Clear the Temples of Wonga Capitalism!

According to the Bible, 2,000 years ago Jesus Christ entered the temple courts to find them overrun by money-changers, fashioned himself a whip, overturned their tables, scattered their coins and drove them out.

And he sayeth, "all of ye but Wonga are to be cast out..."

Two millennia on, Justin Welby, the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury - and therefore one of the men claiming to represent Christ on earth - entered the debate about today's moneylenders, denounced Pay Day Loan giant Wonga - only to hastily retreat days later when it emerged his own Church of England has huge investments in Wonga! 

Archbishop- caught with the Wonga...

Rather than lash out JC-style with verbal whips, JW admitted to being "irritated" and "embarrassed" at the revelations of having such dodgy investments, and then heaped praise on Wonga chief executive Errol Damolin as "a very intelligent man, with a very professionally managed company", feebly mumbling "there are plenty of others much worse".

 


Listening to their flock

The Christian churches - whichever wing - are among the most enduring institutions in human history. One critical factor is their ability to tack and weave in response to the winds of change in social opinion, adapting just enough to hold onto their followers.

The Archbishop's mother was Winston Churchill's personal assistant. He is related to the 1950's Tory leader Rab Butler. He was Eton and Cambridge educated; went on to become an oil industry executive, and in 2008 defended disgraced bankers from being 'named and shamed'. 
But as he surveys the public outrage at the scourge of Pay Day Loan sharks, he tries to reflect some of that fury amongst his flock, pledging to "compete Wonga out of business" by promoting and assisting the growth of Credit Unions. 

Even the Tory-led Westminster Coalition are trying to perform the same, deceitful balancing act. They have pledged £35m in funds to Credit Unions, but rejected calls for a cap on the interest rates charged by the booming Pay Day Lenders like Wonga - whose 'representative' annual interest rate (APR) is a mind-boggling 5,853 per cent!!

This £35m is welcomed by the 400 local Credit Unions, who are currently going bust at a record rate and unable to match the escalating demand for modest loans off working class people. But it is entirely dwarfed by the £2,000m Pay Day Loan industry; by sixty times over, in fact.

 


Loan Shark Cancer

Loan sharks are a cancer at the heart of Britain's low wage economy. Pay Day loans are the product of a poisonous cocktail of poverty pay, mounting inflation on daily essentials like food and rent, and the failure of the High St banks to offer credit, let alone affordable credit, to the working class majority.

Last January, Which? magazine found that over half the population had used credit cards, store cards and Pay Day loans to pay for Christmas - borrowing on average over £300.

1.75 million adults in the UK are denied bank accounts. Another 9 million have accounts that deny them any credit. And those granted overdraft facilities are charged exorbitant daily rates for using them.
When the rent is due, and shopping for food unavoidable, but it's still a week to go to pay day, it's dangerously tempting to reply to the deluge of seductive emails and adverts from Wonga,Payday Pig and the whole array of offers of magic 'solutions'.

Recent surveys show that young workers aged 18-34 are far more prone to take out Pay Day Loans - because they generally suffer the lowest pay, often in the most insecure jobs. A horrifying one in six surveyed in that age bracket plan to incur such crucifying interest charges over the next 6 months.

When you borrow £100 off Wonga to buy food, you typically pay back £137 a month later - or roll over the debt, then take out more loans to pay it off, sliding into the abyss of mounting indebtedness.

Tempting ripoff.

Poverty Pay

The underlying cause is the pathetic £6.19 legal National Minimum Wage - and that's the 'adult' rate!

The higher level Living Wage - recently updated to £7.50 - is entirely voluntary, the product of campaigning pressure on employers. It is hardly a princely sum. But even that modest figure has been denounced this week by the Scottish arm of the Confederation of British Industry as a threat to jobs and the economy!

Low pay is the curse of the modern working class. Over one in five earn below the Living Wage. Oxfam Scotland calculate that costs Scottish society £6billion every year.

Growing numbers of bosses dodge even the measly legal Minimum Wage. 
This sea of poverty pay slashes spending power - endangering jobs. 

