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Ireland: end medieval abortion ban

November 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Late last month a woman died in an Irish hospital after being refused an abortion, even when she told the doctors she was miscarrying. The case has immediately re-opened the debate about the right to abortion not only when the mother’s life is in danger but as her right to choose.

The 31-year-old woman, Savita Halappanavar, was 17 weeks’ pregnant with her first child when she started to experience back pain. When the pain continued she asked the consultant if she could be induced and their response was “unfortunately you can’t because it’s a Catholic country.” When Savita said she is not Catholic, she is Hindu so why should the law be imposed on her the response was “I’m sorry, unfortunately it’s a Catholic country and it’s the law that they can’t abort when the foetus is live.”

The baby’s heartbeat stopped 3 days later and Savita died just 4 days after that from septicaemia.

Ireland’s position on abortion is that “it is lawful to terminate a pregnancy in Ireland if it is established as a matter of probability that there is a real and substantial risk to the life, as distinct from the health, of the mother, which can only be avoided by a termination of the pregnancy”.

However it is clear that this law isn’t followed through as Savita and her husband requested a termination several times but were told while there was still a foetal heartbeat one would not be carried out even though the couple were told the baby wouldn’t survive. Doctors are left to decide on a case-by-case basis as to whether to allow terminations to take place.

Irish anti-abortion groups continue to insist that the Republic’s laws were not responsible for Halappanavar’s death.

Niamh Uí Bhriain, of the Life Institute, said: “It is very sad to see abortion campaigners rush to exploit this case to further their own agenda. The tragic loss of Savita Halappanavar’s life was not caused by Ireland’s ban on abortion. We need to ensure that mothers and babies are best protected; and abortion is not part of best medical practise. It is medieval medicine.”

Before a women’s right to choose even comes into it there are many medically valid reasons for performing abortions ranging from physiological ones such as severe depression leading to suicidal thoughts to physical conditions such as pre-eclampsia. It is clear that it was solely Ireland’s ban on abortion which caused this woman to die as if she had been allowed a termination before she became ill it’s unlikely she would have contracted blood poisoning.

 Even if there is no medical condition associated with the pregnancy then it should be a woman’s right to choose whether she wants an abortion. Over 4000 women leave Ireland each year in search of abortions each year, which is far safer than taking the risk of a back street abortion.

We say: fighting society’s right to tell a women what to do with her body is the first step in fighting the social oppression of women, which is expressed in lower wages, higher unemployment, sexual assault and misogynist ideas in the mainstream media.  

We stand for:

A woman’s right to choose – free abortion on demand

Scrap all anti-abortion laws and the two-doctor rule

A working-class women’s movement to defend the rights of women

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Fight racist deportations at London Met

September 3, 2012 By 1 Comment

(pic: Soren Goard)

Thousands of students have been given until December 1 to find a new university place or face being rounded up and deported from the UK.

Around 2,600 non-EU students have had their education thrown into jeopardy by the decision of the UK Border Agency (UKBA) to strip London Metropolitan University of its right to issue visas to students from abroad.

The decision means the students are unable to renew their visas or continue their studies past September. Both the Students’ Union and UCU branch condemned the move.

The government defended its decision by claiming ‘serious systemic failure’ meant that ‘allowing London Met to continue to sponsor and teach international students was not an option.’

The lecturers’ union, UCU, blames an incompetent management and racist government policies. For many universities, foreign students are treated as a cash-cow. They are charged much higher fees than UK students, and their dependence on the University for visas means an insecure existence.

In 2010-11 15 per cent of London Met’s income came from foreign students.

Unsurprisingly then, that the pro-fees university bosses’ organisation Universities UK condemned the decision. But their fear that it will put off foreign students is motivated more by their reliance on fees from these students than a defence of equal access to education.

Privatisation

For the overpaid pen-pushers sat in Vice-chancellor offices up and down the country, foreign students are central to new funding plans which will see many universities enter ‘partnerships’ or ‘service sharing’ schemes with private contractors.

In effect this will see student loans funded by the government used to inflate the profits of private companies, who will be paid to run services with fewer workers and a bigger bill.

Despite news that some NHS hospitals will be privatised after being bankrupted by exactly the same public-private partnerships, uni bosses have no doubt in their ability to turn a profit from overcrowded, under-resourced courses.

After revealing a £4 million surplus this year, London Met management announced plans to privatise swathes of university services: BT, Capita and Wipro are competing to win a £74 million contract to run (and wring a decent profit from) student services, careers, libraries, IT and ‘consultancy’.

