Claimants Union

A Claimants Union is a grassroots organisation based on self-help and mutual support to enable those entitled to welfare benefits to make successful claims for that benefit. They were particularly prevalent in the United Kingdom following the establishment of the Welfare State.

Cross party support led to the introduction of a Welfare State in the UK by the late 1940s. Whilst this led to a somewhat self-congratulatory viewpoint that poverty had been largely eliminated, this perspective was increasingly being criticised by the 1950s. The research of Brian Abel-Smith and Peter Townsend, The Poor and the Poorest, published in 1965, argued that poverty had increased from 1953 to 1960 and that a significant factor in this was a gap between formal entitlement to benefits and the amount people actually claimed. Abel-Smith and Townsend founded the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG). However Abel-Smith was to work closely with the Wilson administration, while Townsend was to play a critical and oppositional role with the second director of the CPAG, Frank Field, particularly in the run up to the 1966 general election. This perspective particularly affected the growing radical students movement, who were to provide an important impetus to the emergence of the Claimaints Unions. Hilary Rose argues that in these circumstances, students who wished to engage with working class activism looked for new emergent forms rather than linking with the Labour Party whose credentials as being a voice for the working class were being increasingly questioned. While this often meant they were drawn to community politics, the perceived failings of the welfare state encouraged such students to get involved with Claimants Union. Thus it was five working class students in Birmingham who founded the first Claimants Union in Sparkhill in January 1969.

...
Wikipedia