The riot in the Harehills area of Leeds last week was a cry of rage at racism and poverty. Anger exploded on Thursday last week after police forcibly removed children from a Roma family on behalf of social services.
It’s an area that is home to several migrant communities, including people from Roma and Romanian backgrounds. And it’s also an area the council has neglected and underfunded for a long time.
Figures from the Department of Education show that children from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller (GRT) backgrounds are disproportionately taken into care. The proportion of GRT children in schools in England remained constant from 2017 to 2019, at 0.34 percent of the population.
But the proportion of GRT children in need and in local authority care over the same period rose from 0.45 percent to 0.56 percent. There is widespread anger over the treatment people face at the hands of the police.
The riot was a reflection of the bubbling anger among many in the community. Poverty is also intensely widespread.
Many migrant populations are pushed into the area, which landlords then take advantage of by exploiting their vulnerable position. Martin Bennell, a local Harehills resident, told Socialist Worker, “What is needed is more funding for local services, not support for the police that will take precedence in funding.
“Harehills is one of the poorest parts of Leeds and one of the most underfunded areas across England.” Labour home secretary Yvette Cooper called for the harshest possible punishment for those involved.
Cooper condemned rioters for being involved in “audacious criminality”—deflecting blame for the deprivation of the area that is rightly parked in part with the Labour Party. Martin added, “The response from the government has been unsurprisingly disgraceful.”
Far right use riot to whip up racism and division
The far right attempts to use last Thursday’s riot to boost racist arguments must be opposed. Nigel Farage, racist Reform UK MP for Clacton-on-Sea, posted on Twitter, within hours of the riot, “The politics of the subcontinent are playing out on the streets of Leeds.”
Reform UK consistently pushes anti-migrant rhetoric—and has seized on last week’s events as another prime opportunity. Fascist Tommy Robinson latched onto videos of the riot that were shared live on social media.
He spewed vile racism online, calling for the largely migrant residents living the area to be deported. Leeds Stand up to Racism released a statement at the weekend that said, “We condemn far right attempts to come to our communities to stir up hatred and division.
“We stand fully behind the community in Harehills and the community activists working for peace and unity. We won’t let the far right divide us. Solidarity always.”
Ongoing mobilisation for Saturday’s counter protest to Tommy Robinson in central London called by Stand Up To Racism has ever greater significance.
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Housing campaigners last summer in Islington, north London
Keir Starmer’s inadequate policy on housing will have people looking for answers. Labour promises more social and affordable homes, but without any additional money to build them.
Its policy is not based on any assessment of housing needs, such as quantifying the number of social and affordable homes required.
Apparently, to help people priced out of the housing market, we should simply help house building corporations to make bigger profits.
This is supercharged neoliberalism. In London, 65 percent of new-build homes should have been affordable in 2017-22. But in fact only 20 percent were.
In planning, Labour will change the rules so we cannot stop unaffordable or badly designed buildings via planning objections.
We must also scrap Right To Buy to stop the loss of council housing. Council housing is in crisis—3,280 high rise blocks still have life-critical fire safety defects.
A council tenant in a new flat in Haringey, north London, pays a painful £13,000 a year in rent and service charges. Yet Labour will not ban these unaffordable “affordable” rents.
Children and families will lose out, and the prospects of future generations will be blighted. We can look forward to more tenure segregation in new buildings, where tenants cannot use the same entrances or lifts as homeowners.
Twenty local authority landlords have asked the government for an immediate £644 million of funding and more in the longer term.
That’s all because their housing business plans are going into crisis. The real answer to Starmer’s lack of change is to organise in working class communities to demand more and better homes.
A first step in addressing the housing crisis is signing people up to the five-point plan produced by Homes for All and Defend Council Housing.
Paul Burnham
North London
Trump is no victim, he’s reaping what he sowed
The assassination attempt on Donald Trump may be the single act that hands him a second term as Unites States president. It is wrong to depict Trump as an innocent “victim”.
Trump encouraged and incited political violence and hate across the US in his first term. Violent extremists who once infested the margins of society were emboldened by the fact that an open racist was in the White House.
During Trump’s presidency in 2017, we saw the murder of the anti-racist Heather Heyer by a white supremacist in Charlottesville. In the wake of her murder Trump described the racists rallying there as “fine people”.
