Council Tax Benefit Cuts .. non-payment campaign?

[BigTom]

ok, so it's never going to happen, but being too young for the poll tax non-payment campaign I'd still like to talk about it because it's about the only action I can think of that will stop this cut from happening.

If you don't know, council tax benefits are being localised and changed to council tax support payments, with a cut of 10% in the budget. Different councils are finding different ways to apply this cut, and consultation is happening now.
http://birminghamagainstthecuts.wor...uts-the-latest-attack-on-low-income-families/

I'm not sure if it's the council or central government but in Birmignham at least pensioners are not going to be affected by this, and the council here say they wil protect the most vulnerable (without really going into detail obviously). The average cost of this will be £224/year to a household - around £4/week which is a lot of money for anyone on benefits.

It's such a small sum of money that I wonder if it's financially worth councils chasing people for it, how much is it going to cost to take someone through the courts for a couple of hundred pounds? Birmingham already has hundreds of millions of pounds of council tax outstanding - including 16 councillors

So I feel like there's a fair chance that at a practical level, monies owed from this won't get chased if people don't pay it, and if there's a campaign that goes alongside that it'd make it more likely that the cut would actually be reversed (although also more likely people would get taken through courts as well I suppose, since central government won't want to be seen to be letting people get away with it, even if councils decide to turn a blind eye), and could be a useful point of resistance to welfare reforms.

Comparisons with poll tax non-payment campaign are obvious.. big differences I can see are that this cut only affects a minority of people, and that group of people are claiamants and thus scroungers etc. in the eyes of many which makes wider public support more difficult and so with many people unnaffected by this it would obviously be harder to get to the critical mass needed.
But I'm still interested in hearing how the poll tax non-payment campaign came about, and how people think they'd go about trying to make a campaign for CTB cuts happen. With Lletsa off the boards perhaps we can steer away from complete pessimissm and cynicism even though clearly such a campaign is not going to happen.

 

[treelover]

Isn't the case that many low income working people will be affected by these cuts/changes not just unemployed, etc? Anyway, next year is going to see a perfect storm of cuts to all sorts of benefits and services, I just can't see any opposition(though I praise the independent groups, such as Boycott Workfare who try)the radical left isn't strong enough at the moment to undertake anything substantial and to its shame the Labour Party will be acquiescent on all of them,as it was on the poll tax...

 

[BigTom]

yes, low income qualifies you for council tax benefit - no idea what the breakdown is on claimants between unemployed, employed, disabled/carers/others and pensioners though.. possibly similar to housing benefit? (In which case it'd be an almost even split between the four, with around 22% unemployed and 26% each of the other groups.

The lack of organisation on the left is an obvious problem - which is why I want to hear about how the poll tax campaign came to exist, it wasn't Labour who created it then who did?

 

[treelover]

loads on here were involved, but P/P seems to be very quiet at the moment in terms of posting, may have to wait..

 

[Ibn Khaldoun]

This is a good idea! Many people who will be affected aren't yet aware of the council tax changes but when they are aware a very simple plan of action which they know many others are following will be very effective in ending this policy.

 

[ViolentPanda]

We had a pamphlet in the post on saturday entitled "Lambeth Council Tax support scheme consultation: Information and questionnaire".
As a CTB claimant, they'd like me to indicate how I think the cut should be spread. It's 23 questions in 6 different categories, with the first question being "Should everyone face the same cut in their Council Tax benefit?". The answer options are "spread the cut equally" or "protect certain vulnerable groups".
So, this obviously isn't a questionnaire engineered to elicit the answers that Lambeth want, is it?

 

[butchersapron]

Great idea for discussion, lessons learnt about local organising stuff, how to do street organising etc - not got time today really but will come back when i have more than 5 minutes at a time free.

 

[treelover]

there was already a thread on here about local responses to the cuts, which of course are still happening to a degree, the country seems to have gone to sleep overall..

 

[DotCommunist]

thing is, they've shown the ability and totalwillingness to jail even old mrs jenkins down the road for non payment. Its the one bill you really can't tell to whistle cos they'll jail you.

aside from a critical mass, I don't see any way around tht?

 

[Frankie Jack]

Once UC is introduced it'll be really easy for those of us on benefits to withold payment. Whether intentional or not. It'll be intentional in my case if there is a planned mass action.

 

[BigTom]

thing is, they've shown the ability and totalwillingness to jail even old mrs jenkins down the road for non payment. Its the one bill you really can't tell to whistle cos they'll jail you.

aside from a critical mass, I don't see any way around tht?

Well that's not true in Birmingham, where the council seem to be pretty inept at chasing CT debts as per the link in the OP .. but it's clearly a problem, but the same problem was there with the Poll Tax.. so I guess the problem is whether a critical mass can be obtained, since there are fewer people who will actually be able to withhold payment (regardless of willingness to do so).

 

[Minnie_the_Minx]

We had a pamphlet in the post on saturday entitled "Lambeth Council Tax support scheme consultation: Information and questionnaire".
As a CTB claimant, they'd like me to indicate how I think the cut should be spread. It's 23 questions in 6 different categories, with the first question being "Should everyone face the same cut in their Council Tax benefit?". The answer options are "spread the cut equally" or "protect certain vulnerable groups".
So, this obviously isn't a questionnaire engineered to elicit the answers that Lambeth want, is it?

Any word on whether Freedom Passes will be scrapped?

