Red Pepper » Cuts

Young Writers’ Competition

admin — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 12:20:17 +0000

Calling all young writers, activists and aspiring journalists! If you’re aged between 16-25 years old then why not enter our young writer’s competition? Entries will be judged by George Monbiot, author columnist for The Guardian; and Kara Moses, environment editor at Red Pepper.

The winner will get their work published in Red Pepper, receive £100 and get a one years subscription to the magazine. We will also publish some of the runner up entires on our website. Just answer the following question:

How can we make our world fairer and more sustainable at the same time?

Write up to 800 words about an inspiring project or policy which is tackling the environmental crisis and addressing social or economic injustice at the same time. Where has this initiative been discussed, developed or adopted? Could it be applied elsewhere?

Deadline: 22 November 2013

More information and competition rules

1. You must be 16-25 years of age.

2. Your article must be up to 800-words long and written in English.

3. Only one entry per person, which must be submitted electronically as a word document by 22 November 2013. Attach the document in an email, with the email subject line stating ‘Red Pepper young writers’ competition’ to Kitty Webster at kitty@redpepper.org.uk

4. Your entry must clearly state the following:

- Your name, age, place of education/work, and a contact number (landline or mobile)

- How you heard about the competition, e.g. through which one of the supporting organisations, or through which student society

If you have any questions then email kitty@redpepper.org.uk

*** Good luck! ***

This competition is kindly supported by the following organisations:

People&Planet – the largest student network in Britain campaigning to end world poverty, defend human rights and protect the environment.

Shake! – A project that brings together young people, artists and campaigners to develop creative responses to social injustice.

Woodcraft Folk – the co-operative children and young people’s movement. They run hundreds of education groups in towns and cities across the UK where young people of all ages meet to play co-operative games, make friends and learn about big ideas from social justice to climate change.

Young Greens – the youth and student branch of the Green Party. Young Greens aim to harness the energy and ideas of young people, and change the direction of our society towards a sustainable and just future.

We could have won!

admin — Thu, 04 Jul 2013 14:00:25 +0000

The death of Margaret Thatcher and, even more, her reincarnation in the coalition government make this a propitious moment to re-examine the history of the 1980s. With severe cuts being imposed on local government, it’s especially worth revisiting the rate-capping controversy of 1984-85.
The history of the 1980s was never a simple tale of triumphal neoliberalism. The Thatcherite project was resisted every step of the way and at several critical junctures was seriously imperilled. During her first term, until the Falklands war, her government was deeply unpopular. That led to the election, in the early 1980s, of Labour councils with strong left-wing contingents. As unemployment rose, these councils raised spending on services, compensating for cuts in government grants by increasing ‘the rates’ – the long-established local property tax, paid by residents and businesses.
Determined to close this escape valve, the Tories introduced legislation soon after their 1983 victory to ‘cap’ rate rises in what they considered to be profligate councils. From the start, the proposal was controversial, even within the Conservative party, where a significant minority, including Edward Heath, regarded it as an unwarranted centralisation of power. Nonetheless, the government pushed it through parliament and it became law in June 1984.
Second front
The debate about how Labour should respond unfolded against the background of the year-long miners’ strike. For many on the left, this was an opportunity to open a second front against the government. Support for non-compliance was widespread, but there was considerable disagreement over what form it should take. The strategy eventually adopted – in which affected Labour councils would collectively refuse to set a rate – was a lowest common denominator, the one point of action around which most could unite.
It needs to be stressed that the discussion that led to this decision was extensive, involving large numbers at the base of the Labour party. The commitment to non-compliance was the result of a wide-ranging democratic exercise, not the influence of conspiratorial ‘entryists’, and reflected a determination among Labour members to fight the Tories not only during but between elections.
At the Labour Party conference at the end of September 1984, local government attracted more resolutions than any other topic. The official national executive committee statement endorsed non-compliance and called for unity; two resolutions went further, pledging support to councils forced to break the law. The statement and the resolutions were agreed by a show of hands – not at all the result the leadership wanted.
A grassroots campaign
Despite the leadership’s equivocation, the campaign against rate-capping was taken up vigorously at the grassroots. It was inventive, diverse, populist, reaching out to and involving workforces and their unions alongside a wide array of community organisations. In November 1984, 100,000 local government workers took a day’s strike action; 30,000 marched in London. Through festivals, demonstrations, meetings, publications and events involving youth clubs, nurseries, play and pensioners groups, the campaign succeeded in alerting a broad public to the menace of rate capping and its effects on services, jobs and local democracy.
Among the most prominent in the leadership of the campaign and its central strategy of non-compliance were Margaret Hodge of Islington, David Blunkett of Sheffield, and Ken Livingstone of the GLC, along with Derek Hatton from Liverpool and Ted Knight from Lambeth.
From the start, it was clear to all that non-compliance could entail personal penalties for Labour councillors. If the district auditor found that the council had suffered financial loss as a result of their votes, councillors could be ordered to repay the lost money in a ‘surcharge’. If the surcharge amounted to more than £2,000 each, the councillors would also be disqualified from office. On top of that, councillors could be held to be ‘jointly and severally liable’ for the total sum lost to the council – not just their individual share of it.
In February 1985 Neil Kinnock issued his famous edict to the Labour local government conference: ‘Better a dented shield than no shield at all.’ While this was to become (and remains) the prevailing Labour wisdom, it was deeply dismaying to activists. Kinnock had effectively advised the Tories that councils that resisted their diktat would be left isolated. It was a declaration from the top that there would be no labour movement unity.
Nonetheless, at this stage, 26 Labour councils remained determined to defy the government. They planned to synchronise their budget meetings for 7 and 8 March, coinciding with TUC-sponsored ‘Democracy Day’ demonstrations. The government looked vulnerable. Thatcher’s popularity ratings had dipped: 60 per cent now said they were ‘dissatisfied’ with her.
But on 5 March 1985, the miners retuned to work after a year-long struggle. Their defeat became, in the short run, a pretext for giving up the rate-capping struggle, and in the long run, for a general accommodation with Thatcherism. On 7 March, the Times made a prediction: ‘Labour’s left-wing councillors value power more than a place of glory in the Socialist Pantheon . . . They will cling to office and make the shifts required, shifts which in most cases are perfectly manageable.’ The cynicism proved sadly prescient. The first to collapse was the GLC, where Livingstone himself led the climbdown, while John McDonnell led a minority of Labour councillors determined to hold the democratically agreed line.
Defying Thatcherism
Initially nearly all of the other rate-capped councils voted to refuse to set a rate and in doing so enjoyed voluble local support. In April, Islington council published a poll of local residents showing that in the argument over rate-capping, 57 per cent supported the council and only 20 per cent the government.
But as the threats from district auditors became more pressing, one by one the councils abandoned non-compliance. By the middle of June, all but Lambeth and Liverpool had yielded. In September, the district auditors gave notice to 81 councillors (49 from Liverpool, 32 from Lambeth) that the delay in fixing the rates amounted to ‘wilful misconduct’ and that they were therefore required to repay the costs as a personal surcharge. The 81 were also disqualified from office and barred from seeking re-election. A series of judicial appeals failed.
At the end of July 1986, the Lambeth councillors were given 21 months to pay off the ‘surcharges’ at a rate of £5,000 per month between them. Some months later, Liverpool councillors were held liable for an even larger total, £333,000. In the end, these sums were paid off by donations from the labour movement, though not without sacrifices for a number of the councillors concerned.
The councillors paid the price of principle. It was a very un-eighties thing to do. They stood against the current and should be celebrated for that. They kept faith with their electorates and their consciences, even when abandoned by their leaders, vilified in the media and threatened with bankruptcy.
Managerialism replaces politics
The defeat of the campaign against rate-capping was a significant step in the hollowing out of local democracy as well as in Labour’s long-term adaptation to Thatcherism. Those who led the retreat soon shifted their defence. Initially it was posed as a stark choice of lesser evils. But gradually the ‘evil’ became celebrated as a virtue: the ‘reform’ of public services through privatisation and attacks on the workforce. Managerialism replaced politics.
And the pay-off for the ‘dented shield’, which was supposed to be the election of a Labour government, did not materialise in 1987 or 1992, and when it did, finally, in 1997, it did not herald a reinvigoration of local democracy. Instead, the managerial ethos was entrenched via ‘cabinet’ government and executive mayors. The fiscal autonomy enjoyed pre-rate capping was never restored.
Of course, Thatcherism was only the British version of the neoliberal wave of the era. But that global context does not mean its triumph was inevitable. It was resistible. Its hegemony was an end product, established piecemeal, unevenly and painfully. And its triumph required a political struggle.
In that struggle, it was immensely to Thatcher’s advantage that every time she singled out a target for attack, she could be confident that the target would be left high and dry by the Labour and trade union leaderships. Thatcher was never the leader of principle vaunted by the media; she was ruthlessly opportunistic. But it was that very quality that made her adept at calling the bluff of the spineless centre – whether among the ‘wets’ in her own party or the leaders of Labour local government.
Photo: James Taylor. It shows the Hackney Peace Carnival Mural, commissioned by the GLC in 1985.

