Heartbreaking letter from the woman with nowhere left to turn

“We’ve been working for 85 years between us so how can our lives have come to this?”

Helen and David Stuart have worked all their lives. But thanks to a series of devastating redundancies and a benefits system that has allowed them to slip through the net, they are now struggling to keep their heads above water. David is just one of the 198,000 people who were made redundant in the UK between July and December last year. Sadly, the couples’ story is one that will be playing out in households across the land.

Helen wrote a heartbreakingly honest letter to The Sunday Post telling of their desperate struggle to get by after contributing all their lives.

This is the story of how they have been let down by the system.

THERE is fear in Helen Stuart’s pale blue eyes. Fear of the unknown. Fear of losing everything. Fear of having to struggle to survive in a world that has suddenly, unexpectedly, turned against her.

She glances anxiously out of the window, her face tense and strained. She looks haunted, almost. Stalked by the spectre of poverty.

She is so afraid of losing what little she has that she asked for her name to be changed in this piece and for her photograph be to be altered so she isn’t recognised.

Helen has sneaked out of work to talk to me. No one knows she is telling her story. She is terrified it could affect her job or her husband David’s prospects of finding work.

But fear isn’t the only emotion at work here. There is anger, too.

It was a letter that led to our meeting at a pub in a grey retail park in a northern English city. The letter, sent to The Sunday Post by 60-year-old Helen in a moment of desperation, instantly moved everyone who read it. Read it for yourself and you cannot deny its power. Read Helen’s letter hereHelen’s story is a simple one, yet it bores to the very heart of a scourge that is crushing the spirits of ordinary people across the country. She and David have worked hard all their lives. They have saved not a lot, but enough, they believed, to give them some sense of security in their middle age. Helen has raised nearly £100,000 for charities, always keen to help others.

Then David was made redundant. Not once, but three times in the space of three years. At 64 he is desperately trying to find another job. But nobody wants him. Helen’s pay as an admin assistant barely covers the bills but it’s enough to mean that, when David’s Jobseeker’s Allowance came to an end last month all benefits stopped. Like so many others, the system they have paid into for 85 years between them is about to spit them out and leave them to fend for themselves.

“Our peace of mind has gone,” says Helen sadly. “Our savings are completely gone. I’m constantly terrified in case a bill comes in that I’m not expecting. I feel sick on the way home worrying about what the postie has brought. It’s horrible.”

She and David Helen’s second husband have been together for nearly 30 years. She is clearly devoted to him and simply wants to see him happy and relaxed again.

As she says in her heartbreaking letter, she’s tired of seeing him restlessly toss and turn in bed every night or come home to find him sitting with his jacket on because they can’t afford to turn on the heating.

“David turned my life around,” says Helen, who has one son from her first marriage. “He looked after me. That’s why I want to help him so much so I can give back some of the security he gave me.

“For whatever time we have left I want to make it so he doesn’t have worries, so we have a cushion. Just basic security.”

It’s a small dream. But one that seems depressingly distant to Helen. She’s eating a plate of fish, chips and peas as all around us people laugh and chat. Many won’t give a second thought to a quick, cheap lunch at the pub.

“I can’t remember the last time I came out for a meal like this,” she sighs quietly. Her dish costs no more than a fiver.

Their troubles began three years ago when David who has only had three days off work in 40 years, all for family funerals was made redundant out of the blue from the product manufacturing job he’d held for 10 years. It knocked him for six, but within a month he’d found a new job. But that wasn’t to last. Six months later, redundancy struck again and he found himself unemployed. He was forced to claim four weeks of Jobseeker’s Allowance, before once again landing a job. All was well until September last year when the company he was working for lost a major contract. David was last in, so he was first out. This time round, finding a job hasn’t been as easy.

“David’s been applying for at least three jobs a week over last six months,” explains Helen. “But it’s hard. I think his age is against him. It’s been tough. But David is tenacious. He picks himself up and we start again.”

Sadly, no matter how hard he has tried, he hasn’t even had a sniff at a job. With his benefits at an end and no more in sight, an already desperate financial situation is about to get worse.

“It’s terrifying. I feel sick,” says Helen, her face drawn with worry. Some days my heart beats so fast with the stress I’m worn out. I go to bed at 8.30pm but I’m up again at 2am and can’t sleep.”

It’s desperately sad to see someone who has worked hard all their life and contributed their fair share, dragged to such a low point.

Helen started work aged 15 in the civil service before joining the Army at 16. She served for three years in Germany and Northern Ireland. She has also raised more than £100,000 for charity. For someone who has done so much for others, she feels dispirited that there seems to be no help for people like her and David in their time of need.

Helen sighs and says: “I’m hoping there might be someone out there who says, ‘She’s done her best how can we help her?’. Surely this country hasn’t gone so far the other way from that attitude that now it’s, ‘I’m alright, Jack, sod you’.”

It’s the little things Helen misses. She and David couldn’t afford to celebrate their silver wedding anniversary or her 60th birthday. At Christmas there were no presents.

“I used to like to look in shops, but I don’t now. What’s the point?” says Helen, gazing out the window. “The coat I’m wearing was bought by David’s mum and she’s been dead for 20 years. My friend bought me this top for Christmas eight years ago. Then girls at work come in with lovely new stuff on and I can see them looking. It upsets me.”

Her upset and frustration extends to the system of benefits that she feels is unfairly skewed against hard-working people like her and David.

“Good people, through no fault of their own, become unemployed and because of the rules they end up with nothing, while others seem to get a lot.”

I ask Helen what the future holds. She sips her tea in silence, her eyes betraying sorrow as she contemplates a bleak possibility.

“If things stay the same, life, for whatever time we have left, will be one long worry, full of stress and sleepless nights,” she says finally. “But if things change we could have a happier life and with 85 years of work between us I think we’re entitled to that.”

And what message does she have for those who read her poignant letter?

“We won’t be the only ones going through this,” she says. “If you know somebody in the same position, don’t just say how sorry you are to hear about their troubles, do something practical. Help them.”

Her final thought before we part is, as so much of this has been, about David.

“In many ways I feel we’re richer than a lot of people, because we have each other. But it breaks my heart when I see him tossing and turning all night. At 64, when you’ve worked all your life, you deserve a little peace of mind. Is that too much to ask?”

There are few who would say it is.

Read Helen’s letter in full