Following their horrific results in the local council elections in England, Scotland and Wales (England, Scotland and Wales, Local election results), Cameron (Tory wearing a blue tie) and Clegg (for the Lib Dems wearing a yellow tie) have decided to “relaunch their coalition.” For this event, they chose to do a joint talk in Basildon, Essex at a tractor factory where the workers were dressed suitably in blue and yellow shirts, I think the tractors were also only blue and yellow (perhaps the red, black and green tractors were hidden in the back?).
My favourite part of their speech occurs .58 seconds into the tape attached to this link (The Cameron and Clegg road-show) where Clegg defends the coalition from accusations of having an ideological agenda:
“for those critics who say about us in this coalition government that we are somehow doing this for ideological reasons, that we are doing this with any relish, that we are doing it because we want to shrink the state … nonsense … we are doing this not because we want to, but because we have to …”
To that I have to say nonsense! Clegg’s statement leads us to any number of conclusions about him: he is either extremely stupid and doesn’t understand the foundations or the implications of their policies, perhaps his cronies like David Laws and Vince Cable simply have not explained what the coalition is doing. Or perhaps all he is doing is demonstrating his mendacity. It could simply be that either they thought it would be more credible coming from his mouth as opposed to Cameron’s or perhaps he lost a coin toss with Cameron over which of them would say such an absurd thing and he drew the short straw.
Irrespective, when one is accused of ideology in one’s political and economic choices, it is necessary to demonstrate that these accusations are unfounded. Simply saying “nonsense” doesn’t quite cut it. Those accusing the government of having an ideological agenda are basing their argument on economic history and reality. The government’s policies, needless to say, follow along the classic neoliberal agenda of free-trade zones, low corporate taxation, privatisation of public services and the public sector itself, the destruction of remaining union power which lies in the public sector to bring about the full creation of a flexible workforce with low wages and is based upon one of the most obvious ideological economic policy arguments:
1) The fact that coalition policies are targeted at the poorest and working poor; there is no question that lone parents (92% of whom are women), people of colour, and poor and working families with children are bearing the brunt of these policies;
2) The fact that there is no question that privatisation of public services is a primary aim of the coalition’s agenda; the shift from government to households of responsibility for social services is evident and the burden is, of course, falling primarily on women whom have to pick up carer responsibilities for children, the sick and the elderly;
3) The government’s underfunding of the public sector is of course eroding services; this will be used to justify further privatisation of services when the quality has collapsed.
4) The insistence on the part of the government that the private sector will deliver these services in a more efficient manner (read that as cheaper due to the lack of unions and full-time jobs and hence lower wage costs) compared to the public sector. Irrespective of little or no evidence that the private sector does deliver better services, this mantra forms an essential part of coalition (and neoliberal) language. The fact that the private sector does not want to step into the gap is irrelevant to this discussion. Unemployment is rising, forced part-time work (in that people want to work full-time but are unable to find jobs) is on the rise (in fact that is the only increase in employment) and people (especially women) are being drawn increasingly into informal sector work to make ends meet;
5) The attempt on the part of the government to create a “flexible” work-force. Flexible must be understood as a low wage workforce with limited protections; yesterday they introduced in the Queen’s Speech (the yearly spectacle where the Queen announces Her government's agenda) an eroding of appeals for dismissal making it easier to fire troublesome workers. The government has even proposed to set up a low-wage area in places where there is very high unemployment. This will serve two goals: a) undercutting national collective bargaining for the unions; b) create the basis for lowering wages throughout the country based on a competitive argument;
6) The foundational argument underlying government policy that the poor are lazy, immoral, and feckless and hence must be forced to work betrays a rather strong ideological agenda.
7) The introduction of a benefit cap of £500/week (including rent) is increasing hardship upon those that are barely surviving; this has clearly impacted far worse on single mothers, poor families with children, the disabled, and people of colour. Even more so, the virulence of their attack on the disabled whom they say are living on the fat of the land and whom they are forcing into assessment on whether they are capable of work (of course assessed by a private company ATOS whose recommendations are being overturned upon appeal in the vast majority of cases) so that benefits can be reduced to those of employment seekers as opposed to disability has led to increased hardship for the disabled and increased alienation both from services and from members of their community (an example of the virulence of the rhetoric from Iain Duncan Smith, minister of Works and Pensions on the fight to save Remploy which helps disabled people find jobs where their needs are addressed and covered: Iain Duncan Smith on Remploy).
