The Working Class & Leftist Delusion

 by Andrew Wallace

LEFTISM gets itself into bogged down into certain delusional mythologies, one of which concerns the romanticisation of the working work, the heroic proletarian toilers and tillers of the earth,  preordained by Marxist gospel to act as the historical revolutionary agent to overthrow capitalism.  Marx had been pretty disparaging about peasants and 'rural idiocy', instead he and his fellow 19th century socialists felt that a newly emergent class of industrial labourers would shape up as the critical agents of modernity.

Alas some 140 years after Marx's death the working classes across the globe remain as distant from this pre-ordained enterprise as they ever were.  Indeed it seems quite the converse; the working class as hitherto constituted has played a most passive if indeed not reactionary role.

Leftist pretensions to scientific rigour can no longer disguise the romantic fallacy and cognitive bias of 'The Superior Virtue of the Oppressed'. As Bertrand Russell tartly observed 'Marx was the Wordsworth of the proletariat; its Freud is still to come."

David Selbourne has dissected this fallacious intellectual cul-de-sac as:

'prodigies of useless intellectual labour, whose largely metaphysical character is determined  by the metaphysical nature of the problems to which they seek a solution At the lowest political level, however masked by intellectual sophistication, they can descend to disappointed abuse of the working class for having failed to live up to middle-class socialist expectation. Theories, as we have seen, of 'consumerism', of the 'deferential' working class, of the 'long catalepsy' of the British working-class movement, of a class consciousness 'subordinate' in its very 'texture' to the 'hegemony of the bourgeois', all have silently inscribed within them the figure of a politically defective proletarian who is the obverse of the archetypally active class hero of socialist romance, first cousin to Dyden's noble savage.'

A truth which can still barely be alighted upon in progressive circles, 'socialism' is a not a product of the working class worldview, instead it is a quixotic interloper of sorts, a radical import of déclassé intellectuals who had reason to take issue with the corrosive workings and hardships of industrial capitalism. The wage labourers of course bore the brunt of the exploitative economics that coerced them to work in the most degrading of conditions and had active interests in agitating for improvements in their lot. However 'labourism' isn't 'socialism', whereby the former is to be realised in seeking redress to particular grievances and privations rather than the latter politically undefined and radical goal of usurping the settlement of the day.  Conservatism presented itself in the passivity of the general population and the consequent isolation and containment of dangerous radicals and agitators who threatened to bring anarchy to social order.

Marxism has had the unenviable task of confronting this conspicuous turd in a swimming pool with a battery of impressive rationalisations. Chief amongst these is the infamous idea of false consciousness which has been taken as an unfortunate slur on character in the same way ignorance as a descriptor is taken as an insult even though a concise definition isn't morally pejorative.

Marxists have also proved adept at accounting for a multitude of countervailing tendencies that militate against economic immiseration, such as the co-opting of 'bourgeois' sociology's 'embourgeoisment thesis' of middle class expansion, thereby muddying the waters of class conflict via a bought off 'aristocracy of labour'.

Leftist intellectuals then have erred in projecting a radical telos onto the working class arena, ignoring the utilitarian and individualistic basis to labour politics and the voluntarist and anti-statist ethos that marked these communities. They have also been oblivious to the deep structural incorporation of working class material resources into the capitalist system through mortgage and hire purchase.

However other sociologists have attempted to sidestep the theoretical travails of working class conservatism and the 'deviant' class voter by pointing out the not unsurprising reality of hegemony by way of the deep state ancien regime of a living museum pageantry (monarchy, parliament, church, armed forces, public schools, civil service, BBC) which naturally defaults us all to the dominant culture. Ironically this confinement to functionalist observation and impotent commentary rather nullifies Marx's famous 11th thesis on Feuerbach which implored for more action and less philosophical windbaggery!

It's the culture, stupid

The class voting sociology (Marxism ‘lite’) of the post war years is now having to contend with the other belated but uncontroversial driver of voting behaviour - culture!  As analysists are now recognising, voters are motivated by cultural issues which may not easily be subsumed within an economic paradigm and furthermore may actually be oppositional to the traditional material class interests.  Bourdieu's ideas on social and cultural capital have helped to redress the balance by giving due prominence to education and the cognitive repertoire that help to constitute social class in the modern era.

