1+ MILLION PEOPLE LIVE ALONE IN BRITAIN

CATHOLICS HELP TO EASE THEIR LONELINESS
Suicide through Despair
THE GREAT DISCUSSION ON LONELINESS, OF YOUNG, MIDDLE-AGED, OLD PEOPLE ALIKE, IS DEALT WITH IN THE MUCH-PUBLICISED REPORT OF THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF SOCIAL SERVICE. THERE IS A CATHOLIC CONTRIBUTION TO EASING THE LOT OF THE LONELY, AND rr IS BEING CONSISTENTLY GIVEN IN THE ADMIRABLE WORK OF OUR SOCIETIES.
THERE IS THE DANGER, 100, THAT LOCAL BODIES MAY UNWITTINGLY ALLOW ORGANISATIONS BEING SET UP IN THEIR MIDST WITH THE OBJECT OF TACKLING THE PROBLEM, TO BE USED FOR POLITICAL ENDS.
OUR REPORTER WRITES AS FOLLOWS:—
WHO ARE THE LONELY ONES? Those who are cut off from others by circumstances they may have no control over. Those who are lonely by temperament.
"NO ONE CAME TO SEE ME," A woman died alone in a flat. She left a diary. It said: " No one came." Repeated every day for a year. Then the National Old People's Welfare Council received a donation with this message: " From another old lady, who writes in her diary: ' No one came—thank goodness !'" Church-less: There is less church going. Fewer social contacts therefore.
Cold Comfort: " A turn of the knob brings a world of entertainment, but not one warm, human flesh and blood contact."
BENEFITING THE VISITORS?: the lonely person, patiently receiving the call of a member of a Catholic or parochial organisation, knowing that not infrequently the caller comes merely from motives of spiritual selfinterest.
But the contact has to be on human level.
THE LATINS: In Latin countries, the oldsters are given a niche all to themselves in the home of the younger and more virile. Here, we pay for our independence with tears of boredom— or we commit suicide through despair.
OUT TO HELP
I'm one of the people who inhabit one room and sometimes feel, especially on wet week-ends, that the walls are
closing in on me . .
THE plaintive little note appeared in the Manchester Evening News only a week or two ago. The writer was advised to get in touch with Mr.
Armand Georges, a 34-year-old Catholic ex-actor and writer, who has just formed the National Bed-Sitters' Association.
Its aim is to help these lonely folk to live fuller and happier lives by getting them together for socials, amateur dramatics, foreign language classes—any activity, in fact, which is practicable and which fosters friendship between human beings. Tenancy of a bedsitter is the only qualification for membership.
Lonely people are in the news just now. Last week the National Council of Social Service published a report which showed that there are 1,500,000 people living alone in Britain today. Some of them, no doubt, live alone from choice, but many more because they have no alternative.
Mainly from the ranks of this second group come the lonely ones, the people who dread saying good-night to their workmates because they will exchange no other friendly greeting until the next class's work begins.
The unhappiness of the old people who no longer go to work is, of course, immeasurably greater