Since Margaret Thatcher declared that there was no such thing as society, and began the process of destroying it (even though it “didn’t exist”), the working class have slowly lost much of what made it possible to stand in resistance against fascism, authoritarianism - and to stand up for our communities, which were shredded and destroyed as Thatcher intended.

The evidence of that is all around us - in the treatment of those who come to our country seeking asylum but who are labelled “illegal immigrants” and who are blamed for the gutting of services which successive governments have chosen for ideological reasons. It is in the treatment of disabled people, forced into lethal state legislated poverty because of a government concocted moral panic about ‘benefit fraud’- who must now resist the likely imminent introduction of a UK version of MAiD, now the fifth leading cause of death of disabled people in Canada. It is in the way trans people are increasingly being targeted, and our young trans people in particular are bearing the brunt of the bigotry and hatred that the government is legitimising, and which is already costing them their lives.  

And as Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism grows, it is in the governments enabling of, and complicity in, the genocide of the Palestinian people by the state widely known as “Isreael”, a genocide that we have watched in real time for eighteen months.

We live in a world that says compassion is a weakness; which says that valuing each other's humanity, and caring for each other's basic needs in order to grow a strong community is a waste of time - the focus is relentlessly on what the individual can do for themselves. Be charitable, certainly, but no more than that.

We live in a world where governments believe that you can push sick people into work by pushing them into state legislated poverty - which in turn makes them sicker, and less able to cope with daily life (let alone waged employment, which is often inaccessible, and sometimes the cause of the disability and/or sickness).

We live in a world in which it is easier for our leaders to simply kill those who are disposable to them and this makes the world brutish, violent and lethal. We saw, on the streets of the UK in the Summer of 2024, just how this feeds and encourages those who are already suspicious of “the other” they are openly encouraged to blame.

Politics is meant to serve the people: but the people must be a cohesive force for any real, lasting change to take root and impact not just in the here and now, but into the future. Until we recognise the humanity in each other, until we recognise that compassion is a strength and foundational to a healthy society, nothing will change.