MARCHERS today in London and Glasgow are making a simple but essential point — Britain needs a pay rise.

Since the 2007-8 financial crash caused by the recklessness of the bankers, working people in Britain have been the targets of a class war directed by the political Establishment on behalf of their wealthy masters.

The unholy alliance of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats who came to power in 2010 has launched a radical bid to complete the dismantling of Britain’s public services which began under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

From the sale of Royal Mail to attacks on the disabled and the unemployed, the government has done everything it can to destroy the concepts of public service and social solidarity.

But most universal and damaging of all is the way the fiscal crash has been used to force down pay for the vast majority of workers.

Whatever David Cameron may say in Parliament, there is nothing “inevitable” about the real-terms pay cuts suffered by the bulk of the working population.

As the Morning Star reported yesterday, forcing down wages for the many has been accompanied by the accumulation of unlimited wealth by the elite — with Britain’s highest paid corporate boss now raking in a year’s worth of the living wage every single hour.

While ordinary workers have seen their spending power drop by between 10 and 25 per cent since the crash, pay and profits at the top end have skyrocketed. 

It’s no accident. What the economists call “austerity” is nothing more nor less than the transfer of wealth away from the working people who produce it to the parasitical freeloaders who call the shots in Cameron’s broken Britain.

And it is this sustained and deliberate forcing down of wages which lies at the heart of most of the other problems we face.

Tories wail about the “unaffordable” welfare bill. But costs such as working tax credits and housing benefit would not be necessary if workers were paid a proper rate for their labour or government was prepared to introduce rent controls and build council housing.

The dole queues would go down if the Con-Dem coalition was prepared to invest in industry, construction and public services.

A million Britons would not be forced on to charity simply to feed their families if ministers had the will to ban zero-hours contracts and end the culture of low-paid, insecure, part-time work trapping them in poverty.

So the TUC is right: pay rises are at the heart of any attempt to turn the tide on the whole deceitful austerity bandwagon.

But this fight is not simply against the Con-Dems. As they never cease reminding us, the crash took place when Labour was in office — not because of “excessive” public spending, but because Blair and Brown did nothing to rein in the City of London and the spivs and speculators who hurled our economy over the cliff.

Labour’s response could have been to nationalise the banks and other public utilities for the benefit of everyone — but it wasn’t. 

It parroted the same austerity nonsense as the Con-Dems and it is still doing so, courtesy of its disaster of a shadow chancellor Ed Balls and his ludicrous bid to cling to Tory spending plans — which mean spending cuts plans.

The fight to win Britain back for the workers who produce our goods and deliver our services requires the union of all our strength. What were once termed the industrial and political wings of the movement should be marching together today.

The TUC has taken the lead. It is high time the Labour Party started listening.