In August 2019 Patrick Crusius carried out a mass-shooting at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, murdering 20 people and injuring 26 others.
Crusius was a member of the so-called “alt-right” and a supporter of Trump. His presidency ended with the attempted coup in Washington on 6 January 2021. He reached out to violent racists such as the Proud Boys to help him retain office.
Trump has cultivated hate and incited violence as part of a political strategy throughout his career. He is reaping the hate he has sown.
Sasha Simic
East London
We can and should hold MPs to account
Jonathan Ashworth, Leicester South’s former MP, shared his frightened account of how he was chased, pitchforks and all, by constituents while campaigning with his family on election day.
He hid in a local vicarage to avoid being questioned by constituents. Local Palestine activists had suitably dubbed the former Labour MP “genocide Jon”.
The narrative that portrays Palestine protesters as masses of hateful individuals is such a false one.
In this sad story, Ashworth showed himself to be more concerned over being publicly humiliated than his inadequate response over the ongoing Israeli genocide.
It highlights why there was so much support for Independents, such as Shockat Adam who ousted him.
Joyce Cheza
Leicester
Don’t trust Royal Mail in hands of billionaire
As Daniel Kretinsky’s takeover of Royal Mail gathers pace, there are many questions being asked in workplaces. One seems to be very popular—“What will change with a new owner?”
Awful changes are already taking place due to CWU union leaders Dave Ward and Andy Furey’s “surrender agreement” with Royal Mail bosses.
A new billionaire boss is hardly going to rip it up and save the workforce now, is he? No, it’ll be even more wage squeezing, bonus looting and workload increasing on an already worn out workforce.
Add in the possibility of compulsory redundancies next year, and another dispute isn’t that far away in my view. So, I think the answer is that it doesn’t matter who is in charge of Royal Mail Group—the fight remains the same.
Gary Smith
Postal worker in Coventry
Organising is what can win
Reading Socialist Worker’s article on heat in workplaces (10 July), I say get organised at work. Don’t wait for bosses or union leaders who sit in their air conditioned offices. In 1975 to 1984 I was a shop steward in a hospital laundry.
We organised morning and afternoon tea breaks. We also got orange juice with ice when needed—paid for by the hospital. Workers united will never be defeated.
Mike Archer
Cornwall
Off with all their heads
The king’s speech serves as a grim reminder of the backwardness of politics in Britain. It promised stability and security for the richest in society, as per Labour’s new fiscal rules.
King Charles Windsor made shallow remarks about the “cost of living challenges” from atop his throne. Under a new government and king, we can expect to see the same crises of the system.
Let’s build a revolutionary movement strong enough to take their heads off.
Archie Duffin
Edinburgh
Beware Sir Kid Starver
The very fact that there was no proposal in the king’s speech to remove the two-child benefit limit should be a warning. This evil cut was introduced by the Tories in April 2017.
It means that families cannot claim universal or child tax credit for more than two children born after this date.
When Tony Blair was elected in 1997, the trade union leaders gave the Labour government a honeymoon period. Labour took a long time to implement any changes. And there’s a real danger that union leaders could repeat that grave mistake.
Striking security guards in Hackney, east London (Picture: @PCS_union on Twitter)
Almost 1,400 security guards in job centres finished off their latest seven-day strike on Sunday last week—and they’re already planning the next round.
Around 360 workers in the PCS union and over 1,000 workers in GMB union are fighting together for better pay.
Hundreds of strikers from both unions rallied in Westminster, central London, on Wednesday last week.
Veemal Gourdeale, a GMB member who works as a relief officer at sites across London, told Socialist Worker, “People with families can’t make ends meet.”
Outsourcing giant G4S only pays the security guards minimum wage despite raking in millions of pounds every year. And bosses are trying to break the dispute by using scab workers—who are being paid almost £2 an hour more than strikers.
Bosses recently offered strikers an insulting 23p extra an hour. And workers are looking to throw G4S out of the contract. Neio, who’s worked as a job centre security guard for 20 years told Socialist Worker, “The only solution is to get rid of G4S.”
