BUILD ON THE VICTORY AGAINST THE HATED BEDROOM TAX!

The Scottish Socialist Party is joining thousands of tenants and workers hammered by the Bedroom Tax in celebrating it's effective burial in Scotland.

We warmly welcome the decision by the Scottish government to increase funding to the full £50m required to pay for every tenant's bedroom tax, either through Discretionary Housing Payments (DHP) or some similar mechanism, should the Westminster government's Department for Work and Pensions carry out their threat of blocking the additional £15m top-up of DHP funds.
This will lift a heavy rock from the shoulders of 85,000 Scottish families directly hit, as they will no longer have to fork out an average £14 a week, usually from a pitiful £71 a week benefit, with the dread of eviction haunting them.

SSP: TIRELESS BEDROOM TAX FIGHTERS

For the past 15 months the SSP has been at the heart and head of the anti-bedroom tax movement, alongside tenants in the No2BedroomTax campaign, trade unionists hit by cuts to wages and jobs passed on by local Housing Association chiefs, and thousands of ordinary people desperate to bin this abomination of a tax on the poorest.
We've conducted countless street stalls every week all over Scotland; held numerous SSP public meetings; spoken alongside others in No2BedroomTax campaign meetings; helped build networks of local people to prevent any threat of evictions; helped build the mighty No2BedroomTax demos last March and later outside the LibDem UK Conference in Glasgow.

SCRAP IT NOW!

Since late 2012 we consistently argued on the streets for its immediate abolition - at a time when most people at first didn't know what we were talking about! - as a vicious and totally unjustified attack on the poorest, which caused family upheaval, hunger, poverty and stress in dread of evictions, and even drove several people to suicide. The Tory-LibDem Coalition MPs who imposed this have blood on their hands!

Whilst fighting for its abolition, the SSP were the first to also broadcast a package of immediate steps that should be taken by those in power at council, local housing association and Scottish parliament levels - to mitigate the impact, whilst calling on the Labour and SNP politicians to join and build a mass rebellion of working class people for its immediate abolition.
We organized demonstrations and lobbies of councils and housing associations demanding 'No Evictions' and for reclassification of rooms so as to remove people from bedroom tax liability.
Our persistence and repeated street protests led to North Ayrshire being the first council in Scotland to pledge both these steps, at least partially, to mitigate the impact.
We lobbied and convinced some local housing associations to adopt the same policies.
We fought alongside others for the Scottish government to ban all evictions nationally, thereby also protecting local housing association tenants.

FUND THE £50m SHORTFALL

Since Christmas 2012 the SSP simultaneously argued and campaigned - later in tandem with NO2BedroomTax campaigners - for the Scottish government to fund the shortfall, the estimated £50m this year, to remove all fear of evictions or excuses for cuts to jobs, pay and services by cash-starved social landlords.
And it was the SSP, through the online petition I launched on behalf of the party, accompanied by thousands of petitions collected at SSP street stalls, that helped put Ed Miliband and his Labour MPs at Westminster on the spot, demanding they move an immediate emergency Motion to abolish the Bedroom Tax. 

To their eternal shame, when they were pressurized into doing this by the growing rebellion of working class people against the Tax, 47 Labour MPs (ten of them from Scottish seats) didn't bother turning up to vote for Labour's own Motion for its abolition. Presumably because these Labour Bedroom Tax deserters regard the issue as far too trivial ("wee things" as Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont might phrase it!) to bother attending parliament to vote on!

PEOPLE IN PROTEST CAN WIN!

In all the day and daily battling by the SSP, No2BedroomTax campaign, and ordinary tenants organised in local anti-bedroom tax groups, two of the most frequently asked questions were: "Will this do any good?" and "Do you think we can ever get rid of it?".
The short, proven answer to both is a resounding Yes!
Organized 'people power' has pounded the politicians into action - eventually.
Everyone who signed a petition, attended a public meeting, joined a protest lobby or march, and especially those who gave up much of their personal time to hold meetings, deliver leaflets, advise people - this selfless army of volunteers forced the politicians in Holyrood to sit up and listen. They should be proud of themselves.
Protests work - so don't be defeatist!

SNP

To their credit the SNP never favored the bedroom tax. But their initial response, a year ago, was to say nothing could be done about it this side of winning independence. 

In some Labour-run councils the SNP moved motions for no evictions, but initially did not do the same in SNP-led councils, until the growing pressure of tenants and the likes of the SSP on the ground shifted them into a declaration by Alex Salmond at the SNP conference that no SNP council would evict.
At Scottish government level the SNP never agreed to ban evictions, limiting their position to 'encouraging' councils to find other solutions.


LABOUR'S SHAME 

Labour's overall record is frankly shameful, inexcusable. They did nothing to denounce, resist and mobilize against the Bedroom Tax when it was passed as law in Westminster - in fact it was the previous Labour government that themselves introduced a diluted version of the same punishment towards private sector tenants, through the Local Housing Allowance, whilst refusing to cap the obscenely high private landlords' rents.
Labour councillors refused to pledge 'no evictions'; they defeated the first ever motion lodged in any Scottish council with that and other demands to mitigate the impact, moved by SSP councillor Jim Bollan in West Dunbartonshire. 

In fact, in Labour-run North Lanarkshire council they tried to evict a severely disabled mother for arrears, only halting the procedure after uproar from local anti-bedroom tax campaigners. 

And in South Ayrshire council, where Labour is in coalition with the Tories, they issued letters threatening not only eviction for bedroom tax arrears but also the snatching of children (by social services) from the families unable to pay up!

LABOUR'S BELATED CONVERSION

It took the Labour leadership up until their September 2013 UK conference before they dropped and reversed their talk of keeping an amended Bedroom Tax if elected to government in 2015.
And even their latter-day conversion to calling for the Scottish government to fund the £50m shortfall seems driven by tribal party politics, an attempt to embarrass the SNP, rather than a genuine commitment to standing up for tenants and workers - especially given their track record on benefit cuts in government, and their attempts to evict bedroom tax victims.

GIVE US BACK OUR STOLEN BILLIONS!

In contrast to Labour, the SSP has not only consistently argued and publicly campaigned for the SNP government to cough up the £50m to remove all the effects of the bedroom tax, but we've also always argued this should not be at the expense of other services. We have persistently argued Holyrood should pay up the £50m AND mount a mass campaign demanding the money back off Westminster -  mobilising tenants, trade unionists and the vast army of Scots who hate a tax they are not even directly affected by. As we've put it, "Give us back our stolen billions".

DEVOLUTION STRAITJACKET

And that is the down side of the decision by the Scottish government to fund all tenants' bedroom tax payments through DHP (or a homelessness prevention fund if Westminster blocks the £15m breach of the cap they imposed on DHP payments).
It is a totally welcome, almighty victory for those affected by it and those who fought it. But the money has to come from the block grant issued to Scotland by Westminster under the current devolution set-up. From a block grant slashed already by at least £10billion over the past 4 years - with another £4billion of cuts threatened by Westminster via dismantling of the so-called Barnett Formula should we vote No to independence in September.
So the straitjacket of devolution means the Scottish government robbing 'Peter to pay Paul' - which is why the SSP has always demanded the £50m to underwrite the bedroom tax bills facing tenants who simply don't have the money to pay it, but also advocated a mass campaign to win back that funding off the thieves in Westminster who have stolen not just £50m, but £billions off Scottish services, jobs and wages through their control of the purse strings. 

THE CASE FOR INDEPENDENCE

Furthermore, that's why the SSP has openly linked the battle to bin the bedroom tax with the need for independence. Free of the Westminster Old-Etonian millionaires' government, Scotland would never have introduced such an obnoxious tax. After all, 91 per cent of Scotland's MPs - for all their other manifold shortcomings! - voted against it's introduction, but Westminster's unelected majority imposed it.

