Demonstrators gathered at High Riggs Jobcentre today 27th September to demand the re-instatement of the £20 cut to Universal Credit. The protest was called by Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty in response to a call from Disabled People Against the Cuts for UK-wide protests. Participants included a group of school students. Police attended but did not intervene.
The demonstrators denounced the UK government cut, due to be implemented from the end of this month. Protestors held placards with the hashtag #20MoreForAll, demanding the £20 pandemic increase be extended to “legacy benefits” like Job Seekers Allowance and Employment and Support Allowance.
Demonstrators distribute leaflets headed RESIST THE £20 CUT TO UNIVERSAL CREDIT – below an adapted excerpt:
The cut in Universal Credit and Working Tax Credits follows years of cuts as social security rates were either frozen or increased by less than inflation. It is yet another example of governments attacking the poor to benefit the rich.
The Child Poverty Action Group reveal that over the past decade nearly 100 cuts have been made to social security entitlement and that the cumulative effect of these policies totalled about £36 billion cut annually pre-COVID. CPAG state: “Households with children have faced the brunt of these cuts.” The value of social security payments has fallen so that even with the £20 increase a typical Universal Credit household in low paid employment and with two children would be receiving hundreds of pounds less social security in 2021 than in 2010. The £20 cut would mean this cut would be more than doubled.
This brutal cut is also an attack on wages and conditions, aiming to force people to accept insecure low paid jobs. Many on Universal Credit are of course already in such badly paid work, since 39% of the six million Universal Credit claimants are in employment.
We need to organise at the grass-roots to resist this cut, the entire austerity agenda, and the whole profit-based system which is based on the exploitation of the vast majority – and is even endangering humanity’s existence through the climate crisis.
SOLIDARITY AND MUTUAL AID
ECAP encourages claimants to join together and support each other – for example by accompanying each other to appointments and assessments. We support people to win the benefits they need. We run a weekly support session at the Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh. We hold regular stalls outside Leith and High Riggs jobcentres. We are opposing the DWP’s reckless return to compulsory jobcentre appointments – this endangers both claimants and jobcentre workers, due to the continuing covid threat.
We totally oppose all sanctions, and urge claimants to contact us for solidarity. Contact us if you need support over any benefits/ poverty-related issue, and do get in touch if you are interested in getting involved – we very much need and welcome new people.
Whether at work, in education, or in the community, people need to organise autonomously and be prepared to take direct action.
It is no good relying on political parties for meaningful change, they only want to run the existing capitalist system – as long as the economy is based on making profits there will be exploitation, poverty and environmental destruction. People everywhere need to resist today with a view to building a collective power to make fundamental revolutionary change – RECLAIM THE WORLD!
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Disabled People Against Cuts website https://dpac.uk.net
Child Poverty Action Group on the impact of the cut to Universal Credit
Search with the hashtag #20MoreForAll for reports of actions round the UK opposing the cut to Universal Credit and demanding £20 more for all claimants
