Defending people facing poverty

Show respect to benefits claimants and the unemployed.

Respect for Benefits Claimants and the Unemployed aims to bring together groups of claimants campaigning against cuts and combat the negative stories that appear all too regularly in most of the press about them.

Its Facebook page shares news about claimants who are being penalised as a result of government cuts, like 57-year-old Veronica Kenning from Birmingham who is dying of cancer, and who faces eviction from her home because she cannot pay the £23.57 demanded by the council.

Or Irene Lockett, 52, from Kirkby, Merseyside, who was awarded the Carer of the Year title at Croxteth Park Nursing Home where she worked, has fostered several youngsters over the years and gave up work as a carer when she had a heart attack. She could not pay the docked extra £23.24 per week docked under new welfare rules.

In the first month of the tax year on Merseyside alone, more than 14,000 people fell into arrears – 6,000 for the first time.

Nationally, at least 660,000 of society’s most vulnerable families have been hit by the under-occupation penalty with tenants forced to make up 14 per cent of their rent for one extra bedroom and 25 per cent for two.

It has a link to news that The United Nations Development Programme, which has just published the Human Development Report, said last week: “The United Kingdom, unfortunately, has an exceptionally high degree of inequality.”

The report shows that the poorest 40 per cent of Britons share a lower proportion of the national wealth – 14.6 per cent – than in any other Western country.

This is only marginally better than in Russia, the only industrialised nation, east or west, to have a worse record. Measurements of the gap between rich and poor tell a similar story. The richest fifth of Britons enjoy, on average, incomes 10 times as high as the poorest fifth.”

Britain ties for the worst performance by this yardstick among Western nations with Australia – and is, says the report, exactly the same as in Nigeria, much worse than in Jamaica, Ghana or the Ivory Coast and twice as bad as in Sri Lanka or Ethiopia.

Respect for Benefits Claimants and the Unemployed also collects facts and figures, like data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in 2009 that shows that the poorest 10 per cent of households pay 47 per cent of their income in tax, a higher percentage than any other group.

And campaign updates, such as Caerphilly Against the Bedroom Tax, which presented a 2,000-signature petition to a council meeting on 23 July; and information about co-ordinated demonstrations, such a day of action against the Bedroom Tax.

The group takes inspiration from the National Unemployed Workers Movement founded by Wal Hannington in 1918, which went on to organise the infamous hunger marches of the 1920s and 30s.

The Facebook page says that Respect for Benefits Claimants and the Unemployed campaigns for political change to address injustice and persecution of benefit claimants, continuing to build alliances with trade unions and progressive organisations around the world.

All this reminds me of the early days of the Anti Poll Tax movement. Lots of small, localised campaigns petitioning councils, turning up at courts to stop them issuing warrants, gathering outside the houses of non-payers to stop the bailiffs.

The Anti Poll Tax movement saw off Thatcher – let’s hope this movement has the same effect on this government.

Story published on Women's Views on News, 6 August 2013