THE CRIMINALISATION OF HOMELESSNESS AND POVERTY IS NOT TRULY ENDING—ONLY BEING RESHAPED ~ Tony ~ On 10 June 2025 the Government confirmed it will repeal the Vagrancy Act 1824 by Spring 2026 (you just can’t rush these things), and whilst the news was widely and justifiably welcomed by homelessness charities, we should sound a note of caution: we have been here before. The previous Government also said it would repeal the Act, only to announce even more reactionary laws to be put in its place. This time the Government says it will be replaced by amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill to include a new offence of facilitating begging for gain and an offence of trespassing with the intention of committing a crime, both of which are included under the 1824 Act.  Of course, the Crime and Policing Bill is already a thoroughly repressive piece of legislation, including so-called respect orders (which can be used to prohibit a wide variety of anti-social behaviour), youth injunctions (to be used against children aged 10 or over but under 18) and further restrictions on protests (prohibiting the wearing or otherwise using of an item that conceals a person’s identity, an offence of possession of pyrotechnics at protests, and an offence of climbing on a war memorial). Whilst most of the Vagrancy Act was repealed over time, the part of the legislation that makes it a criminal offence to sleep rough or beg in England and Wales remains in force (it was repealed in Scotland in 1982), thus continuing to give the police both the power and the discretion to arrest people and Magistrates the power to impose a fine of up to £1,000. According the Single Homeless Project, between April 2022 (when the last Government said it would repeal the Vagrancy Act) and June 2024 (when Parliament was dissolved), 177 people, including 148 men and 27 women, were arrested under the law. To be clear this means that when you are starving and you beg for food or money to buy food you can be arrested. When you lose your home and are forced to sleep on the streets you can be fined. When you cannot pay the fine you can be imprisoned. As always the victims of capitalism are the scapegoats. HOW WE GOT HERE An Act for the Punishment of idle and disorderly Persons, and Rogues and Vagabonds, in England, to give its full title, was part of the response of the ruling class to the rioting that followed the Napoleonic Wars. The price of bread increased but wages did not (I hope this does not sound too contemporary). As a result many agricultural labourers were plunged into poverty. Trade unions were effectively illegal (just 10 years later the Tolpuddle Martyrs were tried, convicted and sentenced to penal transportation to Australia for swearing a secret oath as members of a friendly society). Unemployment increased. The Corn Laws were enacted to impose tariffs on all imported cereal grains, including wheat, oats and barley, thus increasing the profits and power of land owners. Unrest was widespread. The 1824 Act set a new model, which proved extremely influential around the world over the following centuries. Between the early nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, vagrancy laws were adopted or reformulated almost everywhere the British rulers colonised. Laws were adopted to cover a broad range of ‘offences’ and ‘offensive’ ways of being, including impoverishment, idleness, begging, hawking, public gambling, sex work, public indecency, fortune-telling, traditional religious practices, drunkenness, homosexuality, cross-dressing, socialising across racial groups, being suspicious, and many other activities as well. They were adopted for a range of purposes: to control labour and limit workers’ bargaining positions, including after the abolition of slavery; to define the boundaries of civilized, industrious, and moral society; and to “clean up the streets” and reinforce urban boundaries. Most overarchingly, vagrancy laws served as a practical and rhetorical means through which the discretionary power of the state, as enforced through the police and magistracy, was expanded. The Vagrancy Act 1824 comes from a largely forgotten era. Before the supposed Victorian values that so many reactionary politicians still like to espouse. A decade before the ‘new’ poor law which introduced the workhouses. Twenty years before Engels’ study of the Condition of the Working Class in England. Over a century before the welfare state. As for the offences of leaving properties empty, making rents unaffordable and reducing people to poverty, unsurprisingly no legalisation is proposed—but law and morality rarely coincide. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photo: Matt Collamer on Unsplash The post Scrapping the Vagrancy Act appeared first on Freedom News.

KEMI BADENOCH EXEMPLIFIES THE DECADES-LONG TRADITION IN THE UK OF ‘PULLING UP THE LADDER’, PRACTICED BY CLASS-ASCENDANT IMMIGRANTS ON THE RIGHT OF THE POLITICAL SPECTRUM ~ Daniel Adediran ~ Kemi Badenoch is the death’s head of the Tory Party. A withered husk,it is now completely hollowed out since its heyday in the 20th century and grasping for relevance, in a political landscape that sees the neoliberal Labour party and the far-right dominate mainstream discourse.  It seems obvious enough, with her racist and anti-migrant rhetoric, that Badenoch was chosen by the Tory membership. They are terrified out of their wits that Reform UK will beat them in the elections of the future. The Tories are making a hard pivot to the extreme right in order to court some of the more disturbing elements in our society, and Badenoch will be the face of that pivot in the coming years. Yet there is more to it. Badenoch’s appointment is the latest in a series of desperate pleas to the Tory electorate, pretending that the Party is not as racist and misogynist as everything they say indicates. With the double power of her gender and race, she is the salve to the part of the country that the Tories are desperate to win over, and a convenient mouthpiece for all the virulent racists and misogynists within it. After all, if a black woman is calling for more draconian measures against immigrants, how could it be racist? But Kemi is not one of us. She is not for the liberation of black people and women up and down the country. She not only opposes reparation payments for the descendants of the people enslaved under the British state, she is also vehemently against teaching Black history. She also backed the Sewell report, which denied that Britain today was institutionally racist. Badenoch not only believes that trans girls are not girls, she has also publicly stated that maternity pay is too high for women doing the fundamental work of raising the next generation. A defender of black, brown and women’s rights she is not, and that is not even including her vile comments on immigration.  Badenoch exemplifies the decades-long tradition in the UK of ‘pulling up the ladder’, practiced by class-ascendant immigrants on the right of the political spectrum. We will never know whether she believes everything she says, or whether it’s just a cold calculation to appeal to the most rabid right-wingers in the populace. But we have seen the like time and again. From Priti Patel and Suella Braverman, all the way to the doors of number 10 with Rishi Sunak, we have seen migrants and their descendants prostitute their position as brown and black people for the sake of a morsel of political power and entrenching themselves in the ruling class.  Badenoch has now reached this pinnacle herself, and does not give a damn if the people at her level do not look like her. She is interested only in herself and seems confident that she will not reap the whirlwind that her ‘culture war’ posturing has sown. But with her massive unpopularity amongst the broader electorate, Badenoch’s cosying up to the old, rich, white racists that make up the Tory Party membership will not be enough to give her a platform to rule over us. They are dying out. Siding with racists, she has tied her mast to a sinking ship and I for one will eagerly watch her go out to sea without a raft.  Why would I, a Brit of Nigerian descent watch in glee as Badenoch flails around spewing divisive rhetoric in a burning house? Because, as the saying goes, Skinfolk aren’t always your kinfolk. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photo: Number10, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 The post A black woman Tory leader? Sure, as long as she’s batshit right-wing appeared first on Freedom News.