Retrogression

Back in the early 1980's, in a former life [I've had many], I worked at The Unemployed Workers' Advice Centre in Bangor: a short-lived but valuable resource created by Richard Grimes of the Newham Rights Centre, London and others, in Bangor, in 1982. I was there for a scant two years, but we managed to make a significant impact on what was then becoming a hostile environment for the underprivileged at the hands of Thatcher's state apparatus. We were trained in how the various convoluted 'benefits' of our social security system were supposed to work by the [still] estimable Child Poverty Action Group, which gave us both the tools and the cachet to argue our claimant-client cases and win, usually in short order, against the then Department for Health & Social Security: a short phone call from us pointing out the niceties of the legal obligations the authorities faced was usually enough to get a result for the client on the spot. Further afield in the human rights arena, the Citizens' Advice Bureau was the go-to organisation for resolving sticky issues on all manner of consumer fronts. Locally, on Ynys Môn, we had the untiring advocacy of a great woman called Kath Fyshe from CAB: she was a force of nature in her dealings with the idiocies of local bureaucracy, and always got a result for the good. Sadly, my office closed a couple of years after I left, and now, CAB - a former direct call or drop-in when needed - has been reduced to a client leaving a message on an unmanned number: their call, however desperate in nature, waiting in a queue for attention. 'Nuff said...