The massive economic and social value invested in our universities has been built up over decades with public money. We should not allow our common wealth to be auctioned off to private businesses whose only motive is profit.

Racism

The truth is that both the government and university vice-chancellors are cynically exploiting the desperate situation of thousands of students.

It’s no coincidence that the government’s attack on foreign students came on the same day its immigration statistics were published. These figures showed a decline in the numbers of immigrants – mainly due to a 20 per cent cut in new student visas.

But the Con-Dem government is determined to distort our understanding of immigration – by blaming poor immigrant workers and students for the social problems caused by a system which exploits millions for the profit of a few.

Student visas account for 40 per cent of all immigration into the UK. The majority are paying vast sums to study with very little security. In 2008, one of the first cuts made to pay for the bailout of the banks was state funding for English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) courses. This mostly affected poor and female immigrants.

Now the students at London Met are being penalised for the failings of the university bosses and UKBA.

Defend education

Education is a right that should be provided with free and equal access to all. The barriers to education are used as a weapon to separate the skilled from unskilled, men from women and white from black.

The barriers to immigration and freedom of movement are a tool used by the bosses to keep us divided, struggling in competition against each other rather than collectively against the capitalists enriching themselves at our expense.

We oppose all barriers to freedom of movement and access to education. The rich have no barriers to hiding their fortunes in tax-havens – yet their racist border laws impose total control over the freedom to find work or education.

We reject any attempts to turn people against immigrant students and workers. They are not to blame for bosses who swindle the government or their employees. They face the same cuts and social problems as their neighbours along with the racist violence of the media and police.

Anti-racists, the NUS and teaching unions should immediately launch a campaign to get the students visas immediately reinstated.

We call for citizenship rights for all undocumented workers, with no penalisations.

We stand for equal access to education for all, free and paid for by raising taxes on the banks and capitalists.

REVOLUTION supports a statement of solidarity with the students, calling for the government to reinstate London Met’s HTS status and stop the persecution of foreign students.

You can sign the statement at www.anticuts.com

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More pain for long-term unemployed

August 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The Coalition’s latest medicine for the unemployed is a new forced-labour scheme which will see one million people who have been on JSA for longer than three years forced to work unpaid for six months or have their benefits removed.

The scheme has been named ‘support for the very long-term unemployed.’ However stripping people’s benefits from them and forcing them to work for less than £2 an hour is clearly not supportive in any way.

The government’s insistence on rolling out more and more ‘work-for-your-dole’ schemes is hardly an incentive to companies to invest in well-trained, well-paid jobs. If bosses think there’s a steady stream of jobless candidates who are forced to work for them, paid for by the taxpayer then that starts a race to the bottom.

Some companies are already using prisoners as cheap labour to reduce costs and boost profits.

In a job market with millions of unemployed and less than half a million vacancies, stripping people of their entitlement to benefits is no solution.

None of the government’s policies are about really putting a dent in the jobless figures. After all, the millions of unemployed represent a reserve army of workers that can be used to drive down wages, scab on strikes and scare people into accepting worsening pay and conditions for fear of being made unemployed.

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Young people don’t need jobs or housing say Tory millionaires

July 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Cameron’s £750,000 pile – got a spare bed?

The government is determined to boost tax revenues. But instead of collecting some of the £70million+ illegally dodged in taxes by the super rich every year, Cameron says young people must pay – by being denied access to jobs and houses. Of course, a government whose ministers are almost all millionaires isn’t likely to demand their rich mates pay their share.

Amid a recession and huge youth unemployment, in a speech on welfare he said that people under the age of 25 should be stripped of their housing benefits and made to remain at home until they can afford to move out with no government support.

With youth unemployment hitting 1 million, minimum wage being frozen, EMA being cut and tuition fees rising, they’ve got it bad. A lot of young people couldn’t live with their parents till the age of 25 because of personal reasons or simply because their families couldn’t afford it.

More importantly why should young people be made to live at home, we want them to become independent adults who can make their own choices in life.

These proposals will increase homelessness. By removing the housing benefits the state provides and with no jobs available people have little other way of receiving money and paying bills. While there are no jobs because of the situation our government and banks put us in, then they should be supporting individuals and families until they are able to support themselves. Low interest rates fixed by the Bank of England encourage housing speculators to keep properties empty until rents are profitable enough.

