Big Capital by Anna Minton

Author:Anna Minton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141985008
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2017-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

4

From Bricks to Benefits

EXPULSIONS

In the summer of 2013, Jasmine was a nineteen-year-old single mum of an eleven-month-old baby living at Focus E15, a hostel in East London with a mother and baby unit. When Newham Council cut the funding for the hostel, Jasmine was told she was one of twenty-nine mothers who would be evicted. The council gave her a list of places to phone which they said might accept people on benefits, but she couldn’t find anywhere. Her mother, Janice, remembers: ‘We were literally phoning and phoning, so much so that Jasmine ended up with such a high phone bill she couldn’t pay it.’ The council told her that if she didn’t find somewhere by the time she was evicted she would be moved to Hastings, Manchester or Birmingham, away from her mum, extended family and the support networks so essential to a mother of a new baby. ‘I watched Jasmine getting really down and upset and she’s got a history of vulnerability. I told her, “You’ve got to go out there and talk to the other mums,” ’ Janice said.

Eighteen-year old Sam, who was eight months pregnant at the time, lived just above Jasmine. ‘I could see Jasmine’s door from my window. We ended up talking and talking for ten hours flat,’ she said. They explained that the mothers hadn’t been encouraged to mix or talk to each other, but galvanized by what they were faced with they decided to draw up a petition and get a protest going. ‘It was crap, but it worked. It literally said, “Sign here if you support us and you don’t think we should be evicted,” ’ Sam said. The mums, three of whom were heavily pregnant, took to Stratford Broadway with their babies in their buggies and went to collect signatures for their handwritten petition. ‘We were on Stratford Broadway and we saw these people with a stall shouting about the “bedroom tax”. We pulled one of them over and asked them, “How do you get such a good petition together – how can we do ours better?” ’ Sam remembers.

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