Campaigning group Next Generation Labour (NGL) has established itself as a leading voice within the Labour party against George Osborne’s austerity package, to which the party leadership has made dangerous concessions.
Many on the Labour left have professed their support for the People’s Assembly Against Austerity, a gathering of trade unions, diverse campaign groups and activists. They hope that it can fill the void in the austerity debate that results from all three main parties being committed to the economically-disastrous policy in some form.
Now NGL and others are affirming that if an anti-austerity movement can challenge the Labour leadership, it must come explicitly from within the party grassroots. They are calling for a “Labour Assembly Against Austerity”, in support of the People’s Assembly movement, to be held in September.
The spectre of austerity haunts Europe. It poses no doubt an existential, as well as an economic, political and social threat. The take-up across the continent of impoverishment as an economic policy became a recipe for failure, as much of the trade these countries did between each other broke down. The seams of society are on the verge of breaking, as the economic situation puts many in poverty, thus straining the bonds of solidarity, and feeds long-forsaken tensions, many of which nationalistic. Incumbent governments everywhere around Europe are being voted out, and their replacements are briefed against their aspirations for alternative.
