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Energy Prices: Don't Pay Campaign

The39thStep said:
What on earth does reclaim the energy commons mean ?
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Energy produced by us, taken by capitalists, and then sold back to us for profit.

I admit it's a bit of a niche way of framing it, but it's not a wildly complex or controversial way of talking about it. I had nothing to do with the video btw.
 
LDC said:
Energy produced by us, taken by capitalists, and then sold back to us for profit.

I admit it's a bit of a niche way of framing it, but it's not a wildly complex or controversial way of talking about it. I had nothing to do with the video btw.
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Ta. Never heard of it ., made me wonder how many people had.
 
Tbf whilst it's current political use is quite niche (though its been kicking around for at least 30 years ime.) plenty of people will be familiar with both the word and the concept if they've lived near "a common".
 
TLDR: Stepchange by the way can't actually deal with energy debts people will have this coming winter because they will calculate that you can't afford to put a debt payment plan in place, so your only options would be a payment holiday (lol, wait three months and then the price cap goes up again!) or bankruptcy- well to be quite honest I will probably declare myself bankrupt soon but i have managed to put DPP in place by just fudging my figures at present.

- there are probably other options that i have forgotten and please do contact stepchange post haste if you need to, but this is a basic run down of the situation we are in now, that I was already in at the start of this year.

Any website claiming to be able to help you with high energy bills is really bullshitting at this point aren't they? You either have the money to pay it, or you really really don't. In the latter scenario, what possible harm could come from at least politicising your inability to pay?
 
HoratioCuthbert said:
Any website claiming to be able to help you with high energy bills is really bullshitting at this point aren't they? You either have the money to pay it, or you really really don't. In the latter scenario, what possible harm could come from at least politicising your inability to pay?
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I completely agree with you. Some of the top table EIE speakers aren't seeing it that way though. Which is.... "interesting". This pamphlet argues "Unlike other mass non-payment campaigns of the past (e.g., the
Poll Tax), there is not yet any organised campaign of solidarity to protect those who do not pay their energy bills." Is that a blindspot for Dont Pay, or is this just blatant sectarianism from the full timers?
 
Ĝasper said:
I completely agree with you. Some of the top table EIE speakers aren't seeing it that way though. Which is.... "interesting". This pamphlet argues "Unlike other mass non-payment campaigns of the past (e.g., the
Poll Tax), there is not yet any organised campaign of solidarity to protect those who do not pay their energy bills." Is that a blindspot for Dont Pay, or is this just blatant sectarianism from the full timers?
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It's clearly sectarianism now tbh.
 
Seems the strategy after Truss's announcement is just to say it isn't enough support and press on. Which is fair enough, but in reality I wonder if the announcement will take some of the momentum out of it.
 
Ĝasper said:
I completely agree with you. Some of the top table EIE speakers aren't seeing it that way though. Which is.... "interesting". This pamphlet argues "Unlike other mass non-payment campaigns of the past (e.g., the
Poll Tax), there is not yet any organised campaign of solidarity to protect those who do not pay their energy bills." Is that a blindspot for Dont Pay, or is this just blatant sectarianism from the full timers?
Click to expand...
Just had a pal speaking to me about this, their group in Edinburgh that had run a care home campaign had tried reaching out to EiE but that "they quite clearly don't want grassroots". Hmm.
 
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Reactions: LDC
www.opendemocracy.net

Revealed: E.ON lobbied Tories to cut tax for energy firms

The UK’s biggest energy supplier also felt threat from Don’t Pay UK was ‘existential’, exclusive documents reveal
www.opendemocracy.net www.opendemocracy.net

'The warnings came as growing numbers of people threatened to “strike” from paying their spiralling energy bills. The “Don’t Pay” campaign had originally aimed to enlist a million customers who would pledge not to pay their bills when prices increased in October.

Documents now reveal how worried E.ON was about the campaign, saying it was “existential for the sector. A million customers cancelling their direct debits on 1 Oct means a c£265 million loss per month across the energy retail sector meaning a c£45m loss per month for E.ON alone"…'.
 
