Category Archives: class

Occupying Royal Holloway

Posted on by symonhill

This evening I have had the privilege of speaking with students at Royal Holloway College in the University of London. They today began an occupation of their college, camping outside the Principal’s office and calling on him to oppose the government’s agenda for higher education.

I gave two talks at the college. The first, which was planned weeks ago, was a talk about my walk of repentance for homophobia. I’d been invited by the Students’ Union, Chaplaincy and Catholic Society. It was great to have an engaged and diverse audience, with interesting and challenging questions from (among others) a Muslim and at least two Catholics and members of the college’s LGBT Society.

The second talk was much more spontaneous. Some of the students involved in the occupation, which began this afternoon, asked me to go and speak to them. I was honoured. I wasn’t sure what they wanted me to say, but as they gathered round in the corridor, I spoke about my delight at the outbreak of active nonviolence over the last year. I encouraged them to resist the lies and misconceptions that would be spread about them and shared some thoughts and experience. As with the people at the first talk, I also had much to learn from the questions and comments with which they responded.

I was inspired by the enthusiasm, sense and detailed commitment of these people.

Students listened to each other, including on occasions when they did not agree. They seemed to be working well together to organise things effectively. They have allocated one room (the Principal’s Meeting Room) as a quiet study area, where students who have essays to write or research to do can go and work in silence. There was a steady stream of people with books and laptops going in and out. There seems to be a careful allocation of space. There was a quieter area dedicated for sleeping. Bins are divided for paper recycling, plastic recycling and general rubbish.

The diversity of students present was a challenge to the assumption that student activists are a small minority of eccentrics who get no real interest from the main student body. There appeared to be a gender and racial balance and the diversity of clothing did not live up to stereotypes of activist hippies.

The two talks I gave this evening were about different subjects, but the links between them are becoming ever clearer to me. Sexual ethics and economic ethics are closely linked. Tackling homophobia and resisting economic injustice are both part of a wider struggle to challenge a world in which people are encouraged to relate to each other on the basis of power, prejudice, money or convention. As a Christian, I believe we are called to relationships – whether personal or political – based on love, justice and mutuality. This is a challenge to both legalism and selfishness.

I am often accused of being too optimistic, particularly about politics. But I find it hard to imagine my reaction if someone had told me after last year’s general election that there would be an outbreak of active nonviolence in the coming year and a half. If they had told me that people would peacefully occupy the shops of tax-dodging corporations, that student activists would occupy universities across the UK in protest at tuition fees and that there would be a global movement of nonviolent occupations targeting financial centres, I would probably have laughed in their face.

In some ways, there are many reasons to be pessimistic about the future. Economies are in crisis across Europe. The UK government is responding with a vicious assault on public services and the welfare state.

But as I sat in that corridor at Royal Holloway tonight, I was reminded that there is another way. That the government’s assault on the working class and lower middle class is being met with resistance. That people from Cairo to Wall Street have inspired the world to stand up to injustice. That the power of money and markets will never understand or suppress the power of love manifested in active nonviolence.

No longer can radical campaigns be dismissed as the preserve of eccentric minorities. The breadth of support for Occupy Royal Holloway was very clear. While I was there, the Roman Catholic Chaplain spoke and offered his solidarity. For me, one of the most encouraging comments came from a security guard, as he wandered over to listen to the discussions. He told us he was glad to be working the evening shift because “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world”.

Christian solidarity with Occupy London

Posted on by symonhill

A number of groups have now signed a statement of Christian solidarity with the Occupy London movement. I’m delighted to say that the statement has been welcomed by both Christians and non-Christians involved in the occupations near the London Stock Exchange.

Signatories so far are Ekklesia, Christianity Uncut and the London Catholic Worker, although we’re confident that others will join in soon. The statement has been welcomed on the Occupy London website.

The statement can be read below.

 

Christian solidarity with the ‘Occupy London’ movement 

As Christians, we stand alongside people of all religions and none who are resisting economic injustice with active nonviolence. We offer our greetings to people engaged in occupations of financial centres throughout the world.

We seek to witness to the love and justice of God, proclaimed by Jesus Christ. Jesus said that he had come to “set free the oppressed”. His gospel is good news for all people. It is a challenge to all structures, systems, practices and attitudes that lead people to exploit and oppress their fellow human beings.

The global economic system divides people one from another and separates humanity from creation. It perpetuates the wealth of the few at the expense of the many. It fuels violence and environmental destruction. It is based on idolatrous subservience to markets. We cannot worship both God and money.

