Cost of living crisis – make this system pay
Fight for pay rises, public ownership, socialism
Lynda McEwan
As the 1st of April approached, the heavy feeling of dread I’d been experiencing for weeks really began to intensify. With gas and electricity bills increasing to unmanageable levels, the cost of living for working-class people like myself are sky rocketing.
As a disabled women reliant on state benefits, the fear of being unable to heat my home or fall badly into arrears to these companies is terrifying. The worry is unbearable and also physically exacting.
My condition means my body can’t control its temperature properly so I am often extremely cold and without heating I become more unwell.
And it’s not just energy costs that are going up, it’s food, national insurance and fuel which all have a knock on effect and result in shortages of goods and bare shelves in the supermarkets.
As someone with restricted dietary requirements, the thought of not being able to buy or afford food is really frightening particularly as food banks don’t cater to specific dietary needs. There will be no one to turn too.
Poverty is a class issue. The politicians who make the decisions won’t have to choose between heating or eating. Tory chancellor Rishi Sunak, the richest man in parliament with a multi million pound fortune, has done nothing to ease the mounting pressure on ordinary working people.
The cost of living crisis will exact a horrifying toll on workers and the poorest in society. Already there are harrowing reports of food bank workers witnessing people refuse food parcels because they can’t afford to cook the contents.
What is really infuriating about this cost of living crisis is that the Tory and SNP governments both have the ability to mitigate the impact on the working class but don’t have the political will.
They could tax the richest members of society, nationalise the energy companies and other major levers of the economy under democratic workers’ control and use other financial mechanisms to ensure workers don’t bear the burden of the covid pandemic.
It’s for these reasons that the trade unions and the working class need to build a mass movement for pay and benefit rises that at least match inflation.
To fight for the nationalisation of the profiteering energy companies and for a new mass working class party to fight for the socialist policies that would put an end to capitalist greed and profit.
