Universal credit is already being called “universal chaos”, Angela Rayner told UNISON local government delegates in Liverpool this morning, as conference debated the onslaught on benefits.
“Communities are under attack by an ideology that builds on Thatcherism,” said Ms Rayner, whose region, the north west, is where the system is being tested.
And she compared the meetings of the powerful but secretive Bilderberg Group with the rise of foodbanks.
Bev Miller for the national Black members’ committee said that “we must come together” to fight the attacks, noting that the cuts and the assault on welfare would not “affect them [the government] or their millionaire buddies”.
Jean Thorpe of Nottingham City said that it was “one law for them and another for us,” and called on Labour councillors who say they are against the bedroom tax to “pledge to refuse to evict”.
She urged delegates to “go back to our branches and organise against it … and learn from the anti-poll tax campaign”.
Speaker after speaker emphasised that it was not the poor who had created the financial crisis, but they were being made to pay for it.
Joanna Nicholson of Newcastle City reported that cases of new rent arrears in the time since the bedroom tax had come in had risen by 250,000.
Conference called on the executive to oppose the attack on the system of collective social security in a variety of ways, including working with different groups on the issues, intensifying the campaign of informing, mobilising and organising members.
