Fight for socialist change

Emily Lyndon, Camden and Harringey Socialist Party

It will come as no surprise to most that, over the last six years, conditions for the poorest children in Britain have worsened, according to the government’s own report. Families are worse off under Labour’s continued austerity. The single biggest cause of child poverty being the two-child benefit cap, which Labour have so far refused to ditch.

The devastating impact of deprivation is apparent in schools throughout the UK, where in many cases support staff and teachers supply food and clothing to pupils who need it. We know this is not a sustainable solution, but it is impossible for children to access learning when their basic needs aren’t met.

The cost of housing forces families to live in inadequate homes with insufficient space alongside damp and mould. Children in the sixth-richest country in the world experience health issues due to inadequate housing, many of whom live in small flats where upwards of three children share a bedroom. 

At a school in south London, children from one family, who were frequently off sick due to mould in their home, which the council refused to resolve, were threatened by the authorities with fines and a referral to social services.

Inner London boroughs like Hackney and Tower Hamlets rank highly in measures of child deprivation. Children sleep in cramped, mouldy bedrooms in the shadows of the City of London and Canary Wharf, through which billions are traded every hour and profits boom.

We live in a system in which a super-rich minority gets richer at our expense, and where we are told we have to accept more cuts and austerity to ‘balance the books’.

We need a party to fight for the working class, with policies to scrap the two-child benefit cap, to raise the minimum wage to at least £15 an hour with no exemptions, and to build council homes and cap rents. We need a party with councillors prepared to defy austerity, fully fund schools and other public services, and demand the money needed from the government. 

We need to fight for socialist change to take the wealth and resources out of the hands of the capitalist bosses so things can be run by the working class in our interests, which can bring an end to child poverty for good.