In 2008, The Telegraph was delighted by the prospect David Cameron would end the ‘something-for-nothing culture’. In a 2010 speech, David Cameron said the state was trapping people “in dependency.” Cameron attacked the ‘something-for-nothing’ culture at PMQs in 2012, a 2013 speech, a 2014 speech, a 2015 speech...it’s almost as if benefit claimants are an easy recurring folk devil target. But it’s not just Conservatives who frown upon the mechanisms of the welfare state. In 2015 Ed Miliband said during a televised election debate: “We don’t want to be seen, and we’re not, the Party to represent those who are out of work… we are the Labour Party, we are not the Party of people on benefits.”
The Tories' seeming solution was the 2013 Welfare Reform Act, and a combination of savage cuts and systematic overhauling. In 2018, the Social Metrics Commission published statistics that tax credits (£4.6bn), universal credit (£3.6bn), child benefit (£3.4bn), disability benefits (£2.8bn) and housing benefit (£2.3bn) had all been slashed in budgets. Disability Living Allowance was phased out, replaced with Personal Independence Payments which, alongside Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), were cut by £5bn, or by 10%. These cuts were seen as a way to ‘balance the budget’ after the Labour government, but Grace Petrie’s 2010 song ‘Farewell To Welfare’ sarcastically cries “someone's got to foot the bill / let's start with the disabled and the mentally ill.”
Leon Rosselson’s song ‘Sixty Quid A Week’ has the ‘talking blues’-style singer meet a man who worked his whole life, until he’s on the “scrapheap so I must be punished” after an injury at work. The character talks about his poverty trying to live off his meager benefits, and would love to see the “Tory prat, that arrogant slimeball, live off that.” The man says “they’ve bled me dry / they must have hearts of stone / their cuts have cut me to the bone.”
The reforms also allowed Jobcentres to sanction claimenets. Payments can be stopped for anywhere 4 or 13 weeks. Between 2014-2015 around 482,000 Jobseeker’s Allowance claimants had their benefits cut or reduced. A 2018 report by the University of York was compiled after 5 years of research. Professor Peter Dwyer wrote: “...our findings so far show only limited evidence that the stick approach being adopted by the Government is actually working. It brings into question the ability of welfare sanctions to bring about positive changes in people’s behaviour.” Sanctions mean that people, and their families, can go without any funds for days, or weeks. This has a knock-on effect of hardship and poverty and forcing people to crime, drugs or alcohol abuse. Claimants are not even allowed to be present to explain their case.
The patronising and dehumanising treatment of people accessing benefit and welfare is encapsulated on Autonomads’ swaggering ska-punk song ‘See You At The J.C.B.’, where “looking for a job, my son, is a full-time occupation”. The song envisages an uprising to burn down the filing system. The hostility in the system is slung right back through gritty frustration of Autonomads’ thick dub-punk song ‘Breadline Britain’ draws from the legacy of crust/Anarcho-punk, with the guttural guitar and vocal snarling:
“Out of work and unemployed
Or working hard, souls destroyed
Say we’re all in this together
Fucking right, at the end of our tether”
Furious that people would be given the bare minimum (or less) to live off, the Conservatives introduced the Workfare programme, which forced people living through the benefit system to work for free for multinational corporations and museums. As opposed to, you know, paying people a fair wage. Grace Petrie’s ‘You Pay Peanuts You Get Monkeys (You Pay Nothing You Get Nowt)’ and powerviolence band The Shower Boys ‘Workfare Bastard’ are responses to the exploitative programme. The band I was in, Pewter City Punks, used to cover Billy Bragg’s classic ‘To Have And To Have Not’ about unemployed life. I added a new verse “If you don’t take the job / They’ll cut your benefits / Zero hours or a Workfare slave / Why not try being a spanner in the system / Instead of a cog in their machine.”
Manchester band Wadeye’s Spooneye With A Vengeance is a skacore state-of-the-nation album. The band’s sizzling energy and gristly lyrics are encapsulated on ‘Welfare Warfare’ with thudding drums and slicing ska-punk. After painting a picture of a deprived nation, the central chorus declares an Anarchic hatred for the state which penalises, demonises and destroys.
“Surgeries are closing
As the dying turn to dead
A massive burning track
That the government have tread
Did you believe in what
That pig fucker said?
A ten year dark hole
And now we're in debt
Welfare warfare, welfare warfare
Welfare warfare ain't going our way
Welfare warfare I’m going insane
Welfare warfare where's our pay
Welfare warfare and hate the state.”
The Tories attempt to transform the so-called ‘nanny state’ effectively created a zealous assault on the poorest in society. As we’re told to ‘live within our means’ by millionaires, exploiting us for cheap, or even free labour. There is no ‘deserving’ poor, worthy of crumbs, nor scounging underclass. Only power, wielded by the state. Should we get rid of ‘something-for-nothing’ culture? Yes, let’s start with the bosses. As Automads’ album says: One Day This Will All Be Gone... EVERYTHING NOW!
Next I’ll look at the songs of disabled resistance against Atos and Ian Duncan Smith.