His attack particularly affects single parents or families with children. With 1 in 8 leaving a job and 1 in 5 turning down a job due to the cost of childcare it is clear these families aren’t being supported enough with free crèches and nurseries to enable their parents to work. Instead the government wants to import a crazy scheme from the USA where parents are supposed to take their children into work…

His new proposal includes benefits cuts to those families with 3 or more children ‘to stop the out-of-work being better off by having children.’ With child benefits already having been slashed having another child barely gives you enough extra money to feed them let alone any left over.

‘Consider paying some benefits “in kind” rather than in cash,’ is Cameron’s way of saying ‘all these benefit scroungers spend their money on booze and drugs.’ As this is the case in some situations, support should be given through rehab schemes. Giving ‘money’ in tokens won’t get rid of the issue and it’ll mean that some children have even less to live on.  The US already has 14 million people living on food vouchers – and this number is going up not down.

The disabled are being attacked too with Cameron saying that 2/3s of those on Disability Claimant remain on it for their whole lives. He believes these people should be forced to do full-time community work and take steps to improve their health.

During his speech Cameron clearly stated that pensions wouldn’t be affected in the next wave of reforms. ‘If you work hard all your life, you deserve dignity in retirement.’ The implication being that those young people deserve nothing because they’ve given nothing to the state yet. The youth are an easy target because with no money and living with mum and dad, it’s more difficult for them to organise.

This is another attack on the working class, this time the young and he uses this to drive a wedge between the young and old. Young people didn’t cause the crisis and our future shouldn’t be sacrificed to pay back millionaire crooks like Barclays boss Bob Diamond – who carried out a giant financial fraud and got off with £2million hush money.

It’s not even like Benefits are bankrupting the country – each year more than £15 billion worth of welfare is left unclaimed, and goes back into the pot. The politicians live in giant homes and have refused to build enough decent housing for over 20 years. The private sector isn’t taking up the slack, and why would they? It’s not the capitalists’ job to look out for ordinary people.  If we want a society with proper communities and opportunities for young people, we’ll have to fight for it.

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Solidarity with the struggles of workers and youth in Quebec

July 10, 2012 By Leave a Comment

REVOLUTION sends our fraternal greetings to all youth taking part in the Quebec Student Strike. We address this letter in a spirit of solidarity and recognition that your struggle is the same being fought in the universities, squares and schools across Europe.

On June 22nd global ‘Casserole’ protests marked the birth of an international solidarity movement.

From Montreal to Madrid, youth have been in the vanguard of opposition to the crisis. Revolutions against dictatorship and occupations against austerity have put youth on the frontline of the international class struggle.

Since February 13th 150,000 students have joined an indefinite general strike against attempts to increase tuition fees by 75%. Hundreds of thousands more have staged boycotts, walkouts and solidarity action for over four months.

If fees were the spark, anger at wider attacks provided the fuel for a movement which has brought youth and workers into the streets to defy the batons, courts and tear gas of a regime with no solution but repression.

The defence of education led by the students of Quebec is an inspiration to all youth across the world waging their own resistance to cuts, poverty and unemployment.

Jean-Luc Charest’s ‘liberal’ government knows that it cannot permit a victorious student movement to signal to the world that resistance is necessary – and victory possible.

The success of the student assemblies and federations in drawing the government into a wider confrontation with education and public-sector workers is the key to the strike’s success.

But attempts to compromise and retreat show that young people alone cannot resist indefinitely.

The government refuses to negotiate – counting on dividing ‘moderate’ from ‘radical’, ‘privileged students’ from ‘struggling families’. The attacks on democratic rights imposed under Bill 78 gives Charest unlimited power to ban the right to strike, protest or assemble.

The strike movement has the initiative; now it must use it and answer the question ‘where next?’

With the students out of the way, the government will turn on the social spending for welfare programmes, calculating that making an example of the students will intimidate workers and youth into silence when their turn comes.

Success then, depends on whether we can transform a movement in defence of education into a working class resistance to the austerity offensive imposed by Charest and the federal government.

To the trade unions – the only social force capable of bringing down the government – we must say ‘our struggle is yours – and your struggles will only be strengthened by our victory’.

Raising common demands and taking united action on this basis is necessary to mobilise the forces necessary to stand up to the government’s violence and attempts to divide-and-rule.

Joint strike committees and democratic assemblies must be used to launch a national campaign in defence of education, against the social cuts and reverse the attacks on democratic rights.

The democratic structures uniting the unemployed alongside the youth and workers can form the basis for national action independent of the vacillating leaders of trade unions and reformist parties.

Now is not the time for compromise – the result of the crisis is that our  health, education, pensions and wages will be slashed to inflate profit rates for a privileged minority class. Unemployment is used to reduce wages and intensify competition.

