Posts Tagged ‘Unite Community’

Budget Day, Shaker and Sotheby’s – 2015

Saturday, July 8th, 2023

Budget Day, Shaker and Sotheby’s: Wednesday 8th July 2015 was budget day, and campaigners were out in Whitehall to protest. For the Save Shaker Aamer Campaign it was just another Wednesday and they lined up to remind MPs of the need for action. Later United Voices of the World were back at Sotheby’s who had sacked four workers for taking part in the previous week’s protest.

DPAC Protests – Downing St, Westminster Bridge & Parliament Square

Budget Day, Shaker and Sotheby's - 2015

Disabled People Against Cuts supporters, some in wheelchairs and mobility scooters, were protesting against the changes to benefits which will hit the disabled hardest. Their supporters included Global Women’s Strike, Winvisible, Women Against Rape, Unite Community and Class War.

Budget Day, Shaker and Sotheby's - 2015

They began at Downing St with a ‘Balls to the Budget’ protest, arriving with footballs and balloons and and after some speeches on the pavement opposite Paula Peters led protesters across the road towards the gates, which were protected by two lines of police.

Budget Day, Shaker and Sotheby's - 2015

From there they tried to throw balls carrying messages such as ‘If the Tories had a soul they’d sell it’, ‘Cuts Kill‘ and ‘Blood on your hands‘ over the gates, but most fell short.

Budget Day, Shaker and Sotheby's - 2015

They then moved off down Whitehall and Parliament Street on their way to Westminster Bridge. Police who had largely stood back and watched earlier tried to persuade them to go on to the pavement but were ignored.

They moved to the middle of Westminster Bridge as a small group on the Embankment in front of St Thomas’s Hospital facing the Houses of Parliament displayed a huge banner with the message ‘#Balls2TheBudget #DPAC’ with ahand making an appropriate two-finger sign.

This was then brought up onto the bridge and stretched across its full width, and along with the protesters it completely blocked traffic in both directions.

After some minutes Paula Peters called for the protesters to move to Parliament, leading the protesters and the huge banner on her own chariot past Boadicea.

Here they made use of the banner to completely block all traffic moving through the busy road junction.

They held a short rally on the street and were joined by strikers marching down from the National Gallery led by the sacked PCS rep Candy Udwin, victimised for her trade union activities.

By now police patience had grown thin, and reinforcements arrived to try to clear the protesters from the streets. They tried to grab the large banner and began to push protesters and press onto the pavements.

The press as usual obeyed the police instructions more or less, though that didn’t stop some being pushed rather too violently. Most of the protesters let themselves be pushed to the pavement, but many of those in wheelchairs refused to move. Eventually police made some arrests, including Andy Greene of DPAC who was on his mobility scooter.

Eventually police brought a specially adapted van they had hired into which they could put Andy, still on his mobility scooter and the others arrested and take them safely to the police station. Unlike normal police vans it had large windows through which I was able to take pictures.

More on My London Diary
DPAC Parliament Square Budget Day protest
DPAC blocks Westminster Bridge
DPAC ‘Balls to the Budget’

Joint Strikers Budget Day Rally

Public sector workers striking against the privatisation of the council services in Barnet and Bromley came to join the PCS strikers and held a rally in Parliament Square, along with various trade union speakers, including one of the four cleaners sacked by Sotheby’s.

Joint Strikers Budget Day Rally

Save Shaker Aamer weekly vigil

The Save Shaker Aamer Campaign was also in Parliament Square, holding its regular Wednesday weekly vigil calling for the immediate release and return to the UK of Londoner Shaker Aamer and for the closure of the illegal torture prison at Guantanamo.

Save Shaker Aamer weekly vigil

Sotheby’s 4 sacked for protesting

Later I met the United Voices of the World and their supporters at Oxford Circus, marching with them to Sotheby’s.- in Old Bond Street. As well as their original demands for proper sick pay, holidays and pensions they were now demanding the reinstatement of the ‘Sotheby’s 4’, cleaners sacked for taking place in the protest a week earlier.

