The shame of the two Letters Labors children is also an anti-racism issue

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Letters

Child poverty for black and Asian children ignored by Keir Starmer

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Tuesday, July 25, 2023

Number 2865

Keir Starmer is in hot water

The shaming of the two children is also an anti-racism issue. I’m glad Keir Starmer is in hot water because of his insistence that Labor not scrap the Tory’s two-child benefit cap.

But I’m afraid even many on the left haven’t understood that this is not just a problem of child poverty, but also of racism.

Decades of systemic discrimination faced by black and minority ethnic people have resulted in deep-rooted inequalities. Nowhere is this clearer than on the issue of child poverty.

According to the Runnymede Trust, around 60% of Bangladeshi children, 54% of Pakistani children and 47% of black children live in poverty once housing costs are taken into account.

Yet the overall figure for all children is 30%. In London’s two poorest boroughs, Tower Hamlets and Newham, child poverty rates are the highest, at 56.7% and 51.8% respectively.

It is no coincidence that more than 80% of the children here come from an ethnic minority. Color-blind conservative politicians try to ignore these statistics.

Take their Troubled Families initiative. It sidesteps the issue of family income and instead focuses on more cultural themes, such as family breakdown, alcohol abuse, and education.

Because Bangladeshi children do better in school and their parents are less likely to divorce or drink alcohol, the state can now consider Bangladeshi children to be less likely to experience poverty. But the opposite is true. The poverty of ethnic minority children is of course driven by factors that apply to all poor families.

But they also have specific factors. For example, minority ethnic groups tend towards larger families. Removing the two-child cap on benefits would have lifted 250,000 children out of poverty and 850,000 out of deep poverty.

This would have cost 1.3 billion, compared to the 50 billion in profits recently shared between the oil companies.

Starmer should heed the words of American abolitionist Frederick Douglas. He said it’s easier to build strong children than to fix broken men.

Raj Perera

North London

Students and strikes

As the university degrees begin, one thing is clear, students and staff are angry. We face rising inflation, growing commercialization and conservative attacks.

The government announced last week that it would cap the number of students taking courses that do not end in well-paying jobs. Staff and students are united by strikes by university workers.

They interrupted the studies and left the management scared. The bosses are unleashing with increasingly harsh attacks on professors and other colleagues. At my university, Liverpool Hope, it’s particularly wild.

Management here attacks teachers who boycott exam marking as part of their dispute with the unions. They deduct 100% of participating workers’ wages, with 50% being reimbursed ex gratia.

That’s why last week, when I graduated at our graduation ceremony, I unfurled a banner in front of the strike-breaking Vice Chancellor. He said: The students support the strikes.

Far from being a negative reception, students and staff have responded overwhelmingly positively. My teachers, active members of the UCU union, congratulated me on my diploma and thanked me for my solidarity.

And the students also said it was the right thing to do. Students are on the front line to offer solidarity to their teachers and other staff.

Sky Harrison

liverpool

Why would a poorly paid worker hire consultants?

I work in the NHS on a fairly low salary but not as shitty as some. Still, I support consulting physicians who go on salary strike, even though it’s true that some of them earn a lot of money and drive fancy cars.

The government wants to tear down the health service and hand everything over to the private sector. To achieve this, they want to keep wages so low that many jobs go unfilled and people are constantly looking for a way out.

This affects nurses, like me, because we end up working twice as hard to close rotation gaps.

And it happens at all levels. There are not enough cleaners now because the salary is too low. And, yes, it also happens to consultants. They are deliberately kicked out of the NHS, so conservatives can say it’s a failure.

Masked name

birmingham

The party break provides an opportunity

Last week, North Tyne Mayor Jamie Driscoll quit Labor and said he would now stand in the election for the North East’s first mayor as an independent.

This is really great news for the socialists of the region. The North East mayor will have a lot of power and govern an area that spans seven councils, from Northumberland in the north to County Durham in the south.

We should support Driscoll as a credible alternative to the dismal leadership of the Labor right. He proposes something different from Starmer’s politics. And, he has a vision for the northeast that fills people with hope.

Driscoll says he wants more affordable homes, to lift people off low wages and lead a fight against climate change.

For example, it has undertaken to deliver an integrated transport network. However, socialists should not make our support for strikes and protests conditional on any reformist politician, no matter how leftist.

It is a mistake too often made from the Syriza party in Greece to Podemos in Spain, Corbyn in Britain and Bernie Sanders in the United States.

All have been forced to adapt to the priorities of the ruling class, and some have been removed from power.

Nat

Newcastle

The sun shines on Starmer

Keir Starmer is doing his best to show the ruling class that the next Labor government will govern in their interests.

But he still has his crucial meeting with Rupert Murdoch to look forward to.

It wasn’t until he knelt down to Murdoch and promised Labor would respect the boundaries he set that the job would finally be done.

John Newsinger

Brighton

It’s not just the heat that kills

MP Caroline Lucas recently said there were around 3,000 more deaths last summer when temperatures in the UK first hit a deadly 40 degrees.

I wonder if she is aware that the excess number of deaths in Britain has been abnormally high over the past three years, even after excluding deaths from Covid-19?

In the week ending April 21, 2023 alone, there were 2,540 additional deaths above the five-year average.

Louis Shawcross

North Ireland

We all need 10%!

The Conservatives like to repeat that they are keeping public sector wages down for the good of all.

If they were to pay us more, inflation would spiral out of control, they insist. But a recent report by the Institute of Public Policy Research shows that a 10% average wage increase would not raise inflation significantly.

Should our unions now make this their minimum demand?

Penny

By email

What does SW think?

What does the Socialist Worker think of the Ulez pollution control zone extension outside London?

Initially, I was in favor of it because I want cleaner air. But now I worry about the poorest people who can’t afford a cleaner car.

David Sutherland

St Albans, Hertfordshire

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