In every country capitalism has the least to offer to the youth. The capitalist solution to the crisis is simple – we, the youth and working class, will pay.

But in the schools, in the workplace and on the streets millions have shown that we refuse to pay for a crisis we didn’t cause.

We think we need to turn that courage and determination into a real force for social change. We want to build a revolutionary youth movement, armed with a programme which calls for the independent organisation of young people as part of the international class struggle.

The capitalist crisis has thrown up challenges new and old. From Sudan to Athens, youth are facing the question of how we can go beyond a system which offers no future – and says we must pay for the mistakes of the past.

The struggle for workers’ power and communism provides the only alternative for the oppressed, impoverished and exploited masses.

We appeal to all revolutionary youth to join us in building a new Youth International – a fighting organisation of young communists in every country, committed to a strategy of international working-class revolution.

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Cuts force women to choose between childcare or work

June 27, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Spiralling costs of childcare are forcing many women out of a job and plunging working class families further into poverty.

With around 1 in 8 having left a job and 1 in 5 turning down a job offer due to childcare costs it’s clear that the consequence of vicious cuts is forcing women out of the workplace and into the home.

Cameron talks about people having to have ‘a family and a job,’ to stop sponging off the state, but for a lot of people this is impossible. With childcare costing more than families rent or mortgage in 21% of cases it is not difficult to see why not working is cheaper than paying a childminder or nanny.

The weekly cost for a nursery place for a toddler in the Yorkshire and Humber is £525 a month. This increases by £200 in the South.

More than 250 Sure Start centres have closed since the coalition took power – scrapping a vital lifeline for families, and removing an important service ensuring children of all backgrounds get a good start in education.

The closing down of women’s support centres like Naomi House in Bristol means women who are at risk, in danger or simply need some support will have nowhere to go.

With higher tuition fees being introduced it makes the chance of a mature adult with a family being able to do a degree to get a better job, practically impossible. Plans to charge for Further Education (college) shows that the Tories don’t want to help us – they just want to make money off our ambitions.

It is a vicious circle in which without any government support, families are screwed. The government tells them they’re taking away their housing benefits and they should find a job, yet they can’t afford the childcare necessary to work long hours.

 

We demand

 

-       Free childcare for all provided by employers and subsidised by the government

-       Free education for all, including mature students

-       Support for single parents and women in danger – reverse cuts to women’s refuge and rehab services.

-       Bring back Sure Start and EMA.

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Benefits – the Tory weapon of mass distraction

June 26, 2012 By Leave a Comment

When Cameron took time off to criticise Jimmy Carr’s tax-dodging, it wasn’t long before people started to ask him about his own friendly links with “morally wrong” tax dodgers. That these people happened to be using the cash they saved to fund the Tory party is no more than an unfortunate coincidence.

All very embarassing right? So the Tories took out their frustration on – you guessed it – unemployed people. With 1 million youth not in education, training or employment, there’s enough to choose from. Cameron said he wants to end the ‘culture of entitlement’. Apparently he doesn’t mean the bosses’ entitlement to chuck thousands out of a job, offshore their factories and come to an ‘arrangement’ on taxes over a cosy dinner with a Tory minister or two.

When the Tories’ economic ignorance sends the whole country to shit, the first people they blame are the people suffering the most from their extraordinary incompetence.

Cameron reckons people under the age of 25 should be stripped of their housing benefits and made to remain at home until they can afford to move out. Presumably, this will be made into a sane policy by the setting up giant plantations of magic job trees.

Youth unemployment = 1 million+

EMA = gone

Tuition fees = £9,000 a year

Minimum wage = frozen

Schools = privatised and branded with corporate logos

The record speaks for itself. Cameron obviously never did meet anyone who lived in a normal home – if he did he wouldn’t be suggesting that its normal for young people to live with their parents til they’re 25!

Anyway why should young people be made to live at home, why shouldn’t we be given the chance to become independent adults, capable of making our own decisions?

Because that would cost money – the government would have to reverse hundreds of thousands of job cuts, invest in secure jobs, regulate agency work, equalise the minimum wage – and most importantly, build millions of new homes to address Britain’s housing crisis.

What the proposals mean

The government has already overseen the destruction of millions of jobs. Now they’re taking away housing benefit. Osborne is famous for his mathematical ignorance, but even he can work out that no job + no money = no house. Or, more people will be kicked onto the streets.

