Translator: Michele Gianella Reviewer: Rhonda Jacobs
Fifth of June, 1919.
At the Palace of Versailles, just outside Paris,
renowned economist John Maynard Keynes
writes to British Prime Minister David Lloyd George
resigning his position
as Chief Economic Advisor to the British Government
in the Paris Peace Conference.
The war is over, but France and other nations
want to extract crushing reparations from Germany
as retribution for their role in the war.
Keynes believed that it made moral and economic sense
not to crush Germany's economy;
but doing so would only sow dissent
and foster a desire for vengeance amongst the German people.
He believed that only with an agreed reparations plan
and with opportunities for Germany to rebuild its economy,
to trade with other nations,
to provide employment opportunities for its people,
would a lasting peace be achieved.
In his letter, Keynes made reference
to the impending devastation on the continent of Europe.
Just 23 days later,
the Treaty of Versailles was signed in the Hall of Mirrors,
depicted behind me.
You don't have to be a history buff to know what happened next.
If there can be any positive outcome from the Second World War,
it's that the allies finally learnt their lesson from Keynes' warning.
As a result, you had the Marshall Plan, the Truman aid,
money flowing in to rebuild postwar Europe,
a commitment from the great powers to work together economically,
from which came the European Coal and Steel Community,
which then eventually became the European Union
and has helped usher in almost 75 years of peace in Europe.
They realized that you don't cure conflict with more conflict,
and you need more than a peace agreement to end war.
They saw that conflict and violence
are inextricably linked to poverty, inequality, and hopelessness.
And all of those things were here in abundance in Northern Ireland
in the latter half of the 20th century.
But Northern Ireland has moved on so much since then.
We talk about the "peace dividend"
as a shorthand for the progress and opportunity
that Northern Ireland would have after the Troubles.
To some extent, it's paid out.
Our people are less divided than before.
Our communities are safer.
We've made some, albeit very slow steps towards normalizing our politics.
We have shiny new buildings popping up all over Belfast.
But we have completely failed to address the poverty and deprivation
within the communities who were most affected by the Troubles.
In Northern Ireland today, we see huge amounts of violence every day.
Perhaps the most shocking statistic, in my opinion,
is that more people have died by suicide since the Good Friday Agreement
than died during the conflict.
We have a 25 percent higher rate of poor mental health
than the rest of the UK,
and we're currently experiencing
the highest ever rates of drug and alcohol addiction.
One in five people in Northern Ireland lives in poverty.
Food bank use is soaring.
Homelessness figures continue to increase.
And whilst overall crime has gone down,
paramilitary crime has increased by 60 percent
over the last four years.
Whether it's bullets on the streets or increased rates of self‑harm
or the withholding of essential resources by government,
are these not all forms of violence?
And all these forms of violence are linked to poverty.
Poverty takes away freedom and choice,
forces people into impossible situations.
A University of Manchester study found that children born into poverty
are seven times more likely to be engaged in violent activity
as adults.
Poverty allows the worst elements of our society ‑
paramilitaries, extremists ‑
to groom teenagers into a life of crime and violence.
It allows these gangland thugs
to put a gun into the hands of a 15‑year‑old boy in Derry
and cause the murder of young journalist Lyra McKee
just one month ago.
Lyra was just 29
when a bullet fired from a crowd of rioters
in the Creggan estate, probably intended for police,
struck her.
She died soon after in hospital of her injuries,
an innocent victim of a reckless act of violence.
Four men have since been arrested,
including an 18‑year‑old and a 15‑year‑old.
The first thing I saw when I heard about Lyra's death
was on my Facebook feed,
I saw her incredibly moving TEDx talk from two years ago,
where she talked about how having uncomfortable conversations
can save lives.
Then I read more of her work.
I realized that Lyra had an acute understanding
for the problems we currently face in Northern Ireland.
She wrote about the ceasefire babies,
about how her, my generation, did not reap the spoils of peace.
Instead, we inherited
the intergenerational trauma of the Troubles.
About how working class young people in particular,
face a poverty of support and ambition.
About how Belfast today is really a tale of two cities:
a really great place for those who have prospects and money;
and a really cruel place for those who don't.
In Northern Ireland, one in five children is born into poverty.
In the Creggan, it's two‑thirds.
We need to break the cycle of poverty and paramilitarism.
We need to cure poverty to cure conflict.
It sounds pretty ambitious, right?
Well, in my opinion, there is only one answer.
It's not government‑led nudge programs helping people to fill out more forms
or get an interview for that zero‑hour contract,
seasonal sales associate call center job
paying minimum wage with no lunch break.
Poverty, in its most pure sense, is a lack of money.
So, to cure poverty, we need to give people money.
