By unhappy coincidence, quite a few people that I have been acquainted with in various ways have died recently.
I would not have witnessed any of this had I acted upon suicidal thoughts I was having myself, about 12 months ago.

I wrote a chapter on death in my book, The Asylum of the Universe, a good few years ago. The book was published 5 years ago and the Death chapter was one of the first I wrote – probably 3 or 4 years before that. I have felt inclined to revisit it recently.

The one major difference is that I no longer hold onto the belief that life is worth clinging to, no matter what. More than anything, I think this represents me making a transition from middle-age comfort towards older decrepitude and a growing realisation that very old age has little to offer, especially the way the world continues to shape up. I therefore offer this chapter I wrote 8-10 years ago, unedited, in this context, but for no real reason. If it opens up any useful discussion anywhere, then that will be a bonus.

DEATH

I overheard my wife chatting on the phone to her sister the other day. She was updating her on my father-in-law who has had a serious stroke recently. Last year he had his second kidney removed due to cancer. He has also had three heart attacks. She also mentioned my in-laws’ cat in the same conversation. It is 18 years old – around 90 in cat years, I am reliably informed. It seems to suffer some form of dementia. It will stand leaning against walls for ages. It walks into things. It is a nothing but skin and bones. You can stand on its tail and it doesn’t notice! The thing is, I wasn’t sure whether they were talking about the man or the cat when I heard my wife say that he probably cannot have too long left; that he has no real quality of life; that death will be a blessed relief. Hmmm!

It doesn’t really matter who they were talking about, does it? A blessed relief!! To whom would dying be any sort of relief? I struggle to conceive of a relieved corpse, so the relief must be that of the people relieved of the duty of care for the now-deceased. This is one of the main arguments for euthanasia, if I am not mistaken. And as for real quality of life, how much of that is there when you’re dead? It is the same line of argument that says, “Better dead than red”. Bollocks is it!

I do, of course, understand that people can decide that they have had enough and choose to terminate their own lives. These people fall in to two main categories: the religious and/or spiritual who wish to hasten their migration to the ‘other side’ for many reasons, including that curiously compelling concept called ‘martyrdom’; and the suicidally depressed whose mental state inflates their perception of life’s problems to the exclusion of life’s joys. The former choose to deny the finality of death, while the latter, if not also in this group, see the empty void, the nothingness, as preferable to the continued negative experiences that are swamping them at the time. It essentially boils down to a fear of living being greater than the fear of dying.

Although I fear death, in the sense that I would prefer to live forever than be non-existent, there can be absolutely nothing to fear in being dead. Epicurus, as so often, explained it well (centuries before Jesus):

It is religion that engenders fear of being dead – as it generally invokes concepts of judgement. We rarely feel comfortable being judged, but when the verdict of the judge is perceived to have eternal consequences, it is no wonder believers are nervous about it!

I find the concept of martyring oneself for a cause an interesting one. Belief in an afterlife must certainly make it a lot easier option to face up to. As I lack such beliefs myself, I tend to feel a sense of pity for these poor misguided fools who make the ultimate sacrifice in the hope of supposedly bettering the lives of other believers while securing themselves a place in paradise. But hang on minute. Where is the sacrifice in taking a short cut to heaven?

This is the religious con trick, currently so beloved of Muslim fundamentalists, but utilised by many religions throughout history. Making such a sacrifice out of a selfless sense of love for others is far more impressive I would suggest. I could accept the oblivion of death in order to perpetuate the lives of my kids, as they are my only stake in the future beyond my own existence. I cannot imagine sacrificing my life for anyone else.

Empirical evidence for life after death tends to focus on observations from ‘near death’ experiences. Research has revealed a fair degree of common features reported from people in these  circumstances. These include seeing bright lights, sensation of levitation, feelings of serenity or, alternatively, fear and out-of-body sensations and visions. Research has also uncovered, however, a range of scientific explanations that include hormone releases, residual effects of psychedelic drugs, and ‘reflexes’ in the sensory autonomic system, lucid dreaming and psychopathological symptoms.

So what forms of ‘life after death’ are on offer to those that are prepared to buy into various religious ‘deals’?

• Christians and Muslims are particularly keen on heavenly paradises for the worthy and eternal suffering in hell for those that do not make the cut.

• Christians have had cute notions of sprouting wings and metamorphosing into angels, if you are lucky enough to go to heaven, or sprouting horns and, possibly, a wicked sense of humour if you go to hell.

• Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs and Wiccans have a fine range of reincarnation options on offer.

• Ancient Egyptians had a special offer, whereby if you subjected your corpse to mummification you could get to ride with the Sun. Sounds exciting!

• Zoroastrians get to spend three days with either a beautiful maiden (if you are good) or an ugly hag (if you are bad), before descending to a mildly unpleasant sort of hell. I am not sure if the women get exactly the same deal or what!

• Ancient Greeks and Romans had access to an underworld populated by the dead, but which could be visited and returned from in certain circumstances.

• The Vikings had Valhalla – a heaven available only to those that died heroically in battle. A cool army recruitment tool, don’t you think?

• The Jews have ummed and ahhed a bit. Death as a form of limbo before resurrection has been popular, as has re-incarnation. Kabbalists and the Orthodox Jews are still quite keen on this.

• Mormons have three degrees of ‘heavenly glory’ available: CELESTIAL – the ‘gold standard’ heaven where you get to actually sit with God; TERRESTRIAL – ‘silver’ heaven, which is another dimension somewhere here on Earth for honourable people that failed to embrace God; and TELESTIAL – more like the wooden spoon than ‘bronze’; it is like a holding pen for sinners and deniers of God, and they will be the last in the queue for resurrection.

The devious, as well as the deluded, can manipulate people who buy into these brands of nonsense to the point where they will opt for martyrdom – invariably for political ends. There is no denying the impact that martyrdom can have as a political gesture. I am not sure that Jesus qualifies as a martyr, but his death has certainly had an impact on the world.

The same is certainly true of some lesser-known martyrs. Emily Davison was the suffragette who died under the feet of the King’s horse at the 1913 Derby. In her autobiography, Emmeline Pankhurst wrote:

“Emily Davison clung to her conviction that one great tragedy, the deliberate throwing into the breach of a human life, would put an end to the intolerable torture of women.”

I am not sure she managed anything quite this ambitious, but between them Emily and Emmeline certainly changed the lives of women quite dramatically for the better. It does however prove that it is the dramatic that grabs the attention and forces people to take notice. Check out this image for example:

You may, possibly, recognise it as the image from the eponymous album by Rage Against the Machine. When I first saw it on this album cover, I simply had to find out what was going on. The guy is just sitting upright, perfectly still and in control as he burns to death!!

