Close the gap
Church Action on Poverty launches new campaign
The gap between rich and poor is the key issue facing the UK – and the government’s cuts will make it worse. That’s the belief of Church Action on Poverty (CAP), whose ‘Close the Gap’ campaign was launched on Monday, when church leaders delivered a letter to the prime minister.
The letter coincides with Poverty and Homelessness Action Week, which runs from 30 January to 6 February. The Quaker Housing Trust is one of several groups to have endorsed the initiative.
During the week, CAP are asking supporters to make personal pledges to tackle inequality. Examples include a commitment to write to an MP, to donate to a charity fighting poverty or to pray about the issues involved. Meanwhile, Housing Justice are encouraging churches and Meetings to carry out local counts of rough sleepers. Local authorities are no longer required to conduct such counts. Since September, they have been allowed to make estimates instead.
In their letter to the prime minister, the church leaders point out that the wealth of the top ten per cent of the UK population is one hundred times higher than of the poorest ten per cent. The signatories – including Anglican, Baptist, Methodist and Catholic representatives – insist that ‘tackling inequality is not something that can be put off to the “good times”’.
They also quote David Cameron’s words back at him. In 2009, he acknowledged that ‘among the richest countries, it’s the more unequal ones that do worse according to almost every quality-of-life indicator’.
CAP’s Liam Purcell rebutted the suggestion that the organisation is moving away from its focus on poverty by concentrating on inequality. ‘The two are intimately connected,’ he insisted.
Asked by the Friend about the government’s cuts agenda, he said, ‘I can’t see how it’s going to fail to drive up inequality’. Changes to welfare provision will reduce entitlement to housing benefit and support for unemployed and disabled people. The Student Christian Movement argues that inequality in education will be exacerbated by a rise in tuition fees and the end of maintenance allowances for sixteen- to eighteen-year-olds.
A number of other religious groups have attacked the cuts. Paul Parker, due to take up the post of Recording Clerk to Britain Yearly Meeting, criticised the cuts shortly after his appointment was announced in December. He said they would mean that ‘there will be people in real poverty and so we need to be ready to speak about equality’.
A group of Christian writers, activists and theologians have launched an anti-cuts network called Common Wealth. They urge Christians to ‘take a stand’ against the ‘false worship of markets’ and recognise that ‘the Big Society is a big lie’.
Liam Purcell argued that UK poverty and international poverty are closely related. ‘Around the world, people in poverty are paying the price for this economic crisis caused by wealthy bankers,’ he said. He encouraged Quakers ‘to bring their tradition of direct action for social justice’ to the campaign against inequality.
The group UK Uncut has been using nonviolent direct action to draw attention to inequality, and particularly to corporate tax dodging. The campaign reached a critical point on Sunday, when police fired CS gas at demonstrators in London’s Oxford Street.
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