The Socialist 24 November 2009

"We wont pay for the crisis"

'We wont pay for the crisis'

How could full youth employment be achieved?

Bristol Youth Fight for Jobs challenges council leader

Lessons of struggle: If you fight, you can win!

Flood chaos in Cumbria

Afghanistan: Brown and Obama scrabbling for an exit strategy

Main parties plan cutbacks: It's time for a fightback!

Mobilising to stop Griffin

Racists - stay out of Wrexham!

Successful Manchester Tamil Solidarity meeting

Fast news

People's Charter - a step towards workers' political representation?

The battle for state education

Socialist Party candidate increases vote in NUT election

Education: 'Try your best' is not enough

Schools paying for the crisis

Attacks begin at Bangor University

Fight cuts at Manchester Met

Leeds bins victory

Superdrug workers show industrial action can win victories

Defend the four!

Postal dispute: Bosses still on the attack

London bus workers strike

Axiom railworkers' strike remains solid

Cuts crisis on the Isle of Man

Guadeloupe - End the profiteering and exploitation

The 1970s, mainly viewed from the top

Previous issues, etc

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Young people fight for a future

'We wont pay for the crisis'

Youth Fight For Jobs march 2 April 2009, photo Paul Mattsson (Click to enlarge)

All parents hope that their children will have better opportunities than were available to them. Today, for millions of working and middle class families, those hopes lie in ruins. The bleak and insecure future offered to those growing up in Gordon Brown's Britain is one of the greatest condemnations of twenty first century capitalism.

Hannah Sell, Socialist Party deputy general secretary

There are already more than one million young people who have been thrown on the scrapheap by not having education, work or training. More than one tenth of them have graduated from university, leaving them with a debt of £23,000 on average and few job prospects. The government says that anyone living on less than a £100 a week is below the poverty line - yet the young unemployed (16-24 year olds) are expected to live on starvation rates of £50.95 a week, rising to a far from generous £64.30 for those over 24.

New Labour's latest proposals to help the young unemployed are little more than sticking plasters on a gaping wound. David Blanchflower, until recently a member of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee, stated accurately that: "The government is promising to spend £200 million addressing youth unemployment. That's £200 per person - it's nothing. You might as well just give them a bus pass or a weekend in Blackpool. We're not going to solve the million jobless, which will be 1.25 million next June, with this".

Mass unemployment is not going to go away. Economic recovery, when it comes, will not be a return to 'normality'. For young people and for most working-class people, this will be a jobless, joyless recovery. Moreover, it is all too likely that any recovery will be preceded by a second dip into recession.

The next government - whether Tory, New Labour or 'hung' - will slash public spending. Britain's banking system has been bailed out to the tune of £1.2 trillion of current and future taxpayers' money. In what could be the biggest con-trick in history, the blame for the resulting increased deficit has been laid at the feet of the public sector workforce.

The Tories' slash and burn plans, if implemented, would lead to 700,000 public sector workers being thrown on the dole. The plans of all the main parties are for savage cuts, the only slight difference is how fast the axe will fall.

Any government which accepts the logic of the market - of capitalism - also accepts that it will not be the 'banksters' but working class people who will pay the price for the economic crisis.

Socialists do not accept the logic of capitalism - a crisis-ridden system based on the drive for profit and not the meeting of human and environmental needs.

We demand that every young person has a choice between a decent job with a living wage, a real training scheme with a job at the end of it, or a free university education with a living grant. And we're going to fight for it!