Britain's tented Hoovervilles show the reality of the humanitarian crisis behind the debt and deficit obsession of the Great Recession

Desperation, in the time of recession and austerity, has led to tented encampments springing up across the UK. This one lies a stones throw from Manchester Piccadilly station.

Iain Duncan Smith framed his resignation as the drastic last straw of a reformer, who's efforts were curtailed by the Chancellor's obsession with austerity (Asthana & Stewart, 2016; Peston, 2016). Whatever the true conviction behind the claim, it highlights something incredibly important.

The economic crisis, to which the Conservatives have ever been keen to keep the eye drawn in the last six years, has masked a wider humanitarian crisis. Only one small moment of the Chancellor's budget statement was devoted to it. He told Members of Parliament that:

"Because under this Government we are not prepared to let people be left behind, I am also announcing a major new package of support worth over £115 million to support those who are homeless and to reduce rough sleeping."

The government tried hard during the election the evade the issue, despite attempts to confront the PM directly with the fact that rising numbers of people were using food banks (Channel 4, 2015; Worrall, 2015). Yet the fact remains that homelessness is still rising (Gentleman, 2016).

In his response to the budget, Jeremy Corbyn welcomed the Chancellor's package of assistance, but stressed that rising homelessness was the result of desperate under-investment by the Conservative government (BBC, 2016{2}). A lack of investment which had starved local government of the resources to help and housing associations of the capacity to offer shelter.

While the Chancellor's budget did offer some funds to 'reduce rough sleeping', it was in reality much less than he previously cut from housing support - estimated at only "£1 in every £5" by Shadow Housing Minister John Healey (Healey, 2016).

It is, however, something more than the approach of some local councils to rough sleeping, which has been less than humanitarian (Ellis-Petersen, 2015). Yet even harsh measures haven't been enough to stop the emergence of small, and not so small, shanty towns springing up in places like Manchester, like the Hoovervilles of the 1920s and 1930s.

Europe and the other half of the crisis

The living encamped amongst the dead, along the Rue Richard through the Cimetière du Montparnasse, in Southern Paris, where tents line the road.

On the face of it, the fact that this is as much a broader European as a specifically British problem, may seem to exonerate the Chancellor and his policies. After all, it would be unfair to blame Osborne for the living lodging amongst the dead on the Rue Richard, at the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.

Yet while Osborne has no part in French system - where, in response to their own crisis, supermarkets are no longer being allowed to throw away surplus food and must donate it instead to help those in need of handouts (Derambarsh, 2016) - he does have a role in the other half of the crisis.

War on Europe's borders has led to a second element of the humanitarian crisis: an influx of refugees, for which Europe was not necessarily lacking in resources to tackle, but certainly appeared unprepared. With the British government unwilling to take on the burden of the refugees, a camp sprang up on the British border at Calais.

That camp grew to become a large slum town, administered by aid workers running soup kitchens and handing out charitable donations. But even that temporary solution could not last and the camp is now being broken up, by force, in order to disperse the refugees (Weaver & Walker, 2016).

Hoover and the Great Depression

As President, Herbert Hoover oversaw the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression. Photograph: Herbert Hoover by Opus Penguin (License) (Cropped)

Osborne's approach, pulling back the state and public investment and looking to free markets and civil society to step in to the breach, has made him seem like a man more concerned about balancing his chequebook than acting in the face of a crisis. With that image, he risks receiving the same reputation that marred President Hoover during the Great Depression, as a 'do-nothing' (Leuchtenburg, 2009).

It isn't hard to draw comparisons between some key aspects of the approaches of George Osborne and Herbert Hoover. As US Secretary of Commerce, for two administrations between 1921 and 1928, Hoover was a follower of the efficiency movement - pursuing the ridding of inefficiency and waste from the economy (Hawley, 2006).

As when Osborne's Conservatives came to power in 2010 advocating for a 'Big Society' (Rigby, 2016), Hoover believed that the means of achieving his economic aims was 'volunteerism', as opposed to direction from government - trusting to, and nominally supporting, individual initiative, typified by his role as director of American charitable relief efforts in post-war Europe, particularly in Belgium.

His subsequent time as President, from 1929 and 1933, was however overshadowed by the Wall Street Crash and the beginning of the Great Depression that saw the poor of New York living in Central Park in tented encampments - one of many American shanty towns that became known as 'Hooverville'.

