Today’s letter (DWP death squads strike again. 08 January 2016) was one of the most difficult I have written. At what point do I call a spade a spade? At what point do any of us decide that something is beyond reasonable doubt? One clue had to be the rage and indignation which felt like a steel band around my throat, such that I found it hard to breath or swallow and that once the letter was written I was completely exhausted.
Looking back to what happened in Germany in the lead up to WWII, many have asked why the German people did not speak out? The questions I ask myself are, at that time how would people have spoken out and in what way? To the newspapers? On the streets or outside government buildings? Handing out pamphlets and leaflets or sticking up posters? Holding meetings? How far would they have got before they were arrested and vanished, unheard and unremarked? If any neighbours witnessed their arrest what would it have taken for them to be anything but silent, in terror for their own lives? Terror and silence saved no one in the end.
We are fortunate that we still have a relatively free press, but above all we have the Internet and citizen journalism unconstrained by powerful advertisers on whom most of the mainstream media rely for funding. We have the ability to communicate on a national and global scale as never before in history for the price of a computer and an Internet connection, but for how long? In writing this I am exercising my ability to write and speak out but I do not feel free and I very much fear for the future. The government plans to scrap the human rights act, to impose what’s called the Snoopers Charter, Cameron plans to constrain what he calls non-violent extremists and yet also plans to act above the law. What else could he mean when he said, “For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.” If we are not protected by law, what’s left? Government extremism? If obeying the law won’t help us, then why should we feel constrained by it any more?
In researching my letter I read the response from the DWP about the death of Dawn Amos, who died the same day the DWP wrote to her to say she was not ill enough to receive her weekly care allowance, their spokesperson said “Our thoughts are with the family of Mrs Amos. The decision was based on evidence which included the opinion of Mrs Amos’ own GP.” To which her daughter responded, “Obviously she was ill enough for the benefit because we had to watch her die.” How many times must I read such responses from the DWP before I stop and realise they are always very similar and yet people are still being treated in inhuman ways and they are still dying?
In 2014 at a Department of Work and Pensions Select Committee investigation into benefit sanctions, Debbie Abrahams, interrupted Iain Duncan Smith as he was saying, “I actually believe the sanctions regime as applied is fair, we always get the odd case of…”, Abrahams said, “People are dying because of these sanctions!” Smith responded, “No I don’t agree with that. I think the reality is that the sanctions regime, as a part of this system, we give a huge amount of support to all those who are at the job centre.” That’s Iain Duncan Smiths version of reality but it’s not any kind of reality I recognise in the real world outside of his mind.
David Clapson, to name but one of thousands of benefit related deaths, was sanctioned in July 2014 and 18 days later was found dead in his home. He had £3.44 in his bank account, he had no electricity for his fridge where he kept his insulin and he died of diabetic ketoacidosis caused by a lack of insulin. The coroner found he had no food in his stomach and a pile of CVs was found next to his body. Iain Duncan Smith and Priti Patel have both repeatedly denied there is any causal relationship between sanctions and the death of claimants. Not even one? It took me less than 30 seconds on Google to find one that was widely reported and David Clapson is far from the only one.
Today I chose to write about DWP deaths squads, by which I meant jobcentres and Maximus assessment centres for Work Capability Assessments who took over from the reviled Atos after they bought their way out their contract to conduct the DWP fitness for work scheme. I am acutely aware that death squads is an emotive term and not one that I expect to see any time soon in the main stream media, but it was used as far back as March 2013 by UK Austerity Nation in an article titled – ‘IDS denies job centre death squads working to league tables’ (on the number of sanctions they impose). That was nearly two years ago, can this possibly still be a matter for debate?
Looking back to what happened in Nazi Germany I have to wonder, when was the time to speak out, was there a right time? When would that have been? If people did speak out then clearly there weren’t enough, as history records. And what of now? Certainly I never thought I’d live to see such times as we are living in today. Hate is growing against people on benefits (scroungers), disabled people, migrants, refugees, Muslims, homeless people, poor people having babies and more.
This isn’t the country my parents or my grand parents fought for. After the first world war Lloyd George promised to make this a land fit for heroes, now thousands of ex-service personnel are homeless and sleeping rough. David Clapson served in the Army yet died following a sanction for apparently simply missing an appointment with a Jobcentre adviser.
When is enough, enough? Percy Shelley wrote ‘The Masque of Anarchy’ (banned for 30 years) in 1819 following the Peterloo Massacre when 60,000 peaceful pro-democracy and anti-poverty protesters were brutally attacked in Manchester, yet the final verse is as poignant today as it was 197 years ago:
Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number –
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you –
Ye are many – they are few.
We are not engaged in a new struggle, as Tony Benn said, “Every generation has to fight the same battles.” We stand on the shoulders of giants, as the saying goes, yet I am sure many were afraid in every generation, but there is no shame in being afraid, we can only be shamed by doing nothing. I am not an advocate of violence, that is the preferred method of rulers down the centuries, must we emulate them? Must we be as small minded as them? Are we not bigger and better than Iain Duncan Smith and the brutality that he is meting out to hundreds and thousands of people? Must we meet like with like? Surely we can do better because he is the least of men, glorifying in his brutality.
It is fine to ask, “What can I do?” But having asked, then seek the answer, seek it with passion and strength of will and determination, direct whatever energy you have left from all the demands of daily life towards it, because the thing about answers is that they seldom come without a struggle, without an effort, and they come only to those who never give up and then are ready and willing to act upon them.
https://uk-condemnation.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/ids-denies-job-centre-death-squads.html
https://www.welfareweekly.com/dwp-has-abandoned-any-responsibility-for-benefits-deaths-says-snp/
https://www.thelibertybeacon.com/2015/05/31/david-camerons-new-thought-police/
https://branches.britishlegion.org.uk/branches/carlton/lest-we-forget/
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/17/cant-afford-kids-hardline-tories
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/Lloyd-George/
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/9000-ex-service-personnel-homeless-after-2071049
https://www.historyhome.co.uk/c-eight/distress/masque.htm
https://www.peterloomassacre.org/history.html
https://newint.org/features/2010/10/01/tony-benn-caroline-lucas-mp-agent-bristly-pioneer/
