Jane Austen has become my shelter against a confusing world

I think I am being driven into the early 19th century as a kind of defence from the surrounding confusions thrown up by contemporary politics. Sorry about that, but I seem to have developed a passion for Jane Austen and have read books by her and about her recently. I have even tried my hand at writing one.

I am sure that this is what human beings do when they feel challenged: they try to disappear into the undergrowth rather than face up to the big issues of everyday life.

This is certainly the reason people take to drink and drugs – because life just gets too hard to handle. Recently I passed through a group of drunken and offensive people shouting and threatening each other. They were all in their 20s or 30s and were determined to knock 10 colours of shit out of each other; then what looked like a leader defused the situation by shouting louder than all others.

• It turns out Jane Austen was a secret radical all along
• Ever wondered what Jane Austen would be like on Twitter?
• The ultimate guide to the best books of 2024 – as chosen by Big Issue critics

I remember that used to be my job back when we were in the early days of Big Issue, but now I’m in my
79th year, it’s a role I would rather not hold. But I looked at what to me seemed like people who had given up. They were rough and unhappy and left behind in the great game of life. How could you influence and turn these people away from a lifetime of drink and drugs? Who was out there trying to turn people away from self-destruction?

Self-destruction, of course, is not just about yourself. No one self-destructs without affecting the people around. Affecting the police who sometimes get drawn in. Affecting landlords and tenants, doctors and nurses and whoever is drafted in to help those who seem to be headed for trouble and illness. If you don’t look after your health then someone else, the NHS, has to pick up the pieces. 

The vast increase of the economically inactive in our communities means that we are leaving people to decline at a rapid rate. This is not about choice but about collapse in people’s lives. A society that seems unable to respond to the needs of people harmed by what I keep describing as the ‘inheritors of poverty’. Their lives thrown away because the reasons for their distress are never addressed.

Only some stopgap, some upping of benefits on offer. But never the receipt of benefits that get you out of need. Why? Because benefits are always used to help you get by for the day. So all of the investment in people like the troubled group I passed through is used up daily and never used to change anyone’s circumstances.

You are in an eternal waiting room. And in that waiting room you often lose the will to live. And then falling into distractions like drink and drugs takes over.

Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter

We have an increasing problem because there is no government department, no institution, no section of society charged with helping the people who end up with nothing. We have government departments, though, that respond to the results of the economically inactive having no role in life – the NHS, the schooling system, social services and, of course, prisons and the police.

They are left to clean up the political mess created by the misuse of public funds that never addresses the issue of preventing people falling into poverty, or results in simply accommodating people who live in poverty.

As a society we are very good at coming up with some short-term solutions. Governments tend to concentrate on relief, as if all of those in need were internal refugees. Feed and water them but never break the chains of their need.

Everything does point towards a complete revolution in the thinking of governments and politicians. More of the same pays poor dividends. A complete overhaul of the ritualistic thinking of governments and their associated civil servants. 

Yes, I am definitely a scratched record, if you remember the metaphor from days gone by. Repetitive, circular, and always coming back to a complete overhaul in the way 3we give out benefits as a sop to keep people quiet. But we don’t give out anything in particular that changes the future for people. If government is not a future creator of a beneficial kind, but a hand holder of the poor, then it only makes our social problems deeper and more destructive.

A concentration on the new thinking necessary to bring about poverty prevention and dismantlement are essential. They are pressing political needs. Even if we don’t know what they are, or where these new ideas are going to come from, at least we should stop and accept that whatever we are doing now is not working. 

A part of government must be broken off to concentrate solely on creating that new thinking, while the rest of the government carries on as normal maintaining the stopgap of benefits – because you can’t just pull the rug from under those in need. The detached part, then, would be solely dedicated to creating the prevention and cure of poverty.

If not, I’m sure soon enough we will all end up reading Jane Austen and trying to hide in the early 19th century – not just me.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. Big Issue exists to give homeless and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy of the magazine or get the app from the App Store or Google Play