An independent Scotland opens the door to reshaping the entire benefits and welfare system in a fashion that supports people in need - the sick, disabled, elderly, children or unemployed - with a decent living income and comprehensive support services - funded by taxation of the rich and big business.
It would allow the Scottish working class majority the opportunity to elect a government of the genuine left that could initiate a programme of house-building and renovation, creating jobs and apprenticeships as well as tackling the real causes of housing crises, rather than the entirely bogus claims made for the bedroom tax. 

Top-notch, environmentally-sound and affordable public sector housing has to be one of the many central objectives of an independent Scotland, one of the many concrete, compelling reasons for working class people to vote Yes in September.

CELEBRATE THIS VICTORY!

This is a victory, and it's important to recognize one, as they are not two-a-penny! 

It's a victory for 85,000 families victimized and impoverished by the bedroom tax; for hundreds of social housing staff hammered by cuts to their livelihoods; for the thousands who took to the streets against the Tory Tax; for the army of volunteers who formed into anti-bedroom tax groups and the No2BedroomTax campaign; for the SSP, as the one party that most persistently fought its impact with a package of immediate and long term solutions which we popularized on the streets and in meeting halls throughout 2013.

This is a serious blow to the Westminster government, it's twin Tory parties, and consequently the entire Better Together cabal - Tory-funded, Labour-fronted - that wants to keep us imprisoned in the Westminster jailhouse that still keeps alive this vicious bedroom tax south of the border. 

It is a tremendous boost to all those fighting for its abolition in England and Wales - a living proof that fighting to advance the interests of the Scottish people is a help, not a hindrance, to the betterment of the English and Welsh working class.

DEMAND OUTRIGHT ABOLITION - SAVE SCOTLAND'S £50m

Those who won this victory should celebrate, but also demand back the £50m off Westminster, and indeed build up the campaign for the return of the billions of stolen money to save all jobs and public services. 

The simplest and most immediate way to win back the £50m allocated to Bedroom Tax bills by the Scottish government - and to use that money for other, worthwhile services - is to build on this victory and demand the immediate abolition of the Bedroom Tax at Westminster. 

If the same Labour party currently making false claims of credit for this victory are serious, they should force Miliband and his band to propose immediate abolition - and turn up to vote this time! The decision by the Scottish government puts the LibDem partners in Tory crimes even more behind the eight-ball, boosting the chances of getting the bedroom tax scrapped by the only place currently holding that power - Westminster.

VOTE YES TO EVICT THE TORIES - PERMANENTLY!

Those extraordinary 'ordinary people' who won this victory should register the advantages of having a Scottish government - by definition more susceptible to the pressure and demands of the Scottish people than the remote, aloof Westminster - and join the fray for full-blown self-government.
No more bedroom taxes, no more mass poverty and cuts to services, no more rule by the millionaires in mansions!

Join the SSP in fighting for an independent socialist Scotland that permanently evicts the Tories, not tenants; defends the millions, not the millionaires; the people, not profit.

Peaceful protest over local Labour Party failure to turn up for Bedroom Tax vote

PRESS RELEASE - for IMMEDIATE use

Scottish Socialist Party initiate Peaceful Protest at Labour Deputy Leader's Shameful Failure to vote for Bedroom Tax Abolition

Friday 15th November 3pm onwards At Anas Sarwar's Office, 9 Scotland St, Glasgow

The Scottish Socialist Party is appealing to all those who detest the Bedroom Tax to join a peaceful protest outside Scottish Labour Deputy Leader Anas Sarwar's office, to express their disgust at his failure to attend the debate in Westminster on Tuesday and vote for the abolition of the tax.

The protest has been initiated by SSP candidate in the Glasgow Shettleston Council by-election, TOMMY BALL - a constituent of Mr Sarwar's.

Tommy said:" Anas Sarwar recently made great play of how Labour would abolish the Bedroom Tax if they were elected in two year's time.

But he couldn't even bother to turn up at his extremely well-paid work on Tuesday to vote for the Motion to abolish this vicious attack on the poorest - even though the Motion was proposed by his own Labour party! Since then he has blocked all attempts by constituents - including myself - to contact him for an explanation of why he and 46 other Labour MPs boycotted such a critical vote, whether by phone calls, Twitter or Facebook. So we feel we have no other choice but to demand a face-to-face explanation at his office. And that is even more important after a woman was evicted today in Glasgow - where the Labour council has refused to declare a ban on evictions in the city they rule."

SSP regional organiser, and prominent anti-bedroom tax campaigner RICHIE VENTON added:

"For a year Labour has done absolutely nothing to resist and defeat this obnoxious theft of incomes from the poorest, and in fact said they would retain it under a Labour government. Belatedly, in mid-September, Ed Miliband declared they would scrap it if elected in 2015. I immediately initiated an ePetition demanding Miliband act now, not some time after 2015, and the SSP warmly welcomed the subsequent Motion put by Labour on Tuesday. That makes it all the more shameful that 47 Labour MPs didn't think it important enough to attend and vote for their own Motion - including 10 out of 40 Scottish Labour MPs. We expect spineless treachery and obedience to their Tory masters from the LibDem MPs, who ignored their own party conference wishes and voted to keep the Bedroom Tax. But if anything, the absence of the Treacherous Ten from Scottish Labour was even more reprehensible, since they 'represent' the very people hammered by this vicious measure - as today's Citizens Advice Scotland Report confirms, the poorest, chronically sick, disabled, low-paid workers, single parents. Their treachery cannot pass in silence."

END

For more info Tweet Tommy Ball on @tommy_ball or @the_ssp_

URGENT: The Bedroom Tax Could be Abolished Next Week!

- pile on the pressure on your local MPs.

How often have you faced the comments "Do you think it will do any good?" or "What's the point in protesting, it never changes anything?", as you organise a street petition, or hold a street protest, or march for a cause?

Those in power rely on the corrosive acid of pessimism and defeatism, the despair that too many people have been driven into by corrupt, self-serving politicians who do their damnedest not to listen when the voices raised are inconvenient.

And for the past year, you'd be forgiven for sliding into defeatism when it comes to the vile Bedroom Tax.

This punitive assault on the sick, disabled and poor was in reality invented by Labour in government, when they introduced a diluted version called Local Housing Allowance in the private rented sector.

Don't forget that when you read the later news in this article.Then the unelected millionaires' bootboys - the Tory-LibDem Coalition - devised an even more devilish version for social sector housing tenants in receipt of housing benefit: the Bedroom Tax.

Labour MPs did little or nothing to oppose it, and literally nothing to mount a serious challenge to it in the communities, on the streets or through housing workers' trade unions (who all fill Labour's coffers with members' money through their Labour affiliation!).

For all the months of 2013, up to and including September, Labour leaders fobbed off questions about their intentions if elected in 2015 with guff about 'needing to cost its abolition before making a commitment to a future manifesto' - except when they openly admitted they would keep the Bedroom Tax under a Laour government! Don't forget that as you read on.Labour councillors voted down motions to outlaw evictions. Labour-run councils like North Lanarkshire issued real eviction notices to a severely disabled mother of three kids. Last week, Labour councillors in South Ayrshire joined in coalition with the Tories and not only issued letters with threats of eviction, but also with threats of taking the children off parents who've fallen into arrears! These vicious would-be child-snatchers give concrete meaning to the expression 'a return to Victorian times'.