 


Cuts create a pool for the Sharks

Westminster Coalition cuts to in-work benefits have further driven workers towards the murderous clutches of the Loan Sharks - whether the backstreet versions that enforce repayments with a claw hammer, or the £2billion-strong 'legal' Pay Day Loan outfits.

Workers' wages are at their lowest share of national wealth in 60 years. Recent government figures admit 280,000 of us in Scotland who work are in officially recognised poverty. That is the pool trawled by these ruthless examples of financial capitalism.

People desperate to survive clutch at the Wongas of this system to tide them over, only to be drowned in a sea of rip-off charges. No wonder Wonga was named as Europe's fastest growing business in 2010; and these predatory capitalists stole £62.4million in profit off workers' wage packets last year.

Credit Unions







Credit Unions are a lifeline to many working class people. Their interest rates are capped at 2 per cent a month - about 27 per cent APR. Compared to the Loan Sharks like Wonga that is like heaven on earth. But their resources are limited. On their own, they can't possibly provide the cheap or interest-free loans that would be possible if the enormous resources of the banking system were taken over into democratic public ownership. 

Pouring a few drops into Credit Unions from the ocean of wealth in their hands by the wage-cutting, benefit-cutting Westminster bootboys is a dishonest bit of political posturing. It's in the same school of hypocrisy as Westminster driving half a million families into food poverty and then praising Food Banks. 

And Cameron is accompanying this token investment with raising the cap on interest from 2 to 3 per cent a month, a huge leap in repayment costs for those seeking refuge in Credit Unions.

Plans by the Anglican Church and the Kirk to set up their own Credit Unions as well as provide premises and volunteers for existing ones seems laudable. But it is fundamentally flawed because it does not confront the root causes of people's increasingly desperate reliance on loans. And Justin Welby has quoted annual interest rates of 80-90 per cent as necessary to make a profit in such Credit Unions - hardly in keeping with "blessed are the poor".

 


Clear the temples!




Unless the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Anglican Church and the Kirk in Scotland are prepared to challenge the rule of the bankers, wage-slashing employers and their hired capitalist politicians, they cannot hope to drive the latter-day moneylenders out of the temple! They cannot hope to overcome poverty and the ocean of debt that decent working people are drowning in.

And the Church as an institution is hardly clean when it comes to capitalist exploitation. The Church of England has investments worth over £5.6billion. They used to be the biggest landowners in the country, but now also invest heavily in property and international stock markets.
They seek to appease the moral feelings of their churchgoers by setting limits on the type of investments they profit from. The Church Commission's guidelines accept that they can make money from investing in companies where up to 25 per cent of profits come from gambling, alcohol or high-interest loans, and up to 10 per cent from the arms trade; anything above these thresholds would presumably be sinful!

Neither Wonga nor Welby - organise workers!






Workers in low-paid, insecure jobs can't rely on the Tories or the Church hierarchy to rescue them from the Hell of Loan Shark Britain - with it's brutal anti-union laws, designed to shackle workers and hamstring our efforts to increase pay to a Living Wage as a guaranteed legal minimum for all over 16. 

Workers in unionized workplaces have on average 12 per cent higher wages than their exact equivalents in places where the government's laws and the fear and terror used by employers have blocked the unions getting organised.

So rather than wait for Eton-educated Westminster Ministers or Eton-educated archbishops to challenge Wonga capitalism, (which they are tangled up in anyway), we need to organise and fight back ourselves, as workers, young and old, religious and non-religious. 

 


Living Wage - not living hell!

We need to demand a decent Living Wage as a legal minimum; full trade union rights at work from day one in the job; taxation of the bloated rich and big business; and democratic public ownership of the entire banking and financial sector, to then offer cheap loans to individuals, small businesses and the public sector.

When the plundering Wongas of this capitalist world slap us in the face, we should reject the philosophy of 'turning the other cheek' so they can smite that too. 

