by Dymphna
A personal view of the social work scene
I have recently been renewing my acquaintance with Rudyard Kipling - Rudyard Kipling the poet, that is, as distinct from Rudyard Kipling the short-story writer and part-time novelist. R.K. the poet is very much out of favour at present, and has been these twenty years. I suppose this disfavour springs from his identification with the spirit of Empire, with the Raj, with the Great White Sahib, with an aggressive patriotism; from his comments about ‘heathens’ and ‘lesser breeds without the law’ and ‘cleansing our East with steel’.
Yet he was an extraordinary writer: the command of language is enormous, his rhythms are supple and vigorous and it truly is amazing that he could pull out of a mere eighteen months’ stay in India such a huge range of insights, such a rich vein of material, that he could work on them for the rest of his life.
Perhaps he can better be appreciated if he is looked at not as a poet but as an historian who happened to write in verse. As an historian there is little doubt that he did capture the feeling of living at the heart of an Empire - the flavour of those heady, cruel, exhilarating, arrogant days before 1914; and though he wrote for the most part about commanding sorts of sahibs behaving impeccably in distant outposts, he did also make important contributions in terms of representing the working class or ‘the rank and file’, who had hardly been repesented at all until his day.
In short, the Empire, at its rather unnerving peak, produced its chronicler. Now the Empire has vanished, and Rudyard Kipling with it. Are we not witnessing, however, the birth and rapid growth of a new Empire - the Empire of the Social Services? Ought we not to be looking for a new Kipling to record these heady and arrogant days? Shyly, and with the utmost diffidence, I offer myself. I will set out to step in the footprints Kipling left.
Rudyard began as a sort of hack-writer on an Indian newspaper and soon started churning out little rhyming anecdotes which were later collected as ‘Departmental Ditties’. They were full of sly jokes and native lingo. In the Empire of Social Service such a verse might run Lady Maidie Hooper-Klaas Joined the Child Care hubbub, Visiting the fostah-mahs1 In the distant subbub2 She inspected clothes and ears In a manner systematic, Reducing fostah-mahs to tears With strictures most emphatic. But when preventive work occurred With kids3 who weren’t so pretty Lady M. said she preferred To serve on a Committee.
1 Foster-mothers. 2 Council estate. 3 Children. Later on, if she followed the Rudyard pattern, the Kipling of the Social Services would become fascinated by the life of the ‘ranker’, or basic-grade social worker, and would follow him for instance into the field of mental health.
If you’ve sub - sub - sub - sub - normals on your working load Then good - good - good - good gracious, how the pace is slowed! You keep - keep - keep them on the strait and narrow road, There’s no discharge to the case! For it’s slog - slog - slog - slog to save them from the tears and sobs, Slog - slog - slog - slog - slog to find them little jobs, For the sub - sub - sub - sub - normals need to save their bobs:
There’s no discharge to the case!
Gradually as the services developed the neo^Jpling would discover that caseworkers were going lnt? action in out-of-the-way corners of the realm, and might produce commentaries like this We’ve done a lot o’ casework in our day, With the Irish and the ‘eathen Cypriot; There was a surly squad o’ squatters in Foots Cray But the gipsy was the finest o’ the lot.
^e ‘adn’t never ‘eard o’ Sigmund Freud! Nor cared what we’d learned down along the Tavi! Non-judgment seemed to get ‘im so annoyed ‘E treated us like dirt - and ‘im the navvy! So ‘ere’s to you, Gippo-Whippo, and your matriarchal stories, You’re a pore benighted client with your own subcultural mores, But ‘ere’s to you, Gippo-Whippo, in your roamin’ caravan, You big scrapmetal beggar! for you broke a Casework Plan.
But it would be with the establishment of the great new Social Service Departments and the erection of huge ritualistic hierarchies, full of durbars and investitures, extending all the way up to the Emperor Joseph, that our latter-day Kipling would discover within herself new and sonorous organ-notes.
Something like these Who hath desired the People? O ye in commercial work, Ye conscienceless ones, give ear! For the lift and the swirl and the jerk And the tumbling turbulent spindrift - atoms yet all of a unity Where mental disturbance hangs high - this, this, is our working community! Creeping, pain-ridden, pang-borne, round village and suburb and steeple, Prey to emotional blocs and neuroses - these, these are Our People! We will plunge as a seaman plunges into water that moves and thrills As a hillman descends from his hills:
So and no otherwise - so and no otherwise caseworkers use their skills! And at last, I suppose, Dymphna Kipling would make the final ascent, to the point whence she could see over the whole Empire, marvel at its extent and complexity, visualise the myriads of social workers setting out on their evening visits, and thrill to the romance of the new referral. And write like this Ye have had a call from County Hall, And one from the women police; The inadequates cry: ‘Drop by, drop by!’ The depressives are seeking peace. Let’s ha’ done with the paperwork, dear lass, With Review Reports we’re through: It’s time to pull out on the old trail, our own trail, the out-trail, Pull out, pull out on the Long Trail - the trail that is always new!
Disclaimer
The historical material in this project falls into one of three categories for clearances and permissions:
Material currently under copyright, made available with a Creative Commons license chosen by the publisher.
Material that is in the public domain
Material identified by the Welcome Trust as an Orphan Work, made available with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
While we are in the process of adding metadata to the articles, please check the article at its original source for specific copyrights.