Don't forget that's part of Labour's living track record as you read the rest of this account.But Labour politicians are shameless in their opportunism, as I've previously extensively described in the blog 'Signposts and Weathervanes'. They spin round under the gales of public opinion if they think it will win votes, provided it doesn't to totally challenge the rule of the capitalist system they are married to. 

At Labour's annual vote-fest, aka national conference, Ed Miliband didn't even draw breath as he spun round on his own axis to pledge a future Labour government would abolish the bedroom tax. What a mighty collective sigh of relief followed from the 660,000 households hammered by this vicious theft of benefits. Until they realized that it depended on Labour being elected - and that it meant at least 25 consecutive, torturous months of being expected to fork out money they don't have before the next Westminster elections occur, plus however long it took Labour to keep their promise (always assuming they did).

So a few days after his speech promising future salvation, I lodged an online Petition demanding Miliband move NOW - not some time after 2015 - by putting an Emergency Motion to the Westminster parliament for IMMEDIATE abolition of the Bedroom Tax. We did this on the basis also that the UK LibDem conference in Glasgow, pounded by protesters, had savaged the tax their MPs imposed in unison with their Tory partners.

The ePetition unleashed the fury of 3,000 people within a short time, many of them posting comments that would make your blood boil in anger at the impact of this measure.Now, under this pressure, Labour has lodged a Motion to abolish the Bedroom Tax for debate this Tuesday 12th November!

So I appeal to you to act swiftly - with another push we might even get this brutal measure abolished next week!

If you've not already signed the ePetition please do so NOW;

go to change.org and in the search box type 'bedroom tax Miliband'.

Urgently contact a few family members or friends, explain, and ask them to sign it TODAY.

And send an email to local MPs, no matter which party they're in, demanding they vote for Abolition of the Bedroom Tax on 12th November.

You can find the link to them either through TheyWorkForYou.com or WriteToThem.com.

Organised pressure works!

Don't relent - NOW is the time to pile on the pressure. The potential prize is massive. And it doesn't mean you have to stop seeing through the opportunist chancers; just remember their track record as well as demanding they listen for once.

Keep up the #bedroomtax pressure!

Congratulations! But please keep piling on the pressure!

All of you who signed my Petition demanding Ed Miliband move an immediate Motion to Abolish the vile Bedroom Tax NOW have had an impact. Labour is proposing a similar Motion in parliament this coming Tuesday 12th November! 

But don't give up applying the pressure - NOW is the time to pile it on, to try and persuade enough MPs of various parties to vote to end this punishment of the poorest, including disabled people.

- PLEASE ask a few friends or acquaintances to sign it TODAY - before the vote on Tuesday - it could make all the difference. Tell them how we forced this vote to happen in the first place!

- PLEASE send another email to your local MPs spelling out why they must vote to scrap it on Tuesday - you can contact them via either TheyWorkForYou.com or WriteToThem.com

Keep up the pressure - we can win! 

Yours in unity, 

Richie Venton 

Sign the petition "Ed Miliband, leader of UK Labour Party: Present Emergency Motion in Parliament to Abolish the Bedroom Tax - NOW, not after 2015!"

Spend 30 seconds: demand MPs abolish the Bedroom Tax NOW!

The reviled Bedroom Tax is in a shambles, which is why everyone who devotes 30 seconds of their time to sign my online Petition could realistically add to the prospects of it being scrapped - now!

The ePetition is simple and pointed: it demands that Labour leader Ed Miliband moves an immediate Emergency Motion in the House of Commons for Abolition of the Bedroom Tax NOW - instead of waiting until some time after 2015, for the eventuality of Labour winning the Westminster elections a long, agonizing two years from now.

You can add your voice to this demand on Miliband to put his money where his mouth is by clicking here.


[and if you have problems with the link, simply go to www.change.org and in the 'Search' box type 'Bedroom Tax Miliband'].

Coming Apart at the Seams

Those of us who for the past year have fought consistently and persistently to resist and abolish this obnoxious theft of benefits - tenants, trade unionists, socialists - welcome several recent decisions that undermine it.


We welcome various recent legal judgements that have found in favor of tenants - on grounds of room size and previous usage; disabled people's right to additional space for their needs; the human rights of the disabled, parents, children.

We welcome the decision of the Northern Ireland Assembly to exempt all current tenants for the next 4 years. Whilst the political forces in power in the Assembly are dangerously liable to pass on the £17m cost of underwriting the bedroom tax in the form of cuts to other services, this decision adds weight to the longstanding demand by the SSP, Shelter Scotland and anti-bedroom campaigns for the Scottish government to fund the guesstimated £53m loss of rent this year to social landlords, from tenants simply unable to afford the bedroom tax.

And given that right now - until such time as we win Scottish self-government - it is only Westminster which has the powers to abolish the tax they imposed on us, we welcome the recent political U-turns by two of the major Westminster political parties: the LibDems and Labour.

LibDems under Siege

The LibDems have played a disgusting role, abandoning their party policy of a mansion tax on the rich and privileged, whilst acting as the yellow Tory props to the blue Tories in an unelected Coalition - which has hammered nearly 100,000 families in Scotland with their vile, punitive Bedroom Tax. All the more reason to cheer the decision at the recent LibDem UK conference in Glasgow to slam the bedroom tax and open the door to Clegg being pounded into presenting a Motion for its abolition at Westminster. That decision was, let's not forget, in large measure due to the pressure brought to bear by the protest demo of tenants, trade unionists and socialists outside the LibDem conference.

Labour forced into U-turn

More significant still, that meant Labour was the only remaining mainstream party left standing alongside the Tories, refusing to call for abolition of the bedroom tax.


For the past year, Labour has done nothing to lead the battle for its abolition; refused point blank to promise abolition under a future Labour government, in fact saying they would keep it; refused for months on end to even pledge 'no evictions' in Labour-run councils; and stooped down even lower when they issued real eviction notices to a severely disabled mother of three in Labour-run North Lanarkshire council.


Now, a year after the Bedroom Tax was passed by Westminster, six months after it was implemented on April Fools Day, Ed Miliband has promised its abolition if Labour wins office in the 2015 Westminster elections.

Why wait 'til 2015?

A welcome step, but one which strips away all Labour's feeble excuses about 'needing to examine the cost of abolition', and poses the question starkly: why wait another two or three years? Why not fight for its abolition here and now?

The LibDem conference is supposed to be binding on their MPs. So if - as my ePetition demands - Ed Miliband and Labour were to put forward an Emergency Motion for its outright, immediate abolition, there should be an inbuilt majority of MPs that should vote for it, overruling Cameron's vicious millionaire razor gang.

Not another 2 years of Devastation!

If there's an ounce of sincerity in Miliband's promises - if it's not just a cynical electioneering ploy designed to win votes, and damage the case for Scottish self-government into the bargain - then why would Miliband and Labour make us wait another two years or more?


Why would they punish the poorest sections of the working class with another two years of cuts to their benefits, loss of family homes, upheaval, stress, even suicides? And why would they condemn even more staff in social housing to job losses and pay cuts of £5,000 a year, as has already been imposed by £100,000-a-year chief executives in some housing associations?

We need to demand that Miliband turns his grand speeches into decisive action - action that should be easily successful - action that would rescue 660,000 households from the pit of poverty and despair they've been tossed into by the Bedroom Tax.

NOW is the time for Abolition!

Sign the ePetition today. Encourage others to do likewise.

Sign the petitions at SSP street stalls demanding abolition NOW.

And raise Motions in your trade unions, community organizations, anti-poverty groups and anti-bedroom tax groups demanding that Ed Miliband and your own local MPs push for immediate abolition. That includes those trade unions whose leaderships insist on pouring £millions of members' money into Labour's coffers: demand some return on your money from Labour for once!

