Austerity bites: a journey to the sharp end of cuts in the UK

Austerity Bites is a book brimming with anger at the multiple injustices in the United Kingdom and how the current austerity programme is underpinning and exacerbating these inequalities. From the humorously cutting foreward by Mark Thomas (‘In the 21^st Century we are governed by people who think Downton Abbey is a documentary’; xii–xiii), this is an unashamed challenge to the austerity policies of the current era. Mary O’Hara gives a voice to the people and communities who are at the sharp end of the reforms, laying bare the realities and consequences of the current austerity programme: billions cut from public spending, budgets cut across local and central government, welfare reforms that are unjust, and people who are being made so financially desperate that they are reliant on food banks and payday lenders to survive. O’Hara evidences how certain groups, including disabled people, women and children and people from black and minority ethnic groups, are being disproportionately affected, being hit over and over again by multiple welfare reforms. As O’Hara states: ‘We were not all in this together. We never were’ (257).

O’Hara travelled around the United Kingdom in 2012 and 2013, visiting communities that are being affected by the austerity programme. Alongside interviews with individuals and campaign groups, O’Hara draws on a wealth of evidence (mainly from the third sector) to demonstrate the very real consequences of austerity. The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills (Stuckler and Basu 2013) demonstrated how austerity programmes can lead to global and national public health crises, including severe impacts on mental health. Usefully this book scales down to a more local level, exploring the narratives of how people and communities are being affected.

The first few chapters cover some key symbols of austerity that have arisen in the wake of 2010: the explosion of food banks, financial insecurity, and the rise of the payday lenders. So, for instance, whilst the government tried to herald the rise of food banks as representative of ‘Big Society’ at work (David Cameron 2014), we learn of the sheer scale of people now facing the necessity of using food banks. O’Hara reports a range of data showing a surge of people needing ‘emergency rations’ up to 2013. This rise is seen by O’Hara as the direct result of benefit delays, sanctions, and increasing financial pressures related to the Bedroom Tax and the abolition of Council Tax Relief. We live in one of the richest countries in the world, yet by March 2013 over 300,000 people relied on food banks to have sufficient to eat. And this is a consequence not of the economic recession or of people being incapable of budgeting (as the government and some sectors of the media would have us believe), but as a direct result of government policy.

Chapter Four is an excellent portrayal of the political narratives around austerity, ‘the propagation of the idea – the myth – that a person who isn’t in work is not just jobless, but worthless’ (110). O’Hara discusses how throughout the media, government and the public, the notion of ‘skivers’ has been put forward as the dominant discourse around what is wrong with our benefits system and why it needs reform. This, of course, neglects the fact that many people who have been affected by the welfare reforms are in fact in work, or constantly moving into and out of low-paid, insecure employment. There is discussion of the hardening of public attitudes towards poverty and joblessness, and how the people interviewed internalised these negative narratives.

The following chapter discusses the employment crisis in the United Kingdom in 2012 and 2013, the decimation of jobs in the public sector, and how areas such as the North East and the South West have been most affected. Although O’Hara touches on this subject, it would have been useful perhaps to have seen a more detailed analysis of how austerity is impacting on spatial inequalities in the United Kingdom.

The following chapters explore how disabled people, those who are ill, and those experiencing mental distress are being disproportionately affected by the austerity programme, including for instance those who are being hit by both welfare reform and the cuts to public expenditure including social care funding. The Work Capability Assessment comes under justified criticism, as does the planned move from Disability Living Allowance to Personal Independence Payments. O’Hara writes about the rise in people experiencing mental distress as a result of increased financial strain, and also about the implications of reduced funding for mental health services. We learn that Sure Start services have been scaled back, as have essential services including domestic violence refuges and rape crisis centres.

Overall O’Hara presents a picture of a country where people are being increasingly placed under both financial and emotional strain, pushed to breaking point. What resonates throughout the book is the sheer relentlessness and cruelty of the austerity programme, the stripping away of income and support for people whose lives are being worsened by regressive and unjust government policies. Yet there are also tales of resistance, and O’Hara talks about the fight-back against austerity from the thousands of small voluntary and community groups across the country. She discusses how disabled people have been at the forefront of protests against welfare reforms, for instance in Disabled People Against Cuts, and explores some of the myriad campaigns challenging austerity on a small-scale local level.

Austerity Bites is an excellent book that is accessible to all types of reader and brings together a range of up-to-date information. It was a positive that the concluding chapter talked about how individuals, groups and communities are resisting the austerity programme. This book is open in its anger; it is not an unbiased account and is direct in its critique of the austerian agenda. This book will be of interest to anyone with an interest in how austerity is being played out in the United Kingdom and how people are being affected.

Kate Mattheys
Durham University, Durham, UK
[email protected]
© 2014, Kate Mattheys
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2014.964507