8) The removal of the 50% tax on income over £140,000 to cover the highest earners whilst impoverishing the poorest indicates a clear ideological agenda and a complete lack of recognition of the role of effective demand in enabling economic growth in a capitalist economy.
To add insult to grievous injury, we know exactly what these policies do. We have numerous examples such as Argentina, Chile, and Egypt; reading Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine provides example after example of what happens when neoliberal policies are introduced in a county. The government says that it is strengthening and stabilising the economy. This belies that there is no historical evidence for this result; in fact, the opposite has been demonstrated. All that it is doing is creating rising unemployment, impoverishing the poor, working poor, and working class, changing the nature of work from secure stable employment to more precarious employment, and increasing income and wealth inequality in an ideological belief that it is the wealthy that enable economic growth in a capitalist system and that increased inequality ensures this result.
So when it is said that the government has an ideological agenda we can easily demonstrate this fact; if they deny this, I for one, would love to see their evidence.
I. One does not need a crystal ball:
To further demonstrate the ideological nature of the government's policies specifically concentrating on housing. I am going to address the situation of housing in the UK and the implications for every government since Thatcher’s due to their collective failures to articulate coherent housing policy and the current government’s policy on cuts to housing benefits.
Way back in July 2010, I wrote the following in a piece criticising the UK emergency budget:
“According to the Centre for Social and Economic Inclusion: Long-term Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) claimants will have their Housing Benefit cut from April 2013 to 90% of the full award. This will reduce benefit income and so raise work incentives according to the UK government. Specifically, housing benefit is capped at 30% of local rents as opposed to the current median of local rents. Moreover, additional be cuts will be imposed with respect to the rates that will be paid for larger properties, which accommodate families.
To add insult to injury, JSA claimants that also receive Housing Benefit will also be penalised: from April 2013, if they have been claiming JSA for a year, their Housing Benefit entitlement will be cut by 10%. Given the statements by IDS concerning willingness to pay for moving to areas with jobs, the shortfall will either mean that they have to move house, become homeless or pay the extra with their £65 a week JSA; so will their moving to other areas with employment possibilities be a prerequisite for JSA?
This has a direct impact on housing benefit in London. From next April, Mr Osborne has capped four-bedroom houses at £400 a week, three-beds at £340 and two-beds at £290. In London, about 170,000 families in London pay rent to landlords and receive the local housing allowance. The cap essentially blocks out the following boroughs: Westminster, City, Hackney, Camden, Tower Hamlets, Kensington and Chelsea, Hammersmith and Fulham and partially blocks Barnet, Brent, Haringey, Islington, Ealing, Hounslow, Richmond, Lambeth, and Merton, essentially pushing those on benefits (http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/...) into the outer boroughs of the far west, South, North and east London (from Newham east). Will London start to resemble Paris with the poor forced out to the outer areas and the centre being a no-go zone for the poor (http://www.dailykos.com/...)?”
Honestly, that did not require a PhD in economics to understand nor did it require the use of a crystal ball. There was no question that lowering housing benefits would force people out of the centre of London; there was no question that the sole purpose of this policy was to enforce class cleansing of the centre of London. Moreover, knowing the history of London and, the fact that even in the most wealthy areas of the centre of London social housing existed (much of it was built following the bombing of London in WWII), it was evident that forcing the poor out of these areas was the aim of the policy, intentionally removing the poor and people of colour and shifting them towards the outskirts of London. Under Thatcher, a deliberate policy of sale of social housing to tenants and the movement towards increasing provision of housing through private landlords has eaten away at the amount of public/social housing that exists and has enabled increasing speculation in housing. Following governments have done nothing to stop this trend; in fact, home ownership rather than rentals has been strongly encouraged through access to mortgages for those on lower incomes leading to increased debt.
When the economic crisis hit, more and more people began losing their homes as they could no longer afford to pay mortgages. We have seen rising homelessness due to repossession and job losses (http://www.guardian.co.uk/...).
“The number of people officially classed as homeless in England has jumped by 14% – the biggest increase for nine years – as what charities have described as a "perfect storm" of rising repossession rates and unemployment drives thousands more families into temporary accommodation.
Across England, 48,510 households were accepted as homeless by local authorities in 2011, according to figures published by the Department for Communities and Local Government on Thursday. The data shows 69,460 children or expected children are in homeless households, with three-quarters of the households accepted containing children.
Homelessness had been going down since 2003, with a small increase in 2010, and the scale of this rise has shocked housing campaigners.
