Ros Wynne Jones writes:
And so here we are, days before the general election, at the place where “Compassionate Conservatism” was born and died. Glasgow’s Easterhouse estate.
Home to 25,000 people and where Iain Duncan Smith once wept over the state of the poor.
In 2002, just after becoming the leader of the Conservative Party, he assembled the masses at the local Baptist Church.
Thirteen years on, as the country gets ready for the polls, I am met by two of the people who showed him around their community – Bob Holman, a long-time activist, and Ian Montague, a former teacher.
“He used our community for a photo opportunity,” says Montague, head of Family Action in Rogerfield and Easterhouse (FARE).
“He exploited people here when he knew he was only going to make things worse.”
It is an irony beyond irony that 13 years on from IDS’ “Easterhouse Conversion” to compassion, the estate is crippled by the welfare reforms inspired by his visit.
Now that same man is pressing for the unimaginable savagery of another £12billion in welfare cuts.
“Does he want Easterhouse left as dust?” one woman asks me. “Poor people wiped from the planet?”
Bob Holman, who at one time called Duncan Smith a friend, says he has only one word for him now.
“Resign!” he says. “If you want to do any good at all for poor people, resign. Go and work in the community and put things right.”
He squarely blames Duncan Smith for the rise of Scottish nationalism.
“The result is Scotland is charging down on a white horse shouting independence,” he says. “People think we can’t take any more of this. We’ve tried everything else.”
At 79, Bob is still working with the community.
He greets me in an apron, serving up cheap, nutritious soup in the cafe at the Baptist Church. It costs only a few pennies – enough for people to have a meal and keep their dignity.
“I remember Iain was very nice, very polite,” he says.
“We got on very well. He said, ‘What amazes me is this place has got volunteers and leaders, some of whom are unemployed and some are lone mums – the very people Margaret Thatcher warned us against.’”
He smiles at the memory.
“He walked up to here, about a half a mile. As he walked he saw a syringe in the gutter. ‘What if a child picked it up?’ he said. He seemed very naïve. He said he had come away ‘a changed man’.
“He took me to Tory conference and I spoke about FARE. He got up after me and promised money to charities like ours.
“I am still waiting.”
After IDS was sacked as Tory leader, he set up the Centre for Social Justice in 2005.
“He said he would put social justice at the heart of British politics,” Bob says. “I still believed him.
“In 2010, he became a minister. He accepted cuts to welfare. So I went to see him in Westminster.
“He said, ‘You don’t understand how moderate I am. I am stopping Osborne and Cameron doing much worse.’ I said, ‘What about the grants to local projects?’
“He said, ‘Well you’re to blame for that. Labour’s left such an economic mess we can’t do it.’ I said, ‘Well are you on the side of the poor or the side of Cameron and Osborne?’”
He breaks off, tears in his eyes.
Sandy Weddell, the Baptist minister also involved in IDS’ early visits, explains: “Bob felt the most hurt by what happened.”
Bob shakes his head: “I was the most naïve, you mean.”
Last year, Bob was so distressed by the new levels of poverty he was seeing that he called for a new version of the 1943 Our Towns report.
The original opened the British public’s eyes to urban poverty.
He nominated eight women – including TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady – to write it. One of them was Loretta Gaffney, who runs the Easterhouse Citizens Advice Bureau.
She sees the results of IDS’ vision every day.
The people who won’t go to the food bank because they are too proud, the families who can’t afford to buy their kids shoes, and whose homes are lit every fortnight by candles when their wages or benefits run out.
“Five or six years ago, we never sent anybody to the food bank,” Loretta says. “Scottish food banks gave out over 100,000 food parcels last year.”
At the heated local election hustings at the FARE community centre, the Conservative candidate looks like he wishes he were invisible.
“The Nasty Party is back,” shouts Michael Wilson, 40, born and bred on the estate. “It never went away!” shouts a woman.
No one mentions Compassionate Conservativism. But one by one, the audience’s questions herald its violent death.
Bedroom Tax, food banks, suicides after benefit sanctions, hungry schoolchildren, universal credit – modern life ‘on the broo’, Glaswegian slang for benefits, from Unemployment Bureau.
“I’m the original ‘Shettleston Man’,” Iain Henderson tells me afterwards. “IDS coined the phrase. The man with the low life expectancy and no prospects.”
Shettleston, where Iain was born, is the community neighbouring Easterhouse.
“What’s IDS done for me? Well, I’m still unemployed and I’m 51, and according to his theory I’ll be dead in 12 years.”
Another audience member laughs. “Compassionate Conservatism is the work of the devil,” she says.
What would she say if IDS came to Easterhouse now? “He’d get a Glasgow kiss.”
The saddest irony is that there is still so much governments could learn from FARE.
Founded in 1989 to work with gangs whose violence was disfiguring the estate, it is still the most extraordinary place, tackling entrenched poverty with hope and passion.
I walk with Bob to the spot where IDS was pictured on that very first visit – standing with a pained expression outside a dilapidated block of flats in an incongruous city suit and dress shoes.
Much of Easterhouse has been regenerated since 2002, no thanks to IDS, and the exact block has been pulled down.
But the wasteland left behind remains like a monument to his vanity and empty promises.
There is a matching block behind, still inhabited, washing flapping on balconies. Mattresses and junk still litter the grass.
“Now imagine this with £12billion more in welfare cuts,” Bob says.
With the toughness built up through generations of a strong community under pressure, Easterhouse will survive.
But for social justice to have prevailed, it should be flourishing, its people given the chance of a decent and fulfilling life.
That’s what Iain Duncan Smith claimed to have understood.
“If he did, he’s had a funny way of showing it,” Bob says.
It might be the wind cutting across the wasteland, but it looks as if there are tears in his eyes.
