This is a section from a longer essay, written in 2012, on State attempts to enforce behaviours on the unemployed.
Every week claimants are subjected to violence, but
this violence is not the ‘typical’ physical violence we associate with the word
violence, —although physical attacks on claimants, spurred on by right-wing
media campaigns ( see the Sun’s declaration of war on benefit scroungers: http://is.gd/BmApbV ) have been on the increase,
and with tragic consequences— it’s a violence based on power.
If you claim Job
Seeker’s Allowance (JSA), which will be replaced by Universal Credit in 2013,
you can be ‘sanctioned’, meaning you lose your JSA for a week to 26 weeks
depending on why the sanction was applied in the first place. A sanction is
financial, but it has a social element to it as well: it is meant to regulate
your behaviour. By threatening you with
loss of allowance, benefit, or support, sanctions are supposed to modify you
and your relationship to work; by threatening those who are in poverty, with
poverty, the State expects you to comply or perish -what use are you,
economically, if you cannot or, maybe, will not to work? It is through these
‘sanctions’ that the State wields power over the unemployed (& employed),
and it is through this power that violence against the claimant is committed.
The World Health
Organization (WTO) defines violence as:
The intentional use of physical
force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or
against a group or community, that either results in or has a high likelihood
of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or
deprivation.[1]
Power is a form of violence that can cause, according to the WTO,
injury, death, psychological harm or deprivation. Whether a sanction is
actually applied or not, the intention is to threaten you with the possibility
of not being able to pay the electricity bill, or buy food, or make up the
difference in your rent; the intention is to put you in a position that causes
significant trauma (threatened or actual), so that you don’t resist the terms
of the agreement you signed in order to receive your benefit. It is to deprive
you of the necessities of life so you prefer to be put to work and have your labour exploited.
In the quarter ending November 2011
there were 309 thousand referrals for JSA sanctions where a decision was made,
of which 153 thousand were adverse (i.e. a sanction or disallowance was
applied).[2]
In just 4 months, ending in Nov 2011, 153,000 sanctions were applied to
claimants, resulting in a loss of Job Seeker’s Allowance.
In 2011, over 10,000
sanctions were applied to claimants of Employment Support Allowance (ESA), an
allowance that can be claimed if you have an “illness or disability”.[3]
On the 21st May 2012, 124,000 single parents were forced from
Income Support onto JSA, where they face the threat and application of
sanctions.[4]
This is the extent of regulation of the unemployed on JSA; this is the
extent of regulation of sick & disabled people on ESA; this is the extent
of modification of
behaviour by the State; and the extent to which violence is used against the
poor and vulnerable.
And this violence can have
tragic consequences:
In June 2010, Scottish Writer Paul Reekie was found dead in his home
surrounded by “letters informing him that his welfare benefits were to be halted”.[5]
In February 2011, Elaine Christian committed suicide over her disability benefits being
cut.[6]
In November 2011, Helen & Mark Mullins were driven to suicide,
unable to live on the £57.50 a week Mark was
collecting in JSA. Helen had been refused JSA because she was unfit for work,
but could not claim Incapacity Benefit (IB) because she had not been officially
diagnosed with a condition. Although Helen wasn’t sanctioned, the refusal of
benefits, no doubt, precipitated a fatal act of violence by the State.
In May 2012, a claimant walked into Birkenhead Jobcentre, Wirral, and
slashed his wrists.[8]
These are just a few reported cases of what could be described as
poverty-related deaths or suicides (in one case attempted) invoked by the
threat or actual application of increased poverty by financial sanctions or
adverse benefit decisions. Although most of the cases relate to benefits being
stopped, as opposed to benefits being sanctioned, they highlight the actions of
a state that perpetuates violence and its preparedness for the consequences of
that violence, as evidenced in a six-point plan sent to Jobcentres, by the
Department for Work & Pensions, warning staff of potential increases in
suicides:
"Some customers may say
they intend to self-harm or kill themselves as a threat or a tactic to 'persuade',
others will mean it. It is very hard to distinguish between the two … For this
reason, all declarations must be taken seriously."[9]
When violence is mentioned in this text, in relation to power, it is not
an abstract. When you go to sign on at the Jobcentre and end up being
threatened with sanctions, it’s a very real situation; when you are mandated to
perform unpaid work as part of the Work Programme, for instance, or you
lose your benefit, it’s a very real situation; when you’re a single parent with
a young child being forced to look for work or face sanctions, it’s a very real
situation; and it’s important to recognise these situations as attacks, as acts of
violence, perpetrated by the State against you and your behaviour.
[3] https://johnnyvoid.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/over-10000-benefit-sanctions-applied-to-sick-and-disabled-people-last-year/
[6] http://www.thisishullandeastriding.co.uk/Woman-drowned-drain-upset-health-check/story-12927176-detail/story.html
[7] http://www.formbytimes.co.uk/news/formby-news/2012/05/17/dad-s-fight-for-justice-after-son-died-six-weeks-after-his-benefits-were-cut-100252-30986134/
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