It was bound to happen, given the biggest hit on living standards since the Second World War. There is a growing and spontaneous mass movement against impossible-to-manage increases in living costs.
Working class people have been staggered by the astronomical increases in energy costs, alongside the highest inflation for decades, and by a zombie government completely unwilling to address the issue.
Within days of being launched, a quarter of a million people have signed up to the Enough is Enough campaign sponsored by the CWU, Tribune magazine, Acorn, the tenants’ campaign group, the Right to Food Campaign, Fans Supporting Foodbanks, and several left Labour MPs. Mick Lynch, General Secretary of the RMT has personally endorsed the campaign, which has put forward five key demands:
1. A real pay rise
2. Slash energy bills
3. End food poverty
4. Decent homes for all
5. Tax the rich
“Fair pay, affordable bills, enough to eat and a decent place to live”, the campaign says on its website, “These aren’t luxuries – they are your rights!”
“We were founded by trade unions and community organisations determined to push back against the misery forced on millions by rising bills, low wages, food poverty, shoddy housing – and a society run only for a wealthy elite”.
The campaign aims to build up momentum to win the demands, starting with rallies across Britain and “taking action against companies and individuals profiting from this crisis.” The first London launch rally is planned for 7pm August 17, at Clapham Grand, SW11 1TT, and registration can be obtained here. Others will be planned around the rest of the country.
“We can’t rely on the establishment to solve our problems. It’s up to us in every workplace and every community.
So, if you’re struggling to get by and your wages don’t cover the bills, if you’re fed up working harder for less and you’re worried about the future, or if you just can’t stand to see what’s happening to our country – join us.
Enough is enough. It’s time to turn anger into action”.
Speaking in the campaign video (see above), Mick Lynch says: “People are fed up with the way they’re treated at work. We need to turn that mood into real organisation on behalf of the working class.”
Another trade union leader, Dave Ward, of the Communication Workers Union, told ITV News the campaign was necessary because “the country is on its knees“.
“More food banks than McDonalds, millions of people unable to pay bills, millions more taking second jobs to even survive. All of this while the rich get richer,” he said.
“This campaign is about rebalancing the economy and winning back dignity for working class people.
We will force change by taking our messaging into every single corner of the UK… It’s time for trade unions, community groups and workers to come together like we haven’t seen in decades – because that is the scale of this crisis.”
A quarter of households already in arrears on energy
Thousands of people have also signed up to a different online campaign that urges supporters not to pay their energy bills, much like the campaign against the Poll Tax in the late 1980s. But whether or not that campaign gets momentum remains to be seen, because by its very nature, it is a campaign that would tend to leave households isolated. There would always be the danger that individual households and account holders could be victimised and intimidated – threatened with the installation of a pre-payment meter, for example, or losing credit rating – into paying up what they cannot really afford.
It is clear that already, long before other predicted increases coming in October and January 2023, that more people than ever are unable to pay their bills. According to a report on the BBC website “Almost a quarter of households owe £206 on average, according to the survey of 2,000 people”.
Looking at how these campaigns have mushroomed so suddenly, what stands out is that they are overtly political campaigns. Enough is Enough calls for action against companies and individuals and taxation of the rich. What is scandalous is the massive scale of tax-dodging that the super-rich get away with, amounting to tens of billions of pounds a year. But unfortunately, what is also clear is that these campaigns are filling a political vacuum by doing precisely what the Labour Party ought to be doing, but isn’t.
Enough is Enough is filling a political vacuum left by Starmer
The very existence of a campaign of this nature stands as a rebuke to Keir Starmer and the leadership of the Labour Party, who have refused to back workers who are only trying to maintain their living standards. Starmer has not explicitly said as much, but all of his actions and statements clearly imply that he is content for workers to take cuts in living standards, if that is what it takes to avoid rocking the establishment boat.
We expect nothing from a Tory government of the rich, for the rich and by the rich. But we have the right to expect different from a Labour Party set up over a hundred years ago to represent the political interests of working class people. Labour’s right-wing leadership, Tory-lite in its entire outlook, has nothing to offer. It is utterly out of touch with the depth and the ferocity of the crisis that working people face.
No socialist will object at all to the demands and the aims of the Enough is Enough campaign and Labour Party and trade union members should be encouraged to sign up to it. Those supporting the campaign may soon number in the millions.
But Left Horizons would also argue that an essential element of a serious political campaign must mean fighting for a political party to carry through political measures. One thing logically follows another: a political campaign needs a political vehicle to make it work. An unavoidable element in any serious political fight for decent living standards, therefore, is the fight to ditch Starmer and to return the Labour Party to its working-class roots, with socialist policies in the interests of workers.
