Unpalatable Truths About The Slave Trade

by Les May

WHATEVER the courts finally decide, to many people the slow death of George Floyd under the knee of a policeman was murder and we should not lose sight of this as different groups compete with each other to use his death to foster their own agenda.

A few evenings ago a news programme carried an item in which the interviewee complained that although Tony Blair had expressed his regret about the transatlantic slave trade he had not ‘apologised’.  Now it has never occurred to me to ask Queen Elizabeth to apologise on behalf of her family for presiding over a system which kept my people in serfdom for some 400 years, nor that I should demand the stained glass windows which depict these monarchs in Rochdale Town Hall should be taken down, but I’ll let that pass.  The interviewee blamed this on Blair’s ‘white privilege’ seemingly blind to the fact that he is enjoying the privilege of living in a First World country with all the benefits that brings.

But there was more to this than an exercise in gesture politics.  What the interviewee seemed to be trying to do was resolve the question of what we should do with the statues of slave traders and the like, by capturing the narrative and presenting what is in effect a sanitised version of the transatlantic slave trade suited to modern prejudices.

This was a business enterprise and the transport of 12 million Africans across the Atlantic into slavery was just one part of it.  As it came to full development in the 18^th century it worked like this.  Metal goods made in Birmingham and cloth made in Lancashire were taken to Africa and traded for slaves. Slaves were transported across the Atlantic and traded for sugar in the Caribbean.   In turn this was transported back across the Atlantic to ports like Bristol and Liverpool which grew wealthy on the proceeds.  Then of course the cycle started up all over again.

So where did the 12 million slaves come from? Europeans had only a tiny foothold around the coasts of Africa and relied upon local rulers to provide the slaves, which they were more than happy to do in exchange for the manufactured goods they desired.  There was also a trans Saharan trade which supplied black slaves to North African countries.  The fact that African’s themselves were participants in enslaving fellow Africans is one of the unpalatable things we need to understand, and perhaps remind people of, when thinking about how we should respond to the demands that statues should be removed from our towns.   It should certainly be a part of the narrative surrounding the trans Atlantic slave trade in which Britain played a part.

What is not part of the agenda for these competing groups who seem so eager to rake over the coals of the past is the fact and the reality of modern day slavery. The estimates of the number of people in some form of slavery now are some two to three times higher than the 12 million or so Africans transported across the Atlantic over a period of about 120-150 years.

Anyone looking at the maps of modern day slavery will immediately become aware of the fact that it is not confined to countries inhabited by Europeans or by people of European descent.  The top ten countries for slavery are, China, DRC, India, Indonesia, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Philippines and Russia. But that does not mean it is absent from First World countries.   It has been suggested that more than 10,000 people are enslaved in the UK today.

Like the trans Atlantic slave trade of the late 17^th to mid 19^th century modern slavery is a business.  A Guardian article suggests it generates more than £100 billion in profits each year.  What should disturb us all is that in many cases the products produced by modern slaves are bought by us.  The supply chains which produce our clothes and our high tech goods are unlikely to be free of the taint of slavery. Which of course means that many of the people tipping statues into the nearest dock will, like you and I, be beneficiaries of modern day slavery.

The unpalatable truths are that fellow Africans were quite happy to supply captives to European slave traders during the period of the trans Atlantic slave trade and that slavery has not gone away, it is still with us.  But we have a choice; we can obsess about the past or we can work to eliminate it in the present.  The first of these will give us a warm glow of self satisfaction; the second will be a hard slog and require us all to examine our consciences about why we are able to buy some imported goods so cheaply.

If you care to follow the link to what has been called the ‘Arab Slave Trade’, you may wonder as I do, whether the term BAME, which is frequently used to imply some community of interest amongst the groups included in the acronym owes a great deal to wishful thinking.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/feb/25/modern-slavery-trafficking-persons-one-in-200

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/03/opinion/modern-slavery-grows.html

https://www.syracuse.com/news/2011/04 vendor_abused_mexican_workers.html

https://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-north-korea-forced-labor-20161006-snap-story.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_slave_trade

Typing the search terms ‘economist modern slavery’ will lead to a wealth of detail about global supply chains and their links to slavery.