At Sotheby’s police tried to move them away to the other side of the road, but the protesters, including a group from Class War and supporters from Lewisham People Against Profit, SOAS Unison, the National Gallery strikers and others ignored their requests. They left the entrance clear but wanted to make their presence clearly felt, protesting on the road outside.

Eventually two vans of police reinforcements arrived and started to push the protesters away, leading to a number of arguments. Eventually protesters were pushed to the pavement opposite, making it easier for taxis to drop clients directly in front of the entrance to Sotheby’s rather than having to walk past the noisy protest.

The protest was continuing when I had to leave after around an hour later.

Much more on My London Diary at Sotheby’s 4 sacked for protesting.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in My Own Work, Political Issues | No Comments »

National Day of Action against Universal Credit 2018

Wednesday, May 24th, 2023

National Day of Action against Universal Credit 2018
Campaigners spell out ‘stopuniversalcredit’ in the Tate Modern Turbine Hall; the ‘#’ was delaying security

Thursday 24th May 2018 was the Unite National Day of Action against Universal Credit and I photographed two of the events in London for this, a protest by a group of campaigners from Camden Unite Community at Tate Modern and a rally outside Parliament which was followed by a march to protest outside the Department of Work and Pensions. The pictures come from these events.

National Day of Action against Universal Credit 2018

Back in 2010 when the idea of Universal Credit was announced by Iain Duncan Smith it was true that the UK’s benefits system was something of a muddle, and the aim of producing a simpler system which brought six existing benefits together was probably laudable. But its implementation has been a disaster for many.

National Day of Action against Universal Credit 2018

Those six benefits had each been introduced to deal with particular needs, and though not perfect they more or less worked. Trying to fit everything into a single system has proved to be far more difficult, and many of the decisions made about how the system might work failed to take into account the circumstances in which those on low incomes actually live and the lack of supporting resources the wealthier take for granted, such as friends and family with money and bank accounts with savings.

National Day of Action against Universal Credit 2018

When announced, Iain Duncan Smith promised it would make the social security system fairer to claimants and taxpayers, but as it came into being it became clear that the main objective was to cut the cost to taxpayers and to provide what is effectively a handout to companies and organisations which employ workers on low rates of pay.

The plans for introducing UC hugely underestimated the complexities of the system, particularly as it applies to the the most precarious of workers, many of whom are now employed on zero hours contracts with no guaranteed weekly hours of work. There were huge problems with computer systems partly because of the complexity but also because of a failure to understand the problems and to properly specify what was needed.

The real motivation behind UC was made clear in 2015 when George Osborne announced a future £3.2 billion a year cut to the overall Universal Credit budget, reducing work allowances and reducing and limiting the per-child element of support. These cuts were later partly reversed by Philip Hammond.

The transition from the legacy benefits to UC has been extremely hard for many, particularly as some have had a period of up to 13 weeks before receiving their first payment under UC. Food banks have been put under great strain because of this and benefit sanctions. 60% of tenants put onto UC have been forced into arrears on their rents and many have faced eviction.Some have become desperate enough to take their own lives.

Wikipedia quotes a report that in 2018 a million working “homeowners now getting tax credits will have less with the new system and lose on average £43 a week. 600,000 working single parents will lose on average £16 per week and roughly 750,000 households on disability benefits will lose on average £75 per week. Nearly 2 in 5 households receiving benefits will be on average worse off by £52 per week.”

Universal Credit has become a mess and various small changes the successive governments have been forced into making have hardly improved it. There are some measures which could be taken to improve the situation. Large increases in the minimum wage with the aim of moving to a situation where those in work would be adequately paid and not need UC would help. Changes in employment law including the replacement of zero hours contracts by a fair flexible contract system would also make a contribution. But almost certainly the best solution would be to move to a universal basic wage.

Thursday 24th May was the Unite National Day of Action against Universal Credit and I photographed two of the events in London for this, a protest by a group of campaigners from Camden Unite Community at Tate Modern and a rally outside Parliament which was followed by a march to protest outside the Department of Work and Pensions.

