by Sarah Edgcumbe
Energy payments are set to rise by 80% from 1st October, taking the typical family’s annual vitality invoice to £3,549. The Trades Union Congress (TUC) estimates that the typical UK family’s earnings in 2023 will likely be £2,054 per 30 days, making the price of vitality equal to round two months’ wage. Meanwhile, the poorest amongst us have been pressured onto pre-paid meters which allow vitality firms to cost much more for a similar vitality. Welcome to Tory Britain.
Energy hikes of the extent we’re seeing can’t be blamed solely on the struggle in Ukraine. These excessive costs have little or no to do with Putin and way more to do with opportunistic company greed. Chris Jarvis not too long ago reported in Left Foot Forward that BP tripled its income in the course of the second quarter of 2022, to a staggering £7 billion, whereas Shell recorded income of £10 billion. Centrica, the proprietor of British gasoline, recorded income of £1.34 billion in the course of the first 6 months of 2022. E.ON posted income of over £3 billion throughout the identical interval. The notably non-nationalised National Grid posted income of £3.4 billion for the 2021/22 monetary yr.
Millions of individuals dwelling in Britain should face the deep anxiousness of selecting between heating their dwelling or feeding their households this winter. But not everyone seems to be so onerous up – the Chief Executive of the National Grid, John Pettigrew, has acquired a pay rise of over £1 million, taking his whole pay packet as much as £6.5 million. This is sort of double the typical pay for a FTSE 100 Chief Executive – for the top of a service supplier which was nationalised till 1990. A £6.5 million pay packet is totally unjustifiable in any circumstances, however much more so while 22% of the UK inhabitants live in poverty. In a damning report launched in January, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation discovered that 14.5 million individuals in Britain live in poverty. Of these, 4.3 million are youngsters, which means that 1 in 3 youngsters are actually dwelling under the poverty line. Meanwhile, 2.1 million pensioners are additionally dwelling in poverty. All within the nation with the world’s fifth largest GDP.
It is inside this context of political disregard for the frequent individual and governmental disdain for the social contract that the Don’t Pay UK marketing campaign has emerged.
Privatisation solely advantages the elite – these smug pricks within the high 1% who stay behind huge iron gates and don’t give a shit about their fellow residents. Last yr, Ben Tippet wrote {that a} web wealth tax on the highest 1% wealthiest households within the UK may increase £70-130 billion per yr. Rather than fear that larger taxation will scare the rich away, we needs to be yelling at them to fuck off and by no means darken our doorstep once more. They are concurrently the trigger, symptom, and emblem of the entire absence of social justice which presently blights the UK. We are trapped of their vicious, exploitative, capitalist wheel.
It is inside this context of political disregard for the frequent individual and governmental disdain for the social contract that the Don’t Pay UK marketing campaign has emerged. Its goal is to unite residents of the UK in mass non-payment of vitality payments till these payments are lowered to an inexpensive fee. At the time of writing, over 130,600 individuals have signed the pledge to strike on invoice cost from 1st October. The aim is to safe a million pledges for direct-debit cancellation and non-payment, after which, if the vitality firms insist on charging astronomical costs, we are going to merely refuse to pay. For many it is a scary idea – understandably so. The menace of bailiffs and potential lack of house is terrifying, however these threats turn into largely empty if sufficient of us take part.
There is security in numbers. The historical past of strikes, boycotts and non-payments has demonstrated that when ample numbers of little individuals unite, the bully backs down. Take the mass non-payment of the ballot tax for instance. 18 million individuals refused to pay Thatcher’s tax, which in true Conservative model had a massively disproportionate unfavourable affect on strange households. The consequence of the marketing campaign of mass non-payment noticed the eventual repeal of the ballot tax and the top of Thatcher’s reign of terror as Prime Minister. If British residents may pull this off towards Thatcher within the eighties, we will pull this off towards Johnson, Sunak, Truss, and their gluttonous, ineffective friends in 2022.
Poverty is political. Mass non-payment shouldn’t be seen as an embarrassing subversion, however quite as a forthright political stance. We should stand united and refuse to be cowed by threats of debt and bailiffs. There will likely be no social shaming for us. It is the CEOs and Chief Executives of vitality firms who ought to worry such disgrace. Mass non-payment will scale back their salaries significantly, as vitality prices will likely be pushed down by means of necessity. They will likely be pressured right into a interval of self-reflection during which, if they’ve the power to see previous their egos, they’ll discover themselves wanting.
Social justice has by no means been a present. It is all the time a hard-won proper.
Mass direct motion works. Strikes and boycotts gained equal pay for women and men (in principle at the very least) and eight hour working days. It introduced Thatcher to her knees and consigned the ballot tax to the annals of British political historical past. Apartheid in South Africa was dismantled through financial boycott (amongst different techniques), as was segregation on U.S buses. Mass non-payment of illicit taxes is an act of resistance routinely deployed by the Palestinians towards Israel. But nowhere in historical past will you discover examples of autocratic, nepotistic elites all of a sudden deciding to share their wealth, or to introduce insurance policies based mostly on egalitarianism. Social justice has by no means been a present. It is all the time a hard-won proper.
The Don’t Pay UK marketing campaign is wholly reliant on strange individuals uniting towards the 1% and the vitality firms that symbolize them. It is non-partisan, non-hierarchical, and forward-thinking. It begins with the seemingly apparent premise that no person needs to be chilly or hungry this winter – significantly when vitality firms have boasted file income. You could make your pledge and discover additional marketing campaign particulars on the Don’t Pay UK web site, alongside assets, articles and encouragement. Those of us on pre-paid meters can not take part in non-payment, however that doesn’t forestall us from providing help and spreading the phrase. Looking forward, we must always attempt for nationalisation. A rustic which permits hundreds of thousands to slog by means of the winter in unheated houses haunted by poverty, while the Chief Executive of the National Grid takes dwelling £6.5 million, is essentially corrupt and must be fully deconstructed. One million pledges can be an enormous step on that street.
Featured picture from dontpay.uk
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