by BIEN | Dec 31, 2016 | Bios & background Info, Opinion, Testimonies
Malcolm Torry – “My Basic Income Story”
Almost exactly forty years ago, I left university, got married, and started work in Brixton, in South London, administering means-tested benefits. I spent two years on the public counter: and it didn’t take long to understand how inefficient, degrading, and disincentivising means-tested benefits were. After two years I left to train for the Church of England’s ministry, and from 1980 to 2014 I served in four different South London parishes, and saw yet more of the damage that our benefits system can inflict.
In 1984 a group of individuals from a variety of walks of life met at the offices of the National Council for Voluntary Organisations in London to give birth to the Basic Income Research Group (subsequently the Citizen’s Income Trust). Since then we have held meetings, published a regular journal (The Citizen’s Income Newsletter), managed a website and a library, conducted our own research, and helped other organisations with theirs. The speed with which the debate has gone mainstream in the UK, as elsewhere, during the last few years, has taken those of us who have been working on the issue for more than thirty years a bit by surprise. Two years ago I retired early from a very demanding parish (we had the whole of the Greenwich Peninsula, as well as two other communities, in the parish) in order to concentrate on Basic Income and other research interests. Requests for presentations, articles, and assistance with research, continue to increase in number. The Citizen’s Income Trust runs on voluntary labour and a very small budget, and so is limited in what it can do; but we have an excellent group of trustees, and have benefited from occasional help from volunteers and students on placement.
In relation to my own research, it has been most generous of the London School of Economics to appoint me as a Visiting Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics for a second three year term, and equally generous of the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex to train me in using EUROMOD, the microsimulation programme. I am also enormously grateful to the many people who have assisted in various ways with my books and other publications. The now widespread interest in the Citizen’s Income Trust’s work goes a long way towards making up for the lack of human and financial resources.
Thirty years ago we helped to establish BIEN, we were pleased to be able to organise the BIEN Congress in London in 1994 (a rather smaller event than congresses today), and we have been pleased to see BIEN develop into a global umbrella organisation. The recent increase in both the extent and the depth of the Basic Income debate means that BIEN’s role as a forum for debate is now more important than ever. As the global debate and individual national debates continue to evolve, it will be essential to maintain the integrity of the debate’s vocabulary, to disseminate accurate information about research results and pilot projects, and to ensure that communication occurs between the many different aspects of the debate. Only BIEN can fulfil these roles. It has an important future.
At the end of 2016, the year in which BIEN celebrated the 30th anniversary of its birth, all Life Members were invited to reflect on their own personal journeys with the organization. See other contributions to the feature edition here.
by BIEN | Dec 30, 2016 | Bios & background Info, Opinion, Testimonies
Martine Mary Waltho (BIEN Life Member) – “My Basic Income Journey”
I first came across the idea of a basic income when I was at university in 1984. There was an article in a magazine; it might have been the New Society. It was written by a man who used to be a probation officer. I think this was Bill Jordan. The article was written in a clear and commonsense way. In this way the article took on a life of its own and acted as a discussion point.
Soon after this there were meetings at the Quaker Meeting House in Wythenshawe, Manchester. These were on a Saturday mornings. They were run by Kevin Donnelly who has since died. People came from all over, some from abroad.
Here people could say whatever they wished. There was no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ thing to say. People listened to each other.
There was a feeling of direct communication with people. This gave a sense of meaning to the event and a desire to keep on meeting.
Although there have been attempts to discuss the concept of basic income in the Manchester area, there have been no recent public events. The events at the Wythenshawe Friends meeting house created a ‘basic income’ community which was able to respond and create as necessary.
With regards to now, I think that we need a benchmark which prevents people from becoming poor. That is some means of recourse for people who are poor. I think that at present society is far too willing too accept that poverty exists. Individuals are made to feel that they are personally responsible for their own specific situation. We need some sort of social agreement as to what constitutes poverty in a modern society.
I think that the solution is contradictory. I feel that the basic income movement needs to have as broad appeal as possible. For example, many industrialists and business people have historic knowledge of poverty and these experiences can be drawn upon. The fact that this might represent a different point of view is not a reason to ignore such a view. It might even clarify what is needed.
The question of what constitutes a modern functioning society is at the heart of what a basic income should look like. I am not sure how this can be agreed upon in such a way as to have long term meaning. However I do think it is worth trying to ask such questions.
Photo: Manchester Cathedral and the River Irwell – the “spiritual and physical centre” of Manchester.
At the end of 2016, the year in which BIEN celebrated the 30th anniversary of its birth, all Life Members were invited to reflect on their own personal journeys with the organization. See other contributions to the feature edition here.
by Kate McFarland | Dec 28, 2016 | News
The inaugural Campfire Convention took place in August 12-14, 2016, in the English countryside. It featured a keynote address from Brian Eno, in addition to an array of panel discussions, music performances, and other events.
One panel discussion was on the topic of universal basic income:
Universal Basic Income: A Utopian Vision or a Viable Reality?
Basic income for all – a universal weekly payment for all eligible citizens – can lead to the kind of creativity needed in the sort of world we would all like to live in. Would we all qualify and how would we fund it? With rapid technological change and its impact on the number and quality of jobs, we need to reassess our expectations concerning work and its impact on the human spirit. How could BI facilitate an emergent spirit of co-operative intelligence with thriving creative environments. How do we free up people from unsatisfactory jobs to use time most productively to create space where we can do things that please us and earn a living from our ‘art’?
