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Somers Forge workers continue pay strike

Somers Forge strikers. Photo: Wolverhampton and black country socialist party (uploaded 19/01/2022)
Somers Forge strikers. Photo: Wolverhampton and black country socialist party (uploaded 19/01/2022)
Somers Forge strikers. Photo: Wolverhampton and black country socialist party

Somers Forge strikers. Photo: Wolverhampton and black country socialist party   (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)

Nick Hart, West Midlands Socialist Party

Workers at Somers Forge in Halesowen took their fourth day of strike action in their current dispute for a living pay increase – and also the fourth ever in the company’s 155-year history!

Strikers told us about the Victorian working conditions at this Victorian company. It’s not uncommon to see pools of water, with squirrels and ducks nesting in the workshop, which produces large metalwork for military and other specialist applications.

On top of this is a bullying culture from management that has seen over 50 staff come and go in one section in the space of three years. Far from the company taking necessary measures to minimise Covid during the pandemic, workers were not only being trooped into the plant, but reportedly threatened with the sack for not taking overtime!

GMB union members there have a further two days of strike action planned for late January, as part of their campaign to win a pay rise in line with inflation and backdated to last April’s pay anniversary. Yet another group of workers not taking the cost of living crisis lying down!

‘We won’t let them steal our future!’

Youth strike 20 November

Eesha Khurana, Manchester Socialist Students, spoke at a rally on the eve of Andy Burnham’s first Budget:

Young people have seen our futures stolen from us.

In schools, staff are underpaid and overstretched. Uni tuition fees have gone up year on year and are going over £10k next year. Job opportunities for graduates are drying up.

So much for doing away with discriminatory wage bands! The government is keeping the youth minimum wage lower than it is for older workers – breaking their promise.

Burnham acts like he is different to the governments that went before, but he’s not.

His Chancellor John Healey wants 5% of GDP to be spent on ‘defence’. That’s more than we spend on housing and education combined!

Just like the youth in France, we’re not willing to stand by and let our futures be stolen from us.

Socialist Students is working with over 25 youth organisations across Europe taking part in the international youth strike against war on 20 November. We’re backed by the NEU, and the UCU has called a day of action too.

Thousands of school, college and uni students will be walking out. We demand that the government funds our futures, not their wars!

Join us!

Labour’s do-nothing Budget maintains brutal status quo

Healey and Burnham Photo: Number 10/CC
Healey and Burnham Photo: Number 10/CC

Unions must act to defend living standards

Editorial of the Socialist issue 1389

“The Budget must be the moment that the prime minister’s programme starts to match his rhetoric”, general secretary of biggest public sector union Unison, Andrea Egan, wrote in the Guardian newspaper two days before Andy Burnham’s government had its first ‘fiscal event’.

“Is that it?” heckled a Labour backbencher as Chancellor John Healey sat down after delivering it. “The prime minister came to power promising to end 40 years of neoliberalism, and instead we got 4p off gherkins,” Tory leader Kemi Badenoch quipped. Which is funny. Except it’s not.

Cost-of-living crisis continues

When use of the term ‘cost-of-living crisis’ took off along with inflation in 2021, for many the word ‘crisis’ implied something short – ‘a six-month sort of situation’. Now it’s knocking on six years.

And so the £100 off energy bills announced won’t be sniffed at. Many will have been straight onto the council website to double check which council tax band they are on and work out if they will qualify – a fifth of low-income households in London and the South East won’t. The measure really is ‘cold comfort’ when it is considered energy bills in real terms this year – once government support is factored in – are forecast to be higher than during the last energy price shock (2022-23).

When Burnham took office in July, polling by More In Common asked people how long they would give him to deliver on the cost of living. The answer with the most responses was six months – that deadline is fast closing in.

Between now and the scheduled end of the Parliament (2028-29), real household disposable incomes are forecast to fall in total by £1,050 a year. Far from so-called breathing room, what is in store is a strangulating tightening of household finances.

Ahead of the Budget, Andrea Egan said: “We expect a big, multiyear funding plan to restore investment and wages in our public services – alongside kicking profiteering vultures out of the public sector through bringing services back in-house. These measures should be funded by finally making the wealthy few pay.”