Jeremy Hardy thinks… about people’s concerns

admin — Thu, 04 Jul 2013 13:55:03 +0000

I am not in receipt of any benefits, apart from roads of varying quality and occasional firework displays. And policing, I suppose. And a fire service, should I need it. And museums, parks and art galleries. And free healthcare. And the advantages that have flowed from a free education to tertiary level. And some other bits and bobs. But that’s it.
So, by rights, I should be livid that asylum seekers are given a free house on arrival, that prisons are like holiday camps and that unemployed single mothers are paid more than the prime minister. Except I know that these things are not true.
I don’t wish to suggest that people are stupid, merely ignorant. As a rule, only people who are in receipt of benefits, or who administer them, know how much they are. No one who’s never been inside a prison has any grasp of the realities of incarceration. Only a refugee knows what it’s like to be one.
But most people are not cold-blooded and are quite shocked when they learn how low benefits actually are. If they were to spend one night in a cell, they would cry throughout it. When asked what sentences they think are appropriate for various offenders, they show themselves to be more liberal than judges. And if they were to meet an asylum seeker and hear their story, they would probably want to open their own wallets to help them out.
There are three types of ‘you couldn’t make it up’ stories: the ones that are about very rare instances, the ones that are misrepresented, and the ones that are made up. The duty of politicians of conscience is to say so. To listen, yes, for a bit. Then to say, ‘I hear your concerns, but they’re bollocks.’ That’s just common sense.

The People’s Assembly: making a movement?

admin — Tue, 28 May 2013 18:32:50 +0000

Why do you think Red Pepper readers should prioritise getting involved in the People’s Assembly?

It’s unacceptable that half a decade since the financial crisis – a crisis hijacked very ably by the right – we still don’t have a broad national movement against austerity. That’s not to say we haven’t had lots of very important struggles – the student protests were the catalyst for so much, the waves of struggles we’ve seen come together to fight the coalition, giving people confidence in fighting back, and then the Occupy protests.
But it’s still very disparate. If you don’t have a permanent coherent movement then things fizzle out. So it’s essential to have the trade unions centrally involved. They’re uniquely placed as the biggest mass democratic force in the country representing millions of people from bin collectors to call‑centre workers, teachers and nurses – the pillars of our society. They can help kick start a broad movement to link in with the disabled people’s protests or the tax evasion protests, and help build the mass national movement against austerity that we’re sorely lacking. The anti-austerity voice is missing from British politics due to the unwillingness or inability of the Labour leadership to present a coherent case.
Can anyone come along or are you looking for delegates from other organisations?
Both. What’s interesting is just how broad this is. It involves Unite, Unison, the RMT and other unions, but it also involves Labour activists and MPs and Green Party people, community groups, unemployed people – it really is the ‘we’re all in it together coalition’. Unions will be paying for delegates to come. I’ve been talking to the Unite community groups, who are helping to organise the unemployed, amongst others, and they’ll be sending a coach. It’s really important to mobilise the previously unorganised, the biggest party in the country, the ‘yelling-at-the-TV party’, who are deprived of any meaningful vote.
We don’t get social change through anger alone. We need hope. I want the People’s Assembly to help mobilise people who at the moment feel no sense of political hope, are exasperated about the failure of the Labour leadership to offer any coherent alternative, might actually want to be involved in building a very broad movement.
People might say, ‘Well, Owen, the Labour leadership have themselves signed up to all sorts of reactionary pro-austerity policies, like supporting the Tory de facto cut to the pay of millions of public sector workers, for example, so why are they welcome?’ But the difference is Labour’s link to the union memberships, so at least there’s the capacity for workers to be represented.
Are there any groups that you are particularly keen to bring on board?
As we know, working class women are being disproportionately hammered by the cuts, whether as public sector workers, who are more likely to be women, or benefit claimants, who are more likely to be women. That is the logic of the cuts, which represent a backwards step in the emancipation of women. We need the women’s groups.
How do you relate this language of ‘building’ or ‘creating’ a movement to the task of supporting and reinforcing, linking up what’s already there?
We just want to be a forum, a coalition of lots of struggles but also stitching them together and providing somewhere for people to join up with the general movement. Not wishing to override or displace other groups, far from it. Bringing them more closely together helps them become more powerful than they currently are.
In some ways, the People’s Assembly feels like a conscious attempt to replicate the Stop the War Coalition. Although that was very successful in organising big set-piece national demonstrations, some activists were frustrated about the lack of internal democracy. What will make the leadership of this movement any more accountable and legitimate in the eyes of activists on the ground?
Stop the War was dominated from the beginning by the Socialist Workers Party, who at that time were by far the biggest group on the far left, and had thousands of activists who could be mobilised to dominate key decision‑making. There isn’t an equivalent with the People’s Assembly. You might point out some individuals still involved, but the fact is this is something driven above all by the trade unions. There isn’t any group with the resources or personnel to dominate this at all.
There is a provisional Steering Committee with representatives of lots of different groups. I really wouldn’t have time for anything I thought could be turned into a front for any Leninist sect. That would be self‑defeating and it would just drive people away. We’re not talking about the leadership of a party here. It’s mid-way between a coalition and a franchise, I guess. The structures do have to be decentralised enough for particular groups to be able to go away and do things locally.
How will it work on the day? Suppose you get three and half thousand people there, what will they be able to come away with, other than having had the chance to listen to a platform full of speakers?
We can’t just have an event modelled on platform speakers lecturing you. We’ve all heard powerful speeches against austerity, and of course there’ll be a place for that, but there also needs to be an opportunity for grassroots groups to share their stories. But it has to be a launch pad, to enable local groups to get set up across the country. Because one of the things I’ve been doing – with others like Mark Steel – is to give talks with the aim of setting up local groups, like in Nottingham with the trades council, Manchester, Bristol.
The idea is after 22 June to have a lot more local groups set up who are prepared to take direct action. We need to ramp up the level of peaceful civil disobedience across the country, and link this up with the unions, who of course will come up with their own programme of actions and strikes. On the day we need workshops where people who have no experience of political activism or organising can come along and find out how they can get involved in these struggles.
As you’ve been going round the country, what has the reaction been like so far?
I get a little bit exasperated by some groups on the left, who as soon as you show a bit of initiative, or any ideas, will respond with crossed arms and chin-stroking: ‘This isn’t exactly what I want, or how I want it, so therefore it’s shit.’ And the reason this frustrates me – the world-weary ‘seen-this-all-before’ attitude – is that when I go round the country, there is such a desperation for a real alternative, and when I’ve told them about the People’s Assembly they say, ‘Well, thank God you’re finally doing something, why weren’t you doing this ages ago?’ Which is a completely different response to that of the slightly ‘mardy’ left!
Where people feel their lives are being trashed and have lots of anger and a lot of despair – like when I went to Derby for a meeting with benefit claimants and unemployed workers groups – they just wanted to get something up and running, make something happen and be part of a broader movement. So this won’t be perfect, won’t be the best thing that’s ever happened – there will be problems with it. But we’ve got a responsibility to make it work.
Before this I’d feel a bit despairing. I’d leave a meeting saying okay, we got 200 people together but we’d all just go back home after getting it all off our chests. Where do people imagine a movement is going to come from? It’s like waiting for the Messiah. Will it just miraculously appear spontaneously from the grassroots? I think it was Lenin who said ‘sometimes history needs a push’.
The People’s Assembly is on Saturday 22 June at Central Hall Westminster, London. www.thepeoplesassembly.org.uk

Debate: Is the ‘co-op council’ really co-operating with cuts?

