“Is that the best you’ve got?” he yells to a group moving slowly.
They pick it up instantly while the parents nod in approval from the sidelines.
A huge man in size and force, Stirling is a commanding figure at the Broadwater Farm Estate, a notorious social housing project that is home to 4,000 people in Tottenham, north London. “The Farm” is a depressing labyrinth of 1960s-era brown brick buildings and apartment towers that in no way resembles farm or estate.
For 33 years, Stirling worked here and mentored some of England’s finest soccer stars. Arsenal’s Emmanuel Frimpong. Reading captain Jobi McAnuff.
“Those boys came from here. The feeling is indescribable. And now, you have these guys,” he says, motioning to the kids, “who want to be just like them.”
In 2007, Stirling was made a member of the Order of the British Empire for his years of public service helping youth.
In 2012, he lost his job when youth and sports development manager was made “redundant” during a local London borough budget cut.
Still, he comes every day, teaching kids about responsibility and commitment through sport.
For years, the Farm has battled its reputation as the toughest part of London, full of crime and poverty. Stirling has been on a one-man mission to turn it around and it has not been easy. He’s had a gun held to his head, been threatened with knives, had his car vandalized and he often finds himself diffusing violent situations.
The Farm was a flashpoint for two of the worst riots in London’s recent history, with residents raging against poverty and racism in 1985 and again 2011. Some think it could happen again.
Most young black men in Tottenham do not have jobs — their unemployment rate is 55 per cent. Stirling sees the anger and hopelessness in the boys who can’t break the cycle. He understands their hardship and hunger. He knows what generations of despair can do.
“People are happy when there are riots because at the time, at that exact point, they are having their own way. They are voicing their feelings to the establishment. They are taking it to the streets,” he explains, as he watches the boys kick the ball.
“And I have to give advice to the kids to say, ‘Try to trust the politicians, officials and police.’
“Yet, deep in my heart, I feel the same way they do.”
For three years, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron has followed a plan of ruthless austerity — quick government spending cuts coupled with tax increases — in an effort to kickstart the nation’s economy.
His critics argue he has done so without regard to the social fallout. Big government and generous social programs are no longer affordable, rebuts Cameron, and a brief period of fiscal pain should restore investor confidence and create jobs.
So far, there is no proof his medicine is curing the patient.
England is poorer now than it was five years ago, as measured by gross domestic product, the total amount of goods and services a country produces each year.
The country’s GDP dropped 0.3 per cent at the end of 2012 and the economy is heading for a third recession in five years. GDP is 3.5 per cent below its peak in 2007. The economy is not expected to recover for another two years, making it, according to the Guardian, the longest recovery in 100 years.
Cameron and his coalition government are ignoring arguments from the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to slow the austerity strategy, warning it could hurt growth in other European economies.
“We’ve never been passionate about austerity,” IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard told BBC Radio 4. “From the beginning, we have always emphasized that fiscal consolidation should be slow and steady.”
This April, the most dramatic government spending reductions are to begin. Cuts to social programs, reductions in transfer payments to local councils and the end of tax breaks for the working poor all take effect. Yet, there is scant evidence anywhere that austerity actually works.
Austerity programs in Italy, Spain and Greece have sparked mass protests, high unemployment and increases in suicides and xenophobic nationalism.
Nearly broke, the Greek government passed a budget late last year that raised the retirement age from 65 to 67, cut pensions by nearly 15 per cent and slashed public-sector salaries by one-third. And the country remains in one of the deepest recessions in Europe.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman described Europe’s austerity measures as an “unethical experiment” on human beings.
But Cameron, who campaigned on a strategy of fixing “Broken Britain,” insists on staying the course until 2018, when he hopes to balance the budget.
The subway ride between Seven Sisters station in Tottenham and Westminster takes only a half-hour, but it is a world away for Labour MP David Lammy.