Those kinds of measures are exactly what Unison’s million-plus members need, so too the working class as a whole. But Burnham’s first Budget fell spectacularly short of those expectations. Capitalist commentators are talking of a ‘brutal’ spending review next year.

What’s more, the morning after being filmed downing pints to celebrate his miserable Budget, Healey took to the airwaves to promise cuts to the welfare bill – the overwhelming majority of which goes to support pensioners and disabled people. A sign the government is feeling under pressure, the Treasury frantically phoned producers of Radio 4’s Today programme to plead that is not how they wanted things to be presented!

Political representation

Unison has a whole host of union-sponsored Labour MPs. Similarly, the other Labour-affiliated unions. Many unaffiliated unions have formal parliamentary groups too.

Imagine the role even a small group of MPs could play if they were to act collectively as steadfast fighters for the kind of anti-austerity policies Andrea Egan identifies as needed. Unison could, for example, make membership of its parliamentary group of MPs contingent on moving a motion or amendment to oppose Burnham’s triple lock attack on pensions, for example. So too in the other unions.

On Brexit, fossil fuel licences, benefit cuts and more, the nascent splits are developing in the Parliamentary Labour Party – like they did under Starmer and in the Tory party before – because of the huge class pressures on it.

And the question of the trade unions building their own political force independently of the Labour Party will again rise to the surface. By the time Unite the Union holds its rules conference to discuss Labour affiliation in Summer 2027, it will be acute. Socialist Party members in Unite have argued for that to be brought forward to avoid a situation in May 2027, where thousands of council seats are up for election, without the working class represented.

When Burnham took office, the Socialist referred to Starmer’s two-year tenure and asked: “On what basis will Andy Burnham possibly be able to significantly outlast him?”

The answer is: not on this basis!

As Andrea Egan put it: “There’s no dodging a battle with the vested interests committed to keeping things as they are.” Which is why the Socialist Party has been to the fore demanding the trade unions lead that battle, including by naming the date for a union-led demo against austerity this winter, which was on the table of the TUC General Council executive meeting taking place 2-3 November. What better way to back up the national strike ballots of civil servants, further education staff and probation workers? What better way to follow up the student strikes taking place on 20 November in Britain and across Europe – where mass eruptions of youth mobilisations have already been a prelude to workers’ strikes, including general strikes.

Burnham Budget continues attacks on graduates

Photo: Mary Finch
Photo: Mary Finch

Adam Harmsworth, Coventry Socialist Party, Plan 2 graduate with £50,766.33 debt

Silence can be very telling. Among many issues that chancellor John Healey’s Budget failed to address was the freeze on repayment thresholds for graduates.

Last year, the previous chancellor Rachel Reeves froze the salary threshold at which graduates with ‘Plan 2’ student loans – the loans that approximately five million students have – start to repay their debt. For up to 30 years, Plan 2 graduates pay 9% of their wages above that threshold towards their loan.

Even calling it ‘repayment’ is a joke, because graduates on low wages will have every payment they make wiped out by interest on the debt!

Reeves froze the threshold from 2027 to 2030 at £29,385. So in each of those three years, any pay rise that Plan 2 graduates get, even below-inflation, will mean they pay more back on the loan. Some of the lowest paid will have to start repaying from wages. This is an attack on the incomes and living standards of many graduates, that many did not expect and cannot prepare for.

MoneySavingExpert’s Martin Lewis told Healey the freeze was “morally reprehensible and a breach of natural justice”, to which Healey replied with half-hearted excuses, blaming conflict in the Middle East and elsewhere for him not doing anything about the freeze.

Also in response, Healey patted himself on the back for giving out £100 Household Energy Payments.

That’s insulting to both students and graduates. Students living in university halls, private halls and HMOs won’t be able to receive it. And many Plan 2 graduates’ £100 will get eaten up by their repayments!

The Burnham government is picking up right where Keir Starmer left off, attacking students and graduates alongside the whole working class. All student debt should be cancelled, and free university tuition restored along with maintenance grants. That would ensure all young people can take up university education without taking on debt or being forced to work alongside their studies, taking the wealth that is under the control of the big bosses and putting it under our democratic control to fund it.

