THERE is a fundamental failure, within the narrow parameters across the dominant political classes, to recognise that we live in very different economic times from when the last Labour government was in power.

Tragically, within that context, there is an abject political failure to develop the radical solutions required to tackle the intractable problems currently engulfing our people and our environment.

Rehashing the past simply will not cut through. Papering over the cracks has happened before. It does not cut it and the gaping wounds from previous half-baked solutions are today plain to see.

In our NHS, our transport network, our education system, our postal service, our justice system; all of our public services have been battered and drained of resources and we all are suffering for it.

People desperately require hope and solutions and the only way to force the necessary change is to build a counterpressure, one that is authentic and meaningful that reaches into every town and city across Britain.

In the absence of political leadership, our wider movement has to start developing the ideas; especially when we know the suffering is real and increasing and absolutely preventable.

After a decade of decreasing pay, cuts to public services, reducing incomes for our most vulnerable, normalisation of foodbanks and now headline inflation running at over 11 per cent, and the basics becoming increasingly unaffordable for many people across Britain with the longest period of wage suppression since the Napoleonic wars, Britain desperately needs a pay rise.

We live in one of the richest countries in the history of the world. That it doesn’t feel that way, that so many people are struggling to get by or make ends meet, is all a result of all the wealth being siphoned off at the top with the already obscenely wealthy seeing their fortunes reach even greater, eye-watering levels during the pandemic.

The pain is hitting workplace after workplace and worker after worker, be it railway workers, delivery workers, call centre workers, refuse workers, train drivers, bus drivers, teachers, nurses, doctors, barristers, posties, cleaners, engineers — almost every sector is at breaking point, beset by the same distributional struggles over the surplus and who is to share in the overall gains to the economy — the rich or the rest.

Blaming workers for this crisis, burdening their shoulders further with the bills for austerity and bullying them into submission is no innocent error. It is a calculated, callous, Conservative Party con-trick — and they have the gall, the audacity to pretend that there is no alternative. But there is, and it is up to us all to pave the direction.

Corporate greed, Tory policy and the right-wing press are the banes of our lives. Effective trade unions, communities sticking together and fighting for social justice can be the engines for the progressive change that we need.

Against all of the odds, some local politicians are already doing this locally, despite this cruel government. We have to build on that thinking and ask ourselves how we can democratise the local economy effectively with trade unions in the driver’s seat through policy solutions like community wealth-building (CWB).

If we don’t drive the thinking, the solutions will not come — because sadly, change is not on the minds of the powerful. They are quite happy with things just as they are.

And why wouldn’t they be? With every day that passes and every dog-whistle headline, it is becoming very clear that the system is broken.

The system is operating just as the Establishment would like: not for the majority of the population but in the interest of the capitalist vultures and the “free-marketeers” interested in benefiting an increasingly smaller number of people.

Those people don’t walk in our shoes, don’t feel the daily battle and certainly don’t need to worry about the balance of their bank account.

Arguments and demands will be made at this week’s STUC for a progressive tax system based on income and wealth, greater funding for public services and greater borrowing powers for the Scottish Parliament.

These are welcome — but there must be something more, something that means national governments cannot reverse progress made in the future.

CWB done properly offers real, practical solutions to localities and regions battered by successive waves of disinvestment, displacement and disempowerment.

CWB can change the nature and operations of the local economy so that as a matter of course they produce better outcomes by retaining and growing wealth locally for the benefit of local people and local services.

Schools, the NHS, universities, colleges, local government — all these and more are potential sources of investment, procurement, improved working conditions, and different ways of managing land and real estate assets when looked at through a CWB lens.

Properly done, we can ensure that workers receive their share of economic gains and elevate the importance of fair employment practices and just labour markets as part of ensuring that the economy serves the needs of people, their communities and the wider environment.

Building, creating and sharing wealth is what the trade union movement and our members have always done. The CWU sees great potential in the CWB model. We have supported councils such as in Preston and North Ayrshire to develop and introduce CWB.

Our motion to the Scottish Labour conference saw the Scottish Labour Party agree to make the development of the model a key policy going into the next election; calling for Scottish Labour to develop a programme of training for politicians working alongside the CWU to develop a more democratic economy at a local level supporting worker ownership.

As well as this, the Scottish government has introduced CWB legislation. With Scotland fast becoming a global leader, cementing the progress made so far and ensuring the opportunity to go further and faster is critical, and there is a current opening to respond to the government consultation.

The CWU is asking the STUC, wider movement and individual trade unions to embrace CWB and ensure that the model being introduced by the Scottish government and councils across Scotland applies the principles of CWB properly and helps grow, equitably, the wealth of our local communities, places workers and job creation at its heart, and enhances and invests more in local services.

The unions should be at the heart of organising around CWB, and there is a huge potential for mutual benefits across wider programmes of union organising and renewal.

Ultimately, the union movement’s goals for membership growth and improved density are likely to be well served by activism that also aims to be in charge of local economic justice.

The explicit objective to deepen people’s democratic participation at various social levels, including in the workplace, is the absolute goal of all union organising.  

When we attempt to build organising strength within unions we are ultimately concerned with democratic worker control. The favouring of worker co-operatives with the CWB approach is one means by which these union objectives can be achieved.

Forming a co-operative ecosystem across communities which more thoroughly ties union activism to community activism to co-operative workplaces and worker and community education facilities goes further in establishing frameworks for solidarity and mutual support. The model is proven, and the evidence is there ready to be tailored to each individual place.

We can build a powerful network of trade unionists and progressive-thinking politicians alongside community organisations and charities to champion democratic ownership of the economy, with workers at the centre of the fight offering a real alternative strategy that could be the making of a new important role for the union movement.

Class war is what we are facing. There are no ifs and buts. We need to start fighting and winning — and we must broaden our forces, pulling together those who have struggled for too long around a set of demands with a new economy at the heart of it. This cost-of-living crisis is the defining political struggle of our age. Time to step up.

Laura Smith is a political consultant working at the CWU and a local councillor at Cheshire East Council.