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Martin Johnstone is an ordained minister in the Church of Scotland spending all his time alongside organisations and individuals struggling for justice and Martin is clear that the only way that things will really change is if people who struggle against poverty are at the heart of that change process. 

“Some things are so urgent that we can’t afford to do them quickly.” There is an inherent contradiction in this statement but also a deep truth.

At times quick decisions need to be made and procrastinating costs lives. Other times our immediate, short term responses – natural though they may be – do not serve us well in the longer term. We will doubtless have experienced both during the COVID19 pandemic and we are likely to see both again in our attempts to recover from it.

Over recent months it has been encouraging how much consensus there has been, at least in terms of rhetoric, about the need to Build Back Better. There is a broad recognition that the trajectory we were on was failing too many, driving inequality and destroying the planet.

One of the challenges which those enabling and leading the build back better movement face is the requirement to both respond quickly and to take time and to act deliberatively. There is no doubt that an ‘Overton’ policy window has opened to make the case for radical economic and social change – e.g. building a green economy, creating universally accessible and affordable superfast broadband, recalibrating social care – but also that it could close rapidly. There is also a perceived need to act now before more damage is done. However, there is also a risk that by moving too quickly many of those whose interests were not represented (or even acknowledged) previously will continue to be overlooked.

This is one of the perennial problems of policy development, implementation, and evaluation. Put simply, those whose lives have been most harshly impacted by policy and practice remain largely excluded from the development of the very policy and practice supposedly designed to tackle current injustices. There is, therefore, a need not just to build back better but, to build back WITH.

Over the last few years, a growing number of Poverty Truth Commissions have emerged in different parts of the UK. The commissions bring people with direct, lived experience of poverty together with civic and business leaders in a shared task to address the symptoms and causes of poverty. The commissions always begin with those who experience poverty – they meet as a group for several months before others are invited to join them. It is their struggle that substantially sets the agenda. This is slow work. It is about building understanding and relationships – empathy across and between different spaces – before a commission is capable to move on to developing solutions. One of the people who has helped to develop the Poverty Truth Network says it often feels more like cooking a Sunday roast than a microwave dinner. You can’t rush it.

Recently a small group that has been involved in different Poverty Truth Commissions came together to discuss how to build back with. One person pointed out that it has taken coronavirus for many of us to realise what had been obvious to her and others for many years: things were not working the way they should for people like her and for millions of others. We spoke of digital inequality; poor mental health; isolation for some and overcrowding for others; escalating levels of food insecurity; the struggle to look after our kids. We recognised that for those able to work from home during the pandemic, fewer opportunities to spend money may well mean that savings have increased in recent months whereas for others increased household costs have thrown people even further into debt.

Unless people who bear the scars of failed policy and practice are there when decisions about the future are being considered, there is the overwhelming likelihood that past mistakes will be repeated.

We do not underestimate how challenging this way of working is. But it seems to us inconceivable that it is possible to create a just asylum system without the involvement of asylum seekers and people who are fearful of losing their jobs to them. We won’t successfully create a society where young people can flourish if they are excluded from the design of that society. We won’t develop a sustainable benefits system without the insights of people who require its support.

These things are obvious but, in our experience, it is astonishing how often they are overlooked or paid lip service to. We have lost count of the number of times that we have heard it said: “It would have been good to involve more people with lived experience but there simply wasn’t the time.” However, if we are honest, we need to recognise that for too many of us who hold positions of power, there was not the time because we did not believe that the insights of others were as worthwhile as our own.

Time clearly matters. For some now is the time to really listen rather than jumping to inadequate and incomplete solutions. This is about slowly, and with others, growing in confidence, finding our voice, and sharing our expertise. One of us spoke about how, through the course of the pandemic, he had played a regular part in advising the local authority on how homeless people could be more effectively supported, knowing the issues from the inside. This was only possible because, as part of a Poverty Truth Commission, he had begun to recognise his own worth.

These stories are not unique. The Poverty Truth Network is one of a range of groups that nurture such wisdom and help it to inform policy and practice. But such groups are still a  minority, even amongst progressive organisations who are often understandably impatient for change.  

The model for establishing a Poverty Truth Commission is about designing a system, not just a one-off policy programme. Systems thinking is deliberately slow and iterative, enabling friendships, insights, policy and practice to grow sustainably over time. We recognise that this way of working is also joyful, and that joy is an essential element in what will be the long, ongoing journey towards a sustainable and better future. The arc of history may well bend towards justice, but it is a long arc.

“Some things are so urgent that we cannot afford to do them quickly.”

Martin Johnstone will be one of the panel members at our next online event  on Sunday 7th March - 'Poverty & Pandemic' looking at the impact of the pandemic and asking how the church can be ready and prepared in our communities to meet the challenges.   Book your place to join us here Poverty & Pandemic Tickets, Sun 7 Mar 2021 at 16:30 | Eventbrite

This blog was originally published by Involve as part of their series of blogs looking at “democratic responses to COVID19. You can find out about what Martin gets up to – and what he thinks and feels – at www.attheedge.co.uk.

