Paul Lenehan

Paul is assistant editor of Poetry Ireland Review. This story was first published, in a slightly longer version, in the Irish Times.

PTOCHOCRACY

Perhaps the most memorable occurrence of that period, for our better understanding of human nature, was that winter when the beggars went on strike. The broadsheets in their editorials would talk of the "unfortunate timing" of the withdrawal, with Christmas drawing near, when beggars could be expected to be - as it were - at their most productive. The tabloids for their part encapsulated the situation as pithily as ever in their banner headlines, treating the issue lightly at first due to the novelty of the situation. The strike occurred during a time of unprecedented economic growth. That a rising tide would lift all boats was the received wisdom with which government ministers greeted inquiries as to the distribution of such bounty; before hastening to reassure those without vessels to their name that boats - small, serviceable craft - would be provided. And so people settled down to enjoy a new Golden Age.
       However, it was noted early on that the nation's extra wealth seemed in no way to lead to a corresponding increase in generosity. Indeed, many commentators noted a marked increase in self-aggrandizement, the individual�s concerns regarded as paramount at all costs, the traditional virtues of hospitality and civic pride nowhere to be found outside of the marketing bumphs of the Tourist Industry. It was a point well-made by psychologists that such a state of affairs was in many respects natural for the species; and yet, undoubtedly, an unusually intense quality of self-centredness had attached itself to the nation's social and commercial intercourse.
       Thomas Carlyle it was who christened economics the "Dismal Science", because of the many unpalatable truths uncovered by the power of its precision tools. One such axiom of macro-behaviour stipulates that the weakest are always those who suffer most, and vice-versa; and so it was the beggars in the street who first felt the brunt of that collective shift towards enlightened self-interest. Less money directed towards their begging-bowls, into cupped hands and upturned caps, to be received with an obvious display of gratitude. Conversely, more and more pinched and bloodless faces of freezing children pleading for alms at each thronged junction. And so the beggars went on strike.
       One moment they were there: torn and bedraggled men on the city's bridges; hunkered women beneath awnings clutching undersized infants as proof of their bona fides; night-time silhouettes in archways laying down cardboard against the cold like participants in an experiment in hypothermia; fearsome men with clotted beards ranting comically against Security Men ejecting them from department stores; one moment they were there, the ranks of that malnourished army of Portico and Camber - then they were gone.
       At first their absence was not especially remarked upon, except by the few remaining activists and by the saintly, both civil and religious. However, lacking access to the means of mass-communication, they found their views receiving scant attention. There was the odd think-piece in a freesheet, a few minutes air-time on local radio, to alert the public to the fact that the capital�s beggars appeared to have gone underground, so to speak, and refused to resume their normal stations on streets and thoroughfares. But then the public appeared to believe that underground, figuratively or otherwise, was where the beggars came from each morning and returned to each night. So that no great attention was paid to these prophets.
       Yet such a comprehensive withdrawal of beggars could not remain unnoted for long. Disbelief, first reaction of the public to the developing situation, soon turned to derision. That beggars should opt to withdraw their "labour", as if they were the providers of some essential service rather than a drain on the nation�s admittedly overfull resources - That's rich, that is, was the position most commentators felt cleverly summed up the attitude of the average voter. And the average voter did nothing to contradict that terse summation.
       The tabloids, anxious to respond to public opinion, followed suit. TRAMPS DOWN TOOLS! one paper blared, above a photo of a designer-distressed young woman and man heading into the sunset, their matching HIS and HERS begging bowls artfully discarded in the foreground of the image. BAG A BEGGAR! was the invitation extended by another, offering prizes to readers who managed to establish the whereabouts of the vagabonds, the bounty to be increased if a beggar was brought back for public display.
       Derision soon turned to contempt. Several tabloids ran photo-shoots showing the blistered faces and chafed extremities of vagrants, beneath which a feature-writer jocosely wondered whether this might be the first strike in history where the SCABS and BLACKLEGS were those who remained on strike rather than those who crossed the picket lines - some sport was had, of course, with the word "picket", above a blow-up of the discharge from a particularly noxious wound.
       In a matter of weeks, the public's contempt had turned to anger - perhaps the most surprising feature of the affair, this sense of rage that beggars no longer felt it their duty to occupy their positions in doorways, beneath bridges, at the rear of restaurants pleading for scraps, etcetera. Once again, self-interest appears to have been the primary motivation for this anger, if the opinions collated at the time can be regarded as typical.
       Some people, for example, pointed out that because there was no longer anyone worse-off to feel superior to, previously undealt-with feelings of worthlessness, tidily packed away in the subconscious when the upswing in the national fortunes began, were wont to resurface. Many parents, meanwhile, bemoaned the lack of opportunities for wagging a finger at a beggar family in order to warn their own children that the life of a beggar girl or boy was all they might expect if they were not to behave at all times according to the rules set down for them in the institutions entrusted with their rearing for the next ten to fifteen years.
       Some few of those interviewed who were voluntary workers admitted to being lonely, a brave admission it should be noted, and that, as so much of their life had centred on the homeless and underprivileged, talking to those less fortunate souls and encouraging them to persist despite their lot, they found themselves, in the absence of their good cause, with more time on their hands than they might wish for in which to reflect on their own lives.
