Ministers cannot assume that voters will continue to back them in their plans to cap welfare benefit rises, according to a new poll commissioned by the TUC from YouGov and published today (Friday).

Voters least able to give accurat
e answers about benefits are the most likely to back the government’s policy on cutting benefits. The poll shows that once people learn that the benefit up-rating cap will hit workers in low-paid jobs, support moves away from the government, with 40 per cent overall opposing the cap on low-paid worker benefits and only 30 per cent backing them.

The TUC’s poll, carried out in the run-up to Christmas, found widespread ignorance about spending on welfare, the reality of unemployment, the generosity of benefits and the level of fraud.

TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said:

‘It is not surprising that voters want to get tough on welfare. They think the system is much more generous than it is in reality, is riddled with fraud and is heavily skewed towards helping the unemployed, who they think are far more likely to stay on the dole than is actually the case. Indeed if what the average voter thinks was true, I’d want tough action too.

‘But you should not conduct policy, particularly when it hits some of the most vulnerable people in society, on the basis of prejudice and ignorance. And it is plainly immoral to spread such prejudice purely for party gain, as ministers and their advisers are doing, by deliberately misleading people about the value of benefits and who gets them. 

‘Voters who have a better grasp of how benefits work and what people actually get, oppose the government’s plans. When people learn more about benefits, support moves away from coalition policy. Some ministers seem to see the benefit up-rating cap as a party political trap, but to counter that all you need to do is expose what the proposals really mean.

‘The truth remains that benefits are far from generous, the vast majority of the jobless are desperate for work and most benefit spending goes either on pensions or on benefits for those in jobs or who aren’t able to work.’

The TUC poll reveals many misconceptions about welfare and benefit spending including:

• On average people think that 41 per cent of the entire welfare budget goes on benefits to unemployed people, while the true figure is 3 per cent.
• On average people think that 27 per cent of the welfare budget is claimed fraudulently, while the government’s own figure is 0.7 per cent.
• On average people think that almost half the people (48 per cent) who claim Jobseeker’s Allowance go on to claim it for more than a year, while the true figure is just under 30 per cent (27.8 per cent).
• On average people think that an unemployed couple with two school-age children would get £147 in Jobseeker’s Allowance – more than 30 per cent higher than the £111.45 they would actually receive – a £35 over-calculation.
• Only 21 per cent of people think that this family with two school-age children would be better off if one of the unemployed parents got a 30 hour a week minimum wage job, even though they would actually end up £138 a week better off. Even those who thought they would be better off only thought on average they would gain by £59.

The poll confirms that hostile attitudes to welfare are widespread – with over four-tenths (42 per cent) thinking that benefits are too generous and nearly three in five (59 per cent) agreeing that our current welfare system has created a culture of dependency.

But when the poll sample is divided into three equal groups based on how accurately they answered the poll questions that tested knowledge of the benefits system, those who know the least about welfare are the most hostile. More than half (53 per cent) of those in the least accurate group think that benefits are too generous, while less than a third (31 per cent) in the group who gave the most accurate answers agree that they are.

Nearly three in four (71 per cent) of the least accurate group think welfare has created a culture of dependency which falls to less than half (46 per cent) among those with the best knowledge.

When asked whether they support the government’s proposed one per cent cap on benefits there is an overall clear majority support across everyone questioned (48 per cent to 32 per cent), though those with the best knowledge of the benefits system oppose the government’s actions 45 to 41 per cent.

But a big three-to-one majority of the general sample (64 to 21 per cent) think that the benefit cap will mainly hit the unemployed. When told the cap will affect low-paid workers, majority support for the cap turns into majority opposition (40 to 30 per cent). There is a sharp fall among those with the least knowledge from 54 per cent backing the cap before being told about low-paid workers’ benefits, to 32 per cent afterwards.

The final question in the poll asked people about how benefits should generally change each year. Only 25 per cent said they should go up less than wages or prices, with 63 per cent wanting them linked to wages, prices or both.

