It was funny. In all the worry about people’s businesses being burned to the ground, people’s livelihood being looted and the impact it would have on the working people of Britain, no-one had paid any mind to the more vulnerable people in our society such as the homeless.
In Birmingham it is reported that there are over 4,000 people homeless, although the official figure doesn’t include those that are referred to as “the hidden homeless”, those who have slipped through the cracks to the extent where they aren’t included in a statistic designed solely to measure their existence.
While the riots have disrupted local transport, closed local businesses and lengthened commutes to and from the city, for the most part life goes on. It may not be as dour and mundane as it is on all those other days and the working hours might be mercifully shorter than usual but people get through, the trains and streets alive with chatter with excitement about it all and the same two or three suggestions as to how it could be all stopped.
For the homeless people things are a little bit different. In Birmingham there are a number of people that take shelter in doorways and underpasses in Corporation Street, an area with a geography that can keep people out of sight and away from the cold. Yesterday the decimation of businesses as well as the hundreds of angry “protesters” congregating on the same streets that these people hoped to later bed down on made them wary and fearful for their safety.
After I had left the riots I saw a group of people amassing on a street corner. They’d been ushered out of the street by the riot police. It wasn’t clear when they were going to be let back in and already darkness was descending. They stood around, hands in their pockets, watching the swirl of violence and vandalism move down the street and looked somewhat dumbfounded by it all. I went over expecting some anecdotes from locals, perhaps even shop workers or owners.
A small, slim man with piercing blue eyes looked at me and said “all this trouble… I have to live here you know” and he shook his head. I asked him where he lived and he told me Corporation Street, which I found odd as I knew of no residences round here… Above the Square Peg pub maybe? “No, I live here… On the streets”. I noticed then his well worn black tracksuit, scuffed and dirty.
We struck up a conversation. He was critical of the riots and could see no logic behind them, even from his unique vantage point. “It’s all so bloody stupid. Most of these will be arrested tomorrow anyway and what for? They’re fighting each other half the time. Now with the riots they’re working together to break into shops. It’ll be back to normal in a few days and all that will have changed is they’ll be in court.”
I came clean from the start and said that although I was dressed as if I’d been kicking in a few windows myself I was out here reporting on it, trying to find some sense in it all. He just looked at me suspiciously and asked why I’d want to do something like that. I didn’t want to lecture him, so told him it was for kicks, that maybe I could sell some of my photos and he nodded. “Better than robbing from shops I suppose”.
I extended a hand and offered my name. He said I could call him “Wozza” and it was clear he treated amateur journalists with the same caution as he did the looters. Still, he was happy to talk as it “wasn’t as if he had anything better to do” he joked.
Still, there was a gallows humour in his tone. “I’m one of the better off ones” he explained. “I’m healthy, I’m on a waiting list for a shelter. It’s Summer anyway so it’s not a big deal if you don’t get your sleeping bag when you’re young.”
I flashed him a look that conveyed my lack of understanding. I didn’t really follow the logic and he knew it. “There’s a scheme round here where you get given sleeping bags on a night and they come and pick them up in the morning. It’s just some old guy I think, just doing it out of kindness. Since the riots started he’s not been out. Don’t blame him. Driving around on a night is dangerous enough.”
He then went on to tell me that it had been the same for some of the food distribution programs too, that all he’d had all day was a cup of tea earlier from a van in the afternoon. For him, his placement at the sheltered accommodation couldn’t come soon enough but he was still months away, the average waiting time for his particular digs of choice being six months. “Two down” he said with a rueful smile before changing the subject about where he was going to sleep tonight.
“It’s generally safer round here. There’s a few of us that hang out together and the people on Corporation Street are generally doing their own thing. No-one wants to bother us and the police don’t come in and move us along. It’s as good as it gets.”
Tonight of course would be different. The increased police presence might see the streets sealed off. It had certainly impacted on the footfall that some people were reliant on to beg for small change. Added to that there were gangs roaming around late at night looking for any old scapegoat for their anger. Suddenly the streets, even this one, weren’t safe for the homeless people who resided on them.
Despite that he had been well placed to hear things that had perhaps escaped the attention of others. For example he told me the Aston Villa Club shop hadn’t been trashed by looters but by the rival Brimingham City fans hooligan group known as “The Zulus”, safe in the knowledge that it would be blamed on local rioters and not investigated separately. He also said he’d seen and heard EDL members out on the march and had defaced a local mosque in retaliation, another story that hadn’t seemed to make the local news.
I asked Wozza if he’d thought about getting involved in the riots himself and he laughed and said “it’s tempting” then with a serious steel suddenly in his eyes he added “I’m not a criminal though.”
I felt stupid about making the insinuation, such a middle class prejudicial leap of the mind but he shrugged off any attempt at an apology. “If I put it simple let’s say I did and I got caught. I’d lose my spot on this waiting list and would probably be excluded from a lot of future ones for having a conviction. Some people won’t think it through.”
Much like my comment and indeed the whole situation. It’s funny because throughout the riots I’d seen people truly concerned about protecting those that didn’t need it quite so much. I saw riot police drive away the crowds from the glitzy shops of the Bull Ring and then stand by while they destroyed small, local businesses. Those same business owners talked about the injustice of it all and asked how they could replace what they had lost. I listened to people living in highrise apartments talk about how it disrupted their working day even though the closest they had come to it was on a 24 hour news channel. Not once had I heard anyone ask about how riots could affect the people who had nothing and had to rely on others.
I thanked Wozza and gave him some spare change. I’d come out with only enough cash for to get home just in case I was mugged during my time in the crowds. It was probably not even enough for a sandwich from the same Tesco I’d just seen looted earlier. It left me feeling rotten but he was grateful enough.
I hung around a moment or two before leaving as night started to fall. There was reports of a car fire at Moor Street station and it was clear that things would turn ugly once more. I nodded at Wozza who had joined his colleagues once more and left, feeling like a fake and an asshole because I had a home to go to.