Hòa Thượng Thích Quảng Đức, was a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk who burned himself to death at a busy Saigon road intersection on 11 June 1963. Thích Quảng Đức was protesting against the persecution of Buddhists by South Vietnam’s Ngô Đình Diệm administration. Photos of his self-immolation were circulated widely across the world and brought attention to the policies of the Diệm regime. Malcolm Browne won a Pulitzer Prize for this iconic photo of the monk’s death, as did David Halberstam for his written account. Thích Quảng Đức’s act increased international pressure on Diệm and led him to announce reforms with the intention of mollifying the imm Buddhists. This self-immolation is widely seen as the turning point of the  Vietnamese Buddhist crisis which led to the change in regime.

The difficulty I have with such gestures is that for every instance that hits the headlines and that leads to change, there are countless other examples of martyrdom in vain – because nobody noticed or nobody cared. Dozens of other Buddhist monks incinerated themselves and achieved very little. It was Malcolm Browne’s photo that had the impact, not the act per se. The 9/11 Twin Towers attack had plenty of coverage, but any claims to martyrdom disappear under the blanketing act of mass murder. And as yet, it is hard to discern anything resembling progress for anyone from these acts. So, all in all, I will stick with the conclusion that martyrdom is for the thoroughly misguided and gullible.

Another group that has been in the forefront of public debate in recent times is the terminally ill, especially those suffering debilitating disabilities that need assistance in exercising the option of suicide. Typically, countries that treat their citizens like mature intelligent adults (e.g. Switzerland) have civilised policies that allow people to ‘pass away’ discreetly and with dignity. Equally typically, nanny states (e.g. the U.K.) feel the need to protect their citizens from themselves and evil people who might be a bit too keen to shuffle them off this mortal coil. Obviously, there needs to be safeguards, but unlike the Swiss, the British cannot be arsed to put them in place, so it is simpler and cheaper to simply deny the option.

This suits me just fine, as I am committed to the idea that any level of suffering and indignity is better than being dead. But unlike those with religious ‘righteousness’ informing their ability to judge for other people, I am happy to let sane intelligent adults come to their own decisions.

Death is, of course one of life’s great inevitabilities. Most of us don’t like thinking about it, but of course we do. We don’t like talking about it, but we probably should. Living with my wife has taught me on numerous occasions that talking things through, although difficult, invariably brings greater clarity and makes things easier.

For this reason I have a lot of respect for people facing up to life threatening illnesses, and other potentially deadly situations, that are prepared to open up and share their experiences. Roy Castle was inspirational, and it is the only worthwhile thing that I am aware Jade Goody ever did, sad to say. The artificial celebrity created for the conspicuously talentless and intellectually challenged Jade, allowed her the opportunity to make a meaningful contribution as she shared her trials and tribulations battling cancer with the nation. It was a sad reflection on the society in which we now live that some sick people saw fit to revel in her despair. There was even a website that invited people to guess the precise moment she would take her last breath.

Such sick attitudes only serve to reveal just how casual many people are about death. There is something about the whole notion of death that engenders all manner of strangely contorted attitudes. What should we make of anti-abortionists who murder medics who perform abortions, for example? One idiot of a judge in Kansas has declared that he will consider a voluntary manslaughter or “necessity” defence for psycho Scott Roeder who readily admits to the killing of an abortion practitioner. It would probably mean just a five-year sentence for Roeder and open season on abortionists in Kansas at least.

How we view death, especially other peoples’, is a matter of  perspective. To me, my life is of the utmost importance. To my nearest and dearest, my death may cause some transitory consequences and maybe a little grief. To the rest of the world it will be of no real consequence at all.

Death is, after all, an everyday mundane event. According to the World Health Organisation, there are about 154,000 deaths per day worldwide (over 100 per minute). We probably cry over less than one of these per decade. In terms of geological timescales, if we compare the history of planet earth to a 24-hour clock, the whole of humanity has existed for less than the last second – leave alone my own pathetic lifespan of a few decades. So, on the one hand, my life is the most precious and important thing; while on the other hand it is utterly inconsequential. To quote Tim Minchin, yet again, ‘I am a tiny, insignificant, ignorant bit of carbon’.

Those of a religious bent will tend to deny the finality of death and concoct notions of some sort of afterlife as a consolation. Their shows of grief at death reveal their true beliefs. If their belief were profound, surely death would be an event to celebrate or even a cause of envy.

As already mentioned, there is nothing to fear in death, as the Epicurean thinkers and teachers pointed out a few centuries before Jesus perpetuated an old tradition of peddling false hopes of an afterlife. The most eloquent Epicurean writer was undoubtedly Lucretius. His epic poem On the Nature of Things is unsurpassed in its beautiful exposition of the simple truths of the world we live in.

Considering he wrote it around 60 B.C.E., the quality of the scientific observation and deduction are also remarkable. Lucretius described the body and soul as being atomically constituted, like everything else in the universe, and therefore, like everything else, both body and soul will  disintegrate and disperse after death. He argues that our mental development tracks that of our body through infancy, maturity and senility, such that we should expect the breakdown of our mental faculties as our body begins to fall apart. He concluded that there could thus be no life after death, no reincarnation, and no punishment in Hades/Hell. He found the notion of a benevolent creator utter nonsense; as such a creator would surely have ensured that his creations would be everlasting. On top of this, he recognised that the world is hostile to human existence, in the same way that all living creatures have ongoing battles for survival. He describes (mockingly I suggest) newborn babies tears on emerging into this worldas admirably prescient considering all the troubles that lie ahead for it.

It is as if they know they have arrived in the asylum of the universe!

Live while you love!

I read a bit of research recently that suggested that depression, mental illness and emotional stress are very common among libertarian political activists. As I am enduring bit of a slump again, and I tend to turn to reading and writing to help me regain some persecutive, I am going to have a bit of a closer look at this phenomenon.

As I think about the people I have met through campaigning and activism over the years, I can certainly recognise a loose correlation between those that are more committed to their activism and mental health issues of one kind or another, broadly ranging from depressive disorders to delusional complexes. Sometimes the activist community is very supportive and helpful. On other occasions it can feel alienating and harmful.

If I offer any advice at all, it is purely based on my own experiences and learning (often the the hard way). My first bit of advice is therefore not to consider anything read in blogs as a substitute for professional medical advice. That I would not have said this 10 years ago is, in part at least, because I have found that the understanding of mental health problems among GPs, in particular (as most people’s entry point into the medical support system), is hugely better than it once was – while recognising that there is a bit of a lottery in just how competent (in this regard) your particular GP may be. I do, however, think that it is highly likely that at least one GP in any practice is likely to be good in this respect, so it may be worth asking to see whoever is regarded as strong with mental health issues in a practice, rather than, perhaps, seeing your usual GP if you suspect that they are not so hot on mental health issues. I remain very critical of certain aspects of mental health treatment, especially an over-reliance on medications (while acknowledging that they usually have a part to play in managing some conditions), but if you are suffering from severe depression or considering harming yourself, then there really is a need to speak to someone straight away.

