By Gerry Byrne

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£2 is. about what Norman Fowler earns in five minutes. For millions of pensioners and low income families it's what they have to feed themselves in a day.

£2 a week, average, is what the government intends to claw back from housing benefit claimants. It will affect two million of the worst-off, tipping some over the knifeedge between poverty and destitution.

Pages 6-7: Why millions are starving in Africa. Centre pages: Tamil women in Sri Lanka: a double oppression. Page 3: What the Polic Bill means.

Page 14. Hospital occupations call fightback conference.

Page 15: The NGA's road to defeat.

Page 2: Left unity. Plus: reports, reviews, lettei's...

Some low-paid families stand to lose as much as £8 per week in benefits.

And the Tories show no shame. Brazen as ever, Margaret Thatcher accepted the accusation of robbing the poor without a blink.

She agreed that what the government gave with one hand it took back with the other. She did not dispute that it was the worst off who would be hit by these proposals. She blamed high taxes!

The new housing benefit system has been a disaster since its introduction. It was made clear when the system was brought in that no extra money would be made available to set up the new administrative machinery required. Indeed, one of the bonuses of the scheme for the Tories was that it would lose 2,400 Civil Service jobs.

Claimants who previously got money towards their rent and rates from the DHSS would now get rent and rate rebates from their local councils instead.

But no new jobs were to be created in local authorities, who took on responsibility for running the new scheme. The extra workload was to be foisted on a workforce already cut to ribbons by the squeeze on local government finance.

The results were predictable. Millions of tenants were wrongly put into rent arrears by the failure to process housing benefit claims quickly enough.

Council tenants didn't fare too well, but at least the result there was usually a problem for different local authority departments to sort out between themselves.

For private and housing association tenants the picture was bleaker. They weren't getting money from the DHSS - nor (because of delays) from the council.

The National Federation of Housing Associations found that the number of their tenants in serious rent arrears (over eight weeks) rose five times over in the last year.

Nobody knows how many tenants, often elderly, have gone hungry and cold because they made it a point of honour not to run up rent arrears.

Another pernicious aspect of the scheme is that it removes a substantial slice of claimants' income from their direct control. When you're on the poverty line, the ability to juggle bills is essential. Suddenly, along comes housing benefit and a third or a halt of your income is taken out of your hands. Instead of getting cash from the DHSS, you just get a reduction in your rent and rates.

The pay-off was supposed to be that the poorest people wouldn't run up huge rent arrears to pay off other bills. What has actually happened is the bills don't get paid and tenants find themselves with huge rent arrears which aren't their fault!

And now, to cap it all, even that money they can't get their hands on is cut. Norman Fowler has said he's prepared to consider other ways the axe can fall - so as not to alienate Tory backbenchers.

But the f230 million not negotiable.

So for five minutes of Mr Fowler's time, two million People can choose whether to Who needs 1984?

Neil Kinnock made a speech in Parliament against the benefit cuts - but that, it seems, is about the end of the official labour movement fight against them. Labour MPs will continue to be a 'loyal' , cooperative opposition in Parliament; the TUC will continue to talk to the Tories.

Socialists should step up the fight to turn the labour movement round for a struggle against the Tories. Recall the TUC to reverse the capitulation to the anti-union laws - and demand the TUC breaks off its talks and collaboration with the Tories.

Labour MPs should obstruct Tory business in Parliament, using Westminster not as a debating chamber but as a platform from which to mobilise action.

ANDREW MOORE January 24: 20,000 marched against the Tories' plans to abolish the Greater London Council and the metropolitan counties, and many more struck. -NALGO, NUT and NUPE had authorised strike action by their members.

Now the campaign has to continue. The unions and the Labour Party should start campaigning for industrial action - the only effective means of fighting for local democracy and local services.

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Paper of the Socialist Organiser Alliance No. 162 Januarv 19 198425n Ciaimant: and strikers 1Am Paper of the Socialist Organiser Alliance No.162 January 19 1984 25p