What is poverty? Can it be measured by income – or the lack of it – or is it a state of mind, asks social worker-turned-writer Bernard Hare, who grew up in a Yorkshire mining family.
I was born into poverty in 1958.
My father worked as a coal miner while my mother was a shop worker in a department store. Both were on low wages, but both were proud of the fact that they paid their own way through life.
My first 10 years were spent among the cold, cobbled terraces of east Leeds. The cobbles were cold, but the crumbling, back-to-back houses were warm inside. Miners, back then, got free coal as part of their wages