The Violence of Austerity , livre ebook

The Violence of Austerity
The Violence of Austerity
Edited by Vickie Cooper and David Whyte
First published 2017 by Pluto Press
345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright Vickie Cooper and David Whyte 2017
Chapter 1 is an edited version of an article first published by Wellcome on Mosaic (mosaicscience.com) and is republished here under a Creative Commons licence.
The right of the individual authors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 9948 5 Paperback
ISBN 978 0 7453 3746 3 Hardback
ISBN 978 1 7868 0062 6 PDF eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0064 0 Kindle eBook
ISBN 978 1 7868 0063 3 EPUB eBook


This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England
Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Violence of Austerity Vickie Cooper and David Whyte
PART I DEADLY WELFARE
1. Mental Health and Suicide Mary O Hara
2. Austerity and Mortality Danny Dorling
3. Welfare Reforms and the Attack on Disabled People John Pring
4. The Violence of Workfare Jon Burnett and David Whyte
5. The Multiple Forms of Violence in the Asylum System Victoria Canning
6. The Degradation and Humiliation of Young People Emma Bond and Simon Hallsworth
PART II POVERTY AMPLIFICATION
7. Child Maltreatment and Child Mortality Joanna Mack
8. Hunger and Food Poverty Rebecca O Connell and Laura Hamilton
9. The Deadly Impact of Fuel Poverty Ruth London
10. The Violence of the Debtfare State David Ellis
11. Women of Colour s Anti-Austerity Activism Akwugo Emejulu and Leah Bassel
12. Dismantling the Irish Peace Process Daniel Holder
PART III STATE REGULATION
13. Undoing Social Protection Steve Tombs
14. Health and Safety at the Frontline of Austerity Hilda Palmer and David Whyte
15. Environmental Degradation Charlotte Burns and Paul Tobin
16. Fracking and State Violence Will Jackson, Helen Monk and Joanna Gilmore
17. Domicide, Eviction and Repossession Kirsteen Paton and Vickie Cooper
18. Austerity s Impact on Rough Sleeping and Violence Daniel McCulloch
PART IV STATE CONTROL
19. Legalising the Violence of Austerity Robert Knox
20. The Failure to Protect Women in the Criminal Justice System Maureen Mansfield and Vickie Cooper
21. Austerity, Violence and Prisons Joe Sim
22. Evicting Manchester s Street Homeless Steven Speed
23. Policing Anti-Austerity through the War on Terror Rizwaan Sabir
24. Austerity and the Production of Hate Jon Burnett
Notes on Contributors
Index
Acknowledgements
The origins of this book are a panel discussion on the violence of austerity that was part of the conference, How Violent is Britain?, hosted by the University of Liverpool and the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies in May 2014. The conference brought together many of the authors in this book. Our first debt of gratitude is to Will McMahon, co-organiser of the conference, and who has supported us throughout this project. We are also grateful to others involved in organising the conference, especially Rachel Barrett, Rebecca Roberts and Arianna Silvestri. We would like to acknowledge those who participated in the conference and the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Foundation who supported it. Thanks also to the people at Criminal Justice Matters and Open Democracy who first published some of the ideas developed in the book. The support from our friends and colleagues at the Open University Harm and Evidence Research Collaborative and the University of Liverpool at different stages in the book s development is greatly appreciated. We want to acknowledge the warmth and generosity of the people at the International Institute for the Sociology of Law (IISL), Onati - especially Ainhoa Ba os-Antigua, Susana Arrese, Rakel Lizarralde, Ainhoa Markuleta and Elvira Mu oz - for their support during our visits and in the use of its remarkable library. The IISL is a special place that should be protected and treasured. We are so grateful to our friends and family for their support throughout the long process of putting this book together, and especially thank Davey Blackie and Kirstie Wallace for sharing their home comforts and allowing us to complete the project in its final stages. There are a number of people who, although their names do not appear as authors, made important contributions to the development of the book. Thanks especially go to Joe Halewood and Rory O Neill for their unacknowledged contributions. David Castle has been a consistent source of encouragement, and a model of professionalism in seeing the project through from its beginning to the end.
In particular, we thank the contributors to this book for sharing their hugely valuable insights and experiences, and also for putting up with what must have sometimes seemed like unreasonable requests and demands from us. We hope that it has all been worth it in the end.
Introduction: The Violence of Austerity
Vickie Cooper and David Whyte


This book is about the devastatingly violent consequences of government policy conducted in the name of austerity . It is about the toll of death and illness and injury that so-called austerity policies have caused. It is about the life-shattering violence caused by decisions that are made in parliamentary chambers and government offices. This book is about the violence of politics.
One decade after the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and seven years since the Coalition government first rolled out a suite of public sector cuts it described as austerity measures, the cuts continue to devastate communities. Despite a widely reported softening of political rhetoric, as this book goes to press in early 2017, UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Phillip Hammond has just signalled a further deepening of the cuts in setting out his plans to implement a further 18 per cent reduction of government spending. The Brexit vote to leave Europe is directly connected to ongoing austerity policies and their devastating impact on communities. The claim that we cannot afford the European Union has helped to construct a political solitude and severance from other countries that involves, first and foremost, the closing down of borders and ending of free movement (or at least the qualified right to free movement). This agenda has been amplified by the politics of austerity. Although it may come as a surprise to politicians like David Cameron and George Osborne, the chief architects of the austerity package who then conveniently resigned when people voted to leave Europe, austerity has fanned the flames of a xenophobic politics, permitting powerful elites to reconfigure political alliances and forge new ones. What we describe in this Introduction as an attempt to permanently dissemble the protection state has been consolidated by post-Brexit political rhetoric as we see the devastating effects of austerity materialise.
The contributions gathered in this book collectively present evidence showing that people most affected by austerity cuts are not only struggling under the financial strain but are becoming ill, physically and emotionally, and many are dying. Several chapters in the book demonstrate how austerity is a significant factor in suicide and suicidal thoughts. They tell how key groups feel humiliated, ashamed, anxious, harassed, stigmatised and depressed. The chapters illustrate how austerity affects people in wholly undignified ways such as having to compete for their own jobs and having to comply with welfare conditions in ways that chip away at their self-esteem and self-worth. People have to scream, kick and shout to have their most basic needs met. Street homeless people are forced to compete for the most basic provision of support by demonstrating that they are more in need than the next street homeless person. Disabled people are forced to perform degrading incapacity assessments in order to prove that they are not fit to work and are entitled to state care and protection. Young people cannot find work that lifts them out of poverty and are forced to live in hostel-type accommodation. Women who urgently need to move out of abusive relationships are forced to stay with or return to their violent partners due to lack of adequate shelter provision. The physical and emotional pains of austerity are real and the effects are violent. People are fatigued, stressed, depressed and ill.
In 2013, David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu published their groundbreaking book, The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills , in which they forensically detailed the deadly impact of austerity programmes on public health across the USA and Europe. Amongst their conclusions they showed that the total number of suicides had risen by 10,000 since the beginning of the financial crash in 2007, and millions of people across both continents had lost access to basic healthcare. In a series of hugely important analyses and testimonies, other writers, including Mary O Hara, Kerry-Anne Mendoza and Jeremy Seabrook, have detailed the human impact of austerity in the UK. 1
The first aim of the book is to extend those analyses to show how the toll of sickness and death created by the politics of austerity has left none but the most privileged in the UK untouched. Moreover, this scale of death and illness is simply part of the price that has been paid to maintain the basic structure of social inequality, whether measured by politicians as collateral damage or by economists as externalities (the unmeasured impact of financial