Budget bonus for banks and betting barons

Photo: Ralf Roletschek/CC
Photo: Ralf Roletschek/CC

Hamza Khan, West London Socialist Party

Depending on where you look, the Budget has been touted as a victory for ordinary people, or the first step to a long-desired return to economic stability. Well maybe for some! Banks, gambling companies and defence contractors all saw their share prices rise as investors celebrated a Budget that proved even less threatening to profits than expected.

Ministers fear upsetting the markets more than they fear disappointing working-class communities. Every Budget becomes a balancing act between offering just enough to try and ease public anger while ensuring that big business and wealthy investors remain satisfied with their profits left intact.

The treatment of the banks illustrates this perfectly. Investors welcomed the Budget because the increase in the bank surcharge was lower than they had expected. Billions in banking profits will continue to flow into dividends, share buybacks and retained earnings, while public services remain underfunded and councils face impossible financial pressures.

It does not have to be this way. A democratically nationalised banking system could direct those profits towards building council housing, funding the NHS, funding our councils so they can invest in local public services, all of which also create job opportunities which are desperately needed. The wealth generated by finance should be used for public benefit, not private accumulation.

With conditions worsening and the cost of living getting higher and higher, working-class people are once again told to settle for small concessions while the capitalists get richer right before our eyes. The banks cannot be left in private ownership, they need to be nationalised, democratised and run for the benefit of all of us. To stop the endless race to the bottom, we need to fight for democratic control of society’s wealth.

Labour sets sights on youth for austerity attacks

Photo: Mary Finch
Photo: Mary Finch

Saad H, Hackney and Islington Socialist Party

Andy Burnham has described the past 40 years of neoliberalism as a failure for working-class communities. Yet his Budget offered no evidence of a break with that settlement. For young people, the message remained familiar: shoulder the costs and blame yourself when the system fails you.

Chancellor John Healey’s promise of a “tough approach” towards young people exposes this. Rather than confronting an economy that fails to provide opportunities, Healey treats us as the problem.

The reality is stark. Youth unemployment remains above 15%, and graduate vacancies attract an average of 140 applications each. Those who do get a degree face average student debt of almost £48,000, and the aspiration of building a stable life is just an unfulfilled dream, hampered by unaffordable rents and stagnating wages.

A party looking to address these issues would commit to rent controls, funding public services, abolishing tuition fees, and investing in publicly funded job creation. However, Labour has already broken its manifesto pledge to equalise the minimum wage for young people, backtracked on a plan to introduce rent controls, and Healey’s speech mentioned schools less than ten times, but defence was mentioned over 120 times. Priorities laid out clearly!

The Labour Party is forcing young people to pay for capitalism’s crises. We need a mass party that represents us, which does not bow down before the bosses. We need to get organised to take on the bosses, so this generation and the next generation won’t face our current insecurity.

Socialist Students: N20 and organising against the far right

Organise to defeat the far right on campus!

Louie Nardini, York Socialist Students

Capitalism’s inability to provide a future for the younger generation is shown by what societies are being ratified this year at universities in York. At York St. John, there is no organisation or society for the traditional parties, Labour, Conservatives and Lib Dem, who have overseen a decline in living standards during an era of capitalism in crisis. Other than Socialist Students, and other left-wing societies, there is no other political society on the SU website other than Restore Britain – a far-right group which emerged from a split in Reform UK.

Restore frames itself as an anti-establishment party, yet its head, Rupert Lowe, claims MPs should be paid £250,000 a year – giving already out of touch political ‘representatives’ living standards much higher than the declining standards of the working-class majority. Long before Andy Burnham set out plans to cut the pensioners’ triple lock, Restore was rallying to get rid of it completely. Not only this, in its public documents it rejects the claim that public services are underfunded! So much for offering anything different from the past 15 years of brutal austerity.

The Restore society at the University of York has gotten into a lot of trouble for its “Get Foreigners Out” social media post. The hateful division put forward by Restore has exposed them to many students, many of whom are angry and correctly understand that such right-wing groups do not represent the interests of anyone but the super-rich capitalist class.

Socialist Students agrees with calls to kick the Restore society off campus, along with similar calls across the country for Reform UK and anti-abortion groups. We are fighting to defeat them politically, rather than by administrative means.