It's hardly asking the earth of them! But it could be a life-changer for hundreds of thousands of tenants and workers at the sharp end of this indefensible daylight robbery.

Spend 30 seconds of your day: potentially, if thousands of us do it, and pound Miliband into belatedly pushing for abolition, this could help change the lives of hundreds of thousands.

SIGNPOSTS AND WEATHERVANES

- Labour's bedroom tax gymnastics

There are many issues and principles I would heartily agree with veteran socialist Tony Benn on. And as Labour assembled in Brighton for its September 2013 UK conference, one of the most apt is his view of political 'signposts and weathervanes', which I heard him refer to in a recent interview.

Signposts being people in life and politics whose beliefs are firmly rooted in principles, for which they stand firm, refusing to bend to passing fads and opinion polls, pointing the way forward even when they are an isolated minority.

 

In contrast, weathervanes are those people of no fixed principles, who spin round in all and opposite directions to court popularity, and in the case of professional politicians, to gain power, prestige and privilege.

The former deserve our admiration, the latter our contempt and eternal suspicion about their motives and reliability. The latter is rank opportunism, soaked in hypocrisy and cynicism.
Such is the stench, the insult, attached to the term 'political weathervanes' that the Quebec National Assembly has banned its use since 2007! All the more reason to use it to describe New Labour, as I hope to demonstrate.

Weathervanes at Brighton

As New Labour approached the Brighton beaches for their annual showpiece conference, the winds of change in social opinion howled like a gale, blowing Ed Miliband and his wavering weathervanes into declarations that are the direct, literal opposite to what they previously said - and more importantly, often in total contradiction to what they did in government up until their replacement by the (unelected) Coalition in 2010.

Two prime cases of this dizzying, sickening display of opportunism are the statements by Miliband et al on the bedroom tax and the assaults on sick and disabled people and their benefits.

Ed Miliband has declared that a New Labour government, if elected in the 2015 Westminster elections, will scrap the bedroom tax. For good measure, he has even said this would be funded by closing loopholes on taxation of hedge funds (the bloated rich's betting scheme on our futures), tax loopholes surrounding the Tory "shares for selling your workplace rights" scheme, and tax scams in the construction industry.
Such a declaration is profoundly welcome, especially to the 660,000 households clobbered by this vicious assault on incomes that has caused worry, stress, upheaval for families forced to move, and in several tragic cases, suicide.

Every such declaration of intent to scrap the bedroom tax is a nail in its coffin; added pressure on the besieged Westminster Coalition that presides over this daylight robbery of the poorest and most vulnerable sections of the working class.

Why not a year ago?

But why now? Why did Miliband and Labour not make a similar, unequivocal declaration two weeks ago (4th September) when he was taunted to come out into the open by Cameron during Prime Minister's Questions? Why not six months ago when the brutal bedroom tax was implemented on April Fools Day?
That's where the weathervanes come in; the cynical, unprincipled calculations of what is opportune - as opposed to a firm, consistent, reliable stance based on clean principles. Opportunist politicians rely on people suffering short memories. Ed Miliband, Liam Byrne and the rest of New Labour would prefer we forget their recent past, including on benefit cuts and the bedroom tax. So let's remind ourselves of a few stubborn facts about their real record.

Over the past year of campaigning and speaking as a socialist at public meetings for the abolition of the bedroom tax, I've been repeatedly asked why it doesn't apply to private sector rented accommodation. The simple fact is that a diluted, less extreme version of the bedroom tax DOES apply to private tenants. It's called the Local Housing Allowance - and it was invented and implemented by the previous Labour government.
In simple, stark terms, it caps the amount of housing benefit available to tenants of private landlords to a local average rent for the poorest quality housing. So if you manage to rent a relatively decent house, the punishment is a shortfall in housing benefit payments. Labour ushered in a scheme that punishes private sector tenants, but refused absolutely to do anything about capping the level of rents charged by private landlords.
Hence the burgeoning bill of £23billion annual housing benefit pay-outs; a public subsidy to rent racketeers in the private sector, where rents are far, far higher than in the social sector - where the bedroom tax has hammered the poorest.

Labour's bedroom tax!

In that sense, Labour actually invented the bedroom tax. Indeed, the man who devised the detail of this devilish scheme - Lord 'Eleven-Spare-Bedrooms' Freud, was part of the Labour government up until 2009, prior to becoming Tory Minister for Welfare in the present Coalition. He was instrumental, under Gordon Brown's leadership, in launching repeated assaults on low-paid civil service workers, their jobs, and the services they deliver to many of the same people now brutalized by the bedroom tax.
Don't forget that amidst all the din of conference speeches by Miliband and others.

Blowing in the wind

And it gets worse! After initiating the attacks on benefits during their tenure in No 10 Downing St, starting with cuts to single parents' benefits in their first year of office (1997), Labour never lifted a finger to expose and mount a serious public campaign of opposition to the Tory/LibDem 2012 'Under Occupancy' legislation, better known as the bedroom tax, when it was being debated.

We didn't have the faintly absurd sight of Ed Miliband in shirt and tie mounting a soap box in Brighton town centre to denounce and declare future abolition of the bedroom room tax last year. Nor anywhere else, anytime since...until this incongruous spectacle was (literally) stage-managed for the September 2013 Labour conference.

No, it took a hurricane of opposition amongst working class people to shift these New Labour weathervanes in the right direction - in words, at least. In early 2013, as people awoke to the horrors the bedroom tax signifies, the overwhelming majority of Labour councillors, Labour MPs and MSPs conspicuously failed - indeed, refused - to back the demands for 'No Evictions', or for reclassification of rooms to avoid bedroom tax liability.

The first motion laid before any Scottish council with these demands was put by the Scottish Socialist Party's councillor Jim Bollan in West Dunbartonshire. He had the full backing of the SNP and independent councillors - but the proposal was voted down by the Labour majority. So much for their concern about the impact on 'ordinary families and vulnerable individuals'. Back in March, Labour Shadow Cabinet Minister Helen Goodman spelt out the Labour view on YouTube:

"In the short to medium term we need to reduce the housing benefit bill. A future Labour government would keep the bedroom tax, but it should only apply if people have been offered a place to live and turned it down."

Labour evasions and evictions

Liam Byrne, Labour's Work & Pensions Secretary, under questioning about a future Westminster Labour government abolishing the bedroom tax, repeatedly hid behind these words:
"We will have to measure the cost and judge the economic situation." On 5th September, Byrne repeated "To write a Manifesto commitment we've got to prove the money can be found to drop the bedroom tax."

As recently as July, Labour-run North Lanarkshire council issued an eviction notice to a severely disabled mother of three, for the princely sum of £248 in arrears! And initially they stubbornly refused to follow the example of many other councils - starting with those run by the SNP - in pledging no evictions for at least the first year, "provided tenants take all reasonable steps to avoid arrears". Other councils and a few housing associations had conceded this under the pressure of anti-bedroom tax campaigns.
It took the howling winds of protest by local tenants to force North Lanarkshire Labour into dropping their vicious eviction and to join those social landlords who have at least taken a faltering step in the right direction: "no evictions, provided..."

Don't switch TV channels!

As the pressure mounted, the situation with Labour veered between tragedy and farce.
On the night of 5th September, Labour's position on scrapping the bedroom tax depended on which Scottish TV channel you happened to switch on. On one side, Anas Sarwar, Deputy leader of Scottish Labour said "if we were in power tomorrow we would abolish the bedroom tax."