We are inspired by Jesus, who protested against exploitative traders and moneychangers in the Jerusalem Temple. Christianity began as a grassroots protest movement. Nonviolent direct action can play an important and ethical role in resisting injustice and achieving change.

We stand in solidarity with the ‘Occupy London’ movement and regret that they have not been able to make their protest closer to the London Stock Exchange. We applaud their commitment to co-operating with St Paul’s Cathedral and to ensuring that their camp is safe for everyone in the vicinity. We were pleased by the cathedral’s initial welcome to the camp and hope that difficulties between the occupiers and the cathedral can be speedily resolved, keeping the focus on the need to challenge the financial injustices perpetuated by the City of London.

Would Jesus kick the ‘Occupy London’ protesters off the St Paul’s Cathedral grounds?

Posted on by symonhill

I wrote a piece for the Guardian on this issue on Thursday (20 October). It can be read online at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/20/occupy-london-st-pauls-christianity. This was before St Paul’s Cathedral had closed and asked protesters to leave.

The parallel universe of David Cameron

Posted on by symonhill

Welcome to the parallel universe of David Cameron. It is a world in which the Tories stand up for the poor, lead the fight against dictatorship and stop people from being given benefits on demand. It is a world that exists in a conference hall in Manchester this week, in a few daily papers the rest of the time, and in the less well-informed parts of the right-wing blogosphere. It has nothing in common with the world that most of us live in.

The real story of David Cameron’s speech is the blunder that saw him removing his comments about credit card debt at the last minute. It appears to have taken his advisers a while to realise that being lectured on managing your personal finances by a multi-millionaire would not go down well with people struggling to make ends meet. Nor would the prospect of being told to give money to banks by politicians who have already bailed them out with billions of pounds of our money.

In terms of what Cameron did say, it is difficult to know where to start in pointing out the inaccuracies and half-truths. On at least one occasion, he told a straightforward lie. He said that people receiving disability benefits were ‘Not officially unemployed, but claiming welfare, no questions asked.’

What are these mythical benefits that are given to people without asking questions? My father was on disability benefits throughout the nineties. Many friends of mine have been on them since. All of them had not only to answer strings of questions but undergo tests and interviews, some of them ridiculously over-the-top, that in some cases made their health worse.

Cameron said, ‘Now we’re asking those questions’. He failed to mention that Atos, the company contracted to ‘ask the questions’ – and to re-assess people for ability to work – has done its job so badly that around 40% of appeals have been upheld. Atos’ approach makes clear that the government is interested in throwing as many people off benefits as possible.

Then there were Cameron’s comments on Gaddafi, for whose overthrow he appeared to take personal responsibility. The people of Libya might feel that they had something to do with it too. Cameron said that Labour were saying sorry for ‘sucking up to Gaddafi’ but nor for what ‘really’ mattered. The implication is that siding with Gaddafi is not a major problem. This would explain why Cameron’s government attempted to sell sniper rifles to the Gaddafi regime only weeks before the Libyan uprising began.

Cameron re-announced the government’s consultation on same-sex marriage. This was announced two weeks ago by Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone. Indeed, a consultation had already been announced and Featherstone was effectively confirming that it had been postponed. She promised legal recognition of same-sex civil marriage by 2015. Throwing people off benefits can be done overnight, but marriage equality apparently takes a minimum of four years.

The more I read of Cameron’s speech, the more sickened I felt. But none of it quite compared to a comment made yesterday by Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary. He claimed that the Conservative Party are ‘the party of the poor’.

This is the party of the poll tax, privatisation, mass unemployment and the great social housing sell-off. This is the party that is now leading an assault on the working class and lower middle class with policies that lead to increased homelessness, fewer jobs, lower pensions, worse public services and the abolition of benefits vital to disabled people.

The Tory Party’s core purpose has never varied over the last three hundred years. It exists to promote the interests of the rich. I’m sure that the Conservative Party includes compassionate individuals who genuinely believe that they are working for the best interests of society as a whole. But as institution, this is not how the Tory Party has worked. The Tories have opposed every major progressive policy ever introduced, from old age pensions at the beginning of the twentieth century, to the National Health Service in the 1940s, to the minimum wage fifty years later.

But Cameron and Duncan Smith are right about one thing: Labour is not the party of the poor. Labour presided over an increase in inequality. The ConDems are simply going further. Working class and lower middle class people are increasingly unrepresented by all three establishment parties. Fortunately, we don’t have to rely on these parties. Progressive political change does not start with politicians, but with ordinary people like us. It’s time to remember our own power.

The reality of BAE’s job cuts

Posted on by symonhill

I don’t claim to be an expert at making political predictions. Some of my predictions have been woefully off-course. But yesterday I made what must surely be the most precise political prediction of my life.

