Rats and twisters
The Tory government looks set to clobber another vulnerable section of the working class — the elderly — by abolishing the State Earnings Related Pensions Scheme (SERPS). This is part of Norman Fowler's Review of Social Security which, he claims, is intended to ensure that expenditure on Social Security is "targeted" at the most needy groups in society. The truth is that the capitalist class is beginning to panic at the cost of providing for the increasing number of old age pensioners in the population and are looking for ways to cut public expenditure on social security including pensions. (The Tories are also planning to end the death grant and maternity grant and to cut housing benefit.)
The alternative to SERPS being offered to workers is that they top up their basic state pension (insufficient on its own to provide even the basic necessities of life) by paying into private pension schemes during their working lives. This of course assumes that we have jobs that pay enough that we can afford to do this.
When these changes were aired in the House of Commons recently the Labour Party leadership s criticisms of the new measures were largely confined to gripes about the Tories "ratting'' on an election pledge leading to the accusation by that model of political integrity, Neil Kinnock, that Thatcher was a "twister". Clearly this display was intended only to discredit the Tories in the eyes of the electorate. No one in the Labour Party or any other party present in the House of Commons during this exchange questioned the system of society in which elderly workers who have outlived their usefulness to capitalism are then forced to suffer the indignity of poverty in their old age.
Any capitalist government, whether Tory. Labour or Alliance, will only pay the minimum in social security benefits and pensions that it can get away with without their electoral fortunes being adversely affected. The Labour Party, that self-appointed champion of social justice, is clearly far more concerned to show up the Tories in the worst possible light and so damage their electoral chances than to ask fundamental and urgent questions about the nature of capitalist society.
Young, jobless, homeless . . .
At the beginning of May this year new rules governing payment of board and lodging allowances to young unemployed people came into force, which will make the plight of these particular victims of capitalism still worse. Under the new rules Supplementary Benefit claimants under the age of 25 and living in hostels, lodgings or bed and breakfast accommodation are likely to have their benefit cut unless they move to another area or return to their parents’ home.
These rule changes have come about as a result of revelations last year that seaside bed and breakfast establishments in the south of England were advertising in areas of high unemployment like Merseyside, in the belief that if they attracted claimants as residents they could charge high rents which would then be paid by social security. The impression given by the press was that large numbers of unemployed were living in luxury in hotels at the seaside at the expense of the state.
In fact most bed and breakfast establishments which cater for claimants are grossly overcrowded and of a very low standard — whether they are situated in Brighton or Toxteth, and no unemployed person would choose to live in them if they had an alternative. These owners are not acting altruistically by providing "free" holidays for claimants but are merely exploiting a lucrative loophole in Social Security rules.
The new rules mean that young unemployed people forced for whatever reason to live in this kind of accommodation. will only be able to claim the full cost of their lodgings for a limited period after which time they will be forced either to move or try to manage on still less money. (And these changes will not just affect those living at the seaside.) The intention is to force them to return to the "family home". Of course this assumes that not only is there a "family home” to return to but also that they are welcome there and that the family is in a position to support an additional adult member of the family. Most people living in hostel or bed and breakfast accommodation are there precisely because such an alternative does not exist for them.
These callous new rules for lodging allowance are likely to increase homelessness, vagrancy and poverty among a section of the working class that is surplus to capital's requirement and therefore particularly vulnerable.
Wasted, minister
The government, following the recommendations of the Commons Trade and Industry Committee's report The Wealth of Waste, has appointed David Trippier as minister with responsibility for recycling waste. It might have been thought that this job would fall within the jurisdiction of the Department of the Environment. However, the fact that the new "Waste" minister is to be located instead within the Department of Trade and Industry gives us some clue to the real purpose behind the new appointment (that is. besides the obviously political one of being seen by the increasing proportion of the electorate who are concerned about ecological issues to be "doing something about the environment").
Clearly it is believed that there might be some money to be made in the recycling of waste. All the evidence, however, suggests that in fact the opposite is true: ecologically sound production and recycling of waste products cost more, which is why there is so much resistance to them. Despite the fact that the value of materials "lost" to industry is estimated to be £750 million (The Times, 16 April 1985), the cost of reclaiming such valuable resources as paper, glass, aluminium and copper is prohibitively high. To produce recycled paper, for example, can cost more than producing new paper.
Given the nature of capitalist production for profit it is therefore simply idealistic for people like Jonathan Porritt (director of Friends of the Earth) to express the hope that the government will make "a substantial and unequivocal commitment on recycling” (The Times, 16 April 1985). So long as profit is the purpose of production even the most well-intentioned, ecologically minded government will encounter serious resistance to ecologically sound but expensive production methods.
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