WHEN Jeremy Corbyn was two years old, Winston Churchill was elected as prime minister of the United Kingdom.
The old Tory had managed to oust Labour from power after Clement Attlee’s blunder of calling a second General Election in 1951, costing him his premiership.
Corbyn reflects that while Churchill and his successors Harold Macmillan, Anthony Eden and Alec Douglas-Home were Conservatives, they “did not attack” the fundamentals of the universalist welfare system brought in by Attlee’s post-war government.
“It was much later on when there started to be the general attacks on the welfare state,” he said.
Part of this came in the form of Margaret Thatcher’s attacks on pensions in 1982, the year before Corbyn became the MP for Islington North.
She ended the link between pensions and earnings, which saw the benefit decline as a percentage of overall earnings, a trend which continued until the Coalition government introduced the triple lock – increasing the award in line with wages, prices or 2.5%, whichever is highest – in 2012.
“Everything we’ve won has been a big struggle,” he said.
“Winning the triple lock was never an easy thing to do. I introduced quite a lot of private members’ bills in the 80s on harmonisation of pensions with earnings or prices, in line with what Barbara Castle proposed in 1975.”
Castle (above), the formidable social services secretary under Harold Wilson, “could be pretty terrifying”, according to Corbyn, and managed to “to persuade or terrify the Cabinet” into signing up for linking pensions to earnings in the middle of an economic crisis with inflation running at 25%.
Decades fighting for the welfare state
Over the course of an interview in the former Labour leader’s office in Westminster, the restoration of the link between pensions and earnings is one of the few wins against government policy he refers to when looking back at his 42-year career in Parliament.
Much of the rest of the time has been spent unsuccessfully arguing against cuts and privatisation, including his battle against the private finance initiative (PFI) agenda which Labour vastly expanded after they came to power in 1997.
“They came up with this idea of private finance initiative and I said this is very, very dangerous, this will store up huge costs for the next generation and give you the illusion that the private sector is investing in health and education, when in reality all it’s doing is taking out a mortgage on publicly owned buildings which they’re going to extract as much money as they can from,” said Corbyn.
“I was ritually condemned by just about everybody and quite a lot of Labour MPs."
People would tell him to "shut up, we've got to win the election" but Corbyn notes with a hint of bitterness that he was eventually proven right; taxpayers were saddled with huge costs by businesses who saw the Exchequer as a piggy bank.
Corbyn, 76, said he had seen “the welfare state has gone from 100% to what it is now” over the course of his lifetime.
“We now see with Liz Kendall and Keir Starmer a fundamental undermining of the social security system of payments for those with disabilities,” he said.
(Image: PA)
We are speaking ahead of a major vote in Parliament as Labour attempt to steer through benefit cuts which would make it harder for disabled people to claim Personal Independence Payments (PIP).
Concessions appear to have cut down the size of what had threatened to be a serious rebellion though many remain uncertain about the offer.
'Scare story'
Corbyn says the arguments against the welfare state have been the same throughout his political career, with politicians always insisting the system is unsustainable.
“It's been a scare story all my life that somehow or other the welfare state is too expensive,” he said.
“Things only become too expensive, it seems, when you’re helping people on low incomes or in poverty. They never say it’s too expensive to spend money on weapons and war.”
The independent MP said he had had debates about benefits on “thousands and thousands of doorsteps over the years”.
“People say, ‘I think too much money goes on benefits.’ People just sort of open up with this remark and I say, ‘Well, actually, I guess you’re not on benefits yourself. What happens if you lose your job? What happens if one of your children becomes disabled? What happens if you become homeless? Aren’t you then going to become reliant on the public services for your own good?’
“So you can actually turn the argument around but too often, the Labour Party in particular tends to retreat in front of the arguments that are on programmes like Benefits Street or this sort of populist stuff that The Sun and the Express and the Mail run all the time, instead of standing up for the principle that an inclusive society cares for everybody.”
Finding solutions
Corbyn even has suggestions for how savings could be made in the benefits budget: Building more council housing, controlling private rents and ending low-pay work.
“There’s been a legitimate debate about the level of in-work payments and the extent to which they subsidise low wages,” he said.
“And so the one thing that Labour got right in 97 was to increase in-work payments but also to bring in a national minimum wage and, much later, a living wage because I think the two things have to go together, otherwise, if you have in-work benefits without a minimum wage, all you’re doing is subsidising the worst employers.
“The same argument applies to housing benefit, which is a massive payment out of the DWP budget and biggest recipients of that are private landlords.”
While Starmer has been forced into a partial climbdown on his welfare reforms – which are now estimated to push 150,000 people into poverty while halving the amount the Government expects to save – Corbyn is unconvinced the PM will not come back for more at a later date.
“He seems totally ideologically attached to it on the principle of being tough on the poorest people in our society,” he said.