Many left revisionists had already discerned that traditional class based politics were becoming problematic with declining working class vote share from the 1960s onwards alongside a new counter cultural zeitgeist. With deindustrialisation poised to pulp much of manufacturing and decimate organised labour, Hobsbawm and Gorz wrote in unflinching terms of the likely recalibration of socialist politics. Gorz talked of moving away from class politics in favour of the 'new social movements'. This turn to identity and culture politics followed in the wake of disenchantment with the 'backward' working class. However such doubling down on the new politics exacerbated the cultural and intellectual chasm between the liberal campus radicals and the more socially conservative blue collar workers, leading to a further breakdown of the previous broad based social alliances between the classes.

Working class Hobbesian attitudes to the Welfare State

Fern Brady writing for The Guardian was taken aback by the distinctive authoritarian attitudes towards benefit claimants, particularly the unemployed and disabled.  Those without obvious physical markers of disability were often the target of an inglorious brutalism unveiled in her interviewees who amply demonstrated

(an) 'internalised...Thatcherite every-man-for-himself mentality, wanting benefits for themselves but resenting anyone else getting a handout...it went in a circle, anger constantly directed at other victims of the coalition government's Welfare Reform  Act instead of the politicians and policymakers responsible.'

Houtman et al drawing on Bourdieu’s work discerned the recourse to a 'deserving/undeserving' criteria in relationship to limited social capital and associated authoritarian attitudes which also were marked by penalising attitudes for 'out-groups' and fringe communities.

So ought we really to be surprised at this abundance of working class authoritarianism?  Again Selbourne is illuminative on precisely this point:

‘...any form of illiberalism in the human-as worker can come to be discounted or recycled as an aberration from the norm of a supposedly instinctive or class, predilection for progressive, fraternal and democratic solutions to social and economic problems. That history does not reveal the latter unequivocally, to put it mildly, is inconvenient. Indeed, illiberalism is as much an ideological choice of direction as any other and more explicable, in conditions of insecurity or fear of unemployment, than many’

In critically disabusing leftism of its ludicrous 'salt of the earth' workerism, it is not my intention to deny the very real and toxic nature of capitalism and I continue to desire even if without much hope that a saner politics emerge to reign in the excesses of our times.  However we need to face up to the increasing intellectual bankruptcy of the left.  We are now very much at the whims of the political right who continue to exploit the post liberal environment in their canny take on working class sensitivities.  'White van conservatism' and Boris's new 'Workers' Party' are set to run the show into the distant future.

I have drawn on the following essays/books/articles during the writing of this article:

• The Superior Virtue of the Oppressed, (1937) Bertrand Russell
• Against Socialist Illusion (1985), David Selbourne
• http://www.leninology.co.uk/2010/10/working-class-tory-is-something-to-be.html
• Working Class Conservatives: A Theory of Political Deviance (1967), Frank Parkin
• Social Class in the 21^st Century (2015), Mike Savage
• https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/12/anti-welfare-rhetoric-families
• https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9966722/Welfare-reform-Its-class-war-but-not-in-the-way-youd-expect.html
• Farewell to the Leftist Working Class (2008), Houtman, Achterberg & Derks
• The Forward March of Labour Halted? (1978) Eric Hobsbawm
• Farewell to the Working Class (1980), Andre Gorz
• National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy (2018), Matthew Goodwin

Loose talk by Job Centre DWP staff!

 Manchester LibDem Cllr. John Leech* reports:

Responding to the shocking comments made by DWP staff about Universal Credit claimants, the Liberal Democrats have blamed "Boris Johnson’s hateful Tory Government" for promoting hateful language.

Benefits managers have been caught on tape making horrifying comments about claimants including blowing them up with a grenade and “faking it", according to the Mirror on Sunday.

In one conversation a manager says: “The police sometimes have sting operations where they gather people together. We should nominate one person to throw a grenade in.”

One said they “have absolutely no time” for claimants with depression and anxiety.

The Liberal Democrats have blamed "Boris Johnson’s hateful Tory Government" for "actively promoting cruel language."

Liberal Democrat John Leech voted against the Welfare Reform Act 2012 and was the very first MP in the House of Commons to speak out against key parts of the Act including the Under Occupancy Penalty (‘Bedroom Tax’) and Universal Credit.

*  John Leech was one of two Lib Dem MPs to vote against entering Coalition in 2010 and the very first MP to speak out against the under-occupancy penalty (commonly called the 'bedroom tax') in Parliament.

*************

Fitness For Work - 'Cover Up'?