On the other side, his illustrious Scottish Leader Johann Lamont was simultaneously refusing to answer the question of abolition, not once but three times.
The next twenty four hours saw breathtaking verbal gymnastics from the Labour camp, with Sarwar 'explaining' some guff about his comments on Labour being in power "tomorrow" being entirely hypothetical!
And days later, Labour's Jackie Baillie got into a lather of claim and counter claim with Labour's UK headquarters after blurting out the assertion that Labour would scrap the bedroom tax if elected in 2015. UK Labour rebutted her assertion with the comment, "We are not writing our next manifesto today, and we will have to take a view of the fiscal position near the time".

Of course, Jackie Baillie also suffered a memory lapse on her West Dunbartonshire Labour colleagues' inglorious opposition to outlawing evictions in her own constituency, when the SSP had spearheaded that basic, interim measure of protection for the victims of Westminster's theft of benefits.

The long and winding road

Labour has thus travelled the long and winding road from inventing the bedroom tax; not vociferously exposing and resisting its introduction in the House of Commons a year ago; refusing an unequivocal 'No Evictions' policy in Labour councils; to starting evictions - and then, on the eve of their UK Labour conference, announcing that Labour councils will avoid evictions ("provided they are satisfied tenants have taken all reasonable steps to avoid arrears...") and that the newly militant Miliband will abolish it...in 2015...if elected.

Why? And why now?

There are several factors, none of which do any credit to Labour, none worthy of winning our trust in their willingness to stand up for the working class.

First and foremost, we should take courage and encouragement from this Labour U-turn, which is what it clearly is. It is the principled tenacity of those of us - tenants, trade unionists, community campaigners, socialists - who have exposed, fought and resisted the bedroom tax that has forced Miliband and Labour into eventually promising it's abolition. This proves that 'people power', working class solidarity, if organized and directed at those in positions of power, can win concessions. The same lesson applies to other mainstream parties that we have helped push into a similar stance, despite their various positions on the issue 6 or 12 months ago.

Yellow Tories

The LibDems are the yellow Tory props to the blue Tories in implementing this vicious tax on the poor - whereas they abandoned their own conference policy of a mansion tax on the wealthy.

But the organized pressure of tenants, trade unionists, anti-bedroom tax campaigns and socialists helped to pound the recent LibDem conference in Glasgow into passing a motion against the wishes of Clegg & Co, which denounces the bedroom tax, and calls for a moratorium and review - opening the door to a concerted bombardment of Clegg to put forward a motion in Westminster for abandonment of the bedroom tax. People power pays off, provided it's organized.

SNP shifts

To their credit, the SNP (unlike Labour) has always said they oppose the bedroom tax. But initially, before the fury of working class people found organized expression through demos and demands on councils and the Scottish government, they tended to take the line "we have to wait for independence". That's the essence of Linda Fabiani's comment on BBC Sunday Politics on 3rd February: "Little can be done until the Scottish parliament has more powers."

Under pressure, the SNP were the first major party to declare "'no evictions, provided..." in all their local councils - although the SNP government of Hollywood has dismally failed to outlaw evictions across the nation, which would close the door to local Housing Associations chucking people on the streets. And since February/March, the SNP leadership has pledged to scrap the bedroom tax in an independent Scotland.

Labour spins on its axis

The positions adopted by both the SNP and LibDems are at least partial reflections of the demands from below, channeled by anti-bedroom tax campaigners, including the critical role played by the Scottish Socialist Party - who have been consistent throughout, not waiting for the hot winds of tenants' fury to point them in the right direction. The SSP have been signposts, not weathervanes. And the decisions of these parties have in turn been instrumental in spinning the Labour weathervanes round 180 degrees, from inventing the bedroom tax to pledging its abolition.

And not, in my opinion, purely for tactical electoral advantage on this one issue of the bedroom tax - though the upsurge of furious opposition to it has undoubtedly pummeled Labour into verbal abolitionism that was conspicuously absent for the previous 12 months! Nor is this belated somersault purely designed - as some commentators assert - to distract attention from the hair-raising revelations just published about the savage, self-centred civil war between rival egos in the Labour leadership of Blair and Brown, with methods that make Malcolm Tucker of 'The Thick of It' look like a mealy-mouthed English village vicar. Although, again, that will have been one factor in this panicky U-turn, with the spin doctors in overdrive. And whilst the precise timing is designed to boost Miliband's flagging reputation within Labour's own ranks - especially in the trade unions - as they hold their UK conference, I believe it is rooted in deeper, even more opportunist calculation.

Independence the target

This Labour volte face is also a cynical, desperate manouever by Labour's Unionists on the Scottish independence referendum.

For a few months, the people of Scotland began to grasp one of the stark choices they face: vote to remain in the UK and keep the hated bedroom tax, regardless of which combination of Tory, LibDem, Labour or UKIP wins in 2015; or vote for Scottish independence as a cast iron guarantee of the burial of the bedroom tax.

Labour and their Tory/LibDem cohorts in Better Together must have been having paroxysms at the prospect of that message sinking in. So Labour belatedly concedes to the winds of opposition and tries to channel them towards waiting for a Westminster Labour government in 2015.

Never trust a weathervane

Several questions arise. If it wasn't for the Referendum, and all that is at stake for the imperial arrogance of British capitalism, would Labour have even bothered to concede to 'public opinion' on the bedroom tax, after all their attempts to ignore it for the past year - and before that?

And the corollary to that question: if Labour were to con a majority into voting against independence next year, what guarantee is there that these Labour weathervanes wouldn't swing back round and find some 'economic' reason for keeping the bedroom tax after all - in the wake of Scots failing to seize the opportunity to rule their own country? After all they reneged - under Alistair Darling's chancellorship - on a promise to give pensioners an additional chill factor winter payment.

Labour hired ATOS!

Labour's attempts, this time through the aforementioned Liam Byrne, to win hearts and minds at their conference on the issue of ATOS is perhaps the most revealing warning not to trust the Labour weathervanes, even on the narrow issue of the bedroom tax, let alone the general issue of defending the living standards of the working class majority. And in turn, a warning of the dire consequences of continued Westminster rule! The Labour conference headlines are all about Liam Byrne denouncing ATOS, the French multinational paid to perform medical miracles on the scale of Lourdes - declaring sick, disabled and even dying people fit for work, thereby slashing their benefits.

He says they must be stripped of the contract. But before rushing off to rely on a UK Labour government to restore benefits and services, take a look behind the headlines.

Not a word from Byrne about scrapping the entire system that ATOS happens to administer on behalf of the government. And why would there be? It was the Labour government that invented this punitive scheme of attacks on the sick and disabled. It was the previous Labour government that awarded the privatized contract to ATOS back in 2008, well before the Tories took over their dirty work.

And it was the same rat, Liam Byrne, who reassured the baying reactionaries of the Daily Mail and Express that, to quote his phrase,

"Labour is not the party of shirkers. The clue is in the name."

Tough choices - for the working class!

And alongside the cheap demagogy against the hated ATOS, Labour Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls has used the same Labour conference to repeat his dire warnings that a Labour government would face "tough choices", would "stick with the Coalition's tight spending limits", with "iron discipline on spending control", that Labour "won't be able to reverse all the spending cuts and tax rises the Tories have pushed through", and "we will have to govern with less money. The next Labour government will have to make cuts too - they cannot magic the whole deficit away at a stroke".

All his own words and phrases, not mine!

Does that look like a vision worth voting for, or fighting for? So a Labour Westminster regime would still slash public sector jobs and pay; sacrifice public services on the altar of 'reducing the deficit'; demonize and further impoverish the sick, disabled and unemployed. With or without ATOS. With or without the specific measure called the bedroom tax.

Celebrate - but never forget!

So we should all celebrate the massive retreat by these hard-nosed capitalist apologists in New Labour which their belated pledge to scrap the obnoxious bedroom tax constitutes.

