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The Dispossessed: Mayor’s millionaire poverty adviser takes a journey of discovery
David Cohen 5 Mar 2010
- Special Report: The Dispossessed
- ES Comment: London’s huge response to the dispossessed
- Politicians who avoid the poorest areas must show moral courage
- Londoners have adopted Vincent and are helping him on his way
- London’s huge response to the dispossessed
- We can no longer insulate ourselves against poverty
- What should be done? Have your say
“What does a City banker earn?” Lee Thompson, 18, contemplates the question for a second. “About £40,000,” he says confidently.
The other five youngsters sitting around the table — all Neets (not in education, employment or training) — nod their agreement. “Yeah, £30k to £50k be 'bout right.”
But when one tries to raise the bar to “£80k”, the others shout him down. “Never! That's way too much!”
When I point out that bankers earn hundreds of thousands, frequently millions, I am met by stunned disbelief.
“It don't matter,” one says after a while. “To be a banker you gotta go university — I'm not clever enough. Didn't even finish school, did I?”
Scrutinizing these teenagers from the other side of the table is multi-millionaire businessman Sir Trevor Chinn.
Dressed in bespoke suit and black-tasselled loafers, Sir Trevor, 74, who lives in Knightsbridge, would not usually venture east of the City to streets like this one in Spitalfields where an astonishing 78 per cent of children live in households mired below the poverty line.
Indeed, Sir Trevor admits that until 18 months ago he had never met youngsters with impoverished backgrounds like Thompson who, having dropped out of school with no qualifications, wound up living for a while in his father's Ford Capri car.
But ever since Boris Johnson appointed him to chair his Mayor's Fund in 2008 and charged him with formulating the Mayor's response to poverty in London, Sir Trevor has been a man on a mission.
He has made it his business to call on the capital's worst estates, talk to youngsters and experts, and visit youth clubs like this one, City Gateway, which trains Neets in IT and gets them into decent jobs.
Speaking exclusively to the Evening Standard as part of our week-long series on London's dispossessed, Sir Trevor will today reveal the outcome of his 18-month search for answers: a £5million pilot project in Shoreditch. The project will be funded by a dozen private and corporate sponsors of which £3million, he says, is already in place.
But first we discuss his journey. What has he learned? Did the scale of the poverty surprise him?
“I was shocked,” he says. “I grew up in middle-class Finchley and like my colleagues in the City, I had no idea that almost 650,000 children — two in five — were living in poverty in London.
“Two things struck me — the squalid, overcrowded living conditions people endure and the lack of aspiration. I'd go from a lunch at NatWest Tower where everyone walks with such purpose to the streets of Tower Hamlets a few hundred yards away where people have no self-belief and nothing to do.
“In retrospect, Labour's promise to eradicate child poverty within a generation was probably rash and unachievable, but we could aim to reduce it to Scandinavian levels where child poverty rates are 10 per cent. Despite billions spent on public services, and 500,000 children taken out of poverty nationally, the figures have not shifted in London.
“The reasons are complex and include the fact that London is, and will always be, a magnet for immigrants. It's astounding though that the only government success in London is in education where in boroughs like Newham, the proportion of children achieving five good GCSEs has doubled to 40 per cent. In all other respects, including health and infant mortality, we've not moved forward at all.”
What is the solution? “Everyone agrees the best way out of poverty is a decent job. But to get them to that position, they need training, confidence building and support.
“That's why we've decided to launch a £5million per annum pilot project in Shoreditch. It's an area on the edge of the City where 75 per cent of the 30,000 children who live are from low-income families and it takes in three of the six poorest boroughs in the UK: Islington, Hackney and Tower Hamlets.”
But with Shoreditch spending more than £220million a year on children's services, what can he achieve with just £5million? “Our money is simply leverage,” he says. “Our approach is to identify effective grassroots organizations helping young people build skills and to form partnerships with them.
“We want to project what they do onto a larger stage, help them grow, and connect them to apprenticeship schemes in the City. We'll use local people to deliver local solutions.”
Sir Trevor began his career in the Lex motoring firm and is a former chairman of the AA and Kwik-Fit. When I interviewed him 18 months ago, he said he hoped to raise £100million over four years. So has the man — knighted for his philanthropic work for Great Ormond Street Hospital and dubbed “the Robin Hood of our times” by Boris for his ability to tap private wealth in the City — found it harder to raise cash than expected?
“Not at all,” he says. “I think the £100million was a figure I plucked from the ether. This year we'll raise £5million and once this project is up and running, we aim to launch a second £5million one in south London next year. We're taking a sustainable long-term view, building area by area.”
What makes him “really angry” is when affluent Londoners dismiss poverty because they don't see children starving on the streets like in the Third World.
“Most middle-class people are completely out of touch with how hard life is for families at the bottom of the pile. We have to understand that ultimately, if we want to reduce violence, we're all in this together.
“This is a problem that is 50 years in the making. But it's totally unacceptable that we've allowed this to happen, that London should be both the richest and the poorest city in Europe.