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When Edward Colston Plaque was ammended

THE Daily Telegraph reported on the 25 March 2019 that a plaque paying homage to the reputation of the 17th century merchant and Member of Parliament Edward Colston, under what was then his statue in Bristol has been scrapped after the Mayor complained it watered down his links to slavery.

In February, 2019 Bristol City Council agreed to affix a new plaque under the statue of the controversial figure, to inform visitors of the slave trafficking he was involved in.

The current plaque was made when the statue was erected in 1895.  It makes no mention of the slave trade and reads:  'Erected by citizens of Bristol as a memorial of one of the most virtuous and wise sons of their city'.
A new plaque was commissioned and made after debate.  Bristol historian Francis Greenacre, on behalf of the Merchant Venturers, the organisation Colston belonged to, made changes to it before it was sent to be cast.

For example, rather than writing that he 'trafficked' slaves, the proposed plaque read that he 'transported' them.

The inscription read:  
'He supported and endowed schools, almshouses, hospitals and churches in Bristol, London and elsewhere. Many of his charitable foundations continue. This statue was erected in 1895 to commemorate his philanthropy.
'A significant proportion of Colston’s wealth came from investments in slave trading, sugar and other slave-produced goods.

'As an official of the Royal African Company from 1680 to 1692, he was also involved in the transportation of approximately 84,000 enslaved African men, women and young children, of whom 19,000 died on voyages from West Africa to the Caribbean and the Americas.'

At that time the Mayor Marvin Rees deemed this 'unacceptable', and his office said in a statement:
'It was extremely naive of the Merchant Venturers to believe they should have the final say on the words for a new plaque for the statue of Edward Colston without reference to the communities of descendants of those Africans who were enslaved and treated as commodities by merchants like Colston.
'It’s an oversight to put it mildly not to even have had a conversation with Mayor Marvin Rees, Europe’s first mayor of African heritage and the mayor of a city whose wealth has been inseparable from slavery and plantations and who is himself the descendant of enslaved Africans.
'The proposed words are unacceptable. We will pick this back up as part of our wider work on improving our cultural offer around the transatlantic slave trade.'

Today however, following the dismantling of the Colston statue yesterday, the same Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees, while refusing to act as 'cheer leader' for the police inquiry into possible criminal damage over the dunking of the Colston statute in the Bristol Harbour, he did admit that he was not sorry to see the monument to Edward Colston was no longer in situ.  

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Bye bye Edward Colston!

Subject: BRISTOL COLSTON STATUE PULLED DOWN 

Momentum Bristol

@MomentumBristol

Bye bye Edward Colston! If anyone misses this statue they need to have a long hard think about their priorities. Slave traders are not heroes! #BlackLivesMatter

#BLMbristol #Bristol

Click on live link below to see video:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1269634408069435392

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Crummy Jobs: Park Cake Bakeries have their cake and eat it!

Park Cake Bakeries

Anyone who has had the misfortune to be pressed ganged by the Jobcentre onto a so-called government training scheme in Greater Manchester, will have heard of John Hill Biscuits in Ashton-under-Lyne and Park Cake Bakeries in Oldham. For donkey's years, both firms have relied on seasonal casual workers and temps to meet their production needs particularly in the run up to Christmas and other festive periods.

In 2011, employees at Park Cakes in Bolton and Oldham threatened industrial action following the introduction of new employment contracts, which were described as tantamount to 'slave labour'.  Park Cake were accused by the 'Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union' (BFAWU), of seeking to circumvent the EU 'Temporary Agency Workers Directive' which came into effect in October 2011. This directive (which Conservative leader David Cameron tried to block), entitles agency staff who work for twelve consecutive weeks, with the same employer, to equal rates of pay and basic working conditions with permanent  employees. The cake and dessert maker was accused by the union of creating a "two-tier workforce" by introducing about 30 new permanent staff on minimum wage contracts to drive down terms and conditions, in order to bring in cheap agency labour and zero-hour contracts. 

