Leeds Universal Credit Campaign Alliance meeting

This will be the second meeting of the hub group for the Leeds Universal Credit Campaign Alliance meeting. Everyone is welcome.

The purpose of a Leeds-wide campaign alliance is to connect up the various groups that are involved – or want to be involved – in campaigning against Universal Credit or offering practical solidarity to those affected. This includes claimants and those supporting them, trade union and party branches, community projects, tenants and residents groups, advice and advocacy workers (professional and informal), and others….

As well as connecting people to build a more powerful campaign, the hub-group can do tasks like coordinating actions, stalls and door-knocking sessions, local meetings and the like, and offer support to new groups or those wanting to put on an event. Another function might be to bring together those keen to develop strong and well thought-out policy demands, and strategies for feeding these into campaigns and party manifestos.

At the last meeting we agreed to devote time to developing policy demands to feed into the next Labour Party manifesto, and which campaigners can get behind to that end. We discussed taking these ideas into forums where affected claimants and others at the “coal face” such as advice workers could give feedback and help develop the demands. This is where our diverse networks and connections will be a vital resource.

At the same time, it is important to think about the movement-building aspect: how to bring about the mass grass-roots demand for a benefits system which empowers workers rather than trapping them in low-waged and futile forms of employment, and radically challenges the inequalities produced by a sole focus on waged employment a means to escape poverty.

A suggestion for Sunday’s meeting might be to devote roughly half the time to a discussion of policy demands, and the remainder to planning outreach activities, including taking our policy ideas out to affected groups but also building in public places and forums. People are of course welcome to suggest what they would like to include in the meeting.