AN ‘ever-increasing’ number of households in the UK, including teachers, pensioners, and employees of the NHS, are turning to food banks for assistance as a result of the current massive inflation, according to new statistics.
The research conducted by the Independent Food Aid Network (IFAN), shared with the Observer, found that almost 90% of food banks surveyed reported increased demand in December 2022 and January 2023 compared with a year earlier.
According to the study, about half of the 85 organisations running 154 food banks in the UK which responded to the survey admitted that if demand increased further they would either have to cut support or turn households away.
The Trussell Trust, which with more than 1,300 food banks is the UK’s biggest provider, expects this winter will have been its busiest ever, warning in November that food banks were at ‘breaking point’. Between April and September alone it distributed 1.3m emergency food parcels – a third more than the same period in 2021 and over 50% more than pre-pandemic.
This is modern Britain, where the living standards of the working class and the middle class are being consciously sacrificed to a worldwide inflation that has been stoked up by the US and UK ruling class.
The idea is that the UK and the US ruling classes, and their more fervent allies such as Poland, can assist the Ukrainian fascists in involving Russia in a long and costly war, that will end with regime change in Russia and Putin being replaced by a reliable collaborator with imperialism, giving capitalism a new lease of life.
The bosses’ bonus is that the UK working class would be massively weakened at home.
However, the UK working class is more than fighting back! It has launched mass strike actions to achieve wage rises that match the very high inflation rate. These struggles in reality constitute the first round of the much needed UK socialist revolution.
The bosses meanwhile are demanding that more arms are rushed to Ukraine, that no sacrifice to arm the Ukrainian fascists is too much, with the aim of permanently weakening Russia and even engaging in regime change!
Saturday’s Daily Telegraph contained a progress report, stating that: ‘The West has made progress towards adapting to the new world wrought by Russia’s invasion, but this is no time for backslapping. Putin is preparing for a long war, marshalling more troops and materials, and putting his economy on a war footing. This crisis is very far from over.’
The Telegraph laments that ‘since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Western militaries could be shrunk without consequence, with defence budgets diverted into welfare spending’.
The Telegraph wants the immediate shrinking of welfare payments with massive cuts and with the cash diverted to the military for its war with Russia.
At the same time, it praises Poland which is massively increasing its military spending. According to the Telegraph: ‘Poland is now the rising power of Europe’.
The British ruling class wants war with Russia, with Ukraine and countries like Poland providing the cannon fodder, while the UK working class is pauperised to finance the greatest capitalist drive to undo the work of the Russian and Chinese revolutions since Hitler’s invasion of Russia.
However, the British ruling class is now fighting for its life. The essence of the situation is that the UK working class has not the slightest intention of sacrificing its living standards for the benefit of the bosses, as the mass strike movement has shown.
However, what is required to win this struggle is that the UK working class must organise the British socialist revolution to overthrow capitalism.
The massive strike movement has already shaken the British ruling class. The fact of the matter is that the enemy of the UK workers is at home – it is the ruling class of bosses and bankers.
The imperialist war that the UK ruling class is leading must be turned into a civil war to smash capitalism and imperialism at home, and end the huge attack on living standards with the victory of the British socialist revolution.
Now is the time to build the WRP and the Young Socialists in the UK and sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International worldwide to lead the victory of the world socialist revolution! There is not a moment to lose!