PRIVATE Eye No.1435 reported that the 'opposition parties are calling for an independent inquiry after it emerged that ministers apparently "hid" reports into the deaths of benefit claimants from the independent expert who was reviewing controversial "fitness for work" test.'
It seems that, according to the Eye, that 'seven confidential peer reviews into deaths linked to work capability assessment (WCA) were not passed to Professor Malcolm Harrington as he prepared his final report in 2012.'
It seems that the Professor had 'no recollection of seeing any of the reviews, and he says that 'such damning indictments of the system - if seen - should have triggered a response from me.'  And  'It didn't.'
This all became clear after a Freedom of Information request.  Private Eye reports:  'This is just the latest evidence to emerge implicating ministers in covering up links between WCA flaws and deaths of benefit claimants - particularly those with experience of significant mental distress.'
It seems that the work capability tests have been widely condemned for being too prescriptive, and leading to fatal errors and leaving claimants 'penniless and stressed'.
After the latest 'cover-up', the Eye says:
'Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens all called for an independent inquiry into the "hidden reports" and into the wider issue of deaths directly linked to government welfare reform.'

Activists target council for 'Nanny State' initiative for 'Troubled Families.' Blame the Government not single-mothers, say protesters!

Yesterday around 30 activists from across Greater Manchester, joined a protest outside Ashton-under-Lyne Town Hall, organised by 'Tameside Against the  Cuts'. They were there to protest against the 'Troubled Families Phase 2' initiative which is being introduced by Tameside Council in  Greater Manchester, as a joint enterprise between the Council, Ashton-under-Lyne Jobcentre and New  Charter Housing Trust.

Under the scheme - 'Troubled Families Wave 2, Joint Investment Agreement', Tameside Council is being paid  a £1000 attachment fee by the government for each troubled family on its books and is aiming to work with a minimum of 1,750 so-called 'Troubled Families'.  A further £800 'results fee' is also paid by the government, to an agency appointed by the council. This scheme follows on from Phase 1, which helped 'Troubled Families' with such things as truancy, anti-social behaviour, crime, domestic violence and drug and alcohol dependency.

Although the initiative appears to be legal but looks bent, a leaflet distributed by the protesters, described it as a "dodgy deal between the Government and the Greater Manchester Councils." In particular, they say that single-mothers are being targeted and designated as 'troubled families' because of problems that are not of their making, but which have resulted from Government  economic policies and welfare reforms, which have reduced income for benefit claimants both in and out of work. They also say that the scheme is a misuse of vital financial resources and seeks to cover up Government failed economic  policies  by blaming people for being unemployed.

As we reported recently, a single-mother and jobseeker,  was designated a 'troubled family' and referred to the scheme by Ashton-under-Lyne Jobcentre, when it was claimed she was not doing enough to find work. Under the scheme, each 'troubled family' is designated a key worker and a busybody social worker to police their everyday activities and to give them a nudge back into work. One of the criteria for 'early intervention' by Tameside Social Services, is where the family is considered to be at risk of 'financial exclusion' or where the children are at risk of 'worklessness'.

Protesters also say that New Charter Housing Trust, which is closely linked to the council, have been assigned the role as organizer even though the contract was not put out to tender. The council say that a waiver was "granted under PSO C3.2 to enable a direct award of the investment agreement with New Charter Housing Trust." In March 2000, Tameside Council transferred 14,600 homes to New Charter. Many of the senior managers of New Charter were former council employees and a number of Labour councillor's on Tameside Council, have taken up paid positions within the company. New Charter Housing also own the Reporter and Chronicle Newspaper and Tameside Radio. New Charter also sponsor three academy schools in Tameside. Following a recent criticial report by Ofsted into Tameside schools, Education boss, Cllr. Ged Cooney, - a former Chairman of New Charter Housing Trust - blamed the borough's academies for dragging down educational performance rates in Tameside.

Whether social services intervention will result in 'Troubled Parents' having their children taken off them because of 'worklessness', is not addressed but social workers do have statutory powers to place children in care.

Red Cross to distribute food parcels to hungry Brits!

GUESS WHO'S NOT GOING HUNGRY?

Cameron and Osborne dine out at Puccini's Pizzeria
e Ristorante, Swinton, Manchester, in September.

The international humanitarian organisation the British Red Cross, which helps people in crisis, recently announced that it plans to distribute food aid to the needy in Britain for the first time since WWII.

