THE last time this column appeared in the Morning Star living standards were still rising in Britain. Yes, it was that long ago.

When the bankers’ crash of 2008 pulverised Britain’s deregulated, finance-distorted economy, the great and the good spoke of a difficult couple of years.

Then it became a “lost decade.” Now it looks like a “lost generation.” Can a “lost lifetime” be far away?

Not if Andrew Bailey, governor of the Bank of England, has anything to do with it. He has told workers to take a real pay cut in order to help deal with rising prices. That would be objectionable at any time.  

As Unite’s Sharon Graham asked: “Why is it that every time there is a crisis, rich men ask ordinary people to pay for it?” The question is still more apposite when the crisis is more-or-less a permanent fixture.

By 2017, workers had already faced the longest squeeze on their wages since Napoleon was being locked up on St Helena. A brief upturn was immediately followed by the crisis of the pandemic, with rampant wage-cutting sometimes disguised as “fire and-rehire.”  

Average weekly pay is still today lower than it was in 2008, even before Bailey gets going.

Today, inflation is being driven by factors entirely unrelated to workers’ wages. The soaring energy prices putting hundreds of pounds onto household bills are rooted at one level in the structure of the sector, which sees some big firms profiting enormously while others — basically energy traders — collapse chaotically.

At a deeper level it is about the imperative of private profit-making. Rishi Sunak, announcing his sticking-plaster measures to mitigate the impact of heating bills on household budgets, said that “it is not sustainable to keep holding the price of energy artificially low.”

That is simply untrue. It is, for example, perfectly sustainable to keep the price of healthcare pretty much negligible to the public. The difference with energy — something equally essential — is that health has been decommodified, taken out of the capitalist market, while heating hasn’t.

What Sunak meant was it was not sustainable to squeeze profit margins for the sector. The answer to the conundrum is easy — public ownership. This is what Jeremy Corbyn advocated as Labour leader. It is popular, which makes the policy’s apparent abandonment by Keir Starmer all the more mystifying. It’s as if he is more concerned to get brownie points from the Establishment.

Under state ownership, there is a possibility to treat energy supply as what it is, an essential public good requiring accessible pricing, arguably free up to a certain usage level. Of course, the state may bear a cost, so this is a strategy that would work best over the long term in the context of a planned economy.

As on heating, so on eating. Tesco’s boss John Allan, sitting atop anticipated profits of £2.6 billion warns of soaring food prices. He is prepared to consider any option to do something about this, other than trimming those profits. Journalist and poverty campaigner Jack Monroe has highlighted just how devastating supermarket pricing has already been for the poor.

Bailey’s solution is pretty plain — eat less. That is the import of his wage-cutting plan. The flaw is also obvious — workers’ incomes have been squeezed for 14 years now, and still the crisis persists. It mutates but never abates. How much can a belt be tightened?

It seems no-one can afford to switch on the light at the end of this particular tunnel.

Such is the “triumph of the market.” It is busy levelling down by the day. What’s the answer? One pundit said we “must think outside the box.” Sound advice, as long as you understand that capitalism is the box we need to think outside of.

Johnson’s takeaway offer

BORIS JOHNSON is in trouble. His Downing Street operation seems to have been abandoned by everyone bar Dilyn the dog. Even toddler Wilfred may be looking for a home where his garden swing doesn’t get trashed by lockdown-busting partygoers.

But Johnson has a plan. Two separate articles in the Financial Times last weekend outlined his fightback strategy. One reported that the Prime Minister has told backbenchers they would now have a “direct line” to him to raise any concerns.

The second revealed a policy idea — or the abandonment of one. Proposals to outlaw “buy one get one free” deals on junk food were to be, er, junked, to appease Tories fretting about the “nanny state.”

The direct-line plus fast-food-friendly package does open up new opportunities for the Prime Minister. He could run a takeaway burger operation if all else fails. After all, no-one has greater experience in selling Whoppers to the public.

Saltley Gate: when the working class beat the state

IF ONE could take a single moment as representing the pinnacle of working-class self-assertion in 20th-century Britain, it may well be the closure of the Saltley Gate coke works in Birmingham by mass picketing.

Some 20,000 striking miners and their local supporters overpowered police to shut the site in an emblematic confrontation of two powers — the working class on the one hand and the state on the other.

Led by Arthur Scargill, this tactic helped secure the NUM victory in the most significant single dispute since the 1926 general strike. It epitomised a new militancy sweeping through trade unionism in those years.

Tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Saltley Gate. To observe it, Scargill, one of the greatest trade union leaders the British labour movement has ever produced, will speak at a meeting in Birmingham.

He will be joined by contemporary union leaders, as well as celebrated actor and Shrewsbury picket Ricky Tomlinson. There is a way to go before the 1972 example of the working class in Birmingham can be emulated, but learning the lessons of the action is important for today’s trade unionists.

I would urge anyone who can attend to get along. Chances to hear Scargill speak are regrettably rare these days and shouldn’t be missed. 11am, Quaker Meeting House, 40 Bull Street, Birmingham.