The People’s Assembly Against Austerity was founded in 2013 in response to the Coalition government’s austerity measures which were disproportionately harming disadvantaged groups including low-paid workers, people with disabilities and people from black, minority and ethnic communities.
It was hoped austerity would end when the Tories lost the general election last year and that a Labour government – even a right wing Labour government – would seek to reverse some of the worst impacts of more than a decade of cuts.
But the cuts haven’t been reversed and Labour has proven itself to be no panacea.
- Hospitals are in crisis
- Schools are in crisis
- Special Needs provision is in crisis
- Housing is in crisis
- Emergency Services are in crisis
- Communities are in crisis
Crisis is a term heard so often that crisis has come now just to mean a ticking over. A tick, tick, ticking over timebomb.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Cut. Cut. Cut.
Cuts
This Labour government is cutting millions for the most vulnerable – the poor, the disabled, themarginalised.
This Labour government is not investing the necessary millions to revive Health and Education or to pay fair wages.
This Labour government has chosen – chosen – to not lift the two child benefit cap; a cruelty knowing this would lift the lives and safeguard futures of poor families, poor children.
To make further cuts when people have already been suffering from the impact of years of cuts, is insufferable.
And when people are suffering – along comes Reform and along comes the far right to tell us they have the answers. We need to defend our communities from them.
Last year over two million families used foodbanks. Reform with its rhetoric of blame wants to sustain a two-tier society of the haves and have nots. Reform is not the answer to inequality or to poverty. And far right hate is not going to put food on the table.
Work
Keir Starmer says the route out of poverty is work. Yet 70% of children living in poverty have one or more parent working. So work in itself isn’t the answer.
Work does not pay when you are employed on a zero hours contract. Work does not pay when pay Is low and the hours are long and the conditions unfair. Work does not pay when the powers of the trade unions to organise and protect their members have been diminished in laws that this Labour government has chosen not to reverse.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves says she has the answer, spending billions on her plan to transform the UK into a “defence super power”, stockpiling weapons funded through welfare cuts.
How can economic security come from cutting welfare? Well it won’t.
- £6.4 million will be cut from health and disability benefits by 2030
- 3.2 million families will lose an average of £1720 annually, over £140 less each month
- Rising employment costs and employer National Insurance contributions have reduced recruitment plans and led to job cuts
- The economy has forecasts for poor growth and inflation pressures, limiting fiscal flexibility
If jobs are the answer to lifting people out of poverty, then the ground for jobs must be fertile.
Demonstration
The People’s Assembly Against Austerity is planning a huge demonstration against Labour’s Austerity 2.0 in June and will be bringing together trade unions, campaign groups and community organisations to take messages to Keir Starmer and his government:
- No More Austerity
- Welfare Not Warfare
- Stop The Far Right
- Stop The Cuts
By sticking to her arbitrary fiscal rules, Rachel Reeves is plunging this country into a deepening crisis. By spending money on arms rather than public services, social security, schools and our NHS, this government is actively impoverishing us all.
Austerity wears people down. Poverty wears people down. Austerity is not an inevitability; it us a deliberate and political choice. It is a strategic choice to limit change and hinder fightback, retaining wealth and privilege for the few.
The People’s Assembly say No to Austerity 2.0 and we mean it.
The People’s Assembly say schools need books not bombs.
The People’s Assembly say hospitals need beds not bombs.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
Prepare to get out on the streets on 7 June and join us in telling the government how serious we are. Solidarity.
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