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Brutal Tory axe to fall on poor
No cuts to welfare!
The planned cuts will hit disabled people and their carers, photo Paul Mattsson (Click to enlarge)
Mary Jackson, Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition parliamentary candidate, Doncaster North
The Tories plan to savagely cut £12 billion from welfare benefits. This brutal axe will fall on disabled people and carers, among many low-income and vulnerable households.
How dare they!
Carers save the country billions of pounds by giving often 24-hour care to severely disabled people. And for this they get the princely sum of £63.35 a week!
Taxing disability benefits will effectively result in means-testing claimants.
They also plan to limit child benefit to two children. We've already got 3.5 million children in the UK living in poverty - one million more than when the Tories and their Lib Dem allies came into office. How many more in poverty will satisfy them?
Further reducing the benefit cap will cause more severe hardship and family break-ups. In cities like London with rocketing rents, the current cap is already forcing people out of their homes - effectively, class cleansing!
The government's bedroom tax has already driven people out of social housing. In Prime Minister Cameron's 'broken Britain' a family loses their home every eleven minutes.
This has to stop! However, all the mainstream political parties are set on continuing the failed policy of capitalist austerity.
Rich get richer
But while low-income households are being hammered, the super-rich are laughing all the way to the bailed-out banks.
Millionaire Tory Chancellor George Osborne says he's 'getting tough' on mega-rich tax dodgers. But the rhetoric doesn't match reality. His 'tough' measures have hardly made a dent in the estimated £120 billion dodged in taxes each year, mainly by wealthy capitalists and giant corporations.
Cameron claims the government's cuts measures have got unemployment down and turned the economy around. But that is ignoring the one million benefit claimants sanctioned every year, the 900,000 on cheap labour 'workfare' schemes and the huge rise in low-paid 'self-employment'.
But Miliband's Labour is no alternative. He and shadow chancellor Ed Balls have made it clear that they'll match the Tory cuts, but over a slightly longer timeframe. And let's not forget, all Labour-run councils have ruthlessly implemented the Tories' austerity programme.
We need a strategy to rebuild Britain, to recover the stolen taxes, to nationalise the banks under democratic workers' control, to take back the privatised railways and utilities, for a massive house-building programme, and much more besides.
We need a democratic socialist society run in the interests of the vast majority people, not a super-rich elite protected by their political establishment friends. A socialist planned economy would allow sustainable production, full employment and fully funded public services to be planned to meet the needs of the 99%.
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The coronavirus crisis has laid bare the class character of society in numerous ways. It is making clear to many that it is the working class that keeps society running, not the CEOs of major corporations.
The results of austerity have been graphically demonstrated as public services strain to cope with the crisis.
The government has now ripped up its 'austerity' mantra and turned to policies that not long ago were denounced as socialist. But after the corona crisis, it will try to make the working class pay for it, by trying to claw back what has been given.
- The Socialist Party's material is more vital than ever, so we can continue to report from workers who are fighting for better health and safety measures, against layoffs, for adequate staffing levels, etc.
- When the health crisis subsides, we must be ready for the stormy events ahead and the need to arm workers' movements with a socialist programme - one which puts the health and needs of humanity before the profits of a few.
Inevitably, during the crisis we have not been able to sell the Socialist and raise funds in the ways we normally would.
We therefore urgently appeal to all our viewers to donate to our Fighting Fund.
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