Justice? Brighton's Campaign in Defiance of the Criminal Injustice Act

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Turn on the TV or open the paper and you'll find a whole spate of hysterical stories about scroungers sponging off the state. There's nothing new in this, politicians from all parties are always mouthing off about benefit fraud even as they line their own pockets. But this time it seems like their really going to stick the boot into our benefits. Already the government is implementing a whole series of repressive measures and if they get away with these there will be other attacks. Under this government benefits have been withdrawn from students and 16-18 year olds, and under 25s have had their income support cut by 20%. Now they're all set to bring in the Jobseekers Allowance, Incapacity benefit, the capping of housing benefit, fraud-hotlines, ID cards for claimants and maybe even workfare. And it's not just the government that's into slashing our benefits. Labour leader Tony Blair is calling for claimants to fulfil moral conditions before getting benefit. Shadow Home Secretary, Jack Straw, has attacked the homeless. Frank Field, another Labour MP, is calling for claimants who are suspected of working to be made to sign on four times a day. And Reading Labour Council has set up a fraud line to encourage busybodies to grass on people they suspect might be working whilst claiming benefits.

So what's all the fuss about? The government isn't just cracking down on benefits because they want to save a few million, well �200 million to be exact, for pre-election tax cuts to bribe pissed off middle-class voters. They're trying to slash our benefits because welfare spending is threatening to get way out of control. The social security budget is almost �90 billion a year, by far the largest government department, and over a third of the population are dependent on some kind of benefit. This is especially true for our direct action movement which is dependent on the dole. The government is financing our fight against it and whilst we have to pretend to look for work, in order to sign on, they know we're not. Without dole and housing benefit we'd actually have to work instead of running round the country causing trouble. Some naive people in the anti-CJA movement agree with the government that we shouldn't be taking benefits. They say that we should be independent that we don't need benefits because we can make money busking, grow our own food or even eat out of skips. Fuck that! Being on benefits is bad enough without having to scrape for every last mouthful. If everyone tried busking or skipping they're wouldn't be enough money and food to go round. Even the government realises this. It's national emergency plans admit that if giros were not paid out there would be full scale rioting and looting across the country within three weeks. Dropping out of the benefit system solves nothing, it merely makes the government's job easier. But, getting together with other claimants to fight attacks on our benefits is difficult. Unlike the CJA which deals with us as a group, the benefit system deals with us as individuals, and so claimants tend to look for individual solutions rather than getting together.

To force us into the world of work they have to make being unemployed increasingly unattractive by making benefits more difficult to get and cracking down on alternative lifestyles like squatting and travelling. If the government gets away with implementing the JSA, being unemployed will not just mean having little money, it will also mean having to constantly look for work under the threat of having your benefit stopped if you don't. People will be desperate to work in any job for any wages, regardless of how long the hours and how bad the conditions are, and anyone who doesn't like it can be sacked and rapidly replaced.

The Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) is set to come into force in October next year, when it replaces Unemployment Benefit and Income Support. Getting benefits is difficult enough and the JSA is designed to tighten things up even more. In some areas parts of the JSA have already been introduced. In Reading, 'Active Signing' has been brought in as part of a 'Stricter Benefits Regime' with Employment Service staff formed into 'Back To Work Teams'. Under this scheme dole workers have been formed into teams to target the 'long term' unemployed (over 6 months). Every time you sign on they try and force you to apply for crap jobs under the threat of cutting your benefit by 40% if you don't. Under the JSA we are going to see even more of this as claimants will be forced to fill out a Job-Seekers Contract in order to get the dole. This contract sets out what claimants are prepared to do to get work and every time you sign on you will be grilled about what efforts you made to get a job. If the Employment Service staff don't think you're trying hard enough to get work they can issue you with a Job-Seekers Direction. These directions can cover everything and anything from altering your appearance, improving your attitude, to going on a course, or attending Job Club.

If you disobey a Job-Seekers direction they may cut off your benefit totally for two weeks (at the moment they can only cut your benefit by 40%), this may mean that other payments like housing benefit also get stopped.

If you leave your job, are sacked, or refuse to take a job you can lose all benefit for up to 26 weeks, that's 6 months. There is no right to a hearing before your benefits are cut off and no automatic right to hardship payments. Under the JSA 250,000 people are expected to lose between 20-70% of their benefits. And 70,000 people are expected to lose all benefits and have nothing to live on. Also the JSA will cheat workers out of part of their National Insurance contributions. At the moment non-means tested unemployment benefit is paid for 12 months to people who are unemployed and who have paid sufficient NI contributions. But under the JSA benefit will be only be paid for 6 months after which it will be means tested. This means that people with redundancy money over �3,000 left after 6 months will be cut off. Also people under 25 who have worked will not get the full rate of benefit of �46 a week as they currently do under Unemployment Benefit. Under the JSA they will get the same rate as under 25s currently on Income Support which is �36 a week.