Or perhaps Cameron and his mates will open up their 10-bed mansions to those whose homes get repossed by Britain’s nationalised banks?

His attack particularly affects single parents or families with children. With 1 in 8 mothers leaving a job and 1 in 5 turning down a job due to the cost of childcare, the true cost of cutting schemes like Sure Start is to plunge working families into poverty.

His new proposal includes benefits cuts to those families with 3 or more children ‘to stop the out-of-work being better of by having children.’ With child benefits already having been slashed having another child barely gives you enough extra money to feed them let alone any left over.

‘Consider paying some benefits “in kind” rather than in cash,’ is Cameron’s way of saying ‘all these benefit scroungers spend their money on booze and drugs.’ The USA and France have had ‘food voucher’ schemes for decades – and their problems are even worse.

The disabled are being attacked too with Cameron saying that two thirds of those on Disability Claimant remain on it for their whole lives. He believes these people should be forced to do full-time community work and take steps to improve their health. It’s the great irony that the high number of Disability allowance claimants stems from Tory attempts in the 1980s and 90s to disguise the tru level of unemployment by convincing people to sign on for Disability instead of Jobseekers’.

During his speech Cameron clearly stated that pensions wouldn’t be affected in the next wave of reforms. ‘If you work hard all your life, you deserve dignity in retirement.’ The implication being that those young people deserve nothing because they’ve given nothing to the state yet. The youth are an easy target because with no money and living with mum and dad, it’s more difficult for them to organise.

The real point though, is that most young people don’t vote Tory – so why look after people who’d sooner string you up than “call you ‘Dave’”?

These proposals are savage, but are mainly the reaction of a Prime Minister who knows he has blundered from one scandal to the next, and is trying to reconnect with his Party base.

Nevertheless, it’s a glimpse of what Cameron would certainly like to do, should he ever get into power with a clear majority. All the junk about big society and ‘all in this together’ has been well and truly ditched.

The Tories are telling ordinary working people that we’re going to pay for the crisis, and if we protest, they’ll simply pass laws to stop us. Are we going to let them?

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DWP in ‘workfare doesn’t work’ shocker!

June 15, 2012 By 3 Comments

It turns out that forcing people to work 40 hours a week for their dole doesn’t increase their chances of getting a job. This according to the government’s very own Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Their report shows that the result of the various schemes, known as “Mandatory Work Placements” is that people are forced to spend longer claiming benefits and increases the number of people claiming sickness benefits.

The assessment was filed on Tuesday evening, just three hours after (un)employment Minister Chris Grayling announced he’d found an extra £5million to pump into the scheme – meaning 70,000 people will be working, unpaid, profiting millionaire bosses, while the taxpayer gives them £53 a week to live off.

This £5 million translates into tens of millions of pounds worth of profit for companies like Tesco, which have made their biggest ever profits, by driving down wages.

Grayling claims the schemes are a deterrent to those who are avoiding work, which is around 1% of the total. The vast majority of those on benefits do want to work, however not in an unpaid ‘job’ with no chance of employment at the end.

The government recently announced it will become more difficult to refuse the schemes and those who do, will have their benefits cut. Being paid only £53 a week benefits for 30 hours a week work equals just £1.30 an hour, for parents this would mean increasing childcare, on no extra money.

Researchers found that, between May and November last year, more than 1,600 people had their benefits cut for up to six months for refusing to start a placement or leaving it before it finished.

The assessment revealed over a five month period, those who entered the scheme were actually less likely to go into paid employment than those who didn’t. This is probably due to the fact they have no time to job hunt and attend interviews while getting a job at the end of their scheme is also unlikely as the employers can just apply for the next shipment of free workers.

The money to run this scheme is coming from the cuts made to the NHS, schools and pensions.

It all amounts to a big fat subsidy for bosses. Because the minimum wage is below the government’s poverty threshold, it has to top up wages with Working Tax Credits, funded from general taxation. This system which makes ordinary people subsidise the bosses’ poverty wages is bad enough.

But normalising a system where the unemployed have to work for free is even worse. After all, it’s the bosses who throw people on the dole in order to keep their profits high – we think bosses who sack people should have their companies confiscated and managed by the government.

Unemployment is a construct of capitalism which increases competition, keeping wages low.

We want to abolish unemployment. By raising taxes on the rich we can employ people in socially-useful jobs like house-building.

Boycott workfare – fight for a job and living wage for all!

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Bolton: defend union democracy!

June 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

On Monday evening around 80 students and activists gathered at the University of Bolton to protest against the suspension of Student Union President, Shana Begum.