More details on the protests on Thursday 24th May 2018 by campaigners at Tate Modern, the rally outside Parliament and march to protest outside the DWP on My London Diary.

Universal Credit rally & march
Universal Credit protest at Tate Modern

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in My Own Work, Political Issues | No Comments »

Climate, Universal Credit and Boycott Israel

Thursday, December 1st, 2022

Three protests in London four years ago on Saturday 1st December 2018

Stop Universal Credit day of action – Camden Town, Saturday 1st December 2018

Climate, Universal Credit and Boycott Israel

Protests were taking place across the country called by Unite Community in a day of action against the continuing problems of Universal Credit, a reform and simplification of benefits. The main drive behind the move to this was to cut the amount that benefits cost the country and its implementation has been extremely badly thought out and managed, largely under the control of IDS, the widely detested Iain Duncan Smith, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions from 2010 to 2016.

I chose to photograph the protest at Camden largely because it was taking place next to an Underground station which I could conveniently travel to and then back to the main event I was covering. I could have taken similar pictures at other locations across London or elsewhere.

Climate, Universal Credit and Boycott Israel

The campaigners want an end to the long wait which leaves claimants penniless for six weeks or more before UC kicks in and for them to be able to make their applications in person at job centres as well as online, which causes difficulties for many, either because they lack the equipment and connection or particularly among older people competence on-line. They point to UC having created incredible hardship, pushing many into extreme poverty and destitution, making them reliant on food banks and street food distributions and greatly increasing the number of homeless and rough sleepers. Thanks to Tory policies, more than 120,000-plus homeless children in Britain will spend Christmas in hostels and B&Bs, many without the means or facilities to provide a Christmas meal.

Climate, Universal Credit and Boycott Israel

Academic studies suggest that UC is a part of a “state euthanasia” system for the poor, with academic estimates that it and other benefit cuts and sanctions since the 2010 elections having caused 110,000 early deaths, including many suicides. A cross party committee has called for its rollout to be halted until improvements are made, but the government has dismissed virtually all criticism of the system, making only insignificant changes.

Partly the problem obviously comes from the complete failure of IDS and others planning the system to understand what it is like to be poor. They have savings and resources – families with money and the ability to get loans and overdrafts, well-stocked cupboards, quarterly energy bills rather than having to pay in advance and so on. They are used to being paid their larger salaries on a monthly basis. Most of those claiming benefits have no savings and no one to help them tide over even a few days without money.

Stop Universal Credit day of action

Together for Climate Justice – Saturday 1st December 2018

The Campaign against Climate Change has organised marches, protests and rallies since its formation in 2001 when it protested against Bush’s rejection of the Kyoto treaty, including an annual event around the time of the UN Climate talks since 2005, and I’ve photographed most of these. Particularly in recent years they have been joined by many other groups as concern over the climate disaster has convinced a wider audience of the need for urgent action to save our life on Earth.

In 2018 they were extremely worried that the UN climate talks in Katowice, Poland, taking place the following week, were being sponsored by leading firms in Poland’s fossil fuel industry. Several thousand marchers gathered outside the Polish embassy for a rally before marching through central London to Downing St.

Outside the embassy we listened to a whole raft of speakers including ncluding Labour MP Clive Lewis, Green Party co-leader Sian Berry, Anna Gretton from Extinction Rebellion, UCU Vice President Nita Sanghera, Neil Keveren of the No 3rd Runway Coalition, Paul Allen from Zero Carbon Britain, Beatriz Ratton of Brazilian Women Against Fascism, Asad Rehman of War on Want who all expressed solidarity with protesters in Poland and stressed the urgent need to cut CO2 and methane emissions.


We then learnt and practised a few Polish slogans, some of which were on the placards for the protest including ‘Razem dla klimatu’ (Together for the Climate) which appeared on a number of placards, and the rather less pronounceable Polish for ‘Time to limit to 1.5’, as well as for ‘Climate, jobs, justice!’.

