26th August // Day of Action
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On Friday, OFGEM will announce the new energy price cap. The latest predictions say it’ll put our bills at an average of over £3,600 a year, and 1 in 4 of us simply won’t be able to pay our energy bills from October. Thousands of people will freeze to death in their homes this winter because they cannot afford to keep their homes warm.
We refuse to stand by as millions go cold and hungry this winter. More than 100,000 of us have already pledged to stand together to demand a fair price and warmth for all. Only by refusing in our millions can we make this possible.
26 August // Day of Action
We’re calling for a UK-wide day of action on Friday 26th, and throughout the weekend. This is a vital moment to spread the word as we work towards a million pledges!
I can’t find any information about where these actions will be taking place if you have more details.
Did find this news item:
1.7 MILLION households say they’re planning to cancel payments to energy suppliers this autumn.
This new opinion poll in the i newspaper says it all: if the government doesn’t act, millions of people will. We refuse to stand by as millions go cold and hungry, all so the energy companies can keep making huge profits.
But the only way we’ll win and lower energy prices is if we all pledge to join the strike together!
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/winter-debt-crisis-fuel-energy-price-cap-1807444
❗⚡ This Friday 26th August, OFGEM will announce the obscene new price cap increase ⚡❗
✊🏼✊🏾 We are coming together for a protest outside OFGEM headquarters to let them know how we feel & the people power they are up against. ✊🏼✊🏾
🗣️ Gather at 6pm outside OFGEM HQ in London – 10 South Colonnade Canary Wharf London E14 4PU
🗣️ Bring placards, testimonies and letters to OFGEM to show them how they will be affecting us with the price hike.
Today is the day!
This campaign won’t work, because the energy companies can hold out a lot longer after losing a lot of customers, than households can without gas and electricity.
I suggest starting a campaign to end the global profit based economy, and replace it with a resource based one (which is what the World Socialist Movement advocates).
We’ll soon see how long the energy companies hold out when countless people stop paying their bills. But what people can’t and won’t do is wait for the resource based/socialist pipe dream.
Talking about pipe dreams, how about this?
“What we’re striking for
Don’t Pay is a grassroots movement demanding a fair price for energy for everyone. This is what we’re striking for….
How do we achieve a permanent solution to the energy crisis? A ‘Fair Price for Power’
These demands are to respond to the emergency we are in. However, we need a permanent solution.
The previous price cap was already unaffordable for many, for example, so we need to transform the energy sector to permanently make energy affordable.
To address this, a process within the Don’t Pay movement called ‘Fair price for power’ will begin this autumn, during which the movement will decide together in local groups what a fair price to pay for our energy is and how we can achieve and enforce that price by transforming the energy sector.”
(https://dontpay.uk/about/what-were-striking-for/)So, as a “permanent solution”, it’s capitalism and a “fair price for energy” or socialism and “no price for energy”.
Socialism being a classless society based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources, with distribution on the principle of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”.
Don’t Pay might have had some sort of a case if they said their demands were for some immediate relief within capitalism but that the permanent solution was socialism, but instead they are offering a supposed permanent solution within capitalism.
So, it’s Fair Price versus No Price. Which is the pipe dream? You decide.
“So, it’s Fair Price versus No Price. Which is the pipe dream? You decide.”
After, what is it now, 118 years?, those who have heard the SPGB’s ‘case’ have overwhelmingly made their decision. But, no matter ALB, you continue to dream on.
True, not enough workers have accepted socialism over the whole period of 150 years since it first became a practical proposition for it to come into bring. That’s why we have still got capitalism where even the most militant workers are still demanding a “fair” wage and a “fair” price for this or that and denouncing “profiteering” but not profit-making.
As long as this is the case capitalism will continue and with it problems like the one both career politicians and militant reformists (and vanguardists?) like Don’t Pay promise to permanently fix.
It’s reformists, not Socialists, who are the dreamers, imagining that the problems wage workers and their dependents face can be solved within capitalism.
And 118 years of piecemeal reforms have achieved what? Only another cry for another piecemeal reform!
“And 118 years of piecemeal reforms have achieved what? Only another cry for another piecemeal reform!”
They’ve achieved considerably more than the now rapidly dwindling number of impossibilists have over the same period.
Lenin was being optimistic when he declared “If Socialism can only be realized when the intellectual development of all the people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred years.”
(As quoted in: ‘Ten Days That Shook the World’ (1926))
We shouldn’t disparage any popular opposition and protest against the effects of government. A full belly is needed before socialist ideas fill the mind.
Our role is to be present to offer a socialist analysis for a better understanding of the participants.
We shouldn’t be perceived as kicking the victim when he or she is already on the ground but providing our answer in a sympathetic manner so they are receptive to our message and aren’t alienated by it.
Nobody is dispaaging workers protesting against a reduction in their standard of living by having to spend more than usual on energy costs. That is wholely understandable and there wouldn’t be much hope of wider social change if workers were just to accept this sort of thing lying down.
What we are a dispataging is a reformist who is dispaaging socialism as a pointless pipe dream (which an earlier generation of reformists would not have done). We have to defend socialism when it is attacked. It’s not something we can accept lying down either.
“A full belly is needed before socialist ideas fill the mind.”
A wise person once said: “The people are only 3 meals away from revolution”. Two good examples of this are: the French Revolution (‘let them eat cake’), and the Russian Revolution (‘peace, land, and bread’).
Anyway, the socialist revolution is inevitable. This is due to the materialist conception of history (https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/pamphlet/historical-materialism/), and because capitalism is unsustainable (https://learnsocialism.dropmark.com/554165/17146366).
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