Saturday 15 and 16 November – put the date in your diary now.
20% discount on tickets: www.socialism.org.uk See ‘golden’ ticket option which includes a night in a hostel near the venue
Across the world billions of us desperately want an end to poverty, climate crisis and war. But the current leaders in our governments prioritise the interests of billionaires.
Instead of planning how to organise society to guarantee a home, a job and public services for all, government policies across the planet have contributed to the emergence of the ‘super-billionaire’. Just 24 of them own ten times more wealth than the amount needed to end global poverty.
Those policies include austerity, privatisation of public services and utilities, and low pay.
Since 1990, the number of billionaires in the UK has risen more than ten times from 15 to 156 in 2025. In 1990, two of the UK’s billionaires drew wealth from property holdings. By 2025, it is 42. And we have the housing crisis to show for it – meaning misery for millions.
Similarly the NHS crisis is a billionaire crisis. Between January 2012 and May 2024, £10 million a week has left the NHS’s budget in the form of profits from private contracts. Labour health minister Wes Streeting has received £58,000 from sources connected to the private health sector since July 2024. He is part of a government that rules for the billionaires.
What does all this tell us about the way society is organised? That the interests of the billionaires are put first. That is now widely accepted – and people want change.
In the US, hundreds of thousands have flocked to rallies under the headline ‘fighting the oligarchy’. A majority there think billionaires “are becoming more like dictators.” Trump and Elon Musk have provided some convincing support for this viewpoint.
Trump’s tariffs are designed to maximise profits for US corporations but threaten to bring the next world economic crisis even closer. The capitalist system is riven with contradictions that mean crises are inherent – but Trump’s attempts to disrupt in the interest of US capitalism are accelerating the looming crash.
In 2007-08 it was working-class people who paid the price. Our incomes have never recovered and public services have been underfunded where they haven’t been completely lost.
And in the face of fires, floods and rising sea levels that threaten human lives, we get Trump’s “Drill, baby, drill”. The profits of US oil companies are prioritised.
This system does not offer a future for humanity.
Socialism is the alternative we need, a system based on planning society in the interests of the billions and the environment, not the billionaires. That means fighting for the working class to organise to be able to end the power of the billionaires – and replace them.
How can a political voice for the working class be built? How can we strengthen our trade unions to defend our class? How can young people fight for a future?
The Socialism weekend is a small but vital opportunity to step back from all the campaigning, from the mundane tasks of life and the accompanying stress, to discuss and think about how we fight for the socialist change we need.