This afternoon I spoke to a young woman outside Ashton Jobcentre who told us about her experience of working at Park Cake Bakeries in Oldham on a wonderful zero-hour contracts. She explained that there are two agencies now based in Park Cake Bakeries who recruit staff on zero-hour contracts. Having been recruited initially via the Jobcentre, she receives text messages from the agency calling on her to attend the bakery for possible work. She then explained that she was told to sit and wait for two-hours, in the expectation that there might be work, but she would be paid for the second hour. If nothing was available, she is sent home. According to this young woman, around 90% of the staff at the bakery are agency staff. When I asked how she could know this, she said because she could tell agency staff by the colour of the hairnets - red and purple for agencies workers and white for those directly employed by Park Cake.

When  I asked this young woman how she managed to live when she was not getting temporary work, she said she relied on the goodwill and generosity of friends and neighbours. This is the world of work that many now face daily in Tory England. Data provided by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), in March of this year, shows that the number of UK workers in zero-hour employment has rocketed to reach a staggering 905,000 people, an increase of 101,000 over the past year alone. Recent research undertaken by Middlesex University found that one-in-20 workers do not get statutory holiday pay and on-in-12 does not get a payslip. Around £1.2bn in wages are unpaid annually. 

As Britain prepares to leave the EU, expect more of this race to the bottom and precarious employment. This country will sold on the basis of low-taxes for the bosses and little or no rights or regulation for the workers. This, we will  be told, is all in the national interest. 

Psychobabble to be used by Tories to get people back-to-work. Is this mind control?

We are publishing below a recent briefing received from 'Boycott Workfare':

"On top of punishing claimants with sanctions that leave people destitute, the Government now has plans to use psychological treatments to force people into work.

George Osborne’s budget announced measures to ‘improve employment outcomes’ for people with mental health conditions. These include online cognitive behavioural therapy (change the world by changing how you think) for people on ESA or JSA and putting psychologists in JobCentres.
Unemployment is being redefined as a psychological disorder and the main purpose of psychological therapy will be to force people off benefits.  Or to promote yet another specious reason to cut people off benefits.

Meanwhile, the Tory Manifesto states that claimants who ‘refuse a recommended treatment’ may have their benefits reduced. This is an assault on the human rights of people on benefits and an attempt to co-opt medical professionals as state enforcers.

We’re hearing more and more reports of the misuse of psychology to coerce, bully and punish claimants into ‘getting the right mindset’: “all new starts must attend an initial two week course to develop their confidence”.

Change your attitude

The ‘change your attitude’ message of positive psychology is enforced in mandatory ‘employability’ training courses promising to help with ‘self-esteem, self-confidence and motivation’ and in unsolicited ‘positive thinking’ emails.  Making people take part in various pointless and humiliating psycho-group-activities e.g. building paper clip towers to demonstrate team work, or take completely meaningless and unethical psychological tests to determine their ‘strengths’.

The Department for Work and Pensions issues contracts worth hundreds of thousands of pounds (Focus the Mind, Achieve your Potential) designed to ‘address negative perceptions’ and ‘instil a positive attitude to work‘.  A programme for JSA/ESA claimants over 50 aims to persuade people that age discrimination doesn’t exist:

“to challenge perceptions that employers discriminate on the grounds of age”.

Fraud

These fraudulent programmes don’t result in real paid work you can live on. The companies that run them are making millions out of a big con: that with a total personality makeover, anyone can get a job.  That positive thinking can change the low pay, no pay UK economy.

