Their Agony, their Despair and our Inhumanity

The agony, the despair, the inhumanity of what we have created.

Mark Mullins and his wife Helen died in a suicide pact sometime in October this year after giving up on a life of grinding poverty .  Their bodies were undiscovered for several weeks in their home in the small market town of Bedworth, Warwickshire .

From what is known, the poverty was not simply about a lack of money.  That said, when the couple died, they were living in a wretched and appalling state. They had been living on £57.50 a week for the last 18 months. This tiny sum, just £4.10 each per day, was the unemployment benefit that was claimed by Mark.  Our systems and structures which provide the building blocks of what we call society have become poverty stricken - of humanity, dignity, decency and respect.

It has been reported that Helen had her Child Benefits stopped, but was unable to claim Jobseeker’s Allowance, as she was not deemed fit to work. She was then informed that she also did not qualify for incapacity benefit, due to her not being officially diagnosed with a medical condition.

Mark had found life hard since leaving the army and had been unable to find regular work. He was Helen’s full-time carer but he was unable to claim Carer’s Allowance (£53.10 a week), as he was told he was ineligible until she had been diagnosed with a disorder.

In December 2010, Mark and Helen, who had recently married, appeared in a short documentary about people living below the poverty line in Warwickshire.  Mark gave an interview to the Salvation Army [watch it via this link], whom the couple relied on for food parcels. He detailed their daily struggle for existence. They were interviewed at a soup kitchen in Coventry, where they came each Sunday for a “soup and food handout”. Unable to afford travel costs, the couple had to walk the 12-mile round trip. Mark told the interviewer at the time that they had been doing this for nearly a year.

He said that social services had taken Helen’s youngest daughter away from her, “because she was looking after Helen and doing everything for her”.

“My Helen is learning disabled, but it took her a very long time to get any kind of benefits or social security,” he said. “The job centre decided that she couldn’t sign on because she had no brain function, no numeracy, literacy skill, any mobile abilities. But the Incapacity [Benefit] and disability people wouldn’t recognise her until she had been fully diagnosed. We are caught in Catch-22 situation. We couldn’t sign on the dole. Couldn’t get the Incapacity established. Couldn’t get the disability established, so basically we are living on very little, hand to mouth.”

They could no longer afford food, he added, saying, “We’ve basically survived on a lot of your food handouts. We live in the one room of our property. Obviously we can’t afford all this heating in minus 10 and 15. We can’t afford to run the heating…. The food we gather here we basically put into a big pot and I keep one broth going continuously because your household bags gives us lots of fruit and veg, potatoes and there’s a lot of bread here. And we really have from week to week at times survived on what you have given us.”

They had to put the food parcels they got from the soup kitchen “out in the shed, because it’s cooler in the shed. We don’t have a fridge or a freezer. We bring it [the food] in piecemeal and add to the big broth pot as we go along.”

Commenting on their inability to claim the benefits they were entitled to, Mark said, “I think the system is very unkind. We have lost count of how many appeals we have had. We’ve had to fight tooth and nail every step of the way to get benefits.

“They have no problem in suspending benefits. It’s not an issue for them. They just put a tick in a box and a stroke across a piece of paper and they alter your lives, which is fundamentally unfair. You have those who have the power to do this to you and those of us who don’t have the power to resist it.”

'I think the system is very unkind....You have those who 
have the power to do this to you and those of us who 
don’t have the power to resist it.' - Mark Mullins

This happened within our society.  It will go on happening until we decide it must not happen on our watch again.  

That means more than a donation to a charity, of whatever size.

It means more than shedding a tear at the slick video clips with often heart-rending content shown on such as 'Children in Need'.

It means more than getting off your backside at elections once every few years, forgetting about the 'X-Factor' or 'Coronation Street' for one night, and getting down to the voting station to cast your vote for radical change.

It does mean you have to reclaim how we build and maintain our society from the numpties and eejits who have been left to get on with it at Westminster and Holyrood, for their model of society has failed Helen and Mark in the worst possible way.

It does mean you have to start holding your MP, your MSPs and your governments to account - fully and properly and regularly, not just at elections.  If you need training in how to do that, contact me via this blog.

I have borne witness to another human being driven to killing herself.  It is an experience beyond both comprehension and description, and yet my experience is nothing to what each of these human beings has endured.  For some, death is a better answer than life, as the system has nothing to offer and my personal experience has made me accept and respect that.  For Mark and Helen Mullins, the system changes needed to give them real support and real hope were so minor, the fact that they were missing tells us we have created a society where life is cheaper than than the average weekly shop.  We are but a heartbeat away from sliding into becoming a society where the value systems on display would not be unfamiliar to those who lived in national socialist Germany in the late 1930's.


One of the few who did challenge the cheapening of life of those who did not fit the Nazi model was Pastor Friedrich Niemöller.  His legacy to us is a piece of verse which is as relevant today as it was then:

First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

With Helen and Mark, they did not have to come for them.  'They' [we, us, our society] simply stood aside and allowed them to fall to such depths of agony, despair and inhumanity, that death offered them a warmer, safer place.