While cruising the blogosphere over the weekend, I noticed an post pointing out that the Wales Women's National Coalition had lost its 'core funding' from public funds - amounting to a little under £100,000 over the next year. The blogger, 'Valleys Mam', says she is a "believer in social justice" so can hardly be said to be a rabid Tory determined to trash all public expenditure, but she evidently has doubts over whether public funding of the WWNC - which has been going on some years - is a good thing.
I won't comment in the particular case of the WWNC as I know nothing in detail of the work they've been doing. But I'm sure that more and more organisations like this - not really at the 'front line' but an umbrella organisation for those who are - will find public funding terribly hard to find in the future. 'Nice to have, but we'll have to manage without it', will be the watchword. 'You'll have to look after yourselves'.
Talking of 'looking after yourselves', before WW2, in the border country between Wales and England, a Miss Morgan was born. One of her earliest memories was of her drunken, knife-waving father threatening her mother. Fortunately - from one point of view - he soon disappeared, leaving wife and small daughter behind. Miss Morgan never saw him again. Dysfunctional families are nothing new, nor are they confined to the inner city. Her mother married again as soon as possible - there weren't many other options open. Her new husband, a farm labourer, didn't like children, so Miss Morgan was packed off to an aunt, a kind woman, but of no great means herself. Miss Morgan did well enough in her 11+ to go to grammar school, but the family couldn't afford the uniform, so that was that. At 16, Miss Morgan left school and left home to make her own way in life, all her belongings in a single suitcase.
Life as a till-girl at Marks wasn't very glamorous, her flat was tiny and shabby and rationing was still in. Things brightened up a little when, on one her rare nights out at a dance, she met a young man from the south coast who happened to be stationed nearby on National Service. Well, briefly he was stationed nearby...
Long story short: after a long-distance courtship involving thousands of miles of rail travel, they married. A tiny flat in Portsmouth was the first home. Following a job, her husband then took her to Lincoln, and they both had to check a map to find out where on earth that was, but the job - coming as it did with a cheap-rent terraced house - was too good to miss, as they could save towards a place of their own. The house didn't have double-glazing or central heating, but then very few did.
Fast forward again: the former Miss Morgan and her husband gradually became better-off, more comfortable, lived in their own home. Her husband had also left school at 16; nobody thought he was worth anything, but it turned out that he was just short-sighted and could never properly see book or blackboard. He was hard-working and able and 'got on', as they say. They had children.
Despite the better circumstances, the former Miss Morgan never lost some of the insecurities of her childhood. She was 'self-sufficient', 'stepped lightly on the earth' and 'recycled' long before those concepts were commonplace, as deep-down she was never entirely sure that she wouldn't have to leave home again, with all her belongings in a single suitcase. She never lost the idea that you had to look after yourself, waste nothing, treat everything as a bit of a bonus. Because nobody gave you anything, you had to work for it, look after it, make do. Family first, always. Whatever else you cut back on, you keep the roof over your head. Anyone who needs help, through no fault of their own, you help and expect nothing in return. Don't take anything for granted.
She had no time and little comfort for those who had put themselves where they were and complained about the results. 'Your bed, you lie in it - or get on,' was her philosophy in those cases.
Her children are somewhat different, of course. Comfortably off from birth - even if two of them remember the house with no double glazing or central heating - they're far more 'socially aware', inclined to have a much wider definition of 'no fault of their own', not at all inclined to read the Daily Mail. They're very different in some aspects of their lifestyles and their aspirations. But all of them have worked continuously since leaving education (and are grateful they've been able to), none has been convicted of a criminal offence, all give to charity, all believe in taking responsibility for where your life-choices have taken you.
I'm sure some reading this will think: "Oh god, what a crock of romanticised, sub-standard Keith Waterhouse 'working class makes good' nonsense." Think what you will, I'm not being didactic here, just telling a story. What I will say is I suspect Miss Morgan's model - the model of expecting nothing from anyone else and cheerfully working bloody hard for anything you want - is likely to be an increasingly useful one.
So, with due deference to the Wales Women's National Coalition, I'm with Valleys Mam.
* Let him who reads reflect
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