Enough is Enough!

Corbyn at the Kings Cross rally

by Ed Newman

Thousands of people took to the streets across the country last weekend to protest against the rising cost of living and inflation. The "Enough is Enough" rallies, organised by trade unions and climate change activists, were held over the weekend in all the major cities, including Birmingham, Glasgow, Manchester and London.
    "People can't continue to live like this," said Tim, one of the protesters outside London's Kings Cross station, demanding a pay rise to match rising inflation, unprecedented in 40 years. "I have colleagues at work who have worked out their weekly money and they can't afford to actually live once they pay their fuel bills and once they pay all the other rising costs," he said.
    "One of my colleagues, his rent's gone up 17 per cent just last week, 17 per cent! We're not getting any kind of pay raise like that. Our pay raise at the moment was something about 8 per cent. That's a massive pay cut for us," he noted. "That's why we're here today. Supporting the RMT (Maritime and Transport Union) and the CWU (Communication Workers Union), the post office (who) are on strike today, as well, because it's time for working people to get together and to take action."
    Helen, another protester at King’s Cross, said she was there because she was against the current right-wing government. She said the country's latest prime minister is "on the far, far right ... people are going to really suffer in all sorts of ways." "And we don't know where it's going to end. We need to get rid of them. We need to get rid of this Tory government."
    Helen also said the mini-budget, which gave massive tax cuts for those earning more than £150,000, would be "disastrous for this country." "I mean, we need to sort of seize the initiative on the left and get rid of these people. I mean, it means real hardship for people. It means it affects pensions. It affects people's rents, people's mortgages, people's gas bills, everything. People don't afford it."
    More than half the public do not have confidence in Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss to perform at the highest levels as a world leader, according to a recent poll. Describing the mini-budget as a measure "for the rich" some protesters said: "We are determined to survive and we're demanding caring for all those who care for people and the planet, the land, the environment, their home, and the community."
    “ We think that's the only way we can survive and save the planet ... We're demanding back all the money that's been stolen, that belongs to us. We intend to get it back".
    The pound has plunged to an all-time low against the dollar with investors looking for exits after the new Tory government’s fiscal plan threatened to stretch the crisis-battered country's finances to breaking point.
    Many Brits blame the Tories for the financial crisis. Labour leader Keir Starmer has promised to revive the economy, improve public services and take the government out of an “endless cycle of crisis” if he is chosen to lead the country at its next general elections.
    At his party’s annual conference in Liverpool last week, Starmer attacked the Conservatives' decision to cut taxes for the wealthiest amid a major cost of living crisis, urging voters not to “forget” or “forgive” the moves ahead of an anticipated national vote in 2024.
    Starmer insisted Labour was once again “the party of the centre ground” and promised to fix the UK’s ailing economy, revitalise the country’s National Health Service and confront the climate crisis.
    “This is a Labour moment,” Starmer told the packed venue. “Britain will deal with the cost of living crisis. Britain will get its future back… That’s my commitment to you… the national mission of the next Labour government. And together with the British people we will do it,” Starmer concluded.
Radio Havana Cuba

Enough is Enough!

Mick Lynch at the Grand

by New Worker correspondent

Mick Lynch got a rousing welcome at the ‘Enough Is Enough’ rally at the Clapham Grand in Battersea, south London last week. The venerable Grand, a historic venue outside Clapham Junction station that opened as a music hall in 1900, was once able to take a 3,000 strong audience. Later conversions to a cinema and a bingo hall as well as modern health and safety regulations has cut that capacity by almost two-thirds. But the now restored theatre was packed to the gills for the London launch of the campaign that seeks to lead the fight-back against cost of living hikes not seen for a generation.
    Well over a thousand people had come to hear the RMT transport union leader speak about the wave of strikes sweeping the country and the growing resistance to the austerity regime. Hundreds more were left outside the doors as the hall had reached its current 1,250 capacity.
    Lynch said the Enough Is Enough campaign “never started off as a political movement“ but the mood of the country has now made it one. The Tories had “assumed that our members and all workers wouldn’t fight for our rights, but they were wrong”.
    “Unions must lead, we can’t wait for the politicians. We need to get out into the communities and the former red wall to assist them to campaign. We need to show them how to organise. Our job as activists and trade unionists is to lift them, give them hope and get them out on the streets.
    “Join a union and join a campaign. Move the workers into campaigning and convert it into a wave of solidarity and industrial action across Britain.”
    Lynch urged “every union, community organisation, every grass-roots organisations — whatever it is — to fight back against this austerity”, adding that since this current administration “act in their class interests, it’s time to act in our class interests”.
    His words were echoed by Eddie Dempsey, another senior RMT full-timer, Zarah Sultana the campaigning Labour MP for Coventry South, and Michael Rosen, the poet and writer who is an outspoken supporter of Jeremy Corbyn.
    Enough is Enough was 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 is calling for a rise in the national minimum wage, a path to £15 an hour, a real public sector pay rise and an increase in pensions and benefits. It wants a return to the pre-April energy price cap of £1,277 per year; the nationalisation of the energy companies and increasing investment in renewable energies.
    By reinstating the £20-a-week universal credit uplift, and universal free school meals, along with a new independent regulatory body to hold the government to account, as well as a wealth tax, the campaign hopes to end food poverty too – while providing 100,000 council homes a year.