admin — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 19:34:01 +0000

Read the original article here
Lambeth council is used to being criticised. Recently local government minister Brandon Lewis accused us of ‘lazy socialism’ for spending £600 on posters offering help to residents whose benefits are about to be cut by the Tory/Lib Dem government. The benefit cuts will reduce the income of one sixth of our population, costing at least an estimated £1 million a year in bad debts to the council alone and pushing thousands into poverty and out of London.
Still, I am much more comfortable being attacked by right-wing Tory ministers bent on dismantling the welfare state than I am by comrades writing in Red Pepper, and so I was very disappointed to read the last edition’s article ‘Co-operating with cuts’, which attacked our efforts to involve communities in decision-making whilst dealing with the most severe budget reduction in our history.
Protecting the vulnerable
Our political priority is to protect the poorest and most vulnerable and so despite the straitened times our council is borrowing £500 million to bring our social housing up to a ‘Lambeth Standard’, a quality level being determined by local residents after thousands participated co-operatively drawing up their priorities to improve homes.
Similarly our Youth Co-operative now has nearly 2,000 members from all sections of the community informing commissioning decisions around youth services and education. Partly as a result of this approach Ofsted recently declared our children’s services ‘outstanding’ in four out of four categories, making our service the highest rated in the whole country. Similarly we are now ranked eighth by Ofsted in terms of the proportion of pupils attending ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ schools who are achieving well above national average exam results. Quite an achievement for the 14th most deprived borough in the UK with very high levels of children with English as a second language.
Despite suffering a 45 per cent cut in our central government grant between 2010 and 2016 we have not shut a single library – in fact we have opened a new one in Clapham that has won several awards and seen a 300 per cent increase in users. We have also saved the Upper Norwood library after Tory Croydon (which we shared financial responsibility with) pulled the plug – we are now handing the library to the community to run as a co-op. Similarly we have just opened a new leisure centre in Clapham with two more in Streatham and Norwood to open in the next 18 months to be run by a co-operative.
Managing the cuts
Unlike the early 1980s it is not an option for Lambeth council to refuse to set a legal, balanced budget. If we did the government would appoint commissioners to run the council direct from Whitehall imposing cuts with little local understanding or consultation.
As a result we are doing are best to manage the cuts so they do the least harm to our most vulnerable residents. Our drive to become a co-operative council is not a response to the cuts but an innovative change designed to empower our residents so that they gain in confidence, stop feeling like passive recipients of services and start taking control of their environment to make positive changes. In time this might produce savings because the evidence shows that when service users have more control over the design and production of the services they use the services become more efficient.
We are not pretending the process has been perfect and mistakes have, and will continue to be, made because this is an entirely new way of running a council. The important thing is that we learn from mistakes and not let ill-informed critics blow us off course and back to the ways of militants like Ted Knight who bankrupted the council, ruined services for residents and helped destroy the Labour Party’s reputation for sensible governance for 18 years.
Edward Davie is a Labour councillor in Lambeth. @EdDavie

Council trade unionist Jon Rogers gives an alternative view of the ‘co-op council’
Lambeth Unison shares with Lambeth Labour group an understanding that our borough is being hit by scandalously large reductions in funding and that this is the fault of the Tory-led coalition government.
Where we differ is in our assessment of the role of the local labour movement when working class communities are under attack by a cabinet of millionaires. In Lambeth in 2013, this difference has two dimensions – it’s about cuts and it’s about the ‘co-op council’.
In relation to cuts, it is true that it is the fault of the Tories and their Lib Dem stooges that Lambeth will, on current spending plans, have lost a massive 45 per cent of its central government funding by 2016. The council has made £66 million cuts over the past two years. There are another £108 million to come over the next four.
Since the general election (up to the end of last September) Lambeth had made 550 redundancies. Up to another 1,000 are being spoken of – from a workforce now below 3,000. Further redundancies were outsourced when the Labour group agreed to transfer the job of answering Lambeth’s telephones to Capita in Southampton. This tragic decision, intended to save £1 million, annually has taken far more than that out of the local economy.
No choice?
Ed says they have no choice because if they refuse to set a legal budget ‘the government would appoint commissioners to run the council direct from Whitehall’. This just shows how little effort some comrades have put into considering the current legal position.
It would be more accurate to say that, whereas in the 1980s councillors who put their duty to the voters before their duty to a hostile government risked surcharge and bankruptcy, councillors who took such action now would simply trigger the powers which chief finance officers did not have back then.
The honest truth is that no one really knows how the government would respond if a number of Labour councils stood together to set the budgets that their communities needed, rather than those which George Osborne and Eric Pickles dictate. I suggest Ed goes to Birmingham on 16 March for the ‘Councillors Against the Cuts’ Conference in order to consider this question further.
In Lambeth though it’s not just about cuts – it’s also about “co-ops”.
Unfortunately, because he is a councillor, Ed is not particularly well informed about what is happening on the ground in relation to the ‘drive to become a co-operative council’ of which he is clearly proud. He lauds ‘our Youth Co-operative (which) now has nearly 2,000 members from all sections of the community informing commissioning decisions around youth services and education.’
Check with the officers, Ed. The nascent Youth Co-operative, which hardly even yet exists has, as yet, had no formal role in commissioning decisions. Indeed the so-called ‘early adopters’ of the ‘co-operative council’ were identified from on high by a commission led by cabinet members, and outsourcing decisions were taken by a panel of senior officers with no reference to the Youth Co-operative.
It was the excellent performance of hard working staff in children’s social care delivered the ‘outstanding’ Ofsted result of which the Council – and its workforce – is rightly proud. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the Youth Co-operative and it is shameful to try to co-opt this achievement to justify an unrelated political project.
What the “co-operative council” has delivered so far in Children’s and Young People’s Services has been two years of chaos, confusion and demoralisation followed by the piecemeal outsourcing of some of the services chosen from above for this irresponsible experiment.
‘Co-ops’ and outsourcing
At the same time, the council has broken its promise not to close adventure playgrounds when, having forced out the in-house workforce by proposing untenable cuts in working hours and pay, it then had to terminate, at a moment’s notice, an interim contract with a voluntary group over safeguarding concerns, in relation to which Unison is still waiting for a proper response from the local Safeguaring Children’s Board.
This scandal was part and parcel of the ‘co-operative council’ – as was the decision to reject, on spurious grounds, a workers’ plan to retain in-house the much-loved One O’clock Clubs, and the decisions to transfer at least two of our youth centres into the hands of private companies.
Ed and his comrades in the Labour group may truly believe that ‘our drive to become a co-operative council is not a response to the cuts but an innovative change designed to empower our residents.’ As a socialist who has spent his life in the Labour Party, I’m the last person to knock either idealism or hopeless, unfounded optimism.
However, in the real Lambeth (as opposed to that which is imagined) officers interpret the ‘co-operative council’ as incitement to outsource, so that is what is beginning to happen on the ground, albeit slowly.
Unison hopes that councillors will, as they say they intend to, revise the council’s constitution so that they, rather than officers, take more decisions. The current position is that – for example – the decision to privatise youth centres was taken by senior officers in private as councillors refused to take responsibility for taking the decisions in public.
In future, Lambeth councillors may know more about what they are talking about when they seek to rebut legitimate criticism. I suppose that won’t stop them attacking Ted Knight of course, since a false history of the 1980s is an almost essential element in the threadbare intellectual armoury of the Sainsbury funded Progress faction who have a wholly unhealthy influence.
All I will say in response to the unwarranted attack on Ted is that, nearly thirty years after he sacrificed his political career to defend our borough, Ted Knight is greeted by cheers and ovations at meetings of the council workforce and gatherings of community activists.
If today’s councillors can say the same in the 2040s I’ll eat my zimmer frame…
Jon Rogers is Lambeth Unison branch secretary and secretary of the Lambeth council joint trade unions