In this week’s blog, following Holocaust Memorial Day, Danny Sweeney reflects on his encounter with a place where genocide took place.  photo by Evgeny Nelmin.

Over a decade ago I visited Tuol Sleng; the secondary school which during the Khmer genocide became S-21; the infamous prison and torture centre of the Khmer Rouge as they forced men and women to provide more and more names to be detained as they slaughtered up to a third of the population in an attempt to reset history to ‘Year Zero’. At the time I was a teacher in China and was enjoying our Lunar New Year holiday backpacking in Cambodia and Vietnam. It was an amazing trip, but it is the afternoon I spent facing the worst of human history which I still remember now.

For a place of such horror Tuol Sleng sits unremarkable, in an average neighbourhood. It sits on the east side of a city block in a neat grid system of streets not far from the Mekong, and the parks and pagodas surrounding the Royal Palace.

What sticks in my memory is the change that happened when I stepped through the gates. The sunny afternoon was a blessed respite from the months of frozen north Chinese winter from which we had just escaped. 

It became harsh and oppressive.

The soundtrack of Phnom Penh; the two-stroke engines of tuk-tuks died at the pavement, and a cruel silence pervaded around the site. These memories always come back to me each year as our visit came late in January the same time that Cambodia along with other genocides are commemorated.

I believe that Holocaust Memorial Day is important; a time when we remember the victims and must confront the worst of our human history.

27th January marks the date in 1945 when Auschwitz was liberated, and the full extent and true horrors of the Nazi extermination programme against Jewish, Roma, and Sinti peoples, along with socialists, trade unionists and the LGBT+ communities began to be known.

“Never again” has become the broken promise of the world. The Holocaust Memorial Trust records that since 1945 along with Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur have all experienced genocide with the world watching on. 

Unlike many of the Nazi sites where attempts were made to cover up evidence Tuol Sleng remains ‘as it was’; toward the end the Khmer Rouge had turned on themselves, and the Viet forces found the centre following the scent of rotting bodies. The pictures of some of those who were tortured within those walls are displayed on the third floor in old classrooms. They include those identified as KR cadres who fell foul to the horrors they had helped build. Piles of shoes and clothes rotted to rags remain in the stairwells, and chains and bedframes used for interrogation remain.

The oppressive silence which I felt sits in Tuol Sleng as a scar on time. The presence of memorials, students, and tourists doing nothing to break the hold of the interrogators, or the cries of the victims over 40 years later. These scars on humanity in Phnom Penh, Auschwitz, Srebrenica, Al-Fashir, and Kigali keep hearing the cry ‘Never Again’. This year we know the Rohingya remain exiled in Bangladesh, and the Uyghur in concentration camps in Xinjiang. But still… Never Again! 

Margaret McCall, member of St Margaret’s Justice & Peace Group in Lochgilphead, Argyll & the Isles, suggests ‘My lambs’ are not being fairly fed. Weekly blog.

Recently I felt moved to write to Jacob Rees-Mogg to see how he could reconcile presenting himself as a man of faith with his support for a government demonstrably lacking in charity. He professes to be a Catholic, a member of a church based on charity.

 I drew his attention first of all to the rise in requests for donations to food banks. All churches and many supermarkets have corners where food can be donated. I asked if he had never stopped to wonder why there are so many.

Next, I spoke of UNICEF donating to feed children in London. Did our man of faith ask why UNICEF thought this was necessary? No - he castigated them, saying that this organisation ought to be concentrating on helping children in war-torn and famine-stricken areas. This, I wrote, from someone who supports a government that has decided to cut foreign aid.

 I mentioned some quotes from the bible - Corinthians 13.2: "I may have all the faith needed to move mountains, but if I have no love, I am nothing"; and John 21 15-17: "Lord you know that I love You", and the reply " Feed my lambs."

In this respect, we have seen questionable responses. “Feed my lambs”? Yes, but give them the minimum and let companies squeeze a profit where possible. Social media has featured pictures of the disappointing food parcels given to children during lockdown. The government and the prime minister rushed to condemn these as disgraceful. But on January 13th at Prime Minister’s Questions, Sir Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, read out from the government's own guidance on school meals:

: one loaf of bread
: two baking potatoes
: block of cheese
: baked beans
: three yoghurts
: tin of sweetcorn
: packet of ham
: bottle of milk

This supposedly constitutes a week's food for a child. The food parcels were variants of this - some with even worse content.

There is some debate about the cost of these parcels, but a £15 pound figure seems the most likely – in which case only food of epicurean standards should be included.

My grandchildren have dietary requirements - one has a severe egg allergy, the other is autistic, which greatly affects food choices. Supermarket vouchers would mean parents could choose what they know their children can eat. And no packaging and delivery costs!

Where is the justice here? Meagre food parcels for children while Members of Parliament have subsidised meals; a COVID crisis in which many suffer both in health and in income, while companies make huge profits from providing essential supplies which on more than one occasion have proved not to be fit for purpose. 

This is not my idea of a man of faith. This is someone who brings shame to the religion he professes to follow. Shame on you Mr Rees-Mogg: when will Justice and Peace prevail?

PS: I have had no response from Mr Rees Mogg.