We need a new working-class party
The Labour government has been forced under pressure to make partial U-turns on cuts to welfare and heating allowances; but they’re still determined to make us pay the price. The recent weakening economic figures mean more cuts and tax rises are coming unless we fight.
Prime minister Keir Starmer and chancellor Rachel Reeves have already made clear: it’s not the super-rich who’ll be paying – it’s us, and she is bragging about it!
‘Iron discipline’ in spending, ‘tough choices’ – we’ve heard it all before. It means more overcrowded classrooms, longer NHS waiting lists, more working-class people forced to pay for a crisis we didn’t create.
Yet Britain is richer than ever. There is no shortage of wealth – only a crisis of ownership. While public services collapse and rents skyrocket, the capitalist class wallows in record profits. Britain now has 177 billionaires, and the richest 1% own more than 70% of the population combined. That is not mismanagement – it is the logic of capitalism.
Working-class people should demand we take the wealth off the super-rich! Recent speculation is that Labour has not yet ruled out some tax on the rich. Yet, even if they did, it would be tiny and inadequate.
Taxing the rich is just the start, after all they already avoid tax to the tune of billions of pounds. We should nationalise the major banks, energy companies and big businesses. Bring them into public ownership, not to line the pockets of private shareholders, but under democratic workers’ control – so we can plan housing, schools, green jobs, and public services to meet need, not profit.
But none of this is coming from Starmer’s Labour. Labour’s leadership has made its choice. It’s a party for the capitalists, not for us.
That’s why we need a working-class alternative to the major parties. We need a party that backs strikes, protests, occupations – and unites them behind a socialist programme that says: we won’t pay for the ruling elite’s crisis.
Workers didn’t cause the chaos in this system. We keep society running – and we should run it too. Make the super-rich pay for this crisis. Join us in the fight for socialist change.
Mila Hughes, Coventry Socialist Party