We need to overthrow the capitalist Coalition that dictates on behalf of the moneylenders and wage-thieves of big business. We need to fight back together, 'clearing the temples' of these obnoxious capitalist exploiters and their system.

A SOCIALIST CASE FOR INDEPENDENCE

I wrote this article on 22 June 2013 for the Yes Scotland website, at their behest.

Scotland’s egalitarian traditions are captured in the phrase "We're a' Jock Tamson's bairns". But under Westminster capitalist rule, old Jock must have disowned and disinherited the majority of us! 

We live in the 4th most unequal developed country in the world. 

The richest 100 Scots last year increased their wealth by £21billion, to a total of £39 billion. 

So 100 people have substantially more than the annual budget of the Scottish government, covering essential jobs and public services for the other 5.3 million Scots! 

The richest tenth of households are 273 times better off than the poorest tenth. 

And it's not just those on skinflint benefits or pauperised pensions that suffer; the biggest single group in poverty - and growing in number - is the working poor; currently 280,000 of us.

Just a few statistical reminders of the system we need to change; why Scottish workers need socialism.

But likewise, Scotland’s working class majority need to vote for independence to help tackle these obscene inequalities in our rich nation, in part because independence would hasten the prospects of a socialist future where we truly are “a’ Jock Tamson's bairns”, genuinely 'better together', sharing the fruits of our collective efforts in a fashion that would banish poverty, poor housing, mass unemployment and underemployment

As a socialist and internationalist I advocate independence for three main reasons. 

Firstly, as a democratic advance, so the Scottish people actually get the governments they vote for. There's never been a Scottish Tory majority since 1955, yet we've been saddled with Westminster Tory dictatorships for at least 34 of the subsequent years.

Secondly, as a devastating body blow to the power, prestige and imperial arrogance of the British ruling class, who lord it over Scotland like colonial masters (witness the poll tax), use Scotland as the dumping ground for their US masters' nuclear arsenal, and habitually mobilize disproportionate numbers of working class Scots to slaughter and be slaughtered in wars for oil and empire.

Independent self government of Scotland’s land mass, offshore waters, oil and gas, and the removal of Trident, would all undermine the arrogant rule of the rich, and indeed thereby vastly boost the prospects of the people of England and Wales confronting and defeating the same dictatorship of the rich.

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, independence would hasten the prospects of radical socialist change, of a fundamental and irreversible transfer of wealth and power to the millions, away from the millionaires.

Contrary to the Tories’ Labour puppets in Better Together, voting YES in 2014 is not the same as voting for indefinite, unchallenged rule by the SNP.

A YES in 2014 would give the working class majority population their first-ever real choice of Scottish government, with the opportunity to elect a government of the left with the powers and political will to transform the lives of millions. 

Such a government could radically redistribute the fabulous wealth of the nation through measures that are way beyond the powers conceded by Westminster under devolution, or even various shades of Devo Max - including progressive taxation of the rich elite and big business; a Living Wage for all at 16, with equal pay for women; a fair benefits system for those unable to work; a state pension and education grant linked to a Living Wage; reversal of privatisation and extension of democratic public ownership into all services, transport, energy (including green energy), big industrial enterprises, construction and banks; reversal of cuts and expansion of public services; scrapping of Trident and an end to bloody imperialist wars. 

It could democratize society, scrapping all anti-union laws and blacklisting; constructing democracy in the workplace and communities; devolving key decisions to local councils, tenants and communities. 

Some in the trade union movement cling to the myths peddled by those on the 'left' of the Labour party - that independence would 'wreck the unity of the working class', and we're 'better together' in a 'redistributive Britain'.

Which particular planet have they inhabited for the past 30-40 years, during which all the post-1945 gains of the NHS and Welfare State have been systematically dismantled, not only by Westminster Tories but also Labour governments?

And if they succeeded in confusing workers into voting No, Westminster would undoubtedly unleash even more savage cuts to jobs and services, emboldened by our failure to seize the chance of democratic self-government. 

