Picking up the pieces

This book was inspired by a year-long journey I made around Austerity UK and the people I met while on it. It is an exploration of the policies and people that brought austerity about, and of how the devastating consequences of a regressive strategy altered a country. Some of the profound and destabilising outcomes of the most radical transformation of the welfare state in the UK since its inception have been examined. The chapters have looked at how, against the backdrop of a ‘Great Recession’, historic declines in real incomes, entrenched deprivation, soaring personal debt and gaping wealth inequalities, the UK’s government took a course of action aimed at dismantling the social security safety net in which millions of its citizens were invested.

The chapters have documented how whole swaths of the population – the poorest, people with disabilities, women, carers, older people, poorer people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, children and young people – have been made more financially insecure and increasingly vulnerable as a result. They have illustrated how, for many, their very dignity has been stripped away as essential state-supported services and benefits have been slashed and how some were even driven to suicide.

The final part of this book looks at two related and pivotal aspects of the austerity landscape: the role of people who have been picking up the pieces, and the rise of those who have refused to be cowed and have been fighting back. With so much misery triggered by austerity, the individuals and groups all over the UK assisting those most in need – either through grassroots support or by protesting – were proving to be a precious resource. They offered a modicum of hope in an otherwise bleak political panorama. More than this, however, since the beginning they have been a tangible example of collective efforts to confront the austerian agenda as well as providing a barometer for what alternatives might lie ahead.