The way to cut across racist division is socialist unity amongst the working class. Socialist Students across university campuses across the country has consistently held meetings, demonstrations, and discussions on how to fight the far right, racism, sexism, and all forms of division pushed by the bosses. We explain that far-right ideas must be defeated politically, rather than simply ignoring them if they begin to get an echo.

At the same time, anything left up to the Students Union by itself is not guaranteed to get finished – this includes the battle for our views. We cannot rely on the SU to do the job of defeating the far right for us. If we allow the SU to repress societies because of their views, they could potentially use those tactics to bite back against us. It has been the case elsewhere in the country that Socialist Students has had society applications denied, or have been barred from holding meetings, etc.

In line with our ‘action-led’ approach, Socialist Students is organising youth strikes on 20 November – ‘fighting for our futures, not their wars’ – to politically guide the energy and anger of students to a real fight against war, racism, austerity, and the move to a fully funded free education model.

Official support for N20 youth strike!

National Union of Students (NUS)

The National Union of Students (NUS), which represents over seven million students, announced on 28 October, in its response to the chancellor’s Budget, that it will be taking part in the youth strike. NUS said the Budget “does nothing for students”: the chancellor had done nothing about unfair student loans in England, had slowed the growth of the minimum wage for people aged 18 to 20, breaking a manifesto promise, and had given no detail on funding universities and colleges.  Students had been left out of the conversation, NUS said, and “that’s why NUS is taking part in the youth strike”.  It is asking students to sign up to take part on the day.

National Education Union (NEU)

The national executive of the NEU, which organised staff in schools and colleges, has unanimously voted to back the International Youth Strike.

The executive resolved to “express support for the right of young people to peacefully organise, protest and make their voices heard, including those taking part in the N20 day of action”, and to “oppose disciplinary action against students participating in peaceful protest activity, including detentions or other sanctions, and to support campaigns defending students’ rights where required”.

University and College Union (UCU)

The UCU, which organises workers in universities and colleges, has called a national day of action over the crisis in further and higher education on 20 November. Unison, another trade union, has voted to join the day of action in higher education too.

Other support in Britain

Numerous trade union branches and bodies have passed motions in support of N20. A model trade union motion can be found at: socialiststudents.org.uk/international-youth-strike-model-trade-union-motion/

The Young Greens are on board. So too, the Stop The War Coalition, which was welcomed to its first in-person meeting of the international organising group on 17 October.

Protests confirmed so far for Friday 20 November:

  • London: 12 noon, Parliament Square
  • Birmingham: 12 noon, University of Birmingham, Green Heart; 2:30pm, High Street, outside Waterstones
  • Brighton: 12:30pm, St Peter’s Square
  • Bristol: 1pm, College Green
  • Cambridge: 4pm, King’s Parade
  • Cardiff: 11am, Cardiff University Students’ Union
  • Carlisle: 12 noon, Market Cross
  • Cheltenham: 12 noon, Imperial Gardens
  • Coventry: 12 noon, Priory Street, outside the Cathedral
  • Guildford: 12:30pm, University of Surrey, Philip Marchant Building
  • Hull: 12:30pm, Queen’s Gardens
  • Leeds: 12 noon, Parkinson Steps
  • Leicester: 1:30pm, Clock Tower
  • Liverpool: 1pm, University Square
  • Manchester & Salford: 12 noon, Whitworth Arch, then march to No10 North
  • Newcastle: 12 noon, Civic Centre Gardens next to St Thomas’s Church
  • Northampton: 12:30pm, Angel Square
  • Nottingham: 12:30pm, Nottingham Trent Students’ Union
  • Paisley: from 11am, UWS Paisley Campus Library
  • Plymouth: 12 noon, Sundial, Armada Way
  • Pontypridd: 12 noon, USW Treforest, outside G Block
  • Preston: 12 noon, University of Lancashire Student Centre
  • Reading: 12 noon, Forbury Gardens
  • Sheffield: 1pm, Barker’s Pool
  • Southampton: 12 noon, Guildhall Square
  • Stoke-on-Trent: 12 noon, Ember Square
  • Swansea: 12 noon, Swansea University, Fulton House Green; 12 noon, Gower College Gorseinon, College Gates
  • Wolverhampton: 12 noon, Wulfruna Street, outside the University
  • Worcester: 3pm, Sabrina Bridge
  • York: 2pm, St Helen’s Square

Join the student fightback: join Socialist Students…

Visit socialiststudents.org.uk/join or text 07403 057 140

What we’re doing for N20, and what you can do too!