Eamon O’Hearn from GMB said, “The DWP and G4S have happily overseen hundreds of days lost to job centre closures, and security guards go hungry on poverty pay.” “Things have changed and these workers will not give up their fight.
“Now G4S is paying more for agency staff than its own guards to break the strikes. “DWP has to do the right thing and step in.” Both unions are warning that more job centres would shut if the dispute isn’t sorted.
Workers are set to walk out for another seven days from Monday next week. They are due to picket in dozens of job centres across England.
Dáire Cumiskey
‘We save lives but would earn more making coffee’
Hundreds of healthcare workers in Plymouth struck for three days last week in a fight over pay banding and backpay.
Healthcare assistants, maternity care assistants, imaging care assistants and clinical support workers for University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust walked out last Wednesday.
They have joined thousands of other Unison union members across England in a fight to have their clinical skills recognised and their job descriptions updated. The workers are currently in band 2, the lowest in the NHS, and are demanding to be regraded as band 3.
That would mean an increase of up to £2,000 a year—and back pay of up to five years. Imaging care assistant and Unison rep Leon Shrigley said, “I love my job. But we all feel very taken for granted. The hospital couldn’t function without us.
“We care for people who are very unwell and work in a high-pressure acute situation. “My colleagues and I regularly perform clinical observations and CPR resuscitation.
“It’s insulting when you think that we could all earn more an hour working as a barista in a coffee shop.”
Local government pay ballots are coming
A massive local government strike over pay could be coming in Scotland. Cosla, the local authority employment body, wants workers to take an offer that in cash terms is just 3.2 percent over one year.
Workers in waste, recycling and street cleanings in 12 councils and one arms-length management organisation have voted to strike. They want wages that outstrip inflation, and reflect how underpaid they’ve been for years.
Unison Scotland head of local government David O’Connor said, “Council workers deserve a wage that reflects their essential roles.
“With over 95 percent of those voting saying they are ready to take industrial action, it demonstrates how they feel, not only about the pay offer, but how undervalued they are feeling generally.”
And this week, some 38,000 early years, school and family centre workers will vote over strikes. “If they vote to strike, then schools will also be closing in September,” said O’Connor.
“Cosla and the Scottish government have to understand the anger amongst local government workers. They feel let down. The only way they can get government to listen is to threaten strikes.”
He said that workers’ pay had dropped “25 percent over the past 14 years”. To win the workers’ union needs to be prepared to bring them out on strike, not just threaten it.
Some 360,000 social workers, teaching assistants, planning officers, caretakers and other school and council staff are also voting over strikes in England and Wales.
The Unison members voted in a consultation over the 2024-25 wage rise for local authority and school workers and 81 percent rejected the offer of £1,290.
The offer has been accepted by the GMB union members but rejected by Unison and the Unite union. Unison members will vote from 4 September to 16 October.
Bin walkout for union recognition
Nearly 100 refuse workers in Sheffield are set to cause a stink by striking this month. The action will bring the city’s bin collections to a standstill.
The workers employed by outsourcing company Veolia from the Lumley Street depot are striking because bosses are refusing to allow collective bargaining agreements with the Unite union.
That’s despite the union saying it represents around 80 percent of the depot’s workforce. Bosses claim the GMB union is the sole trade union representative.
Drivers and loaders are set to walk out from Monday next week to Friday next week. Unite also has a national bargaining agreement with Veolia across numerous depots across Britain.
Dock workers down tools for colleague
Ellesmere port dock workers employed by GAC at the Queen Elizabeth II Dock on Merseyside are voting for strikes after bosses fired their colleague.
Bosses at GAC fired the worker for “refusing a reasonable working request”. This “request” was a change in hours which meant he could not care for his disabled mother.
He informed the company he could not comply with the new rota due to being her primary caregiver. The workers, who are jetty operators in the Unite union, are voting until Tuesday next week.
Bus win for drivers in Merseyside…
Bus drivers employed by Stagecoach Merseyside voted on a new pay offer last week. They’ve accepted a new 6.4 percent pay offer which will reduce the gap between themselves and other drivers in the area.
It follows a six-day strike by the 500 drivers. Their Unite union cancelled four further days of action while the strikers voted.