Not only does the JSA not create any new jobs it will sack the very people who are implementing it. Under the JSA, the DSS and the Job Centres will be merged. Employment Service management reckon that by 1996/97 24,000 of the present 46,000 staff will have been sacked. Anyone who's had grief from Job Centre staff won't feel like shedding too many tears at the thought of them being unemployed. But it's the front-line staff, many of whom were previously claimants, not the supervisors and mangers who are going to be put out of work. Employment Service staff have already effectively had their pay cut by being put on an incentive scheme. The more cases they refer to Adjudication (i.e. deny benefit to) the higher their pay. In 1994 ES staff were set a target of 135,000 referrals to Adjudication. For those staff who manage to hang onto their job's conditions are going to get worse, very much worse. The whole point of the JSA is that front-line staff in Job Centres will decide who gets their benefit cut off. Claimants naturally don't like having their money stopped, and it can get personal, very personal. In the last three years attacks on ES staff by claimants have gone up 240% and under the JSA things can only get worse. To prevent these attacks open-plan Job Centres will be turned into fortresses with grills, close-circuit TV, and private security.

Unsurprisingly Employment Service staff are a little pissed off. They're either going to lose their job or get a punch in the head from claimants, or both if they're really unlucky. ES and DSS workers don't want the JSA and their union the CPSA has a policy of industrial action to oppose it. In 1994 400 CPSA members staged a protest against the JSA in Sheffiled when Micheal Portillo tried to visit the Employment Service HQ - his visit was cancelled. And in Hackney ES staff have refused to cooperate with a JSA pilot scheme. But there's a big difference between a union having a policy of industrial action and actually doing anything about it. We can't sit back and hope the CPSA will stop the JSA for us. As claimants we should be trying to link up with dole workers to get info. on the JSA and to encourage them to sabotage pilot schemes. But we need to start by organising ourselves collectively as claimants to publicise the anti-JSA campaign through leaflets, pickets of Job Centres, and disruption of training schemes. Already the anti-JSA campaign, or more accurately the threat of a national movement combining the unemployed and dole workers, has brought concessions from the government. The JSA has been put back from April 96 to October 96 and there is even talk that it may be postponed until after the election, but don't count on it.

Already there have been two national anti JSA conferences held in Oxford. At the second of these Groundswell conferences it was decided to organise a national day of action against the JSA on Monday 2nd October - one year from when the JSA will be fully implemented. Regionally based actions will take place on that day. The action for the south-east will be in Brighton, and will coincide with the Labour Party conference.

Incapacity Benefit, which will replace invalidity benefit, is already in force. Like all the other benefit changes it is merely designed to save money, and it is thought that the changes will mean that at least 20,000 who qualified for invalidity benefit will not get the new incapacity benefit. It is estimated that Incapacity Benefit will save the government �1 billion by the year 2000. This is a sick irony as a few years ago people were openly encouraged to sign off by the government and to claim sickness benefit in order to reduce unemployment figures. But disabled people are not going to take having their benefits cut off. This was shown on July 11th when a group of people with disabilities, working under the name Incapacity Action, pelted Social Security Secretary Peter Lilley with eggs in protest against Incapacity Benefit.

The tests for incapacity benefit are designed to remove as many people from the sick as possible. For example getting to work doesn't count as part of the test for Incapacity Benefit, so people deemed able to work but who have no means of getting there will be cut off. Also claimants will be disqualified from claiming Incapacity Benefit even if they pass the tests if the authorities decide that: 'you didn't accept medical/other treatment which could improve your condition'. So either you agree to be filled full of drugs or they cut your benefits off. Also physical examinations are carried out by DSS doctors, none of whom are specialists, who have quotas of people to get off benefits that they must reach. This even gores to the extent of holding the examinations in first floor offices and then cutting off anyone who is able to climb the stairs on the grounds that they're not sick!

Anti-JSA Contacts

Oxford Unemployed Workers and Claimants Union, East Oxford Community Centre, Princes Street, Oxford OX4 1HU (contact for details of next Groundswell conference) Reading Claimants Union c/o The Info Shop, 26 Silver Street, Reading RG1 (much of this article was nicked from their leaflets, send them donations for some) Haringey Solidarity Group, Box 2474, London N8 (North London contact for anti-JSA campaign) Box JSA, 121 Railton Rd, London, SE24 0LR. (South London contact for anti-JSA campaign) Exeter Claimants, The Flying Post, PO Box 185, Exeter EX4 4EW Bristol Claimants, Box 51, 82 Colston St, Bristol, BS1 5BB Edinburgh Autonomous Group, c/o Peace and Justice Centre, St Johns, Princes Street, Edinburgh Bradford 1 in 12 Club, 20-23 Albion Street, Bradford BD1 2LI Plymouth Claimant's Union, PO Box 21, Plymouth PL1 1QS Somerset Community Defence Campaign, 4 Gordon Terrace, Bridgwater, TA6 5JP Westfield Association, 6 South Baffin Street, Dundee DD4 6SW Brighton Claimants' Action Group, c/o Prior House, 6 Tilbury Place, Brighton BN2 2GY