Uniting against the real causes of oppression is better than poor people lashing out at the nearest scapegoat

I attended  an information day in Liverpool regarding a reconciliation-based Summer Play Scheme  — Protestants and Catholics together to build trust and friendships — in 1979. At that information day, a participant said that an affluent Roman Catholic resident away from the strife-ridden areas had told him:

"These Catholic-Protestant troubles have nothing to do with us; it's just those working class families fighting among themselves."

In 2016, after the Brexit vote, there seems to be an upsurge in racist hate crime that needs to be addressed. Perhaps the following is the backdrop to that rise of the race hatred gutter into communities after political Punch & Judy pantomime?:

1. David Cameron's, "We're all in this boat together" statement came as a façade for a 2010 post-General Election coalition with the 'market liberals' of the Liberal Democrats known as the 'Orange Book' Lib Dems, through cuts in public spending that seem to have been especially targeted at various strands of the most vulnerable people in British society via the 'bedroom tax' and even nastier 'welfare reforms' than Blairite Labour had brought in. (As previously stated on this blog though, the harsher 'Work Capability Assessment' by which Employment & Support Allowance entitlement was assessed was authorised by Yvette Cooper as one of her final acts as Work & Pensions Secretary in office in April 2010. It was not piloted until early 2011, and so the 'Con-Dem' coalition got the blame for that.) The even nastier strands of 'welfare reform' included not only benefit sanctions, but also
   • 'bedroom tax' reduction in Housing Benefit,
   • reduced support from central government to local authorities leading to imposition of Council Tax payments on the poorest citizens, and
   • 'overall benefit cap' as part of Universal Credit

2. Capitulation of opposition party councils with 'Con-Dem' government attacks on Housing Benefit and the imposition of Council Tax payments on the poorest, while rents rose considerably and council lands was sold off to builders for ridiculously low prices, council waiting lists were closed down, very poor people were evicted, global money launderers bought up large swathes of London and other UK cities, and the racist UK Independence Party's 'blame it all on migrant workers' explanation became mainstream
3. More of the same after the 2015 General Election that introduced an outright Conservative Party majority that claimed a 'mandate' for more of the same nastinesses
4. A greater emphasis on xenophobia in British politics as the nation moved toward an EU Referendum while social housing entitlements were attacked in the Housing & Planning Bill 2016, and the 'EU Referendum Debate' became effectively a smoke screen for attacks on poor people's entitlements in favour of the global money launderers and profiteers buying up the UK and the workfare companies that operate as legalised, taxpayer-funded human traffickers
5. A week before the actual UK EU Referendum took place, a pro-EU Labour MP was murdered by a mentally disturbed person who had swallowed the race hatred of 'Britain First' wholesale, and a truce was called between the opposing factions in the EU Referendum, before hostilities resumed.
6. Those who scapegoated 'foreigners' now seem to take the superficial polarisation of public opinion in their favour as licence to attack and abuse 'foreigners'

Now, 

• Hackney Unites in association with Hope Not Hate is calling a community meeting on the theme #moreincommon
• Islington Tribune reports that a 'Post-Brexit race hate attack sparks fear of rise in 'community tensions', and a similar report in the Camden New Journal.

There is hope. With its focus on helping benefit claimants with their claims, Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group meeting every Thursday from 3pm to 5:20pm at Kingsgate Community Centre has built a very ethnically diverse membership and now finds its diversity of 'mother tongues' an advantage in translating people's stories for the benefit of the caseworkers. In our campaigning alongside the casework, we help direct attention also to what is really going on and who is really to blame.

By Dude Swheatie

Related link addresses

• http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/eu-can-i-stay-or-must-i-go.html
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Orange_Book:_Reclaiming_Liberalism
• http://us2.campaign-archive2.com/?u=b82d5d5a7ac69045df976d76f&id=fe63305f0a&e=9bb347a936
• http://www.islingtontribune.com/postbrexitracehateattack
• http://www.katebelgrave.com/2016/06/youre-the-kind-of-immigrant-that-we-want/
• http://www.katebelgrave.com/2016/06/while-politicians-amuse-themselves-austerity-continues-rampant-etc/
• http://londongreenleft.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/brexit-uk-in-crisis.html
• http://kilburnunemployed.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/minister-for-bins-letwin-to-head-brexit-unit.html
• http://www.camdennewjournal.com/brexit-hate-crime
• https://www.carolinelucas.com/latest/farage-was-frontman-for-biggest-establishment-stitch-up-in-a-generation

From Cannon Fodder to Sanctions Fodder, 'Your Country Needs You'?

While the Royal Mint is releasing a 'your country needs you' coin to commemorate the start of WW1, I believe these words from an August 2010 blog post by Peter Beresford are highly relevant:

Fear and insecurity

These days as I listen to the radio, overhear conversations or have casual contact with strangers, I am increasingly hearing people highlight two targets from a growing sense of fear and insecurity. I am shocked at how often conversations turn to attacks on immigrants/asylum seekers and people on benefits and how much 'they' are costing 'us'.

These are both groups with more than their fair share of problems to bring to social work and social care, yet the prevailing response is increasingling negative and hostile. I have had to listen to such poisonous tirades when I've bough things in shops. I've overheard such rants from neighbours in a supermarket café, standing in a post office queue and sitting on a bus. Worst still are the radio phone-ins where tam experts who'll to the dominant line encourage callers who respond in kind. But perhaps worst and most irresponsible of all, are government websites that encourage all kinds of hate mail against people on benefits.

Grimly fascinating

There's something reminiscent of the mindless cruelty of first world war conscientious objector tribunals and medical boards set up to drive people into the bloodbath of the western front in these developments. With it comes a sense that it may be more and more risky and difficult to speak out against them....

Isn't it marvellous that instead of creating real waged employment for people, this Government is finding more and more stupid reasons to deprive tens of thousands of JSA claimants per month of an income?

Alan Wheatley

PS: Peter Beresford has since commented on my comments:

 thanks for this Alan, what a dreadful coin and how true your comment is. all v best peter

A current example of how the Government is maligning benefit claimants while letting extortionate landlords get away with robbing the public purse is this January 2014 headline from the Daily Mail: Revealed: How 33,000 families were claiming more than £26,000 per year in benefits before benefit cap was imposed.

Of course, as Mike McNabb pointed out in 2011, the Mail tends to focus on maligning vulnerable people rather than highlighting how offshore companies have been the ones really milking the system. And when I was interviewed by a Mail on Sunday reporter in February 2003 about something entirely different, I mentioned to the reporter that I was a disabled jobseeker who had applied to teach computing skills to [other] disabled people. So, presumably to give my witness account greater credibility to Mail on Sunday readers, the reporter stated that I taught computing skills to disabled people and did not mention my true source of income.

Alan Wheatley