Advertisement

We need your help now

Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.

You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.

If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.

Actor Conor J Maguire in Removed Matt Curry

Opinion Let's drop the narrative of the undeserving poor and other myths that dehumanise people

My new play attempts to capture the perspective of young people who have been in state care – humanity has to be at the core of our response, writes Fionnuala Kennedy.

I GREW UP in West Belfast.

Born into the conflict, I lived in an area that was hugely politically active.

We were aware from a very young age of politics, the fight for rights, chalking political slogans to the ground where we played. I knew well the faces of John Major and Margaret Thatcher – more from Spitting Image than anything else.

I also had an in-depth knowledge of the benefits system from panicked phone calls and conversations, getting sent to the neighbour’s house to see if their ‘bru’ came in that week.

My primary school was a mix of kids from my area and children from a more affluent one down the road. I was acutely aware that my parents had less money than others, that we were different.

The embarrassment and shame of having to queue up with a few others from our class to get our free school dinner ticket was a daily dread.

One Christmas when I was eight years old, I remember seeing the news that my classmate had been shot in a bar when playing snooker with his father. The shock for me was realising this wasn’t just between the adults. Age didn’t matter. You were someone’s enemy and you never knew why.

Circumstances

Lingering inside me always was the feeling that we deserved it because of ‘our circumstances’.

Ah, your circumstances: your name, where you’re from, where you live, how you speak, what you look like, what you have, what you don’t have. I was surrounded by the narratives, the judgements and the justifications for all of it.

It creeps into your head. When you don’t think you’re equal to someone else, when you think other people are simply better because of their circumstances, you’re in danger – in many different ways.

I continue to be fascinated with how society creates narratives about people and what that subsequently gives permission to.

These narratives inform my work as a theatre-maker in some shape or form.

Undeserving poor

For a few years, I’ve been campaigning against the Tory party’s brutal Welfare Reform Bill as part of the Participation and the Practice of Rights Project

People with disabilities have had much-needed benefits stopped, while others have been sanctioned without due process and left with absolutely no income for weeks.

Then there is the controversial ‘two-child policy’ which limits welfare benefits to people who have more than two children. Rape victims can get an exemption from that rule – but they have to prove that they conceived the child as a consequence of rape. 

The narratives around people on benefits have been ramped up to allow for this callous bill.

Recently, I was tasked with writing workshops with a parents group to share stories of people living in poverty at a conference in Belfast to raise awareness and tackle these false narratives about people on benefits. 

I worked with women who have been through some of the darkest times imaginable because they are living in areas of deprivation, with some battling custody of children, addiction, illness or violence – all while trying to provide for their children from meagre benefits.

After presenting the stories, I was told by the organisers that the women’s stories didn’t ‘relate to the subject of poverty’. They had previously referenced ‘I, Daniel Blake’, where the protagonist has worked all his life and due to illness had to sign on.

I suspect that the women, whose stories I told, were viewed as the undeserving poor.

There was ignorance of the nuances of poverty and to the circumstances that propel people into it. They’re not the narratives we want to hear.

Dehumanising the ‘other’

I’m currently working with a group of people seeking asylum in Northern Ireland.

Their circumstances are unimaginable. Talking to asylum seekers – especially to those with children – I’m in awe of their resilience in the face of a brutal system.  

Brexit gave further permission to the negative narratives around immigrants and asylum seekers, allowing us again to justify cruelty to another human being in defence of our quality of life.

The narrative tells us we can strip some people of their humanity – they are the ‘other’.

This narrative then gives permission for cruel legislation, for racist attacks, for violence, for dehumanising men, women and children to a label, to severe stress, to violence, to starvation and destitution.

In working with asylum seekers to share their stories, we debated those stories, including the fact that one of them smokes and can’t afford tobacco on the £37 a week income they are expected to live on.

Will highlighting his story undermine our argument? Will people say, ‘Well you shouldn’t be spending your money on tobacco?’

Even though for him, living in a foreign country with no family and in a highly stressful situation, having a smoke is the only small joy in his life.

Is he undeserving?

Removed

For my new play, Removed, I had the privilege of working with young people with care experience, to hear their stories and mainstage them.