We should gain courage and strength from the fact our combined and relentless pressure - tenants, community activists, trade unionists and socialists combined - has not only forced the LibDem conference but now also the Labour leadership to promise abolition of this outrageous measure.

But we should also keep sober and vigilant in our celebrations, avoiding any political amnesia at the role of these parties.

Remember, the SSP has been steadfast and consistent in resisting, denouncing and seeking to dismantle the bedroom tax.

Remember, Labour invented it. The LibDems help the Tories impose it. Far from being an advert for waiting for a UK Labour government, the mind boggling somersaults of Labour on this issue is a warning that we need Scottish independence to elect and hold to account a government genuinely of the left. One that could tap into the enormous natural and human wealth of Scotland to build a welfare system worthy of this century.

Signposts to independence and socialism

Conclusions? Never trust a weathervane, especially a Labour one that has performed more twists and turns than Georgie Best at his peak. Instead, follow the signposts to independence and socialism.

MARCH IN ANGER - EVICT THE TORIES

Tax their Boardrooms - not our Bedrooms

Thousands are marching in Scotland against the vicious, vindictive Tory Bedroom Tax. 

Anger is turning to outrage on the streets and on the demos, as this cruel theft of income from the poorest has claimed its first victim. Stephanie Bottrill, a grandmother, was driven to suicide by the impossible prospect of having to find another £20 a week. She had done without heating all winter to save up for the Bedroom Tax bills.

And horrific reports are emerging of investment of time, money and staff hours by social landlords in what amounts to 'suicide watch'; housing staff, caretakers and welfare rights workers are being sent on courses to spot the danger of suicide amongst those tenants affected by the Bedroom Tax. What a searing condemnation of the system and government we live under in the 21st century!

We're all in this together!

All because the Westminster Coalition Cabinet, stuffed full of 23 millionaires - including Welfare Minister Lord Freud, with his two mansions and eleven spare bedrooms - dictates that 670,000 households across the UK have 'spare bedrooms' and are to be punished for it.

All because the Tories and Lib Dems are waging war on the working class, robbing hundreds of £billions off benefits and wages, so the millionaires can enjoy an annual tax cut of £107,000.
And people's anger is not restricted to those directly affected, including the 105,000 households in Scotland. An absolute, decisive majority of those queueing up at SSP street stalls to sign petitions demanding 'No evictions - Scrap the Bedroom Tax', tell us "This doesn't actually affect me, but..."
These 105,000 households in Scotland - including 83,000 with at least one registered disabled family member - are at the sharp end of the Tory Tax. But this affects us all in some way. When many of those confronted with bills of £10 a week or more on incomes of £71 simply can't afford to pay, rent arrears means the threat of evictions - but it also threatens the jobs and wages of workers in local housing associations and councils, plus the vital services they provide in communities.

An estimated £53m shortfall in rental income to social landlords this first year alone because of the Tory Tax has already begun to take its toll. At least one Glasgow local housing association, whose bosses are on £100,000 and £85,000 each, have declared redundancies and ruthlessly cut the wages of staff with 20-plus years of devoted service to their tenants by a shattering £5,000 a year. Their "explanation"? That they have to cut back due to the bedroom tax and Universal Credit.

United - despite vile propaganda 

The Tories and LibDems thought they could divide working class people with their vile propaganda about 'skivers and strivers', 'shirkers and workers' - but a growing unity is turning into action again the Tory architects of the worst assault since the poll tax.

That's why those marching through Glasgow on Saturday 1st June should and will then turn their fire on the Scottish Tory party conference in Stirling the following Saturday, 8th June, on the protest march called by the broad-based No2BedroomTax campaign. 

We need to make the Tories feel like an endangered species in Scotland - but with no plans for conservation! They need to feel the hot breath of fury at what they are presiding over and justifying, and given the clear message that the only people who will be evicted in Scotland are the Tories - not tenants.

No evictions

And evictions are a very real threat - contrary to those who scoffed when we warned of this months ago. For months before the tax was imposed on April Fools Day, the SSP, No2BedroomTax campaign, Unite Community union and others took to the streets demanding that councils, local housing associations and indeed the Scottish government outlaw the threat of evictions. 

Repeated protests and street campaigning has had some positive results. Councils controlled by the SNP have pledged there will be no evictions for at least the first year - provided they are satisfied "tenants have made all reasonable attempts to avoid rent arrears". So has the Labour/SNP/Green coalition Edinburgh city council. And some local housing associations have adopted the exact same policy with the exact same proviso attached.

Those are welcome, if faltering steps in the right direction. And let us be clear: they did not drop from the sky; they are concessions won by vigorous, determined campaigning on the streets, outside council meetings, through the local media and at councillors' surgeries. 

People in protest can win concessions.

Backdoor evictions

But the danger inherent in the clause about 'making all reasonable attempts to avoid rent arrears' is that it could lead to backdoor evictions, unless the pressure is kept up on the social landlords and the mainstream politicians - even including those from the SNP . 

When tenants are eking out an existence on £71 a week, how the hell is being expected to pay ANY amount of bedroom tax 'reasonable'? 

When people already under a repayment arrangement for previous rent arrears are then hit by demands for £10 or more bedroom tax, all the 'attempts' in the world will still make it impossible to avoid rent arrears and therefore they could face actual eviction procedures. 

Scottish government 

The SSP has fought from day one for councils and local Housing Associations to not only help every affected tenant apply for Discretionary Housing Payments to reduce the impact of the Tax, but also to mount a ferocious campaign for funding off the Scottish government to fill the shortfall in rent. This side of getting the Tory Tax scrapped - which is our clear, unqualified aim - that is the only serious route councils and LHA bosses can take if they are genuine about avoiding evictions.

Likewise the SSP has demanded throughout that the SNP government should use the powers they already have under the straitjacket of devolution to mitigate the crucifying cuts people face. To outlaw all evictions, which would cover local housing associations as well as those councils (such as those run by Labour) which are refusing to declare 'no evictions'; and to cough up the guesstimated £53m shortfall in rents to social landlords this year, to stop cuts to jobs, pay and services - and to then spearhead a Scots rebellion demanding back the stolen £billions off Westminster, so that neither housing, the NHS, education, transport nor any other public service suffers cuts.

Stinking Labour hypocrisy

The Labour party has unleashed a great hue and cry of criticism of the SNP government for not declaring an all-embracing, national 'No Evictions' policy. But Labour's hypocrisy on the bedroom tax and indeed evictions has a more overpowering stench to it than the average sewage works on a hot summer day!

Labour councils have failed utterly to declare against evictions. Worse than that, a mere six weeks into this vicious Tory Tax being installed, Labour councils in both North Lanarkshire and South Lanarkshire have delivered letters threatening evictions. 

In South Lanarkshire, this scared the living daylights out of the likes of Angela Buskie, mother of three, who they expected to pay £22.08 a week, leaving her £10 a week to feed herself and three kids. She was threatened with being turfed out of her home, in a letter delivered by hand on a Sunday - because she owed them £129! 

Faced with news of this outrage, Labour council leader Eddie McAvoy claimed it was a mistake; that he knew nothing about such letters being sent out. Either he's lying, or the elected Labour councillors have allowed unelected officials to run riot in wielding the Tory Tax as a blunt instrument against tenants on rock bottom incomes.

Tweeted words are cheap

In the case of North Lanarkshire Labour council leader Jim McCabe, no such feeble explanation was given. No claims of mistakes, no public apologies, no immediate withdrawal of the threatening eviction letters. 

