‘It’s got to end’

Unite Community members were out in full force for Anti-Sanctions Day today (March 9), as dozens gathered outside the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) to protest the government’s brutal – and often deadly– benefits sanctions regime.

They joined Unite-led demonstrations outside Jobcentres up and down the country to send the government a message that sanctions, which see vulnerable people lose benefits for unimaginable reasons, such as missing a Jobcentre appointment to attend the funeral of a family member.

The main demonstration in London was attended by Gill Thompson, sister of David Clapson, an ex-soldier diabetic who died starving because he was penalised by the Jobcentre for missing a meeting.

His body was found surrounded by CVs and his electricity had been cut off making his insulin unusable.

Clapson’s sister Gill’s presented the DWP with a petition signed by tens of thousands calling on the government to implement a review of sanctions.

Gill’s previous campaigning led to an inquiry by MPs into her brother’s death.

“People are dying as a direct result of sanctions – including my brother – and they shouldn’t be dying,” Gill told UNITElive.

Missed appointment

“Missing a Jobcentre appointment because you had to go to the doctor, for example, isn’t a criminal offence, but these people are being met with such cruelty and severity, and it isn’t right,” she added.

“My brother worked for 35 years – essentially his entire adult life,” Gill explained. “He just hit a time in his life when he couldn’t cope. But they are sanctioning people with mental health issues, with cancer, with a bad heart.

“These people are ill and vulnerable – they need our support. The welfare system was brought in to look after these very people, but instead the system is making them suffer.

“My brother died because he missed two meetings. They knew he was a Type 1 diabetic but they still sanctioned him and he died within a week.”

“We will keep campaigning because they’ve got to stop. It’s got to end.”

Banners

Unite community members carried banners as they marched to deliver the petition, which listed the names of scores of people who had died after being sanctioned.

Unite community member and university student Chris Francis said he attended the demonstration today out of anger towards a system that has affected so many, including his own mother who has a degenerative disease.

“I’m here especially for the people who cannot be here today,” he said.

“My mother had worked her entire life and she’s paid into the system for years and years. To then be denied benefits when she’s too ill to work and then to be sanctioned because of it – it’s beyond belief. The way we treat the sick and disabled in this country is abhorrent.

“Austerity is essentially a fancy word for class warfare – to divide and rule.”

Unite community branch secretary for Ealing Raj Gill has personally experienced the government’s Work Capability Assessment (WCA), a tick-box exercise that often rules people who are unable to get about their daily lives as “fit to work” in order to deprive them of disability benefit.

“I’m completely blind in one eye and partially blind in the other due to diabetes,” Gill explained. “I’ve been on insulin for a good many years. I’d been on disability living allowance but now my family’s benefit has been cut.

“I’ve paid national insurance for forty years,” he added. “I’ve paid for these benefits and I’m entitled to them. This government shouldn’t be taking away benefits that we’ve all worked for.

“It’s good that Unite community membership is getting on board in vast numbers to oppose benefits sanctions.

Joining up

“We’re joining up with local people all around London and the entire country,” Raj went on to say. “This protest is not the end; thus protest is just the beginning. [Work and pensions secretary] Iain Duncan Smith will go before any of us go anywhere.”

Jan, a Unite community member with three children who have chronic illnesses, has not had an easy life, and attended today’s demonstration to support society’s most vulnerable who are now under attack.

“I did not realise, after experiencing severe child abuse, after being homeless several times and after experiencing domestic abuse that I, at 60 years of age, would be living in a world that treats its poor, its young, and its ill so horrifically,” he said.

Jan, who is retired, explained that Unite community was an important catalyst that could bring various people from all sorts of backgrounds under the banner of social justice.

“Workers are the backbone of our movement but [Unite community] can be the beating heart,” she explained.

“We are the people that can go out on the streets when people on low-pay and zero-hours contracts who are struggling to pay rent can’t be here. We can go out and be the messengers. And we’ll do this united with people in work.”

Unite community co-ordinator Liane Groves asserted that the union will continue to be front-and-centre of the fight against benefit sanctions and the government’s austerity regime.

“We will not put up with sanctions and we will continue to campaign until this government abandons its policies,” she said.

Find out more about Unite community’s continued campaign against benefits sanctions here.

Pictured are Gill Thompson (left) with Unite Community member, Maggie Zolobajluk. By Mark Thomas