In this issue we carry a number of articles about the dire position faced by young people in Britain today. They are scarcely out of the womb when the government’s testing regimes are applied to them. Then comes a narrowing education, and welcome to university along with a lifetime of debt.
Weighed down with insecurity, unable to foresee a home of their own or an end to debt, no wonder many young people are suffering from mental health problems.
Ahead they face the prospect of working well into their old age – and still having to face retirement in poverty.
All the while they are being told that their problems are individual, and require individual solutions. That’s the biggest lie of all.
The young are not to blame for the failure of capitalism, nor for the failure of older workers to confront it. But if they want a world fit for them and their children to live in, they will have to adopt collective solutions to what are collective problems. A young person’s place is in their union.