IWCA letter in the Gazette about ITnet

So ITNet have finally been given the boot – good, this is something we’ve been campaigning for all year. Now it’s time to boot out all the councillors who allowed this scandal to wreck so many people’s lives.

And before the Lib Dems start crowing about their role in getting rid of ITNet, let’s just have a look across into Islington where the Lib Dems are in control of the council, and see who’s running the benefits system there? None other than our old, incompetent friends ITNet.

And while it’s good to see benefits coming under the control of the council – which is at least partly accountable to local people in that we can vote them out – we’ll never get true accountability until the council starts to represent the working class majority in Hackney. After all, if any of these councillors had actually been on benefits themselves (Vernon Williams excepted), they would have known what was going on a lot earlier.

To make sense of how this disastrous series of events started, we only need to look at the make up of our council. Whatever parties they come from, they represent the middle classes – none of them have a clue, or give a damn, what’s going on in the lives of the working class majority they are supposed to be representing.

Dan Carter – Hackney IWCA

Original version of Letter in Hackney Gazette 12th October