Guy Cowen-Hutton reviews this booklet from Left Horizons . [a hard copy or a pdf version of the booklet can be obtained by emailing editor@left-horizons.co.uk. To download pdf – see end of article]
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Across the world in the 21st Century, people are leading “a lifestyle more insecure and uncertain than ever before”. Facing issues such as environmental degradation, unprecedented levels of inequality, deteriorating living standards or the looming threat of war, the planet is in crisis – and it is young people who have the most to lose.
This is the introductory argument of the Charter for Young Workers and Students, published by Left Horizons. The Charter provides young people with a play-by-play breakdown of the issues facing them under modern capitalism in key areas of their lives from work and education, housing to climate change and democracy.
Each of the Charter’s different sections goes on to offer young people the opportunity to engage with reasonable demands they can make of politicians, employers and the labour movement in order to improve their lives and provide them with a better future.
In the section on work, the Charter highlights how young people are disproportionately trapped in insecure jobs, with poor pay and little in the way of employment rights.
Public services in decline
Turning its focus to the economy, the Charter demonstrates how privatisation has plunged public services into decline, affecting the key services that young people are reliant upon, such as schools and the NHS, whilst big businesses make record profits.
The decline in public services is keenly emphasised in the education section in particular, which argues that a lack of funding in education specifically has created a system which is fit for no one. Schools are crumbling, academies are no longer accountable to local communities and the higher education system is neither truly accessible nor appropriate for all young people, regardless of whether they choose an academic or technical route.
Likewise in healthcare, young people are unable to access mental health services in a failing NHS and they are frequently at the mercy of the handful of employers who offer employee benefits to access support for a demographic group at the sharp end of the mental health crisis.
If things outside are difficult for young people, the Charter argues that things at home are not much easier. ‘Generation rent’ are stuck living with family or in overcrowded, overpriced private rented accommodation, where landlords issue rent increases and eviction notices as though they were party invitations.
[Photo – London Renters Union]
These issues are of course set against the backdrop of the climate crisis. The Charter points out that this is a cause taken up most by young people. Global warming is unrelenting and young people are keen to ensure that the future of the planet is secure, voicing, as many young people loudly do, concerns over the role that big energy companies are playing in exacerbating this.
Taken together, it is clear to see why young people have the “most to lose”.
Running hard to stand still
Little wonder that the Charter’s introductory section includes the line “most young people are running hard to standstill”.
The Charter not only analyses the issues facing young people under capitalism, and supplies demands to solve these issues, but acknowledges the work that young people are doing just to survive in this economic system and to fight back against it. It highlights the campaigns that young people are involved in and how they are beginning to organise themselves at work, showing that “more young people are starting to fight for a better future”.
However, it is the final two chapters of the Charter which strike the loudest chord.
In the section on the labour movement, it makes the key point that even the term “labour movement” sounds unfamiliar to the ears of young people, as they have long been abandoned by the leadership of trades unions the Labour Party, as well as being victims of an erosion of workplace rights over the last few decades.
However, as the Charter rightly acknowledges, young people can still play their part. Each section of the Charter provides not only detailed explanations of the crises facing young people under capitalism but also a call to action for young people to make demands of political leaders. This provides a clear blueprint that young people can organise themselves around to tackle the problems blighting their lives and to fight for a better system that can provide the basis for real a real solution: Socialism, where society is organised to meet the needs of the majority of the people, not the need of the profits for the greedy few.
This booklet is a must read for any young person feeling disaffected by the forces at play in their life and uninspired by the political choices on offer to them in 2025.