Speaking about the arms trade at a fringe meeting at the Labour Party conference, I was asked about the impact on jobs if the UK stopped exporting arms. I replied that even if arms exports are not reduced at all, arms industry jobs would gradually disappear from Britain, as companies such as BAE move employment to India and elsewhere. Later in the day, BAE confirmed nearly 3,000 job losses in the UK.

The redundancies are already being blamed on the government’s military cuts. The reality is that cuts to the military budget (or the “defence budget”, as its euphemistically known) have been relatively slight when compared to the coalition’s swingeing attacks on public services and the welfare state.

Furthermore, BAE have got form for being misleading about employment. When they signed a major deal with India last year, they said it would protect jobs at their Brough plant. Within months, they were announcing job losses at Brough. In 2006, when arms dealers were lobbying to end a criminal investigation into BAE, they claimed that the latest Saudi arms deal would provide 16,000 jobs in the UK (and both the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph put the figure at 50,000). Once the deal was signed, BAE cynically announced that most of the jobs would be based in Saudi Arabia, with very few new jobs in the UK.

In this context, it would not be a surprise to hear an announcement from BAE pretty soon about the creation of new jobs in India or the USA. If this happens, it would be naive to think that this had no connection with the job losses in Britain.

There is no future in the arms industry. Apologists for the arms trade try to justify it by speaking of the number of jobs it creates (a tactic also used by supporters of the transatlantic slave trade over 200 years ago). In reality, the arms industry is subsidised with about £700million of taxpayers’ money every year. Future generations will look back in disbelief, unable to understand why, when faced with the horrors of climate change, we chose to throw millions into arms production. We could be using those millions, and the skills of thousands of British workers, to research and develop renewable energy and technologies that can help us to tackle the physical, economic and security threats resulting from climate change. Let’s start by retraining the workers that BAE have so callously thrown on the dole.

To read more on arms trade issues, please visit the Campaign Against Arms Trade website.

“Rogue trader” went to a Quaker school

Posted on by symonhill

Much has been written today about Kweku Adoboli, the “rogue trader” who lost £1.3bn of other people’s money. One fact that has received little attention is that he went to a Quaker school.

According to the Daily Telegraph, Adoboli attended Ackworth School in West Yorkshire. The Telegraph doesn’t mention that it’s a Quaker institution, but it does mention that it charges £19,635 per year (only slightly below the average annual income in the UK).

If Wikipedia is to be believed, Adoboli was not only a student at the school, but was “Head Boy” from 1997-98.

The UK’s “Quaker schools” are nearly all privately owned, fee-paying institutions and the vast majority of their students are not Quakers. They provoke bitter debate amongst British Quakers, many of whom object to the name of their religion being associated with anything as elitist and divisive as a private school.

I understand that some of them offer bursaries for students with Quaker parents, meaning that at least a few of their students are not from wealthy backgrounds. But this only adds an element of religious discrimination on top of the socio-economic discrimination inherent in their nature.

I respect the fact that some Quaker parents struggle with the ethical issues involved before deciding to send their children to Quaker schools. What I find alarming is how many Quakers are prepared to robustly defend Quaker private schools while otherwise being apparently committed to principles of equality which lie at the root of Quakerism.

I am not of course suggesting that Ackworth School should be held responsible for Adoboli’s dealings. Far more blame must attach to the financial industry and the politicians who won’t stand up to it. It is not really accurate to describe Adoboli as a “rogue trader”, when the whole investment banking sector is effectively a rogue trade.

Nonetheless, I hope this incident will trigger renewed debate about the realities of Quaker schools and give British Quakers a wake-up call about education.

I have been involved with Quakers, to varying degrees, for thirteen years. I now attend both a Baptist Church and a Quaker Meeting, as well as worshipping in other contexts. Quakerism is a significant part of the way I understand my Christian faith.

Since becoming involved in Quakers, I have been encouraged and inspired by the number of Quakers, and Quaker bodies, taking a radical stand on issues of peace and justice. And I have been enormously frustrated by the lack of radicalism that is apparent whenever it comes to questioning Quaker institutions themselves. For a movement founded on convictions about the free movement of the Holy Spirit, Quaker institutions can be unbelievably hard to change.

A mansion tax and the realities of class

Posted on by symonhill

Britain may be broke, but the government’s desperation to cut the deficit seems to have its limits. This morning, Eric Pickles has ruled out an increase in council tax for houses valued at more than a million pounds.

This is the so-called “mansion tax” proposed by the Liberal Democrats when they were in opposition.

As Communities Secretary, Pickles is responsible for council tax. But he went further, saying in an interview with today’s Daily Telegraph that he also wants to see the end of the 50p tax rate for those on high incomes.

He described top-rate taxpayers, and people with million-pound homes, as “middle class” and “hardworking homeowners” who put lots into society but “don’t take a lot out”. These three phrases combined can easily give a misleading impression about who would be affected by a “mansion tax”. Indeed, they perpetuate an inaccurate understanding of wealth and class in British society.

Firstly, Pickles talks about the “middle class”. Only about 1% of houses are valued at over a million pounds. Similarly, only 1% of the population are rich enough to pay top-rate tax. In no sense are these people in the “middle”.

Eric Pickles is following the common practice of implying that a tax on the very richest would apply to far more people than it does. These implications help to create more opposition to such taxes (as I pointed out when the Liberal Democrats proposed the “mansion tax” two years’ ago – see http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/10256).

Secondly, Pickles regards this wealthy section of the population as a group of “hardworking homeowners”. I am sure that many of the are indeed hardworking. Some are not. Many people are low or middle incomes are also hardworking. Some are not. There is no general correlation between hard work and income within the population as a whole. The majority of people in the UK live and die in the same social class into which they were born.

But certain politicians and commentators constantly associate wealth with hard work and poverty with laziness. Despite the lack of evidence behind this, it conveniently makes inequality appear fair.

Thirdly, Pickles claims that “middle class families have put a lot into the country and don’t take a lot out”. Again, he is using “middle class” to mean the tiny percentage rich enough to pay a mansion tax or top-rate income tax. To suggest that these very wealthy people give lots to society without taking much is demonstrably untrue.

As Church Action on Poverty (CAP) point out, richer people pay a lower percentage of their income in tax than poorer people. Admittedly, income tax is higher for the better-off, but VAT is the same rate for everyone from a homeless person to a billionaire. CAP’s research suggests that the richest fifth of the population spend 7% of their income on VAT. For the poorest fifth, the figure is a whopping 14%.

Between them, a number of corporations and wealthy individuals deprive the Treasury of billions every year through tax avoidance. Of course, there are some wealthy individuals who conscientiously pay their tax without looking for loopholes, and I applaud them for doing so. But the extent of tax avoidance undermines Pickles’ claims about how much wealthy people, taken as a group, put into society.

More importantly, the very fact that the rich are rich means that they have taken more of society’s wealth than the rest of us. We are encouraged to see wealth as a personal possession. If we instead see society’s (and the world’s) wealth as belonging to society (and the world) as a whole, it is clear that some people have taken vastly more than others.

The Daily Telegraph quotes Tory MPs who believe that tax cuts for the rich will stimulate the economy and increase growth (from its current level of virtually nothing). For now, I’ll leave aside the question of whether growth is good in itself. But many of those who want to see growth would acknowledge that giving more money to the richest is not an effective way of generating it. Poorer people are far more likely to spend extra money that richer people. And only the very richest syphon off their money to tax havens, where it is of literally no use whatsoever to the British economy.

As you will have guessed, I would be happy to see a “mansion tax” and would like to see the top rate of tax increased, not abolished. However, the money these measures would raise would be minimal compared to the amount that could pour into the Treasury’s coffer if there was a serious crackdown on tax havens and other means of tax dodging by corporations and the very rich.

Ministers tell us that the economic situation is so dire that they have no choice but to increase VAT, abolish Disability Living Allowance, make massive job cuts, scrap Education Maintenance Allowance, treble university tuition fees, attack public sector pensions, cut funding for local services and basically tear the heart out of the welfare state.

But it seems that the situation is not bad enough for minsters to introduce a mansion tax, slightly raise the top rate of income tax or bring in VAT on private education and private healthcare. And the most commitment they have shown to tackling tax dodging is feeble words that seem to have led nowhere.

Their treatment of the wealthy contrasts sharply with the demands made of the rest of us. New Labour governments also seemed wedded to the interests of the rich, though their loyalty was rarely so blatant or their economic policies so extreme.

This situation makes one thing clear. The coalition’s economic policies are not primarily about addressing the deficit. They are the weapons in a vicious assault against the working class and lower middle class. In short, ministers are fighting a class war.

I have for a long time hesitated to use this sort of language. But I am now convinced that it is an accurate description of the extreme approach to society and economics that this government is pursuing. It’s time for people of all classes to stand up and say so.

———-

This blog post appeared originally as my latest column on the website  of the Ekklesia thinktank. To read more of my Ekklesia columns, please visit http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/news/columns/hill.

Benefit claimants and top-rate taxpayers

Posted on by symonhill

 A glance at the front pages of this morning’s papers gives a brief snapshot of the grotesque reality of ConDem Britain. The Daily Mail and Daily Express lead with vicious and misleading attacks on disabled benefit claimants, while the Daily Telegraph reports on Boris Johnson’s call for very wealthy people to pay less tax.

 Welcome to the UK under David Cameron, where the poorest are blamed for the nation’s problems while the richest are portrayed as victims.

The gleeful headline on the Daily Express is “Sick benefits: 75% are faking”. The Mail uses the same figures to make a similar claim. To say that these figures are “out of context” would be polite. They are deliberately deceitful.

They appear to refer to disabled people who are assessed for Employment Support Allowance. It takes a fair bit of concentrated reading through the Express article to realise that they have combined figures for those assessed fit for work with those who don’t complete their applications.

Given the bureaucratic hurdles that the assessment process involves, it is no surprise that some give up before they have completed it, particularly if they are applying because of a mental health problem or learning disability.

The Express back up their position with quotes from David Cameron, junior minister Steve Webb (who was regarded as on the left of the Liberal Democrats before he became responsible for slashing benefits) and the Taxpayers’ Alliance, a right-wing lobby group whose main purpose seems to be to object to taxes being spent on anyone poorer than their own members. In a feeble attempt at balance, a brief critical quote from the TUC’s Brendan Barber is thrown in right at the end.

Conveniently, the article makes no reference to the number of claimants who successfully appeal against their assessment. Around 40% of appeals are upheld. This is amazing. It reveals the unreliability of the assessments in which the Mail and Express place so much faith.

The assessments are carried out by Atos, a private company awarded a multi-million pound contract to assess ability to work – and with a clear mandate to get people off benefits, unhampered by such considerations as reality. Atos have found people with terminal cancer to be fit for work. As mental health charities such as Rethink and Mind have pointed out, they also seem particularly unable to grasp the complexities of mental health problems.

Neither Atos nor their friends in the right-wing press take account of the reality that many disabled people would love to work but are prevented to do so by inaccessible workplaces, prejudiced employers and social structures that marginalise them. Disability is caused by society’s attitudes to people with certain impairments, not by the impairments themselves.

But companies will not have their fitness as employers determined by Atos in twenty-minute assessments by unqualified individuals with a biased mandate.

As the government and their friends in the press launch this vicious assault on disabled people, the Daily Telegraph reports that Boris Johnson has repeated his call to scrap the top rate of income tax. It is 50p in the pound and only about 1% of the population are rich enough to pay it. This income tax; when it comes to VAT, everyone pays the same, from a homeless person to a billionaire.

As Church Action on Poverty have pointed out, richer people spend a lower percentage of their income on tax. The poorest fifth of the UK spend about 14% of their income on VAT, while for the richest fifth the figure is only 7%.

The Tories and their allies tell us that cuts are necessary to address the deficit, but it’s hard to take them seriously when some of them are them are keen to offer yet more concessions to those whose wealth would allow them to contribute the most to tackling the economic situation.

In this warped response to economic problems, those with the least have to pay the most.

I will never own a house. And I am not doomed.

Posted on by symonhill

The media this morning (31 May) are very excited about a survey showing that nearly two-thirds of people aged 20 to 45 in the UK expect never to own their own home. Most of the coverage did not even mention that the survey also revealed that nearly a quarter don’t want to.

The Today programme gave the issue a prominent position on BBC Radio 4. Several daily newspapers reported it as a piece of alarming news. Even the relatively progressive ‘i’ newspaper (sister paper of the Independent), had a front page headline declaring “Generation doomed to rent for a lifetime”.

I am 34 and will never own a house. But I am not “doomed”. I am happy to rent. Happy not to have endless meetings about mortgages with banks and financial advisors. Happy not to have pay out whenever something goes wrong with the electricity or plumbing. Happy not to get on the “property ladder”, beloved of those who look forward to buying a house only so that they can sell it and buy another one.

The surprising thing about the survey is that nearly a quarter of people questioned did not say they wanted to own their own home. This is despite all the newspaper front pages about house prices, the TV programmes about buying homes and the constant barrage of messages presenting home ownership as an essential part of being an adult. Not only is ownership held up as the marker of success, but talk of the “property ladder” fuels the notion that the purpose of possessions is only to acquire more possessions.

The recent economic crisis has taught many people that we cannot rely on a fantasy of endless resources and that we need a radical overhaul of the economic system. Bankers, ministers and much of the media don’t seem to have noticed that anything has changed.