A leading anti-poverty action group has called on people in Wales to “fight back like our ancestors did in the 1930s”, when the Great Depression saw mass resistance against millions being plunged into poverty.
Cover image: March Against Poverty, Cardiff, Tom Davies
People’s Assembly Cymru, who helped lead the successful campaign for free school meals in Wales, say they have adopted the slogan ‘Fight to Win’ after a series of successful campaigns and against a backdrop of a soaring poverty crisis.
The call for wide scale protest & action comes in response to a devastating report by the Bevan Foundation, which lays bare the true situation facing the poorest people in Wales in 2021.
The report, released on Thursday and based on polling by You Gov, reveals what its authors describe as the ‘deteriorating’ situation faced by almost 40% of the Welsh population when it comes to poverty.
Its headline figures included:
- 39% of Welsh households do not have enough money to buy anything beyond everyday items, a 6% rise since May of this year.
- Thousands of households are having to ration their use of the essentials, such as heating and electricity, as incomes fall and the cost of living rises.
- Children are being hit hard by the crisis, with more than one in five families with children having had to cut back on item including books, toys, nappies and clothing, whilst one in ten families with two children have had to cut back on food for children.
- More than one in twenty households are worried about losing their home over the next three months.
- Debt is a major problem, with 25% of Welsh households having borrowed money since May 2021 with 12 per cent at least one month behind on a bill.
The factors driving the crisis, according to the report, is the combination of falling incomes and the rising cost of living, hitting a population where many were already on the edge.
Welfare cuts are a major driving force. 275,000 of the poorest households in Wales saw their income fall when Universal Credit was cut by £80 a month in October. On top of this, inflation – which measures the cost of living – was running at 4.2% in November ,its highest for 10 years.
Wages have also been suppressed over the past decade in both the public and private sector, leading to situations where even NHS workers are having to visit food banks.
The report is a brutal indictment of over a decade to Tory driven austerity from Westminster, but also implicates the Welsh Labour Government, who have held office in Wales for 22 years.
Their ambition, unveiled in 2015, to eradicate child poverty by 2020 stands in sharp contrast to the reality on the ground, where far from being eradicated, child poverty is rising.
However, a ‘silver lining’ in the report, according to its authors, is that there is widespread backing for state intervention to tackle the crisis.
“There’s clear support for policies such as universal school meals, providing emergency support to struggling families and building more social housing,” wrote Steffan Evans, Head of Policy at the Bevan Foundation.
He added that the new Welsh Labour / Plaid Cymru cooperation deal “already contains a number of commitments in these areas” and that they must “go about implementing the policies urgently.”
The cooperation deal includes plans to introduce free school meals for all primary school pupils within three years as well as exploring rent caps and other measures.
The situation right now is bleak, however, with poverty in Wales rising year on year, leading some to liken the crisis facing the most vulnerable people as more akin to the period before the creation of the welfare state than after.
People’s Assembly Cymru echoed The Bevan Foundation’s assessment but also advocated for mass mobilisations against poverty of the kind witnessed almost 100 years ago.
“We agree 100% with the Bevan Foundation that proposals in the cooperation agreement that mitigate poverty must be implemented rapidly. The cost of living crisis is exploding now,” said Adam Johannes, of People’s Assembly Cymru.
“Over the last decade of Tory austerity, the Welsh Government budget was slashed by almost a quarter.”
“It is during economic crises that the working class and poor most turn to the local state, but this has been the time support has been cut back most cutback.”
He decried the” failure of Welsh Government to coordinate councils, trade unions, service users and communities into a social movement against austerity” but said ordinary people were “stepping up” to fight various campaigns that had the potential to come together.
Recently, parents at two schools in Carmarthenshire forced their local council to U-turn on planned closures. Workers at Stagecoach and Arriva buses, and electrical giant Panasonic have won a pay rises on the back of strike action.
This also comes after successful campaigns to stop the closure of the Royal Glamorgan Hospital A&E department and halt major cuts to the National Library of Wales.
“We have to find ways to bring together the small but rising tide of industrial action in workplaces with an anti-poverty movement in our communities,” Adam Johannes said.
“If they want to take us back to the 1930s, we have to fightback like our ancestors did in the 1930s for a society that delivers economic security from cradle to grave.”
The 1930s saw mass resistance to phenomenal levels of poverty and suffering brought about by the Great Depression following the Wall St financial crash of 1929.
Gwyn Alf Williams and 1930’s mass struggle in Wales
In Wales, the largely untold history of the period is recounted by Gwyn Alf Williams in his seminal book, When Was Wales, recalling how the labour movement mobilised in their hundreds of thousands against poverty:
‘On that Saturday 3 February 1935, the population of south Wales; seems to have turned out on the streets. There were 60,000 to 70,000 in the Rhondda marching to Tonypandy; Aneurin Bevan spoke to thousands at Blackwood, Pontypool saw the biggest meeting it had ever had, 20,000 listening to Ernest Bevin. There were marches and meetings in Neath, Britton Ferry, Merthyr, even in Barry. Down the Aberdare Valley 50,000 people marched to Mountain Ash in a procession two and half miles long through wind and rain…’
‘Something of the order of 300,000 people marched that day. One person out of seven of the entire population of Wales was out in those valleys. It was the greatest demonstration Wales had ever known. A whole community stood up and said No.’
‘They were saying No to the Unemployment Assistance Board Act of 1934-5. They had had enough of unemployment and emigration, of Public Assistance Committees haggling over threepence for children’s milk, of young girls going off to London and young men putting their heads on the railway line.’
The anti-poverty movement in the period of the Great Depression began with hunger marches and direct action initiated by the radical left in the National Unemployed Workers Movement, which built a militant counterculture that peaked in the 1940s with an historic victory: The creation of the post-war welfare state that launched the NHS and built half-a-million council homes.
“Don’t underestimate the level of struggle needed,” said Adam Johannes, referring to the battles needed to fight poverty today.
* People’s Assembly Cymru are now backing the ‘Right to Food’ campaign for a law to guarantee every citizen is well fed, to be achieved by the creation of publicly funded collective provision of food such as universal free school meals and community canteens.
