hand in pocket
The earlier ‘streets of London’ post reminded me of that touching, slightly melancholic song by Ralph McTell, and my relationship with it. Hand-on-heart, I can’t recall much being given to charity when I was growing up, other than when my ol’ man thrust the princely sum of two-bob in my grubby mitt to give to the tramp who was singing this song, unaccompanied, on a wet Preston street. Hearing the song today immediately transports me back in time and renders me unable to speak for a wee while.
To my knowledge, that was the working-class charity stance at the time: charity began at home in that you looked after your own but we trusted the state, to which we paid, without argument, our taxes & dues, to look after the rest of the great unwashed. Unless something really tugged at the heart-strings. My how things have changed. Charity demands are everywhere. From Red Nose Days, emergency appeals and constant postal reminders, to little Johnny’s run in the park, intrusive email alerts and the Costa chuggers, they represent a massive increase in both charitable demand and anticipated guilt-driven impulsive response.
Whilst still essentially believing it largely remains the state’s responsibility, I do consider myself to be a fairly generous giver. I proactively support a charity or two, find it difficult to walk past a rattling-tin, actively seek out The Big Issue and religiously donate a quid with every ebay purchase. However, the subject of charity still makes me feel both uneasy and inadequate, though the charitable knee-jerk can no longer be automatically taken for granted. Guilt can propel me to give but, by the same token, it can alienate and engender feelings of ‘charity fatigue’.
For over twenty years I was a supporting member of Amnesty International, until a number of duplicitous internal pension payments and golden handshakes were made public. I angrily wrote to the boss and cancelled my standing order. The Kids Company seemed on the level until Camila Batmanghelidjh was rightly hauled over the coals for administering a largely self-serving enterprise. Shamed Paul Kelly of Console was declared to be ‘detached from reality’ wrt to his own personal spending when, over a two year period, it came to light that he, his wife and son cost the charity almost €1m, with a further €500,000 being spent on foreign trips, designer clothes and eating out!
With these, and many more examples, trust in charities is understandably on the wane. Social enterprise is perhaps the rationale alternative to indiscriminate charity: in essence, social enterprise identifies business opportunities and makes loans accordingly. By making an active investment it encourages responsible profit and enables people to work to task & goal. Admittedly, it won’t work for all but I like the cut-of-its-jib and it’s increasingly clear that charity needs to rethink its position within society and, as such, its approach. A soft-heart can go hand-in-hand with a hard nose.