Psychological resistance to work

In another scheme claimants will have interviews to assess whether we have a ‘psychological resistance’ to work, along with attitude profiling to judge whether we are ‘bewildered, despondent or determined’. If they decide you are ‘less mentally fit’ you’ll be sent on ‘more intensive coaching’, while those who are ‘optimistic’ can be placed on less rigorous regimes. This is how they will decide who is to be punished with ‘extra support’ i.e. forced to spend 35 hours a week at a JobCentre.

Sanctions

The growing use of psychology, with practically every JobCentrePlus manager an expert in the topic, is not helping people with mental health problems whose suffering at the hands of this system has been well documented - with more than 100 people a day with mental health problems losing their benefits through sanctions.

The newly privatised Behavioural Insights Team has trained over 20,000 JobCentre staff in ‘behavioural techniques‘ with DWP managers regularly sending out positive psychology tweets to ‘motivate’ staff to meet targets. Targets that result in escalating sanctions.

Positive psychology

Positive psychology messages are so stupid, they are laughable. But being told day in, day out, that it’s our fault we’re unemployed or in such low paid work that we have to claim benefits  can really get to people. The language of workshy scroungers is a deliberate attempt to put people down and undermine support for hard won welfare rights.  Claimants are expected to show a positive attitude to being exploited or be sent on 6 months Community Work Placement for ‘lack of motivation’ or be referred to a psychologist for questioning your job coach.

BPS inquiry

Before Christmas, the president elect of the British Psychological Society  Jamie Hacker Hughes responded to our concerns by promising to hold an inquiry. That was then. Inspite of repeated reminders, there is nothing on the BPS website about the inquiry. No terms of reference. No information about how people who’ve been through various workfare psycho-interventions can submit their testimonies. All we’ve had from BPS on the issue of psychology, workfare and ethics so far is a press release saying that it’s fine to test claimants for ‘psychological resistance to work‘ as long as the person doing the tests is ‘qualified’.

We’re not holding our breath for the BPS inquiry. In the meantime, we welcome your own testimony on how psychology is used to manipulate, blame, punish and coerce people on benefits.

What you can do

Let the British Psychological Society know we won’t stand for compulsory positive psychology and mandatory psychological treatment. We expect them to speak out. You could also ask them what happened to the inquiry into psychology and workfare promised by their President Professor Jamie Hacker Hughes back in November 2014?

Twitter

Facebook

Lobby members of the newly established ‘Mental Health Task Force‘ . This includes Mind, Age UK(well known workfare exploiters) and Rethink

Ask Psychologists against Austerity to keep up the pressure. Tweet them here "

Take action: No voice for workfare profiteers!

We are publishing below a recent briefing received from Boycott Workfare:

"Take action online against the workfare industry conference as part of the Week of Action vs Workfare and Sanctions!

Today, Monday 27 April, the welfare-to-work industry is holding its AGM.  The ERSA – the organisation that does spin and lobbying for workfare exploiters – is meeting to discuss the year in workfare and new ways of making the sector respectable.

We don’t know the location yet.  Since our noise demo massively disrupted their conference at the end of 2013, they’ve been cagier about where they meet.

For the first online action for the week of action against workfare, we want to target the ERSA and spotlight the violence they do to claimants through workfare, ‘training’, and sanctions.   Their work relies on coercion, threats, and the imposition of poverty. So at the AGM we’ll find the Employment Related Services Association talking over new ways of presenting the same lies about workfare.

Their past conferences have been attended by people like Esther McVey (Minister of State for Employment); the head researcher of Iain Duncan Smith’s thinktank Centre for Social Justice; the heads of workfare companies like Avanta, Seetec, G4S and Pinnacle People; the heads of massive charity workfare users like Groundwork and the Salvation Army; and the boss of the company that forced unemployed people to get changed under a bridge for the Queen’s Jubilee.

Their blog hosts advertorials for the Salvation Army’s part in the Work Programme.

Contracts to these companies and others that ERSA represents are worth billions of pounds.  Fees for delivery of one part of one workfare scheme, for two years, in England, Scotland, and Wales, are over £250 million.   And all this is money wasted: the schemes don’t do what we’re told they’re supposed to do, they just cause poverty, homelessness, anxiety, and death.