That is the grisly spectre under continued Westminster rule, based on the economic and social crisis created by the banks and big business. It would especially confront us if the real and present danger of a Tory or Tory/UKIP government ruled from Westminster, but also even if Labour won in 2015.

Labour have refused to even pledge abolition of the iniquitous Bedroom Tax, let alone the Thatcherite anti-union laws they retained; have abandoned the principle of universal social provision; and have warned that a Labour government will be 'ruthless', with 'iron rule' [their phrases] in carrying on with public sector cuts.

The unity and solidarity of working people has been cynically undermined by successive Westminster governments, and has never depended on one form or other of capitalist government.

Trade unionists share membership - and take joint action - across national government boundaries: in Britain and Ireland, north and south, across Scandinavia, and in North America. It is an insult to the proud internationalist traditions of the Scottish working class to claim they would cease all acts of solidarity with fellow-workers in England, Wales, Ireland, Europe or indeed further afield once we had gained the powers to radically improve the lives and conditions of the Scottish people through self-government.

Every day that we suffer growing poverty, inequality and stunted ambitions for the young generation is an argument for fundamental, socialist change – which is a far more realistic prospect in an independent Scotland than with the ‘choice’ of different factions of the same capitalist, pro-war Westminster machine.

A socialist Scotland will not emerge on 19 September 2014, but if we vote Yes, its time will come far sooner than if we surrender to Westminster rule by the rich. Workers need socialism and independence.

G8 SUMMIT:

Fracking Furious in Fermanagh 

by Richie Venton 

County Fermanagh, in the south west of Northern Ireland, is where I was born and brought up. 

Visiting my family there is always a tonic to the senses: the lush green rolling hills, the back roads bursting with birdsong, the stillness and glittering tranquility of Lough Erne. 

Stickers on a former butchers shop in Belcoo, Co Fermanagh, give the false impression of a thriving business!

Of course the price is almost guaranteed and persistent rain: as the local saying goes, half the year Lough Erne is in Fermanagh, the other six months Fermanagh is in Lough Erne! And at many points in the agricultural cycle, you get used to a powerful aroma of the most natural of all fertilizers, spread by the farmers to enrich the grass!
Not last week though! The all-too-rare glory of sunshine vastly enhanced the spectacular scenery, but instead of boosting the smell of manure, it increased the smell of fresh paint! Especially so in the county town of Enniskillen, where every street railing had a new black gloss to it; shop fronts boasted bright new colours; you could hardly turn a street corner without walking into painters up ladders or on cherrypickers. A family friend described in exasperation how he wanted to decorate his house but literally couldn't find a tin of paint for sale in any of the local shops!

Massive cosmetic cover-up

To say a full-blown cosmetic exercise has been launched would be a gross understatement: empty shops, idle work sites and derelict buildings are literally covered up with giant posters of idyllic Fermanagh scenery, in several villages and many approach roads. 

 The G8 invasion

Why? The 'masters of the universe' are coming to town!

David Cameron chose the luxurious Lough Erne Golf Resort hotel complex, on the scenic rural outskirts of Enniskillen, as the venue for this year's G8 summit of the leaders of eight of the capitalist world's biggest economies. 

Lough Erne Resort, venue for G8

Local people are generally glad to see the town and parts of some surrounding villages getting a paint job. They welcome the intensive road resurfacing that has been conducted over recent months, especially on the main Belfast to Enniskillen A4 route.

 An estimated £11m has been spent on road improvements, but mostly on the main routes that the G8 media circus might spot, not on rural roads most desperately in need of repair for those who live there. 

The short burst of employment this has created is welcome in an area of chronic unemployment; a family friend, a skilled tradesman, has had to turn away painting and decorating work because he can't cope with the demand, whereas he'd previously had to drive a tanker for a living. 
An English company has been handed the £450,000 contract by Fermanagh district council to mount vinyl pictures on shop-front shutters!

Behind the gloss

Lough Erne tranquility invaded by G8

But behind this gloss lurks a stark reality that will remain when the G8 caravan moves on, captured in one example: the luxurious Lough Erne Resort chosen to host the G8 exploiters' deliberations has until recently been put into administration, only temporarily re-opened for the G8 event, with workers taken back on... but on lower wages!

