Prices are soaring, at the shops and in our energy bills. It's becoming more and
more of a struggle for many to pay bills. At the same time, wages, benefits andpensions have been virtually frozen for years. This is happening whilst bigbusiness is making massive profits and the rich are getting richer and richer.The divide between the haves and the have nots is opening wider. ---- We willdiscuss what is happening now both in the workplace and in the community andconsider how to organise resistance in the workplace and in the community. Howcan the struggles be joined up? ---- Join Plan C, the Angry Workers, the ACG, andDon't Pay to discuss organising effective resistance to the cost of livingcrisis. It is an in-person meeting at the May Day Rooms in Fleet St London. ToRegister and for more details see:https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cost-of-living-organising-to-resist-tickets-438550535457Here is a leaflet on the Cost of Living to giving out over the coming period.Please download and hand it out where you can.Cost of Living?Can't Pay, Won't Pay!Prices are soaring in our energy bills and at the shops. It's becoming more andmore of astruggle for many to pay bills. At the same time, wages, benefits and pensionshave beenmore or less frozen for years.This is happening whilst the economy is growing and big business is makingmassive profitsand the rich are getting richer and richer. The divide between the haves and thehave notsis opening wider. But according to various economists, this must be becauseworkers areasking for wage rises which are unaffordable, or the state is spending too muchon thepublic sector. Therefore, according to this logic, wages have to be kept down andthe statemust cut back on spending, interest rates must raise to force people to saverather thanspend, taking money out of circulation so that inflation drops.As anarchist communists we say that this is false. The current situation iscaused by thebosses accumulating so many trillions of profits and not investing in theeconomy. Insteadthey are hiding these huge amounts of money away in tax havens or investing onthe stockmarket where they have a chance of making more profit. This is not just the casefor Britainbut in all the big capitalist economies, as is the cost of living crisis.This situation of under-investment is aggravated by the ongoing problems causedby theCovid pandemic and by the war in Ukraine. This under-investment contributes to theongoing collapse of infrastructure so that goods cannot be transportedefficiently. Workersin transport and in the warehouses find it more difficult to get by on low wagesand Brexithas accounted for a shortage of truck drivers. This also accounts foragribusiness preferringto let crops rot rather than increase wages for agricultural workers, after thesupply of dirtcheap labour from Europe dried up.The same goes for the water and energy companies. The directors of these companiesprefer to pay themselves huge bonuses rather than invest. As a result storagefacilities arenot up to scratch for gas and electricity. Much is lost through the failure tomend pipes andcables, resulting in huge amounts lost in water, gas and electricity. Rivers andthe sea arepolluted because of sewage dumping by the water companies.At the same time we the working class have suffered years of austerity. And payrises thatdo not keep up with inflation. The national minimum wage is kept low and manycompaniesuse fire and rehire policies to drive down their employees' wages and conditions.They cutback on staff, forcing individual workers to do the job of several.The reliance on Russia to supply much of the gas supply for the whole of Europe,includingBritain, helps push up energy prices as Putin uses this as a weapon. The war inUkraine hasalso resulted in a large number of supply chain problems, as various foodstuffsand rawmaterials supplied by either Ukraine or Russia are affected by the war. TheCentre forEconomic and Business Research believes that sanctions have had a major impact oncommodity prices and inflation. Brexit has also caused a number of supply chainproblems.The Bank of England wants to increase interest rates. This will only encouragethe fat catbosses to invest more of their profits in banks. For working people, this willdrive upmortgage rates, increase rents and eat into spending power.Would a rise in wages get us out of this? Well, this can only come about throughforcing thebosses to raise wages through strike action.However in the long term, the boss class will respond by increasing labour-savingtechnologyto cut their wages expenditure. They will raise prices and charges, the bankswill hike upinterest rates and the landlords will raise rents. The wage rises gained throughstrike actionwould be eventually eroded. This does not mean we should not engage in strikes tofight forbetter pay and conditions.We have to develop ways to resist the State and the boss class and developnetworks ofmutual aid.The energy price hikes affect the poor the most, because poorer households spendthreetimes more on energy than richer households. It also means that landlords willraise rents topay for energy rises; in fact a third of renters have had their rents raised inthe last year.Covid has caused the deaths of at least 190,000 people in the UK and the governmentappears to have no plans to limit the spread of the disease, opening the way for thepossibility of deadlier forms of the virus. Long Covid has affected nearly amillion people,according to the Office of National Statistics. This has affected their abilityto work, forcingmore people into poverty.Even without the soaring energy prices, the State and the capitalists would haveattemptedto pay for the costs of Covid and Brexit by attacking our living standards.Fourteen millionpeople now live in poverty in the UK, and this is rising. Climate change hascaused problemswith food production, fuelling the cost of living crisis.What is the answer?Help get mutual aid groups going- during the height of the Covid pandemic manymutual aidgroups formed. These helped neighbours, got food packages for those isolating,and did othertasks for those less able to do themselves because of Covid. These need to berevived. Theycould set up community kitchens, provide advice and education, and help resistany evictions.Form food cooperatives. One recent example of this is Cooperation Town, a networkof foodcooperatives in London. These are where people club together to buy food in bulk,thuscutting costs.However, these basic ideas around helping each other survive the crisis are notenough.Join the Don't Pay campaign- This is a movement against the rise in energy bills.It isorganising a pledge for one million people to withhold payment together when thepledgereaches its target. So far over 196,000 have signed this pledge and Don't Paygroups are beingset up all over the UK. If energy hikes go ahead and critical mass of a millionis reached, thismeans cancelling direct debits on the same day.Rent strikes- landlords are attempting to pass on their rising costs to tenants.Rent strikestook place in St. Pancras in 1960 involving many council tenants. More recentlystudents atUniversity College London organised a mass refusal to pay rent, forcing theuniversityauthorities to cut rents. Join or set up tenants action groups and/or join theLondon RentersUnion, which fights for tenants, or groups like Housing Action Southwark andLambeth. Groupslike these set up telephone trees so that people can come together to resistevictions.At work, support the strikes, and argue that different groups of workers shouldstrike at thesame time as with postal workers, rail workers etc. Join grassroots unions likethe IndustrialWorkers of the World and the United Voices of the World. If you're in amainstream unionwork to organise strike committees. Don't let the union bureaucrats stopeffective action,they will side with the government and big business if it comes to the crunch. Goout onunofficial wildcat strikes if you can. Already the number of wildcat strikes inthe last fewmonths has soared.We need to organise together collectively without leaders or representatives sothat we allcontrol our struggle. All alone we can do little, but together we can help eachother and fightback against the ever worsening situation.Useful Contacts:Don't Pay: https://dontpay.uk/London Renters Union: https://londonrentersunion.org/Housing Action Southwark and Lambeth:https://housingactionsouthwarkandlambeth.wordpress.com/IWW: https://iww.org.uk/UVW: https://www.uvwunion.org.uk/en/https://www.anarchistcommunism.org/2022/10/12/cost-of-living-london-public-meeting-and-leaflet-to-download/_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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