Link to this page: https://secure.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/1148/33030
From The Socialist newspaper, 22 September 2021
Working class under attack
Low pay, benefit cuts, tax increases, price rises
The fightback starts now
Adam Harmsworth, Coventry Socialist Party
The bosses and the Tories are putting millions of workers through even more hell. The cost of living has soared with inflation rising to 3.2% - following its highest-ever recorded monthly increase. Rent outside London is rising at its fastest pace in thirteen years. Energy prices are about to jump an average of £280 per household. These harsh rises will worry millions of people across the country, not least the estimated 2.4 million who have already faced destitution.
At the same time, the Tories are launching swathes of attacks on lots of different workers. The rise in National Insurance comes along with the end of the furlough scheme, cuts to Universal Credit, an insulting pay offer to NHS workers, and a pay freeze for millions more public sector workers.
The working class are being squeezed from all sides by an unforgiving capitalist class. Millions more ordinary people will be forced to cut back spending, eat into savings, and fall into debt, condemning them to yet more hardship.
And in all this outright theft from working people, the Tories decide to launch a ludicrous 'Levelling Up' agenda with a renamed 'Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities' - a name worthy of The Thick Of It! The idea that the Tories will help workers 'level up' or raise living standards, while at the same time they take from workers already being robbed by price hikes, is a sick joke.
How do we challenge the agenda of this rotten government and its capitalist backers?
Workers in the health unions have made an excellent start. Members of Unison, GMB and the Royal College of Nursing have all voted with a big majority to reject the 3% pay insult.
This is a crucial moment for the trade union leaderships, not just in the health sector but across the movement. They must begin building a coordinated campaign for industrial action now to force this government back.
The price rises, economic chaos, and sharpened attacks by this government prove that capitalism is in crisis. The unions taking decisive action now would empower the workers' movement and win big support from youth. It would pave the way for socialist ideas and a political programme to raise living standards: rent controls, mass building of council housing, nationalising the energy companies - a socialist democratic planned economy where all workers get a decent wage and can live without fear of poverty. But first, the trade union leadership must lead the fightback, and show workers that they can win!
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In The Socialist 22 September 2021:
What we think
Workers' politics won't come from Labour
News
Energy market chaos makes the case for nationalisation
Tory cuts to Universal Credit: we need a union fightback
Interview: Bakers' union to vote on Labour disaffiliation
Tax fraud could be over £20 billion annually
Life expectancy falls - a condemnation of capitalism
Feature
Socialists and the four-day week
Occupy
Workplace news
End the teaching workload crisis
MOJ pay deal accepted - we demand 10%
Workers at 13 colleges to strike over pay
New strike dates in EMR guards dispute
Oaks Park strikers call eleven days' more action
International
Campaigns
Unemployment, low pay, rip-off uni fees, climate change... Join the fight for Socialism
Yorkshire Youth Fight for Jobs relaunched
W Sussex 'disability tax' - protest not going away
Fighting evictions in Cornwall
Leeds taxi drivers and disabled passengers unite to fight station changes
Socialist Students: Youth lit up when they saw us
York: Non-binary and trans rights protest
Readers' opinion
TV Review - Help: Heart-wrenching portrayal of Covid care home crisis
Gleision mine deaths: Still fighting for justice
Who pays for the climate crisis?
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