A Guest Post from Leanne Tervitt
I was 17 when I had my son, 19 when I had my daughter. Another council scheme statistic. I was on full benefits, we called it the Monday book. I would cash in my benefits in Monday then head to Asda with the weeks dinners planned. I learned how to make meat last 2 meals, a chicken dinner one day, then I’d strip that chicken dry and make chicken broth the next. Mince and totties one day, then stovies with the left overs. I made leek and potato soup most weeks as it was cheap, healthy and filling with a piece to dunk in. Lunches were pieces on whatever was there, and a pudding was a yoghurt.
It was easier then as it is now as I could always feed us and heat our housing association flat, although there wasn’t much money for anything else.
No doubt about it that people looked at me and judged. They thought that was my life now, and my kids life. A life on benefits ahead with my rent paid and scrounging from the system and the tax payer.
Im thankful of the help that benefits gave us. It allowed me to remain at home with my children until my son started school and daughter nursery, they got a decent start to life in that they had all my time.
Many young lassies in that situation would remain there though, stick on benefits with no way out. Without help and support it would be nigh on impossible to escape.
My son had just started nursery when I joined Dunfermline Womens Technology Centre. It was run by women, for women, during school hours to allow those with children to attend. We were taught electronics, computing and communications, in the hope we had good standing to get employment at the Hyundai wafer fab factory being built in the town.
The women who attended were all on benefits at the time, some had suffered abuse, some had mental health issues, some single parents like myself and all of us from council schemes.
I cannot praise this place highly enough. Not only did we gain an education, as most of us had left school at the earliest opportunity, we also gained confidence in spades.
Putting women together from these backgrounds worked wonders. We had support from the tutors but we also had huge support from each other. I gained friends for life there who I still spend time with now.
Some left their abusers, some went on to college, some found work, everyone found out that they mattered. We all gained an education not just academically but socially. We were supported all the way through and its one of the best years of my life.
I also had the support of my mum. I was lucky. When my year at the technology centre ended I wanted to go to college to study electronic engineering, but to get there on time and home in time for my bairns s was an issue.
I was lucky. I had my mum.
My mum took early retirement, gave up her job in the dockyard to look after my bairns. She would arrive in time for me to get my bus to Fife College, and would have them fed before I got home. I would arrive home, help them with their homework, take them down the Glen for an hour to play, then bath and bed early for the next day. I went to bed at 8pm every night, on a sofa bed in the livingroom, so I could get up at 4am and study. It was the only realistic time to study that didnt take any time away from my bairns.
This went on for a couple of years before I found work in engineering.
My mum brought those bairns up as much as I did and if I didnt have that support then I’d still be a cooncil lassie statistic living on benefits with my bairns.
Support is needed to escape it. I had it in abundance and thats why I’m here now, why my kids work, why I had opportunities and why they had opportunities.
Its all about the support. Many dont have that support though, and its seriously lacking from Governments. Imagine if those on benefits had some of the support I did. Imagine how many would be in work, how many would have opportunities.
Don’t knock those on benefits. Dont judge those young cooncil lads and lassies. Dont call them scroungers while there are folk out there with billions in the bank, and people with money and power through birth. And those who dodge their taxes and those who live in Palaces.
Give folk a hand up and they’ll take it. Give them the support and they’ll end up contributing to society. Their bairns will have opportunities and you might just help to break the cycle of poverty which is multi generational in many cases.
Its all about support. How many engineers, musicians, doctors, lawyers are in our schemes waiting to be found., waiting to realise their potential but never given the chance?
Help folk, don’t kick them when they’re already down. Surely that’s how Scotland and us Scots should be. A fairer Scotland for all where everyone can reach their potential and nobody is left behind.
Independence !
An extremely heart-warming article.
Thatcher with her twisted ideology made a conscious decision to disempower the Unions and to do that she embarked on the distruction of our manufacturing industry. Opposition to Right wing Neoliberal policies can only come and be fought by an organised working class through Union membership ,Thatcher and every Tory government understood this. UK, Ok is not a proper country, the ruling Tory elite dont want their pals in the city or their lobbyists who enrich them to pay their taxes . Wealthfare costs money ,an NHS costs money, a decent society costs tax payers money . The real reason for Tory austerity is so the rich dont need to pay and that is why we live impoverished by our colonial masters imedieval backwater.They have been particularly brutal to us in Scotland with no proper investment in our economy creating a underdeveloped state, stripping our assets to keep us in a Truma bond a state of Stockholm syndrome, they need our resources to keep their Brexit afloat so the Truma bond is perpetuated by the media gaslighting us with double speak and propaganda. While they infiltratrated our politicians and political parties to reinforced our sense of hopelessness that they have created. But we are not helpless, we are awakening to the colonial masters game, we will have our democracy and when that day comes their will be nothing that they can do. We just need to think smarter AUOB ( Scotland United) at the next election.
Dissolve the Union.
Another fantastic post from Leanne, braw tae see “totties” being spelt right.
Seriously though, as someone who has personal experience of the”benefits” system it seems designed to keep people down and families apart.
Well said Leanne. I’m sick of having to point out to filk who condemn those on benefits that it is those at the top who are robbing everyone blind and not thos unfortunate enough to have to rely on the meagre pittance the state grudgingly gives them. Those who are “all right Jack” think that if they can make it so can everyone else. They make my blood boil.
There was in my view a couple of things that were also crucial in Leanne’s journey.
One was her determination to get herself into college and secondly the support of her mum.
Support comes in so many ways. It is what makes a society tick.
The Thatcher ideology was that there is no society. This story tells the real ideology.
Without the hand up of benefits the road forward would have been closed. But it would also be closed had there not been the childcare support of Leanne’s mother. And of course the free at the point of use access to education. That too was an essential.
Or what about healthcare also free at the point of use. What impediment, what disincentive would that have provided had someone like Leanne had to find money to pay for treatment for herself or her children.
Social support in all its forms is essential for personal and societal development. Absolutely essential as this story confirms.
Sadly societal support in our neoliberalism Great Britain is ever more under threat as the rich get richer, the poor poorer, as our country’s economic output, intellectual capital and societal cohesion slumps on the world stage.
Career progression of many Scots, even those who may be highly educated, is restricted due to cultural differences. Language plays a decisive role in any colonial society in which the language of the colonizer remains dominant. The native Scots language is never taught nor given any authority; to British/English educationalists (aye, an maist o thaim fowk wha lairn oor bairns!) ‘Scots’ has aye been considered an ‘invalid’ language, as therefore are thay fowk wha speak thair ain mither tongue. This provides a/the key reason for the supposed ‘attainment gap’, but it also brings us closer to Jimmy Reid’s ‘alienated people’ thesis, or ‘subordinate group’. Until this linguistic oppression is stopped, our meritocratic elite will largely remain Anglophone, with most of the native people subject to ‘the tortures of colonial bilingualism’ and its inevitable discrimination. Colonialism, albeit largely about economic plunder, depends on ensuring these cultural differences are maintained, and indeed widened.
https://yoursforscotlandcom.wordpress.com/2021/07/04/paper-two-the-determinants-of-independence/
Heartfelt piece, Leanne. I have always hated the negative and confidence-sapping aspects of being on benefits when, in so many cases, there is little or no alternative. You spell it out so well. In your case and in so many cases, there is the struggle to get out of the vicious cycle and build a decent life. In the Thatcher years, a number of Tory MPs were challenged to exist on benefits, and all of them fell at the first hurdle, and they were on them for a week or two maximum. Several, including Michael Portillo, did admit that they just could not manage long-term. It is never easy to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes.