At the Conservative Party conference in 2011, David Cameron told a lie in his speech. This is not a claim that I make lightly.

Cameron said that disability benefit claimants had previously been able to receive benefits with “no questions asked”.

Anyone who has ever claimed such benefits knows how absurd this statement is. I grew up in the 1980s when my father was disabled and I well remember the bureaucratic hoops that he had to jump through before he received essential benefits.

On one occasion, the instructions on a form that he had to complete included the line “If you are blind or cannot read this, ask somebody to read it to you.”

Things have got many, many times since the ConDem government embarked on a policy of throwing people off disability benefits as quickly as possible. Atos, a private company, has been hired to carry out the assessments, with the unofficial but obvious mandate of declaring people to be fit for work regardless of reality.

“Atos” has become a dirty word for many disabled people. Terminal cancer patients have been declared fit for work. So has at least one person who was sectioned under the Mental Health Act at the time. A few years ago, I interviewed a woman who had been assessed as partially sighted at every medical test since she was born. Atos, however, said she had “no difficulty seeing”.

No wonder that thousands have died shortly after being declared fit for work by the brutal bureaucracy that is Atos.

Tomorrow (Wednesday 19 February) peaceful demonstrations will be held across the UK to resist Atos. Those involved will call for an end to Atos’ role in assessments, insisting that they be carried out fairly and accountably by the National Health Service. Some may take nonviolent direct action. Most of us will simply make our voices heard outside Atos offices and in other public places.

Click here to find a list of planned demonstrations. Personally, I’m honoured to have been asked to speak at the demonstration in Highgate in north London.

If you are unable to attend a demonstration, please hold all involved in your prayers (if you’re a praying person). You can also write to your MP or tell a friend, colleague or neighbour about the issue.

Many thanks to everyone who’s been so encouraging about my new book, Digital Revolutions: Activism in the internet age. I’m really chuffed to see it in the shops at last!

Following the book’s publication, I’m writing a series of articles about related themes that will run on the New Internationalist website over the next few weeks. The first one concerns online petitions, whether they can be effective and how they become popular. It focuses on the recent petition urging Iain Duncan Smith, the UK’s Work and Pensions Secretary, to live on £53 per week. You can read the article here. Your thoughts are welcome!

My new book, Digital Revolutions: Activism in the internet age, has now been published by New Internationalist.

The book looks at recent global movements – including Occupy, the Slutwalks, the Arab Spring,  Uncut and the Indignados – along with other cases of recent activism such as the Spartacus Report, Pussy Riot and Boycott Workfare. As well as exploring these movements more generally, my book asks particular questions about the role of the internet. The focus is on interviews with activists and stories of campaigns more than on outside analyses.

The book is £9.99 and is stocked by a number of bookshops; it’s in several branches of Waterstone’s. You can buy it online from the publisher – £9.99 for the paperback and only £3.99 for the e-book.

If you’re looking for a discount on the paperback – you can get one without supporting the tax-dodgers at Amazon! You can buy it for £7.49 from Word Power Books, an independent online bookseller, or £7.99 from the Guardian bookshop.

If you read the book, it would be great to hear your thoughts. You can email me at symonhill@gmail.com, or leave your comments below.

I was two years old when Margaret Thatcher came to power, and thirteen when she resigned.

Thatcher’s policies led to mass unemployment, leaving my father on the dole for much of my childhood. I started secondary school the year that Section 28 was brought in, banning schools from presenting same-sex relationships as legitimate. When my father became disabled, I watched him having to go through absurd levels of testing and bureaucracy to receive benefits. People living nearby bought their council houses as Thatcher sold them off, setting working class people against each other and replacing collective aspiration for a better community with personal aspirations to own more stuff. I watched my parents worrying about paying the poll tax, trying to work out their finances at the kitchen table as I walked up to bed.

The rule of Thatcher: I saw it all and I hated it all.

Then that was that wonderful day in 1990 when my classmate ran into the classroom and shouted “Thatcher’s resigned!”. At the end of the day, the teacher was in such a celebratory mood that he let us go home early.

But I’m not celebrating today. It would be vile to celebrate anybody’s death and those who do so are lowering themselves to the same level as the supporters of the death and destruction which Thatcher so enthusiastically handed out.

Thatcher was a human being, made, like you and me, in the image of God – however much the image was distorted. She, like you and me, was capable of repentance and redemption. She will be held to account by a higher and better authority than the Today programme or even the general electorate. So will the rest of us.