I cannot even begin to imagine this life but I tried to capture the truth in the interviews I conducted.

The recurring theme was the young people thinking they had done something bad to be removed from their families and placed in care. 

How do our assumptions about who is ‘deserving’ facilitate us to ignore the plight of some care leavers and to create a system that may not serve them but instead reinforces to them that they are bad?

When we are presented with a young person with care experience who has been through extraordinarily difficult times, but they’re not the ‘Annie’ we have in our heads, how do we really respond?

It is no coincidence that many young people with care experience end up in prison.

The young people I interviewed were building their lives having suffered great trauma, but also having to continually battle against other people’s perceptions and judgements about them.

And it is a battle. One that makes their lives incredibly difficult on top of everything else they are going through.

We all contribute to the narratives. We are the enemies they never asked for. I’ve done it many times and try to work out where it comes from.

It feels to me that there is now a sense of people becoming aware of it – in wider debates around victims of rape and women seeking abortions.

We are possibly moving towards a place where we are ready to ask ourselves why we want the perfect victims and situations, in order for us to sanction people in desperate circumstances with our support?

Humanity has to be at the core of our responses and change cannot happen fast enough.

Fionnuala Kennedy is the author of Removed a new play inspired by interviews with young people growing up in care in Northern Ireland, created by Prime Cut Productions in collaboration Voice Of Young People In Care and in association with Young at Art. 

Removed is currently running in the Belfast Children’s Festival until Saturday 16 March 2019. 

Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone...
A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation.

Close
26 Comments
This is YOUR comments community. Stay civil, stay constructive, stay on topic. Please familiarise yourself with our comments policy here before taking part.
Leave a Comment
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Maurice Danaher
    Favourite Maurice Danaher
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:28 PM

    Current national debt is circa €190B. Is Noonan giving up on getting the ECB to finance the Bank debt and get it deducted from the €190B. This was one of FG’s election promises. The real national debt figure is probably close to €500B if we were to accrue all PRSI pension liabilities. Yesterday’s article in the Sunday Times is frightening on this.

    112
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Winston Teardrops
    Favourite Winston Teardrops
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:33 PM

    Why would they include future liabilities? At that rate you could bring future expected revenue into the equation!

    61
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Emily Elephant
    Favourite Emily Elephant
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:40 PM

    Because as from 2017, we have to account for unfunded liabilities to give a true picture of national debt. Just as companies have had to do for years. There’s no real difference between a bond you have to repay and a pension you’re committed to paying, except in accounting terms.

    51
    See 11 more replies ▾
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Maurice Danaher
    Favourite Maurice Danaher
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:01 PM

    Well said. Couldn’t have put it better myself.

    19
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Kate Ellen Egan
    Favourite Kate Ellen Egan
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:04 PM

    Where will the money to fund these early repayments come from ? I know it’s a stupid question but does anyone know the answer ?

    11
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Robin Tobin
    Favourite Robin Tobin
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:11 PM

    Maurice the minister is doing lip service for the next election. Europe is in receivership and has told Noonan no to what you have noted. It would be nice but our politician didn’t talk hard they were the good boys in the class. So Europe expects them to keep paying.

    28
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Alien8
    Favourite Alien8
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:15 PM

    They will be coming from 15 year loans/bond issues so the banks will be lending this money to repay them back early.

    10
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute VoiceOfVanguard
    Favourite VoiceOfVanguard
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:23 PM

    Wait ’til Ireland doesn’t get the retroactive bank recapitalization.

    And when – not if – new international corporate tax rules take effect from 2016 (OECD), at least €50 billion, or half the annual value of services exports will be vapourized.

    Plus, some multi-nationals have also said they will leave when that happens i.e. when they have to start paying a lot more corporation tax back home on top of high wages in Ireland.

    Hold on to your tin hats.

    16
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Richard Rodgers
    Favourite Richard Rodgers
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:28 PM

    Emily
    Perhaps now the penny might drop when we consider the point John Bruton was making when discussing such liabilities recently.!
    He was massively abused on this site when his opinion about defaulting by the State on pensions etc when the alternative was bankruptcy .
    How quickly we shoot the messenger in Ireland rather than trying to deal with realities.

