Facing up to poverty on our doorstep (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Facing up to poverty on our doorstep

8:59am Tuesday 26th July 2011 in Emma Clayton By Emma Clayton

Walking into a conference room for a charity event, I tutted under my breath at the pile of rubbish left in the doorway.

It was only as I stepped over it that I realised it was a blanket strewn across the floor, with a pair of old shoes sticking out of it.

Then I noticed a body shape beneath the blanket. It was only a dummy, but it was enough to make me catch my breath.

We know there are rough sleepers out there, and occasionally we might catch sight of one slumped in a shop doorway for the night. But you’d need a heart of stone to step over someone lying under a blanket and not feel a flicker of shame.

The event I was attending was a screening of Bradford charity Hope Housing’s film The Not So Promised Land, highlighting the squalor many Eastern and Central European migrants end up living in after coming here to find work.

Filmed in ramshackle, rat-infested squats and outbuildings around Bradford, it makes for uneasy viewing, although I wasn’t shocked at the appalling conditions these men are living in. You’d have to be pretty naive or have your head buried in a suburban sandpit not to be aware that this kind of poverty exists.

I’ve done voluntary shifts at day shelters in Bradford and wondered what happens to the people, mostly men, who come in for a hot meal then shuffle outside again when the doors close. If we’re honest, it’s something we don’t like to think about too much.

Hope Housing’s film exposes the reality of life for people lured here by offers of work. Those offering help often turn out to be underground gangs who take migrants’ passports, leaving them stranded in squalor, ineligible for legal employment.

What came across strongly in the film is that the men featured, mostly Polish, simply want to work. Coming from places where work and welfare provision are scarce, they’re driven by desperation. It’s easy for us to ignore or dismiss it, but it’s here in our city, in squats, makeshift shelters and disused factories.

There is a tradition of displaced people from Eastern European countries arriving in Bradford. I went to school with girls from Polish, Ukrainian and Hungarian families, whose grandparents had settled here after the war.

Many would have encountered hostility initially, but at least the mills were swallowing up workers back then.

Today’s migrants are our forgotten underclass. Thanks to Hope Housing there are some success stories, but there are countless others sleeping on a filthy floor beneath an old blanket tonight.