By Tom Barker, UNISON steward in Leicester and member of UNISON’s National Executive Council (personal capacity)
In my role as a support worker in a school for children with special educational needs and disabilities, I have witnessed first hand the appalling impact of cuts and austerity over the past decade. As a UNISON steward, I have also been involved in fighting back. I am increasingly disgusted at the actions of this so-called Labour government, which the trade unions for some reason continue to fund.
Between 2022 and 2023, I helped lead a campaign to defend the residential provision in my workplace, which was under threat of closure because of council cuts. Throughout the campaign, it was repeatedly pointed out to Labour politicians that cutting this service would not save them money as it would lead to more dependant adults.
One affected student told the City Council (Leicester Mercury, October 3 2023): “You are making important life skills harder to achieve for children like me.”
Of course, the Labour Party hid behind the Tories and blamed funding cuts to local government, including the High Needs Block – a portion of the Dedicated Schools Grant specifically allocated to SEND students.
The City Council went ahead and withdrew the funding for this service, shedding crocodile tears while doing so. And now the Labour Party is in government, have they restored this funding? No. In fact, they are attacking disabled people with the same ferocity (maybe more) than even the Tories.
And like in the residential campaign, their numbers don’t even add up. Cutting Personal Independence Payments to get people ‘back to work’ makes no sense, as it is precisely this money that enables people to be able to access work.
But the government’s plans only make sense when we realise the money is only one of the motivating factors here. The other is sowing division.The Labour government wants to create a dividing line between the ‘deserving’ and the ‘undeserving’ poor. It is a revival of the Tories’ ‘strivers’ vs. ‘scroungers’ rhetoric.
What’s the purpose of this’? It is to prevent a unified fightback against an increasingly predatory and diseased capitalist system. But they will fail. A poll carried out earlier last week put a hypothetical Corbyn-led left party at 10%, despite the fact that it does not even exist yet.
Such a party could have a transformative impact on society, and it would be hard for the unions to justify funding Labour if it existed.