There is another reason not to celebrate Thatcher’s death. She did not carry out those foul policies on her own. She was able to do what she did because others went along with her. I’m talking not only about her cabinet and party, or even those who voted for her. We all bear some responsibility for the state of society. We are all responsible for making it better.

Today, Thatcher is dead but Thatcherism is alive and well and living in Downing Street. Cameron and Osborne are pursuing policies of which Thatcher could only dream. She died just as disability benefits were being slashed and taxes were cut for the super-rich. She would have been delighted.

I’m more concerned with the death of Thatcherism than the death of Thatcher. At the moment, that seems a long way off. So today, with all the reminiscing and obituary programmes, I’m remembering the campaign against the poll tax. It was the first political campaign that I closely followed and supported. It taught me that people can change things from below, and that change can – sometimes – come suddenly.

So today, let’s be all the more determined to resist this government and the vicious Thatcherite class war that ministers are waging in the interests of the rich. I hope and pray that the day will come when the only way in which children experience Thatcherism is when they study it in history lessons. 

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My new book, Digital Revolutions: Activism in the internet age, can be ordered from the publisher by clicking here, priced £9.99.

According to today’s Daily Mail, I should be feeling insulted this morning. “What an insult to Christians!” declares its front page.

The Mail is angry with the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) for issuing advice that suggests that the religions and consciences of all people, and not only Christians, should be respected in the workplace.

Sometimes, the Mail has claimed (with little evidence) that Christians are being marginalised. This is not the issue now. Today, the Mail is explicitly objecting to the notion that non-Christians should be respected as much as Christians.

The Daily Mail has campaigned in favour of Christians being allowed to wear crosses at work and was pleased when this right was upheld in court. Today, the paper declared in outraged tones, “After crucifixes are allowed at work, human rights quango tells firms: Give vegans and pagans special treatment too.”

The EHRC is saying no such thing. Recognising the right of Pagans to wear religious symbols is not “special treatment”; it is equal treatment. As a Christian, I want to express my faith and follow my conscience, not as a matter of “special treatment” but as a right enjoyed by all people.

The Mail article, by political correspondent Jason Groves, declares that “Even atheists should have their beliefs respected according to the new guidance”. Is the Mail arguing that atheists should have fewer rights than others? I hope that most people, whatever their views on religion, would find this suggestion appalling.

The paper seems particularly angry about the suggestion that “lifestyle choices”, such as vegetarianism, veganism and environmentalism, should be respected alongside people with “deeply held spiritual beliefs”.

For many people, such principles are more then “lifestyle choices”. They are, indeed, deeply held beliefs. For some, they are also spiritual. My environmental commitments are strongly linked to my Christian belief that the world is not simply there for the wealthiest humans to use for their own ends. I know several Christian vegans whose veganism is inspired by their interpretation of Christianity. I do not share that interpretation, but I understand where it comes from.

For all their regular claims about Christians being marginalised, it is clear that the Daily Mail don’t want equality for Christians. They want privileges. Such an idea should be abhorrent for people seeking to follow Jesus Christ. Jesus did not teach his followers to claim privileges for himself that they deny to others. He urged them to love their neighbours as themselves – and that means all neighbours, not only Christians. Jesus lived his life in solidarity with people on the margins of society and was killed as a result.

I am not insulted when people whose faith I do not share are accorded the same rights as me. I am insulted when the Daily Mail tries to co-opt my religion to promote prejudice and inequality.

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My new book, Digital Revolutions: Activism in the internet age, can be ordered from the publisher, New Internationalist, by clicking here.

This week, I completed a survey on the BBC website to discover which class I belong to. In reality, I don’t have much doubt about which class I belong to, so I was really discovering more about the people who designed the survey than I was about myself.

Over the last few days, there’s been a brief flurry of media interest in new research that suggests there are now seven classes in Britain. The survey was based on this idea. It declared me to be part of the “precariat”. This is odd, because even on the survey’s own terms, I didn’t seem to meet the criteria for it. It may be because I’m self-employed.

Then again, the questions were so bizarre that I doubt  many of the findings are likely to be useful at all. I wasn’t asked what work I do, but was asked what work my friends do. This varies considerably. I was asked what I enjoyed in terms of entertainment. For these researchers, it seems that class is not about money and power, but about whether you go to the theatre.

Of course, such things might be an indicator of how much disposable income you have. But the cultural associations of a particular activity often have little to do with the income needed for it. Just think of the cost of going to a Premier League football match.

