A REDDITCH woman will be travelling to the Royal Courts of Justice next Friday to press the pensions case of women born in the 1950s.
The women are calling for a judicial review into the Government decision to raise their retirement age from 60 to 66.
Judy Phillips, from Church Hill, agrees with the equalisation of pension age, but says women like her were given just 18 months’ notice and in some cases no notice at all, of the change.
“How can you get the money together in that time to cover six more years?” she said. “The government says it doesn’t have the money but I’ve been working since I was 16, paying in my stamp for 42 years, so where has it all gone?
“If the government hasn’t got it anymore that’s embezzlement.”
Judy is part of the Backto60 campaign group which estimated 3.5million women are affected by the pension change.
She’s one of the few to be given permission to travel down to the Royal Courts of Justice to see the case being presented by Backto60, which is being supported by other groups fighting the women under the banner ‘One Voice’. In a show of solidarity they are calling on all women born in the 50s to down tools or walk out at 10am on Friday, November 30, for 10 minutes.
“The government has stolen our money,” said Judy.
“A lot of women when they got married changed to a married stamp and back in the 70s with high interest rates and everything we were making sacrifices to keep the household going.
“As women, we were not encouraged to have our own pensions. They picked on us.
“We know a judicial review will take years but people are dying in poverty and it’s the only way to make this government listen.”
For more on the campaign visit https://www.backto60.com/
