Let’s point out one fact: the welfare state, just like the NHS, belongs to us all. It was set up by Clement Attlee’s socialist government to protect citizens in times of great need.

It is our welfare state — a rock-solid tangible acknowledgement that the Britain we live in protects its most vulnerable citizens.

The existence of the welfare state and NHS was brought about by the protests of socialists like us.

For many disabled citizens over the years, the welfare state has, without question, stepped in and declared that “as we live in a compassionate, caring and civilised country, the state will protect you from poverty.”

Right up until Margaret Thatcher’s regime the role of the welfare state was never questioned. It existed to protect vulnerable citizens unreservedly.

Then the right-wing Thatcher government set about undermining and preparing to dismantle the welfare state as we knew it.

Three consecutive years of freezing child benefit and targeting women and children was eventually thrown out by John Major when he took over from Thatcher, but the damage had already been done.

Thousands of children were thrown into poverty. But Thatcher was just the start. How proud she must be of Iain Duncan Smith and

David Cameron for daring to do what she couldn’t, as public opinion back in the ’80s would not have tolerated it. How times change.

The toxic elements of a ruling-class Tory Cabinet and front bench, coupled with the march of right-wing media, have produced a hatred of anyone who has to claim any benefit from the welfare state. It started off with the complete dehumanisation of the unemployed.

Unemployment for the vast majority of people is a temporary predicament. Who the hell wants to live on £72 a week by choice?

Yet Duncan Smith and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) have pushed the idea that “workshy” individuals enjoy being on benefits enough to choose that lifestyle.

George Osborne jumped in by referring to “hard-working people going to work every morning while they see other neighbours’ curtains drawn.”

By 2011 this coalition had made unemployment shameful, something that had to be hidden at all costs when in conversation.

Within a year of coming to power, we were seeing TV programmes like Saints and Scroungers on the BBC.

The Daily Mail has weekly articles on unemployed people, many with large families, as journalists prey on people who have no idea they are being ridiculed and scapegoated.

But the mere misery of being unemployed however is not good enough for the Con-Dems.

There has to be an element of “sport” in it for our privileged Eton boys, so benefit sanctions have been brought in.

We are sold the lie that thousands of unemployed people can’t be bothered even going to the jobcentre so it’s worthwhile giving them a kick by stopping their benefit altogether.

However, it’s not quite so simple is it? Here in my rural area of north Wales some “local” jobcentres are over 10 miles away, so the staff are told to sanction claimants for being five minutes late. Never mind the fact the buses and trains are ultra-expensive when on benefit anyway, but your whole existence can depend on being on time.

Funerals of close relatives are sanctioned too because you can’t be in two places at once and the icing on the cake of sanctions is when you get a job interview on the same day as signing on.

Often a choice has to be made — job interview or survival. But if you attend the jobcentre, you get sanctioned for not attending the job interview.

Unite Community branches throughout Britain are demonstrating against these sanctions tomorrow in a national day of action at jobcentres everywhere. I am leading the NE Wales Unite Community demonstration in Wrexham, and I urge you all to find out locally what is happening in your area on that day so we can highlight this scandalous abuse of power by the DWP.

For more information see www.unitetheunion.org/campaigning/stop-benefit-sanctions/