We got more speeches at a rally at the end of the march opposite Downing St, with Labour MP Barry Gardiner, Liz Hutchins of Friends of the Earth, a woman from Frack Free United, In the final speech Claire James of Campaign against Climate Change introduced a speaker on behalf of the Global South, where people are already dying because of climate change.

Together for Climate Justice

BBC Boycott Eurovision Israel 2019 – Broadcasting House, Sat 1 Dec 2018

Finally after the climate rally ended I rushed up to Broadcasting House where the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and others were calling on the BBC to withdraw from the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest hosted by Israel, to avoid being complicit in Israel’s ongoing violations of Palestinian human rights.

Campaigners said that the contest was being used to ‘artwash’ Israel’s human rights record as a state whose laws have created an apartheid system in Israel and Palestine, and whose forces in the last eight months since protests began in Gaza have killed over 200 Palestinians.

As well as the PSC, the protest and the #BoycottEurovision2019 was supported by the Stop The War Coalition, Palestinian Forum UK and Friends of Al-Aqsa (FOA). Also present in a pen a few yards away were around 15 Zionist counter-protesters who waved Israeli flags and shouted insults and lies, with one man loudly insistent that Palestine had never existed.

I’m happy to boycott Eurovision wherever it is taking place, and have been doing so ever since it began.

BBC Boycott Eurovision Israel 2019

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in My Own Work, Political Issues | No Comments »

Universal Discredit

Monday, May 24th, 2021

T-shirts spell out StopUniversalCredit’ in Tate Modern Turbine Hall on the Unite Day of Action against Universal Credit, 24 May 2018

There were some positive ideas behind the introduction of Universal Credit, a new social security payment system first announced by the then Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, in 2010, claiming it would make the social security system fairer to claimants and taxpayers. It aimed to simplify the system by replacing six existing benefits for working-age people who have a low household income: income-based Employment and Support Allowance, income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance, Income Support, Child Tax Credit, Working Tax Credit and Housing Benefit. It would also taper off gradually as people moved into employment, removing the ‘cliff edge’ of losing benefits when going back into work.

But both Duncan Smith and Welfare Reform Minister David Freud, had failed to grasp the complexity of the varied and often varying circumstances of those in low paid and often insecure employment, particularly those on zero hours contracts or other sporadic or seasonal work, or with fluid family arrangements. Nor did they make clear that the main driver behind their changes was to simply cut the cost of benefits. And it now seems likely it will end up being more expensive than the benefits it replaced.

Outside Parliament

Following the Welfare Reform Act 2012, UC roll-out began to selected claimants at pilot job centres in 2013, and problems rapidly became apparent. There were entirely predictable problems with the IT system and the implementation costs were six times the initial forecast at £12 billion. The roll-out was intended to be more or less complete by 2017, but is now expected to take until 2024. Cuts were made to the initial system by George Osborne in 2015, making the transition to work less generous and removing some of the payments for child support, though these were partly restored in 2018 by Philip Hammond. And in 2020 there was a temporary £20 increase as a response to Covid.

What is clear is that the introduction of UC has caused a great deal of hardship to claimants, some temporary, some permanent. It has led to many being unable to keep up rent payments with a great increase in evictions and homelessness. UC has been the main driver of the huge increase in the need for foodbanks. It has forced some women into prostitution and made some claimants turn to crime to keep alive – while some have starved to death.

UC has had a particularly hard effect on families with children, particularly those with more than two children since 2017, and also on self-employed claimants and others with fluctuating incomes. Overall there have been both winners and losers, with around half losing out and a little over a third gaining compared to the replaced benefits.

Marching to the DWP

One of the major problems for everyone has been the long wait before any UC is paid, partly because of the change from a weekly to a monthly benefit. Even where the process works smoothly, the delay between making the claim and receiving money is six weeks, and around a fifth of claimants have had to wait around 5 months or more. There are now emergency loans available – but these mean that when people do get their payments they are reduced to repay these advances. There are also many whose benefit has been cut or stopped for largely trivial reasons through a savage system of benefit sanctions imposed by job centres.