Living with depression is not easy. All too often mental health issues are overlooked and/or ignored – by everyone from the sufferer themselves, by people around us (that don’t understand what is going on), through to workplaces and wider society. Sufferers are too seen seen as weak or overreacting. Beside the personal sense of alienation that often goes with mental illness, the institutions of capitalist society offer sufferers very little control over their treatment. Typically, mental health treatment is fragmented and commodified, complete with hierarchies to negotiate, elements of coercion and the pressures of budgets, profits and bureaucracy.

Mental health facilities in schools (for both staff and pupils) are woefully lacking (although some recent attempts to introduce mindfulness to the curriculum and INSET programmes is to be welcomed). There’s generally no problem ringing in sick at work with physical ailments, but very few employers have any provision for for mental health leave. In my experience, short-term absences for mental health issues are regarded as highly suspicious – if you are going to be off with mental health problems, then at least make if a full-scale meltdown and have three months off!

In this context, it really ought to be a given that the class struggle community, in particular, should take issues of mental health seriously. It should be discussed and there ought to networks where sufferers can turn when they need support. This happens informally at best, but given the high incidence of sufferers as already pointed out, there is usually someone nearby that can at least offer genuine empathy. It is important for sufferers to realise that they are by no means alone. Talk to someone. They will understand and often be able to point you in the direction of further help. Don’t forget that the very essence of class politics is all about solidarity and helping each other.

I would always encourage people to try to find someone in person if you can, and I am far from alone with that advice. Telephone helplines, medical ones and the Samaritans in particular, can be valuable too. But be careful about relying on online forums and web advice. Self-diagnosis is full of pitfalls. Self-help after professional diagnosis and initial guidance is fine – and the way I have learned to cope.

As blokes in particular, we often resist reaching out and/or talking about ‘girly’ things like feelings and emotions. We need to recognise that these are symptoms of the divisive culture and false identities imposed on us by a ruthless and uncaring capitalist system. Whether we suffer from depression or not, as social animals, we all need to discuss our feelings and emotions. It not only helps us as individuals, but strengthens us a movement when we develop a healthy culture of discussion and support.

Part of the reason we get involved in politics is because we want to make the world a better place. That means most activists are happy to support comrades in need of a bit of emotional support. There are not enough of us to allow comrades to fall by the wayside. Sharing a sense of solidarity and common purpose makes comrades potentially solid pillars of support. We get great satisfaction from looking out for each other, as if we cannot look after our own, how could we ever expect to extend similar values to a wider society?

Being realistic also means recognising that being involved in politics can bring more stress than enjoyment. We therefore also need to recognise that we, ourselves and every comrade, need to be able to take a step back from time to time. A few months off from any given group or project can help recharge the batteries, gain fresh perspective and help avoid things getting in ruts and stagnating. Similarly, we must all be wary of over-extending ourselves or expecting too much from others. It is never about people pulling their weight – it is about being comfortable with what you are contributing and being grateful for everybody else’s contribution, no matter how great or small. It is not good anarchist or socialist practice to have one person carrying too much responsibility within a group – and not conducive to good mental health either.

Be realistic about how much time you dedicate to a project and be open with others when you need help. If you are not getting the assistance you need, speak to others involved, let them know and give opportunity for others to step up. Ultimately, do not feel the burden is on you to make things work.

Despite our commitment to the cause, it’s always important to have other interests, preferably without any overtly political dimension. I would say that it is also important to maintain those friendships with people that do not share your political perspectives and involvement. This is achieved in no small part by avoiding political discussions and judgements. If nothing else, it will help maintain some broader perspective in your life. Hobbies and sports are great ways of keeping body and mind healthy – which again will benefit your political activities as well. We all need a break from contemplating the ills of global capitalism, lest it overwhelm us.

In essence, it boils down to being good, kind and respectful to each other. But sadly, far too often that proves beyond us. I read an interesting short essay recently entitled: Be Good to Your Comrdaes: Why Being a Prick is Counterrevolutionary. It made the point, that any of us familiar with party politics in particular will recognise, that political activism tends to attract a bunch of egotistical pricks, at least disproportionately. Many of the nicest people I know are leftie political activists that are caring altruistic, generous and giving. But I can also real off a list of people that are harsh, condescending and sometimes downright bullies. Politics shares a tendency with religion for people to take entrenched positions, even over small matters with people supposedly on the ‘same side’. When we have our own ideas and beliefs attacked, we tend to lash out in defence of our position, even if it is an untenable one.

Many of us have developed very thick skins over the years, but that can make us prone to using words or tones that can hurt our thinner skinned comrades. When we become so full of bitterness about the state of the world around us, we can tend to take out on those around us, even when those nearest, ought to be our dearest allies.

What happens, of course, is that people quit. It also make people reluctant to get involved. I quit the Green Party and I am reluctant join Plaid Cymru. Anarchist groups seem to have a better handle on this sort of nonsense, perhaps because it truly part of the core values of everyone therein. Party politics is inherently competitive and confrontational.

Even anarchist groups will attract their share of strident revolutionaries who can overstep the mark. Whatever the organisation, however, if has to be recognised that interpersonal meanness will always be counteractive to the greater cause. It sabotages the change, the revolution, that we want to see. When people act like pricks, they end up driving people away. Nobody wants to share the company of people that make them feel like crap. If they are not driven away completely, they can be tipped into a downward depressive cycle, lose their self-confidence and withdraw. They stop sharing their ideas or volunteering for activities. Meanness and bullying causes our numbers to be fewer and our remaining comrades to be less effective. This has to be intolerable for a group whose ultimate raison d’être has to be persuading the majority of the population to our way of thinking. If we think we can achieve this by humiliation and intimidation, or by ostracising critics, we may as well go straight to taking up arms and ‘persuading’ people at the end of a rifle.

We need to be comfortable with expressing criticism and disagreement. This is the only way we truly change minds. Being forthright should not prevent us from remaining friendly and respectful. It requires collective responsibility to deal with individual transgressors. Various tools can be used to structure debates, and training in effective chairing is worth considering. One suggestion that I have rarely seen implemented is that someone is assigned the task of monitoring the level of respect in meetings (a kind of behaviour referee if you like), someone other than the chair. Some sort of ‘three strikes‘ rule can then be implemented. But hey – it is down to each group and organisation to find some arrangement that works for them – so long as that is what they do.

The bottom line is that if someone’s pattern of intimidating or humiliating others doesn’t stop after ongoing intervention, then this person has to go – expelled or at least suspended – because whatever assets they bring to the group, they will be doing more harm than good.

To conclude – the number one thing we can all do to advance the causes we hold so dear is to value our comrades and be good to each other. In terms of looking after each other’s mental health, let’s pledge to stop giving our comrades yet another reason to be depressed!