Leslie Morphy, the chief executive of Crisis, said: "Our worst fears are coming to pass. We face a perfect storm of economic downturn, rising joblessness and soaring demand for limited affordable housing combined with government policy to cut housing benefit plus local cuts to homelessness services." (http://www.guardian.co.uk/...).”
Moreover, if there are no jobs, then all you are essentially doing when you cut benefits is lowering income ... the argument of Iain Duncan Smith that we are not really lowering benefits as these will be made up when people start working is laughable in an economy in a double-dip recession where unemployment is rising due to government policy against the state sector and a private sector for which increasing employment is nonsensical as there is no demand for increased production of goods and services as incomes are falling.
As such, irrespective of government claims to the contrary, class exclusion and further impoverishment of the poor and working poor was the aim of the policy.
If you are interested in the exact housing benefits cuts changes, here is the government link and explanation (http://www.direct.gov.uk/...); an additional aside that is important to understand here is that all benefit increases will be dependent upon changes in the Consumer Price Index rather than the Retail Price Index (which takes into account changes in the costs of housing). Finally, if you think that this has been accidental, take a look at the Department of Works and Pensions Equality assessment (2010) on housing benefit and council benefit (http://www.dwp.gov.uk/...) where it is rather evident that it is single parents (primarily women), people of colour, poor families, the disabled and elderly will primarily be the victims of this policy.
So, imagine my non-surprise to read the following piece in The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/...) which for some reason created quite a furore in the news leading to a string of denials that the purpose of the cuts in housing benefits were to create a form of “social cleansing” in London. Evidence of this has been covered frequently by The Guardian, but after one day, the story disappeared from the BBC. Happily, those doing research on poverty and the impact of the government’s policies with respect to housing benefits were not as blind to the obvious as the mainstream media.
“We find that the changes to be introduced in 2011 will immediately reduce the proportion of London neighbourhoods affordable to LHA claimants from 75% to 51%. This falls further to 36% by 2016 as a result of the measures' longer-term effects. Our estimates of current neighbourhood affordability are strongly correlated with current observed concentrations of LHA claimants, giving credence to the predictive value of the approach. The estimates for 2016 are highly sensitive to the future relationship between CPI inflation and nominal rent inflation, emphasising that this is a key uncertainty about the long-term effects of the proposed reforms.
Most inner London boroughs are likely to become almost entirely unaffordable to low-income tenants on LHA by 2016. The large clusters of neighbourhoods in outer East, South and West London which our model finds to remain affordable in 2016 are likely to house increasing numbers of low-income tenants as a result of the reforms. The areas which remain affordable are characterised by high rates of multiple deprivation and unemployment among the existing population. We conclude that the reforms will intensify the spatial concentration of disadvantage in the city, and increase the segregation of poor and better-off households within London (http://www.cchpr.landecon.cam.ac.uk/...).”
What is rather unsettling as an understatement is the information that several London councils (both Tory and Labour run) are trying to move their poor outside of London to other cities in the country (Westminster council is trying to move their “homeless” to Nottingham and Derby (NE of England); Newham council is trying to shift 500 families to Stoke on Trent in the NW of England; it emerged that Waltham Forest has shifted a small number of families to Luton and unsuccessfully tried to shift others to Kent and Croydon council is looking to rent homes for its residents in Hull in the NE of England; see
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...; see also:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/...; here is a map of England to understand the distances involved which may prove helpful to non-British people:
http://www.itraveluk.co.uk/...).
II. Class Cleansing and Evictions in London:
While walking in Haringay, North London with a friend, I noticed some rather discomforting signs on the windows of real estate agents. Those on housing benefit are often not welcome to try and rent a room, flat or house.
The eviction of tenants due to the introduction of the housing benefit cap has started (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/...):
“Officials at the central London county court have started granting eviction orders to a number of landlords in housing benefits cases, allowing them to begin eviction proceedings against tenants who are no longer able to afford their rents as a result of the new cap on the amount the government will contribute to rent payments.
During a busy rental repossessions hearing, one Marylebone landlord was there to evict a woman and her three children, the youngest aged seven, from the flat they have rented from his property company for the past two years.
This will be the ninth family the landlord has removed from their homes this year and he has a further 35 families that he has to evict over the next few months as the housing benefit cap takes effect. The woman did not attend and an order was granted in her absence.
"The social cost is immeasurable. Lives are being wrecked," he said. "I don't like ethnic
cleansing, and that is what is happening." He described the tenants he was in the process of evicting as "exclusively non-white" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/...).