    9
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute SeanieRyan
    Favourite SeanieRyan
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:14 PM

    Still think that a debt deal will have to be done.

    The EU live in a fantasy world where real economic reality is denied and put on long finger.

    They blew their chance to resolve the Euro crisis.

    11
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Ben Gunn
    Favourite Ben Gunn
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:32 PM

    That would apply to unfunded civil service pensions but not to PRSI pensions. That liability is subject to year by year legislation and, in theory, could be reduced or abolished by a new Finance Act. It won’t happen of course, but the possibilty means that it is not a reckonable long term debt.

    3
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Stephen Brady
    Favourite Stephen Brady
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:47 PM

    What do you mean give up, they didn’t even ask for feck sake

    4
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Kerry Blake
    Favourite Kerry Blake
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 9:48 PM

    ohhh I feel another seismic shift coming on….

    7
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Huggy Bear
    Favourite Huggy Bear
    Report
    Sep 8th 2014, 9:12 AM

    Property tax
    Water charges
    USC
    ….any if these terms familiar to you????

    1
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute IrishGravyTrain
    Favourite IrishGravyTrain
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:21 PM

    No financial penalty for paying off loans early. Ha ha. We should be getting a discount for paying early.

    107
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Winston Teardrops
    Favourite Winston Teardrops
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:30 PM

    Don’t get into finance. I can tell by this one comment that it’s not for you.

    75
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Tony Skillington
    Favourite Tony Skillington
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:51 PM

    We should never have had them in the first place…ffs

    48
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Peter King
    Favourite Peter King
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:23 PM

    Getting a bit annoyed with this sycophantic attitude the government has with Europe.

    77
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute John Deegan
    Favourite John Deegan
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:38 PM

    What, you feel no surge of patriotic pride when our minister begs the faceless financiers to kindly allow us to give us a big ball of cash?

    32
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute John Deegan
    Favourite John Deegan
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:39 PM

    * you a big ball of cash *

    7
    See 8 more replies ▾
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Mike O Neill
    Favourite Mike O Neill
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:00 PM
    7
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Richard Rodgers
    Favourite Richard Rodgers
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:39 PM

    Peter.
    What a brain and what a genius. Please tell us how yo can save the State a cool three hundred and seventy five million Euro a year as proposed by Minister Noonan so that we don’t have to politely ask our creditors for agreement to vary the terms of our Bailout.
    You must be a whizz with figures and I envy the confidence with which you stride across these pages.
    I showed your comments to a colleague and I could see straight away that he misunderstands you. In tact what he said about you couldn’t be printed here but all great men Peter suffer from such slingshots!

    12
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Paul Mc
    Favourite Paul Mc
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:09 PM

    @Rodgers as per usual your wisdom knows no bounds you and your comments are wasted on the journal.
    Its time you took up your true vocation and that in my humble oppinion is that of chief Fine Gael ass wipe.

    25
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Richard Rodgers
    Favourite Richard Rodgers
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:22 PM

    Paul
    Thanks! Your opinion in your own words is indeed humble and it is quite clear that you never aspired beyond that though instinct probably told you that there was enough material in you to heft a Sinn Fein shovel but you would need to be told what to do after that.
    The world needs simple folk Paul and at least you have recognised that!

    5
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Stephen Grehan
    Favourite Stephen Grehan
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:37 PM

    Well said Paul Mc. When Rodgers is in the company of Edna its like a scene from the film The Human Centipede.

    13
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Thomas Newell
    Favourite Thomas Newell
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 9:09 PM

    hows life as the chief arse kisser and male cheer leader to enda and his brigade richard cos clearly you are one of them patriots big nose hogan was on about

    10
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Kerry Blake
    Favourite Kerry Blake
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 9:54 PM

    So Richard hows that seismic shift of Enda the statesman performing these days?

    10
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Richard Rodgers
    Favourite Richard Rodgers
    Report
    Sep 3rd 2014, 12:01 AM

    Kerry
    Whaaaaaaaaat?

    3
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute E=MC2
    Favourite E=MC2
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:58 PM

    When the cost of Noonan’s very generous minster’s pension to which he does not contribute a cent is added to the debt it could be the last straw that breaks the taxpayer’s back.