(Draws heavily on an anonymous booklet entitled Class Struggle and Mental Health, published by Freedom Press, 2015)

As a member of the Green Party until quite recently, with many friends and respected comrades still in the party, it was driven home to me today that, outside of the Green Left faction within the Green Party, the overall image of the Party is a pretty shocking one amongst left wing activists and anarchists operating outside of the Green Party. This came about when I attended the Cardiff Anarchist Bookfair today. Although there was some acknowledgement of some genuine ecosocialists within the Party, there was a lot of scorn poured on the records of elected Greens and especially the record of the Brighton administration.

It wasn’t until I got home, and started going through literature that I had picked up during the day, that I found an article in ‘Resistance‘, the paper of the Anarchist Federation, that encapsulated and, perhaps, informed this attitude towards the Green Party. It was entitled “Tories on bikes”: the Green Party in power, with quote being ascribed to a striking Brighton bin worker.

The article examines what it saw as the evidence of Greens selling out, with the inference being that we had been led to expect a lot better. I know that I and many members of Green Left can relate to this.

For those not familiar with what happened in Brighton, the article summarised it succinctly. It pointed out that Greens had long trumpeted a commitment the living wage (and still do), but that they (led by Jason Kitkat) tried to impose a “pay modernisation” scheme on low-paid council workers with the support of the council’s Tory group. The article alleges that this meant pay cuts of up to £4000 a year for some. More damning than this figure (which I suspect is an exaggeration) is the accusation of “acting like the worst kind of union-busting boss“, by threatening workers that if they refused the new terms, they would be sacked and re-employed on the new contract. In other words, acting like a bunch of Jeremy Hunts! Sadly, this is pretty accurate and the bin workers responded with a wildcat occupation of their depot.

Caroline Lucas comes in for some criticism that does not quite fit my recollections of events. It acknowledges that she voiced her opposition and said she would join the picket lines. I thought that she actually did do this at one point, but the article suggest that she never showed up. It does, however, say that she was seen picking up litter during the strike in June 2013, contrary to a statement from the bin-workers asking people not to do so, as it would undermine their strike action.

The bottom line here, and the point that discredits the socialist credentials of the Party in other’s eyes, is that when faced with tough choices, they fell into line and did the neoliberals bidding for them. The article describes it as underlining the sense of “a world of perpetual disappointment when your elected representatives betray you“.

Anarchists, of course, have come to expect nothing else. They rightly point out that the problem is not with who is in power or even with how they exercise that power. The problem is with political power itself. Notable anarchist, Noam Chomsky, points out that “the smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum“. In this context, the article concludes that the Green’s might well be on the fringes of that spectrum, but they remain part of the party political system that has been established to keep us quiet and compliant. This, ultimately, is why I gave up on the Green Party and party politics altogether.

The ironic thing is that it was good friends within Green Left that introduced me to people like Proudhon, Kropotkin and Bakunin – the veritable godfathers of Anarchist thought. They remain, to the best of my knowledge, committed to fighting the cause from within the Green Party. I am left wondering whether I should consider them to heroically battling to shape the Party into something truly worthy, or whether to consider them as naive fools, wasting their time and propping up an inherently flawed system. Discuss!

James Meek is a writer for whom I have huge respect. His extraordinary novel The People’s Act Of Love, set in Siberia, post-Russian revolution, was nominated for the Booker Prize and won The Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize in 2005. More recently, his journalistic writing has also picked up awards. Just last year, 2015, he won the Orwell Prize for political writing of outstanding quality for his book, Private Island: Why Britain Now Belongs to Someone Else. He also is a contributing editor of The London Review of Books, and it is his most recent contribution to this, entitled Robin Hood in a Time of Austerity, that forms the basis of the rest of this piece. (It is a transcript of this lecture given at the British Museum recently.)

We are all familiar with the legend of Robin Hood. Taking from the rich to give to the poor – redistributing wealth – has long been seen as a programme of the left. James Meek, however, suggests most convincingly that the legend has been twisted and usurped by the right, with the considerable assistance of their friends in the media. He explains it something like this:

• The traditional poor (unemployed, disabled, refugees etc.) are accused of sponging off the state to live in big houses, wallowing in undeserved luxury, while not needing to work.
• The rich, meanwhile, are redesigned as the ones who are ‘hard-working’ but forced to support the undeserving poor-who-are-considered-rich.
• The Sheriff of Nottingham in this narrative is played by the assertive leftie whose modus operandi is to plunder the honest, hard-working peasants hard-earned wealth to give to the dishonest, lazy, social parasites, given more than they deserve.
• Thus, the ‘Sheriffs’/baddies are played by Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, Hugo Chavez, Russell Brand and their like, while the ‘Robin Hood’/good guys are played by George Osborne, Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, Jeremy Clarkson and their like.
• This is all pedalled as the reality by rags like the Daily Mail, with their stories of immigrants getting £1000 social security cheques, malingerers with 11 sprogs living in 10 bedroom mansions at taxpayer’s expense, and slagging off any attempt to pick your pocket with tax-gathering devices from speed cameras to inheritance tax.

As I have pointed out before on this blog, the key signifier is the phrase ‘hard-working people’. This is a clever catch-all to draw in everyone from struggling shop worker to multibillionaire business people. They are all encouraged to take on the mantle of the put-upon peasant struggling to fend off the sheriff’s cruel tax raids. Thus we have society divided between the ‘hard-working’ and the ‘work-shy’. We are encouraged to speculate as to why some are not working hard and ‘doing their bit’ in these ‘difficult times’. They are probably plain lazy, feigning disability, benefit tourists from far-off shit holes, commie strike-inclined trade unionists, or any combination of these and more. They expect food on their tables, roofs over their heads (spare bedrooms even FFS), Sky TV and money for fags , full and free access to public services – and all the while contributing sweet FA and taking everyone else to be mugs. That’s all rather rich, isn’t it! Thus the poorest and most vulnerable in our society have been transformed into the despised ‘rich’ (those with more than they deserve).

Meanwhile, in the wake of the banker-induced financial crisis, I and many Greens and other lefties got involved in a campaign to introduce the prosaically named ‘Robin Hood Tax’ on financial transactions. This was designed to discourage the reckless speed with which bankers and fund managers were shifting vast, destabilising amounts of money around the globe. The campaign has resulted in 11 European countries embracing the idea, but this will not include the UK unless Corbyn becomes Prime Minister. It is an idea that Thomas Piketty would like to see taken further to become some sort of global tax on capital, with the principal objective being reducing the extreme inequalities inherent in the capitalist system. Well, I guess we all can dream.