LDC said:
www.opendemocracy.net

Revealed: E.ON lobbied Tories to cut tax for energy firms

The UK’s biggest energy supplier also felt threat from Don’t Pay UK was ‘existential’, exclusive documents reveal
www.opendemocracy.net www.opendemocracy.net

'The warnings came as growing numbers of people threatened to “strike” from paying their spiralling energy bills. The “Don’t Pay” campaign had originally aimed to enlist a million customers who would pledge not to pay their bills when prices increased in October.

Documents now reveal how worried E.ON was about the campaign, saying it was “existential for the sector. A million customers cancelling their direct debits on 1 Oct means a c£265 million loss per month across the energy retail sector meaning a c£45m loss per month for E.ON alone"…'.
Click to expand...

I've been saying to my local group that as winter bites and people have to start spending on heating - or choosing not to - we'll have reason to go back out and talk to our community. Having reports like the above to show people will be a great way to demonstrate that more pressure could get more results. Ta for posting.
 
novaramedia.com

Don’t Pay Took Down Kwasi Kwarteng | Novara Media

We should be talking about the campaign's pivotal role in sending the government into a tailspin, argues Keir Milburn.
novaramedia.com novaramedia.com

Recently uncovered documents have revealed that the threat the campaign presented was pivotal in forcing the Truss government into an energy price guarantee costing £150 billion over the next two years. That commitment was so big it made the rest of the government’s programme impossible to deliver under current fiscal conditions. Kwarteng’s decision to nonetheless push ahead led to his fall. The prime minister is soon likely to follow, and the Conservative party has itself been thrust into an existential crisis.


The long and the short of it is this: Without the Don’t Pay campaign Kwarteng would still be chancellor and the Tories would not be trailing by 30 points in opinion polls...

By forming an organised expression of a widely felt sentiment, Don’t Pay had brought the privatised energy supply market to the brink of collapse. There is little doubt that this incredible leverage forced the government’s hand and produced a much larger and more universal price cap than it would have freely chosen.

It can be hard to recognise when campaigns and social movements win because such victories are often messy and contradictory affairs. While the energy price guarantee promised to reduce bills, and would therefore save lives, the government refused to pay for it through a windfall tax on energy company profits. That means the huge public expenditure involved will act, in effect, as a subsidy for the private energy sector paid for through government borrowing. While Kwarteng’s “mini-budget” – with its unfunded tax cuts targeted at the wealthy – was the straw that broke the camel’s back, it was the price cap that loaded the camel to breaking point. Its £150bn price tag dwarfs the £2.3bn cost of abolishing the 45% highest rate of tax and the £18bn cost of cancelling next year’s corporation tax rise.

By finding the leverage through which to assert the interests of ordinary bill payers, Don’t Pay closed the available space for the Truss government’s programme and put it on a collision course with the bond markets. For the campaign, however, its early victory was experienced as a loss of momentum.

On Monday, the new chancellor Jeremy Hunt announced the reversal of Kwarteng’s mini-budget and most of the tax cuts it contained. He also announced the curtailing of the energy price guarantee limiting average annual energy bills to £2,500. That will now end in April 2023 rather than October 2024 and average bills are expected to leap to £4,347 in six months’ time. This gives Don’t Pay a new deadline.

E.ON’s presentation confirmed the ability of a million non-payment pledges to break the energy supply market. If Don’t Pay can demonstrate the requisite level of support before next April it can force another policy U-turn. As the Tories are now seeking to use the bond market panic as an excuse to impose austerity, the demand to pay for renewed energy bill support through a windfall tax on energy companies could become irresistible.
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smokedout said:
At times like these we need trade union bosses, if we have to have bosses, who are prepared to go to jail but the big unions are too much part of the machine to ever truly contemplate that kind of radicalism.
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Thats some neck attacking labour union representatives putting their heads above the parapet as public figures from folk ‘wanting to remain anonymous’ themselves. I wonder what the job prospects are for a formerly imprisoned general secretary of a militant TU.
Do you suggest trade unions don’t have a public face? I think Lynch’s recent media performances have done more for class politics in the UK than any of the various groupsicles have over the last two decades.
Equally odd is that Don’t Pay aren’t even suggesting a strategy of imprisonment on their website. So it just appears to be a generic swipe at unions being hierarchical when the RMT don’t even fit that mould.
 
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