‘Of particular concern is over a third of low-income families with children cutting back on food for their children – this is a last resort and … not something you choose.’ Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Going under and without, December 2022
Poverty and hunger stalk the land. By last November, already more than 10% of the population was regularly going without food. Nearly four million children are growing up in poverty. Thousands of households are unable to adequately heat their homes. For the poorest sections of the working class in Britain, these are desperate times indeed. Yet the number of billionaires living in Britain is at an all-time high, and by the end of 2021 there were 2.85 million millionaires resident in this country (Credit Suisse, 2022). That’s a figure roughly parallel with the number of food parcels distributed by the Trussell Trust food bank last year. The British prime minister, Rishi Sunak, and his wife Akshata Murty have achieved near-billionaire status, with a combined wealth of £730m. Tory MP Jacob Rees Mogg is said to be worth £100m, as is, notoriously, the former Conservative Party chair Nadim Zahawi. The Home Secretary Suella Braverman and Chancellor Jeremy Hunt are also worth millions. Is it any surprise then that the system is run entirely in the interests of the rich and their continuing ability to accrue profits, while the working class is forced into ever greater destitution?
Inequality on the rise
The cost-of-living crisis has left 90% of low-income households on Universal Credit (UC) forced to go without even the absolute basics: food, a warm home, hot water, winter clothing, refrigerators and washing machines, toiletries, dental treatment, prescriptions, pain relief and essential journeys. It has become impossible for increasing numbers of people to sustain any semblance of a decent standing of living.
In November 2022, six million adults – 11% – reported going hungry in the past month. Significant sections of claimants were going for days surviving on one meal a day, or nothing at all, not even a slice of bread. The Trussell Trust has spoken of a ‘tsunami of need’, with 7,000 emergency food parcels a day being distributed over the winter. In South Shields in the northeast, local press reported a young woman who had fainted from hunger after trudging two miles with her young children to get to a food bank; she and her partner had been going without food to keep their children fed. Both were in work. It’s a picture being repeated a hundred-fold up and down the country. Half of all Britain’s health trusts are now opening their own food banks for staff.
Meanwhile, the filthy rich gorge themselves in Michelin Star restaurants like Sola in Soho, London, at £337 a head. Chef patron of Sola, Victor Garvey, stated, ‘There’s no such thing as overpriced… If you’re charging something and people are willing to pay it, somebody’s opinion on it doesn’t really matter.’ November and December 2022 brought in record profits for Sola. According to the Equality Trust, the number of billionaires in Britain increased from 15 in 1990 to 177 in 2022; their combined wealth rose from £53.9bn to more than £653bn over that period – an increase of over 1,000%. In stark contrast, the Resolution Foundation predicts that household income falls this year will be as big as last year, which saw the largest annual fall in a century. There will be an additional 800,000 people in poverty in 2023-24 compared with 2021-22.
Squeezing the poor
The government has touted its cost-of-living support payments as a panacea for economic hardship. In reality, as the JRF report makes clear, these payments have been nowhere near sufficient to stop millions of families plunging deeper into poverty.
- 7.2 million households in the bottom 40% of incomes are going without essentials.
- A quarter of low-income private renters face eviction.
- Over three million households have not been able to afford to keep their homes warm since June. These numbers will increase as energy bills rise again in April 2023 and government support is cut back.
- Around four in ten low-income households have no or very few savings. A quarter of the poorest households have little choice but to get into debt with a loan shark, payday lender, or pawnshop by taking out a high-cost loan. Around half are in arrears with these loans.
Even more are in hock to the biggest loan shark of all – the British state. In its Debt and Deductions report, the Trussell Trust details the insidious practice of making deductions from already meagre benefits. Reasons can include: a benefit overpayment; an advance payment; a DWP loan; a local council debt; or a third-party debt (rent arrears, utility bills or court fines). People are often forced into receiving an advance payment because of the initial five-week wait to receive the first UC payment. This then ties them into a debt cycle. In May 2022, of 4.7 million UC claims, 2.1 million had deductions totalling £130.5m. This equates to around £1.6bn deducted from UC every year, a huge sum siphoned from the poorest. 47% of people who are referred to food banks have had their or their partner’s benefits reduced because of deductions.
No salvation with Labour, no solution under capitalism
In January, Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, scenting possible election victory two years down the line, went into overdrive to reassure the capitalist class that Labour would be a safe pair of hands for their continued enrichment. His future government, he promised, would be ‘fiscally disciplined’; there would be no ‘big government chequebook’ and definitely no wealth taxes. He is himself, of course, a multimillionaire. Asked recently if she agreed with Peter Mandelson’s famous dictum of being ‘intensely relaxed about the super-rich’, Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves equivocated, making it clear that she was certainly not against people getting rich, and had no intention of taxing them harder (The Times, 7 January 2023).
The ranks of the impoverished are swelling, with more and more people ensnared in a daily struggle to survive. Capitalism cannot solve the problem of deepening poverty because it is the cause of the problem. Only socialism can provide for the working class. The alternative is abject misery and destitution. Something has got to give. It is time to fight back.
Mark Moncada
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 292 February/March 2023