A socialist version of Robin Hood was very much alive and well for much of the twentieth century. It wasn’t just about robbing the rich; it was about taking back from the rich the excessive wealth accumulated by owners of capital and returning it to the creators of wealth – the shop-floor workers. A socialist Robin Hood is not just interested in confiscating the ‘box of silver coins’ and redistributing it; he would demand control of the system to shift the burden of taxation onto the rich, and spend the revenue for the common good. It can be argued that Elizabethan Poor Laws were a starting point, followed by these landmarks:

• 1842 – Robert Peel’s first peacetime income tax
• 1908 – the first means tested old-age pension
• 1920s to 1980s – the era of high progressive marginal rates of income tax, peaking at 95% tax rates paid by the super-rich (referred to in the Beatle’s song ‘Taxman’ by line 2: “There’s one for you , 19 for me‘)

It was, in fact, the USA that set this last trend, on the back of the belief that it was the actions of the rich that caused their Great Depression. They were seeking to avoid becoming a class-bound society of aristocrats and peasants. They wanted to learn from the mistakes of old Europe in their brave New World. It worked for them for a long time. It was a golden era of nationwide (relative) prosperity and reducing inequalities. However, the elephant in the room was always the growing levels of debt. The traditional medicine for reigning in national debt has always been by some combination of tax increases and public spending cuts. Keynesian wisdom has always maintained that cuts are more harmful that tax rises – but that message has been increasingly lost since the Thatcher/Reagan era.

Thus we have two mainstream, but opposing, political narratives about what has happened in Britain in the last 15 years or so.

• The Conservative ‘austerity’ narrative: Labour went on a reckless public spending spree in the years running up to the crash of 2008. As a consequence, like a household with too big a mortgage (and there were plenty of these about who related to the analogy), the answer is to cut spending deeply and sell off possessions. In this context, the tax take was flittered away and wasted. Tax is therefore a necessary evil at best that we should seek to reduce. Public austerity is therefore the only option.
• The Labour ‘anti-austerity’ narrative: Gordon Brown didn’t borrow or spend excessively at all. The crash was down to the irresponsible borrowing and lending practices of major British banks. A country is not like a household. With its own currency, it can’t become bankrupt through excessive spending. The debts are easily managed. Austerity is an ideological choice by a Conservative Party intent on shrinking the state at whatever costs to those it protects. In periods of low interest rates, debt should be increased to stimulate the economy. Taxes on the rich (who are, almost by definition, hoarding their capital) should go up for the same reason.

James Meek points out the fundamental problems with both of these narratives.

The Conservative austerity narrative is based on lies. Gordon Brown had reduced the national debt that Labour inherited from the Tories in 1997. The crash was not caused by excessive spending, but by excessive saving. Vast sums of money (the lubricant of the economy) were syphoned away by countries like China and Saudi Arabia as they hoarded foreign currency reserves. Large corporations followed suit – hoarding cash instead of re-investing it. Wealthy individual capitalists were allowed to legally suck wealth out of firms and into their personal hoards. While the majority of us hit hard times, the mega-rich became conspicuously richer.

Countries like the US and UK found themselves hit by a double whammy. They had become reliant on imports from resource giants (like Russia and Saudi Arabia) and the manufacturing powerhouses (like China and Germany), and as if this was not bad enough, they had also allowed what was left of our manufacturing and energy production to fall into the hands of foreign owners, thus exporting much of the value-added that we could still muster.

Market economics meant that with such a glut of hoarded money looking for a somewhere to sit and attract interest, interest rates plummeted. So how were the bankers to attract the hoards of cash? Where was the easy money to be made? Well, look in the mirror. It was you and me, through the means of easy credit and, especially, sub-prime mortgage lending. It worked for a while. The banks grew and grew, and just like Mr Creosote, a waffer thin mint eventually caused them to go pop.

So the crash was not the result of crazy public spending, but it induced spending during the crisis to repair the mess and avert the threat of an economic depression unseen since the 1930s in the USA. Brown just about managed to achieve this. By comparison, Osborne’s austerity agenda stagnated the recovery and leaves us in no doubt that the real agenda is shrinking the state for ideological reasons.

Somehow this thin veil of lies, promoting the austerity agenda, have proved popular enough to see the liars elected to run the country. Labour singularly failed to defend Brown’s record and promote his achievements. Instead, they somehow conspired to let Brown’s major failings become the story – his failure to regulate the banks properly and thereby avert the crash in the first place. It really was all his fault! Northern Rock, in 2007, was one of the first dominoes to fall. Some of the things that were going on there beggar belief, but the regulators never saw a problem. Perhaps this is because there were pages on the Tearsury website explaining how to do it all!

Labour simply cannot pretend it didn’t know what was going on. The New Labour project took a gamble on trusting the bankers and financiers in order to counter a sense that Old Labour could not be trusted with the economy. It back-fired spectacularly as it turned out that the bankers and financiers were even less competent! The problem Brown faced was that if he had reined in the banks, it would have inevitably made it harder for ordinary voters to get mortgages and credit that they had come to expect and rely on. The Daily Mail headlines would have been full of Brown strangling the economy and killing off jobs. I guess that is the price you pay for making a pact with the devil!

So now we have Labour grass-roots supporters seeking a return to the policies of their halcyon days through the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn. This is echoed across the pond with Bernie Sander’s advance at the expense of Blairite Hillary Clinton. Piketty’s timely book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has provided the intellectual support for this movement. Its main conclusion demolishes the position of the modern populist right. Piketty finds that throughout most of history capitalism can only ever increase inequalities, no matter how hard those hard-working families without capital assets work. Returns on capital will always outstrip the rate of economic growth as a whole. The only time when this was not the case was those years of big investment in public services and high tax rates on the rich in the mid-20th century.

There are some telling subtleties in Piketty’s analysis. For example, he concedes that taxing the mega-rich will not generate enough in itself to plug the holes in a country’s budgets. The biggest benefit of high tax rates on huge incomes is in the reducing of the concentration of wealth in too few hands. In other words, taxation is far from a necessary evil – it is a necessarily good thing. He qualifies this by conceding that citizens in wealthy countries need to retain ample income to generate the demand for all sorts of goods and services provided by the private sector. To this extent, Piketty can be seen as a centrist rather that a leftist. It is about getting a workable balance. As Meek points out, with a bit of money, a middle class family might legitimately choose send their child to a private school; but they cannot individually provide a universal education system and markets won’t provide it. Likewise, you can buy any car of your choice, but by yourself you cannot build and maintain a road network to use it on, and the market won’t provide that either. Be it education, health, roads, social security, energy or water, we all rely on common networks to meet our universal needs. Privatising them runs the risk, the near certainty in fact, that they will not remain universally accessible. We are seeing this already, are we not?

What this amounts to is the abdication of responsibility for meeting people’s basic needs by our government. Our public services, instead of being universal networks, are being run by global companies and overseas investors, disproportionately funded by the imposition of taxes, fees, and duties by the poorest sections of society, further impoverished by the levels of debt they have been lured into by legalised loan sharks.

