Benefits Street: Channel 4 Moves Residents To Safe Houses Following Death Threats
This article titled Benefits Street: Channel 4 Moves Residents To Safe Houses Following Death Threats and written by Steven Preece was first published by the Welfare News Service on 24 January 2014 and has been reproduced here with permission.
Some of the residents of James Turner Street in Birmingham, who starred in Channel 4′s highly controversial ‘Benefits Street’ documentary, have been placed in safe houses following a string of death threats, it has been revealed.
The highly emotive documentary has rarely been out of the news since the first episode was aired by Channel 4, and has been met with increasing criticism for how it portrayed benefit claimants, with one petition demanding that the show be scrapped securing close to 60,000 signatures, at the time of publishing this article.
It is claimed by residents on the street that they have received threats of violence against them and even death threats, with one of the residents, Kate Dudek, 27, telling the Daily Mirror:
“Since it was on TV, there have been so many people coming up and down. I have a seven-year-old daughter who I don’t let out any more because I feel it isn’t safe.”
Some of the threats posted on the social network Twitter include setting fire to the street and another which said that they would like to “walk down #benefitstreet with a baseball bat and brain these scum bags”, among others.
Police are currently investigating the threats made against the residents but have not yet said whether any charges would be made against the perpetrators.
An insider has told the Daily Mirror that since airing ‘Benefits Street’ a number of the residents have had to be rehomed.
The insider said: “After we named the street in the show, some of the participants in Benefits Street have had to be rehomed. They are vulnerable and we have a duty of care towards them.”
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Iain Duncan Smith MP, has been accused of using the divisive documentary, created by TV company Love Productions, to justify draconian cuts in welfare spending.
Despite the death threats made against the residents on the street and the backlash the programme has received, Love Productions Creative Developer, Richard McKerrow, continues to stand by the documentary saying: “It’s a very honest and true portrayal of life in Britain and people are frightened of it.”
Same Difference 
Channel 4 should be facing charges of “affray”. Now all of a sudden the familys they paraded across our tv’s for millions to view are vulnerable and in need of protection ? Wasnt that why they where hand picked in the first place ?
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Chan 4 should be charged with inciting hatred against others and behaviour likely to cause harm!
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Channel 4, shame on you! This further adds to the Governments plans to demonise a whole sector of the population they don’t know how to help. What about the people who work who Chanel 4 have footage of and left on the cutting room floor? I pity the sad people who get sucked in and believe what they see, we have no rights to judge others, walk a mile in their shoes……there but for the grace of God and all that. I was lucky to be born to working parents in an area that had mines and factories and when they shut down I got out but I have family who struggle just to make ends meet that didn’t make the move. We treat animals better in this country….
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Reblogged this on nearlydead.
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Reblogged this on HUMAN RIGHTS & THE SIEGE OF BRITAIN POLITICAL JOURNAL and commented:
Just what IDS wanted!!!
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The program creators, and the Government are wrong, this isn’t an accurate portrayal of how life in Britain is for people in benefits, there are a lot of hard working people who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, either by illness or disability or simply through circumstance. To tar everyone with the same brush is morally wrong.
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Freeloading scumbags wanna try working for a living. Yes, thats you, you Tory twats. People rarely chose to be on benefits and to allow such a pathetic ‘ program ‘ to stereotype benefit claimants is bang out of order. Stop allowing such drivel and lets think, maybe help people back into work. C4 , how about offering some work to these people instead of exploiting them. Twats the lot of you.
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The program has achieved its purpose, caused people to fear for their safety just because they have to claim benefits.
Strange that alternative homes can be found for their victims but not the millions affected by the bedroom tax, let alone the homeless.
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It is a step closer to the new Tory Workhouse, surrounded by patrolled high wire fences and guard towers to protect the inhabitants. (Or is that a concentration/death camp)?
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I refused to watch it. It was an obvious hatchet job, I could tell that much just from the adverts for the show. This country’s sheep mentality makes me sick, they believe anything they see on TV or read in the papers. How many of the idiots posting comments have actually done some research into government spending and the welfare bill? I sincerely hope that they one day end up too ill to work, exhaust every penny they’ve ever saved, sell their homes, cars and everything worth any money just to survive a bit longer, go hungry so their children can eat, go through a system designed to humiliate them and make them feel worthless just to be sanctioned for being late turning up to a pointless interview, then publicly hated by the rest of the sheep to the point of feeling so worthless that drugs, alcohol or suicide become the only escapes imaginable. This I would love to see, hell I’d even consider paying for a TV license to watch that, I would even consider re-opening my Twitter account just to hurl some abusive threats at them
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Never saw the programme… Shocked and not surprised at the hate comments Stephen stress head vickers is on the ball …
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a real example of something for nothing;
bedroom tax
£60 fines for primary school parents who dont comply to blar blar
high stupidly high cost of fuel.
expenses of MPs including homes fuel and nights out.
council tax …try and complain
ect ect ect
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I would like to see how anyone else could manage on a daily diet of litte hope, despair and grinding poverty. It is so easy to condem people that find themselves floundering in the so called safety net. Sanctions, very little hope of a job an uncaring government are the real villians.
Money is found for wars and to bale out banks, but the Tory picture of jobs if you want one, is a lie. Anyone does whatever to survive and were Charles Dickens alive he’d notice no change twixt the Victorian poor and the 21st century Tory poor.
Mob lynching via social media and right wing media organisation’s are now the norm. This baying mob are encouraged by a government thst are no better than the Nazi’s who stigmatized sections of their society, to cover up for ethnic cleansing to force through ridiculous ideologies on a gullible public.
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I find your comments echo my own exactly, how do we get this over to the rest of the country? I find myself repeating these comments time after time. I predicted the return of workhouses some 2 years ago, now I feel, with this government denying the need for foodbanks, that the poor wont even get that.
I have no doubts that this government will be directly responsible for many more deaths before they admit they are wrong. Feeling helpless to help is very worrying.
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If these were racial threats the perpetrators would have been arrested by now. Inciting the crimes is still against the law. Channel 4 and these people tweeting threats should be arrested
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