Westminster council is an area covering some of the wealthiest people that live in London; it also has some social housing and also poor people whose private rent is covered by housing benefits. Westminster council is a Tory council and is already pretty notorious; the fact that they are trying to shift “homeless” people out of the borough is just one more in a series of charming accounts coming out of the council. In February,
The Guardian addressed the question concentrating on Westminster council which is certainly one of the boroughs in London which will be affected most strongly by the housing benefit cuts; normal rents in that rather expensive part of London are rather high indeed.
In fact, the press officer of the council said “To live in Westminster is a privilege, not a right, because so many people want to live here,"(http://www.guardian.co.uk/...).
What amazes people about this statement is that it is in direct opposition to the idea of a London in which different areas in London contain people of varying incomes; it is the roar of the wealthy, those demanding class exclusion as a right.
What also needs to be understood is that we are not only talking about housing, we are talking about children being displaced from schools, people losing their communities and extended families and support networks and being moved to places where none of these networks exist of which they are members. So, a government that is in the process of undercutting state provision of services and support towards households and the private sector is also undercutting the established informal family and community support system by removing people from the areas in which these support systems exist (for an excellent discussion of the impact on families see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/...).
In July 2011, a report was issued on Westminster council (http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk/...):
“Some 6,234 households living in the private rented sector in Westminster receive the benefit. More than 5,000 – 81 per cent – currently pay rents above the new cap levels. The Government will save £40 million in benefit payments to tenants but the council will receive only £1.1 million from ministers to cover hardship payments for the worst cases. Some 4,000 children and young people live in the affected households.
Officials say: “Making an assumption that all family households with a greater than 20 per cent reduction in housing benefit will move from the borough, Westminster could possibly see around 17 per cent of primary school age children move. Up to 43 per cent of the primary age school population in Maida Vale might be affected and 34 per cent of 11 to 13-year-old pupils living in Bryanston and Dorset Square.”
Social care cases will be affected – the report says 50 of the 102 children thought to be at serious risk of harm could be forced to leave the borough – making monitoring by social services difficult. Some 313 vulnerable elderly people, including 42 people over 80, some of them with dementia, could be forced to leave. Another 30 with serious mental problems could have to move (http://www.tribunemagazine.co.uk/...).”
III. Rising rents
We are seeing rising private rents throughout London. While the version of the mansion tax passed by the government affected homes costing more than £2million and had implications for homes of that value being purchased by companies to avoid stamp duty it had no impact on homes at a lower value. There is already a trend of the purchase of homes in cheaper areas by landlords which are then broken up and rented by the room to maximise rents. Whole families are living in one room and there is an increase in sheds being rented out as housing (http://www.guardian.co.uk/...; http://www.guardian.co.uk/...).
The "beds-in-sheds" issue is actually proving a bit embarrassing to the government. Many of the people living in them are immigrants. They have responded by calling for a cross-Whitehall task force to tackle the issue:
“Housing minister Grant Shapps and immigration minister Damian Green will launch a cross-Whitehall task force dedicated to tackling the issue today.
The ministers will discuss the problem of sheds and outbuildings being rented out illegally – often to migrants - with police, immigration and council officials. They plan to act against criminal landlords and remove illegal immigrants. Living conditions in the sheds are often squalid and high rents are charged.
The government’s proposals include:
• encouraging councils to make greater use of legal powers across planning, fire safety, housing and environmental health
• measuring the extent and nature of the problem, drawing on information collected by central government and councils
• ensuring councils and the police share available intelligence
• closer working with foreign authorities to help those wanting to return home
• steps to prevent more ‘beds in sheds’ from being created.
Mr Grant Shapps said: “It is a scandal that these back garden slums exist to exploit people, many of whom are prepared to return voluntarily to their home country but instead find themselves trapped into paying extortionate rents to live in these cramped conditions. I want to see a crackdown on these criminal landlords (http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/...).”
The lack of social housing, the lack of rent-control and rent-stabilisation measures, the cuts in housing benefit, the insufficiency of protection for tenants from landlords is the cause of the problem. The problem is not something that can be fixed by the application of small changes; it will require a wholesale transformation in housing policy and the introduction of rules and regulations to protect tenants.
These forces are combining to push rents skyrocketing in areas that may have been able to pick up those being “relocated” from the centre of London. Moreover, cuts in local services due to the freezes of council taxes imposed by the government are hitting those areas hard; most of the job losses that have already been seen, the closures of cultural centres (e.g., theatres, libraries, after-school activities) are hitting poor areas extremely hard. They already have high numbers of people on waiting lists for council housing, they cannot accommodate more people and these people being pushed out of the centre of London will inflate rents even further.
