Standing together for the unemployed

by New Worker correspondent

Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group (KUWG) campaigners picketed the Harlesden jobcentre last week to give out leaflets to claimants about the help KUWG can provide. The Group focuses primarily on combating benefits injustices through advocacy in individuals' benefit claims, and on demonstrations that emphasise that there is hope when we come together.
The KUWG recognises that the struggle of the employed and the unemployed is one and the same, but it also affirms that smear stories and marginalisation add to the isolation experienced by the unwaged. The campaign was started by Tom Mellish, a TUC official, some 15 years ago in collaboration with the Willesden Trades Council and it has been going ever since.

Stop Universal Credit!

By New Worker correspondent

NCP leader Andy Brooks joined other comrades and friends picketing the DWP HQ in Westminster last week to protest against the hated ‘Universal Credit’ scheme and demand that Labour scrap it if they win the next election.

                        Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group (KUWG) hold protest pickets outside Caxton House every month to highlight the injustices of Universal Credit which discriminates and penalises the people it purports to help.

Gerry Downing from Socialist Fight, who helped set up the campaign during the Financial Crash of 2008, said the picketers were demanding that Jeremy Corbyn keeps his promise to scrap the scheme if Labour wins the general election next month.

Jeremy Corbyn says Labour will axe Universal Credit when it returns to power.

“Universal Credit has been an unmitigated disaster,” the Labour leader said. “It is inhumane and cruel. Labour will scrap Universal Credit. We will introduce a new system that will alleviate and end poverty, not drive people into it.”

                        The protesters ended their lunchtime protest with the KUWG’s traditional salute – ‘V for victory’ and ‘two-fingers’ to the Establishment –  but they will be back in December to keep up the fight.