Workfare: a policy on the brink

admin — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 10:00:47 +0000

‘Three people start today on this “work experience”. They are to help us for up to 30 hours a week for eight weeks over the Christmas period. I am terrified by the idea that head office think they don’t need to pay their staff. I myself am on part-time minimum wage and if they can have workers for free now, what is to stop them making my position redundant and using job centre people to run the store at no cost to themselves?’ – Shoezone employee, November 2012.
At the end of 2012, stores such as Argos, Asda, Superdrug and Shoezone made use of the government’s workfare schemes to meet their seasonal demand, instead of hiring extra staff or offering overtime. This is part of an increasing trend to replace paid employees with workfare participants. In September the 2 Sisters Food Group sacked 350 workers at its plant in Leicester. It moved the production of its pizza toppings to Nottingham, claiming that the move was ‘as a result of several recent strikes’. However, instead of employing people, the company has taken on 100 workfare placements, ‘to give them an idea of what it’s like to work in the food sector’.
It’s not just companies using workfare. It has an increasing presence in the public sector too, plugging the gaps left by redundancies and cuts. Hospitals, public transport and councils have all used workfare participants to provide services. Halton Council has shed 10 per cent of jobs since 2010, and is now using workfare placements. Lewisham has closed some of its libraries. It has now emerged that its new, outsourced ‘community libraries’ use people mandated onto workfare for free labour.
The use of workfare has escalated over the past year and this has had a significant effect on the amount of paid work available. ‘Mandatory work activity’, which compels people to work without pay for 30 hours a week for four weeks, has been expanded to 70,000 placements a year, despite Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) research showing that it had ‘zero effect’ on people’s chances of finding work. The so-called ‘work experience scheme’, eight-week placements mainly in the private sector, is expected to put 250,000 people to work without pay over the next three years. The government refuses to say how many of the 850,000 people sent on the ‘work programme’ have also been forced to work for free. With five other workfare schemes also in operation, it all adds up to workfare replacing paid jobs and driving down wages.
Yet despite the expansion in workfare, the first statistics published on the work programme show it has been a resounding failure: it did not even reach its own minimum target for the number of people the schemes were supposed to get into work. People on the work programme are twice as likely to have their benefits sanctioned as to find work.
Challenging workfare
Until recently the reality of mass forced labour in the UK was yet to reach public consciousness. Unless you, or a friend, had been made to work for free for the likes of Asda, or your work hours were cut when your employer took on placements, you probably wouldn’t have known about the policy. Red Pepper (Oct/Nov 2011) was among the first to report on the government’s plans to rapidly increase the number of people on workfare and raise concerns about how the scheme would undermine work conditions, undercut the minimum wage and attempt to rewrite the social contract.
The success of the campaign against workfare is ensuring that it is both widely known and widely criticised. Workfare’s viability is now genuinely in question. Tens of big high street brands and charities have been compelled by public pressure to end their use of workfare, including Sainsbury’s, HMV and Oxfam. Two of the workfare schemes (work experience and some placements on the work programme) no longer threaten to punish those who fail to participate by stopping their benefit payments (though claimants are often given the impression that they will be, or are threatened with a compulsory scheme if they don’t comply).
There have been promising stories of grassroots union activists seeing off the threat of workfare at the Home Office and in Brighton and Hove City Council, while Norwich City Council was the first local authority to pass a motion boycotting workfare. The future of workfare is uncertain and this central plank of the government’s attack on welfare could be overturned.
Building a movement
In February 2012, Tesco made the mistake of posting an advert for a workfare position online: nightshifts for jobseeker’s allowance. Within hours, the advert was all over Twitter and Facebook and the mainstream media were forced to pay attention, with even the Daily Mail leading with headlines such as ‘Tesco makes u-turn over “slave labour” jobs scheme’ (22 February 2012).
Once people knew about workfare, they responded. Days of action have taken place in 43 towns across the UK – from cheeky post-it notes left throughout stores to occupations and pickets of key offenders. Very rapidly brands including TK Maxx, Burger King and Marie Curie, which had been quietly profiting from thousands of hours of unpaid work, withdrew to save their reputations.
Boycott Workfare also targeted pro-workfare think tanks, whose undemocratic lobbying has pushed the workfare agenda. Persistent campaigning has ensured they no longer advertise the venues of their conferences, fearing the events will be disrupted by direct actions.
The campaign and ensuing media coverage has challenged the political climate. Far too many people of all political hues bought into the narrative of ‘strivers and skivers’. It was Labour, after all, that introduced workfare into the UK, dividing benefit recipients into deserving and undeserving poor.
As grassroots action picks off some of the largest workfare users, the schemes’ futures begin to look less certain. Until coordinated UK-wide action forced a climbdown (though not a complete withdrawal), the British Heart Foundation’s website boasted that at any one time it had 1,600 workfare placements in its stores. A recent DWP report on mandatory work activity has noted a sharp reduction in placements since charities have been persuaded by the campaign to withdraw. Since December 2012 the willingness to profit from forced unpaid work has become even more unpalatable as people on sickness and disability benefits who have been found ‘unfit for work’ can also be sent on unlimited periods of workfare. Lord Bichard, in a Commons select committee, even mooted mandatory work for pensioners. In recent months, by taking on the target others have baulked at, namely charities, Boycott Workfare has prompted even more to announce that they will be pulling out. Workfare is wobbling.
These victories have presented new challenges. Despite mainstream media commentators, politicians and some campaign groups claiming that Tesco had pulled out of workfare when the company announced an additional new scheme it was introducing, in reality it was still participating. Superdrug and Scope suspended involvement, then later sneaked back in.
A campaign led by the unemployed
From the start the Boycott Workfare campaign has involved and taken its lead from people directly affected by workfare, people who are often ignored by many sections of the left.
Where traditional politics has left a vacuum, the space for grassroots, creative and agile campaigning has opened up. Working with other groups, a key feature of the way Boycott Workfare campaigns is that it seeks to enable as much action as possible – welcoming every tactic and strategy deployed against workfare and publicising actions wherever they are and whoever has organised them. It means empowering individuals to resist being subject to workfare, providing information to people receiving social security or who have been sanctioned. It’s about trying to help, with no strings attached.
People understand that it is their actions that can make the difference. It’s their movement. Much of the knowledge about who is using workfare is ‘crowd-sourced’; people’s real stories and experiences are used to challenge those who claim they are not using workfare. Every day, people take their own actions against workfare, writing letters, sending emails or haranguing those involved in the schemes on social media.
Slowly but surely a campaign network has established itself across the UK. People take action when and how they want to, liaising to share information and inspiration and to coordinate for key targets. Collectively the grassroots are punching way above their weight.
Workfare and the unions
As is often the case, how unions have responded varies enormously. Union leaderships have been slow to react to workfare as a workplace issue. The TUC occupies the uncomfortable position of officially condemning workfare, while supporting Labour’s intended scheme, the so-called ‘job guarantee’. This scheme advocates compulsory work at far below a living wage with a similar harsh sanctions regime to that operated by the current coalition government.
Grassroots members of Unite’s new community branches are taking direct action against workfare. Yet Unite still asked the Boycott Workfare campaign to do free casework for its new community union members who had been unemployed and recently sanctioned, despite charging these members a £26 annual fee. Boycott Workfare declined. It seems Unite is yet to use its resources to offer the kind of individual case support we try to provide for free.
The PCS has been supportive, agreeing to sit down with the campaign to see what can be achieved by working together. However, the CWU agreed to help implement a workfare scheme at the Royal Mail. It belatedly exited the scheme, after being embarrassed into doing so.
Despite this mixed picture, local branches have passed motions opposing workfare and brought the issue to national conferences. Many unions, including the BFAWU, NUT, Unison, Unite and PCS now have policy against workfare. In 2013, the campaign hopes to work in genuine dialogue with unions to devise strategies to counter workfare at a local, regional and national level – essential since workfare’s implementation is so diffuse.
The year ahead
The campaign to stop workfare faces some big challenges in 2013. Since October 2012, people who refuse workfare or fall foul of the system in other ways now risk losing their subsistence benefit for up to three years. Universal credit looms on the horizon and with it will come a new deluge of conditionality. Low paid and part-time workers will be drawn into the same boat as jobseekers – forced to do jobsearch and workfare until they are earning the equivalent of full-time work at minimum wage. Whitehall intends to make using the disastrous Universal Jobmatch website compulsory, sentencing those claiming social security to hours of demoralising searching on an ineffective database, while also making surveillance of every click possible.
There is, however, a realistic prospect of success. A DWP legal submission attempting to block information about who is using workfare argues that the schemes risk collapse if that information is published. Since we are continually discovering this information through word of mouth anyway, the campaign can take heart from this admission of its effectiveness.
More people will be introduced to workfare in 2013. But as we step up our outreach, they will also be introduced to us, and we still have a few tricks up our sleeves. Potential workfare users be warned: if you exploit us we will shut you down.
Warren Clark is a member of the Boycott Workfare campaign, with personal experience of workfare. He writes here in a personal capacity. Illustration by Malcolm Currie

