Day of action sees four locations in Scotland targeted

Protesters descended on a jobcentre and a Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) assessment centre in Edinburgh as part of a nationwide day of action against Universal Credit.

Edinburgh Coalition Against Poverty (ECAP) mounted the protests outside High Riggs Jobcentre and Argyle House disability benefits assessment centre on 18 April.

Campaigners held placards aloft highlighting the high sanction rate and the fact dozens of disabled people who had been sanctioned had committed suicide.

An ECAP activist said: “Through its reliance on online technology universal credit attempts to isolate claimants and undermine collective responses.

“We need to counter this by supporting each other and accompanying each other to all benefits appointments. Never meet them alone.”

The day of action saw demos take place in other Scottish cities including Dundee and Glasgow. In London Disabled People Against Cuts activists in wheelchairs attempted to storm Prime Ministers Question Time in Parliament.

Demonstrators then defied police to blockade a major road junction in Westminster for over an hour.

The activist added: “Universal Credit is an integral part of the austerity attack on all working class people, an integral part of the ruling class drive to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

“Universal credit is universally crap – we need to make it and all austerity policies unworkable.”