The ConDems have introduced a Bedroom Tax from April 1st, 2013. This will cut 14% off housing benefit if a household has one ‘spare’ bedroom and 25% for households with two or more. Those who are affected will lose an average of £14 – 16 per week. An estimated 660,000 of working age social tenants across the nation will be hit and face the stark choice of moving home or existing within a stasis of further debt and hardship. Disabled people, single parents who are not designated as the ‘main carer’ for their children, couples sleeping apart due to medical conditions … all will be hit, with children of the same sex expected to share up until 16, and those of the opposite sex up to 10. In order to legitimise this a fairytale of housing shortages has been spun but the real shortage is of one and two bedroom properties. This is not about freeing up social housing, this is a callous attack on the poorest of society as only those who are claiming benefits are currently affected. What began with the Tories in the ’80’s with their right-to-buy policy has come to this! The new, improved Poll Tax!! … and Labour are backing it all the way.
People have been fighting back. Grassroots campaigns have been conducted en masse across the UK, but these very protests have been hijacked by the Labour ‘Left’. 57 supposedly apolitical events have been seized and monopolised by a Labour ‘Committee’ who have censored any left wing groups and their attempts to speak the truth. Ordinary people too, have found themselves silenced when attempting to express their concern at Labour’s backing of the Tax. The blocking of people from Facebook event pages has been widespread. Labour have merely been furthering their own political agenda. If these protests are indeed non-political, and if as the tired mantra that ‘we are all in it together’ exists than why does one political party assume authority and why are no other parties, groups or individuals permitted to have representatives showing their solidarity with the cause?
Reclaim it!! The protest belongs to us, all of us, and it is imperative that we continue the fight. The ConDems and Labour benefit by weakening our collective might. We have achieved so much by standing up for our rights but it is crucial now more than ever that we remain vigilant and are not fooled by government ‘concessions’ aimed at little more than appeasement. The Bedroom Tax is just the tip of the iceberg, a mere sliver of only 20% of the announced reforms – there is so much more to come! There have been concessions, the tax revoked for those in the armed forces and some revisions made for foster carers and the disabled but as such it has become a diversion serving the interests of the exploiting class and their divide and rule ethos. We fight one unfair cut while they implement the universal credit system and hack away at what is left of our NHS. What a happy coincedence that the new Universal Credit System will make people ‘better off’ as regards the Bedroom Tax, thus legitimising it and making it a ‘good’ and ‘essential’ thing. Our NHS, itself a government concession back in 1945 to appease people who were beginning to realise the considerable merits of the Soviet system is now under immense threat, and while our attention is absorbed by the harsh realities of the Bedroom Tax our health service is torn to pieces, reshaped and remodelled in the style of the USA. Think you are poor? Soon you will be in poverty will no access to what ought to be a basic right. Mainstream media is saturated with fables of the failings of our NHS, our public service, thus legitimising the private raping of the system.
We must fight against all reforms. We must reclaim the fight and stand together as one. Capitalism strives to divide us by pitting the poor against the poorer. CPGB-ML are against all cuts!
