THIS summer saw a billionaire extravaganza — a £34 million Bezos wedding ceremony, wealth and opulence on display as guests flew in from their private jets from around the globe. Meanwhile, one in five people across Britain — or 14 million people — live in poverty. The contrast is stark. An elite few are being allowed to hoard vast wealth while millions in Britain struggle to make ends meet. Our political leaders should feel ashamed that they have allowed this to happen. 

Amidst this deep injustice comes the rise of right-wing opportunists such as Farage and his ilk, seeking to sow divisions in our communities. They pretend to be on the side of ordinary people — yet their toxic rhetoric aims to make scapegoats of the most marginalised people, all while Farage and his cronies sidle up to the corporate profiteers and billionaires, leaving us all poorer. 

In Britain, workers face a triple threat: job losses, economic breakdown and the impacts of climate change coming at them at speed. All of these crises are interconnected, and not least because the same few people are profiting from and driving them.

Big oil, for example, makes billions from climate-wrecking fossil fuels, driving climate change — which is estimated to add £3,000 to household bills in 2025. This destructive profiteering is coupled with fossil fuel companies’ complete failure to protect their workers from job losses brought on by declining oil and gas reserves and deindustrialisation. Meanwhile, the billionaire class is laughing: the combined wealth of the 15 top fossil fuel billionaires is a staggering $321.17 billion.

Our current system is bad for our planet, bad for our workers, and makes little economic sense. An example which illustrates this clearly is that Britain paid £117 million in the first half of this year to Scottish wind farms not to generate electricity.

This clean power was wasted while many households struggled to afford essential energy for heating and cooking. Reforming the system so that no renewable energy is lost should lead to lower bills — and this would challenge claims from bad-faith actors that net zero drives up costs.

Too often, there are attempts to pit workers and the climate justice movement against one another. But when we work together, our collective power can transform material conditions for workers, protect our planet’s future and create an economy in service of ordinary people — not the super-rich class.

That’s why on September 20, we’re going to be at the Make Them Pay demonstration in London. We’re joining forces to create an economy where it’s ordinary people who reap the benefits, not billionaires and corporations. 
We are uniting behind three key demands: to tax the super-rich, to protect workers not billionaires, and to make polluters pay.

The green transition must be transformative, and therefore must be more than arguing for “green” jobs in the same neoliberal economy that has been driving down wages and attacking pensions, creating precarious work, outsourcing labour, and privatising public services.

We deserve good, green jobs in an economy that works for the people that keep it running, not the rich and powerful — and we must fight for them.

Our government must prioritise creating decent, well-paid, unionised jobs in our communities, and supporting the renewable industries of the future, rather than preserving extreme wealth for a few at the top.

It is only right too, that the costs for the transition are shouldered by the super-rich responsible for causing this mess, and seeing our energy systems as simply a means to extract profit at our expense. As we come up to the autumn Budget, we must see bold, transformative proposals on taxation that make polluters pay for the damage they have inflicted onto all of us.

The fight for climate justice and workers’ rights is one and the same, and our movements need to continue forging alliances and working together if we are to effectively take on this capitalist, profit-hungry system ruled by corporate greed — and succeed. Join us on the streets on September 20.