Many other problems have also been caused by UC – you can read a long list of criticisms in the Wikipedia article. As well as evictions and homelessness it has resulted in an increase in domestic violence and a steep rise in mental-health problems. And, as the National Audit Office reported, there is no evidence Universal Credit has met its aim of helping people into work and they say it is in many ways unwieldy and inefficient and is unlikely to provide value for money.

It is clear that UC is in need of a complete replacement, and that it’s monumental failure should have led to the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith in 2015 after the DWP admitted publishing fake testimonies of claimants enjoying their benefits cuts and statistics showed 2,380 people died in a 3-year period shortly after a work capability assessment declared them fit for work, but instead he was knighted in 2020. Under the present government we are unlikely to get more than very minor tinkering that will quite likely create more problems that it solves. One of the proposals under debate is that of a Universal Basic Income, along with targeted welfare payments (some of which are still in existence) to cover those with additional needs. Earlier this month the Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford announced that this would be trialled in a pilot scheme in Wales.

Universal Credit rally & march
Universal Credit protest at Tate Modern

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in My Own Work, Political Issues | No Comments »

Hunger, Housing and Injustice

Monday, March 29th, 2021

My work on Saturday 29th March 2019 began in north London at Bruce Castle Park in Tottenham, where the indefatigable Rev Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty had organised a march demanding living incomes and decent truly affordable homes, calling for an end to the bedroom tax, the housing benefit cap, unfair taxes, hunger and cold homes.

The Reverend Paul Nicolson who died peacefully on Thursday 5th March 2020 aged 87 had long campaigned on these issues, and had commissioned the work on poverty that helped groups such as London Citizens and Unison to persuade the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone to introduce the London Living Wage.

His Christian principles led Nicolson to found the Zacchaeus Trust, an anti-poverty charity providing frontline services on Social Security benefits, housing and homelessness as well as the campaigning organisation TAP, and he supported and spoke at many protests calling for justice for disabled and others on low wages and often inadequate benefits.

I left the march as it passed Tottenham Police Station on its way to a rally at Tottenham Green to make my way to Kilburn, where the Counihan Battlebus Housing For All campaign, along with the TUSC Against Cuts and Unite Community were holding a protest in Kilburn Square over child hunger and housing problems, calling for rents to be capped and for everyone to have a home.

Children played a large part in the protest and were having fun, but also making a serious point, with placards “Going to school hungry is not fair!” As I pointed out in my rather long article on the protest:

Children going to school hungry is a direct result of government policy and its inhumane (they call it ‘tough’ to make it sound positive) sanctions policy. What we need is not this kind of vindictive approach but more jobs and an end to poverty wages. And it would be far more productive to attack the huge sums involved in tax evasion and tightening up the rules on tax avoidance than the relatively small amounts of benefit fraud or the largely mythical workshy.

The journey from Kilburn to Parliament Square was fortunately a simple one on the tube and I arrived as students and staff from Oasis Academy Hadley came from Enfield to protest against the planned deportation of one of their students, 19-year-old Yashika Bageerathi. She had come to the UK with her family in 2011 to escape a dangerous situation in Mauritius and was in the final year of her A level course, in which she was expected to get high grades.

The Home Office decided that since she was 19 she could be deported without her family, and had already detained her in Yarl’s Wood ten days earlier. Two deportation attempts failed when both British Airways and Air Mauritius refused to fly her to Mauritius, possibly because of the huge public campaign to allow her to stay and complete her exams.

It was impossible to see why Home Office minister Theresa May was so keen on this deportation – other than wanting to seem to have a tough policy on immigration, and as I wrote, morally their position seemed indefensible. But deport her they finally did.

Despite spells in Yarl’s Wood which disrupted here education and the deportation which took place six weeks before her A Level exams, she was able to take the exams and passed with straight A grades. She then issued a statement thanking everyone – both in the UK and on her return in Mauritius for their support, and clearly stating “I have no desire for a life in the public eye any longer” and that she wished to begin a new chapter in her life.

