Tories target cuts budget at working class youth

For months, we’ve been told that everybody in society is going to have to cut back because of growing national debt (a result of the trillion spent on rich bankers in 2008-9).

What raises alarms is the sections of society who are to deal with the brunt of Osborne’s emergency budget of June 2010. The budget could not be a more obvious attack on the working-class and the poor, with benefits and services cut by millions, a freeze on wages, and an increase of VAT to 20%. One group of people who aren’t getting much time in the media or a place in the public debate about the issue, are youth. This “fair” budget, comprising of the harshest measures since World War Two, is no doubt going to have a disastrous effect on young people – unless we fight back!

Michael Gove, the Education Minister, has recently scrapped programmes for building and renewing schools across the England, which in many cases, had already begun. He said 719 school revamps already scheduled would no longer go ahead, and a further 123 academy schemes are to be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. He argued that the Building Schools for the Future scheme has “throughout its life been characterised by massive overspends, tragic delays, botched construction projects and needless bureaucracy.”

However, in reality Gove has condemned millions of young people to shocking classroom conditions, temporary buildings, and leaking roofs. A large proportion of the schools in England date back to the 1950s, and are characterised by narrow corridors, small classrooms and weak buildings. Building Schools for the Future was created to fund building work, theoretically creating a better, safer and more harmonious environment for students to learn in. Instead, these schools are denied a decent future, and at least £260million has been wasted on unfinished projects.

With less and less jobs available, more young people are looking towards further study to avoid the dole queue but brutal government cuts mean that around 200,000 young people will be unable to find a university place this September. Fewer than 1 in 5 young people from the most disadvantaged areas of the UK enter higher education compared to 1 in 2 from the most advantaged areas. So not only does it mean that fewer people will get to go to university, but that those places will be (predictably) distributed amongst the wealthy.

Universities are faced with cuts of £1.2 billion between now and 2013. Classes will increase in size, preventing students from being taught effectively and in depth, harming our ability to think critically about the world around us. Furthermore, this cut in expenditure will mean students who encounter difficulties with university life will be denied help. Services such as English language support for foreign students will not be immune to government cutbacks. University Students have already been complaining of the lack of resources which are essential to their degree. In one particular case, there were only 12 copies of the vital books needed to complete assignments, to be used by over 200 students.

A recent report in the Guardian reveals: “100-120,000 public sector jobs and 120-140,000 private sector jobs assumed to be lost per annum for five years through cuts”. The job losses in the public sector will result from the 25% reduction in Whitehall spending over the next five years, while the private sector will be affected through the loss of government contracts and from the impact of lower public spending due to the increase in VAT and wage freezes.

However, the same report in the Guardian shows that the Treasury assumes ‘growth in the private sector’ will generate 2.5 million new jobs in the same period. Between 2010 and 2015, the Treasury assumes that employment will rise from 28.8 million this year to 30.1 million in 2015, despite the loss of jobs caused by spending cuts. The TUC general secretary Brendan Barber deems this claim ‘absurd’. He argues that instead, we will face: “dole queues comparable to the 1980s, a new deep north-south divide and widespread poverty as the budget’s benefit cuts start to bite.” Moreover, the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development’s chief economist, Philpott argues: “There is not a hope in hell’s chance of this happening [the creation of 2.5m new jobs].”

These job cuts will come in different forms. Some workers will get fired or have to take a compulsory redundancy. More damaging for young people is the process of voluntary redundancies and recruitment freezes – which effectively leave unemployed youth without the opportunity to gain a job. It’s a way for the bosses to divide workers against each other and make the youth pay for their crisis.

The CIPD has estimated that there will be 725,000 jobs lost in the public sector alone by 2015.

There has never been a more appropriate or obvious time for workers and youth to unite. The new government’s plans affect us all, and they must be stopped. We need maximum unity to stop the Tory cuts.

REVOLUTION understands that young people are specially targeted for cuts by the government and the bosses. We are often not organised in trade unions, and are seen as easy targets by the bosses – who attack us with bad pay deals and pension schemes for new workers, recruitment freezes, different minimum wages for young workers, and worse.

This is why REVOLUTION exists as an organisation for young people who want to fight to change the world and get rid of the capitalism system that oppresses us. We want to build a mass movement of young people to bring down the Tory government and fight for socialism.