TODAY British workers and their families face the biggest attack on their living standards since records of cost of living increases were first recorded in 1956.
From today, a whole raft of massive increases take place as council tax bills soar and the Tories increase in the energy price cap kicks in.
Energy bills will increase by an average of £693, pushing bills up to nearly £2,000 with further increases promised next October while council tax bills from today are set to hit £2,000 a year.
Yesterday, the telecoms companies started to increase charges for broadband and mobile phone contracts.
Broadband bills will go up on average by £46 and mobile phone bills estimated to increase by £28.85 as the telecom giants impose inflation-busting increases to drive up profits.
On April 6th, the Tories will inflict another massive hit on the lives of workers when Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s National Insurance tax hike comes into effect. This tax on workers wages will cost a typical household £95.30 a month.
Earlier this week, the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, warned soaring energy prices in the UK were a real ‘historic shock’ to incomes and the living standards far greater than in any previous year including the world oil crisis in the 1970s.
Bailey in the past has laid the blame for inflation running out of control firmly on the backs of workers and the trade unions insisting that they must not demand big pay rises as this only fuelled inflation.
Bailey wants workers to accept poverty and not fight for wages to defend their living standards, in order to rescue a capitalist system that is plunging into recession.
From today, the ‘shock’ of energy prices spiralling out control driving up inflation – that already stands at a thirty-year high of 8.7% and is predicted to go into double figures this year – will become even greater as everything from energy, food, council tax and phone bills go shooting up.
The depth of the crisis facing working class families was brought out in a report by the New Economic Foundation (NEF) which found that following these price increases in April 23.4 million people in the UK will be more than £8,500 a year worse off when it comes to paying for necessities like heating, food and clothes.
Half the children in the UK will be in families that cannot afford the sky-rocketing cost of living and be forced to sacrifice essentials like putting food on the table.
Even before the huge surge in the cost of living hit today, it is clear that millions of workers and young people have been forced to turn to credit cards and other high cost loans just to survive.
This week, the Bank of England published data showing credit card borrowing jumped by £1.5 billion in February – the highest monthly amount on record.
With record inflation, cuts to Universal Credit benefits and wage increases being far outstripped by price increases, the point has been reached where the working class has no option but to take action to defend itself from a capitalist system that is trying to drive them into acute poverty, demanding they sacrifice their families to keep the bosses and bankers in profit.
Already across the country workers from university lecturers, council and transport workers are taking strike action over pay and in defence of their pensions and conditions.
The working class and young people are clearly not prepared to passively accept pauperisation as the price to pay for keeping this dying capitalist system staggering on into recession and economic collapse.
With British capitalism reaching a crisis point today the immediate issue is for workers to demand that their unions respond by going on the offensive by calling a general strike to kick out the Tory government and bring in a workers’ government and socialism.
A workers’ government will expropriate the bosses and bankers and build a nationalised, planned socialist economy that can offer a future for workers and young people today.
Only the WRP and Young Socialists are building the leadership required to take the fast-developing socialist revolution to victory. Join today.