More at:
Fellow Students Fight for Yashika
Kilburn Uniform Day
Mothers march for justice

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in My Own Work, Political Issues | No Comments »

1st December 2018

Tuesday, December 1st, 2020

Two years ago, the first day in December had been declared Stop Universal Credit day of action by Unite Community and small groups around the country were holding protests and handing out leaflets in busy town centres about the many failures and great hardship caused by this poorly though out and badly administered benefit. They called for an end to the long wait before claimants receive money, for applications to be allowed at job centres as well as online, for better help when the system fails people, for direct payments to landlords to avoid rent arrears and evictions and an end to benefit sanctions for all claimants.

Universal Credit was intended to simplify the benefits system, but it failed to take into account the huge range and complexity of situations ordinary people face, and assumed that claimants would have the same kind of support that the middle-class and wealthy take for granted from families, friends and resources. And its failures were compounded by making it a vehicle for cutting costs. As I commented in 2018:

“UC has created incredible hardship, pushing many into extreme poverty and destitution, making them reliant on food banks and street food distributions, greatly increasing the number of homeless and rough sleepers. Thanks to Tory policies, more than 120,000-plus homeless children in Britain will spend Christmas in hostels and B&Bs, many without the means or facilities to provide a Christmas meal.

Some have said that UC is a part of a “state euthanasia” system for the poor, with academic estimates that it and other benefit cuts and sanctions since the 2010 elections having caused 110,000 early deaths, including many suicides. A cross party committee has called for its rollout to be halted until improvements are made, but the government has dismissed virtually all criticism of the system, making only insignificant changes.”

http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2018/12/dec.htm#universal

I took a detour on my journey into London to photograph the protest outside Camden Town station, where protesters were also pointing out that Universal Credit “hands more financial power to male claimants making it a misogynist’s dream, forcing women in violent relationships into greater dependency on their violent male partners.”

The major protest taking place in London was a march and rally organised by the Campaign against Climate Change. Together for Climate Justice began with a rally outside the Polish Embassy, in advance of the following week’s UN climate talks in Katowice, Poland.

Despite the impending global disaster, little real action is being taken by countries around the world and we still seem committed to a course leading inevitably to mass extinction. Behind the failure to act is the intensive lobbying of companies exploiting fossil fuels who have spent many billions in sowing doubt about the scientific consensus of global warming, and continue to produce vast quantities of coal and oil and explore for further resources, increasingly in the more ecologically sensitive areas of the Earth.

At the rally a wide range of speakers expressed their concerns that the talks in Poland are being sponsored by leading firms in Poland’s fossil fuel industry. And at the rally opposite Downing St where Frack Free United were to hand in their petition at the end of the march, a speaker from the Global South reminded us of the urgency of the situation; people there are already dying because of climate change.

Before the march we were all taught to say a few slogans in Polish, including ‘Razem dla klimatu‘ (Together for the Climate) which appeared on a number of placards, and the rather less pronounceable Polish for ‘Time to limit to 1.5’, as well as for ‘Climate, jobs, justice!’.

Finally I made my way to Broadcasting House, where The Palestine Solidarity Campaign and others were calling on the BBC to withdraw from the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest hosted by Israel, to avoid being complicit in Israel’s ongoing violations of Palestinian human rights.

Campaigners say the contest ‘artwashes’ Israel’s human rights record, including the killing of at least 205 Palestinians by Israeli forces in the besieged Gaza Strip since protests began at the end of March, and the passing of the Jewish nation state law which formalises an apartheid system in Israeli law.

A small group of Zionists had come to oppose the protest, but made it clear that they did not want me to photograph them. Some lifted the Israeli flags they were holding to hide their faces when I pointed my camera in their direct or turned away.

More at:

BBC Boycott Eurovision Israel 2019
Together for Climate Justice
Stop Universal Credit day of action

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in My Own Work, Political Issues | No Comments »