Taking N20 to schools, colleges, and unis

Cleo Sharp, Liverpool Socialist Students and Liverpool Socialist Party

We are building towards the 20 November international youth strikes tenaciously.

Through our Socialist Students groups at University of Liverpool and Liverpool Hope University, we have been getting students involved in the campaign. They have been joining us on stalls and spreading awareness.

Liverpool Socialist Party branches are publicising the movement through our regular campaign stalls. Socialist Party members in the trade unions are doing the same. For example, Liverpool Socialist Party member Rees is an activist in the National Education Union (NEU).

The NEU is the largest education union in Europe. And has passed a motion for the union to support the 20 November youth strike. This means that teachers in the NEU will oppose disciplinary action against students taking part in the strike.

We have received an overwhelmingly positive response. School students are signing up on the Socialist Students website, asking for assistance to develop the strike at their schools.

At every opportunity, we’re upping the ante. Now taking on the colossal task of stickering and postering Liverpool.

We are focusing on schools and colleges where students have reached out to us, as well as the three largest universities in Liverpool.

We are helping students who have taken an interest in the movement, to develop their political consciousness, getting them involved with our actions. This is crucial as we’re amping up to be postering, leafleting, or stickering every single day of the next three weeks, until the strike.

Already in the last month, three young people have joined the Socialist Party, directly from Socialist Students groups.

Some groups in the University of Liverpool Guild of Students are attempting to cut across the movement. But, we are persevering, because we are confident in our ideas. The anti-austerity programme, that we are bringing to the strike, is connecting with people.

Socialist Students is the central organisation in Liverpool pushing this campaign. We are prepared to take it as far as it will go.

We’ll be working as hard as possible up until the youth strike. We are taking a group of students down to Socialism 2026, particularly to take part in the Socialist Students rally on Sunday 15 November.

There, we will hear from speakers representing signatories to the youth strike from across Europe.

London’s New City College: Students have a right to be heard

Nora Shaughnessy, Queen Mary Socialist Students

We handed out so many leaflets, that we actually ran out!

Queen Mary Uni Socialist Students visited New City College in Poplar, east London, to speak to students about the 20 November International Youth Strike. There was a fantastic response from young and mature students.

Two students initially came over to pick up a leaflet. After reading it, they came back to ask how they could get more involved.

We gave them a Socialist Students campaign starter pack to help them organise their own rally, and bring their friends along. We also managed to get a member of staff signed up.

Some staff seemed hesitant to approach our stall, possibly worried about openly expressing political opinions, because of their position within the college. It’s important that staff and students feel free to express their opinions, and get involved in issues they care about.

As socialists, we believe young people should have a say in their education and future. Schools, colleges, and universities should be places where students can discuss issues affecting them, challenge inequality, and organise together.

The visit showed that young people aren’t apathetic. They are interested, they want to be heard, and they’re ready to get organised.

Working-class unity, not racist division

Opposing the far right and racism in Yorkshire - Iain Dalton
Opposing the far right and racism in Yorkshire - Iain Dalton

Socialist Party and Socialist Students member Philip, a college student in Cambridge, wanted to speak at an anti-racist protest in Stevenage in October, organised by Stand Up To Racism. The organisers didn’t allow him to speak.

But this is what Philip wanted to say. So, we’re printing it in the Socialist.

I wanted to come up and speak today, not only as a Socialist Party member, but also simply as a student. Due to situations like the cost of living, climate crisis, the rise in unemployment, and the government’s inadequacy in providing suitable solutions for these problems, young people have more than enough reason to worry about their futures.

Whilst coping with these pressures, I cannot imagine what it must be like for people who are struggling with the same conditions, and yet are blamed for it because of the country that they come from or the colour of their skin.

Asylum seekers living in hotels are given only £9.95 a week to live on, despite the cost-of-living crisis. Yet, they are still being accused of leeching off government resources.

Standard tuition fees for higher education are going to rise to over £10,000 next year. And the price is almost three times as high for ‘international students’.