Most Fermanagh people aren't fooled by appearances, however pretty. In fact they are downright resentful at the hypocrisy of years of being ignored in their pleas for road improvements and investment in jobs and small independent businesses by the government - with pleas of poverty from the Stormont and Westminster regimes - now suddenly transformed into bottomless pots of gold to spruce up the place because eight capitalist heads of government and their entourage are descending on the county for a couple of days. 

 Armed occupation

But the G8 invasion of Fermanagh involves more than paint, pretty posters and pothole repairs. 

Lower Lough Erne

It includes an appalling extravaganza of taxpayers' money being splashed out on a 'security' operation that has many of the hallmarks of a police state, of an occupied, militarized zone.

Police boat patrol on Lough Erne

A massive ring of steel fencing round the Lough Erne Resort has cost over £4.2million. The Shore Road, that runs from Enniskillen past the venue, has been blocked off to general traffic from 1st to 26th June, with local residents having to show special passes to get home. This is part of a vast water and air exclusion zone - not just on 17-18th June when these imperialist lords land for their discussions on the carve-up of the world's resources and war plans, but for the entire period from 1st to 26th June.

School exams are being disrupted by the traffic exclusion zone, with students expected to get earlier buses on the days that heavily shape their futures. 

Non-emergency outpatient services are being suspended when Cameron's international cronies come.

A massive police operation is already underway, several weeks before Cameron, Obama, Merkel, Putin et al descend on Fermanagh for two days. On a short journey you will encounter at least two or three police patrols, on foot, in cars, with random checkpoints, people frequently stopped and searched, squads of motorbike cops on the streets, boats with police patrols on the lough, and police helicopters violating the tranquility of the county. 

Police dog handler checks car

CCTV cameras festoon every available lamppost or building. 
Already 730 police officers from England, Scotland and Wales have been trained to drive armoured Landrovers - a 'privilege' normally restricted to police in N Ireland - as part of an overall drafting in of 3,600 'mutual aid' police from Britain. 
Police armed with machine guns are patrolling the streets weeks before the G8, as are British soldiers.

G8 masters of violence 

The local media repeatedly pumps out the line they are being trained on 'how to deal with public disorder' - part of a massive propaganda hype about impending violence that is designed to demonise and demoralise the trade unionists, environmentalists, socialists, and human rights campaigners seeking to exercise their right to peaceful protest against the G8 jamboree.

Police training for G8

Water cannons are in position. Unmanned police drones, costing over £1million, have been bought to fly over and spy on people and protests.
The prestigious Killyhelvin hotel - normally reliant on weddings, family outings and tourists - has been literally taken over for weeks by a massive media horde there to report of the G8, no doubt on the prowl for any incident of violence by protestors that they can exaggerate, but very little exposé of the bloodcurdling violence perpetrated by the G8 leaders and their system of ruthless exploitation of people and planet.
By way of contrast, former British Army and RAF bases in Omagh and Enniskillen have been turned into 'custody facilities' for protesters - at a cost of £3.9million.

And the local council has declared itself unable to find a suitable camp site for protesters, whereas the bill for catering and cleaning alone at the G8 resort is £3million. 

Government Ministers have coyly declined to answer questions about plans to shut down internet access and social media at the height of the G8 - in stark contrast to the Department of Environment's fast-tracking of seven temporary new telecoms masts in the G8 conference centre itself and the main police barracks.

£50m police bill 

The British army has arrived to give back-up to the police, and army helicopters will fly the G8 entourage to and from the Lough Erne Resort. The place is crawling with hundreds of secret service operatives.
The Police Service Northern Ireland (PSNI) is spending an overall £50m in policing and so-called 'security'. That is an obscene squandering of public funds against the backdrop of vicious public service cuts, where the likes of my mother's home help service has been cut to the bone, and where charity volunteers collect on street corners and at stalls in the bigger Enniskillen supermarkets for life-saving services that are not rendered by the state.