I have long held the sadly cynical view that as long as the majority of the population feel that they are doing alright, an elected government can get away with squeezing the poor and pampering the rich. But this has to be seen as a horribly high risk attitude when our government is systematically decimating the public services and infrastructure we all rely on, while simultaneously handing over control of what is left to multi-national corporations, ultimately accountable to no-one but their shareholders.

This leaves us, on the left especially, with an enormous challenge, as James Meek puts it at the very end of his article:

“To make and keep universal networks requires the authority of the state, an authority that has been absent; and it’s hard to see where that authority might come from if the people don’t find a way to assert their kingship.”

We have to find a way. Personally, I believe that we have to focus on the things that unite the assorted factions of the left, along the lines of SYRIZA, and take that to the people – before it is all too late!

Election pact talks between Plaid Cymru, Welsh Liberal Democrats and Greens break down

So says the headline on the ITV news page today.

First of all, let me applaud the Plaid Cymru leadership for taking the initiative. It shows that they are beginning to learn some harsh truths for a start. They are not going to form a government on their own in May and they seem to finally be acknowledging this. As no party is going to form a government on its own in May, it is time to stop all the ridiculous posturing and get down to some serious politics.

The knee jerk reactions from Labour and Tories tell you all you need to know about these two parties that have grown ever closer, especially since Blair’s red toryism so beloved of Welsh Labour, on the back of the inbuilt injustice of our electoral systems.

Thus we have the anonymous Welsh Labour Spokesperson saying:

“By trying to stitch up local contests, these three parties have essentially tried to subvert the electoral process….. also a complete lack of respect to Welsh voters.”

Electoral alliances enhance democracy if done properly. It is not stitching up a local contest, it is giving a broader range of opinion a chance of getting representation. I vote for the chosen alliance candidate is a vote for the common elements of all the alliance parties. If Labour gets 50 % of the vote it still cannot be beaten, but a system that allows them to constantly clean up with 30 to 40% the vote – that is a system that shows contempt for the electorate. But it is a system that suits the big two – as they can regularly have all-powerful absolute majorities with a third of the vote – which given the typical turnout figures can mean less than 25% of the electorate. (Don’t forget, the Labour hegemony in the Welsh Assembly, with all those careers it has provided for the likes of Carwyn RT Jones, owes itself to that initial 50.1% of a 49.9% turnout in the referendum that created the Assembly in the first place!)

A similarly anonymous Welsh Conservative Spokesperson uttered the same disingenuous drivel, adding:

“it makes a mockery of their claims to be the Party of Wales if they were willing to leave some constituencies uncontested”

This may have superficial credibility, but I would assert that this depends on the integrity of the alliance put before people. If it is purely self-serving opportunism, then Anon Tory is right. But if it is a genuine alliance, rather than a mere electoral pact, then we are really talking about something noble that really does seek to address the needs of the Welsh people in increasingly dire times. It is exactly the path trodden by the Greek people in response to the ravages of ideologically imposed austerity as they rallied behind the SYRIZA alliance of more than a dozen anti-austerity parties, that otherwise would have never have been heard at all. The Party of Wales, with the interests of the people ahead of its own interests, needs therefore to become the driving force for the Welsh Ecosocialist Alliance that will contest every constituency on that basis. (An idea I put forward in November 2013)

This is almost certainly a long way from the tentative discussion reported this week. Although it may be the reason the Lib Dems ran away from the idea. While once upon a time they may have been convincing as libertarian (mild) lefties, they have no credibility for such a description these days, since Clegg’s neoliberal Orange Book. In fact, I am a bit surprised that PC even saw fit to try and include them. However, Tim Farron has some anti-austerity credentials and was a commendable gesture to at least talk to them. That they chose to walk away probably saves problems down the line, although I would have thought that anything that might help them maintain a presence in the Assembly would have been welcomed by them. They have a few very good people that are going to be lost to the Assembly for sure now.

As for the Greens, it is a huge relief that post-Bartolotti, Wales Green Party is back in the real world. Even before the ‘love in’ between Leanne Wood, Natalie Bennett and Nicola Sturgeon, in the run up to the General Election, I was sounding out the prospects of developing working relationships between PC and Greens at all levels. There was considerable potential at one time, scuppered by Bartolotti’s ego and and some unseemly sectarianism. It is encouraging to see the new leader off the Welsh Greens, Alice Hooker-Stroud, talking more pragmatically:

“Our electoral system in Wales needs a good shake up. Progressive voters regularly have to hold their nose and vote for another term of a Welsh Labour government that has run out of ideas and has nothing left to offer but more excuses. Representatives of the Wales Green Party were approached to explore whether we could form an alliance as an alternative to our tired, inert one party state. People want real change, and we were looking to form alliances with parties who share common ground with the Wales Green Party to see if we could offer them a chance to vote for it.”

That reference to shared common ground is the crucial one. There is so much of it between the Greens and PC; far more than the average member of public will realise. It really is madness fighting over essentially the same votes for the most part. The bits that they don’t share are undoubtedly highly important to some of their respective voters, and this puts some people’s noses out of joint when talk of working together surfaces. However, with proper selling of an alliance, these voters would be cutting said noses off to spite their faces in not getting on board as they would not get their especial concerns addressed anywhere else.

In conclusion …….

This news amounts to nothing at the moment. Its timing raises legitimate questions as to what has motivated it. It is, however, and encouraging sign that some parties are seriously grappling with the realities that face them. It has to be the way forward and has to be applauded and encouraged, if not for this year’s elections (it should have been done at least 18 months ago, before everyone had candidates selected everywhere), it should be something revisited and developed for all our sakes.

Given the likely scenario of an assembly with no party close to an overall majority, watch the typical two-faced hypocrisy of Welsh Labour and the Welsh Tories as the scratch around to see what deals they can do to try and cling to what they believe is their god-given right to rule over us. Probably the most appropriate coalition would be between the two of them. A Labour/Tory coalition? You heard it here first!

PS. Most recent polling data – treat with caution after the General Election!

Source: http://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/electionsinwales/wp-content/uploads/sites/100/2013/07/December2015.pdf

• Labour falling away
• PC gaining most – but not enough!
• PC+Greens+Lib Dems = more than UKIP (just!) (WTF!!!!)
• Don’t knows increasing and likely to be decisive
• ‘Would not vote’ low – a high turnout would be refreshing!

The following leader appeared in this weeks New Scientist:

POLITICS is often said to be the art of the possible. Complex real-world problems rarely have neat solutions. But British politicians appear to have forgotten this: the impossible is becoming law.

Consider the Psychoactive Substances Bill, which attempts to ban almost everything that alters mental state. It was passed last week by mostly supine MPs after a clueless debate (see “You’re not hallucinating, MPs really did pass crazy bad drug law“).

