British capitalism is in the throes of a deep economic crisis. To sustain an adequate rate of profit on investments, capitalism must force down wages. Benefit levels are being cut to the bone to force claimants into poverty-pay work just to survive. State benefit levels are now so low that recipients are unable to afford regular meals for themselves and their children. The state however relies on the working class to seek out means of survival, and a whole system of privatised charity has now arisen to meet their mounting needs, in particular foodbanks. Charities such as the Trussell Trust now function as a necessary adjunct to the state benefit system, allowing the state to calculate that however much it cuts benefits levels, charitable foodbanks will ensure that no one starves. Regardless of their intent, therefore, foodbank providers have become an essential element of the system pauperising increasing sections of the working class. Foodbanks let the government and the state off the hook for providing decent conditions for those requiring benefits. They exist because the Labour Party and the trade unions do not have the intention of fighting for the needs of the working class as a whole. MARK MONCADA reports.
In June 2023, the Trussell Trust published an in-depth study, Hunger in the UK.
- It found that: nearly half (47%) of households facing food insecurity include children under 16.
- 14% of all adults or their households (11.3 million people) experienced food insecurity in the 12 months to mid-2022. More than two-thirds of these did not received any food aid at all, meaning that figures on food bank usage do not capture the full picture of hunger.
With food inflation currently at 17.4%, this picture is worsening by the day. But what the report makes plain is that it is the very design of the benefits system that is the ‘most significant cause of the financial insecurity that is driving the need for food banks’. This includes pitifully low benefit levels, punitive sanctions and caps. The state is forcing the poorest sections of the working class to turn to charity by design.
State-sponsored immiseration
Benefits have been systematically lowered and rationed through the introduction of the Bedroom Tax, the Overall Benefit Cap, the sanctions regime, the five-week wait for the initial Universal Credit (UC) payment, the scrapping of the pandemic-era £20 uplift to UC and the two-child limit on the level of child benefit payments. The former prime minister Theresa May brought in the two-child limit in 2017 with the explicit purpose of forcing parents with ‘large’ families into work or to work more hours by ending their right to claim child tax credits or UC for any third or subsequent child born after April 2017. It is estimated to affect 1.5 million children; abolishing the limit would immediately lift 250,000 children out of poverty and a further 850,000 children out of deep poverty.
A key feature of the increasing impoverishment of the working class is that one in five people referred to food banks in the Trussell Trust network are in working households. With 3.7 million people (12% of the workforce) earning less than the real living wage, work is not a way out of poverty but a means to keep you there. Seven in ten children in poverty live in households where at least one adult is working. In the North East, 21.5% of children in poverty live in households where all the adults are working. It has become normalised that increasing sections of the working class are in employment and still unable to make ends meet.
Labour: a false hope for the working class
Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer repeats ad nauseum that he is a ‘responsible’ Labour politician and wants a ‘responsible Labour government’ which abides by ‘strict fiscal rules’. He is determined to convince the ruling class that Labour will enforce the destitution of the working class more efficiently than the incumbent government. He has made a point of refusing to commit to abolishing the two-child cap on benefits or the Bedroom Tax, or to providing all children with free school meals. Fiscal probity requires the continued immiseration of the working class. Not that Labour politicians have a conscience about it: Rachel Reeves, now Shadow Chancellor, spelled it out quite clearly in 2015 when she said, ‘We are not the party of people on benefits. We don’t want to be seen, and we’re not, the party to represent those out of work.’ Reeves received an Anya Hindmarch handbag and contents worth £1,250 following a recent talk she gave at a technology investors’ meeting – clearly an acceptable benefit. More recently, Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting justified Labour’s trampling on the working class when he declared: ‘No hope is better than false hope.’ This is someone who is on more than £86,000 a year as an MP, and who receives tens of thousands of pounds from MPM Connect, a shadowy company with no website or public face.
Trade union leaders like Unite’s Sharon Graham may warn that Labour’s ‘vision’ is ‘not bold enough’, but this is pure obfuscation. The reality is that the trade unions have always washed their hands of the vast mass of workers, whether unemployed or in casualised and precarious employment. Labour will defend the needs of the capitalist class on the backs of the working class.
Bring out the pitchforks
Food banks and charities, under increasing pressure, will not be able to act as a safety net forever. At a meeting in June hosted by the Spears Wealth Management group – an association of the super-rich and their advisers – at the five-star Savoy hotel in London, speakers warned that the increasing gap between rich and poor that is a key feature of the crisis was driving a ‘real risk of insurrection’. One said that, unless the most affluent invested some of their money in ‘humanitarian efforts’ to alleviate the suffering of the poor, they would have to watch out for ‘pitchforks and torches’ on the streets. The ruling class can see clearly that whether under a Conservative or Labour government, the unbearable and unrelenting attack on the living standards of the working class will ultimately face resistance on the streets of Britain. We say: bring it on. The options are fight back or starve. Get out those pitchforks.
FIGHT RACISM! FIGHT IMPERIALISM! 295 August/September 2023
