Stories from the Edge - Volunteer Now

“ People helping people ”Jerome DawsonAccording to the American writer Mark Twain a banker is a person who will lend you an umbrellawhen the sun is shining but he wants it back the minute it begins to rain.Another American Joe E Lewis defined a bank as an institution where you can borrow money ifyou can prove you don’t need it. To need money implies you don’t have any. Banks aren’t charitable institutions that assist theneedy.That is the job of someone else, according to bankers. In this case charity and business stand in opposition. One is aboutmaking money and the other is about giving to those who need it. Political leaders of global capitalism, whether it is Labourboss Tony Blair speaking just hours after his historic second successive term or George Soros, the billionaire capitalist, want toafford everyone the opportunity and the choice to succeed. This might be a bare bones way of looking at bourgeois society.However for the unemployed, the low paid and those in developing countries there are few choices in life. For people living inharsh conditions in developing countries it is often the stark and fundamental choice between living and dying. In less drasticcircumstances anyone who has ever been unemployed does not have the luxury of even choosing which washing up liquidthey prefer. It’s usually the cheapest yellow pack brand. Those who are in work and earning average wages don’t have manychoices either. Their spendable incomes after paying the house hold bills are limited.This, often harsh, reality of modern bourgeois society has provoked numerous responses by ordinary people to overcome thecontradiction between those who have access to wealth and power and those who don’t. At one level bankers and their branchmanagers are the regular butt of jokes. Their stereotyped image is that of the frosty faced individual scanning whether anindividual is a good risk or not. Whether or not they are worth a gamble or a ‘flutter’ in the jargon. On another level thecontradiction between the altruism and the free market ideology is resolved by the introduction of Credit Unions. The CreditUnion Movement is one of the big success stories of the second half of the 20th Century. They cut out the man or womanwho epitomises the money grabbing rich. In the 40 years since the organisation came to Northern Ireland it has gone from asmall gathering in the front room of an ordinary suburban house in Derry to plush new state of the art offices which wererecently opened on Lurgan’s Market Street. The Credit Union is about helping people manage their money. The operative wordhere is union with all its connotations that are the basis of the Trade Union movement - that is, a union of ordinary workingpeople combining to protect themselves.