‘I’ve become aware of the diversity of people’s lives, and the rhythms of their days.’
Street talk: A shocking homelessness fact prompted Jennifer Kavanagh’s latest book
‘I was learning simplicity from those who have least.’
In 1861, asylum for the homeless poor of London was opened when the thermometer reached freezing point. In 2017 the mayor of London Sadiq Khan announced plans to open homeless shelters there every day the temperature was forecast to drop below zero. When people ask what led me to write Let Me Take You by the Hand, I have many answers, but finding that shocking juxtaposition was one step along the way. How much has really changed?
The first fact comes from Henry Mayhew’s iconic work of investigative journalism, London Labour and the London Poor. Like Dickens, who was the same age, Mayhew was a powerful advocate for social change – in his case through thousands of interviews with people living or working on the streets. While not imagining that I could emulate ‘the greatest Victorian novel never written’, it occurred to me that shining a light on the streets of modern London might make a point.
So how did it come about?
The word ‘Quaker’ barely figures in this book, but my Quaker journey does provide its roots. Back in the late 1990s I was asked to co-ordinate the tea runs for homeless people that some London Meetings were running. I’d never volunteered in my life, and had no idea about homelessness. On my first tea run I was nervous, but, as I walked over to a young man in a sleeping bag and offered him a cup, I found myself forming a relationship with another human being. Instead of passing by a bundle in a doorway with embarrassment and guilt, I was doing something, however small. My preconceptions fell away. It was an epiphany – that bundle in the doorway could have been me.
Finding Quakers had meant a rediscovery of my youthful idealism. After a frustrating lifetime of believing, as I had been told since childhood, that I could not make a difference to injustice and poverty, I found people who were making a difference. In small, local ways perhaps, but I could see that it might be possible for me, too. From then until about 2012, I was drawn to working with people ‘on the margins’: those without a roof, without a country, or those in prison, as well as people in the poorest communities, here and in the developing world. Faith and action came together, and that mysterious and fruitful interaction has absorbed me ever since.
Later, as I became more involved in writing and workshops, I began to miss that work. I had a sense that there was a big project waiting for me, but I didn’t know what it was. In 2010 I wrote Journey Home, about the whole concept of home, and I am now surprised to see that I quoted from Henry Mayhew. So it was about ten years ago that the idea of this book first began to evolve.
Knowing I couldn’t do it on my own, I approached a young Quaker journalist. He was interested, but too busy, and the idea subsided for a few years. But in 2018 I saw something in my Facebook feed that made me sit up. I remember the director of a Quaker charity saying that he based his decisions on synchronicity. This is something I’ve experienced too. What I saw on Facebook was another juxtaposition, this time a deliberate one: a photo of a street sweeper about 100 years ago, next to a recent one, set in exactly the same place, in the same pose. It was striking, shocking, and I knew then, with both excitement and a sinking heart at the magnitude of the task, that I had to do this book. This was a project that would bring together my writing and my wish to be engaged.
All this, in a strange way, has been an extension of my daily life. When I came back to London after a couple of years of wandering, often in remote places, I wondered how I would cope without the space and peace of the nature. But I’ve found that my love of the natural world has been replaced by the joy of people-watching. I talk to people as a matter of course – to the publican next door, the security guards, and the homeless man down the road. But also to strangers, in the park, or at the bus stop. I’ve become aware of the diversity of people’s lives, and the rhythms of their working days.
A first step was to pick the brain of Alastair Murray, who was just stepping down as deputy director of Housing Justice. To my delight, he said he wanted to work with me, and introduced me to a young man named Mat Amp. Mat was working in the area of homelessness, and had experience of homelessness and having to resort to some of the survival techniques described in the book. Here was someone who could do the night work, the interviews with people who would not open up to me.
I knew the book would be demanding, possibly upsetting, and that I might feel the need for support. I also wanted to ground the work in my faith. I set up a support group with three kind Friends.
At the end of 2018 I set off along the streets of London, to record interviews with nearly 200 people: men and women, aged twenty to eighty-eight, of different ethnicities and twenty-five different nationalities. Some I deliberately sought out; others I found on the way. I didn’t just talk to homeless people, but, following Mayhew, traders, buskers, dustmen, preachers, casual workers – lives of insecurity, in 1861 and now.
I loved it. Again, I was learning simplicity from those who have the least, and who have learnt what matters. When I asked one man how much he earned, and whether it was enough, his reply was: ‘What’s enough? People want more and more. I work out the basics, then see what’s left over.’
The book was published a few weeks ago. How lucky I was that we finished the interviews just before lockdown, and that I could spend the next couple of months pulling the threads together. I was worried that the pandemic might date it but – although delivery workers are gaining some new rights, and buskers, especially in Westminster, are losing some of theirs – much remains the same. The economic fall-out from Covid has meant a new generation of homeless people, and no one is addressing the plight of those worst affected – those with no recourse to public funds. In fact everything we hear from government seems to be leading to further destitution.
It’s important to say that, like Mayhew’s book, Let Me Take You by the Hand is not just a portrait of homelessness and misery, but also of courage and resilience, of the importance of family and community, and of delight in the outdoor life. One thing that emerges very strongly – whatever the hardship, among those born here and those who have arrived – is a love of London. But my original intention was to give a voice to people ignored or unseen; to paint a picture of poverty that would make people sit up and take notice; to make enough of a splash to prompt something to change.
In the preface to the first volume of his great work, Mayhew said: ‘My earnest wish is that the book may serve to give the rich a more intimate knowledge of the sufferings, and the frequent heroism under those sufferings, of the poor. The condition of a class of people whose misery, ignorance and vice, amidst all the immense wealth and great knowledge of the first city in the world is, to say the least, a national disgrace to us.’
And so it is now.
Let Me Take You by the Hand is out now from Little, Brown.