And so here we are, days before the general election, at the place where “Compassionate Conservatism” was born and died. Glasgow’s Easterhouse estate.
Home to 25,000 people and where Iain Duncan Smith once wept over the state of the poor.
In 2002, just after becoming the leader of the Conservative Party, he assembled the masses at the local Baptist Church.
Thirteen years on, as the country gets ready for the polls, I am met by two of the people who showed him around their community – Bob Holman, a long-time activist, and Ian Montague, a former teacher.
“He used our community for a photo opportunity,” says Montague, head of Family Action in Rogerfield and Easterhouse (FARE).
“He exploited people here when he knew he was only going to make things worse.”
It is an irony beyond irony that 13 years on from IDS’ “Easterhouse Conversion” to compassion, the estate is crippled by the welfare reforms inspired by his visit.
Now that same man is pressing for the unimaginable savagery of another £12billion in welfare cuts.
“Does he want Easterhouse left as dust?” one woman asks me. “Poor people wiped from the planet?”
Bob Holman, who at one time called Duncan Smith a friend, says he has only one word for him now.
“Resign!” he says. “If you want to do any good at all for poor people, resign. Go and work in the community and put things right.”
He squarely blames Duncan Smith for the rise of Scottish nationalism.
“The result is Scotland is charging down on a white horse shouting independence,” he says. “People think we can’t take any more of this. We’ve tried everything else.”
At 79, Bob is still working with the community.
He greets me in an apron, serving up cheap, nutritious soup in the cafe at the Baptist Church. It costs only a few pennies – enough for people to have a meal and keep their dignity.
“I remember Iain was very nice, very polite,” he says.
“We got on very well. He said, ‘What amazes me is this place has got volunteers and leaders, some of whom are unemployed and some are lone mums – the very people Margaret Thatcher warned us against.’”
He smiles at the memory.
“He walked up to here, about a half a mile. As he walked he saw a syringe in the gutter. ‘What if a child picked it up?’ he said. He seemed very naïve. He said he had come away ‘a changed man’.
“He took me to Tory conference and I spoke about FARE. He got up after me and promised money to charities like ours.
“I am still waiting.”
After IDS was sacked as Tory leader, he set up the Centre for Social Justice in 2005.
“He said he would put social justice at the heart of British politics,” Bob says. “I still believed him.
“In 2010, he became a minister. He accepted cuts to welfare. So I went to see him in Westminster.
“He said, ‘You don’t understand how moderate I am. I am stopping Osborne and Cameron doing much worse.’ I said, ‘What about the grants to local projects?’
“He said, ‘Well you’re to blame for that. Labour’s left such an economic mess we can’t do it.’ I said, ‘Well are you on the side of the poor or the side of Cameron and Osborne?’”
He breaks off, tears in his eyes.
Sandy Weddell, the Baptist minister also involved in IDS’ early visits, explains: “Bob felt the most hurt by what happened.”
Bob shakes his head: “I was the most naïve, you mean.”
Last year, Bob was so distressed by the new levels of poverty he was seeing that he called for a new version of the 1943 Our Towns report.
The original opened the British public’s eyes to urban poverty.
He nominated eight women – including TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady – to write it. One of them was Loretta Gaffney, who runs the Easterhouse Citizens Advice Bureau.
She sees the results of IDS’ vision every day.
The people who won’t go to the food bank because they are too proud, the families who can’t afford to buy their kids shoes, and whose homes are lit every fortnight by candles when their wages or benefits run out.
“Five or six years ago, we never sent anybody to the food bank,” Loretta says. “Scottish food banks gave out over 100,000 food parcels last year.”
At the heated local election hustings at the FARE community centre, the Conservative candidate looks like he wishes he were invisible.
“The Nasty Party is back,” shouts Michael Wilson, 40, born and bred on the estate. “It never went away!” shouts a woman.
No one mentions Compassionate Conservativism. But one by one, the audience’s questions herald its violent death.
Bedroom Tax, food banks, suicides after benefit sanctions, hungry schoolchildren, universal credit – modern life ‘on the broo’, Glaswegian slang for benefits, from Unemployment Bureau.
“I’m the original ‘Shettleston Man’,” Iain Henderson tells me afterwards. “IDS coined the phrase. The man with the low life expectancy and no prospects.”
Shettleston, where Iain was born, is the community neighbouring Easterhouse.
“What’s IDS done for me? Well, I’m still unemployed and I’m 51, and according to his theory I’ll be dead in 12 years.”
Another audience member laughs. “Compassionate Conservatism is the work of the devil,” she says.
What would she say if IDS came to Easterhouse now? “He’d get a Glasgow kiss.”
The saddest irony is that there is still so much governments could learn from FARE.
Founded in 1989 to work with gangs whose violence was disfiguring the estate, it is still the most extraordinary place, tackling entrenched poverty with hope and passion.
I walk with Bob to the spot where IDS was pictured on that very first visit – standing with a pained expression outside a dilapidated block of flats in an incongruous city suit and dress shoes.
Much of Easterhouse has been regenerated since 2002, no thanks to IDS, and the exact block has been pulled down.
But the wasteland left behind remains like a monument to his vanity and empty promises.
There is a matching block behind, still inhabited, washing flapping on balconies. Mattresses and junk still litter the grass.
“Now imagine this with £12billion more in welfare cuts,” Bob says.
With the toughness built up through generations of a strong community under pressure, Easterhouse will survive.
But for social justice to have prevailed, it should be flourishing, its people given the chance of a decent and fulfilling life.
That’s what Iain Duncan Smith claimed to have understood.
“If he did, he’s had a funny way of showing it,” Bob says.
It might be the wind cutting across the wasteland, but it looks as if there are tears in his eyes.
Harrowing.
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