The ERSA’s tagline is ‘giving a voice to the employment support sector’.   But the industry doesn’t need a voice – it certainly has no interest in hearing from the people its members’ jobs exploit.  Why should they be able to sit and calmly discuss ‘employment support’, as if they were unemployed people’s benevolent helpers?

Let’s drown them out.  Tweet to @ersa_news "

WORKFARE WEEK OF ACTION!

We are publishing below a recent briefing from Boycott Workfare.

"With an election looming it’s a vital opportunity to expose and challenge workfare and sanctions policies and the political lies that underpin them. 

Already your efforts have resulted in massive success: Dozens of organisations have withdrawn from the schemes following public pressure. Let’s take it even further on 25th April – 2nd May. Read more here.

Start getting ready for the week of action now:

• Reply to this email to order know your rights leaflets to give out at your local jobcentre or workfare provider
• Plan an action at a workfare exploiter near you!
• Order Keep Volunteering Voluntary leaflets to ask charities in your area to pledge to avoid workfare!
• Join the Facebook event and invite others to take part too!
• Remember to let us know what you plan so we can help to publicise it!

The week of action is a chance for everyone who opposes workfare and sanctions to demand an end to these cruel policies. Already this year, at least four organisations have withdrawn from workfare following public pressure. However you take part, it will count. 

During the week itself, check the Boycott Workfare website to take part in daily online actions too!

Then join us for the Welfare Action Gathering on 30th May!

It’s a fact, regardless of who wins the election - we will have to resist!  New policies such as the roll out of Universal Credit will see people in employment and on housing benefit sanctioned too. So, we would love to see you come and take part in our Welfare Action Gathering on 30th May at the London Welsh Centre. It will be a great chance to discuss how we can all continue to resist, and maybe even come up with creative new ways of doing so! "

Please let us know if you can take part in the week of action and gathering and help spread the word far and wide!

Boycott Workfare Action Week: 25 April - 2 May!

We are publishing below a recent briefing from Boycott Workfare:

As the general election campaign gets underway we are already seeing politicians calling for more of the same policies. More workfare. More sanctions. Yet we know that these policies have been a total disaster. It is shameful that workfare and sanctions are supported by all the main political parties. This is why we are holding a week of action in the week before the election. We need your help to expose and challenge workfare and sanctions policies and the political lies that underpin them.

Workfare undermines paid jobs and wages and results in sanctions. It does nothing to improve the chances of people finding a job and exploits those forced to carry it out. Last year over half a million people had their benefits sanctioned. The number of benefit sanctions imposed by the DWP now exceeds the number of fines imposed by the courts. People are being left with nothing for up to three years. There is now overwhelming evidenceof the harm being caused by sanctions. Sanctions are damaging the health of claimants and leading to hunger, homelessness and deaths.

Your actions have already had a huge impact in challenging these policies. Dozens of organisations have withdrawn from the schemes following public pressure. Over 500 voluntary sector organisations have now signed the Keep Volunteering Voluntary agreement to say they oppose workfare and sanctions and will not be involved. 25 councils have also said they will boycott the schemes. All this means it is getting harder and harder for the government’s private providers to find workfare placements. Hundreds of placements have been cancelled and your actions have made a real difference.

The week of action is a chance for everyone who opposes workfare and sanctions to demand an end to these cruel policies. However you can contribute join us to take action from 25 April – 2 May:

• Join in with online actions throughout the week!
• Ask charities you support to sign the Keep Volunteering Voluntary agreement!
• Speak out! Tell those promoting workfare and sanctions what you think of their policies!
• Hand out our know-your-rights leaflets at your local jobcentre!
• Plan actions at a workfare exploiter near you!

Remember to let us know what you plan so we can help to publicise it!

