Workers' Liberty

Recent research from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that around £13,400 a year is required to maintain a minimum standard of living.

According to the Treasury at least 2.5 million British households (around one in ten) suffer from fuel poverty (Energywatch puts the figure at 4 million, 16% of all households).

In Britain, rising food prices — up over 15% a year — mean poorer households scrape and struggle. In many countries, they mean people starve. The most basic foods — wheat, rice, corn — have pretty much doubled. Families don’t have enough to eat. In Egypt, workers have struck and occupied factories. In other countries, there have been food riots.

The “official” rate of inflation currently stands at 3% (for April 2008).

Workers at Mahalla in the Nile Delta have suffered a fresh wave of repression from Hosni Mubarak’s regime after a series of militant strikes, protests and demonstrations beginning on April 6th. The Egyptian police arrested hundreds of workers, demonstrators and even journalists reporting on the revolt, as the regime seeks to silence working class people angry at low wages and massive food price inflation which has seen bread prices go up nearly 50% in the last year.

Between fifty and sixty per cent of the population identify as “working class”. Despite the term “working class” vanishing completely from the language of the Labour Party, the proportion claiming this now-unspoken identity has been fairly stable since the 1950s.

“Britain remains a nation dominated by class division”, reported the Guardian on 20 October. The division is dramatised by David Cameron’s Tory front bench, which includes no fewer than 15 men schooled at Eton. The Lib Dem leadership contest is being fought out by two men schooled at Westminster, a school almost as posh as Eton.

From Workers' Liberty Teachers NUT conference bulletin 2007
The Unicef survey into the well-being of children across 21 industrialised countries placed the UK 21st out of the 21 countries surveyed.

By Jill Mountford

Last week, in the midst of teenage gun murders and a UNICEF report on childhood in the richest 21 nations that placed Britain firmly at the bottom of the league, the one time bully boy Stalinoid National Union of Students’ President, now a Government Minister (I know, it beggars belief), Jim Murphy announced a welfare reform to “tackle poverty and support aspiration” for lone parents.

Of all the industrialised countries Britain is the poorest, unhealthiest and most depressing place to grow up in.

Pass the sick bag. In a horribly creepy interview in the Sunday Times, Jasper Gerard not only drools all over the page, but falls over himself in praise of Jemima's concern for the poor.

By Ben Davies

Just one month after the leaders of the G8 countries, the world’s richest, gifted the world’s poorest nations a few more crumbs from their table, we see a gut-wrenching example of the true scale of world poverty and inequality — the famine in Niger.

Dita Sari, a leading socialist, trade unionist and anti-sweatshop activist in Indonesia, looks at how women and migrant workers are faring in Indonesia today.

We asked socialists and activists to comment on the way to campaign against world poverty after the G8 summit.

Anti-poverty campaigns group War on Want has today released calculations showing that the money on the table at the G8 will provide under 5% of the debt relief and less than 20% of the aid needed to meet the objectives of the Make Poverty History (MPH) campaign. Read the details here.

African partnerships

Paul Wolfowitz, the new head of the World Bank and prominent neo-con has given support to Blair and Brown’s idea of massive and increased aid to Africa. He pledged to persuade Bush of the necessity and justice of this plan. He also said that “there were real partners [in Africa] with whom the west could work.”

The Jubilee Debt Campaign (JDC) estimates that the total external debt of low-income countries is $523 billion (£260 billion). Debt is a huge problem.

How can hunger, poverty, and suffering through preventable or curable disease be ended?

The sums spent by the world’s richest governments on aid and debt relief pale in comparison to the amount they spend on weapons. In 2004 — the sixth successive year in which global arms spending increased — the global total spent on munitions topped $1 trillion for the first time since the height of the Cold War. The amount spent on aid that year was $78.6 billion.

AIDS

In Western Europe and North America, death rates for those with HIV/AIDS have been cut dramatically through the use of antiretroviral drug treatment. In poor countries where six million people with HIV/AIDS need treatment, only 400,000 - less than 8% - are receiving it. In Africa, home to 26 million HIV/AIDS victims, only 1% are receiving treatment. The UN was understating it hugely when it commented that "treatment and care are not yet reaching the vast majority of people in need" (December 2003).

By Paul Hampton

These notes are based on materials from the Jubilee Debt Campaign for a No Sweat meeting in London 14 July 2005 More info: Jubilee Debt Campaign.

Workers' Solidarity Can Make Poverty History

The new issue of Tubeworker calls on London Underground workers to join the demonstrations at the G8 in Edinburgh in July. It explains how workers' solidarity is the best way to end poverty.

Workplace reports include updates on the fights by both signallers and station staff against widespread displacement of staff under the 35-hour week, plus news of an exploding hand-held device and restructuring in ISS which is bad news for cleaning staff.

Click 'read more' to read the text; 'download' to download (PDF).

A month before the big Make Poverty History demonstration in Edinburgh on 2 July, the movement has been hit by a row about the wristbands it sells, for people to wear to show support, being made in non-union, low-wage, sweatshops.

The basic statement of the Make Poverty History campaign, and a response by No Sweat

TRADE INJUSTICE, DEBT AND LACK OF AID

Today, the gap between the world’s rich and poor is wider than ever. Global injustices such as poverty, AIDS, malnutrition, conflict and illiteracy remain rife.

Duncan Morrison reviews “Skint”, BBC1, Mondays, 10.35pm

The documentary series Skint has reminded me how valuable good documentaries can be. Using a not quite fly on the wall style, the makers ask questions to their subjects as they go through their lives. They follow a number of people and families in the Birmingham area as they struggle to make ends meet. These are Britain’s poor.

Religious freedom?

Two hundred charities, trade unions, NGOs [non-governmental organisations], and religious groups have formed an alliance called “Make Poverty History”, and are organising for a big demonstration in Edinburgh on 2 July. The Scottish police predict 200,000 people will be there.

By Paul Hampton

The demand to “make poverty history” is winning wide resonance this year and nowhere is it more relevant than in Africa, where the majority of people subsist on $1 a day. But the Commission for Africa report published last week shows how little the ruling class are prepared to do to help the majority of Africans.

Make Poverty History is the theme of the protests that will surround the G8 summit at Gleneagles this summer. No Sweat will be heading along in full tweeds, as our Golfers Against Sweatshops make for the Gleneagles greens.