 

[Frankie Jack]

HoC Work and Pensions Committee

Grimond Room
Meeting starts at 4.30pm
Universal Credit

Witnesses

Rt Hon Iain Duncan Smith MP, Secretary of State, and Lord Freud, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Reform, Department for Work and Pensions

http://www.parliamentlive.tv/Main/Player.aspx?meetingId=11424

 

[wemakeyousoundb]

We had a pamphlet in the post on saturday entitled "Lambeth Council Tax support scheme consultation: Information and questionnaire".
As a CTB claimant, they'd like me to indicate how I think the cut should be spread. It's 23 questions in 6 different categories, with the first question being "Should everyone face the same cut in their Council Tax benefit?". The answer options are "spread the cut equally" or "protect certain vulnerable groups".
So, this obviously isn't a questionnaire engineered to elicit the answers that Lambeth want, is it?

yep got this too, for those not receiving the questionnaire in Lambeth they can still take part here:
www.lambeth.gov.uk/ctsconsultation

 

[geminisnake]

The lack of organisation on the left is an obvious problem - which is why I want to hear about how the poll tax campaign came to exist, it wasn't Labour who created it then who did?

The simple answer as I remember it is the people created it. The poll tax was 'tested' in Scotland( a breach of the Act of the Union, which the legal system did feck all about )

I think the original groups started in Glasgow but not sure. More and more folk picked up on it and it spread. Tbh I thought then and still think now that the main reason it was scrapped was MASS rioting in London. People protested a long time before the riots happened and it seemed to have SFA affect.

 

[weepiper]

The poll tax campaign was largely a Tommy Sheridan thing I think

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-Britain_Anti-Poll_Tax_Federation

 

[Frankie Jack]

Aye it was Weeps. No one gave a shit for the year the people of Scotland were being battered with the Poll Tax. It was only when it was rolled out nationwide that the shit hit the fan.

 

[geminisnake]

The poll tax campaign was largely a Tommy Sheridan thing I think

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-Britain_Anti-Poll_Tax_Federation

I remember Tommy being heavily involved but it wasn't only his baby. I went to a march where he was speaking in Dundee when I was pregnant with son(so 23 yrs ago). I truly believed in him. He was a brilliant orator, then he became a parody of himself

The wiki thing isn't, imo, very informative. Dundee doesn't get mentioned at all and I know there were a lot of folk in Dundee who were very active/vocal/supportive. We used to go to people's houses en mass when the sheriff officers were coming round to prevent things being taken. I went a few times. Can't remember any names though.

 

[weepiper]

I remember Tommy being heavily involved, I went to a march where he was speaking in Dundee when I was pregnant with son(so 23 yrs ago). I truly believed in him. He was a brilliant orator, then he became a parody of himself

Yep. Such a shame he made bad decisions and fucked it all up.

 

[DotCommunist]

The simple answer as I remember it is the people created it. The poll tax was 'tested' in Scotland( a breach of the Act of the Union, which the legal system did feck all about )

I think the original groups started in Glasgow but not sure. More and more folk picked up on it and it spread. Tbh I thought then and still think now that the main reason it was scrapped was MASS rioting in London. People protested a long time before the riots happened and it seemed to have SFA affect.

the way I heard it was that the mass non payment was also a huge factor- you can't put half the population in jail can you?

 

[butchersapron]

The poll tax campaign was largely a Tommy Sheridan thing I think

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-Britain_Anti-Poll_Tax_Federation

was it frig

 

[geminisnake]

the way I heard it was that the mass non payment was also a huge factor- you can't put half the population in jail can you?

No, but as I said people were protesting long before it got to the streets of London. Shit all over their doorstep and suddenly they pay attention. And it wasn't/isn't a jailable offence north of the border.

 

[treelover]

Irony?

I, too was a Sheridan believer for some time, tempered by his call to dob in poll tax protesters..

 

[weepiper]

was it frig

Maybe I should change that to 'Tommy Sheridan was largely credited with it' then. Up here at least

 

[Fedayn]

was it frig

Up here the first groups involved were Militant, folk around Clydeside press and the old CPB. Those who organised most of the active-politically speaking-punters were Militant and the anarchists. There were also others involved but the largest single group was Militant.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Any word on whether Freedom Passes will be scrapped?

Not yet.

 

[smokedout]

I actually think this could work, but as a localised campaign. They've done this to stitch up boroughs and it effectively amounts to a cut in LA funding - the fight will be with local councils to socialize, or tax the rich more to make up the shortfall. in areas with high numbers of claimants a none payment campaign could gain traction, particularly as there is likely to be a virulent and entirely non-political non payment campaign taking place at the same time.

Some LAs are talking about charging claimants £2/3 quid a week, this will be impossible to enforce in practice and will probably unravel even without any kind of campaign. Just the threat would be useful now, I'd say speaking to the various claimant groups that exist or have emerged might be the best starting point.

 

[smokedout]

dp

 

[ViolentPanda]

Some LAs are talking about charging claimants £2/3 quid a week, this will be impossible to enforce in practice and will probably unravel even without any kind of campaign. Just the threat would be useful now, I'd say speaking to the various claimant groups that exist or have emerged might be the best starting point.

We're band B in Lambeth. That's just shy of £1000 a year, and they're talking (currently) about an across the board reduction of CTB by £118 a year, so yeah, £2.50 a week.
Of course, you don't need to be a mathematician to work out that people in lower-band properties would be hit harder by this that people in higher-band properties, but what's new about the most vulnerable getting kicked first, eh?

 

[chilango]

Re Poll Tax campaign.

Alongside the riots and the mass non-payments there were other things adding to the general resistance. Scots and Welsh Nats alsoopposed it and were involved in taking the campaign into rural areas with no lefty presence. In my nearest town Plaid picked up councillors in an area with no Nationalist tradition off the back of initiating local anti Poll Tax stuff.

Even people who couldn't or wouldn't refuse to pay we're involved in clogging up the system challenging every letter, every bill, paying in pennies, blocking and obstructing the process wherever possible.

But iirc the main, main thing was that mass collective illegality became normal and socially approved of.