RECORD numbers of young people, 835,000 18-24 year-olds, are not in school, college or work in England, official figures are showing.
This is an increase of 105,000 over the figure of 730,000 recorded for the same quarter last year.
Already the propagandists of the bourgeoisie and their politicians such as Chancellor Darling are calling these youth the ‘lost generation’ or ‘Neets’ (Not in education, employment or training).
However, the figures, published by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, for the second quarter of 2009, also show a surge in the numbers of 16-18 year-olds not in school, college or work.
The shock figure for this age group is 233,000, 13,000 more than the first quarter of 2009, when the figure stood at 220,000. The recorded figure for unemployed 16-24 year-olds has therefore reached 1,068,000, over 40 per cent of the 2.4 million people who are looking for work.
Chancellor Darling said yesterday: ‘It’s very important that we help young people get back into work or into training.’ In fact, the Labour government has put £1.2 trillion at the disposal of the big banks, in gifts, loans and guarantees, but is doing nothing to give young people a future.
While the bankers and the bosses can do no wrong, at the Royal Mail the government is pushing forward a programme for casualisation and privatisation which will bring with it some 30,000 sackings, as well as wage and pension cuts for those who remain. There will be no jobs or training for youth there!
Brown is allowing the motor car industry in the UK to sink without trace and refuses to nationalise companies such as GM Vauxhall Ellesmere Port and GMM Luton. He intends to allow hundreds of thousands of jobs to go in manufacturing industry. There will definitely be no jobs or apprenticeships for youth in manufacturing!
The capitalist slump over which Brown presides means that tens of thousands of university graduates will not be able to get the jobs that they studied for, and will have to settle for work in burger bars, if they can get it.
In the next few months Labour will be lifting the cap on student tuition fees thereby making it impossible for hundreds of thousands of families to send their children to universities. They are cutting off any hope for a better life for youth!
Instead the youth will be put under the insulting category of ‘Neet’ (Not in education, employment or training) as if the crisis of capitalism is its fault!
While this is going on, the bankers and the bourgeoisie with their deposits and investments guaranteed by Labour, will carry on speculating and enjoying their huge bonuses, plus early retirement, while workers are told that they must work till they are 70, giving an additional blow to the job prospects of hundreds of thousands of youth.
Youth are neither ‘Neets’ nor the ‘Lost Generation’. They are the revolutionary generation!
They are already angry at the failure of the capitalist system. They already understand that it is capitalism that has no future, and that the only future that it offers them is to be cannon- fodder in the mountains and plains of Afghanistan.
Youth are the most revolutionary section of the working class. Their everyday experience at the hands of the capitalists spells out to them that capitalism must be overthrown, and to do this youth must build the revolutionary party to organise the millions of workers for world revolution.
More and more young people are realising that this means joining the Young Socialists, and building the Workers Revolutionary Party, and the Fourth International.