The number of people turning to food banks as emergency aid to feed their families, has more than tripled following the squeeze on benefits in April. The country's biggest food bank operator, the 'Trusell Trust', announced that they distributed food aid to 355,985 people, including nearly 120,000 children, between April and September compared with 113,264 during the same period in 2012. The Trust said that they had distributed more food aid to hungry Brits during those six months than in the whole of  2012. According to the Trust, increases in food and energy prices, pay freezes, the bedroom tax, cuts in council tax benefits and welfare changes in April, along with changes to the rules governing crisis loans, have all led to an increase in demand for emergency food aid. More than 650,000 people were referred to food banks over the period because of benefit changes - a fourfold increase - and another 117,000 were referred because of delays in paying their benefits.

The Trust told 'The Independent' newspaper that people using food banks, had started to return food that needed to be warmed up because they could not afford to switch on their electricity. The Trust, which operates around 400 food banks is calling for a public inquiry into the level of food poverty.

The one party state of Tameside in Greater Manchester, falls within the most deprived quartile counties of England. The fact that there will soon be at least 11 food banks, is a stark indicator of the dire financial difficulties which many people find themselves in. Members of the Tameside East Foodbank, are now a regular feature in many local supermarkets where they can be found handing out tickets asking customers to purchase items of food, such as milk, pasta sauces, tinned rice pudding, biscuits or snack bars, to help "local people in crisis."

Why so many people in Britain both in and out of work should find that they are unable to feed themselves when we live in the seventh richest nation on the planet, is absolutely diabolical and scandalous in the extreme. When people are facing homelessness and destitution in Britain due to welfare cuts and  the bedroom tax, this Tory government is far more concerned with bankers' mega-bonuses and in giving tax cuts to multi-millionaires. The taxpayer has already bailed out failing banks to the tune of £1.162 trillion.

Former Labour minister, Frank Field, who was appointed by Tony Blair to "think the unthinkable" regarding welfare reform, is now David Cameron's own Poverty Tsar. Although Labour laid the foundations for much of these Tory reforms, Field has spoken out about the danger of food banks becoming an "institutional part" of the welfare state. He told 'The Independent':

"Clearly something very serious is happening to people at the bottom of society which isn't picked up in the offical data. If you had said to me ten years ago that we would be discussing the use of food banks, I would have led you to a dark room to recover."

Although the Tory government claim that there is no robust evidence that welfare reforms are linked to the increased use of food banks and the government welfare adviser, former merchant banker, David Freud, has stated publicly that there is always infinite demand for a free good, Chris Mould, the executive chairman of the Trussell Trust, told the newspaper:

"The level of food povery in the UK is not acceptable. It's scandalous and it's causing deep distress to thousands of people. As a nation we need to accept that something is wrong and that we need to act now to stop UK hunger getting worse."

Households Worse Off!

HOUSEHOLDS claiming benefit will be £1,615 a year worse off in 2015/16 as a result of the coalition government’s welfare reforms, a report has found.

The study carried out by the Centre for Economic and Social Inclusion and commissioned by the Local Government Association, illustrate the cumulative impact of welfare reform. The government’s reforms include an overall household benefits cap of £26,000, the ‘bedroom tax’ on tenants deemed to be underoccupying their homes, local housing allowance caps and caps to increase in benefits.
The CESI study found 60 per cent of all welfare reform reductions fall on households where somebody works.
Four out of five of households hit are likely to need some form of assistance from their council to help cope with the reduction in their welfare, due to the shortage of jobs and affordable homes.
The LGA has used the report’s findings to call for action from the government. It wants council borrowing caps to be relaxed to make it easier for local authorities to build homes. It also wants councils to have more influence over employment programmes and for a re-evaluation of discretionary housing payments, so supply better meets demand in different areas.
Sharon Taylor, chair of the finance panel at the LGA, said: ‘In many areas welfare reform is not encouraging people into work because the jobs simply don’t exist, while the opportunities for people to downsize their homes to cope with reductions in benefits are severely limited by a lack of affordable accommodation.
‘Unless more is done to create new jobs and homes, households will be pushed into financial hardship and we will see a huge rise in the number of people going to their councils asking for help to make ends meet.’ :  insidehousing.co.uk  

The Bedroom Tax & 'Austerity Kills'

SINCE the suicide of the English lady in Solihull concerned about her 'bedroom tax', reported by Blanco on this Blog last Sunday, David Stucker and Sanjay Basu have written an article in the Global Edition of the New York Times (yesterday) entitled 'How austerity kills'.  It seems that early last month a triple suicide was reported in the seaside town of Civitanova Marche in Italy, where a married couple, Anna Sopranzi aged 68, and Romero Dionisi aged 62, had been struggling to live of her monthly pension of 500 euros (£590), and had fallen behind with their rent.  Their problem was that the Italian government had suddenly raised the retirement age and MR. Dionisi, a former building workers had become one of Italy's esodati (exiled ones) - older workers plunged into poverty without a safety net.  On the 5th, April, he and his wife left a note on a neighbour's car asking for forgiveness, then hanged themselves in a storage closet at home.  Then when Ms. Sopranzi's brother, Giuseppe Sopranzi, aged 73, heard the news, he drowned himself in the Adriatic.