..and another bus win in Bedfordshire
Some 140 bus drivers in Bedfordshire won a pay rise against their bosses at Stagecoach Cambus. The drivers, who are in Unite, won a 15.9 percent pay rise over the next two years backdated to May 2024.
Unite says that an 11.4 percent rise will be applied within six months with a further rise in June 2025. The drivers were due to walk out on for 14 days across July and August but Unite called action off as a “goodwill gesture”.
The drivers earned just £13.46 an hour while others in the area got over £15.
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Protesters in London have marched for months to stop the genocide and bombings (Picture: Guy Smallman)
The prospect of a wider Middle East war took a big step forwards last weekend as Israeli jets bombed a port in Yemen. The airstrikes targeted a power station as well as gas and oil depots around the Red Sea port of Hodeidah. Israeli attacks were directed against Houthi fighters that have declared solidarity with the Palestinian struggle.
Israeli admiral Daniel Hagari boasted that the operation was “one of the farthest and longest ever conducted by the Israeli air force”. He said that Israel’s missiles specifically targeted “dual use” facilities. That means they hit parts of the port that are crucial for goods, including desperately needed food and oil destined for the some of the world’s most impoverished people.
The ministry of health in Sana, Yemen’s capital, said the attack killed at least six people and wounded a further 80, most of them with severe burns. Last week the Houthi resistance claimed responsibility for a long-range drone that struck Tel Aviv, killing one Israeli and wounding several others.
Far right politician Avigdor Lieberman urged the Israeli air force to go further, saying, “We must not be satisfied with a one-time blow—we must completely destroy the port of Hodeidah.” That message will find a willing audience in Binyamin Netanyahu’s war cabinet.
It hopes to draw the West into a conflict that targets Iran and forces allied to it. Israeli forces are primed for further attacks on Lebanon and Syria—knowing that Britain and the United States will not likely stand in its way. President Joe Biden’s Middle East policy faces in opposing directions. He was more than happy to unite with Britain to launch attacks on Yemen in January after Houthi fighters targeted Red Sea shipping.
But he worries that a broader conflict could destabilise the whole Middle East region and fears a revolt like the Arab Spring more than a decade ago. That’s why the US National Security Council was quick to say it was not involved with Israel’s bombing—despite the US having provided both the planes and bombs.
Israel’s “surgical” and “moral” approach to attacking Gaza was in evidence again last Saturday as its bombs killed some 64 Palestinians. Its strike on a United Nations-run school in the Nuseirat refugee camp killed some 23 people.
“These were civilians who were killed. These were children who were torn up in the strike, there’s nothing left of them,” one man yelled as he showed a white tarp covering body parts. Meanwhile, footage on social media appears to show an Israeli strike targeting a donkey cart pulling civilians in Rafah, southern Gaza.
The footage shows an aerial view of the attack. Palestinians in Gaza have been using donkey carts to move around or to transport the dead and wounded in the absence of fuel and lack of ambulances.
Solidarity with Hadid
Sporstwear firm Adidas has dropped pro-Palestinian model Bella Hadid from an advertising campaign after Israeli genocide apologists barraged the firm with complaints. Israel supporters were incensed when Adidas announced the half-Palestinian woman would be fronting the campaign for its SL-72 trainers.
They made a spurious claim that because Adidas named the shoes for the 1972 Olympics, they are intrinsically linked to the Palestinian attack on Israeli athletes at the Munich games. The argument is nonsense, designed only to silence pro-Palestine voices.
Hadid, whose father is Palestinian, has repeatedly made public remarks criticising the Israeli government and supporting Palestinians. Adidas apologised last week for the “offence” it had given. And it sacked Hadid, whose demands for human rights were deemed to be an insult to Zionists.
British cash to resume after Zionist deceptions
Britain will resume funding for Unwra, the United Nations (UN) agency for Palestinian refugees. Foreign secretary David Lammy conceded last week that Israel had provided no evidence for its claims that the agency and its staff were linked to the Palestinian resistance groups. Most Western states cut their funding to Unwra in January after Israel claimed that more than 2,135 agency employees, out of a total of 13,000 in Gaza were members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad.
