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From: The Socialist issue 925, 16 November 2016: It's Socialism or Trumpism - build a socialist alternative to defeat the right

Search site for keywords: Debt - Nationalise - Banks - Labour - Labour Party - Union - PCS - Young people - US - Media - Jeremy Corbyn - Evictions - Militant - Education - Council - Austerity

£1.5trn household debt - nationalise the banks!

Unmanageable debt is causing spiralling repossessions and evictions, photo Erich Ferdinand (Creative Commons) (Click to enlarge)

Laurel Fogarty, Kingston Socialist Party

The average adult in the UK is now a whopping £30,000 in debt. This is 113% of the average annual income. The total household debt in the UK has rocketed to over £1.5 trillion.

Families are feeling the pinch. These numbers translate into real suffering for ordinary people, with a reported 17 homes repossessed every day - or one every hour and a half this year.

For renters the effects are similar, with 306 landlord possession orders filed every day, as rents are pushed up and wages stagnate.

Resistance

This shines a stark light on the vital need for a cap on rents, a mass programme of council house building, and an effective resistance to evictions as rent arrears accrue.

A huge amount of this massive debt is paid in interest on mortgages, credit cards, and loans - bald profits for the banks and their shareholders.

This naked profiteering in the face of crippling debt, evictions, and repossessions shows that these greedy financial institutions must be nationalised to operate in the interests of ordinary people. Right now, the bosses use them to bury the working class under increasing mountains of unpayable debt.

For young people in particular, this sudden uptick in private debt is crippling.

As students are forced to take out massive loans to fund their education, they also face fierce battles against low wages and increasingly insecure employment.

The fight for free education goes hand in hand with the fight for better working conditions and a £10 an hour minimum wage without exemptions. We need coordinated strikes and a mass party for workers to fight and win these battles, to give young people the hope of a debt-free future.

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Finance appeal

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.