AFTER almost 10 years of a Labour government under Prime Minister Blair, young people who get jobs after leaving university find they end up with only 52 per cent of their gross pay.
Deductions for tax, pension contributions and compulsory student loan repayments account for the other 48 per cent.
A report from the right-wing, think-tank Reform, The Class of 2006: A lifebelt for the IPOD generation, published yesterday, reveals that young people between 20 and 35 are being hit from all sides.
Their average earnings have risen over the past few years more slowly than those of other age groups, increasing by only 23 per cent since Blair moved into Downing Street. The net income of a young couple with no children has decreased by 3.4 per cent since 1997.
Young people are most likely to have huge debts, with students leaving university owing, on average, £15,000. Since 2001, personal bankruptcies have risen by 288 per cent for people under 30. This is before the Labour government imposes £3,000 top-up fees in universities this month!
Despite having low incomes, those under 30 spend more on housing and utilities, and substantial sums on transport.
Young single people and working couples with no children stand no chance of getting council accommodation because of the diminishing council housing stocks, resulting from the Blair government’s block on new building, and privatisation.
They also stand little chance of qualifying for a mortgage to buy a home of their own because of their existing debts. The average house price today is £214,566 (Rightmove) and recent Bank of England interest rate rises have pushed mortgages out of reach for young people.
This forces youth into the clutches of private landlords, who charge exorbitant rents, making it impossible for them to pay off debts and save for a deposit on a home.
This is the life facing the younger generation in capitalist Britain today, after almost 10 years of a Blair Labour government. This is Blair’s ‘legacy’ for the future!
Workers reject this future for their sons and daughters.
The National Union of Students (NUS) and the trades unions must act now to halt these vicious attacks on youth, carried out in the interests of decrepit British imperialism, desperate to make profits out of everyone.
The NUS has called a national demonstration in London on October 29, under the slogan: ‘Admission: impossible: no to soaring levels of student debt, no to any attempt to lift the £3,000 cap, no to the marketisation of education and yes to free education and access for all.’
Workers must demand their unions support the students’ march to scrap tuition fees and restore free education.
The Labour government has shown that it will not change course on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the privatisation of the NHS and the attacks on pensions. It will not drop university tuition fees!
The only way to restore free education is to mobilise mass strike action to bring down the Blair government.
The trade unions in the Trades Union Congress, in alliance with the NUS, must organise for a general strike to bring down the discredited, lame-duck, Blair government and replace it with a workers’ government, based on the unions.
Such a government will put an end to privatisation, get rid of university tuition fees, restore maintenance grants and write off student loan debts, as part of a programme of implementing socialist policies.
This struggle requires the building of a new revolutionary leadership, in both the student movement and the trade unions, to replace those leaders who have collaborated with Blair for the past 10 years, accepting the privatisation of services.
Join the Workers Revolutionary Party today and build up its Young Socialists Students Society and All Trades Unions Alliance to lead this fight!
