A generation that has been cast aside could usher in social change

Editorial / 13 November 2026 The answer to unemployment is reindustrialisation, not cutting benefits 13 November 2026 Editorial / 12 November 2026 Sedwill threats will lead to annihilation 12 November 2026 Editorial / 11 November 2026 So much Palestine needs, so much Britain could do 11 November 2026 Editorial / 10 November 2026 Socialist advance in US has global significance 10 November 2026 Editorial / 9 November 2026 Thames Water’s creditor drama shames a Labour Party pledged to reverse Thatcherism 9 November 2026 Editorial / 8 November 2026 War, law and Remembrance Sunday 8 November 2026 Editorial / 6 November 2026 Reject Mahmood and Rowley’s reheated British FBI 6 November 2026 THERE is a whole host of young people in the present generation that capitalism has cast adrift.

Dealing with this is, of course, a problem for government policy, of both this government and of every other government since the end of the post-war boom.

Today’s young people neither in education, employment or training face a life crisis not of their making but one handed down to them by a system that, at every stage in its development, has privileged profit over people even when the post-war recovery meant that skills training and apprenticeships were more readily available then than now.

And now their future is mortgaged to capitalism’s never-ending wars.

But recollect that even at the height of the boom the employers’ federations campaigned against the industry training levies which were designed to ensure a nationwide framework of skills training.

Reactionary politicians today rail against the expansion of higher education and bleat about so-called “useless degrees” in skills that in earlier years might have been transmitted in a work-based industrial setting.

But our sclerotic, short-term profit-seeking corporate culture firstly failed to re-equip British industry with more modern technologies and secondly abandoned domestic industry when cheaper labour elsewhere guaranteed higher profits.

From 1870, the year of the Education Act, until the 1960s Britain had a manufacturing-based economy. Since then the relative decline of manufacturing in Britain, both in relation to other sectors of the economy and in relation to other countries, has been the characteristic feature of our capitalist system.

This reflects deep-rooted structural problems that turn on the narrow class interests of our peculiarly constituted ruling class. The failure to direct capital to modernise basic industry and to invest in innovative and emergent sectors parallels the expansion of the corporate banking and finance sector where profits — as the recent raise in interest rates demonstrate — arise not from the creation of material values but from speculation and manipulation of fiscal instruments.

There are manufacturing sectors where Britain remains strong. True, they are substantially related to defence and aerospace but pharmaceuticals and some areas of advanced science and knowledge-based sectors remain effective and are able — in the language of inter-imperialist rivalry — to compete.

But we have a regionally unbalanced economy with parts of the south overblown and much of the country dealing with deindustrialisation, population shrinkage, unemployment and the whole host of social problems that accompany this.

Since the 2008 credit crunch and banking crisis and the ensuing recession and the helter-skelter economic policy switches of the years since — remember Liz Truss — Britain’s structural problems have endured.

The opportunity for a new economic strategy based on public ownership and state investment that Jeremy Corbyn said could accompany Britain’s departure from the neoliberal European Union has been frittered away by each of the successive governments with the new Labour administration of Andy Burnham caught between empty promises and capitalist-continuity policies.

Of course, energetic government intervention, a vastly expanded training and education regime could equip young people with the skills for a revived economy based on the satisfaction of human need rather than fugitive capital squirrelled away in tax havens.

But without capital controls and a tax regime that taxes wealth at the same rate as earnings this would be mere window-dressing.

A future for this generation of young people and their successors will not be secured by tinkering with a system has proved inadequate to carry out the tasks necessary.

Revolutions are made by young people and when the material conditions arise for a revolutionary change it is the generation whose understanding is shaped by their experience of capitalist crisis who make it.

Editorial / 13 November 2026 The answer to unemployment is reindustrialisation, not cutting benefits 13 November 2026 Voices of Scotland / 10 November 2026 Zombie Blairites can’t fix the youth unemployment crisis 10 November 2026 Labour continues to fail young working-class people in jobs and education yet shifts the blame on to them. SEAN O’NEILL suggests the trade union movement needs to champion their cause by promoting investment in infrastructure jobs

Youth Unemployment / 9 November 2026 TUC calls for ‘bold plan’ to tackle Neets crisis 9 November 2026 Features / 31 January 2026 Who is causing Britain’s economic stagnation? 31 January 2026 If the government really wanted to address public finances, improve living standards and begin economic recovery, it would increase its borrowing for investment, argues MICHAEL BURKE