The poor are getting poorer, with the number of households in poverty rising from 21% in 1991 to 24% ten years later. The north-south divide is getting wider although Hackney and Tower Hamlets, both in London, are the poorest areas in the UK (poverty increased in Hackney by 9% in those ten years). Glasgow has the highest poverty rate outside London, a massive 41%.
It is so bad that even the Tory shadow work and pensions secretary admitted that "we in the Conservative party have to recognise that our country faces a serious problem of poverty."
Within companies, executives enjoyed 23%-plus rises in their annual salary. Their workers, without whom no wealth could be produced, got less than 4%. The typical chief executive of a FTSE 100 company now earns 80 times more, on average, than one of his workers. The bottom fifth of workers pay a higher proportion of their income in tax than the top fifth.
Is there a solution? It is no coincidence that the last 25 years has seen a rapid decline in union membership and militancy along with the fastest increase in inequality of any country in the developed world. The growing gulf between rich and poor is the consequence of a weakening of organised labour. The balance of power in the workplace has shifted and, consequently, workers cannot hold onto, never mind bolster, their share in the wealth they create but do not own. With a weakened labour movement, management can ignore their workers, giving spurious reasons for failing to increase wages or closing pension schemes while finding money for themselves, no matter how badly a company is doing.
We need to tip the balance of class forces. We must support all workers in struggle, refusing to let the media demonise those unions (like the RMT or FBU) which actually are responsive to their members and stand up for their interests. We must seek to encourage the spirit of revolt in all workers, unionised or not, to fight for their own interests. That means creating a rank and file movement in the unions which can fight not only their actual bosses but also trade union bureaucrats who place their cosy relationships to New Labour or the employers above their members' interests.