Last week also saw publication of the draft “snooper’s charter”, which asks for some powers that are nonsensical, because they bear little relation to how digital communications actually work, and others that are draconian. And it saw the release of the “evidence base” behind the drive for a seven-day National Health Service, though this provides scant justification for the proposed reforms, as the medical profession has explained.

Rationalists may hope these laws will prove unworkable. But with the government seemingly also bent on removing checks and balances on its power, from freedom of information requests to human rights laws, we should be concerned that it will instead be free to interpret their vagaries any way it wants, unchallenged.

In a democracy, that may seem unthinkable. But it is beginning to seem worryingly possible.

I have little to add. We seem to all be sleepwalking into some sort of Orwellian nightmare. Orwell, of course, was very familiar with the Spanish Civil War. Will the Tories keep pushing, provoking and alienating people until civil war erupts here?

An important article in the Guardian today:

Wristbands and red doors for refugees: history is not repeating itself, but it is rhyming by Giles Fraser

Giles Fraser

“In the week we remember the Holocaust, it would be a disservice to the millions who died if we didn’t recognise that the treatment of Muslim migrants is an echo of the past.”

This is an excellent article that brings together many of the things I have been thinking and saying for a while. I like the idea of differentiating between history repeating and history rhyming. If we do not wake up soon we will all find ourselves in the midst of an utter nightmare.

Perhaps it is appropriate to remember this famous rhyme from history:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

“First they came …” is a famous statement and provocative poem written by Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) about the cowardice of German intellectuals following the Nazis‘ rise to power and the subsequent purging of their chosen targets, group after group. Thatcher drove the socialists out of town (and out of the Labour Party). The Tories continue to emasculate the Trade Unions. Cameron, Osborne, IDS etc are now set on kicking the poor and the desperate wave of refugees that their neoliberal meddling in far off lands have created.

And me? Will you speak for me? I know a few that might, but most of the people I know (my neighbours, work acquaintances etc) have stood up for none of the others, so I won’t hold my breath.

Yesterday was a day of mixed emotions, for me at least, as I went with the South Wales delegation of Frack Free Wales activists (representing local groups from Llanelli, Swansea, Bridgend, the Vale, Llanharan and Monmouth) by coach to Upton, near Chester. We joined an assembled throng of c. 400 like-minded people from all over England & Wales – Lyme Regis, Brighton, Kent, Lincolnshire, Leeds, Manchester, Blackpool, Aberystwyth, Bath, Somerset, Nottingham, Hull, Tyne & Wear etc. etc. All those present were effectively delegates of their local groups and communities; millions of people now united in opposition to this multi-faceted menace we call fracking.

Upton village had never seen anything like it. It is a sleepy little suburb of Chester, but it was not asleep on this day. The fractivists assembled in the car park of Upton Park which was awash with colourful characters, banners, placards and even 10 feet tall dinosaurs! The park’s pavilion was open to provide toilet facilities and a tuck shop, while a range of stalls were set up to provide hot veggie food, pasties, cakes and hot drinks, along with a collection point for clothing donations for the camp residents that had lost their belongings in the camp eviction a few days earlier, more of which later.

We then set off on a slow procession through the streets of the village to the site of the Community Protection Camp, a couple of miles away. This obviously caused some disruption for local residents as some roads were closed off to traffic to facilitate us. But everyone we encountered was hugely supportive. I personally apologised to a couple of car drivers stuck in the throng for what must have been held up for 10/15 minutes as we passed. They just smiled, and said ‘no problem’. One thanks us for taking the trouble to come to his village to help protect them from the frackers. Dozens of residents, young and old alike, came to their front gates in the bitter cold (it didn’t get above 4 celsius all day) to wave and cheer us on. Many more dozens were at their front windows, smiling, waving and giving us the thumbs up. I saw no more than one or two grumpy faces all day. It was all very uplifting and reassuring to see the level of community support we clearly had.

Then we left the housing behind and were in the rural lanes leading to the proposed drilling site, and things immediately started taking on a somewhat more sinister feel. By now, the musical accompaniment we had was being joined by the constant drone of a police helicopter circling overhead. It remained above us for what must have been close to 2 hours, maybe more, at a cost of many thousands of pounds of taxpayers money, for what conceivable reason? We then passed the landowner’s residence, which had a whole minibus squad of a dozen heavily kitted out officers across the entrance.

The whole mood became much more sombre on arrival at the site. The site had been occupied continuously since April 2014. It had become the home for a small band of full-time residents and the hub for regular community engagement and support.

Community event at camp last summer

However, the sight that met us was more akin to a WW1 battlefield, and it induced similar feelings:

The site had been razed to the ground, after an eviction order had been served, by a combination of a massive police operation (interestingly with Welsh signage on the vehicles and officers – which I am not sure is normal for Cheshire police!), and the dubious services of Swansea-based eviction ‘specialists’, UK Evict Ltd. (Note to self: investigate this company and its connections!)

The Solidarity Day had been planned some time ago, and I don’t suppose it was any coincidence that the eviction was enacted in the week before it. It just highlights that this whole campaign has become an attritional war, and a battle of wills. They have no idea what they are up against. I spoke to numerous residents of the camp and they were all remarkably upbeat and philosophical. They knew this was coming from day one. They know they can rebuild it, and enjoy doing so. They know they have the support of the local community and the fractivist movement across the country and beyond. They know they are winning. And here is the proof of that, in the form of Upton-frackers Igas’ recent share performance:

• Share price last May = c. 42p; Share price last month = 13.5p i.e lost more than two thirds of their value in just over 6 months.
• Last trading day: Over 200,000 shares disposed of, and just 25,000 bought.

Bye-bye IGas!! The writing is on the wall. Just as it is for Gerwyn Williams and his rag-bag collection of skint companies like Coastal Oil & Gas and UK Methane. They are not even big enough to have a share issue, and plans to try to have a share issue seem to have fallen by the wayside, presumably because he could not give them away!

So overall the day was a huge success. It was a long way to go to spend 5 hours out in the bitter cold, strolling around a remote part of the country that few have any real connections with. Yet all of our party, and I am sure just about everyone in attendance left with a satisfying boost of affirmation that we a part of a huge widespread community of people fighting a just and vital cause. For me, and many others, it is part of a bigger picture too. It is part of a battle of competing values and nothing short of an ideological war being waged by the tory establishment. A couple of things about the Solidarity Day highlighted this for me.

I have already hinted at the ridiculously over-the-top policing operation. Let me look at this in a bit more detail. With my own eyes I counted in excess of 100 police officers, 7 or 8 minibuses that presumably brought these squads in, at least 6 officers on motorbikes and about 10 police cameras. Not forgetting the helicopter presence that must have cost at least £5,000 alone. Total cost? It has got be somewhere in the £10k to £20k range. For 400 peace-loving, community-supported citizens.