By withholding funds the West helped spread death among Palestinians. French foreign minister Catherine Colonna conducted a formal investigation into Israel’s claims. In April she found that Israel is “yet to provide supporting evidence” for them. Yet it has taken months for Britain and other Western states to resume their funding. President Joe Biden is still refusing to reinstate US aid. Biden said the US would instead build a floating pier for its aid ships to dock at. But the pier has already been destroyed by waves.
Israel is an apartheid state
Israel’s occupation of Palestine is “unlawful” and breaches laws concerning apartheid. That’s the conclusion the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations’ top court, handed down in an advisory opinion last week. The decision will pile even more pressure on Western states, including Britain, that give Israel political cover for its genocidal war in Gaza.
The court found that Israel’s “near-complete separation” of people in the Palestinian Occupied Territories and the West Bank breached laws concerning “racial segregation” and “apartheid”. For Keir Starmer’s government the decision will be a source of embarrassment. Labour has since 2023 effectively banned its members from describing Israel as an apartheid state.
Delivering the court’s findings, ICJ president Nawaf Salam said that Israel must make reparations to Palestinians for damages caused by its occupation. And, he added, the United Nations Security Council, its General Assembly and all states have an obligation to not recognise Israel’s occupation as legal. Independent MP for Blackburn Adnan Hussain said the ICJ’s advisory opinion is a “historic moment for international justice, and confirms what the Palestinians, legal scholars and human rights community have been saying all along”.
He called for governments around the world, including Britain, to divest from “trade with occupied territories considered illegal under international law”. Labour, unsurprisingly, sought cover for Israel by focusing solely on the question of illegal settlements, which it opposes—and refused to engage with the court’s wider decision.
Things they say
‘You besmirch the presidency’
Backbench Labour MP David Lammy has some thoughts for Donald Trump in 2017
‘Trump is not only a woman-hating, neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath…’
Backbench Labour MP David Lammy in 2018
‘…he is also a profound threat to the international order’ Backbench Labour MP David Lammy continues
‘My job is to represent the national interests of this country’
Freshly minted foreign secretary David Lammy signals a coming change in attitude toward Trump
‘We’re both Christians so I think I can find common ground with JD Vance’
Foreign secretary David Lammy on Donald Trump’s running mate who calls Britain an ‘Islamist state’
‘Would not be right to have a blanket ban’
Foreign secretary David Lammy wants Britain to keep seelinmg arms to Israel
Labour home secretary Yvette Cooper smiling with police as Labour launches new raids on refugees (Picture: UK Home Office)
The Home Office is launching a “summer blitz of illegal immigration raids”. This is the type of news readers might expect from a Tory government. But this is new Labour home secretary Yvette Cooper’s plan.
Cooper will redeploy over 1,000 staff from the failed Rwanda deportation scheme to instead round up refugees whose asylum claims have been rejected. They will target migrants from countries including Vietnam and workplaces such as car washes, beauty salons and nail bars. Cooper will then instruct the Home Office to deport people more quickly.
Labour claims this is to “smash the criminal gangs”. “Most people in this country want to see a properly controlled and managed asylum system,” Cooper wrote in the right wing Sun newspaper, “where those who have no right to be in the country are swiftly removed”.
Rounding up and deporting people does nothing to target gangs—it only leaves desperate people in more dangerous and precarious situations. Cooper will also lay out plans this week to allow refugees earmarked for Rwanda the opportunity to claim asylum.
Under the Tories, anyone who came to Britain without documentation in the last 18 months could not have their claims processed. Labour wants to clear the asylum backlog to save money on housing refugees in hotels—and kick people out faster.
As of April this year, 102,888 refugees were waiting for a decision. The Refugee Council estimates that 70 percent will be granted asylum. But anyone who has suffered under the Tories’ vicious asylum system should be supported by the new Labour government.
Meanwhile, another refugee died trying to cross the English Channel in an overcrowded dinghy last Wednesday. Coastguards rescued 71 people after a vessel deflated just off Gravelines, near Calais, France.
This is the fifth drowning under Keir Starmer’s Labour government after four refugees drowned the previous week trying to leave northern France. But Starmer is ploughing on with his war against smuggling gangs.
He recently pledged £84 million for projects in Africa and the Middle East to stop “illegal migration at the source”. This includes helping Syrian, Jordanian, Lebanese and North and East African refugees access education and jobs.
