Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain's Underclass

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As if we can postpone action on the things that are demoralising, incapacitating and killing us until after the hypothetical revolution. However, a book, and especially a non-fiction work such as Poverty Safari, cannot be considered on the style of its writing alone, and it is unfortunately in its structure and in some of its content that this book falls slightly short. They regard themselves as champions of the under class and therefore, should any poor folk begin to get their own ideas or, God forbid, rebel against the poverty experts, the blame is laid at the door of the complainants for misunderstanding what is going on. No fan of identity politics either, he argues that intersectionality undermines the creation of “a well-organised, educated and unified working class”.

It is a personal memoir about deprivation, abuse, violence, addiction, family breakdown, neglect and social isolation. The result is a pleasingly accessible book for those pressed for time (such as trainee EPs) as each chapter does not take long to read. What we now need to ask ourselves, as a matter of urgency, is which aspects of poverty can we positively affect through our thinking and action?Some have tattoos and dyed hair, others are outfitted in traditional Celtic garb, others wear leather jackets adorned with anarchist symbols. Despite growing up identifying as left-wing and hating ‘Tory scum’, McGarvey is scathing about sections of the left.

Beneath all the theoretical discussion and torturous terminology about politics and economics, these problems of mind, body and spirit and what we do to manage them as individuals, families and communities, are the unglamorous, cyclical dilemmas that many people are really struggling with.

The cumulative effect being that responsibility for poverty and its attendant challenges is almost always externalised; ascribed to an unseen force or structure, a system or some vaguely defined elite. McGarvey concludes that despite the social injustices and difficulties that have shaped his own life experience, the only way he has been able to affect change in his own life is to take some personal responsibility for his future and not lay all the blame at the feet of society for having failed him.

If he has no awareness that children with "Bearsden accents" can feel emotionally upset, and that only working-class children have feelings that are worthy of attention, then I actually despair! Rather than admit that no one really knows what to do, besides tweak some knobs here and there, our hapless leaders, with their own immediate political dilemmas to consider, simply pretend to have the situation under control. In Scotland, he points out, the poverty industry is ‘dominated by a left-leaning, liberal, middle class… Because this specialist class is so genuinely well-intentioned when it comes to the interests of people in deprived communities, they get a bit confused, upset and offended when those very people begin expressing anger towards them. But his urgently written, articulate and emotional book is a bracing contribution to the debate about how to fix our broken politics.It's highly addictive to get core insights on personally relevant topics without repetition or triviality.