Associating class with culture and recreation gives the impression that class is some sort of lifestyle choice rather than something structural. This sort of attitude makes it easier for some people to dismiss the whole notion of class. Examples include Jill Kirby of the right-wing Centre for Policy Studies, who appeared on the Today programme to argue that “class has eroded almost completely”.

I was disappointed that nobody on the programme asked her to explain how it is that the majority of finance directors, QCs and senior journalists went to fee-paying schools, even though 93% of people in the UK are educated at state schools. The Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mayor of London and Archbishop of Canterbury all went to some of the most expensive schools in the country, which between them educate less than one percent of the UK population. How can anyone argue that this is a country without class?

Another argument that is often heard is that “we are all middle class now”. Those people who go straight from Eton to Oxford to well-paid jobs in investment banks are certainly not middle class. Nor are the million people working in supermarkets and the even greater number working in call centres, many of whom are on zero-hours contracts with little legal protection and far less job security than in the “traditional” working class jobs they have replaced.

I’ve seen class from various angles. My father was a manual worker and I grew up on a council estate. Studying in Oxford, I realised that the “middle class” people – the sons and daughters of teachers and junior managers – had far more in common with me than they did with those who had been to fee-paying schools. Indeed, even people who had been to the less expensive private schools were at a considerable distance from the old Etonians. The big difference was clearly between the people from the “top” schools and the rest of us.

Of course, someone on a middle income who also has a fulfilling and flexible job is likely to have more power over their life than someone on a low income with a demeaning job. I’m not suggesting that there are no nuances or sub-divisions. But let’s not use this as an excuse to mask the reality of the most important distinction. As the Occupy movement has put it, this is between the “one percent” and the “ninety-nine percent”.

Some people point to the blurring of the boundary between the middle and working class as evidence that class does not matter. They say that it shows that people such as Karl Marx were wrong. However, you have only to read Chapter One of The Communist Manifesto to discover that a blurring between the middle and working class is just what Marx predicted. He argued that the increasingly important division was between a tiny number of very rich people and everyone else.

This should not come as any surprise in Britain today – or, indeed, in most of the world. The poor and people in the middle are being told to pay for an economic crisis caused by a system that served the rich. The poorest are suffering the most, with swingeing benefits coming into force only days before the Centre for Policy Studies claimed that class had been eroded. People on middle, as well as low, incomes are facing job losses and pension cuts, just as the NHS is part-privatised, university fees are trebled and local services destroyed at every turn. 

People who object to all this have been accused by David Cameron and George Osborne of waging “class war”. It is Cameron and Osborne who are waging class war. They have slashed taxes for the rich, defended millionaire bonuses and turned a blind eye to corporate tax-dodging at the same time as taking a slash-and-burn approach to public services. The Conservative Party are continuing with their three-hundred-year tradition of promoting the interests of the wealthy. Surveys that define class by tastes in music are not going to help us to resist them.

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My new  book, Digital Revolutions: Activism in the internet age, can be ordered by clicking here.

When I was a child in the early eighties, my father joined the ranks of the unemployed after being made redundant from car factories. He struggled to find work while Thatcher attacked British industry. My mother got a part-time job delivering newspapers to help us to make ends meet. She began each day by sorting them all out on the living room floor.

I saw regular headlines portraying unemployed people as lazy cheats. As my father literally cycled around to find work, my mother’s job had exposed me to the reality of newspapers that demonise people receiving benefits.

It’s doubtful that the current coalition government could have pushed through its vicious cuts programme without the support of newspapers such as these. They are demonising people in poverty like never before.

As ministers slash disability benefits, media stories have portrayed disabled people as fraudsters and charities such as Scope have recorded a sharp rise in disability hate crime. Working people struggling to pay the bills are encouraged to blame their unemployed neighbours at a time when unemployment has risen due to an economic crisis. Right-wing papers scream about the cost of welfare, overlooking corporate tax-dodging and massive military expenditure.

When it comes to cutting the deficit, this government seems to have ruled out any methods that would make things even slightly more difficult for the rich. People in the middle are expected to suffer – but the poorest are suffering the most.

Nothing represents Cameron’s class war more than workfare schemes – or “mandatory work placements” as they are more formally known. These schemes, quite simply, demand that people work without pay. If they refuse to participate, their benefits are cut.

