A fire-eating drag queen, not to be confused with a fire-breathing Polly Toynbee and a brace of comedians “off the telly” may not appear to share that much in common, but they and several thousand others could be found picketing branches of Barclays bank in London last Saturday as UK Uncut demonstrated its abhorrence at the news that Barclay’s has paid corporation tax of less than 2 per cent on record profits of £11.6 billion.
While publications ranging from the Daily Telegraph to the New Statesman sneer at the efforts of demonstrators to draw attention to the massive tax avoidance of companies such as Barclays, Vodafone and Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia group, UK Uncut challenged ordinary people earning less than the average wage of £236,000 paid to Barclays Capital’s bankers to turn their local branch of Barclays into something more useful for the day. Perhaps a library, a Sure Start nursery or a drop-in centre for the elderly, vital services which are under threat as the government attempts to claw back some of the billions it loses in revenue each year in unpaid taxes, while blaming everyone but the super rich beneficiaries of legitimate tax avoidance loopholes for the fact that their sums don’t add up.
The fact that many of those beneficiaries use their untaxed ill-gotten gains to subsidise the Conservative Party should come as no surprise to anyone. That the ground for the banking crisis which led to this sorry state of affairs was dug by the deregulation of the financial services industry by Bill Clinton in the United States and Tony Blair in Britain should galvanise all those on the left to demonstrate their disgust at this state of affairs at every opportunity.
“We’re finally going to make work pay, especially for the poorest people in society”, trumpeted David Cameron this week. Of course, the Prime Minister could retire now at the age of 44 and live comfortably for the rest of his life – and, my God, I wish he would. At least when unveiling the Welfare Reform Bill, he didn’t repeat the fabrication that: “We’re all in this together”. Try telling that to the mother of one from Ealing who kindly sheltered me from the drizzle under her umbrella outside the Soho Square branch of Barclays and who faces the very real possibility of being forced to move outside the borough where she was born and brought up in just as her three-year-old son will begin school because of the Government’s cap in housing benefit.
And try telling it to disabled Andrew, 44, who travelled to London with his elderly mother to register his disgust at the threatened loss of the day-care centre he used to attend three times a week, but now is only able to visit once a week after his local council slashed its “door-to-door” transport budget.
The weekend’s action took various forms, all under the banner of a “Bail In”, where protestors took it upon themselves to reinstate some of the services London is already losing as a result of the Government’s big bank bailout. Branches of Barclays were turned into libraries as protestors came equipped with books, banners (and some delicious cup-cakes), a comedy club complete with live stand-up and in Tottenham Court Road a kids’ breakfast club. Kids munched fruit and muffins and played an alternative giant game of snakes and ladders, (“Boots PLC relocate to Swiss PO Box to avoid £100 million in taxes”, read one square) while bemused staff occasionally popped their heads out from behind the counter to ask if anyone had any cheques to pay in. Perhaps this “coming together” is what Cameron meant when he trumpeted the Big Society, but I doubt it.
Despite the day’s jollies there was palpable anger as protestors were reminded of the real life costs of the biggest bank job in history, albeit one in which the banks held us up.
According to the Prime Minister: “There is no alternative. The cuts will affect every part of our lives.” Well half of that statement is true, although the effect of allowing British companies to avoid £90 billion a year in tax will affect us all to rather different degrees.
This is not the first time I have found myself outside a branch of Barclays on a wet weekend. As a teenager, one of the very first demonstrations I ever took part in was against Barclays’ involvement in apartheid South Africa. You would think that by now they had learned their lesson.
Barclays was badly stung then by customers voting with their feet. I hope and believe they will be again – along with all the other crooks and blackmailers who have held successive kow-towing governments to ransom with the threat that they will seek alternative employment elsewhere. Well, good luck to them. If anyone else is prepared to fork out million-pound-plus salaries to the financially illiterate and morally bankrupt, they can do it with their own money. Not mine.
Meanwhile, Barclays boss Bob Diamond, recipient of a £9 million bonus was nowhere to be seen. We can only hope he wasn’t consumed outside one of his own branches in a wig-based conflagration. With London’s fire authority facing cuts of £60 million, just who would put him out? I would urge anyone who fancies a day out to visit www.ukuncut.org for details of future planned actions and to make suggestions of your own. In my locality, the much-used swimming pool is under threat. Now there’s an idea…
