THE single-minded ferocity with which Social Services Secretary Norman Fowler is hounding the young unemployed who claim board and lodgings benefit defies any logical explanation.
Fowlers's aim is to turn claimants under 26 who seek board and lodging benefit into permanent nomads, forcing them to move every two, four or eight weeks in order to remain eligible.
● At the end of July these vicious proposals were ruled unlawful in the High Court after causing three months of chaos and heartbreak among claimants. But in a characteristic reprisal against a black couple who won a tribunal appeal for increased benefit following the High Court ruling, Fowler personally intervened to block the extra cash, threatening their eviction and the loss of their MSC training course places.
● A second attempt to smuggle the proposals through the back door of the Commons and Lords statutory instruments Committee in October was rebuffed because of the High Court ruling. Fowler has not yet put the plans to a vote in Parliament.
● After a third failure, Fowler resolved to table the regulations for debate in the Commons later in November — after which they will come immediately into force.
These and other brutal attacks on the unemployed are forging ahead with little response from the labour movement. The abysmally publicised and poorly-organised October 27 TUC demonstration against the Fowler plans to savage pensions and the social security system symptomised the lack of interest of most union leaders with the problems of claimants and the jobless, and a failure to organise more than a tiny percentage of the millions on the dole.
A feeble turnout — marked by an almost complete absence of union contingents from London itself, and a purely token presence from the TGWU and NUPE in particular — was relieved only by the substantial columns mobilised by the unlikely trio of USDAW, the Tailors and Garment Workers, and the GMBU, and by large numbers of militant pensioners.
If the workers's movement does not address itself to the problems of the unemployed, recruit and organise unemployed youth and adult workers, the prospects of forging the necessary alliance against Tory policies is constantly undermined.
Every union branch, Labour Party and Trades Council can begin now to play a role in reversing this situation, by taking up the fight for the organisation of the unemployed.
● Demand rule changes where necessary — or implement existing rules to recruit unemployed workers at minimal subscriptions with full rights to speak and vote.
● Launch publicity campaigns, leafletting, meetings, estate canvasses, urging the unemployed to join appropriate unions, and suggesting items — subsidised travel, other facilities, campaigns against harassment, etc., which can be taken up by the labour movement. Urge the unemployed to make their own proposals. Go to the unemployed: don't wait for them to come to the unions!
**The costs of unemployment**
HOW much does unemployment actually cost each year? Government figures have not been published since 1982, so it is left to outside bodies to make informed estimates.
One has been produced by professor Adrian Sinfield and Neil Fraser with help from BBC North East.
This tots up the figures as follows:
● The direct cost of benefits paid out is £1.76 billion in unemployment benefit and £4.6 billion in supplementary and housing benefits. Adjusted to add men over 60, Northern Ireland, and redundancy payments the total comes to £7.4 billion.
● Working on the basis that 3.2 million registered unemployed must mean at least 3.6 million out of work (some of whom do not receive benefits or do not register), they calculate lost Income Tax revenue as £5.7 billion, lost National Insurance at £5.2 billion and lost indirect taxes from the reduced spending of the jobless at £2.1 billion.
● The totals come to a staggering £20.4 billion each year simply to sustain the army of unemployed. Even this leaves out the loss of possible production and services, and the increased costs to local authorities.
Sinfield and Fraser also underline the ways in which the Tories have tried to recoup some of this lost money directly from the unemployed, by:
● Scrapping in 1982 the Earnings-Related Supplement payable for the first six months of unemployment.
● Phasing out additional unemployment benefit payable for dependent children.
● Taxing unemployment benefit.
But the summer of 1985, therefore, the Tories had cut £500m from benefit expenditure, and recouped a staggering £625m in taxes from the unemployed — cutting 15% from spending even while numbers on the dole have increased by 140%!
THE poorest paid workers have suffered worst under Tory rule. Latest figures show that since 1979 the average earnings of the bottom 10% in the pay league have fallen 5% behind the 74.6% increase in prices. These figures are pre-tax, and ignore the fact that rising prices hit the low paid proportionately far harder than those at the top of the scale.
The top 10% on the other hand enjoyed rises worth 101.2% over the same period — 26% above inflation — and also benefitted most from the various tax cuts.
Yet it has been the lowest paid who have suffered most from the 140% rise in unemployment since 1979 and the trebling of youth unemployment. This gives the lie once again to the Tory notion that high wages "price workers out of a job".