Join the Facebook event and invite others to take part too! "

Boycott Workfare: Week of Action gets Results!

We are publishing below a recent briefing from Boycott Workfare:

"So, what did last week show us? When you take action, you get results. 

Scope, Barnardos and British Heart Foundation have cancelled their involvement with CWP 6-month workfare. Traid pulled out too when an action was called outside its store in Wood Green. That’s four national charities who were forced to respond following pressure from you.

With over 17 actions in the UK and beyond, and hundreds of people taking action online, we stepped up pressure on workfare which is unpopular and vulnerable.

In Edinburgh, compulsory courses at workfare provider Learndirect were cancelled when 60 people blockaded its office. In London, provider Urban Futures faced an occupation at the same time, exposing managers’ nasty attitudes towards claimants. In Brighton, people invaded provider Avanta and handed out leaflets.

Actions took place at job centres, which were rebranded “sanctions centres” instead. This report from the demo in Peckham shows why: “They appear to be sanctioning people at the rate of between 30 and 45 people per day. Some people have received sanctions of 10 months for a ‘first offence’! They seem to be ignoring the official guidelines about sanctions periods entirely and making up as they go along. We also heard about a 6 month pregnant woman with child who was sanctioned for two months for being one minute late.”

The Trades Union Congress was bombarded with tweets and emails, while claimants from Kilburn demonstrated, asking the TUC how it can march for a “pay rise” while actively supporting “no-pay” Traineeships for young people and sanctions.With the government set on extending workfare and sanctions to the working poor next, the huge level of support in the week of action shows that the public are with us. In Sheffield “shoppers were, without exception, sympathetic” to the picket outside workfare exploiter Savers. “Some people had experienced workfare schemes themselves and were pleased that we were making the issue a public one.” People know that workfare means increased poverty via sanctions, and replaces paid work.

In the Netherlands, the anti-workfare campaign Doorbraak also took part in the week of action, pushing the mayor of Amsterdam to pledge to end to workfare next year. Austrian unemployed group “Aktion Arbeitslose” helped build support as well.

By holding those who profit from workfare to account and having a massive impact – at a time when permanent austerity and social injustice are the policy order of the day – your actions bring hope. We show each other that we are not alone. People’s actions in New York have brought workfare to an end in the city where it began. Whilst claimants have been abandoned by the Coalition Government, Labour and sadly even the TUC – they have not been abandoned by you. So let’s keep the pressure up! "

A massive thank you to everyone who took part in any way in the week of action. If your action isn’t mentioned here, but you’d like it to be, please email info@boycottworkfare.org 

Take action: Invite organisations to Keep Volunteering Voluntary!‏

We are publishing below a recent briefing from Boycott Workfare:

"All week we’ve been inviting people to take part in online action to challenge workfare. If you haven’t had a chance to do so yet, please take a minute to:

• Ask Barnardos and British Heart Foundation why they appear on a list of Community Work Placements
• Contact Groundwork – the charity with 4500 workfare placements last year and a sub-contract to run workfare
• Stop workfare in hospice charity shops
• Challenge the TUC‘s support for workfare

Today we’re supporting the Keep Volunteering Voluntary campaign’s call for people to contact the charities and voluntary organisations you support to invite them to pledge to shun workfare too. Read on for more info and a template letter, and follow Keep Volunteering Voluntary on twitter and facebook.

There are a lot of organisations who have said they won’t take workfare, but still a lot who do. We want all voluntary work to be freely chosen, not a means for private companies to make profits or Jobcentres to force people off benefits. Keep Volunteering Voluntary (KVV) have set up a pledge and already 430 organisations have signed!

You can help to encourage organisations to sign up to Keep Volunteering Voluntary in several ways. Firstly check whether they are already on the list of sign-ups.

• If you use or support a charity, try to find out whether they use workfare, and in any case ask them to sign up to KVV.
• If there is a local charity shop, go in and talk to the people there: find out whether there is anyone there on workfare, and ask the organisation to sign up to KVV.
• If you work or volunteer at a voluntary organisation, try to get them to sign up.
• If a place you work or volunteer at has any links with a voluntary organisation, try to contact them too.

