Class and injustices

While the general election of May 2015 unexpectedly brought a Conservative government to power under David Cameron, the writing was on the wall; but relatively few wanted to read the signs. The high-turn out for UKIP in traditional working-class Labour strongholds, even if the party did not eventually take the seats, should have been warning enough, after years in which UKIP had done so well in the EU elections, often topping the polls in many areas. Something was changing as a result of the Tory–Lib Dem Coalition government’s austerity programme, which was making working-class areas suffer for a global financial crisis that they had not created.

It was the bankers and the financial centre in the City of London that, through their greed, had helped to bring about the crisis of 2008, but they were not being held responsible for their actions. They were being allowed to get away with criminal behaviours rather than being held to account before the law. This was experienced not only as unfair but also as deeply unjust, and it was not going to be forgotten or forgiven.

As far as many people across the country were concerned, the bankers had been able to get away with irresponsible behaviours, their hands in the tills, that working-class people would have been punished for. There was something that was evidently not working in capitalism as a system, and it seemed that there was one law for the rich – for the 1%, as they became identified – and another for everyone else. On their TV sets people could watch bankers being questioned by committees in Parliament and getting away with making a simple apology but not being held accountable. They had taken gambles with other people’s money and greed had inspired their behaviours, but the criminal justice system seemed incapable of identifying their behaviours as breaking the law. This seemed manifestly unjust, and proved for many that the law was rigged, designed to defend the interests of the rich while making the poor accountable for their actions and making them suffer.