The potentiality, and perhaps inevitably, of 2013 proving one of the most socially convulsive and ugly in Britain's social history is very real.
The brunt of this Tory-led coalition government assault on welfare and public spending come on stream in April. Swingeing cuts in child benefit, housing benefit, and a cut in council tax benefit will plunge millions of UK families into the abyss of destitution and despair. Add to this a one percent freeze on Jobseekers Allowance, tantamount to a real terms cut, and the conditions for social unrest in the UK have hardly been more propitious.
Since coming to power 2010 this Tory-led coalition government, aided by its allies in the right wing press, has been diligent in its efforts to prepare the public for the economic tsunami that it intends to unleash on the public sector, the poor and benefit claimants. It has engaged in a concerted and determined propaganda campaign designed to demonise the unemployed, people on disability benefits, and public sector workers, the main targets of its attacks with the objective of turning what was, and remains, an economic crisis caused by private greed into a crisis in public spending. Pitting one section of working people against another has been a key plank of the Tory strategy to minimise resistance to the most egregious and brutal assault on the incomes and lives of poor people since the days of the workhouse.
Save The Children calculate that currently in the UK 1.6million children are living in what they describe as severe poverty. Households mired in severe poverty are forced to make a choice between heating and eating on an income of £15,000 or less. The extent of child poverty in the UK is a badge of shame in the word's seventh largest economy.
Given the criminal lack of social and affordable housing in Britain, a consequence of Thatcher's decimation of council housing stock throughout the 1980s, a policy continued throughout the nineties, wherein tenants were able to buy council properties at huge discount, and Labour's failure to address the yawning gap during its 13 years in office, millions of people are currently living on the edge of homelessness, victim of the inflated rents and insecure and short term tenancies offered by private landlords. With the collapse in the mortgage market, demand for private rented accommodation has spiked, which with the government's intention of scrapping housing benefit for under 25's and restricting it for everyone else is a recipe for disaster.
These facts, no matter how shocking, do not come close to describing the stress suffered by those on the receiving end of the government's assault. This is a crime in itself, a cruel and brutal attack on the welfare of millions of men, women, and children, punished for daring to be poor by a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.
Meanwhile, as 2013 gets underway, the rich have never had it so good. Last year's Sunday Times Rich List confirmed that the 1000 richest people in Britain have seen their wealth increase by a staggering £155 billion over the past three years of the recession, enough to wipe out the entire deficit with around £30 billion to spare. Yet thanks to the government's decision to reward those earning £1 million a year or more with a £42,000 tax cut starting this spring, the rich can look forward to their wealth increasing still more. As for the corporations and businesses which many of them run, those are set to enjoy a two percent reduction in corporation tax in 2013, while VAT will continue at 20 percent, a tax on consumption with a disproportionate impact on the poor.
Thanks in large part to the unstinting efforts of the campaign group UK Uncut when it comes to shining a light on the immorality of tax avoidance by the rich and big business, we now know the full extent of the theft committed by multinational companies such as Asda, Ikea, Starbucks, Vodafone, Google, Amazon, and others when it comes to exploiting tax loopholes to avoid paying anything like their fair share of tax on UK revenues. Plugging these loopholes at any time, never mind in the midst of the deepest recession since the 1930s, you would think would be done as a matter of urgency by a coalition government whose mantra since it entered Downing Street after the 2010 general election has been 'fairness' and 'we are all in this together'.
The opposite has been the case. In fact, worse, this Tory-led coalition has turned its guns on the poor and working class to make sure that the wealth and profits of the rich remain intact. It is class war by any other name.
The lack of investment by the private sector has led to a collapse in demand, which in other words means we are living through a crisis of underconsumption. It is a crisis screaming out for an investment-led response by the government to fill the vaccum left by the lack of private investment in the economy, specifically via the banks, the beneficiaries of billions in taxpayers money to keep them afloat at the height of the financial crisis.
The result is an economic shambles with injustice at its heart and the wonder is that we have yet to witness wholesale riots and civil unrest in towns and cities all over the country in response. It is why the wisdom contained in Thomas Jefferson's quote - "When injustice becomes law resistance becomes duty"- has never more appropriate than when it comes to Britain in 2013.