Fight the unfair bedroom tax!

Tracey Farrell, Harlow Socialist Party

The Con-Dems' bedroom tax, due to be introduced this spring, is not just another attack on the unemployed but also on working people who, like 93% of new claimants in 2010 and 2011, are forced through low pay and massive private rent costs to rely on housing benefit.

If you have the audacity to remain in the home that you have emotionally and financially invested in, where the child you have shared access to or your teenage children can live with you post secondary school, where your grandchildren and your guests can stay as you grow old, then be aware - they will literally starve you out. Research in Wales has found people planning to cut meals to cover the tax!

Under the new rules, from April council and housing association tenants who have one 'spare' bedroom will have their housing benefit cut by 14%. Those with two bedrooms will lose 25%.

A family will be punished for 'under-occupying' even where every bedroom in the home is in regular use. For example, benefit will be cut where under-16s of the same gender have been given their own bedroom, rather than being forced to share. Children under ten are expected to share regardless of gender.

Separated parents will be punished for keeping a 'spare' bedroom for when their children visit. Foster parents will receive a cut because, for benefits, foster children do not count as part of the household. Couples who sleep apart due to a medical condition are also under attack.

In my town Harlow, the council has offered tenants the following advice: if you are unemployed you should get a job, if you are employed you should increase your hours, or take in a lodger, or move to a smaller home.

What world does the council live in? Over 2.5 million people are looking for work. More than three million workers - 10.5% - are underemployed and want to work more hours. And locally, as the council has virtually no one-bedroom properties to move you to, it's a box room in a shared private house.

Harlow Socialist Party has decided to take action against the bedroom tax. We urge everyone to fight this disgusting attack, and to galvanise anger and outrage against the coalition.

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Finance appeal

The coronavirus crisis has laid bare the class character of society in numerous ways. It is making clear to many that it is the working class that keeps society running, not the CEOs of major corporations.

The results of austerity have been graphically demonstrated as public services strain to cope with the crisis.

The government has now ripped up its 'austerity' mantra and turned to policies that not long ago were denounced as socialist. But after the corona crisis, it will try to make the working class pay for it, by trying to claw back what has been given.

The Socialist Party's material is more vital than ever, so we can continue to report from workers who are fighting for better health and safety measures, against layoffs, for adequate staffing levels, etc.
When the health crisis subsides, we must be ready for the stormy events ahead and the need to arm workers' movements with a socialist programme - one which puts the health and needs of humanity before the profits of a few.