This is Scotland's biggest single social landlord. On 13 March, North Lanarkshire Labour boldly tweeted "tomorrow we will be campaigning against the vile bedroom tax". Weeks later, whilst Labour politicians make hay out of the abject failure of the SNP Scottish government to unequivocally ban bedroom tax evictions, McCabe's Labour council threatened a Coatbridge man with eviction - a single man, with a history of mental illness, who has never incurred rent arrears prior to the Bedroom Tax, and had requested a move to a smaller house, but was told none was available. And the letter warns him of legal costs of £289.70 because he has accrued the grand sum total of £50.10 in arrears! 

Don't rely on Labour

These rank hypocrites are playing games with people's lives. Spouting opposition to the Tory tax to recover some of their lost base in Scotland, but not even promising to abolish it if they win the 2015 Westminster elections, and meantime implementing the Tory Tax like a gang of fundamentalist zealots, against the very people they falsely claim to represent. 

At UK level, Labour's Shadow Minister Liam Byrne has declared "we are not going to make promises we can't keep"!

We can't rely on the Labour opposition at Westminster nor local Labour councillors to resist and disrupt the Tories' tax. Far from it, they are at the forefront of implementing it.

Opponents of the bedroom tax, including those directly hammered by it, need a twin track plan of action against the threat of evictions: building local networks of people prepared to mount human walls of solidarity against any attempted evictions, and piling the pressure on the politicians and housing association bosses with demands that they outlaw evictions, fight for full Discretionary Housing Payments, and launch a serious campaign for Scottish government funding to remove the prospect of either slashing staff and/or harassing people for rent arrears they are simply  incapable of paying.

Reclassify rooms

Running parallel to these demands against evictions, the SSP, No2BedroomTax and others will continue to pound the social housing landlords with pressure to reclassify their homes, so that rooms are declared 'not liable' to payment of the Bedroom Tax. That road is being travelled by Knowsley Council on Merseyside and Nottingham council.

The first and so far only Scottish Council to have partially conceded this is North Ayrshire.

They now promise to reclassify rooms, starting with smaller rooms that they may declare to be boxrooms. This is a breach in the defenses of Councils that say their hands are tied. 

It is the result of a wave of repeated protests, organised by the SSP in Ayrshire, with twice-weekly street stalls, big public meetings, numerous highly publicized protests at council meetings.

They now need to be pushed to reclassify all their houses - as do other Councils and housing associations across Scotland. If enough do this, as well as fending off the dire poverty and potential evictions, it would help make the tax unworkable.  

Struggle - and socialism

The SSP has been at the heart of building meetings, protests, demos and anti-eviction networks. We have spearheaded putting pressure on council and housing association bosses to outlaw evictions, reclassify rooms and demand the funding off the Scottish government to offset loss of rental income and the astronomic rise in applications for Discretionary Housing Payments - an increase of 338 per cent across all council areas in the month of April, with the biggest increase of any area in the UK being in Glasgow, where 5,501 desperate people have applied for these emergency payments, compared to 1,437 the previous month!

But the SSP will also continue to empower people with the knowledge that there is absolutely no excuse or justification for this daylight robbery of benefits. 

The country is awash with wealth, but it's in the hands of a filthy rich handful. 

Last year the richest 1,000 people - that's a piddling 0.003 per cent of the population! - INCREASED their personal wealth by £35 billion. That's 70 times more than their hired political servants in the Tory/Lib Dem Coalition are stealing off the poorest through the Bedroom Tax. 

The richest 100 fat cats had an average rise of £2billion. So 100 people could live on the minimum wage and then still pay the entire Bedroom Tax bill for all those affected for the next 400 years! 

Tax their boardrooms, not our bedrooms

The system of capitalist exploitation and inequality is absolutely obscene. Fighting the Bedroom Tax is one important step in turning the tide of crucifying cuts to living standards suffered by millions under successive Tory and Labour governments. 

The fearless fighters marching against this measure should go on to help build a powerful, united movement to challenge the rule of the rich, with demands for taxing the billionaires and boardrooms, not our bedrooms, and for democratic public ownership of the banks, big industry, construction, energy and all public services. 

That way - the socialist way ahead - could ensure decent, skilled jobs for all, on a guaranteed living wage, including to build top-rate social sector housing at affordable rents.

Join the marches against the Bedroom Tax. Build a movement to evict the Tories, not tenants. Join the SSP in the struggle for an independent socialist Scotland, where benefit cuts, poverty pay, poor housing and mass unemployment will be banished.

STRUGGLE OR STARVE!

the bedroom tax...

By Richie Venton

Thousands are expected to march against the Tory Bedroom Tax in Glasgow on Saturday 18th May, determined to bring about it's downfall.


This march, rally and family fun day has been called by the No2BedroomTax campaign, which initiated and organised the huge 30th March demo. And it's been backed by the Scottish trade union movement, in the form of the STUC conference, as well as UNITE Community union.

Unity between different sectors of the working class is critical in resisting the vicious onslaught of the Westminster millionaires' razor gang. 

Cameron and Clegg have systematically tried to divide and rule working class people on behalf of their class of parasites. 

For months they talked of 'shirkers and workers' as they capped benefits at one per cent for each of the next 3 years - trying to bury the fact that 65 per cent of those hammered by this one cut alone are people in work - facing cuts in Working Tax Credit, child benefits, housing benefit and the likes.

Lourdes!

They demonise the sick and disabled as they hire multinational outfits like ATOS to drag people through assessments on their fitness to work, conducted by ill-trained staff, hounding people off marginally higher rates of benefits by declaring them fit to work. 

No wonder ATOS' headquarters in Glasgow has been dubbed 'Lourdes', such is the miracle cures they perform, declaring very sick people well as they leave the building! 

But it's no joke - vast numbers have died within weeks of being declared fit by these profiteering hitmen for the government.

But perhaps the most consciously divisive of all the Tory-Lib Dem cuts to benefits is the Bedroom Tax. They thought by picking on 105,000 Scottish households they could isolate them from the rest of us. In vain!
People joining the marches are often there on principle, not directly affected themselves. The most common expression used by the thousands who have stopped and signed Scottish Socialist Party street petitions is "It doesn't affect me, but...".

Unity

This crude theft of incomes from the poorest sections of the working class - in part designed to pay for the bankers' bailout and the millionaires' recent tax cut - has infuriated tens of thousands and given them the chance to lash out at a government they detest for all it's other attacks.

Unity between those directly affected and tens of thousands of others is growing. 

People on the streets condemn a Tory Tax that tells disabled people they are not allowed an extra room for lifeline disabled facilities, or for sleepovers by carers unless they are getting 24/7 cover from registered carers. 

They are appalled at multi-millionaires like Lord Freud - government Welfare Minister, who has 11 spare bedrooms in his two luxury mansions - telling separated parents they face the punishment of the Bedroom Tax for having a bedroom for their own kids to stay in several nights a week.
Likewise with grandparents who share in the upbringing of their grand-kids, or couples who need an extra bedroom to get a night's sleep because of severe health problems such as COPD.

Daylight robbery

The term 'daylight robbery' arguably arose 450 years ago when King William introduced a Window Tax and people avoided it by bricking up their windows. This is daylight robbery 21st century style. It is depriving children, parents, grandparents and disabled people of their human rights. It is stealing £500 million a year off the poorest to give to the richest, from the neediest to the greediest, from the millions to the millionaires.

The Bedroom Tax is now well known for stealing 14 per cent of housing benefit off over 80,000 Scottish households, and 25 per cent cut off nearly another 25,000. 

Robbing an average of £14 a week off people often on weekly incomes of £71 is of course what the Tories exist to do: they are the party of the millionaires and multinational capitalists.

Stay put and fight

But this might as well be called the Disability Tax, or the Single-end Tax. 