 Mr Stuckler and Mr. Basu claim:
'The correlation between unemployment and suicide has been observed since the 19th century.  People looking for work are about twice as likely to end their lives as those who have jobs.'

They maintain that this is not just a story of suicides being an 'unavoidable consequence of economic downturns', but that in 'countries that slashed health and social protection budgets, like Greece, Italy and Spain, have seen starkly worse health outcomes than nations like Germany, Iceland and Sweden, which maintained their social safety nets and opted for stimulus over austerity.  Mr Stucker and Basu note:  'Germany preaches the virtues of austerity - for others'.

Stucker and Basu argue:
'What we have found is that austerity - severe, immediate, indiscriminate cuts to social and health spending - is not only self-defeating, but fatal.'

If Stucker (senior researcher in sociology at Oxford) and Basu (an assistant professor of medicine at Stanford) are right, then this may raise problems for anarchists, like Chris Draper, who insist that to be consistent the anarchist movement must detach itself from the andencies of the state through a program of cuts in state spending.  Chris Draper opened up a valueable debate for anarchists which must be confronted if an alternative vision for society is to be presented.

Are people of low intelligence drawn to conservative ideologies and beliefs?

In January 2012,  a Canadian study was published in the journal 'Psychological Science', which stated that 'low intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies' that promote coherence and order. It was argued that children of low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults, because such things as open mindedness, flexibility and trust in other people, require 'certain cognitive abilities'.

This Canadian study was referred to by George Monbiot in his Guardian column the following month. While conceding that not all conservatives are stupid, he argues that conservative strategists on both sides of the Atlantic, have created a 'fantasy-based' ideology that appeals to the 'low-information' voter. He argues that the conservatives have built an alternative knowledge system that appeals to the basest and stupidest of impulses and have found that "it does them no harm in the polls." For example, climate change is dismissed as an "eco-fascist-communist-anarchist conspiracy" or the deficit is explained away has being caused by the greed of the poor. He also says: "conservative strategists have discovered that there is no pool so shallow that several million people won't drown it" and then quotes the former U.S Republican strategist Mike Lofgren, who said: "the crack-pot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital centre today."

One person who knows about the value of appealing to voters baser and stupidest impulses, is the Chancellor George Osborne. At times he makes Dr. Goebbels look positively decent. This Tory buffoon has stooped so low that he even tried to make political capital out of the deaths of the six, Philpott children, by linking their deaths to the issue of welfare reform, as did that vile and odious newspaper the Daily (Malice) Mail.

As Shadow Chancellor, Osborne was thought by many to have been out of his depth. Vince Cable said of him: "I never rated George's understanding of financial matters, but he is a political operator of some substance." Although Osborne's austerity plan has increased the financial deficit by 30% since the election, has pushed up unemployment, slashed the amount taken in tax, increased the benefits bill and seen the economy stagnate, his excuse for this collapse in growth, is to blame the previous Labour government, the euro-crisis, bad weather, Royal weddings and the British people for taking too many bank holidays. His economic plan has been described as "all shock and no therapy". Even the 'Spectator' magazine, announced a competition - a bottle of Pol Roger champagne to whoever could explain Osborne's growth strategy. Of the 27 EU Finance Ministers, Osborne was the only one to vote against a cap on bankers bonuses that would have set a limit of a year's salary on bonuses and double that if shareholders approved it. The proposal was supported by the European Central Bank and the E.U. Commission.

With the Cameron government there is misinformation on a massive scale. In his "every penny matters" speech given to a captive audience of supermarket staff at the Morrisons distribution centre near Sittingbourne in Kent, Osborne referred to people on benefits and asked whether it was right that some people should be receiving more than £26,000 a year in benefits. As usual, he omitted to mention that those people receiving anything like this amount, represented less than 1% of people on benefits who were living in high-cost temporary accommodation in London. On a previous occasion, he claimed that there were families taking £100,000 a year in housing benefit but omitted to mention that this applied to only five families in Britain. In 2011, government ministers also briefed that 1,360 people had been off work for a decade with diarrhoea when in fact, they had severe bowel disease and cancer. Similarly, of the 120,000 'persistently anti-social families' which were identified by the government, it emerged later that the figures were actually a measure of deprivation not behaviour.

