Editorial

System change needed

Don’t throw things at the telly – fight back!

Working people face attacks on their wages, jobs, services or benefits.

These attacks will be decided by often wealthy MPs still found to be milking their expenses. They preside over a society that more and more resembles the books of Charles Dickens.

Where young female students are encouraged to sell sex for sky high tuition fees or a pensioner starves in a shed after being evicted from his house.

Blacklisting of workers, MPs’ expenses and phone hacking abuses have been revealed. But when their dirty hands are exposed they try to cover up as the scandal of Hillsborough revealed.

In this world full of new Mr Bumbles, Fagins and an utterly corrupt establishment it’s little wonder that people are increasingly disillusioned.

This was reflected in record low voter turnouts for police commissioner elections of only 10% in many cities, which showed people’s lack of faith in the system representing them in any way.

Governing parties were hammered in November’s byelections. But Labour’s victories didn’t reflect huge enthusiasm for them, despite the hatred of the Coalition parties.

Mass voter abstentions reflect a feeling that none of the establishment parties offer working class people a voice.

Britain’s rulers are rotten and there’s only one thing that unites them: Making us pay for their crisis and ‘dividing and ruling’ us to achieve that.

They threw pensioners against students when fees rose, private sector against public sector when they wanted to cut pensions, and now they want everybody to blame benefit recipients.

But they can be fought. Scottish Unison’s call for a one day strike, across Scotland and the UK, is a clear call to action as is the refusal of councillors in Southampton to vote for cuts. Working people and youth must unite to fight back.

But we must go further than resisting attacks. Things are rotten for a reason. While the system that spawns such a corrupt elite continues, so will all the abuses, injustices and inequality.

The capitalist free market system demands we suffer and the politicians and press are merely the instruments of enforcing that.

Elite

They have had it all their own way for over 30 years and the result? The mother of all economic crises and a sick society, made more unbearable by their arrogance. When Leveson reported, Andy Coulson and Rebecca Brooks were appearing in court.

One or two of the elite may get rapped knuckles – don’t bank on it – but as well as fighting every cut or injustice, the real answer is to change the system.

If the super-rich 1% carry on owning the vast majority of the wealth they will continue to pull the strings.

We need a voice. Imagine if there was a mass party that said what we all know – that cuts are just a way of making workers pay for the bankers’ crisis.

Such a party would oppose them. Imagine if that party was also part of the campaigns in workplaces and communities, if its leaders were workers, trade unionists, pensioners and young people.

A new mass workers’ party will need a programme that shows how jobs, services and benefits could be paid for without making other working class people suffer.

The Socialist points to the hoarded billions of the mega rich – an estimated £800 billion they hide away in bank accounts as they can see no easy route to a quick profit.

What about a 50% levy on that as a start to pay for investment in jobs, homes and the NHS?

But fundamentally it’s about ownership – and that means nationalisation of the banking system and also the taking back of all the privatised utilities and services that the 1% vultures are grabbing.

So don’t waste energy shouting at the TV. Get involved instead.