THE picture showing one-inch-long metal spikes driven into the pavement in the doorway of a block of luxury flats in central London in order to prevent the homeless seeking shelter has created widespread revulsion.
These spikes – which appeared two weeks ago outside a luxury development in Southwark Bridge Road – are most commonly used on building ledges to prevent pigeons from roosting.
That they are now being used to drive the victims of the capitalist crisis out of the doorways of the wealthy, reduces the homeless to the level of vermin.
The ruling class won’t be happy until every homeless person is driven off the streets of London, presumably to roam the countryside as vagrants and vagabonds to be picked up and jailed for the crime of poverty. This huge and burgeoning crisis is not confined to London or to any one group of ‘unfortunates’.
According to the housing charities, government figures show that in London 6,400 people were sleeping rough on the streets last year, while in the first three months of 2014 this figure had reached 2,029 – an increase of 75% over three years. Across England the rise in people without a roof over their heads has increased by 37% since 2010. Even these stark figures do not convey the real depth of the housing crisis.
What also has to be taken into account are those 50,000 families in the country officially designated as homeless last year – a figure up by 23% in two years. When you add to those sleeping rough the numbers of single people living in temporary accommodation, families forced into bed and breakfast, and the hidden homeless who live in grossly overcrowded properties and young people, who live by ‘sofa surfing’, i.e., sleeping on friends sofas and then moving on, the figure for homelessness becomes gigantic.
Homeless charities estimate that 185,000 people in England are affected by homelessness and that one in ten of the population would experience it during their life, a figure that is growing daily as the full effect of cuts to benefits, bedroom tax and pay cuts are felt. As for homeowners forced by the speculative bubble in house prices to take on huge mortgages, the reality is that they are just one pay packet away from default and repossession.
With affordable social housing destroyed by the coalition, private rents going through the roof, millions of workers and young people face the prospect of eviction and destitution under this bankrupt capitalist system that can no longer provide even the most basic essentials for human life.
For it is not only homelessness that has hit the headlines this week. Three charities, Oxfam, Church Action on Poverty, and the Trussell Trust food bank organisation, announced that ‘food banks and food aid charities gave more than 20 million meals last year to people in the UK who could not afford to feed themselves.’
This was a 54% increase on last year and was the result of ‘a perfect storm of changes to the social security system, benefit sanctions, low and stagnant wages, insecure and zero-hours contracts and rising food and energy prices.’
What is clear from all these reports is that capitalism today can offer nothing to workers and youth but destitution and starvation – where entire families are expected to survive on charity and the homeless are treated like animals to be driven out of sight and left to rot.
Workers and young people cannot and will not accept this as the price to pay for bringing down the debts of the banks and keeping this rotten decayed capitalist system going.
The burning question of the hour is to replace the old reformist leadership of the trade unions – that shed copious tears over the plight of workers but do absolutely nothing to fight this government – with a new, revolutionary leadership, prepared to call a general strike to bring down this government and advance society to a socialist system.