Alan Wheatley of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group arrived at Brent
Council's Scrutiny Committee meeting last night, with just approved
press statement on the leaflet licensing fiasco. He came straight from the KUWG
meeting that ended at 5pm the same day on the Camden side of Kilburn. He
writes of his experience of the meeting:
"The seating
arrangement in the scrutiny committee room was such that we observers
were
effectively excluded from hearing properly, as the scrutiny committee
all sat round a table and we were clearly outsiders, with extremely
limited capacity to input into the meeting.
Kilburn
Unemployed Workers Group has joined Brent Fightback and Brent Trades Council in
opposition to what it calls “Brent Council's Council Tax on free speech.”
Brent
Council plans to institute licensing of organisations other than charities and
political parties that deliver leaflets in the Borough of Brent. “This is not
only an attack on free speech,” said Alan Wheatley, a spokesperson for the
group. “It is also a way for despotic local and central government to bury
disclosure of how widespread oppressive measures such as the sanctioning of
benefit claimants actually are.”
“The
Council say that they do not want the reputation of the Borough of Brent
tarnished by littering over the time of the Olympics. As usual, the Council has
its priorities wrong while at the same time it is throwing people in South
Kilburn onto the street and central government's attacks on poor people
exacerbate the desolation and isolation that come with poverty.
“The
Olympics serve as a branding platform for global corporations such as McDonalds
that are notorious for shoddy employment practices and for product that leaves
loads of street litter. Our leaflets, by contrast, help counteract the
desolation and isolation that vulnerable benefit claimants experience via
Kilburn Jobcentre and the JobCentre Plus network. Our leafleters are not paid,
and to make our resources stretch further, we display our leaflets rather than
thrust them under people's noses. People ask us for the leaflets that tell of
our weekly meetings at Kingsgate Community Centre on the Camden side of
Kilburn, and more. Further, people who attend our meetings who have had bad
treatment at the jobcentre and/or through the testing procedures of Atos
Healthcare that reduce the number of disability benefit claimants without
curing them of their ailments, feel less inclined to throw themselves under a
bus.
“We
know of people who have won their tribunals for entitlement to Employment &
Support Allowance and had but a month in which to enjoy their back money before
dying in this the year of Queen Elizabeth II's Silver Jubilee. The wait for a
tribunal is about a year these days. Serial re-testing of claimants adds to
their stress. The Royal Family, who cost the taxpayer much more per head, are
comparatively in glowing heath.
“Through
the invitation to our meetings that our leaflets represent, people who have
been subjected to bullying that goes through the Chancellor of the Exchequer
and ministers at the Department for Work & Pensions begin to feel better
about themselves.
“Brent
Council's proposed daily leaflet licensing fee of £75 is greater than the sum
total of £67.50 weekly Jobseekers Allowance plus £5 per week earnings disregard
for a single person aged over 25. That fee would hit us and our members hard,”
s/he said. “Non-claimants generally remain blithely ignorant of the facts of
how low state benefits are, and the fact that the £5 per week 'earnings
disregard' has remained unchanged since 1988, but our leaflets help to set the
record straight about that and the sanctions against claimants that are now
routine.”
Kilburn
Unemployed Workers Group meets every Thursday at Kingsgate Community Centre,
107 Kingsgate Road, NW6 2JH from 3pm to 5pm. With a dearth of such groups
around London, KUWG helps benefit claimants in Brent and Camden and beyond to
the help they need, when they need it.