Workfare has received more media attention recently, partly because of Cait Reilly, who went to court after being forced to work for four weeks in Poundland and receive only benefits in return. Cait didn’t object to working in Poundland (she’s now working in a supermarket). She objected to working there without pay.

A partial court victory has now been overturned by MPs (the vast majority of whom have never experienced unemployment). Their workfare bill was passed this week by the votes of Tory and LibDem MPs, helped by the Labour Party’s decision to abstain. A small but honourable group of Labour rebels joined Plaid Cymru, SNP, Green and Northern Irish MPs (both unionist and nationalist) in voting against.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Tories’ most vehement class warrior, has suggested that opponents of workfare think they are above shelf-stacking and other menial jobs. This is not true. What we object to is work without wages. “The worker is worthy of his pay,” as Jesus said.

In a rather desperate attempt to justify workfare, some have portrayed the schemes as a sort of voluntary work to gain skills. But voluntary work is (this could hardly be clearer) voluntary. “Compulsory voluntary work” is a contradiction in terms.

This is particularly relevant when it comes to charities that are making use of workfare labour. I am very sad to say that they include Christian organisations such as the YMCA and the Salvation Army.

They say that they are trying to help people gain the skills needed to find work. This misses the point completely. If charities recruit people to do voluntary work, giving them training and skills, this is great. But that is not what is happening. This is not voluntary work. Christian charities are benefitting from forced unpaid labour. Not only is this wrong in itself, but by participating in workfare they are helping to provide these schemes with the appearance of social and moral legitimacy.

There are at least two other good reasons for opposing workfare.

Firstly, it is increasing unemployment. If a companies can use workfare labour, they will need to recruit fewer staff. Workfare workers are taking the place of paid workers.

Secondly, workfare is yet another way of requiring taxpayers to subsidise private companies. Someone on a workfare scheme at (for example) Asda is not being paid a wage by Asda but a benefit by taxpayers. This is not only unfair on the worker concerned. It is unfair on the rest of us who are effectively subsidising Asda through our taxes.

This is one of many ways in which the welfare system benefits the rich rather than the poor. Tax credits subsidise employers who should be paying higher wages, while housing benefit goes into the pockets of landlords who face no legal limits on how much rent they can charge.

Challenging the companies that use workfare has been remarkably successful. Indeed, Boycott Workfare has arguably been one of the most effective British campaigning groups of the last year. A string of businesses have either withdrawn from workfare schemes or refused to use them at all. They range from Waterstone’s and Sainsbury’s to TK Maxx and the 99p Stores. This week, in the midst of a week of action against workfare, Superdrug joined the ranks of those to give up on the scheme.

It is appalling that charities such as the YMCA and the Salvation Army seem to be operating with lower ethical standards than Sainsbury’s and Superdrug. I strongly believe that the Salvation Army genuinely do a great deal of good work with people in poverty. I respect the Salvation Army a lot and it pains me to find myself campaigning against them.

I am encouraged because I know for a fact that there are people within the Salvation Army who are as opposed to workfare as I am. While groups such as Christianity Uncut and Boycott Workfare are publicly campaigning for change, the Salvation Army’s leadership is also facing lobbying from within.

In their latest statement on the issue, the Salvation Army said that they cannot “sit on the sidelines” while unemployed people need help. Participating in workfare is worse than sitting on the sidelines. Those who participate are helping to perpetuate a policy that is pushing more and more people into unemployment and poverty. They are – however unwittingly – actively colluding in the government’s class war. As Christians, let’s not sit on the sidelines, mistake charity for justice or satisfy ourselves with occasional critical comments about cuts. Jesus took the side of the poor. We should too.

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This article formed my latest column on the website of the Ekklesia thinktank. For more of my Ekklesia columns, please see http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/news/columns/hill.

Christianity Uncut, a network of Christians campaigning against the UK government’s cuts agenda, is calling on Christian organisations to take a stand against workfare. Please see http://www.christianityuncut.wordpress.com.

This morning, the European Court has rejected three of the four cases brought by Christians who claimed that they were discriminated against because of their religion. Two of them wanted the “right” to discriminate against same-sex couples.

I was discussing the case on Radio Five Live Breakfast when the news came through. A critic of the judgment tried to claim that the individuals in question had a right to “conscientious objection”, comparable to the right of pacifists in wartime.

As a Christian pacifist, I reject this argument on several grounds. I’ve tried to explain my reasoning further in an article on Queers for Jesus, which you can read here. The Five Live programme on which I discussed the issues, along with other guests, can be heard here.