Bear in mind this super-sized police and military operation is being conducted in an area where the biggest town, Enniskillen, has a population just under 15,000, which is roughly a quarter the population of the whole of Co Fermanagh. 

 Legacy of cuts and poverty

Much is being prattled about 'the G8 legacy' in Fermanagh. A crude reduction in people's civil rights is likely to be one actual legacy; they won't splash out on this monstrous 'security' exercise and then simply dismantle it.

Long term job creation it certainly will not bring. Two private security firms, including the notorious G4S, have been handed the contract for 650 staff for the G8 jamboree, but they don't even intend to recruit locally. 

The local RNLI has just launched a public appeal for £60,000 to build a proper shelter for this vital, life saving service, run by volunteers; not for them the bottomless well of public funding afforded 8 men and women who dominate our lives with their economic and social policies. Another local public appeal has just raised £15,000 for defibrillators, after a near-tragedy. 
Youth unemployment is officially 24 per cent, with low-paid retail jobs one of the few outlets. 

 Environmental carnage

One of the most outrageous 'legacies' of the G8, if they have their way, will be fracking in Fermanagh. The Fermanagh G8 Not Welcome coalition that is marching through Enniskillen on 17June has made opposition to fracking a central theme.

In 2001, the G8 endorsed High Volume Hydraulic Fracturing for shale gas, in support of the lobby of the oil and gas multinationals. Shattering rock, this releases gas, but also brings to the surface numerous toxins, such as benzene, lead, mercury and radioactive material. Fracking also contaminates water supplies along new fault lines in the rock, reaching into streams and lakes. As the lakelands of the north of Ireland, Fermanagh seems the last place on earth that fracking should be allowed. 
But the capitalists who lord it over us mere mortals couldn't give a frack about the well-being of Fermanagh - or anywhere else on the globe. 
The Belfast government has already granted permission to a company called Tamboran Resources to start work on two sites in Fermanagh, where they have plans for 60 'pads' - each a seven-acre site, concreted over, with heavy and noisy machinery, with air, water and noise pollution - a mere mile apart from one another.  

 Fracking mayhem

Scientists warn that more than half the water will be severely contaminated, with no means of decontaminating it. And the unusually shallow shale layers in the area - about a quarter the depth in other parts of the world - makes fracking in Fermanagh especially dangerous. 
And it can't even be sold to the local population with the cynical offer of jobs in an unemployment blackspot: Tamboran initially promised 600 jobs north of the border plus 600 in the south, but have now reduced their pledge to 3 jobs per pad, a miserable total of 180. 
Aside from the issue of dangerous and environmentally destructive jobs, that's hardly compensation for the 5,000 local jobs in farming or the 1,000 tourism jobs that will be jeopardized by this monstrous plan to frack Fermanagh. 

 Socialism at home and abroad

The G8 summit epitomizes all that is worst about the capitalist world we live in. 

Nauseating pomp and privilege for the powerful, alongside poverty, unemployment and outright hunger for the majority population. 
Food banks and charity collections for desperately needed services in the local community, alongside obscene gluttony, publicly funded, at this gathering of eight capitalist puppets. 

Over 3 billion people on the planet living below $2 a day, whilst 358 billionaires and a couple of hundred multinationals have a grip on the world's wealth. 

1.3 billion people subsisting on $1 a day, and somebody dying of hunger every 3.6 seconds.

Environmental destruction so that the giant energy corporations can make a fast buck. 

And deployment of state forces, armed to the teeth, to block the right of peaceful protest to people genuinely committed to a decent life, a living wage, public services, peace, and protection of the planet from destruction for short-term profit.

Capitalism means world starvation, poverty and war. Capitalism means the dictatorship of the rich, with the backup of armed forces prepared to deny the right to resist to the majority. 

The G8 occupation of Fermanagh is a brutal reminder of the world we need to change, of the need for socialism in Ireland, Scotland and around the globe these creatures are meeting to carve up. 

Join that fight now, before they lay waste to millions more people and the planet we share.

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.