By Ruairi Creaney – ICTU Youth

Propaganda is not always obvious. No longer does it take the form of full-on jingoistic portrayals
of the enemy, whoever it might be at any given time. The term is certain to bring up images of those hostile xenophobic posters from the First World War urging working people to sacrifice their bodies and lives for their respective ruling classes. Images, too, of dictators adorned with bouquets of flowers from adoring children will spring to mind.
The first BBC report on the unprovoked invasion of Iraq in 2003 reveals a lot. Plush words such as “precision-guided bombing”, “missile attacks” and “raids” were used to describe the actions of the US/UK invaders. Compare this with the tiresome language used to describe anyone other than western governments who use violence. The resistance movements in Iraq, Palestine, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Guatemala and all the other countries whose populations are considered by us in the west as non-people are always “terrorists”, “bombers”, “gunmen” and “murderers”. The invaders, of course, are “our boys”. Indeed, “imperialism” is a word rarely heard on the airwaves.Modern propaganda is a much more sophisticated beast than that of the early 20th century, but its results are no less effective. Its destructive reach extends way beyond the theatre of war and conquest, influencing heavily the decisions we all make every day as consumers. Not only are we indoctrinated into supporting rapacious wars around the globe, we are programmed on a mass scale to devote our lives to consumption, no matter what effect it has on our collective well-being. Propaganda today is presented to us along with the faces of well-known celebrities, displaying the latest crap we ought to buy. On television and in the print media, propaganda is pretentiously cloaked in airs of “objectivity” and “impartiality”.

Reporting of the long-running occupation of Palestine is consistently ridded with propaganda, half-truths and lies. Mainstream outlets aim for “balanced” and “unbiased” reporting on this issue, as though there were a moral equivalence between occupier and occupied. Mainstream media is also intensely selective of what atrocities and injustices go reported or unreported. The suppression of the Solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980s was news. The genocide of more than a million people carried out by General Suharto, capitalism’s dictator, was not news. His crimes remain largely unknown in the west. He was “our” dictator. He provided “stability” to a volatile region, as did Gadaffi, Mubarak, Batista, Pinochet and the endless list of other dictators propped up by the West’s “democratic” governments.

During a visit to the United States, a group of journalists from the Soviet Union, awed by the passivity of western citizens, asked their American hosts: “How do you do it? In our country, to achieve this, we throw people in prison; we tear out their fingernails. Here, there’s none of that? What’s your secret?”

Following the pointless slaughter known as the First World War, the term propaganda had a negative connotation. Something new was needed to mould the minds of the population of the “free world”. Edward Bernays, a nephew of Sigmund Freud, is often described as having been the “father of public relations”. In his book, Propaganda (Bernays was quite explicit in his admission that he was a propagandist), he wrote: “If we understand the mechanisms and motives of the group mind, it is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it.” This was called “engineering consent”, the aim of public relations.

Bernays was the darling of the advertising industry, which, of course, is propaganda by another name. His insights were sought by a range of corporations seeking to boost sales and profits. Among his most famous feats was the encouragement of large numbers of women to take up smoking, which had previously been seen as a masculine pursuit. Cigarettes were referred to as “torches of freedom” and smoking was said to be a blow against gender inequality. Sales of cigarettes skyrocketed. Bernays’ legacy of manipulation and dishonesty continues today in the modern advertising and public relations industries.

Barack Obama’s election victory in 2008 was one of the greatest accomplishments of propaganda since the Second World War. The world was greeted with ‘hope’ and ‘change’, with many expecting the closing of the Bush era to represent the end of imperialist America. It was, of course, all image and no content. It succeeded in raising the hopes of millions. This was the power of ‘Brand Obama’, which earned him the accolade of Advertising Age’s marketer of the year for 2008.

Since taking office, Obama has continued Bush’s wars and presided over the imprisonment of truth teller Bradley Manning. He has enthusiastically embraced the use of unmanned drones, which have slaughtered more than 2,000 people. According the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, at least 392 of the victims were civilians, 175 of whom were children. The people who were sold ‘hope’ and ‘change’ by Obama’s vast propaganda network have been sorely let down.

