The Observer 1971. A piece about where people work features this catholic family living in a shack in Northern Ireland - the mother, Kathleen Stokes (26 years old, pregnant and with 4 children) complains - 'it gets a cold at night, the children get chills and there are rats enough'. They've been in the shack for two years, husband John built it as the only way of having a permanent address, and thereby the only hope of getting a job or state benefits. The piece goes on to say that when the kids leave school they'll have nothing to do but 'join the mobs of stone-throwers confronting the British Army'.To me this piece does two things - it reminds us that the 'troubles' in Northern Ireland was a class struggle as much as anything, and it should remind us that when people talk of the waste and over-consumption and the need to restrict consumption (what gets called contraction and convergence) for the sake of the planet we need to be very careful about how we do it. There are few people living in this kind of deprivation in the UK today and we need to keep it that way, as well as lifting the poor across the world who still suffer conditions like this. And that means giving them a home they can heat, a fridge they can store food in, and maybe even a tumble dryer.
It's excessive consumption we need to curb, not human rights.
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