Introducing universal basic income,
a radical social welfare policy
that would give every person in society enough money to live on
regardless of their personal circumstances.
It would be untaxed and unconditional,
arriving in your bank account every month with no strings attached.
A substantial basic income in the UK might be £800 a month,
with slightly higher payments
for pensioners and those with work‑limiting disabilities,
and slightly lower payments for young people.
It would replace the vast majority of existing benefits
and would provide everyone in society with a basic level of financial security.
So sounds like a bit of a fairy tale, right?
Well, it's quickly becoming a reality.
And there's been basic income trials happening for a long time now
right across the world,
from Canada to India, from Finland to Namibia.
In perhaps one of the most famous basic income experiments,
in Manitoba, in Canada, in the 1970s,
the entire town of Dauphin was given a basic income for four years.
Unfortunately,
a newly elected government came in and scrapped funding for the program.
The results from the experiment were stacked away in some 2,000 boxes
and weren't looked at for another 35 years,
until, by chance, they were uncovered.
The results spoke for themselves.
In the town of Dauphin,
hospitalization rates during the trial period
were down by 10 percent.
In particular, those related to mental health.
Domestic violence incidents were way down.
Kids were doing better in school.
People didn't quit their jobs.
There was some labor market participation drop‑off amongst two groups.
The first was young mothers,
who were spending more time with their families.
The second, perhaps more worryingly, was young males of school‑leaving age.
Evelyn Forget,
the health economist who rediscovered the data
had a pretty good idea of where these young men might be.
When she cross‑referenced data from the trial
with high school dropout rates
and college enrollment figures at the time,
she got her answer.
Where were these young men?
Staying in school.
Choosing to improve themselves because now they could.
That's all well and good for the town of Dauphin,
but can a basic income help people
in the worst possible cases of poverty and deprivation?
That's exactly what they set out to find out in London in May of 2009.
A charity identified 13 homeless men, "veterans" of the streets.
Rough sleepers for at least four years,
who collectively, it was estimated,
were racking up a combined bill of over £400,000
in terms of policing, healthcare, and other social services.
The strain on the city was huge,
and no innovative charity program could break the cycle.
So, one homelessness charity decided to give each of these men £3,000 cash.
They could do whatever they like with the money.
They could make use of a financial advisor if they wanted,
or not.
The results?
After just one year, 11 of the 13 men
were off the streets and in permanent housing.
Not a single one had spent the money on drugs, alcohol, or gambling.
In Finland,
basic income recipients across the board felt happier and less stressed.
In Namibia,
incidences of cattle theft disappeared almost overnight
because no longer were families forced into stealing cows
to feed their starving families.
So, one of the first things that people always ask me
when I talk about basic income
is, where has it been trialed?
Hopefully, I've just answered that question.
The next question inevitably is always, "Well, how would we pay for it?"
My answer, inevitably, is always,
How can we afford not to?
How can we continue morally justifying picking up the bill for poverty?
We're already paying for poverty in policing, in prisons, in healthcare,
in the human and financial cost of mental health and suicide,
the costs of conflict and division.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation
has estimated the cost of poverty in the UK to be £78 billion annually.
That's £23 per week for every person in the UK.
Every person in this room,
all 66 million people that live in the UK currently.
Collecting currently uncollected tax would give us all another £10 a week.
Scrapping the tax‑free allowance would give us all another £32 a week.
And scrapping the vast majority of existing benefits
would provide another £77 a week.
And there, we're already three‑quarters of the way
to a substantial £200 a week basic income for every person in the UK
before looking at additional tax revenue.
And in doing so,
we would be scrapping one of the most insidious forms
of state‑sponsored violence against the poor in modern history ‑
welfare reform.
A peer‑reviewed study has argued
that since austerity measures were introduced in 2010,
as many as 120,000 preventable deaths have occurred in the UK.
A UN special investigator has condemned the poverty levels in the UK
and the Universal Credit System in particular.
Now, let me ask.
Is welfare reform, really,
how we're going to achieve a lasting peace in Northern Ireland?
Or will we risk driving more young men in Belfast and Derry
into the arms of paramilitaries,
as their families are increasingly pushed into poverty, precarity, and hopelessness?
We need to transform society
so that violence is no longer an attractive option.
A basic income will not cure,
it will not solve the pain and trauma of being in a post‑conflict society.
It won't cure our mental health and suicide crisis.
But it might make life easier for an awful lot of people.
It won't change our history, but it can give us a better future.
It's the real peace dividend.
Now, I want to ask you all,
How would your lives change with an extra £800 a month?
Or, someone you know in your life who might be struggling at the moment,
how would a basic income help them?
Thank you.
(Applause)