(From http://blog.shelter.org.uk/...).
IV. The Impact on Poorer Councils
Perhaps the most interesting discussion concerns Newham council. Newham contains the Olympic village site where a number of homes have been set aside as “affordable housing” and the rest sold to a Qatari firm (http://www.london2012.com/...). Now, let’s discuss what affordable homes mean; they are not social or public housing which are desperately needed throughout London, but especially so in Newham. Instead these are homes to be purchased by key workers.
Newham is one of the poorest boroughs in London and has some of the poorest wards and none of the wealthiest (http://www.londonspovertyprofile.org.uk/...); the following chart shows the different areas in London and the income composition of those areas. As you can see, even in many of the wealthiest areas there are wards which are populated by the poor (e.g., Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, Hammersmith, Camden and Fulham; some of these are new arising from gentrification, others are long-established areas of wealth). Then there are areas in which there are only lower income and working class people (e.g., Newham, Barking and Dagenham, Lewisham) and others in which there are no poor wards (e.g., Wandsworth, Merton, Richmond upon Thames). Most places have a combination of wealth living alongside of poverty; some new areas are due to gentrification where the wealthy are pushing the poor out of traditional working class and poor areas.
To add to a structural housing problem caused by government policies, there is also the temporary misery caused by the Olympics being held in London which is causing an "Olympic Housing Crunch." Long-term tenants are being squeezed out so landlords can make a nice bit of money during the Olympics. Landlords are increasing rents as they will be making a much higher return if they rent during this period than by having regular tenants, the creation of Olympic lets is occurring and clauses are being written into rental agreements; in many senses what we are seeing is the future in miniature for a two-week period:
“Homes in the east London boroughs where many events are to be held are fetching between five and 15 times their typical rates as properties are rebranded as short-term “Olympic lets.” Some landlords are also enforcing expensive “penalty” clauses for tenants who want to remain during the gathering of the world’s top athletes.
The accommodation crunch is expected to be so severe that some residents are planning to rent out their backyards to campers during the Games – which begin July 27.
“We’re [seeing] landlords beginning to evict their tenants,” Antonia Bance, head of campaigns for housing charity Shelter, told msnbc.com. “Lots of letting agents are writing clauses into contracts being signed saying you can live here with the exception of this period [during the Olympics].”
Shelter’s Bance described the case of a couple in the Newham area who will be renting out the three-bedroom house they own in a former public housing project for 15,000 pounds ($23,600) for three weeks. The average rental price of a three-bedroom property in the borough is 1,189 pounds ($1,870) per month. In the Dalston neighborhood, one-bedroom apartments that normally fetch around 300 pounds ($475) per week are now being advertised at 1,625 pounds ($2,575) per week. And in Kentish Town, which is a 25-minute train journey from the new Olympic Stadium, a five-bedroom home is being advertised at 10,000 pounds ($15,845) per week during the Games.
It is difficult to know how many Londoners will be priced out of the city as landlords woo Olympic visitors, but interviews with property experts, real estate agents, tenants, prospective landlords and tourism-industry specialists suggest it will not be an isolated problem (http://news.rla.org.uk/...).” This has also been documented by the Guardian (see, e.g., http://www.guardian.co.uk/...).”
Conclusion:
The manner in which the government has addressed benefit cuts is based upon the ideological preconceptions of the upper classes; more than that, it is based upon the ideology of the most reactionary members of that class, those favouring privatisation, those favouring “free” markets, those to whom the unemployed are simply numbers, whose concern is lowering wages irrespective of the impact on the general system to facilitate accumulation of capital and higher profits, those simply not recognising that capitalism is an inherently unstable system.
The cuts in housing benefits and their justification are based upon ideological arguments as opposed to finding solutions for housing provision in a society beset by extremes in wealth and income differentials. These ideological foundations are also to be found in UK government housing policy. Some of it is found in discussions of “deserving” and “undeserving” poor, which is complemented by the policy of disability assessment testing, the notion of right and privilege in housing. We are often addressing similar issues, such as urban overcrowding. However, the differences in assumptions and conclusions are based upon the priorities of those proposing different perspectives. The issues of whether we address coverage of housing from the perspective of private home ownership as opposed to social provision of housing, private market determined rentals as opposed to socially determined rents are clearly demarcated by ideological and class perspective and by what we are trying to achieve.