Brian Monteith: Is the freedom to beg a right worth defending?

Published on Thursday 28 January 2010 08:56

WHEN I read the general manager of the Balmoral Hotel, Ivan Artolli, had the bravery, nay, the audacity to actually say in public that Edinburgh has a problem with beggars I had to pick myself up off the floor and have a stiff drink.

It takes courage to say such politically incorrect things these days. I can only think he must have been wanting to say it for months and then finally something in him snapped – I don't think we should dare ask what!

You see, Edinburgh's beggars is a subject I have often thought about mentioning but I am torn over the issue – and I suspect I'm not unusual in that.

In coming to a considered view, one can only draw on personal experience of what one knows of Edinburgh and other comparable cities. When I think back to when I was a kid in the sixties and a teenager in the seventies I just cannot remember any begging of the type there is now. Some people at train or bus stations asked for spare change, but nobody was sitting on Edinburgh's cold flagstones with only cardboard or a blanket for insulation.

Sure, Edinburgh had what we called tramps, and when I journeyed to the Art College for four years I got to know them as they populated the Grassmarket, King's Stables Road and the graveyards in between. One thing about the tramps, though, there was never any doubt they were down on their luck. Mostly alcoholics (although not all), their smell hit you before you saw them and I'm not talking halitosis, although they had that too.

Even at the height of the recession of the early eighties – the economic price for the flatulence of politicians in previous post-war years – the begging phenomenon was not prevalent. People were told famously by Norman Tebbit to get on their bikes, like his dad had, and find work in the next town, or the town after that.

Begging really seemed to take off in the late eighties and early nineties when the so-called care in the community policy put many people who were unwell and unable to take care of themselves out of cold institutions and on to even colder streets – the promised local back-up was never delivered.

The beggars attracted sympathy as it was felt they were genuine and that there was a problem with homelessness. Now, some 20 year later, after countless government initiatives to deal with homelessness, and of course the ever-burgeoning welfare state, the scale of begging is far larger.

Due to my work I often travel to some of the sorriest sites on this earth – and yet as begging goes, Edinburgh beats all I've witnessed. I've worked in Lagos, a city of 15 million, no welfare state, appalling sanitary conditions, seriously challenging economic and social circumstances – and yet there are relatively few beggars. Everyone is trying to sell you something, to do something for you, to make ends meet. There's little money in begging in Lagos. The beggars that there are have hideously obvious wounds or diseases – there is no doubting their plight.

Maybe beggars follow prosperous society? Yet in London, Rome, Tokyo, New York, Berlin, Paris, Copenhagen – all of which I have visited in the last two years – none of them have the incidence of beggars that Edinburgh seems to have. So I agree with Mr Artolli, Edinburgh's begging is worse than other cities.

When it comes down to it, Edinburgh has a begging problem not only because it is allowed by the authorities but also because we are prepared to tolerate it. Does it have a detrimental effect on our tourism? Is it a kinder side to Edinburgh's supposedly detached and aloof reputation? I cannot say, but it cannot be denied that it is worse than in other cities.

What I do know is that for such a beautiful city it is a disgusting sight, it affronts my work ethic and raises serious questions about just what our charities and social services really are doing.

And yes I've heard the stories of the organised begging, the people getting out of the cars in the morning to go to their own jealously-guarded prime sites so they can harvest the tax-free top-up income for their benefits that makes it worthwhile. It is this practice that challenges the idea of making any donation and why for a long time now I have given instead to the Salvation Army whom I have worked with and seen what they do.

But I remain torn. For all my personal distaste for begging I also can't help thinking that my natural emotions are a hideous side to me that I should repress – or that my libertarian instincts should recoil at the thought of the state, in this case the dreaded city council, denying people the freedom to put their hand out and ask for help?

What can be more totalitarian than making our streets sanitised by removing from our eyes the human reminders of how cruel and hard life can be? That's why there was no begging in communist countries. The poverty was there all right – its visibility just wasn't tolerated. Can we end begging without ending freedom?