Walking through Mayfair you would not believe that this could be a country where the poorest are abandoned to survive on just a few pounds a day. Mayfair screams money, and there the rich play openly, driving their sports cars, holidaying in luxury hotels and sitting outside expensive restaurants whilst a few hundred yards away people bed down in shop doorways.
Of course the people working in those restuarants and hotels do not share in this vast wealth – most are working for a minimum wage that will not even pay for the basic necessities of life. These people do some of the hardest work in society, working long hours for fuck all, cleaning up the shit and detrius of the rich. And after Wednesday’s budget they will be made even poorer to pay for a huge inheritence tax cut for the children of millionaires.
At Sotheby’s auction house in the heart of Mayfair, billionaires bid for scrappy pieces of art, spending more on trinkets than most families will ever earn in their entire lifetimes. Yet the cleaners and porters who work there do not even get decent sick pay, and four of them were just sacked for complaining about it. The rich, and the lackies like Sotheby’s that serve them, treat the poor with utter contempt, as if the only purpose of these living, breathing human beings is to generate them ever more wealth that all, ultimately, comes from the work we do.
In the past during periods of such grotesque inequality the rich lived in terror, hidden away behind locked doors, praying that their guards and servants did not slit their throats as they sleep. Yet now they flaunt their fortunes for all to see, laughing and braying in the London sun as they boast about their property portfolios and bark orders at those they consider beneath them. There is no indignity too great that it cannot be inflicted on the plebs, the chavs, or whatever they are fucking calling us this week.
The class war is real, it is destroying our lives and they will take everything unless we start to fight back. There should be no comfort for millionaires whilst children go hungry – the rich should not be permitted to eat and sleep and enjoy their pampered lives as if everything is as it should be. This has gone on for far too long, and it could be stopped in a heartbeat if we re-learn to act collectively on the scale that is required.
So fuck elections and get out on the streets. Advance to fucking Mayfair, starting this Wednesday, and support the sacked cleaners who lost their jobs for daring to raise their voices. Join Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) earlier in the day and say Balls to the Budget. Come to the Fuck Parade in Camden on Saturday and fight back against rampant gentrification. Wherever there is trouble run towards it, because it is time to rediscover our pride and show our strength and our rage. There is fucking more of us than them. Let’s start to make sure they know that.
Disabled People Against Cuts are gathering outside Downing Street at 10.30am on Wednesday July 8th, full details at:
http://dpac.uk.net/2015/06/wednesday-8th-june-at-westminster-and-online-balls-to-the-budget/
The protest demanding the re-instatement of the sacked Sotheby’s workers is on the same day, meet outside the United Colours of Benetton, at Oxford Cicus from 5.30pm or head to Sotheby’s at 34-35 New Bond Street, London W1A 2AA, more info at:
http://www.uvwunion.org.uk/upcoming-events/2015/7/8/shame-on-sothebys-reinstate-the-sothebys-4
In the meantime everyone is piling on Sotheby’s on twitter @Sothebys and their facebook page.
Class War’s anti-gentrification Fuck Parade is meeting outside Camden Tube at 7pm on Saturday 11th July, info at: https://www.facebook.com/events/1476014982689696/
If you are outside London or can’t make these protests please help by sharing, tweeting and blogging about them...
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