This from
"brickburner":
The
Cull of the working class.
As we all
know by now, the dreaded Bedroom Tax has arrived. This of course is
the latest of a long list of attacks on working class people. We must
be careful not to view these attacks in isolation – they constitute
a coordinated assault on working class people particularly the most
vulnerable members of society; the sick and disabled. It has been
estimated that eight in ten people affected by the Bedroom Tax are
disabled. Many of those have already been through a work capability
assessment conducted by the French firm Atos, on behalf of the
Department of Works and Pensions, which has resulted in them losing
their benefits.
Michael Meacher M.P. led a commons debate on
the 17th. January this year in which he criticised almost every
aspect of Atos’s operations including the thousands of people who
have died after being declared fit for work. You can see his speech
on You Tube. Atos has been widely and repeatedly criticised
by the British Medical Association, and is subject to constant
lobbying by disabled groups throughout the country. This callous
treatment of the sick and disabled goes hand in hand with the
emergence of a new and sinister trend of political thought has
developed over the term of the present Government, which sees welfare
benefit claimants and those at the very bottom of society as lazy,
dishonest stupid scroungers who are less than human.
The
Government’s sustained attacks on the weakest in society are
reminiscent of the Nazis treatment of some of their own citizens
prior to the beginning of the Second World War when they “assessed”
the sick and disabled to see if they were physically and mentally fit
to live. Those human beings whom they termed Lebensunwertes
Leban-“life unworthy of life”, and “useless eaters” were
callously exterminated. The German authorities managed to persuade
the population at large through written and pictorial propaganda,
that this extermination was morally acceptable and that the sick and
disabled were a drain on the economy. They managed to do this by
“dehumanising” people.
An article in The Guardian on
11May 2013, reported on research carried out at the University of
Louvain by Jacque-Philippe Leyens which suggests that low status
groups including the poor, homeless people, drug addicts and welfare
claimants are seen by others as less than “fully human”. Leyens
has coined the term “infrahumanisation”- the infra for “below”,
as in below or less than fully human to describe this development of
everyday dehumanisation. As Robert de Vries in the Guardian article
puts it, “The Government’s cuts to welfare benefits are causing
real harm to a lot of innocent people, nevertheless, remarkable
numbers seem to be willing to support them”, and, “People
struggling to get by in their own lives will find it hard to
sympathise with those they feel are getting a free ride”.
The
Government propaganda about “shirkers” and “strivers not
skivers” seems therefore to be working. Unfortunately, on
programmes such as “Question Time”, these phrases have been
enthusiastically adopted by many members of the audience. This of
course is a classic example of the “Divide and Conquer” strategy
being employed against the working class.
Another ruse used
by the Government to justify their unremitting attacks on the working
class is the mythology that cuts are necessary, and “that we are
all in this together”. The idea that those at the top of society
will suffer just as much as those at the bottom would be laughable if
it were not so insulting and contemptible; the very people who
decided to cut the living standards of working class people are in
the process of voting themselves a pay rise of between £10 to £20
thousand pounds a year. Most of us would be delighted to live on just
the pay rise, but in fact MP’s will now get more than £75,000 a
year-some of them want £100,000, - yet they have the nerve to say
that we all have to share the pain! And of course the Bankers still
get their bonuses and Multi-nationals manage to dodge paying tax.
The claim that cuts in public services are necessary at all
is a complete lie. As Tony Benn once said, “If you can find money
to kill people, you can find money to help people”. According to
U.K. Government figures Britain spent at least £9.24 billion in Iraq
and £11.1 billion in Afghanistan between April 2001 and March 2010,
and that’s not taking into account what has been squandered from
2010 till now. The so-called Ministry of Defence lost £74 million
pounds of taxpayers’ money recently on a cancelled order for
fighter jets. (Richard Johnstone, Public Finance 10 May 2013). So it
would seem that there is plenty of money to wage illegal and
pointless wars, but not enough money to create a caring peaceful
society.
There is another war going on at the moment; it is
the class war. A war waged by those at the top of society against
those at the bottom. We are the victims of this war. For generations
working class people have had to endure poor wages, bad and often
dangerous working conditions, industrial illnesses and long periods
of financial hardship. Working class people are still being
killed daily in this war. Literally thousands of people die every
year after Atos has passed them fit for work. People have been forced
to work for benefit money; before long regular workers will be sacked
then they too can work for slave wages and will join the millions of
others living below the breadline. Warren Buffett an American
billionaire business magnate once said, “There’s class warfare
all right, but it’s my class - the rich class that’s making war,
and we’re winning!”
Through these measures, the
Government has upped the ante in their war against the disabled and
unemployed. If you aren’t in work, or are sick or disabled you
don’t deserve to live, - you are a useless eater! In this war
against the working class the sick, the disabled and the unemployed
are being culled. The Government are killing working class people. If
this seems far fetched, you only have to remember this, the entire
Nazi extermination programme which culminated in the Holocaust,
started in 1939 with the T4 euthanasia program which targeted sick
and disabled people. If the German people had resisted at this stage
the Second World War may never have happened.
The only way we
can prevent history repeating itself, is for ordinary working class
people to organise and fight back. We have to combat the Bedroom Tax
and all the other cuts that the Government and their friends in big
business are trying to impose on us. We have to rely on ourselves and
not on politicians; they are part of the problem not the solution!
Above all, we have to overcome the State’s attempts to
divide and rule us; we need to show our fellow workers that we have
nothing in common with the boss class and that we must build our own
organisations and strong communities to unite against them.
Only
then can we hope to win the class war.
ann arky's home.