Download this template letter you can take to a charity shop, or adapt as an email to send to a voluntary organization.

Some responses you may get and how to reply:

“We’ve already signed up.” – great, well done!
“We don’t have anyone on workfare.” – so you won’t mind signing up to KVV then.
“We’re helping the unemployed gain experience.” – that’s not of much value if they don’t want to be there.
“What’s wrong with (unpaid) volunteers.” – there’s no objection to genuine volunteers, but to compulsory schemes and coercion.
“The people on placement want to be here.” – that’s fine, but they shouldn’t be threatened with sanctions.

If you can get any kind of statement from an organisation, that’s always useful – a way in to further dialogue, or good publicity for the campaign. Let Boycott Workfare know and we’ll pass it on to KVV as well.

Some charities – such as Age UK – have a national office but each local area branch is ‘independent’ and may sign up separately. So if you see a local branch signed up but not your area, that’s an added incentive for your local to sign up too.

Without charity’s support, workfare schemes will collapse. That’s why every extra new organisation to sign up is so important – helping build consensus in the voluntary sector that workfare is completely at odds with its aims and values.

A massive thanks to everyone who has taken part online and organised demonstrations throughout the week of action! There are more protests in Amsterdam and Peckham today, and in Bristol, Haringey and Sheffield tomorrow! "

Take action: No grounds for green-washing workfare‏!

We are publishing below a recent briefing from Boycott Workfare:

"Take online action today against Groundwork, the green charity using unpaid labour. Branches of Groundwork up and down the country openly advertise their involvement in all kinds of workfare, including the latest and most exploitative programmes.

Charities and voluntary organisations should know the value of volunteering. Instead Groundwork is taking thousands of unemployed people on workfare placements with no pay and putting people at risk of sanctions. According to their own statistics they forced 4,500 people through workfare last year alone. They trade on the goodwill of their ‘volunteering’ projects to secure government money for unpaid labour schemes.

Groundwork is also taking part in the latest draconian scheme, Community Work Placements (CWP), as a sub-contractor of G4S in Merseyside, Lancashire and Cumbria. CWP is a six month long placement – twice the length of the maximum community service sentence for committing a crime.  Workfare criminalises unemployed people and then punishes them more harshly than other people who are forced to work for free. It does this without even the appearance of judicial process: people are punished just because they’re unemployed. More than 400 charities and 22 councils have rejected CWP and other workfare schemes by signing the Keep Volunteering Voluntary pledge. They understand that workfare is punitive and that it doesn’t help people find jobs.

Following the latest attacks from the government on unemployed people, in which the Tories are promising to cut benefits and roll out more of the harsh schemes like the ones Groundwork provides, we need to show those involved in workfare just how unacceptable it is.

A lot of green charities and recycling companies are involved in workfare schemes. The environment is a useful alibi for forcing people to work for free, because it makes it easy to claim that the work unemployed people are doing is for “community benefit” – which it is supposed to be, if the scheme is one that people can be directly forced to do, like CWP or Mandatory Work Activity.  This is why there’s so many environmental charities, city farms, and recycling firms on our list of workfare exploiters.

Workfare schemes cannot operate without charities that are willing to take on unpaid workers, but Groundwork’s involvement is deeper: they help organise the schemes as well. Groundwork say they recognise that Jobcentre Plus is enforcing a “stricter application…of conditions and sanctions”, but they continue to help to run this punitive system anyway. 

Let them know about the hardship and destitution that benefit sanctions are causing. Let them know that forcing people to work under threat of destitution for no pay is wrong.

Groundwork are on Twitter @groundworkuk and on Facebook here.

Or you could contact them through their website, or on the phone (0121 236 8565).  They have local branches throughout the UK.  To find contact details for the nearest one to you, look here."