How to Get Fair in the country
The Get Fair campaign brings together a coalition of more than fifty organisations committed to the eradication of UK poverty by 2020. It includes a number of denominations and church agencies, along with the Muslim Council of Britain, Help the Aged, Save the Children – and many more.
Lying behind the Get Fair campaign is a desire for people to understand better the causes of poverty and what it means to be poor. There is also the hope that people will be inspired to take action in their communities and that the eradication of poverty will move up the political agenda. Concrete measures that are being called for include ensuring everyone in the UK has:
• An income that meets minimum living standards
• Affordable housing and decent neighbourhoods
• Fair access to services, without discrimination
The Get Fair campaign originated some time before the full impact of the recession and credit crunch was being felt but present circumstances have led to an even greater sense of urgency and a more fundamental reappraisal of the situation. In an open letter to political leaders the Get Fair coalition called for the launch of ‘a UK Economic Recovery Plan to invest in housing, energy efficiency, job creation and income protection measures for the most vulnerable, combined with bold measures to prevent
irresponsible lenders and energy companies profiting at the expense of their poorest customers.’ With events moving so rapidly it is a challenge for the campaign to keep pace.
First on the alphabetical list of Get Fair coalition members is the Arthur Rank Centre (ARC). In
addition to lending its weight to the campaign, the ARC is keen to raise awareness, including among other coalition members, that poverty is not wholly an urban phenomenon. Over 2 million people in rural England live on or below the poverty line (and that was before recent developments), yet for a complex array of reasons rural poverty remains largely hidden and invisible.
A factor contributing to this hiddenness is that even some of the campaigning methods currently in vogue are not proving to be very rural friendly. There is a great emphasis on hearing genuine testimonies from people experiencing poverty and exclusion. Last year, Poverty & Homelessness Action Week focused on the holding of ‘Local Poverty Hearings’ and this year the Week’s Voices from the Edge script is based on anonymous interviews with real people living in real poverty. It has proved very difficult to provide significant rural input into either of these initiatives.
It is a great challenge facing those who live and work in rural communities – who are all too aware of the realities of rural poverty – as to how the voice of the rural poor can be heard when so many factors conspire to silence it. This is not a new challenge but innovative and creative thinking is required if the obstacles are to be overcome.
A number of opportunities to address this issue present themselves in 2009. They include:
• Registering support for the Get Fair campaign at
www.getfair.org.uk; ordering a
campaign pack and promoting the campaign through
appropriate networks
• Supporting the Poverty & Homelessness Action Week (31 January – 8 February 2009) and downloading free resources from
www.actionweek.org.uk.
• Responding to the call from the Commission for Rural Communities for evidence of the effects of the recession and credit crunch on rural England – to inform its regular reports to Rt Hon Hilary Benn. Evidence to be sent to louise.rixham@
ruralcommunities.gov.uk.
Are there any innovative and creative ideas out there? The rural poor may ‘always be with us’ but they need not be so numerous or so ignored.
Revd Graham Jones
National Rural Officer for the Methodist Church and the United Reformed Church
grahamj@rase.org.uk
www.arthurrankcentre.org.uk
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rural mission
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