This article, much edited to the point of no reference to the Climate catastrophe, was published in the Plymouth Herald on 19th September 2023. The attack on pensions leaks into debate about our entire future. Will there be pensions in the future? With the predictions of global economic collapse under the weight of extreme weather disruption, how do we best campaign for climate justice? The obvious issue includes divestment of pension funds from fossil fuels, but what kind of future are we fighting for, and won’t the catastrophe make all this meddling with Capitalism rather than ending it, quite pointless?

Britain is being manipulated into a political quagmire of anger and hatred. Whilst tax-payers cash is bleeding-out to subsidise record profits of oil companies and the big landlords, the working class is descending into fuel poverty, hospital waiting lists and homelessness.

But don’t blame the Billionaire Prime Minister, the multi-millionaire MPs sitting Parliament or the corporate executives sucking from the funds in advance of their companies going into liquidation, sacking thousands of worker at a time. No, no, don’t blame the bosses. 

The bosses, their newspapers (5 rich individuals own more than 80% of our media) and the politicians they pay for are all telling us to blame each other. If we can’t manage our low pay there must be something wrong with us as individuals. If we can’t afford the rent or mortgage we should lower our expectations about where and how we live. If we’re limited to life on welfare benefits we don’t deserve a voice.

The most recent target of the attacks on the working class is the new row about pensions. The most obvious purpose of the variety of allegations is to split old from young, workers from claimants, and especially to build the anger of young workers against retired people who they say, get paid for doing nothing. It is rarely explained that the retired have, throughout their working life, paid handsomely for the pensions of their contemporary elderly in the expectation that the future generation will do the same. Such an arrangement is far more cost-effective and secure than private pensions based-upon accruing a stash of cash vulnerable to the ups-and-downs of gambling on the stock exchange. State pensions are a preserve of the Commons – that part of society owned and valued by all.

Clearly speaking for the far-Right individualist dog-eat-dog wing of the political spectrum, one senior Conservative MP last week warned Prime Minister Sunak against giving inflation-linked rises to benefits and pensions as this would “leave the working population worse off and taking the brunt of the pain”. With inflation still high and rising, state pensioners are due to get an 8% increase next April.

But we were all surprised then to hear Angela Rayner confirming that Labour is refusing to say it will keep the inflation-safe triple-lock on pensions. In this carefully stage-managed and choreographed political Conference Season, they all seem determined to out-Right each other. 

Britain has the all-but lowest and very paltry level of State pensions of any country across Europe. The full State Pension is £156.20 per week, or £692 per month. Additional income is taxed. The Minimum Wage is £385.54pw, £1700pm for a 37-hour working week –  more than twice the State Pension yet understood by most of us as impossible to live on these days. Fuel, rent and mortgage hikes, colossal food inflation and the general cost-of-living far higher with those of us with the least spending power.

It now appears that all major political parties are looking to cut the pensions rates and blame the elderly, whilst ruling-out collecting the unpaid tax from the richest in society, amounting to at least £35,000,000,000 that the wealthy should pay every year yet is never collected by His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC). And the tax-payer doles out over £12billion a year to fossil fuel companies in subsidies despite them making record profits (that’s surplus cash for shareholders) of £65billion in 2022.

The money for pensions should be there. A further £67billion remains unpaid as tax-bills sent to the UK-based Banks. The banks profits are heavily increased by the market trading of the private pension funds themselves, creaming-off a large slice of the cash paid in by workers in the hope of getting it back in old age.

Those who believe in Capitalism believe in the inalienable right of individuals to exploit and defraud to become billionaires by whatever means necessary. They are the first to blame benefit claimants and pensioners as a drain on society’s resources. 

Indeed, Capitalists hate all aspects of socialism – the simple notion that we pay into the common tax purse in order to provide basic living standards for all (access to housing, health care, education and nutrition) irrespective of whatever circumstances life’s lottery determined we should be born and raised into.

But what we’re actually seeing is upside-down socialism – policies of small-State market-driven privatisation are there to ensure a tiny minority takes all the tax-cash from the poor, out of the collective purse and into their fat private pockets, offering nothing in return. The current Additional State Pension imposed upon all workers just as they raised the age of retirement to 68 is predicted to add some £150-a-month extra in addition to the decreasing State pension provision, after paying-in for forty years. This is a recipe for mass subsistence and poverty on a scale larger than the sprawling ghettos of the United States of America.

Nevertheless it should be of little surprise that some young workers are taking the bait. After all, with a crumbling Britain falling into authoritarian control in preparation for economic collapse under the weight of climate chaos and war, what have they to look forward to? And who else can they blame but those who came before? 

Of course, they have a point – the elderly haven’t fought hard enough for the future they won’t see – but neither have the Millenials. Everything must change, whatever investments have been made. The same pensions system cannot possibly exist in twenty or thirty years time when the Millenials reach pension age. It is not simply a question of what shade of government will be around to determine the quality of old age (although that is an issue as fascism resurrects itself across the globe – fascists don’t have welfare principles) but the overall condition of the global economy. And that will be decided, above all else, by Climate Change.

The rising sea levels and hot-house environment causing chaos to food production, city living, transportation and thereby all aspects of the current way of doing things will change everything. Above all, the extreme weather events, already chaotic, will devastate global financial systems and see the current mountains of private pension cash evaporate. Those wishing to tweak our finances for a secure old age need to be advised by the science of climate collapse. 

In this context, attacking the investments made by pension funds on the basis of their links with fossil fuels is morally superior but is, at best, a piece of concrete propaganda to raise climate consciousness. The campaign misses a crucial point: the entire monetary system is wedded to and reliant upon fossil-fuelled production. The call has to be for the end of all fossil-fuel extraction and use – a revolutionary demand because it is beyond the capabilities of the Capitalist system. 

Depleting the pension funds in isolation whilst leaving the other finance systems intact will only strengthen the position of the privateers and anti-Welfare far-right whilst reaping the wrath of those left with too little. It’s happening already. The finance system itself has to be changed from commodity trading for profit to production for adaptation and survival. In that context, the market trading and speculation inherent to pension funds is already defunct, whether investing in oil fields or solar farms. 

If we can organise for a socialist society based upon a system where everyone offers what they can manage and gets back what they need, the concept of retirement will itself be retired. Every one of us will be a valuable contributor to society in whatever way we see fit throughout our entire lifetime. Wouldn’t that be better.

In the here-and-now, the self-righteous, climate-sceptic far-Right who are currently loud-hailing calls to cut State pensions and forcing full privatisation need to be challenged. To find the Labour Shadow-Cabinet refusing to commit to the protection of state pensions whilst also refusing to raise taxes on the super-rich leaves trade unionists stunned and socialists angry. 

To cut the triple-lock will mean even more elderly people suffering ill-health, isolation, loneliness and despair inside the current system. 

Added to which, the young workers being called-upon to jealously challenge the mythical luxury of being a pensioner in today’s Britain are being conned into acceptance of a future where they will experience an even more painful ageing, forced to pay more for less. Work ’til you drop. Such reactionary divide-and-rule politics of blame will not further any movement for social progress or protection. We must stand together, workers young and old, to demand decent pay and conditions working in climate jobs towards an enjoyable fourth age in a fossil-free economy!