In Scotland, 8 out of every 10 households hammered by it have at least one family member with a registered disability. And when they tell people they need to uproot themselves - often after decades in the family home, or in the immediate aftermath of their partner's death - because millionaires living in mansions dictate they have 'too many bedrooms', they are trying to drive people back to the overcrowded conditions of past generations.

Why should people have to uproot themselves from the home they have invested time, money and memories in, or from the neighbours whose friendship and solidarity they depend upon for a decent life?
People should stay put, refuse to budge, and join the fight to scrap this vicious tax.

Struggle or starve!

Whilst millionaires were rewarded an annual 'pay' rise of £107,000 through tax cuts last month, the same government's own civil service calculated that 42 per cent of the households hit by the Bedroom Tax were literally unable to afford to pay it from day one.

People in this rich nation have already suffered the choice of heating or eating. Now they are confronted by the impossible choices of heating, eating or paying the Bedroom Tax. With Food Banks trebling in number over the last year, we are well and truly traveling back to the Hungry Thirties or even Victorian times.
The choice is blunt: in the words of one of the main slogans of the working class movement of the 1930s, we either "Struggle or Starve"!

People in abject poverty being robbed by the Bedroom Tax is a recipe for evictions - which is why the anti-Bedroom Tax movement is so important.

The campaign is determined to help people appeal every housing benefit cut decision - on time, within a month of the authorities issuing the letter of decision. This can be on grounds ranging from upholding clauses of the Human Rights Act to Children's Acts to challenging what the so-called spare bedroom is actually used for. Several legal challenges are in the courts, and if any succeed, those who have submitted written appeals could win concessions or exemption.

Reclassify homes

Alongside individual appeals, the pressure which campaigners, including the SSP, have put on councillors, Housing Association bosses and the Scottish government to outlaw all bedroom tax evictions is critical - and has already reaped important dividends.

Protests at Council meetings, street campaigning and fighting demands in local media calling on these people in power to declare there will be no evictions has forced them to sit up and listen.
In a number of Councils - including South Ayrshire, Edinburgh, Renfrewshire, Highlands and Dundee - they have taken at least a faltering step in the right direction, pledging there will be no evictions for at least the next year.

After a series of big SSP public meetings, which went on to organise several protests at council meetings - pounding those in power to outlaw all bedroom tax evictions, reclassify houses so as to avoid rooms being eligible for the tax, and to demand the shortfall in rents from the Scottish government - North Ayrshire Council has gone further than any other so far in Scotland. 

The SSP led local people in demanding they follow the example of Knowsley and Nottingham councils and reclassify rooms. Under this pressure, as well as declaring no evictions for at least a year, the Council has now said they will reclassify two-bedroom houses with a small room to become one-bedroom and a boxroom. 

Also, to make their one-bedroom houses available to all ages, not just the elderly; and to give those asked to downsize an extra 50 housing points so as to increase their chances of getting rehoused.

Partial victory - keep fighting 

This is a partial victory for the SSP-led campaign in the area, which has been ferocious and persistent.
But it's still only partial; we are stepping up the pressure on councillors to reclassify ALL their housing stock, and importantly to launch a campaign alongside tenants and council workers for funding off the Scottish government to fill the gap left in rental income by people simply being unable to pay the Bedroom Tax.
Failure to do this could lead not only to cuts in jobs and services, but also to the threat of evictions by another route in the future. 

People who don't pay because they can't pay will end up in arrears. Unless the pressure is sustained on the politicians in charge, they could then decide such tenants face eviction procedures because they did not "take all reasonable steps to avoid getting into rent arrears" - the clause adopted by every single council and housing association that has so far pledged 'no evictions for at least a year'.
Some of these tenants may already be on a repayment Pre-eviction arrangement, and if they now get clobbered by the bedroom tax, they could be driven by poverty into defaulting on their payments and face eviction procedures. 

That's why the No2BedroomTax campaign and the SSP will keep building local networks of people ready to form human walls of solidarity against any evictions, as well as demanding local Housing Association bosses and the Scottish government come off the fence and outlaw evictions.

That is why the campaign needs to sustain the demand for funding off the Scottish government of the guesstimated loss of £53m this year in rent to social landlords. Otherwise some local Housing Associations will declare cuts and redundancies - one in Glasgow has already issued redundancies and cut the pay of longstanding staff by up to £5,000 a year. 

And some of them might even go under, which is an added motive behind the Tory Bedroom Tax; to drive people into the private rented sector to be exploited by profiteering shark landlords who are subsidised by public funds through housing benefit - and to even drive weaker ones into the clutches of the banks and the profiteering private sector.

No excuse for cuts

The SSP will unite with anyone prepared to resist the Bedroom Tax. But we do not share Labour's view that it should just be reformed and applied differently. Labour's aspiring future government Minister Helen Goodman has blurted out they would keep it but only apply it if a tenant is offered a smaller house and declines it!

The SSP is not out to reform or amend the Bedroom Tax, we are out to scrap it, to help build a movement that makes it unworkable and forces the government to abandon it.

And we will never tire of exposing the fact there is absolutely no excuse for introducing this, or any other benefit cuts. 

The government peddles the lie that cuts are unavoidable due to the national debt and annual deficit in public spending. But the figures for these were consistently higher than they are now for most of the past century - including during the decades when the NHS and welfare state were built, millions of council houses were built, and unemployment reached an all-time low.

The cuts to benefits are based on ideological dogma, opposition to social provision and universal benefits - something which the Tories and Lib Dems share with New Labour! - as well as a crude drive to divide the working class and make it easier to carry out a wealth transfusion to the very richest away from the rest of us.

Tax the rich

There is no excuse for these savage cuts to living standards given the fabulous wealth of the nation. It's not a problem of the wealth available, but its outrageously unequal distribution. 

Last year, the tiny elite richest 1,000 people in the UK - making up a miniscule 0.003 per cent of the population - increased their wealth by £35billion. That's more than the entire budget spent on DLA, ESA, JSA, care allowances and similar benefits! It would pay, twice over, for the £18bn cuts to the benefits bill implemented so far.

And the bloated rich - individuals and big corporations - systematically dodge £120bn a year in tax, which is 240 as much as their Tory-Lib Dem political representatives are robbing off the poorest through the Bedroom Tax.

Socialism, not savagery

There is no excuse for these cuts. And there is an alternative - socialism.

The SSP is fighting to scrap the Bedroom Tax, halt all benefit cuts, and for the Scottish government to stand up to the Westminster dictatorship by refusing to carry our their butchery, demanding back the stolen £billions that could expand jobs, services and incomes. 

Contrary to the SNP leadership's message, the Scottish government don't have to choose between protecting the NHS, education, council services, council tax payers and tenants battered by the Bedroom Tax. They should mobilize all these and more in a Scottish rebellion against the Westminster thieves, demanding back the £billions stolen by them, that could be deployed to massively invest in jobs, services, housing, pay and benefits.

We are campaigning for an independent Scotland with the power and political willpower to abolish the Bedroom Tax. 

We are fighting for a socialist Scotland where by taxing the rich and taking vital services, natural resources, energy, construction, banking and major industry into democratic public ownership, we could guarantee a well-paid job and apprenticeships for all those fit to work; a living income for those unable to and the retired; and decent, affordable social sector housing for all needs, built to the highest environmental standards.
Unite through No2BedroomTax campaigns to fight for the abolition of one of the most vicious attacks in a whole package of savagery.

Build a mass movement to evict the Tories, not tenants.

Join the SSP for an independent socialist Scotland where the wealth of the nation is owned, controlled and used for the benefits of the millions, not the millionaires.