Co-operating with cuts in Lambeth

admin — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 10:00:58 +0000

As former Lambeth council leader Steve Reed makes his foray into national politics, following his Croydon North by-election win for Labour, it is a good time to look at the flagship project on which he launched his rise to parliament. Lambeth Council declared itself a ‘co-operative council’ under his leadership back in 2010, claiming to revolutionise the way public services are delivered. This new model of governance, Labour claimed, would empower communities by allowing them to make decisions about how their services are run.
This rhetoric of shifting power to the people has proven popular, with more than 20 Labour councils piloting approaches in co-operative public services through the Co-operative Councils Network founded by Reed. Other fans include the Guardian’s Zoe Williams, who has written about the ‘constructive changes’ by Lambeth and other councils as ‘heartening’. Reed has declared that his project ‘offers a model that can be extended right across public services nationally’. But what has been the residents’ experience in Lambeth?
One o’clock clubs – open access play centres for under-fives – were declared to be an ‘early adopter’ of the ‘co-operative model’ by Lambeth Council in 2011. The council’s plan was for the clubs to be run by ‘new co-operative entities’ by April 2012. This transfer of management has come under great criticism by users, who highlight the undemocratic nature of the process.
Fenton Forsyth, who takes his son to his local one o’clock club, declares his ‘disillusionment’ with the entire process: ‘There’s a feeling of helplessness amongst people that it’s not done properly, they don’t have their say. People are anxious about what’s been done and how it’s done.’ He describes a consultation meeting he attended. After hearing bids from organisations looking to run the service, ballot papers were distributed to the attendees. When Forsyth asked if he could have one for his wife, who was at work, he was told that only the people present could vote. He dismisses this as ‘snapshot democracy’, when the decision should involve the whole community. In any case, he adds that only 30 per cent of votes went to the club users, so that the council could override whatever they voted for regardless.
Lambeth’s libraries were another service that the council decided to restructure along supposedly ‘co-operative’ principles. A libraries consultation was set up encouraging residents to ‘have your say’. But as with the one o’clock clubs, users felt frustrated and ignored by the process and the outcome.
Lisa Sheldon is a student who grew up using Lambeth libraries. ‘We didn’t have much money, so the library was a really important resource. I did the summer reading trails as a child and used the computers and books for my homework.’ She took part in the consultation process but has little faith that Lambeth took her views into account. ‘The documents we were supposed to fill out were huge. It took me two hours to plough through, and even then it was clear from the wording of the questions that the council had already made up their mind as to what would happen.’
She says the results of the consultation revealed that a majority did not want or were undecided about the ‘co-operative library’ proposals, but the council went ahead anyway. ‘When Lambeth talk about shifting power to local people, it is obviously disingenuous. Handing people reduced library budgets and making them decide between books and staff is not empowering – to tell people to enforce their own cuts on their library service is unforgivable.’
‘The consultation spoke of creating “community hubs” in libraries,’ Sheldon continues. ‘But as anyone who has visited a Lambeth library knows, these places already serve the function of a community hub where all members of the community visit to access the great range of services provided. Lambeth council’s plans are so far away from the true meaning and practice of the word co-operative they are bringing the term into disrepute.’
A further aspect of current council policy, the sale of co-operative housing and the removal of residents who have occupied it for more than 30 years, was covered in the previous issue of Red Pepper (‘Short-life sell off’, RP Dec-Jan 2013). Along with the changes to libraries and children’s services, it demonstrates how Steve Reed’s ‘co-operative council’ has failed to live up to its rhetoric. Instead, a top-down power structure continues to drive forward the outsourcing, privatisation and sell-off of public resources in the name of empowerment.
A comment by Lambeth councillor Florence Nosegbe is revealing: ‘The key driving force behind [the co-operative council] is to get more local people involved in the vision that we as councillors are making.’ The vision is very much of the councillors’ making with local people’s participation limited to flawed consultations. As Lisa Sheldon puts it, ‘The only co-operation going on here is with the national government’s cuts.’

Labour and the cuts: beyond the ‘dented shield’

admin — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 13:55:37 +0000

The revelation that local councils would face an average cut of 28 per cent in central government funding by 2014/15 was shocking enough. It was especially so since the burden of increasing social care needs means that, according to the Local Government Association (LGA), the funds available for spending on other key services such as repairing roads or running libraries and leisure centres would effectively fall by 90 per cent in cash terms.
But averaging out the impact of the cuts ignores the dramatic political imbalance in exactly how communities and local government secretary Eric Pickles’ plans are being implemented. The Guardian reported that ‘councils in northern, urban and London boroughs with high rates of deprivation predominantly run by Labour have seen their budgets cut by almost 10 times the amount lost by Tory-administered authorities in rural southern England’. And whereas the average loss per head resulting from the cuts stands at £61 nationally, in the 50 worst affected areas (42 of which are run by Labour, and where one in three children is in poverty) the loss stands at a massive £160 per head.
This isn’t even the end of it. George Osborne’s autumn statement revealed that the cuts will now have to continue until 2018, such has been the failure of the chancellor’s economic strategy. Not surprisingly, the dawning realisation of what this means for some of the most hard-pressed families in the country has brought howls of outrage. The leaders of Newcastle, Liverpool and Sheffield city councils wrote a stark letter to Pickles warning that the cuts were creating ‘dire economic consequences’ and could lead to ‘the break-up of civil society’ with increasing ‘tension’ and ‘social unrest’. A similar view was expressed by Sir Albert Bore, the leader of Britain’s single largest authority, Birmingham, who said the cuts would mean ‘the end of local government as we know it’.
Contrary to government claims, such reactions can’t be put down to Labour exaggerating the problem for political gain. The independent Audit Commission found that ‘councils in most deprived areas were worst affected’ in the two years of spending cuts witnessed so far. The LGA’s Conservative chairman, Sir Merrick Cockell, has described the cuts as ‘unsustainable’ and accepted that it’s ‘unrealistic’ to pretend they won’t hit services, while Kent’s Tory leader, Paul Carter, says his county ‘can’t cope’ with further cuts and ‘is running on empty’.
Labour’s approach
But the situation facing Labour councillors is especially acute, since not only are the funding cuts political, but the burden of current and projected needs in working class communities are enormously greater. People elected Labour councillors not merely to administer plans determined by central government but to represent their interests at the local level. Howls of outrage about the cuts from these councillors are one thing but voters are increasingly beginning to ask what they are planning to do to protect the hard-pressed people they represent. Is there an alternative vision for local government in the areas with high levels of economic deprivation, and if so, what practical steps can the Labour Party take where it is in power locally?
Labour’s approach thus far has been to identify central government as responsible for the painful choices facing Labour councils, but to accept that these savage cumulative cuts are effectively a fact of political life, at least this side of a general election. The priority, therefore, has been to protect levels of spending on essential social care, on which the most vulnerable depend, and then identify the ‘least worst’ options for reducing other costs. This inevitably means a reduced level of ‘non-essential’ services once all scope for ‘efficiency savings’ has been exhausted.
The responsibility of power, we are told, means taking ‘tough choices’ to avoid still worse consequences. However, such an approach – described by Neil Kinnock in 1980s as the ‘dented shield’ – assumes that, for now at least, Labour councillors have no choice but to become the instruments through which Pickles will deliver cuts to deprived communities. Blairite ‘modernisers’ such as Lambeth’s Steve Reed, who have successfully pushed the ‘co-operative council’ agenda (see page 13), openly admit that this new policy model recognises the need to ‘deliver better with less’. They have used the language of mutualisation to pursue the fragmentation of service provision in order to create the basis for competitive markets with social enterprise and voluntary/third sector involvement in the initial stages.
While the language of empowerment, community and decentralisation has provided an ostensibly attractive agenda – with historic echoes of the genuinely grassroots co-operative tradition – the underlying logic promotes the aim of remodelling local government to allow for a much diminished role in the direct delivery of services. Those expecting a Labour government to restore local government structures and finances to the status quo ante are likely to be disappointed. As with so much else, Labour may oppose the scale and pace of the cuts today, but will not make promises to reverse those cuts the Tories have already implemented or set in train.
Hapless accomplices
Of course, many councillors want to demonstrate that they are more than hapless accomplices of Eric Pickles’ cash‑grab from local services. They have been seeking ways of implementing any progressive measures still possible given the ‘inevitability’ of working within financial parameters determined by Whitehall. So, for example, a dozen or so Labour authorities have committed themselves to becoming living wage employers, by stipulating minimum pay standards in the course of procurement from contractors. Islington has been commended for its creation of a ‘Fairness Commission’, bringing together academics and social policy experts with councillors in open public deliberation to take evidence on inequality in the borough and make practical recommendations for directing what limited resources are available to tackle the problem. Critics have dismissed such measures as ‘window-dressing’.
A number of Labour councils have also been actively exploring co-operative initiatives around renewable energy. In Preston the local authority has suggested that erecting wind turbines on council-owned land would put £1.5 million a year into the council coffers. Worthwhile though it may be, however, the anticipated revenue does not avoid the immediate budget crisis, which has seen the council decide in principle to demolish the city’s architecturally significant and well-used bus station because it says it cannot afford to maintain it.
The stock response to the argument that Labour councils could refuse point-blank to deliver the coalition cuts is that any alternative, deficit-based ‘needs budget’ would lead directly to Eric Pickles assuming direct control over local budgets and implementing cuts with no thought for those most in need. It is true that no course of locally-determined resistance can ultimately succeed without direct confrontation with central government based on a mobilisation of local communities nationwide. But were Labour to spearhead a national campaign of militant resistance involving local communities in determining their collective needs, the secretary of state wouldn’t find it easy to suspend the entire apparatus of local democracy. And unlike during the epic rate-setting disputes of the 1980s, individual councillors no longer face personal financial ruin, since – although they can be debarred from office – the power to surcharge expelled councillors no longer exists in law.
Of course, the Labour left is significantly weaker today. Even those advocating a militant ‘no cuts’ stance recognise that it would require a strategy for building confidence and extending community support. But there can be no excuse for councillors failing to exhaust every option in their power to delay and contest the implementation of cuts – in the first instance by drawing on reserves and making full use of prudential borrowing powers – to buy time in which the forces of resistance in the community can be consolidated. Bold and determined resistance could inspire levels of popular support that could transform calculations of what is politically possible.
The full scale of the cumulative devastation to be wreaked at local level is only now beginning to hit home, despite the fact that, according to figures from the GMB union, there are already 236,900 fewer people employed by councils in England and Wales than in 2010. And the public resistance thus far has not shifted Labour councillors from passing cuts budgets.
Anti-cuts councillors
There have been some limited local exceptions, such as the two Southampton Labour councillors who refused to vote with the ruling Labour group to close a leisure centre they had explicitly promised to save at elections a few months earlier. Following their decision to form a rival group on the council, Labour Councillors Against the Cuts, they have been formally expelled from the party. Councillor Don Thomas, one of the two rebels, told Red Pepper, ‘We have had hundreds of well wishers, over 300 emails locally and across Britain, plus loads of telephone messages and many letters of support. Our relationship with the unions is very good and there’s now a tense but working relationship with the Labour group. We are going through the budget proposals with the city’s chief financial officer with a view to developing alternatives.’
A similar story lies behind the emergence of a small group of anti-cuts councillors in Broxtowe, near Nottingham. Here, this hung council is run by a joint Lab-Lib ruling group. Councillor Greg Marshall explains how, at the 2011 borough elections, he was one of two councillors who successfully sought selection, and was subsequently elected, on a clear anti-cuts basis: ‘The first real test was the budget in February 2012. Three councillors opposed the budget, which among other measures increased council house rents by approximately 8.5 per cent.’ Since then, ‘there has been some support from other Labour councillors who say they have sympathised with the position some of us are taking. This has over time seen a change in positions on issues around council house rents and social care, and hopefully these changes will be reflected as we develop budgets for 2013/14.’
Although such instances of resistance are relatively isolated and fragmented, the Labour Representation Committee is attempting to build a strategic network of anti-cuts Labour councillors.
Grassroots resistance has failed to grab any national headlines thus far. But things may be beginning to change. The decision of Newcastle Labour leader Nick Forbes to announce the total axing of the city’s arts and cultural funding, for example, has brought together a coalition of incensed workers, community activists and high-profile arts figures. Birmingham, meanwhile, is facing the complete destruction of its youth services, with more than 1,000 job losses and further areas of council provision threatened with being ‘decommissioned’ in the future.
The stakes are also about to be raised significantly. Labour councils are going to have to make specific choices as people are thrown into extreme financial hardship due to the latest benefit ‘reforms’. The circumstances might be the result of central government policy, but will they employ bailiffs to evict families who have fallen behind on their rents due to the new benefit cap? Will they prosecute people who fall into arrears due to the removal of council tax benefit?
Anti-cuts councillors could be more imaginative about forms of practical resistance. For example, they could consider technical measures beyond options presented by council officers – such as drawing up a charter of immediate defensive measures to which Labour councils could sign up, in dialogue with tenants and residents associations, unions, community activists, charities, faith groups and others with experience of working with real social needs. This might consist of working with the unions to ensure that services are kept in-house, not privatised; protecting council tenants through a moratorium on all evictions; developing long-term debt repayment schemes for council tax bills or social housing rents; implementing licensing standards, including de facto local rent controls on privately-rented accommodation; and so on.
Town Halls under Labour control could be transformed into local centres of community resistance, turning themselves into smaller-scale versions of the type of resistance the Greater London Council presented to Thatcher in the 1980s. Unless Labour can actively demonstrate that it is on the side of working people in actions and not just words, then its councillors will be treated with the same contempt as representatives of the other mainstream parties. And local government might never recover.