“These kids are entitled to better. And although their problems can't be solved overnight, I am determined that we can make a good start.”
Reader views (10)
Unfortunately it seems to be largely the result of 30 years of neoliberal and unrestrained free market economics which, even by the reckoning of a rightwing historian like Niall Ferguson, the consequences of which - the massive deregulisation of industry to serve the needs of capital as opposed to those of the people doing the work and, most relevantly, the opening of border controls to allow cheaper labour to pour into hitherto expensive manufacturing markets like the UK - will do what it did everywhere it was realised in the late 19th and early 20th century and likely lead to massive violence and destabilisation.
We have played a large part in destroying our own country through greed. Capitalism is the most radical of ideologies.It burns through everything it touches.
New Labour were even worse than the Tories as they betrayed the very ideas that gave the party existence. Blair, the JP Morgan advisor and his son the fellow merchant banker become ever more grotesque with every passing year, making Ramsay MacDonald look like Atlee.
Seeing these Standard pieces is like reading The Condition of the Working Class in England - a book written by Friedrich Engels whilst he was helping Marx formulate his grand theory. That is where we are after 30 years of the hegemony of the rich - we are back in the mid 19th century and rolling back yet further still.It'll be 1848 soon!
And of course the truth is that those on the political right and those at the top will be elated by this.
- I Crause, London, 03/08/2010 11:52
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If there are 'no jobs' in East London, then why are all the workers on the 2012 site in Stratford from Eastern Europe? Why haven't local people been recruited to this project? Another sad fact is that we have a government overeager to pour money into so-called 'overseas aid', yet completely ignore the deprivation, poor housing and dispair not 10 miles away from the very House of Commons they spout their nonsense in. The policy to end this problem is 'British Jobs for British Workers' (as per Gordon Brown's speech) and to eradicate poverty in our own country first.
- Joannie, Newham, London, 09/04/2010 23:56
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Could we have a definiton of 'middle-class' please? I'm a professional in counselling/education, a single parent who's always worked, have a son in 2nd yr of A levels and I earn £27k. To me, a really good salary- but in comparison with doctors, lawyers & accountants my salary is considered way 'below average'.
By education/occupation I seem to be middle-class, by income & lifestyle....not middle-class but...what class?
Who defines class & by what measures?
- What-Class-Am-I-Then?, ex-Londoner, 01/04/2010 14:12
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Those termed middle class three years ago are today knocking on the door of poverty,as the rich with their huge bonuses and ability to avoid Tax stream ahead.Council TAX,Public transport costs,energy costs,food costs have all taken there toll.When mortgage rates rise to 10%,even more will be stuck in a rut.
- Dave, london, 08/03/2010 09:37
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Social mobility and lack there of is something we can all help to counter attack. The middle classes ARE out of touch and we all have a responsibility to somehow get involved at grass roots level. It is easy to sit there and brag about achievement you may have made in your life and how others just fail to grasp the opportunity that is there, but did you go to one of the worst schools in the country and then have parents who cannot speak English, surrounded by friends who expect and accept failure and reliance on government support? To break out of that is much tougher than getting your city job after getting your university degree! We can all help by offering that hand up and getting involved. It is better for everyone in society after all, as well as to the individual.
- Sarah, Tower Hamlets, London, 07/03/2010 21:35
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I run Business Junction, London's largest independent business network, a network born and raised in Shoreditch. The agencies in this part of the area have failed to engage with us to help bring the smaller Shoreditch companies, many working in exciting new areas of appeal to youngsters like gaming and technology, into contact with those needing a hand into employment.
Spending millions on solely engaging large City companies to provide employment ignores the potential on these kids doorstep. There is a poverty of ideas on the engagement side too, it seems. Too much 'tick-boxing' perhaps?
- Mark Herring, London, 05/03/2010 16:04
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Middle class England are not out of touch with the povety that is in our cities. This government has never re-generated inner cities left them to rot so to speak so it is the governments fault. Anybody from any part of the world can come and live here and sit around and do nothing that is what is causing this country to be third world. Time to stop world aid and re-generate our own country. Families need to be taught that education is important and this government needs to create jobs in manufacturing instead of selling our firms off. Stop employing EU foreigners to come here and stop bowing down to the EU.
- Frances, Leics, 05/03/2010 15:53
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One minute they are telling us we need all these extra people,when they arrive the place turns into a third world country,make up your minds will you.
- Davey_Bouy, Chertsey, 05/03/2010 13:56
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I wondered how longer it would take to build up to the 'Mayor's Fund' - a (failed) PR exercise with the sole intention of staving off much-needed changes to the country's prevailing economic infrastructure by demonstrating that bankers have 'hearts'. Only a (much) more progressive tax regime and resulting redistribution - advocated, of course, by none other than Adam Smith - will solve the issues highlighted by the 'The Dispossessed'; not discretionary, paternalistic, ego-massaging gestures by those represent the problem, not the solution.
- Charlie Bagan, London, 05/03/2010 13:49
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"Not in education, employment or training", and that is the crux of the matter.
- Frank, Home Counties, England., 05/03/2010 13:41
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