‘Capitalism threatens young people’s future’, says YCL General Secretary

Speaking at the Communist Party’s Political Committee meeting last night (9 April 2024), Georgina Andrews condemned the silence surrounding the problems of Britain’s youth. ‘As young people increasingly fall into poverty, billions of pounds are spent on war and the preparations for war’, the Young Communist League General Secretary pointed out. In particular she highlighted the impact of inflation-busting rent rises on young people struggling to get by on low wages, student loans or welfare benefits. ‘Around 130,000 apprentices and workers aged 16-20 are denied the national living wage of £11.44 an hour, missing out by up to £200 a week’, Andrews revealed. With youth unemployment now standing at 12 per cent and rents set to increase on average by 13 per cent this year, many young people have experienced no recovery since the Covid slump.  ‘The exploitation of young workers goes hand in hand with a housing crisis as rents and mortgages are beyond their grasp’, Andrews pointed out, ‘while public money can always be found for big business and war’. The YCL leader welcomed the mass participation of young people in Britain and around the world in solidarity action with the Palestinian people of Gaza and the West Bank. ‘Many of my generation are angry about the British government’s support for Israel’s aggressive war and bloodshed in Gaza, including the continuing supply of armaments to Israeli forces guilty of massacring civilians, health staff and aid workers’, she declared. ‘The YCL and the Communist Party must continue to highlight imperialism’s role in this genocide, showing how it is related to the drive for Western domination of markets, resources and transport routes’, she urged. She also poured scorn on the failure of the world’s major capitalist powers to act decisively against global warming and climate change.  ‘Young people around the world see the growing threat to their livelihoods as health and social services deteriorate, populations are displaced by hunger and war, and energy and food supplies are destabilised’, the YCL General Secretary argued.  ‘Capitalism’s aggressive drive to maximise profit and domination is at the root of the world’s problems and it now falls to the younger generations to “make capitalism history”‘, she concluded.  The CP Political Committee congratulated Andrews and the YCL on their ‘Harry Pollitt School” in Manchester last weekend, when more than hundreds of YCL members and supporters attended a series of talks delivered by leading figures in the progressive, Communist and labour movements at home and abroad. END.