Care in crisis

admin — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 18:00:20 +0000

Illustration: Hey Monkey Riot – www.eddbaldry.co.uk
In many ways, the elderly care sector is an example of what Conservative policy-making aims towards. Dominated by private companies with no financial regulation (and many links to the Tories), what is left of state provision is rapidly dwindling. Those with the means to pay for their own care do so – often with a lifetime of savings and their home – while receiving no state support. Local authorities are continuing to freeze the amount of support given to those who can’t, even though current rates are far below most independent care homes’ fees. This means families must meet the shortfall.
Inconveniently for the Tories, the result of privatisation is not efficiency and innovation, nor choice and value for service users. It’s chaos, blighted by inadequate care provision and instability.
The estimated £1 billion in cuts to adult social care that have occurred since Osborne full-throttled his austerity programme, along with the further £1 billion expected over the next two years, have inevitably worsened services. Demographic changes mean elderly care will be an increasingly important, and expensive, issue. Last year’s report from the Dilnot Commission on drastic funding changes, which was intended to create a more sustainable and fairer system for service users, was recently dismissed by the coalition in its social care white paper as too expensive. The government, like others before it, refuses to engage with the chronic funding crisis, while the care system fails and impoverishes vulnerable elderly people.
Cuts passed on to local authorities by central government since the last spending review have caused a raft of closures, and outsourcing of the remaining council-run homes and day centres. Local authorities are shouldering the burden of austerity, and with it the backlash from unpopular decisions.
Loneliness and isolation
A Unison survey on day centre provision carried out earlier this year found that 57 per cent of respondents reported closures to services and over two-thirds saw an increase in charges for attendance, transport and meals. This is compounded by a fall in pensioners’ incomes through other factors such as fuel payment cuts and the withdrawal of the age-related tax code. In addition, over half of day centre staff said their pay and conditions had changed for the worse.
Matthew Egan, Unison’s assistant national officer on local government, says the impact on vulnerable older people is severe. Access to council-run centres is being restricted to those with the greatest need, and social isolation is no longer enough: ‘It’s loneliness and isolation that people are going to be suffering from more and more in our communities as a consequence.’ While some councils have said the savings will be passed over to individuals’ personal budgets, and will therefore give more ‘choice’ to people, the result is that voluntary sector services cannot continue because they rely on local authority grants to pay for costs such as rent and wages.
Marie*, a senior support worker in a charity-run day centre, explains that the service she works for had to raise thousands of pounds to keep going after local authority grants were drastically reduced. To achieve it, the staff worked evenings and weekends doing unpaid fundraising. At the same time, charges were raised, which meant many people could not afford to attend. Marie describes how staff have been overstretched and elderly people excluded from the service. ‘A lot of older people generally live alone and have no contact with anyone, other than say family or carers, and their health both mentally and physically can deteriorate rapidly. I believe day services for older people to be essential for their welfare . . . I have personally seen many successful stories of older people coming to our service, scared, alone and timid, only to blossom and become the life and soul of the party!’
The misnomer of choice
In Bristol, the Lib Dem city council recently passed a motion to close all but two council-run homes, with those being retained for dementia sufferers, and seven day centres. Local resistance fronted by the Bristol and District Anti-Cuts Alliance (BADACA) has gained momentum. More than 100 people lobbied the council meeting at which the final decisions were passed – after a laughable ‘consultation’ process in which the choices given were closure, closure or closure.
Jeremy Clarke, BADACA’s organising secretary, describes the mood in the care homes: ‘People who live in the council care homes like to live there, they feel that they paid for it through their taxes and the welfare state.’ Campaigners are suspicious of the council’s arguments that the process is simply a modernisation of the service, and that not-for-profit organisations and charities will tender for the new, independent contracts. In a context of scarce resources, it’s the large organisations that are likely to win such contracts.
The government buzzwords of ‘personalisation’ and ‘empowerment’ are used to argue that home care is always preferable to residential. In reality, it’s about economics: home care is cheaper. Yet, as Matthew Egan stresses, the home care sector is in no position to pick up the slack. ‘It puts more pressure on the workforce and the workforce is getting the blame, the people delivering the care, even though they’re getting stretched and stretched, on really bad pay and really bad terms and conditions.’ Time and wages have been cut to the bone, and some staff are reporting that they will stay for extra time with clients, past the allotted 15 minutes, without pay just to ensure they are receiving adequate care – while they themselves are on minimum wage.
Policies aimed at enabling people to remain at home, such as training courses to help them live independently, have benefited some. But they are being used in a blanket fashion to the detriment of many of the most vulnerable. As such, any talk of ‘choice’ is a misnomer. Lynne*, an elderly people’s social worker in the south‑east, says: ‘Yes, they talk about empowerment but we have to fight to get people into homes now – really, really fight. There’s actually a limit on how many people we can place in residential homes a month, I think 25 in each area. Even if people have extreme dementia and are wandering the streets, it’s not guaranteed we’d get them into a home.’
Care for profit
As council-run homes close their doors, the people made to relocate find themselves in the private sector. The landscape of the £10 billion independent care sector, and the character of organisations that make up its patchwork coverage, are complex. Inherent problems in the sector are far wider than the rare horror stories of institutional abuse that have featured in recent investigations, such as that by Panorama.
The common thread is the means by which they achieve cost-effectiveness: they pay less. The staff work longer hours with fewer benefits, and skeleton staffing means carers can struggle to find time to provide the individualised care they’d like to. Cuts in the rates of support given to local authority‑funded residents have exacerbated these issues.
Lynne emphasises that the problem stems from our cultural attitudes towards caring: ‘There needs to be a drastic rethink . . . The majority of carers are not valued. They’re not valued by their peers, by society, and they’re not valued by the staff.’ She suggests raising the wage level and the qualifications needed to work in the sector. Unison is running a campaign to recruit care workers into the union, believing low levels of unionisation are reflected in the poor terms and conditions the workforce endures.
The impact of funding freezes from local authorities has also manifested in poorer quality food and other provisions and equipment. Lynne says she’s seen residents suffering from discomfort and skin flare-ups because homes are buying poor quality incontinence pads.
Driven by profit, many – but not all – homes have a money-grabbing ethos. While fees for home places vary enormously (from several hundred pounds per week to thousands), this doesn’t necessarily mean the more costly care is of better quality than more affordable homes. ‘To be honest if I drive up to a home and it’s expensive-looking, and it’s got flower beds and grounds and things, my heart sinks because they’re putting the majority of the money into how it looks, not how it works,’ Lynne explains. ‘One home is run by a national charity and it’s charging £3,000 a week and the care is bog standard . . . if I want to be generous.’
The practice of kicking people out when they run out of money is surprisingly widespread. Self-funders, having sold their homes, fund their place until their assets drop below £23,000 and they become eligible for state support. At this point, they are evicted. These evictions were happening so often, causing distress to old and infirm people and landing them on the doorstep of the local authority, that one county employed a social worker specifically to work with self-funders and their families to advise on how to avoid it.
Private equity
Across the care sector another shadowy presence looms: private equity firms, which are moving into the sector and now own a large proportion of homes. In 2011, the Guardian reported that 135,000 people were being cared for by private equity-backed operators. New players on the block include Terra Firma, which took over 500 Four Seasons care homes earlier in the year. Another entrant into social care is Acromas, which through its acquisition of Allied Healthcare has become a lead player in the home care sector, along with Sovereign Capital.