Panelists (viewer’s left to right):
• Daz Long, tarmacker, volunteer boxing coach, father of three and granddad of six.
• Imandeep Kaur, cofounder of Impact Hub Birmingham and director of Project 00 (pronounced “zero zero”), a collaborative studio of architects, designers, programmers, and social scientists.
• Barb Jacobson, coordinator of Basic Income UK and board member of Unconditional Basic Income Europe.
• Frances Coppola, finance and economics writer, singer, and musician, who has frequently written on basic income.
• Brian Eno, musician, composer, producer, and leading pioneer of ambient music, who has lately been promoting basic income. (In late 2015, Eno spoke about basic income on his John Peel Lecture on BBC Radio 6, and participated in the panel “Basic income: How do we get there?” with Coppola and David Graeber.)
Reviewed by Dawn Howard
Campfire photo CC BY-NC_ND 2.0 Snipps Whispers
by Kate McFarland | Dec 17, 2016 | News
Photo: Results of “ball poll” at UNISON West Midlands Regional Games in Birmingham (credit: Becca Kirkpatrick).
The trade union UNISON has called on West Midlands mayoral candidates to commit to running a basic income pilot in the region.
UNISON, a major public service employee union, has released a 20-point manifesto, calling on candidates in the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) mayoral election to declare which of the 20 “asks” they would implement if elected.
The election, which is to take place on May 4, 2017, will decide the first mayor of England’s West Midlands region. The WMCA was established to the govern the seven-authority area in June 2016.
One of the points of UNISON’s manifesto, which has been published in full on the West Midlands political blog The Chamberlain Files, is a demand for a “micro-pilot” of universal basic income (no further details of the pilot have been specified):
WMCA to run a micro-pilot on the use of a Universal Basic Income (UBI). A UBI could have many benefits including helping the long-term unemployed get back into work via part-time work and providing a basic income that would allow people to undertake entrepreneurial activities.
Unemployment is a pressing concern in the West Midlands. A new report from the Resolution Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank, reveals that WMCA has an employment rate of 64.5%, as compared to an overall employment rate of 71.6% within UK city regions other than WMCA.
The UNISON manifesto also calls for a range of improvements in education, transportation, housing and development, and government accountability in the WMCA.
UNISON has approximately 1.3 million members across the UK. It has over 120,000 members in the West Midlands, making it the largest union in the region. Members in the region comprise employees in eight main types of work: local government, health care, education services, water, energy, community, police and justice, and private contractors.
Sources
Kevin Johnson, “Nationalisation, seats for unions and free public transport – Unison unveils mayoral manifesto,” The Chamberlain Files, December 15, 2016.
Neil Elkes, “Call for universal basic income trail [sic] in the West Midlands,” Birmingham Mail, December 15, 2016.
Becca Kirkpatrick, personal communication.
by Kate McFarland | Dec 11, 2016 | News
Since May 2016, the Institute for Policy Research (IPR) at the University of Bath has been conducting an ongoing project investigating the design, effects, and implementation of different universal basic income proposals for the UK.
The project, Examining the Case for a Basic Income, includes a series of lectures, workshops, and other events. Its most recent event was a public lecture by Citizen’s Income Trust Director Malcolm Torry on the state of the basic income debate.
The next event associated with the project, which will take place on Tuesday, December 13, is an academic-oriented workshop led by IPR Research Associate Luke Martinelli and Visiting Policy Fellow Jurgen De Wispelaere (also Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Tampere). The goal of Tuesday’s workshop, Basic Income and the European Welfare State, is to “situate the feasibility and institutional ‘fit’ of different basic income schemes within the literatures of the comparative welfare state and comparative social policy”.
Taking as a starting point that European welfare states face common and diverse challenges (in terms of labour market, demographic and social changes that lead to new profiles of poverty and insecurity, for example), the aim of the session will be to consider the ways in which these challenges present both opportunities and difficulties for basic income as a policy solution, how these vary from country to country, and how different ‘varieties’ of basic income arise when we consider the political and institutional feasibility of schemes in specific contexts.
In addition to a presentation by Martinelli and De Wispelaere, the event will feature a talk by BIEN Co-Chair Louise Haagh (University of York), entitled “Basic Income, Welfare States and Institutional Change: Insights from Europe”, and a roundtable discussion highlighting the different perspectives on welfare state from five different countries. Roundtable participants include Haagh, representing Denmark; Fran Bennet (University of Oxford), representing the UK; Loek Groot (University of Utrecht), representing the Netherlands; Pertti Koistinen (University of Tampere), representing Finland; Jose A. Noguera (Autonomous University of Barcelona), representing Spain.
Each session will include a period of open discussion with the audience, which is expected to consist of academics with research interests or expertise in comparative welfare states.
Details about the Basic Income and the European Welfare State workshop are available here: https://www.bath.ac.uk/ipr/events/news-0264.html.
The IPR’s Examining the Case for a Basic Income project is planning more events for the future, as well as a release of papers for public distribution in spring 2017.
Photo CC BY-NC 2.0 Shawn Harquail