This can include young people who have spent almost the entirety of their lives inside the UK, but don’t have citizenship. Often because they cannot afford it.

The rhetoric used by the likes of Nigel Farage is blatantly untrue. The same system, that has consistently failed young people born in the UK, is failing refugees and immigrants too. It isn’t a case of us or them.

Regardless of where we come from, we all deserve financial security and a fulfilling future. This cannot be provided by capitalism.

Our interests will never be supported by a system that thrives off inequality and the division of the working class, by means of scapegoating and marginalisation.

Chances are, that if you have gathered here today to take a stand for your community, then we already have a common goal. Join Socialist Students and 25 other youth and student organisations internationally striking on 20 November to advocate for funding for education and in support of all young people.

And beyond these strikes, continue to cooperate with us in a sustained effort for socialist change. Fight for our future, not their wars!

Join N20 to oppose Labour Budget austerity

London protest ‘inspired by Europe fightback’

Socialist Students organiser Mihaela Ivanova spoke at the London protest outside Parliament, the day before Labour’s Budget.

In an ITV interview, Andy Burnham stated his Budget will not stray from the red lines of Labour’s 2024 manifesto. In other words, a promise to continue brutal austerity, a grinding cost-of-living crisis, and defending the skyrocketing profits of the bosses.

While politicians of every rosette are beating the drums of war, young people across Europe have poured out onto the streets in their thousands to fight back. We are inspired. Not just by them.

But by the French teachers’ unions, who have stood shoulder to shoulder with their students against the attacks on education by the Macron government. The same attacks to education that Burnham’s government, and previous governments here in the UK, have forced onto young people.

That’s why Socialist Students is building for the International Youth Strike on 20 November to join the hundreds of thousands of students across Europe to fight for our futures not their wars! Students in over 50 schools, colleges, and universities in the UK will be walking out of their classrooms.

We are emboldened by the NEU (National Education Union), which has passed a motion to join and provide safe stewarding. And the UCU (University and College Union), which has called a day of action.

The peaceful protests in France have shown us that when students and workers are united, we cannot be defeated. So we invite you all to join us on 20 November to fight for the funding we need, and fight back against the austerity, war, and racist division of this government.

York uni protest projects our voice

Arthur Herbert, York Uni Socialist Students

Our Budget Day protest was an opportunity for us to voice our opposition to rising militarisation, austerity, and the cost-of-living crisis. We succeeded in projecting our voices, connecting with more students at the uni.

As many York Socialist Students members are new this year, including myself, we have never organised a protest before. So this provided an opportunity to do that.

York Socialist Students has grown from three members last year to 15 this year, so far. We’ve quickly learned the need for strategy, defined roles in mobilising our forces, and preparing chants beforehand.

Our protest was an essential trial run for the International Youth Walkout on 20 November, which will see thousands of students and young people across the world strike out against the capitalist order, its wars, and its failure to provide for our futures.

Socialists say £15 an hour minimum, and more

Saf, Birmingham Socialist Party

Socialist Party campaigning on the minimum wage, speaking to people around Birmingham, shows how many people support increasing the minimum wage to £15 an hour, or more. The working class has experienced multiple cost-of-living crises in the past decade, continuing now with the disaster caused by Donald Trump’s war in the Middle East.

Whilst families are struggling between choosing food or paying the heating bill, big business are making billions in profit. Tesco made £2.3 billion profit last year.

Imagine their profits for this year! All those billions, but none to show for their workers.

Now Labour under Andy Burnham has dropped another promise. The youth minimum wage rates are £2-£5 lower.

Labour previously said they’d close this gap. But now they won’t. The lower youth rate should be abolished.

We also have a huge issue with rent. Prices are beyond what a minimum-wage worker can afford.

We are not asking for much. The government is already subsidising companies paying poverty wages.

All these billion-dollar companies can afford more than enough to pay fair wages and more. But choose not to maximise profit and increase their wealth.

Bills are increasing. So wages should increase too!

Alongside, there needs to be a ban on zero-hour contracts. Labour promised to increase workers’ rights. But it has been watered down and delayed.

The working class is facing a cost-of-living crisis, which we didn’t cause, but have to pay for.

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