Like many people during last week’s Tube strike, I got caught in the pouring rain on my long walk to work. With almost all lines entirely suspended, many of us took to buses, bikes and the pavement to get around London. As much of the capital slowed to a standstill, the commute was a sharp reminder of just how much we rely on workers to keep this city running.
I paid a visit to the picket line outside Seven Sisters station to offer my solidarity – and I spoke to staff who were seeking fairer working conditions, including a minor reduction in the working week. “They are not after a king’s ransom”, general secretary Eddie Dempsey said. “But fatigue and extreme shift rotations are serious issues impacting on our members’ health and wellbeing.”
From the picket line, I headed to parliament – much of it on foot. Whenever I walk long distances through London, it is impossible not to feel shame at the scale of poverty and inequality that has come to characterise this city. For most of us, rain is a short inconvenience. We will soon be inside, warm and dry. For those sleeping rough on the streets, it compounds an already brutal existence. Everything you own – your clothes and your bed – is now soaked. The best you can do is crouch under a bus stop, a shop entrance or a makeshift shelter. On almost every corner of every street in central London, I would see somebody who was either in visible distress or seeking shelter from the rain and the wind.
That same morning, I was listening to a teacher on BBC Radio 4 explain the knock-on effects of child poverty in schools. About nine children in an average classroom of 30 are growing up in poverty. Seven in 10 primary schools now say their top concern for children in their local area is access to child and adolescent mental health services. Many teachers are still using their own money – or even fundraising – to purchase supplies their students don’t have the money to buy.
I arrived at Westminster in the early afternoon. The contrast is nauseating. On one side of the gates is gold and grandeur; on the other side is 250,000 people without a home.
When 4.5 million children live in poverty, you have to ask: what is all this pomp and circumstance for? The answer, to me, is clear: to compel MPs to forget everything they have seen on their way to work. I can find no other explanation as to why so many of them spend their careers telling people that nothing will change.
Over the past year, the government has continued a programme of austerity and privatisation. It has refused to lift the two-child benefit cap, the single biggest driver of child poverty. It has tried to take away the winter fuel allowance. It has increased the bus fare cap. And it has tried to take away £5bn from disabled people, curating a two-tiered benefit system that deprives thousands of people of a dignified life.
There is one area where the government has been very generous, though: arms spending. Government military spending is now at £31.7bn, which is a 6 per cent increase in real terms from last year. Imagine how much better ordinary people’s lives would be if we spent that money on schools, hospitals and green energy instead.
The stale and stagnant triopoly of our major political parties simply cannot go on. They have proven time and time again that they are not prepared to address the root cause of our society’s ills. They are incapable – or unwilling – to address economic inequality. And they are holding our country to ransom with their subservience to the status quo.
People have had enough of a political regime that serves the interests of billionaires and corporations. They have had enough of a government that inflicts suffering at home and enables genocide abroad. They have had enough of broken promises from political parties that fail to deliver real change.
Having spent a year trying to balance the books off the backs of the poor, Labour is reaping what it has sown. We are here to sow the seeds of something different – something new. We are here to take on the rich and powerful. We are here to offer hope in a more equal, sustainable and peaceful world.
Up and down the country, people are shut out of the decisions that affect their daily lives. That’s why we’re building a new, mass, democratic party that belongs to its members. In the autumn, we will host our inaugural founding conference. This will be the moment that we decide the direction of our party, what it stands for, and how we organise to win. Our founding conference will be a historic moment in British politics. It will do something that no other political party has done before: put its members in charge.
This conference will not come out of the blue. It will be the product of a series of mass, regional, public meetings. These meetings will inspire people to discuss and debate the key questions facing the future of our party. Already, more than 750,000 people have signed up to build a new kind of political party. This is what happens when people are offered a real alternative. This is what happens when people are offered hope.
Make no mistake. This is just the beginning. We are going to mobilise everywhere to ensure our movement is rooted in social movements, trade unions and communities up and down the country. We will support workers on the picket line for the same reason we will support private renters, students and all those who are being denied the resources they need to thrive. We believe that everyone deserves to live in dignity.
We are not going to scapegoat refugees for the ills of society. Instead, we will focus our attention on the real cause: a grotesquely unequal society that concentrates wealth in the hands of the few.
In doing so, we will defend the human rights of all. That includes disabled people and their right to live in dignity. That includes children in poverty being denied their right to food and clothing. That includes trans people, who deserve to live in safety, dignity, and freedom. That includes refugees – our neighbours and friends of tomorrow.
We must be united against oppression and prejudice in all its forms, and that is what we will be. For too long, people have been denied a real political choice. Not anymore.
Jeremy Corbyn was leader of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020. He has been the MP for Islington North since 1983