But better job opportunities won’t stop refugees fleeing war-torn countries or from corrupt regimes.
Starmer recently said “illegal migration” needed to be tackled “upstream”. Yet smuggling gangs are able to operate because there are no safe routes for refugees to enter Britain.
And Starmer hasn’t ruled out offshoring refugees for processing. He said, “I’m a pragmatist and I’ve always said we’ll look at what works.”
That pragmatism has led to the deaths of five refugees. Anti-racists need to fight the Starmer government’s racism and scapegoating of migrants and refugees.
Students protests against the government in Bangladesh (Picture: Rayhan9d Wikicommons)
Thousands of protesters have exploded onto the streets of Bangladesh challenging the rule of right wing prime minister Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League (AL) party.
For more than a week the vast student movement has been locked in deadly clashes with paramilitary police and armed supporters of the prime minister.
They are demonstrating against a quota system for public sector jobs, which discriminates against those not connected to the ruling party.
Hasina responded by calling protesters “Razakar,” an offensive term used to describe those who collaborated with Pakistan during the 1971 independence war.
That was a signal to her supporters to attack the students with the utmost brutality. Heavily armed pro-government forces last week shot at demonstrators with live ammunition.
According to India’s Hindustan Times newspaper, at least 133 people have been killed so far while hundreds more are severely injured.
Social media videos show police firing at protesters at point blank range while they allow pro‑government thugs to rampage.
Throwing One eyewitness said, “We had nothing in our hands. We only had placards and flags. They started throwing bricks at us and then [hit us] with iron rods.”
And students say Hasina has ranged every part of the state, including university authorities, against them.
One medical student at Dhaka university said that when an armed gang stormed his campus, the college authorities simply watched from their offices.
“We were in front of the registrar building [and] I saw some of the university officials watching from above,” he said.
“We were trying to escape [but] the office buildings were locked up. We pleaded to be let in, but no one opened the doors. It is not just failure— this is complicity.”
Last Thursday, protesters set fire to at least two government buildings in Dhaka, the capital, including Bangladesh’s national television station.
The state responded the next day by declaring a nationwide curfew and ordering the army to patrol the streets. Hasina has given them a “shoot to kill” order.
Authorities have also cut internet and phone networks. In an emergency measure last Sunday the country’s top court scrapped much of the quota that triggered the uprising.
But the court stopped short of outlawing the job allocation scheme, meaning the system of patronage and corruption remains.
As Socialist Worker went to press there were signs that some protesters were staying on the streets.
The key for them now must be to spread the action to millions of workers in the textiles factories, clothing sweatshops, the railways and the docks.
Together they have the power to bring down this discredited and violent regime.
Decades of corruption and inequality are behind this summer’s protests
Students started mass protests against a government quota scheme for public sector jobs in the beginning of July.
They were furious that prime minister Sheikh Hasina had reinstated a rule that says 30 percent of public sector jobs be reserved for the families of “freedom fighters”.
Freedom fighters are those that took up arms against Pakistan’s rule of Bangladesh—then known as West Pakistan—in the 1971 liberation war.
The 1972 government designed the quota as a reward for those that had fought in the war.
But it quickly became a way of institutionalising support for the Awami League party, which had helped lead the resistance.
More than 50 years later the quota was still in place and giving preference to fighters’ grandchildren—while discriminating against all others. Anger over jobs goes deeper than the quota.
Millions of young people across South Asia emerge from university with excellent qualifications but are then unable to find work to match them.
They form a vast pool of under‑used labour, forced to compete for jobs that they are over-qualified for. More than one-third of graduates in Bangladesh remain unemployed two years after graduation.
No wonder then that some 8,000 people apply for each public sector job, prizing them for the better security and pay they offer compared to the private sector.
For the vast majority of the people the system rejects, there is resentment and anger. That mood is compounded by a government that rules by circumventing democracy and encouraging corruption.
Elections in the country are fixed, and the right to protest and organise trade unions are permanently under attack.
Meanwhile, the government buttresses the growing power of the rich by giving them state contracts, bought-off ministers and security forces to protect them from those they exploit.
