John was born to a poor London Irish family just after the Second World War in a place called Notting Hill, which was not the Notting Hill you see in affluent West London – or Richard Curtis rom-coms – today. When he was five, his family were made homeless because they couldn’t pay the rent. John and his family moved into a space in the roof of his grandmother’s house, where they lived for a year, before being put in another slum…only to be kicked out of there too.
“We had hardly any money, and what little money my parents did get hold of tended to disappear into the pub or on cigarettes. It was their way of coping with the bleak circumstances we found ourselves in.”
Eventually, John’s family fell apart. The local authorities didn’t look after John or his siblings, so he was left separated from them in an orphanage. While they joined the workforce, John was left with other troubled and displaced London Irish kids (which the war had left no shortage of).
“Things didn’t get much better when I left the orphanage, and I started to get in trouble at school and with the police. The poverty I experienced was extreme, but it was all I knew, so didn’t strike me as so terrible at the time. But I have come to believe that it also causes poverty of the mind and spirit.”
Over the course of his early life, John became an angry person. He got into trouble with the law, with arson, vandalism and car theft among his adolescent crimes. He was never serious about committing crime to make money: it was just a way to let out some of the hatred he felt for the world.
Crime has some inevitable consequences, and John’s spells of incarceration began when he was just 13. He got shuffled between detention centres, boot camps and reformatories.
“It struck me that these places had their own ‘class systems’ that made me feel that I had to fight back against the various bullies that I encountered. Unfortunately, it had a really detrimental impact on my mental state and reduced my chances of becoming a decent citizen any time soon.”
As a result of his impoverished upbringing and undiagnosed dyslexia, John was illiterate in his teens. But aged 16, while he was serving time in a boys’ prison for stealing and crashing a car, a brilliant prison officer spotted his difficulties and taught John to read and write.
“I’m eternally grateful to him, not just because it was vital to the legitimate career I went on to have: it was my first lesson that incarceration can be an educational, developmental experience if it’s done right.”
Later on, John found himself in a facility that gave inmates work experience in a print department. He got stuck in, and fell in love with it. In his late twenties, after many years on the run for some earlier misdeeds, he decided it was time to leave crime behind and he handed himself in, made some apologies and paid some fines.
As soon as he could, John started to get jobs in the print industry using some of the skills and enthusiasm for the craft that he’d learned inside. After working a few jobs, he started his own print business and became quite prosperous, setting up magazines for galleries and working for radical charities.
The experience he had accumulated in the print industry came in handy when John came to do the thing he’s probably most famous for: setting up The Big Issue magazine in 1991. He set it up to enable homeless people to help themselves, giving them the self-respect and pride that comes with earning money.
“I’ve begged for money myself – I was brilliant at it – and often give to beggars, but I believe that giving people something for nothing won’t help them in the long run; in fact, it might even leave them worse off psychologically. When I was begging, I learned that it encourages you to feel as sorry for yourself as possible, because looking wretched earns you more money. And that’s not good for the soul. I often speak to Big Issue sellers, who come across as much more upbeat than other homeless people. I’ve seen some amazing success stories involving our sellers who have gone on to do incredible things, like Dr. Sabrina Cohen-Hatton. This has really reaffirmed my belief in what we I’m delighted that The Big Issue is still going today.”
In 2015, John’s life’s work landed him a crossbench life peerage in the House of Lords. His mission now is to tackle social injustice and poverty through social enterprise and early intervention. He wants to eradicate poverty by giving people a proper route out. John also wants to shift the focus of our prison system back towards rehabilitation and the sort of education that helped him get on his feet.
“During my time in prisons I met some real geniuses who just hadn’t worked out how to use their gifts for legitimate ends. That’s what I’d like to see us really foster. I hope my story itself can give people who have been through prison or other difficult circumstances the belief that a better life isn’t beyond their reach. That’s what More Than My Past means to me.”