    36
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Phillip Hogan
    Favourite Phillip Hogan
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:23 PM

    Wow, we are so lucky.

    25
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Alien8
    Favourite Alien8
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:53 PM

    Looking at the returns, it is all rosy for Noonan – revenue’s new mantra is to suck every last penny of savings and profit out of small business and their employees and to present it as a gift to some unelected ex-politicians and expect a pat on his obnoxious head.

    “Look what I brought you – someone else’s debt, maybe I’ve ruined a few small businesses and taxed earnings and savings from Irish people to the hilt, but as long as we’re all happy let’s make this look like good news to the ‘media’ – you’ll print it like that, you property funded news website”…

    36
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Ger Ryan
    Favourite Ger Ryan
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 7:29 PM

    At the end of the 1st 1/4 2008 this country was heading towards a deficit of 22bn euros. In d last 5 yrs we have undertaken a huge social experimenr in how to balance d books without strikes/riots etc and we have nearly made it. There is huge credit due to fg and lab and enormous credit due to d dept of finance and public expenditure.

    19
    See 3 more replies ▾
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Stephen Brady
    Favourite Stephen Brady
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:52 PM

    Why should lab and fg get any credit. Ff told them what to do before they got booted out.

    11
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Colin Mccormack
    Favourite Colin Mccormack
    Report
    Sep 3rd 2014, 3:53 AM

    How is it any credit to them, it’s a credit to the irish people not the politicians. The politicians didn’t stop riots they hid away in Leinster house and quietly stripped us of our pride and dignity and left most of us demoralised and close to bankruptcy. Suicides are through the roof, let’s see these magnificent politicians of yours deal with that elephant in the roof. Crime.? It’s bandit country in ireland again, those shower deserve no credit for anything.

    4
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Ger Ryan
    Favourite Ger Ryan
    Report
    Sep 3rd 2014, 7:22 AM

    The simple fact if the matter is that this country of 4.5million people withdrew over 16bn from circulation over the past 5 years. Politicans put their names forward as spokespeople for that. You didnt. You come on forums and talk abt how bad it is. Pokiticans arent stupid or even greedy anymore. They all know the suicide numbers, the high taxes, the unemployment but they still put their names forward. You didnt. it is easier spew vitriol from d sidelines

    2
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Alan O'connor
    Favourite Alan O'connor
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:06 PM

    More bad news for the Shinners. Tax take up. Ahead of forecast.

    Where are the Shinners anyway?

    I suppose it’s hard for them to spin positives into negatives. Especially when there’s an election coming up. Just doesn’t appeal to voters.

    But it’s all they have.

    21
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Thomas Newell
    Favourite Thomas Newell
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 9:13 PM

    so anyone that has a different opinion to them muppets in power are shinners………explains the mental state of the cheerleaders for the likes of the FG/LB/FF crowd on hear…..deluded one trick ponies who believe anything that comes out of the lot in the dail

    14
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute John Hartigan
    Favourite John Hartigan
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:08 PM

    Election spew has started

    21
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Nosmo King
    Favourite Nosmo King
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:11 PM

    ” Noonan ” and ” charm ” in the same sentence !! . It is just so wrong, Jack Horgan-Jones. Just so, so wrong.

    16
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute VinHeffer89
    Favourite VinHeffer89
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:05 PM

    Will Mr Noonan be dancing suggestively for Mario Draghi et al as well?

    16
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Susan Adair Farrelly
    Favourite Susan Adair Farrelly
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 8:54 PM

    Charm?? God help Europe…

    8
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Jarlath Murphy
    Favourite Jarlath Murphy
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 5:41 PM

    Jam?………………………………..
    ‘…………………………?…………….
    ……..?………………………………….

    NEVER!

    8
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute DM
    Favourite DM
    Report
    Sep 2nd 2014, 6:16 PM

    Why was my two comments deleted?

    7
    Install the app to use these features.
    Mute Brehon Law
    Favourite Brehon Law
    Report
    Sep 3rd 2014, 8:16 AM

    Just in time for the general election!

    2
Submit a report
Please help us understand how this comment violates our community guidelines.
Thank you for the feedback
Your feedback has been sent to our team for review.

Leave a commentcancel

 
JournalTv
News in 60 seconds