24.10.1996

Last thing we need

Over the past week, the Unemployed Workers Charter has been interviewed on local radio stations in Derby and Leeds. On Tuesday October 22 we were included in a BBC Radio Leeds round-table discussion on working hours and new European Union directives. On Thursday October 17 I went head-to-head with a Derby Tory councillor and magistrate in a debate on the morality of dole snooping and ‘shopping your neighbour’.

The UWC told listeners in Derby that the real ‘scroungers’ in our society were not the desperate people at the bottom of the heap who may be forced to squeeze a few extra quid out of the system, but the parasite class that lives off the labour of others:

“The last thing the unemployed or any other section of the working class need to do is start blaming each other for the attacks on our living standards and democratic rights. The class that created the crisis should be made to pay for it. That is the only moral solution, as far as I’m concerned.”

Mark Fischer