Striking teachers on the march in London last year fighting for pay (Picture: Guy Smallman)
The government’s independent pay review bodies are expected to recommend a 5.5 percent pay rise for teachers and NHS workers. But chancellor Rachel Reeves didn’t rush to say the Labour government would implement it.
She said there is a “cost in not settling” pay negotiations last weekend, but made no concrete promises. A 5.5 percent increase is an above-inflation pay rise for the 514,000 teachers and about 1.3 million NHS workers that the review bodies cover. It would cost Labour an extra £3 billion to pay it. It’s a step in the right direction.
But there’s a very long way to go to undo the horrendous cuts and austerity that the Tories implemented over their 14 years of government. And there’s plenty of money for Labour to do that. A 2 percent wealth tax on assets over £10 million could generate nearly £24 billion a year and affect just 0.04 percent of the population.
Labour has pledged to increase military spending from 2.3 percent to 2.5 percent, increasing spending from £54.2 billion a year to £87 billion a year by 2030. Taxing the hoarding of wealth by the rich or spending less on war and weapons could easily provide the funds required.
A pay offer must also be fully funded. Schools and hospitals would be unable to meet a 5.5 percent pay rise from their existing budgets without making cuts elsewhere. Education workers say a rise that’s funded by cuts to other areas is unacceptable.
Pablo Phillips, NEU education union joint district and branch secretary for Waltham Forest, told Socialist Worker, “If the rise isn’t fully funded then all it does is shift pressure to schools to manage their budgets. That creates conflict between teachers and management. Teachers don’t want to feel like they are getting pay rises at the expense of school children or their fellow workers.” Education workers’ pay needs to rise a lot faster to tackle the recruitment and retention crisis in schools.
Pablo added, “What you need is a plan for above inflation pay rises over the next few years.” The NEU says, “Once the government makes a pay offer for September, we’ll ask members whether they want to accept or reject it. Our snap poll will run from 21 to 30 September.” Workers should keep fighting for pay restoration and be prepared to take hard-hitting action to have their demands met.
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While over 1.6 million children languish in poverty due to the two-child benefit cap, a Labour official described keeping it as a “virility test” for the new government.
The remarks came as Keir Starmer faced down a rebellion among Labour MPs this week over his refusals to scrap the Tory policy in the King’s Speech.
The Labour official said Starmer was worried about being “seen to lose its first fight with the Labour left”. Chancellor Rachel Reeves tried to deflect blame, saying the previous Tory government had “left it to us” to make the “tough decisions”. But when Reeves and other politicians talk of “tough decisions”, it’s never about being tough on the super-rich.
It always means making life harder for working class people like mother of three Roxanne, a social worker from South Wales. “There is an awful lot more financial pressure because of my third child—I’ve ended up having to work extra hours,” she told Socialist Worker. “But then you have to pay childcare costs and you can’t claim for the third child. The more you’re working the less time you have with the girls and, as a single mum, there’s a lot more guilt for not being around.”
Roxanne explained that, under Universal Credit rules, “the more you work the less money you get”. “Childcare costs are absolutely extortionate and a lot of childcare only covers Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm,” she said. “I work in social care where a lot of it is unsociable hours.” The Tory cap restricts welfare payments to the first two children, meaning those with more children born after April 2017 miss out on up to £3,500 per year per child.
Abolishing it would cost between £2.5 billion and £3.6 billion, according to the Resolution Foundation. The think tank said the cost was “low compared to the harm the policy causes” for children’s education, health and quality of life. Roxanne, who works in children’s social care, explained that there’s “more intervention” when children are in poverty.
She described how social services “have to get involved when mums cannot afford food”. And “more children are coming into the system” because “families aren’t coping”. Labour claims it’s unaffordable, but the money is there to scrap the cap—and much more.
The Green Party, for example, called for scrapping the cap through increasing capital gains tax to raise £16 billion a year. This move would hit a small minority of rich people by taxing capital gains—profits from selling shares or second homes—at the same rate as income tax.
But even such a mild measure is too much for Starmer because he wants to reassure toffs that Labour is no threat to them. Starmer announced a new task force to “devise a strategy to drive down” child poverty.
Children in poverty don’t need a task force. They need a boost to welfare provision—and it will take campaigning outside parliament to force Labour to deliver.