Following the crash of 2008, public and political anger across the globe was geared towards those who caused the crisis, namely, bankers and the rich. The crisis took the mainstream media by surprise, whose “impartial” economic commentators, having been thoroughly schooled in neo-liberalism, saw the boom of the 2000s as proof that capitalism had triumphed over all other systems. The agenda of the same “experts” who failed to foresee the crisis now dictates political discourse. The blame has been shifted onto low-paid public sector workers and those in receipt of welfare. “The deficit”, a term most people would not have heard discussed before the Great Recession, is now the big political issue of the day. Yet, for most of the population, it is a non-issue. Noam Chomsky correctly pointed out in his recent book, Occupy: “The issue is joblessness, not the deficit. There’s a deficit commission but there’s no joblessness commission.”

The mainstream narrative, pushed by the same gang of neo-liberal economists who failed to foresee the crisis, is tiring. The welfare state must be dismantled. Health care must be privatised. The public sector has to shrink. “There is no alternative,” we are told. Yet, if there are no alternatives, why do we bother having elections, parliaments and other supposedly democratic institutions? What’s the point of democracy if nothing can be changed, if we have to persistently bend to the will of “the markets”?

Aside from the broader political scene, our everyday behaviour, too, is heavily influenced by propaganda. We are now exposed to thousands of advertisements every hour of our lives. The aim of this wasteful industry, true to the legacy of Bernays, is to influence human behaviour on a mass scale. It plays on our most primeval desires and, among many people, seeds a constant feeling of deep dissatisfaction. It entices us to continue destroying the planet we rely on for survival for the sake of a short-term thrill, while at the same time driving us further into personal debt and diminishing our savings.

The existence of propaganda in the west is rarely acknowledged, yet its influence extends further than ever. Vast PR machines, invisible to the general public, dictate the news. Advertising invades our lives and rapacious wars destroy nations, which go misreported and, in many cases, unreported.

“The finest trick of the devil,” it was once said, “is to persuade you that he does not exist.”

- Check out Ruairi’s other articles: www.freelancelefty.com 

The umbrella body of the Trade Union Movement, the NI Committee of the ICTU, expresses its support for NHS doctors taking strike action tomorrow (Thurs 21st June 2012).

Speaking at meeting of trade union activists, its ICTU President Eugene McGlone said:

“The NI Committee of the ICTU supports the Doctors in our National Health Service who are taking action to defend their pensions from a government which is unwilling to negotiate or compromise.

“All trade unionists should support this strike, as the issue is not the present salaries or pensions of Doctors, but the principle of resistance to the unnecessary and ideologically-driven austerity programme of the Westminster government. The hospital porters and cleaners and technicians who went out on strike last November were observing the same principle. The real issue is the bad faith of the Tories and their determination to make public servants pay for the incompetence and greed of the private sector elites who caused the economic crisis.

“There has been a co-ordinated attempt to make the doctors appear greedy, with some right-wing commentators arguing that they should be on strike over the cuts agenda and how it is affecting the NHS. The point is that the doctors cannot go on a political strike, as those disputes were expressly banned by the Thatcher government. Nonetheless, it is absurd to separate the strike tomorrow from the general mood of anger felt by all workers in the NHS.

“This strike has been hugely backed by a large turnout of doctors, and it is their first industrial action in three decades. We have recently seen dramatic displays of discontent from police officers, prison guards and senior civil servants – groups of public servants not known for being militant.

“The lesson from the doctors’ strike to the government is that their cynical attempt to divide and conquer workers from all sectors and all professions is failing.”

NIPSA is organising activity on this Thursday at lunch time to coincide with the industrial action being taken by doctors. On account of the fact that doctors will be required to remain at their place of work to cover urgent and emergency cases, the BMA itself will not be organising any public protests.

NIC-ICTU is asking as many activists and members as possible to meet at Cornmarket, Belfast City Centre at 12.45 pm to leaflet the public and show a public demonstration of support for the doctors and all public servants struggling against the attack on public services and public service pensions.

ENDS

John O’Farrell
Communications Officer, NIC-ICTU
Tel: 07808 582546
Email: john.ofarrell@ictuni.org

An Injury to One… from Creative Workers Co-operative on Vimeo.