The article below was written by a supportive comrade outside the ACG.
We get older. Get used to it.
Statistics suggest that the life expectancy of working class people is not much less that middle and upper class people. That’s if you’re lucky enough to live to a ripe old age. Working-class people will have faced the additional risks of less-healthy lifestyles, heavy manual labour, working in dangerous conditions and exposure to harmful chemicals, whether it be in the home, office, laboratories or the chemical industry. Older workers tell their younger workmates to take it easy as they’ll regret it when they’re older but they are ignored.
If they have survived terminal illnesses like cancer or heart disease and not be cursed with failing eyesight and hearing-loss, older working-class people will be more susceptible to conditions that affect joints like osteo-arthritis.
All in all, life under capitalism for working-class people is shit.
It was in 1948 that the State Pension was introduced, for age 65 for men and age 60 for women. Since then, successive governments have raised the State Pension age, presently 66 for men and women, with it likely to increase in 2026 and even more after 2044.
Working class people deserve to live their final years in comfort, yet the bosses, and their lapdogs, governments, want to minimise those ‘golden years’ and work us to the grave! They don‘t care if work is exacerbating our health conditions as long as they carry on getting cheap labour and save on paying pensions for longer.
This is an issue that affects us all, old and young. Youngsters may be fit and healthy now but the years roll by quickly and they’ll be like us old’uns soon enough. In other countries, like France, increasing the pension age is a massive issue, leading to large anti-government protests. Yet in Britain, we do fuck all. There are no active pensioners’ campaign groups. The unions have retired members branches who just support Labour, their general secretaries happy for us to sign petitions until the Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) recently threatened strikes and direct action over the issue. Governments want to impose the increases on us, the far-right never mention pensions and the far-left are only interested in the trendy issue of the moment. The chance for Anarchists to unite around the issue of resisting the pension age increases seems a golden opportunity.
Anarchist Communists have long realised that the struggle for working-class liberation is not just in the workplace but the community too. We may need to learn new skills in how we communicate with the wider working-class and build organisation on a small-scale, in our cities, towns and villages. Unless we do, we can all face having to work harder, for longer. Fuck that for a game of marbles!
Ned Skinn
Photo: Gray Panthers demonstrating in Chicago in 1974.