Yet this campaign of vilification has successfully disguised the fall in living standards for millions of others through benefit cuts. Only one-in-eight who are on housing benefit, are not in work. Indeed, 93% of new housing benefit claims are from people who have a job. Far from targeting 'shirkers', the 3 year benefit and tax credit cap doesn't mainly target the unemployed. More than 60% of those who will lose out, are in work.

In January, the TUC published a survey that found that 41% of people surveyed believed that the entire welfare budget went to unemployed people, when in fact it is only 3%. Most if it, does in fact go on pensions. Despite having one of the least generous unemployment benefit systems in Europe, opinion polls suggest that many people think the government pays out too much in benefits. Far from soaring ahead of wages, unemployment benefit has fallen to 11% of average earnings compared to 22% in 1979. As the Guardian columnist Seamus Milne, wrote earlier this year:

"Central to the sharp increase in social security costs over the past generation have been rising joblessness and stagnating wages. Since 1980, unemployment has averaged more than three times the post-war rate, while the proportion of those in low-paid jobs has doubled to over 20%. Welfare has become a prop for the failure of neo-liberal capitalism to deliver jobs or decent wages."

Although two-faced Labour have criticised aspects of the governments welfare reform programme while in opposition, they laid the foundations for much of it, when they were in office. Labour also allowed the government to introduce retrospective legislation that prevented unemployed people who had been unlawfully sanctioned, from claiming the money back.

What government ministers are skilled at doing, along with the journalist hacks working for the Tory press, is diverting public anger that might be directed at the government, the bosses, the bankers and their bonuses, in order to get the 'plebs' to mobilise against their own interests. The Cameron government seek to turn the low-paid against the unemployed as they have done with private sector workers against public sector workers. They talk about the 'Big Society' while playing one group off against another. Their agenda is the billionaires agenda - less tax for the rich, less help for the poor, no cap on bankers bonuses, less regulation for business, less spending by the state. Despite having no mandate from the electorate or a proper majority, what this government aims to do, is to privatise what remains of public provision  and to hive it off to their big business friends whose incomes will be sustained by public contracts and captive markets - a kind of socialism for the rich and private enterprise for the rest of us. But what would you expect from the party that defends established privilege.

Tory welfare minister given a hard time in Bolton by benefit protestors!

 

The following article which we print in full appeared in the 'Bolton Evening News' on Friday 1st March 2013.

 

"WORK and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith (pictured centre) was greeted by angry protesters and members of the public on a visit to Bolton.

The man in charge of the Government’s welfare reforms was in town yesterday on a fact fiindng secret visit to the Department of Works and Pensions building at Elizabeth House in Back Spring Gardens.

Not even the local Conservative party had been made aware of his trip, but a tip-off led to Bolton’s unions quickly organising a small group of about a dozen protesters.

They followed the former Tory Party leader from Caffe Nero in Deansgate — where he had been enjoying a coffee with two aides until 9.45am yesterday — for the 300 yards to Elizabeth House, opposite the Octagon theatre.

On his walk, a clearly uncomfortable Mr Duncan Smith was constantly heckled by the protesters, who blew whistles and shouted “he wants your bedroom” and “how many bedrooms have you got in your subsidised mansion?”

Once they became aware who he was, several members of the public joined in, including a group of teenagers.

During his walk — flanked by his two aides but no security — Mr Duncan Smith was heard to say several times “how much further?”

When The Bolton News approached Mr Duncan Smith for an interview he replied: “I’m sorry I’ve got a meeting at 10am”, and one of his aides added: “He’s very busy”.

Demonstrator Florence Hill, a retired former chairman of Bolton Unison, said: “He said ‘hello’ to me.
“I said “don’t say hello to me, you’re not welcome here”, and one of the two men with him said ‘we’re always welcome in Bolton’.”

Bill Hardman, aged 59, of Little Lever, joined the protest outside the building and had been following Mr Duncan Smith in his wheelchair. Mr Hardman, who was born with spina bifida, lost his job at Remploy in Bolton last September after working there for 33 years said: “I’m here because I know what effect this is having, not just on myself but on every disabled person, it’s absolutely frightening.”

Matt Kilsby Bolton Unison branch chairman, said “We heard it was happening and decided to contact people. Whether four people or 40 turned up didn’t matter, the message was that he was not welcome here.”

The DWP refused to comment."