Isn’t just amazing how readily money can be found for such over-the-top operations in these times of austerity? Wouldn’t it be nice to witness a bit of over-the-top healthcare or over-the-top educational provision occasionally? Which brings me nicely to the other sight that jarred with be as we were being herded along our route.

Along the way we passed this Upton Clinic. This image is from July last year, when the clinic was still operational and providing valuable and valued services for the community.

It now has a ‘For Sale’ board on it, with the pernicious statement “Development Opportunity” on it. Should you be interested, the particulars are attached at the end of this piece.
Why pernicious? Well, this is not just a short-term austerity measure. The clinic is not being moth-balled until better times, when it can be re-opened and renew its work. It is being permanently disposed of, bulldozed and built all over. It will never be able to return, its place in the community permanent;y and irrevocably deleted. A permanent impact and legacy of Camoronic and Osbornomic ideological assault on our communities.

But I digress. The policing issues deserve more attention. The BBC coverage reported Cheshire Police saying “Patrols were deployed for reassurance”. Really? Whose reassurance would that be? The reassurance of the landowner given a whole squad of personal protection from us calling him rude names perhaps? The reassurance of the establishment  that they could identify everyone of us anarchic insurgents?

If you think that last comment is a bit paranoid, then let me share some other information obtained directly from officers manning the many cameras. They looked like the sort of video recording cameras news reporters carry around these days. I asked one officer what happened to the recordings. He said, “You don’t need to worry about that, these cameras aren’t recording anything. They are live-feed cameras into HQ.” “You what?” I spluttered. The officer explained: “It means they can monitor the situation and respond accordingly“. “And identify the trouble-makers?” I asked. “Well, yes of course” the officer replied.

Respond accordingly? WTF does that mean. It certainly didn’t mean telling all these surplus officers that they were obviously not needed and could go home in time for the football results. Could it possibly mean that there were reserve forces on standby somewhere to come a deal with the riots and start of the revolution? Who knows? Somebody knows.

It wasn’t just cameras either. While in the Park car park at the beginning and end of the event – where everybody was together – a police camera crew positioned themselves across the road and was constantly scanning the assembled crowd. A couple of those nice friendly Police Liaison officers, the ones with the nice big pale blue bibs, were station don the edge of the gathering and ‘engaging’ with people. You know, those nice friendly chats about where you have come from and were you having a nice day etc. During such chats, it was not just cameras monitoring the discourse, but those amazing bits of microphone technology that can pick up distant conversations. Let us hope they di not pick up us plotting the assassination of the Cabinet, the bombing of Buckingham Palace and the cyber attacks on the stock exchange that we were all plotting. But I have said too much!

We keep winning the occasional battle, but I fear we are losing the war. Not the war against the frackers. I am confident that one can be won still. But the wider schisms and increasing inequalities that the Tory’s ideological assault is wreaking on the huge sections of society can only end one way, I suspect. It is likely to get ugly. But we have the good people on our side.

PropertyInfo50804_Upton_Clinic_iBrochure.pdf

Based on an an article by Hajera Blagg that first appeared in uniteWORKS magazine, January 2016.

Benefits sanctions, in which people out of work are punished by having their benefits stopped for often absurd reasons, were significantly ramped up in 2012 under work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith. Since then, stories involving sanctioned claimants dying after their benefits have stopped have made headlines.
The most shocking of these was the story of David Clapson, a diabetic who had his benefits stopped after missing a jobcentre appointment. He was found dead in his flat last year with only £3.44 to his name. His official cause of death was diabetic ketoacidosis, caused by severe lack of insulin. The electricity in his home, which refrigerated the insulin that kept him alive, had been cut off; a pile of CVs for job applications was found near his dead body. A coroner found later that, at the time of his death, Clapson had no food in his stomach.

There are no official figures that irrevocably prove that sanctions cause deaths – the department of work and pensions (DWP) has been notoriously reticent in releasing any data. But following intense public pressure and thanks to Freedom of Information requests, the DWP admitted earlier this year that 10 of the 49 benefits claimants whose deaths had been subjected to secret “peer reviews” had been sanctioned at the time of their death. Of these 49 benefits claimants, 40 had apparently involved suicide.

While as yet it has been mostly anecdotal evidence that has linked sanctions and death, recent research by the University of Glasgow has unearthed the scale of destitution that sanctions have wrought. Hardship payments, which are available to benefits claimants who have been completely cleaned out of any financial resources and who have no family members or friends who can offer support, have risen in direct lockstep with skyrocketing sanctions.

University of Glagow researcher Dr David Webster found that before 2012, hardship payments as a percentage of sanctions ran at less than 10 per cent. But almost precisely after Duncan Smith set in motion the more severe sanctions regime, this number began to climb sharply. Now, hardship payments as a percentage of sanctions stand at a stark 40 per cent. “The figures show that the Duncan Smith regime is creating destitution on a horrifying scale,” Webster noted.

Webster highlighted the difficulties desperate people who’ve been sanctioned may have with hardship payments. “If [hardship payment applications] are successful, arbitrarily defined ‘vulnerable’ people (which do not include, for instance, people who are mentally ill or homeless) get 80 per cent of their sanctioned benefit,” he noted. “Others get 60 per cent. Only the ‘vulnerable’ can apply immediately. Everyone else has to wait two weeks.”

And sanctions are set to get worse under the present government, once Universal Credit, a programme that rolls six benefits into one, is fully in place over the next few years.

‘In-work sanctions’
While sanctions now only apply to those not in work, the DWP is piloting sanctions for the lowest paid workers – a chilling development in a sanctions regime that has already thrown so many people into deep and often deadly poverty. In-work sanctions would mean that if struggling workers on low pay earn below a certain threshold and are claiming Universal Credit, they will be made to sign a ‘claimant contract’, pledging to try and increase their earnings, for example, by working more hours. If they don’t meet their ‘obligations’ they face being sanctioned.

More hours? They don’t exist when low/zero hours contracts keep so many underemployed!

“It will be very difficult for many people to increase their per hour earnings, so this would basically mean taking on more hours,” Unite researcher, Sian Errington, explained. “But where’s the support for this? The government has been very evasive on what additional help there will be to enable low-paid workers to earn more – and there are no obligations on employers.” While the details on in-work sanctions aren’t yet clear, Errington noted that we can probably expect the programme to be put in place for all Universal Credit (UC) claimants once the pilot programme – which Duncan Smith confirmed was now being conducted in parts of the North-West – is complete.

Unite assistant general secretary Steve Turner condemned the additional cuts and changes to benefits that the present government is pushing through. “The suffering of millions of working people under the previous coalition government is only the beginning,” he said. “By 2020, food banks could be a permanent feature of society, with poverty and income inequality growing, with children suffering the most. “Make no mistake – this government isn’t interested fixing the country’s finances. This is only a smokescreen so it can pursue an ideology that seeks to completely dismantle our social security system.”

(Source: BIFF)