Private equity firms are not accountable to the public. Known as predators due to their profit-maximising and asset-stripping, they have little interest in the markets in which they operate – which is particularly worrying in social care. They run on huge debts used to finance takeovers (Acromas has recorded debts of £6.6 billion) and are known for tax avoidance through offshore accounts. As many residents are receiving local authority support, tax money is once again being funnelled towards private interests.
Given the importance of social care, shouldn’t there be government regulation of such companies’ finances to ensure there is no repeat of the Southern Cross collapse, which affected 31,000 residents? It’s not on the cards, and the reason is ideological. As Egan puts it, ‘They refuse to entertain the idea because it doesn’t fit in with their world view of the private market and the role of the state.’ Tellingly, managing partner of Sovereign Capital Ryan Robson is a big-time Tory donor (giving over £250,000) and put himself up for selection as the Conservative election candidate in Bracknell.
Overall the picture is bleak – but workforce organising, community opposition and a national Right to Care Campaign backed by numerous organisations are trying to stop the issue from being pushed into the long grass. There are ample examples of quality care in the sector. But it shows the dangers of privatising a crucial aspect of the welfare state, and serves as an example of why it must be resisted.
* Names have been changed

Able to fight: How disabled people are taking on the Tories

admin — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 17:52:03 +0000

Disabled people stopped London traffic by chaining their wheelchairs together earlier this year. Photo: Pete Riches
‘We feel that these are violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. We haven’t striven for 70 years to have all these rights taken away from us in one parliament.’ John McArdle, co-founder of the Scotland-based Black Triangle Campaign, doesn’t mince his words when he talks about the need to fight the government’s cuts agenda.
All the activists interviewed for this piece shared the same anger and passion. As far as anti-austerity activism goes, the disability movement has remained mobilised, vocal and determined when other sectors of the population appear tet to have fully awakened, or in the case of students, have lost momentum after initial dramatic revolts. As John McDonnell MP warned the House of Commons in June, ‘We now have a disability movement in this country of which we have not seen the equal before … These people are not going to go away.’
That movement has been building for some time. ‘Miss Dennis Queen’ is a blogger and longtime disability rights activist with the Disabled People’s Direct Action Network (DAN), who’s been involved in campaigning for more than 12 years. She acknowledges the recent ‘explosion’ of campaigning but emphasises the coalition’s policies aren’t entirely new – and neither is resistance. Labour had devised cuts that were taken on and set in stone by the current government: ‘We were talking about this before but protests at that time weren’t being reported.’
Likewise the most high profile campaigns, such as DPAC (Disabled People Against Cuts), already existed within the disability rights movement, which had been working for years to further equality, inclusion and recognition for the disabled population. The cuts put years of hard-won progress into reverse gear with such velocity that suffering was filtering from boardrooms to bedrooms with brutal speed. By the time the protest movement surged with students and other anti-cuts groups, thousands of disabled people were ready for a call to arms.
Bold action
The blockade of Oxford Circus with wheelchairs tied together with chain on 28 January demonstrated the readiness for civil disobedience – along with the ability to grab headlines. Andy Greene, a member of DPAC’s national steering committee, explains that the action came about as the welfare reform bill was going through parliament and was high on the agenda of both DPAC and their partners-in-protest UK Uncut. He says: ‘It kick-started consciousness more than anything … It showed we had the power within the movement to reignite the militant actions that hadn’t been seen since the late eighties and early nineties.’
Miss Dennis Queen thinks there’s an inherent power in taking direct action as a disabled person. For observers, she says, ‘being aware of us doing it contradicts the prejudice around us. It’s so opposite to what is expected of us that it educates everyone.’ And the sight of wheelchairs outnumbered by police, she adds, further proves their points.
Bold and creative actions and demonstrations have become a hallmark of the campaigns. Further London roadblocks – in Trafalgar Square, outside the Houses of Parliament – and occupations such as that of the Glasgow Atos office all involve the physical taking of space. They assert disabled people’s existence in a policy climate that seems bent on erasure, while the blocking of traffic symbolises the blocking of bills. In occupying the head office of Deloitte in Scotland, Black Triangle was showing the movement’s alternative narrative, a critique of neoliberalism, finance and tax-dodging in particular, to that put forth by the government. The accountancy firm was targeted because of the Deloitte chairman – and ‘tax-dodging guru’ – David Cruickshank’s cosy relationship with David Hartnett at HM Revenue and Customs.
John McArdle is critical of recent media resistance to reporting on demonstrations such as these. He cites the Trafalgar Square action in April: ‘The BBC reported there were traffic problems in their bulletins but there was a blackout basically. Definitely there seems to be a conscious decision not to report on acts of civil disobedience.’
The failure to cover events is not a surprise, though. While Westminster is, in McArdle’s words, ‘coming up with sheer lies and propaganda’ to garner public support for the cuts, the media seem only too happy to act as their cheerleaders. A frequently-cited example is the claim that there are huge levels of fraud in disability living allowance claims. The actual figure, according to the Department of Work and Pensions’ own report, Fraud and Error in the Benefit System, published in February, is 0.5 per cent.
Hate campaign
The government-led misinformation around these figures has underpinned what amounts to a hate campaign from the tabloid press towards disability benefit claimants. This was epitomised by the Sun’s vitriolic editorial against ‘scroungers’ in which it claimed: ‘They cannot be bothered to find a job or they claim to be sick when they are perfectly capable of work because they prefer to sit at home watching widescreen TVs – paid for by YOU.’
At the same time, police figures show the rate of disability hate crime has soared. A total of 1,942 disability hate crimes were recorded by police forces in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2011, up by 14 per cent on 2010 and doubling since the start of the financial crisis in 2008. According to Andy Greene, ‘Everyday on the DPAC website we’re hearing of people being accosted in the street, in their own homes, on public transport.’
In response, disability rights groups and activists have been flooding the internet with their own stories. Blogs – sarcastically named with the labels they aim to repudiate, such as ‘Benefit Scrounging Scum’ and ‘Diary of a Benefit Scrounger’ – have gained huge support, featuring honest accounts of negotiating the benefits system and daily life with a disability or ill health. The Black Triangle campaign website was the eighth top political blog in the ebuzzing rankings in June, while Diary of a Benefit Scrounger was ranked 15th in July.
Miss Dennis Queen comments: ‘People talk about “armchair activists”, the label used to mean people sitting in their house with opinions not necessarily taking action. But in 12–13 years of being an activist I have done most of my work from my bed.’ From resource sharing to petitions, mythbusting and networking, the internet is not just a tool but a realm for protest within the movement, and an ultimately inclusive one: those who can’t get on the streets can act from home.
This is just one example of the movement’s stated aim to use every mean at its disposal to fight back. Equally important are the links made between different campaigns, trade unions and the medical profession. Disability campaigns have reached out to trade unions to work on common goals such as protecting public services and the rights of disabled people in the workplace. One example is the Hardest Hit coalition, particularly active in the north east, where trade unions, campaigners and charities have come together to organise conferences, rallies, protests and written reports about the effects of government policy.
Support from within the medical establishment, particularly with regard to work capability assessments, is also gaining momentum. In May, GPs at the BMA’s local medical committees conference in Liverpool called for the test to be scrapped as it was harming patients. Others have been publicly questioning whether the tests are in violation of medical ethics. At the BMA’s annual conference in June, the doctors’ union passed a motion demanding that work capability assessments be ended ‘with immediate effect and be replaced with a rigorous and safe system that does not cause unavoidable harm to some of the weakest and vulnerable in society’.
Even as the coalition tries to keep bulldozing its policies through, and local authorities keep burying their heads in the sand about the impact of their cuts, the disability movement is showing they won’t get away without a fight.