Hoover made more effort than previous Presidents to arrest the severe economic downturn, including some public works projects. And then (Gray, 1993), as now (Pidd, 2016), civil society stepped up to provide aid and relief. Yet when the election came, Franklin D Roosevelt won, and with his New Deal coalition led the United States for four terms, with a comprehensive and interventionist plan to support and rebuild.

While Osborne avoided the stigma of the crisis hitting on his watch, he has also avoided intervention. Instead he has cut public spending - saying that the roof must be fixed "while the sun is shining". Amidst years of economic turmoil and cuts to social security, while statistics say homelessness has continued to rise (Gentleman, 2016), its difficult to see an application for his maxim.

The cracks and those slipping through

The advent of these modern day Hooverville encampments suggest that there is an unacceptable break down in the welfare safety nets in Britain, in France and elsewhere in Europe. Not all of this can be put down to the pressures of the refugee crisis. There are cracks appearing and people are slipping through.

Throwing money at suppressing the symptoms is not enough. It won't tackle the core problems. As much as the Conservatives want the focus to be on the public debt, in order to justify their agenda, private debt is just as large of a problem. Individuals are hanging on by their fingernails, stretched thin by the high cost of living.

Housing is prohibitively expensive. The cost of energy needs to come down. Work for the lowest paid is too insecure and the safety net too full of holes. George Osborne doesn't have to become a believer in a big  interventionist state overnight to help. At the very least something might be done with small reforms, aimed at properly regulating the energy and housing industry to prevent anti-competitive behaviour and price gouging.

Above all that, Osborne might benefit from accepting a single simple lesson, one that most austerians should take note of: the bad times inevitably end up costing far more than the good.

References

Anushka Asthana & Heather Stewart's 'Is Iain Duncan Smith’s resignation about disability cuts – or Europe? Duncan Smith defended the cuts to disability benefits on Thursday – so what has driven his dramatic resignation and change of heart?'; in The Guardian; 18 March 2016.

Robert Peston's 'Politics doesn't get much nastier than IDS' resignation'; on ITV News; 18 March 2016.

'Ways and Means: Financial Statement'; in Hansard, from Parliament; 16 March 2016.

'Cameron and Miliband: the battle for No 10 begins - David Cameron and Ed Miliband clash with Jeremy Paxman in the first public contest leading up to the general election, and take a grilling from the public on their records and future promises'; on Channel 4; 26 March 2015.

Patrick Worrall's 'FactCheck: Cameron’s blind spots on zero hours and food banks'; on Channel 4's FactCheck; 27 March 2015.

Amelia Gentleman's 'Number of people sleeping rough in England rises by almost a third in a year: An estimated 3,569 people are sleeping on streets on any one night, government figures show'; in The Guardian; 25 February 2016.

John Healey's 'John Healey: Osborne has ducked hard truths on homelessness'; 16 March 2016.

Hannah Ellis-Petersen's 'Ellie Goulding condemns London councils' treatment of homeless people: Singer wants to discuss Kensington & Chelsea and Hackney’s ‘ridiculous’ treatment of rough sleepers with Jeremy Corbyn'; in The Guardian; 8 October 2015.

Arash Derambarsh's 'I helped lead the successful campaign to ban French supermarkets from wasting food – it must now work across Europe: I'm delighted that the small, voluntary initiative I began with friends is now legally binding everywhere in my country. But why stop there?'; in The Independent; 19 February 2016.

Matthew Weaver & Peter Walker's 'Calais camp demolitions resume after teargas fired overnight: Overnight clashes at ‘Jungle’ refugee camp after police confront people throwing stones at demolition teams'; in The Guardian; 1 March 2016.

William E Leuchtenburg's "The Wrong Man at the Wrong Time"; on American Heritage; archived at Questia; Summer 2009.

Ellis Wayne Hawley's 'Herbert Hoover As Secretary of Commerce: Studies in New Era Thought and Practice'; University of Iowa Press; 2006.

Elizabeth Rigby's ''Big Society' fades again as three-day volunteering plan shelved'; in the Financial Times; 8 June 2015.

'The Humanitarian Years', The Museum Exhibit Galleries, Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum; as viewed in 2016.

Christopher Gray's 'Streetscapes: Central Park's 'Hooverville'; Life Along 'Depression Street''; in the New York Times; 29 August 1993.

Helen Pidd's ''It's not a lifestyle choice': homelessness on the streets of Manchester - The city’s homelessness problem jars with its self-projected image of glamour and prosperity. We spend the day with outreach worker Colin Morrison as he offers assistance to an increasingly visible and fast-growing population'; in The Guardian; 10 March 2016.