THE cost-of-living crisis has the working class under assault on multiple fronts. Serving on the committee of the Wyndford Residents Union, I witness first hand the devastating impact that runaway inflation has upon the lowest earners in society.  

But there lies great opportunity in times like these too, when the extraction of wealth from the bottom to the top of society has never been more flagrant. Members of my community in Maryhill, Glasgow, spend an average of 54 per cent of their income on energy bills, with our energy provider SSE (formerly Scottish and Southern Energy) reporting a 15 per cent year-on-year increase.  

While most consumers have a degree of “flexibility” to their fuel tariffs by changing energy provider 1800 homes in Wyndford are tied to SSE due to its lease of our district heating system.

District heating systems function at a low cost in energy and environmental impact. They involve a distribution system of insulated pipes that carry hot water or steam from a central source to homes within a certain perimeter.  

The Scottish government’s district heating system initiative was launched in 2011 as part of a pledge by the SNP to address fuel poverty and make Scotland’s energy greener — there were also promises of a publicly owned energy company.  

A decade later, a little over 23,000 homes in Scotland are supplied by 800 heat networks, and there is no publicly owned energy company in sight.  

When the Wyndford district heating network was established in 2012, it was part of Cube Housing Association’s efforts to meet the “decent homes standard” for energy efficiency and fuel cost. The housing association owns the district heating station with SSE having been granted a 30-year lease on its operation.  

The communal production and distribution of energy in Wyndford makes increases in our heating bills automatically a collective issue. This is the position of Wyndford Residents Union, as it prepares to enter negotiation with SSE over these price hikes.  

For the last three months, the union has been campaigning to get SSE round the table. We staged multiple demonstrations, we circulated a petition that now has hundreds of signatures from the local community and we asked our local politicians to support our demands.  

Labour MSP Pam Duncan-Glancy wrote to SSE and to Wheatley Homes, drawing attention to the energy company’s “egregious” advice to customers that they “cuddle their pets” to keep warm if they cannot afford their bills. SSE repeatedly stonewalled us, until finally giving in from the pressure of bad publicity following our campaign.  

Our position is clear — we demand a return to the pre-April rates. Given that SSE has enough profit to hand its CEO a 47 per cent pay rise this year, we know that money is not the issue here — this is blatant profiteering at great cost to our community.  

That tenants unions like the Wyndford Residents Union are now organising to force collective bargaining with one of the Big Six energy suppliers is an excellent sign for our class. The tried-and-tested methods used by the organised working class through our trade unions are being used in creative ways, extending beyond the workplace and into our communities.  

The People’s Assembly, particularly with the launch of its Power to the People campaign, demonstrates how trade union skills and resources can combine with the work of local activists in our communities to force the progressive change our society needs if it is to address the twin issues of climate change and rampant inequality.  

We cannot expect leadership from neoliberal governments in Holyrood or Westminster who will never place the needs of the working class and our planet before the interests of private capital.

The STUC on the other hand has pledged support for a publicly owned energy company, which would remove the parasitic effects of profiteering that the Wyndford Residents Union and many other community-based groups are fighting against.  

The unified efforts of the organised working class is the only way out of this cost-of-living crisis, and out of the climate catastrophe that is already affecting millions of people on our planet.  

We must turn to trade union and community organising, combining the strategies and arguments of both to build from the grassroots a new kind of society — one that is no longer rigged in the interests of a greedy capitalist class who hoard the wealth, but which instead serves the interests of the working class who produce the wealth.

Follow the Wyndford Residents Union on Facebook @WyndfordResidents.