Atos and the Paralympics: rubbing salt in the wounds

Atos Healthcare’s contract to assess the ‘fitness for work’ of incapacity benefit, ESA and DLA claimants is worth £100 million per year. The company’s boss Thierry Breton was awarded a £1 million bonus this year on top of his annual pay packet of nearly £1 million. The multi-million pound IT company is one of the big winners from the government’s welfare reform programme and its privatisation agenda.
The assessments carried out by the company have become a lynchpin of the coalition’s welfare reforms. They have been criticised by doctors as ‘dominating the whole procedure’ for assigning benefit categories – despite lacking medical expertise and working, it is claimed, to targets rather than seeking an accurate reflection of need. Staff have reportedly used Facebook to refer to claimants as ‘parasitic wankers’ and ‘down and outs’.
Most controversy surrounding the assessments has been around the criteria used and the impact the stress of them has on people’s health. It’s not difficult to see why they have been widely lambasted as fundamentally flawed: Citizens Advice Scotland found that among the claimants deemed fit for work were people suffering from Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis, bipolar disorder, heart failure, strokes, severe depression and terminal cancer. The tests, based on drop-down box choices on a computer program, are said to be inadequate for complex conditions.
The government has boasted that half of all new ESA claimants are found fit for work. However, between 40-70 per cent of the decisions are being appealed, and so far 40 per cent of appeals have won – costing millions in taxpayer money on top of the distress and financial hardship of wrong assessments. The Daily Mirror recently reported that 32 people a week died last year after being deemed to be well enough to go out and get a job.
The human impact is becoming clearer. Coroners’ reports on suicides have noted the stress of the assessment and appeals process as a contributory factor, while citizens’ advice and welfare advice services are inundated with people seeking help on appealing benefit decisions. Not surprisingly, Atos has become one of the top targets for protesters. People are also using the web to share Atos horror stories, which continue to emerge thick and fast.
Atos’s sponsorship of the Paralympics this year has enraged campaigners as ‘rubbing salt into the wounds’. Demonstrations, including candlelit vigils for Atos victims, are planned in protest.

What the government is doing to disabled people

There are more than 10 million disabled people in the UK, who have been hit from various directions by coalition government policy – particularly through benefit reforms and local authority cuts. Taken together, warns Nick Coyle of Disability Alliance, ‘the combined effect will mean some people are cut adrift from the entire welfare state’.
Overall, the government has planned cuts of £2.17 billion (20 per cent) to disability living allowance (DLA), along with £2 billion of cuts to employment and support allowance (ESA). DLA can be claimed by those in or out of work to cover the extra costs of living with a disability; it is split into mobility and care components. ESA is for those out of work and can be claimed either by people in the ‘support’ group, who face the biggest barriers to working, or those in the ‘work-related activity’ group, who are expected to get back into work in the future.
ESA has been limited to one year for the latter group, while claimants must undergo ‘fitness for work’ assessments by the private firm Atos – these have been one of the most controversial, and damaging, aspects of the government’s reforms (see RP Feb/Mar 2011). Many are pushed off ESA and onto jobseekers’ allowance, ignoring the fact that the major barriers to work for disabled people remain transport and the workplace itself rather than lack of will. Activist John McArdle says this amounts to disability ‘being systematically denied in order to deprive us of the social security to which we’re entitled in a civilised society’.
Next year, the DLA will be scrapped in favour of a new benefit, the personal independence payment (PIP). In the process it is predicted that half a million people will lose their entitlement. The government has declared in advance that the switch will result in a 20 per cent cut to the benefit bill – leading campaigners to argue that this is proof that the cost reductions are determining how the eligibility criteria will be set, rather than reflecting people’s needs. Because the government claims it is focusing support on people ‘who need it most’, disability groups fear those with lesser needs could lose benefits, hitting their independence, wellbeing and quality of life. The phasing out of the independent living fund – a benefit that was specifically aimed at those with the greatest support needs – also contradicts the government rhetoric.
Local authority cuts to the adult social care budget have reached nearly £900 million this year, on top of the £1 billion cut last year, according to the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services. Councils are raising eligibility criteria for social care, in many cases restricting it to those with ‘critical’ or ‘substantial’ needs, increasing its cost and closing down services. Reductions in care packages have in several cases led individuals to take councils to court; legal aid cuts will make this recourse increasingly difficult in the future. Disabled services such as day centres have already lost significant funding. One in three local authorities have closed day services, while the costs of attending centres, including transport, have risen on average by 70 per cent. Mencap’s recent ‘Stuck at Home’ report found that one in four people with a learning disability now spend less than one hour outside their home every day.
True to style, the government has been willfully blind to damning evidence about its programme’s impacts on disabled people’s poverty, quality of life and mental health. In May, calls were dismissed for an assessment of the cumulative effect of the policy changes on the UK’s obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The minister for disabled people, Maria Miller, claimed the exercise, called for by a joint committee on human rights, disabled people and their organisations, would be too ‘complex’.

The impact on women

The paid-work-or-nothing attitude foisted on many disabled people, together with an increasing reliance on informal carers, is having a particular impact on women. Claire Glasman from WinVisible, a grassroots group for women with visible and invisible disabilities, explains:
‘With other groups we’ve opposed the phasing out of income support, which recognises that mothers and other carers are already working unwaged and should not be harassed into a waged job.
As disabled people and disabled women we feel that coping with a disability, and all the discrimination that you face, is an unwaged workload. This deserves to be recognised and to be cut down by adaptations, because in an inaccessible world everything is an enormous effort to do. As women we are also the ones very likely to be looking after children, the ones with time to be visiting elderly relatives in hospital, and so on.
In this culture of working really long hours, there’s less and less time for relationships and caring for people. As disabled women we’re often doing that kind of unwaged work and we want it recognised, and to be able to get money to live on, without having work conditions imposed on us.’