       Then there were those perfectly entitled to regard themselves as pillars of their community, who had heretofore refused point-blank to give money to beggars, that decision based on a cast-iron conviction of how the human animal operates in extremis: that such money would end up in the hands of a grasping parent, to be used for purposes for which it was never intended by the giver - namely, the purchase of alcohol. And then, overnight, there were no begging faces to stare down; no pale-faced children to lecture on how, though such an individual had the financial capability to assist, he or she refused for the very finest of reasons to place even so much as a two-cent coin in this or that girl's shivering hand.
       Strangely, it was these people who seemed most affected by the absence of the beggars. It was as if some rock-solid belief which they'd long entertained about human nature had, overnight, dissolved. Some of these even went so far as to express a desire for the return of the beggars in order that a small donation could be made, which might just bring a trickledown benefit to the child should a drunken father return home in high spirits rather than the more likely murderous mood: crumbs from the poor man's table.
       Lastly there were the political parties to consider, for the disappearance of the beggars had induced in their ranks that state of collective agitation more associated with the imminence of a leadership battle. Sociologists were quick to provide an explanation. Not only had the beggars, they proposed, provided a convenient scapegoat when times were tough for whichever party was in power - an option no longer available; but also, a climate of uncertainty unacceptable to both government and opposition alike followed on from the realisation that if the beggars were no longer there to be easily dismissed as the bottom rung of the social ladder, then what unsuspecting minority group might be drafted in to take their place?
       In line with this contention, rumblings of discontent, from the media and members of the public alike, were aimed in turn at Travellers, at the disabled - and at non-nationals of course, who could always be relied upon to help out in such circumstances. The debate intensified when learned articles were penned suggesting that if the matter continued in such a way, with the most-despised minority group of the day withdrawing in turn from the public arena after too much vilification, it might not be long before even career politicians and property tycoons, for example, would come to be regarded as the most contemptible.
       Was that the turning point? Perhaps at that stage those who controlled the media decided a change of strategy was required. Should Beggars Be Choosers? the quality papers enquired; and, what exactly was the Beggars Belief? Had society, the tabloids wondered, only Paupered Over The Cracks? And so it was that the Fourth Estate were united in their policy of urging the beggars, for the greater good, to return to the streets. The political establishment too rowed in, promising more lenient legislation in the years to come, with substantial budget increases for essential services.
       For a week, nothing happened. The beggars, previously unlooked-for, now could not be found. Whatever boltholes they were hiding in, whatever boarded-up houses, drained cellars, abandoned attics, condemned ruins, these were places that polite society knew nothing of, having chosen not to. Even when a beggar was chanced upon, and a measure of pressure applied (it was suggested that physical force was used on more than one occasion by members of the public or the police), no tip-off was obtained. Or if obtained, was found to lead nowhere. Then, in a celebrated editorial, our leading newspaper of record declared that, with the homeless and vagrant setting the agenda, a ptochocracy, or rule by beggars, could no longer be regarded as out of the question. Soon the word was on everybody's lips. Heard in government buildings, on chat shows and news bulletins, in workplaces and public bars and hackney cabs. A future ruled by beggars was no longer an impossibility. Which was the moment the beggars chose to return.
       In the smallest hours of the coldest morning of that winter, they returned. Women slid their sore bodies down picture windows to rest once more against each dripping store facade; men in the remains of blankets reclaimed each windswept footbridge; and hollow children occupied once again each freezing doorway. It was the return of a tattered army, in the dead heart of winter, and no-one witnessed their re-emergence.
       Later investigations would reveal that no matter where it was the beggars were holed up, individually or in groups, it was a dryer bivouac than that provided by exposure to conditions on the streets. And food could always be scavenged by those most adept at spiriting themselves away. There were even hints from some vagrants that supplies had already been stockpiled in preparation for their strike. No, it seems that whatever shelter they had found was a better place than the place the public wanted them to be. And there, indefinitely, they might have remained.
       But then came that word: ptochocracy. And the beggars returned. For it had never been their intention, was never their ambition, in this they were adamant, to rule over other human beings. No, they were not born to be rulers, the organisers maintained, nor likewise to be ruled. And who were these mysterious ringleaders? Not one of the beggars could properly say. It seemed that they were all leaders at one time or another, and all leaders at the same time too. A bumper Christmas for beggars. So many people were so delighted to see them return to their respective pitches that great generosity was displayed. Of course, once public opinion hardened early in the New Year, it was assumed that the conditions the beggars had endured whilst away from their rightful place must have been so appalling as to have driven them back to the relative comfort of the streets, where an overhanging canopy would surely deflect the worst of the weather. And so with almost no fuss did the situation revert to the normal state of affairs which pertains between those who beg and those who don't. Even so, rumours abounded that small cells of renegade beggars persisted in living away from society, bedding down in abandoned blockhouses, wintering in disused power-station outbuildings. That these renegades could be seen scattering from the approach of land-clearing machinery when the great Wharf Reconstruction Programme began. It was even reported that about the body of a number of the usual quota of beggars found frozen to death by the sub-zero savagery of winter, clutched in a gangrene-blackened hand, was found a scrap of paper making reference to some mysterious kingdom of beggars; and that such a kingdom of beggars was at hand. But perhaps these were only myths that beggar and non-beggar alike needed for different reasons to believe.

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