A combination of Bolton students, local youth, trade unionists and activists from anti-cuts campaigns converged on the University buildings to put pressure on the University management.

Although Student Unions must legally be run through student-democracy, the University bosses have replaced Shana with an unelected University Governor, Chris Minta.

Minta has been installed by the VC, George Holmes and is only accountable to the University itself, not the student body he is supposed to represent.

Whilst it was encouraging to see activists from many different campaigns and organisations coming out in support of Shana, there is one organisation who’s presence would make a huge difference.

Chris Minta is the branch secretary for the UCU at Bolton, although there were UCU members at the demonstration, a greater presence from them would surely have been hugely significant.

After meeting outside the Students Union, the demonstration moved to the Octagon Theatre to pressure the University officials enjoying themselves in there, probably under the pretext of having a meeting.

Of course, a peaceful gathering of activists and students merits a small amount of police harassment, and we were not disappointed. Our friends in blue were out in force making sure we did not commit atrocities such as blocking a footpath or “causing a fire-hazard.” It was disheartening for activists on the demonstration to see the organisers asking the police for permission to walk about in a public area and advising the police as to where we were headed next.

Overall the demo was important step towards organising more widely to defend student democracy. Student Unions are an important part of the fight against the Con-Dem Government’s attacks on higher education as well as a vital support for students against problems such as racism, coping with disabilities, academic issues and financial problems.

Without a democratically elected leadership, Student Unions are just another part of the University bureaucracy and will not work in the interests of students.

Successive governments have gradually restricted SU powers, enthusiastically supported by the University itself, which funds the SU. Ultimately the role of the state and university bosses in funding our Student Unions means they can never be truly independent bodies fighting in our interest.

  • Shana Begum should be immediately reinstated, with unreserved apology from uni bosses.

  • Campus Student Unions should organise solidarity action, and offer practical support like fundraising.
     
  • At a national level, the NUS and UCU should condemn this attack. 
     
  • Students should form a democratic committee to investigate the actions of university management. 

The National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts is a grassroots organisation dedicated to fighting for student democracy and free education. It organises in many universities across Britain and led the student movement in 2010 after the NUS shamefully caved in to the Con-Dem coalition. Find out more

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Unemployment at its highest in decades

June 1, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Unemployment is currently rising to the historic mark of 3 million. Although recent statistic show that it has dipped slightly, the reality is the coalition have fiddled the figures by placing the unemployed onto workfare training courses such as A4E and Best. Recently A4E has been in the spotlight for allegations of fraud by making up jobs that they managed to find for them or another tactic being used is to sanction those that are unemployed for menial errors.

Leeds Unemployment Action group has recently been set up; we have regular meetings and leaflet local jobcentres talking to people signing on. Last week whilst down at park place job centre I was speaking to a young man who told me he’s lost his Job seeker’s allowance (JSA) due to the fact he misunderstood the time of his next appointment to sign on subsequently he lost his JSA for a month. I asked him “Did you apply for a crisis loan?” His reply “Yeah but they wouldn’t give me one as they didn’t in their opinion consider me in severe enough need!” The fact somebody else can decide whether or not you need money to live off just highlights the disgrace our government are.

The argument the coalition give for cutting public sector jobs is that it will be offset by the boost in private sector jobs. Latest evidence show the contrary happening as those in the public sector lose their jobs

The private sector is unable to make up for the demand as the economy is being hampered by the lack of consumer spending and the crisis in the Eurozone.

Those that claim disability living allowance (DSA) or Employment support allowance (ESA) are facing re-assessment. Already dozens of disabled people who can’t cope with facing re-assessment and consequently losing their benefit have committed suicide. The coalition government has contracted out the re-assessment to a private multinational corporation called Atos. The re-assessment criteria is deliberately geared towards throwing as many disabled people off the sick register, Atos is given a bonus incentive by the government for every sick person it manages to find somehow rather miraculously “fit and healthy.” With Remploy factories been closed down it will throw even more disabled people into unemployment because they simply can’t get a job anywhere else.

Being unemployed is a constant uphill struggle and incredibly demoralising. Unite have recently launched a community membership programme. For just 50p a week, people not in work and over the age of 16 can receive a range of advice, including access to Unite’s legal helpline, debt counselling, assistance on claiming benefits and the chance to talk to people in a similar position as them. There are already branches set up in Sheffield, Salford and Liverpool with plans to extend further afield. Having the unemployed in a union branch would be a step forward in giving them a bigger voice and fighting back against austerity.

 

 

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