Shadow work and pensions secretary Liam Byrne recently justified his demand that Labour MPs abstain on government workfare plans on the need for political consistency.
He pointed out that Labour in government had applied sanctions against jobseekers refusing to take part in its own workfare programme and, now in opposition, proposes a Compulsory Jobs Guarantee that would also carry the threat of claimants’ jobseeker’s allowance being stopped.
Political consistency can be praiseworthy but not when it’s based on a wrong principle.
Blaming the unemployed for not having a job is a time-honoured Tory principle dating back at least to the 1930s “genuinely seeking work” condition applied to disqualify people from benefit.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation calculates that over six million people in Britain are unsuccessfully seeking full-time employment.
This indicates that fault lies with the economic system rather than its victims, who bear not only the hardship of living on benefits but constant abuse from politicians and media alike.
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Tory multimillionaires in the Cabinet have swung in behind the vile Daily Mail insinuation linking the Philpott manslaughter case in Derby with Britain’s welfare system.
Labour has rejected this, but so have the Liberal Democrats, which illustrates that it requires no great measure of political principle.
It is not enough for Labour to oppose the most disgusting slur against the welfare state and those forced to rely on its far from overgenerous provisions.
The party that built up the welfare state, the NHS and state schooling based on the 1944 Education Act has a responsibility to defend the work of its forebears and to stand alongside those denied the right to work.
Deputy leader Harriet Harman was given the job on BBC TV of defending Labour’s policy and recognised that it is only a “small minority” of the unemployed who don’t want to work.
However, her enunciation of Byrne’s recently developed three principles set alarm bells ringing.
These principles, she said, were that work should pay, that there should be an obligation to work and that there should be a “contributory principle for people putting into the system as well as taking out.”
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Such a “contributory principle” appears to encapsulate Byrne’s divisive ideas of prioritising the deserving poor over their undeserving counterparts in allocating council housing and of looking for ways to pay varying benefits to the unemployed dependent on an assessment of their contribution to society.
This discriminatory attitude contradicts the welfare state principle that need alone should dictate access to housing and benefits.
It ignores the basic problem that the system provides insufficient council housing and decent employment, allowing private landlords to enrich themselves and unscrupulous employers to force workers to accept wages that don’t allow them to keep themselves and their families, obliging them to claim in-work benefits.
Worse still, it taps into the Tory attacks on the welfare state, demonising the homeless and jobless for being poor.
That Labour should fail to take a clear principled line on these issues is bad enough but it is also politically self-defeating.
Any voter determined to plump for a candidate dedicated to bashing the poor will vote Tory every time because that’s what they do.
Labour should not take its guidance from “anti-shirker” opinion polls. It should defend the postwar Labour government’s achievements and champion a role for the state in investment for housing, growth and jobs.
Political consistency can be praiseworthy but not when it’s based on a wrong principle.
Blaming the unemployed for not having a job is a time-honoured Tory principle dating back at least to the 1930s “genuinely seeking work” condition applied to disqualify people from benefit.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation calculates that over six million people in Britain are unsuccessfully seeking full-time employment.
This indicates that fault lies with the economic system rather than its victims, who bear not only the hardship of living on benefits but constant abuse from politicians and media alike.
—
Tory multimillionaires in the Cabinet have swung in behind the vile Daily Mail insinuation linking the Philpott manslaughter case in Derby with Britain’s welfare system.
Labour has rejected this, but so have the Liberal Democrats, which illustrates that it requires no great measure of political principle.
It is not enough for Labour to oppose the most disgusting slur against the welfare state and those forced to rely on its far from overgenerous provisions.
The party that built up the welfare state, the NHS and state schooling based on the 1944 Education Act has a responsibility to defend the work of its forebears and to stand alongside those denied the right to work.
Deputy leader Harriet Harman was given the job on BBC TV of defending Labour’s policy and recognised that it is only a “small minority” of the unemployed who don’t want to work.
However, her enunciation of Byrne’s recently developed three principles set alarm bells ringing.
These principles, she said, were that work should pay, that there should be an obligation to work and that there should be a “contributory principle for people putting into the system as well as taking out.”
—
Such a “contributory principle” appears to encapsulate Byrne’s divisive ideas of prioritising the deserving poor over their undeserving counterparts in allocating council housing and of looking for ways to pay varying benefits to the unemployed dependent on an assessment of their contribution to society.
This discriminatory attitude contradicts the welfare state principle that need alone should dictate access to housing and benefits.
It ignores the basic problem that the system provides insufficient council housing and decent employment, allowing private landlords to enrich themselves and unscrupulous employers to force workers to accept wages that don’t allow them to keep themselves and their families, obliging them to claim in-work benefits.
Worse still, it taps into the Tory attacks on the welfare state, demonising the homeless and jobless for being poor.
That Labour should fail to take a clear principled line on these issues is bad enough but it is also politically self-defeating.
Any voter determined to plump for a candidate dedicated to bashing the poor will vote Tory every time because that’s what they do.
Labour should not take its guidance from “anti-shirker” opinion polls. It should defend the postwar Labour government’s achievements and champion a role for the state in investment for housing, growth and jobs.
Morning Star