Raised by a single mom at the Farm, Lammy got out because a teacher was convinced he could be the black answer to Welsh crooner Aled Jones. Lammy sang his way into a full scholarship at Cambridgeshire’s Peterborough Cathedral.
He was 13 and away at school when he watched on TV as the first riot unfolded in 1985. The violence was triggered after police burst into Cynthia Jarrett’s home to search it while they held her son in custody. She suffered a stroke and died.
The tension between police and the largely black community ignited a race riot. An angry mob hacked to death police Const. Keith Blakelock. Rioters, armed with knives, guns and gas bombs, burned Tottenham for days.
The mayhem was repeated in 2011 after police shot and killed local resident Mark Duggan, a black man. His death set off riots in Liverpool, Bristol and Manchester during what some called the Summer of Discontent.
Businesses in Tottenham were once again looted and destroyed. In the months that followed, Stirling acted as an intermediary between the Duggan family and police. The inquest into Duggan’s death has just begun.
Lammy, who was first elected to represent Tottenham in 2000, laments that the children of the 1985 rioters might become the next generation of rioters.
“If your young people don’t get accustomed to work, acclimatized to it, the scar it can leave on their children and subsequent families is very, very deep.”
Under austerity, the lives of the poor are about to “get significantly worse,” he says, pointing to the bedroom tax.
The “bedroom tax” is one of the changes taking effect in April. It will reduce benefits for people living in social housing if they are considered to have an extra bedroom. One bedroom is allowed per couple; children under 16 of the same gender are expected to share another room. Those under 10, regardless of gender, must also share a bedroom. Having one extra room means a 14-per-cent benefit cut; two is a 25-per-cent cut.
As a result, the local council in the Camden area of London may have to move 750 low-income families who won’t be able to afford their rents.
“This administration is asking the poorest and the vulnerable to bear the slack,” Lammy says, his voice building to a crescendo. “It is catastrophic.”
It may be about to go off the charts.
“Come on Nathan. Get in here!” Stirling yells down the hall outside the gym. He gives 9-year-old Nathan and his mom, trailing behind him, gentle hell for not arriving on time.
He is worried about Nathan. The boy has enormous talent but he missed the last soccer practice because his mom said she didn’t want to go out in the snow. Soccer is Nathan’s chance to get out of the Farm and Stirling knows it.
“He worked hard to get up there,” frets Stirling. “He’ll fall behind.”
The storied English football club Manchester United is said to be courting Nathan for their youth academy, a feeder for the main team. Arsenal, the inner-city London club, is also interested. The day the Star visited, a Tottenham Spurs assistant couch was watching him.
Nathan slips off his puffy winter coat as he walks. Despite the London snow, he’s already in uniform, bright green soccer shoes on his feet.
The lithe boy with the cornrow braids races into the gym and immediately starts running drills so gracefully his feet don’t appear to touch the ground.
“He can’t mess up here,” Stirling sighs. “He can’t.”
Stirling is hoping Nathan’s innate talent will let him, like Lammy, leave the Farm.
Stirling has taught dozens of successful football stars: one of his sons, Jude, plays professional football in England. Stirling often picks up the boys from home, dragging them to practice, acting as a father-figure to those without one.
“This can save the family,” he says.
Stirling lost his job in the name of austerity. He is now living on his savings, which should last until June. Then, he will probably have to look for work.
“I just can’t let the parents and the children down. But the system has no plan B for me. At the end of the day, I can only give them what the bottom line allows.”
Pull out of London’s Euston train station and it doesn’t take long to see Britain’s changing economic landscape.
The comfortable, upper-middle-class, red-brick houses in the suburbs of London give way to countryside farms, with rolling hills and grazing lambs.
But an hour out of the city, it is as though the train has crossed an invisible border.
Picturesque scenes fade to run-down industrial towns — Stockport, Crewe, Manchester. Even freshly fallen snow can’t hide Birmingham’s grit or the smell of exhaust in the train station.
The end of the line is Liverpool, home to Liverpudlians or Scousers, a storied football club, the Beatles and hardship. In some neighbourhoods, one in three houses lacks even a single person with a job.
