The following is a powerful political poem from Alan Morrison’s upcoming collection of poetry Tan Raptures:
Clapson’s
Cap
Her son, compelled, the
country’s foes had fought,
Had bled in battle; and the
stern control
Which ruled his sinews and
coerced his soul
Utterly poisoned life’s
unmingled bowl,
And unsubduable evils on him
brought.
‘A Tale of Society as It
Is: From Facts, 1811’ by Percy Bysshe Shelley
‘Sorry
for your loss but no errors were made’
Only those
within the margins of human decency –
Well
outside the remit of the Dee Double-u Pee,
Only Work
Programmes and the worst laid schemes;
No
searching of consciences, only search engines on bogus
Job sites
of phantom vacancies, and plenty of penalties,
Plethora of
sanctions, interrogations, black spots –
And threats
of all these; dockets for food banks,
Sticks
without carrots, punishments, punishments,
Roll up,
roll up for punishments –all at the expense
Of
soul-and-body nourishments: treat the poor and
Unemployed
as if they were pirates ransacking
The public
purse (supplied by “hardworking taxpayers”),
Daylight-dodgers
rolling giros, Black Dog “Scroungers”;
Make the
unemployed walk the plank, Nudge ’em, nudge ’em,
Keelhaul
’em; and as for those malingerers,
keep on
Their
case, badger them –Sheriff stars for badges, Targets,
Targets, throw Atos darts at ’em, “disrupt
and upset” them;
Cap their
benefits, splice the mainbrace, clap them in
Irons of
no income, as they did with Clapson:
Penalised
for missing a jobcentre appointment, stripped
Of his
£71.70 weekly allowance, died penniless
And
half-starved at 59, collapsed from ketoacidosis
Because he
couldn’t chill his life-sustaining insulin
In the
fridge for the electricity had been cut off
As a
result of losing his benefits, all for missing
One single
appointment on the Work Programme…
(Mark
Wood, a painter, poet and music composer,
Went the
same way after Atos declared him “fit for
Work” and stopped his benefits, a verdict he
sleepily
Accepted
–since he always worked at his poetic
Occupations,
soul’s vocations– and one which sapped
His
appetite; fitting, since he could no longer afford
To feed
himself: when he finally passed out, then passed
Away, aged
44, six stone was all he weighed…)
Clapson,
a diabetic ex-soldier, had served in Northern
Ireland at
the height of the Troubles, but whom no tours
Of duty on
fractious bullet-cracking Belfast streets
Could
prepare for the front line of domestic cuts
Under Iain
Duncan Smith’s punishing welfare regime;
So much
for poppies and patriotism, for saying “We
Will
remember them”, when
this vindictive government
Is so
quick to forget them; countless souls as Clapson:
No “scrounger”,
he’d worked and paid his taxes for 29
Years
–done Cameron’s “right thing”– and looked after
His sick
mother, thus saving thousands for “the taxpayer”,
Then, on
her entering a care home, he lost his carer
Status and
was put on precarious benefits while
He looked
for jobs, and took up unpaid work placements…
Clapson’s
body was discovered in a sea of CVs and
Job
applications, just £3.44 to his name, a tin of soup,
Half a
dozen tea bags and an out-of-date can of sardines,
All that
was left in his larder –during the post-mortem
The
coroner noted no food in his stomach, no food in…
Nothing…“Something
for nothing”, something for no tins,
But
nothing in compensation for his petitioning sister,
No formal
acknowledgement of ‘administrative manslaughter’,
Simply a
paltry ‘apology’ as if issued from impartial mourners
Implicitly
divorcing themselves from any culpability:
‘Please
Omit Flowers’, Please Omit Powers, Please Omit Responsibility…
‘Sorry
for your loss but no errors were made’
The loss
is to all of us, to our collective soul,
Our sense
of “good old English decency” –what values
Have they
who throw away the lives of the victims
Of
impoverishment and incapacity
For the
sake of saving corpses’ pennies for the taxpayers?
We say not
simply we will remember Clapson
And the
tens of thousands of fiscal sacrifices
At the
Satanic altar of Austerity –but we say,
All of us,
afflicted by the aristocratic Chancellor
And Iain
Duncan Smith’s administrative massacre
Of the
claimants, brandishing our black triangles,
Giro
stigmas, stars of David, with rustling wings
Of ominous
brown paper envelopes, in the name
Of the
Spartacus Report: We are Clapson, We are
Clapson, We
are Clapson, We are Clapson, We are…
‘Sorry
for your loss but no errors were made’
Sorry
for the errors but no loss was made
Here is a 2014 Guardian article which provides some
background on David Clapson’s needless death: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/09/david-clapson-benefit-sanctions-death-government-policies