Many “have-not” northerners resent the “have” Londoners, who not only hold the purse strings but make the decisions for the nation. Due to its high poverty, Liverpool council gets most of its budget from central government.
Last December, Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson sent Cameron a letter, demanding a meeting and pointing out that Liverpool had already been forced to trim $221 million from its budget in the last two years. During the next four years, another $224 million must be chopped. The city spends about $758 million a year.
“I believe community cohesion is being seriously threatened by the lack of funding to our city and others,” he wrote. “I believe that the so-called Summer of Discontent will happen again if we do not address this issue.”
Shipping used to dominate the economy in this port city of 465,000, but that ended decades ago. The Albert Docks are now a spruced-up tourist destination, complete with museums and art galleries. The biggest employers are the government, the retail sector and a Land Rover plant.
Unemployment hovers at 20 per cent, higher for young people. A total of 18,000 people aged 18 to 24 are on job seeker’s allowance, or welfare. A recent Church of England study found five of England’s 10 poorest communities are in Liverpool.
The April reductions will make things worse.
Deputy mayor Paul Brant says the changes will take away $395 in benefits and services from every resident each year.
Food banks have sprung up all over Liverpool, seven run by one church alone. A thousand police officers could lose their jobs and city councillors are to decide between shutting down old-age homes or women’s shelters.
“It feels like we are imposing sanctions on communities we came in to support,” says Brant, a Labour Party supporter.
Municipal councils in the north are being hit the hardest, he explains, as cities getting the most money from London are facing the largest cuts. Mayors are seeking legal advice on how they can meet their legal obligations to taxpayers once the cuts are in full force.
“We’ve closed libraries and we’ll have to close more. We are now wondering on the viability of providing sports and youth services. We are concerned with our capacity to support the vulnerable, but we need to keep the council solvent.”
Brant says London’s move to cancel tax breaks for the working poor actually means a 20-per-cent tax hike, or $392 per household on average. Brant, a logical man not given to drama, does not know how he will explain the full extent of the cuts.
“The people think the cuts have already happened. But they are just about to start in April.”
Clubmoor is a district in Liverpool that few tourists see.
About 14,000 people live in the working-class neighbourhood. Social housing mixes seamlessly with modest townhomes on cramped streets. Poverty is hidden behind the walls of the tidy brick houses. The unemployment rate is nearly 27 per cent.
The heart of the community is St. Andrew’s Anglican Church.
The church has two offices: one deals with matters of God, the other debt. It is not unusual to find vicar Steve McGanity and his staff outside supermarkets asking for food donations.
In the last year, they fed nearly 4,000 people and the numbers are “increasing all the time.”
“The current policies . . . are certainly unfair and unjust,” he says of austerity. “The way they are done, certainly. It will cause some families huge, huge harm.”
Once the bedroom tax hits, Clubmoor will be devastated.
Almost 98 per cent of the social housing has more than one bedroom. “All the single people will feel they either have to move or face the extra cuts.”
And even if they want to move, there aren’t enough single dwellings.
“This is a financial plan. Not a social plan. There has been no thought. All these policies are geared to reducing the deficit. No one has joined up the dots.”
The Scouser youth are restless.
Every evening, the Turkish owner of a pizzeria steels himself. His shop has been vandalized, bricks thrown through the windows. His Polish wife has been spat at and had beer bottles thrown at her.
“It is very bad here,” he says, as he stands guard at the glass front door, the smell of pizza and fried chicken wafting outside. He does not want to be identified for fear of reprisals.
“There is no work. No money. Before, I thought there would be better opportunities here, so I came and invested, but, no.”
If he could sell his business, he would. There are no buyers.
“The business taxes are too high and Cameron’s taxes are killing people. Every night, I give food for the people who have no money. There is no chance this economy will get better. It won’t.”
Original Article
Source: thestar.com
Author: Tanya Talaga
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