The latest figures on household energy debt in Britain reveal not merely an economic accident, but the deliberate outcome of class policy. The burden of debt borne by the masses — £4.43 billion, nearly three times higher than in 2020 — is the direct consequence of decisions made by the capitalist state in service of foreign imperialist interests.
What are the facts? More than two million households are now trapped in arrears, many without repayment plans. Families are driven to take out expensive credit to secure the basic means of survival. Older workers, who built this country through a lifetime of labour, are forced into their beds in coats and scarves to withstand the cold. And for this, they are told to accept still higher bills, £145 a year more, to subsidize the profits of the energy monopolies.
This suffering is not the result of natural disaster, but of political calculation. The British government, at the command of the ruling class, severed access to cheap Russian gas under the banner of “sanctions.” These measures were not taken in the interest of British workers, but to align Britain with the strategy of the United States; to weaken a rival and preserve the hegemony of the American empire. The outcome is plain: while financiers and energy speculators enrich themselves, the British proletariat is condemned to misery and debt.
The truth must be spoken clearly. The government could, at any time, reverse these sanctions and restore affordable energy to the people. Instead, it chooses to maintain the fiction of “national security” while sacrificing its own population on the altar of Atlantic solidarity. Such is the nature of the capitalist state: it doesn’t serve the people, but the narrow class of capitalists, landlords, and imperialists.
Charity or “debt relief schemes” within the existing system will be a short term relief at most. These are crumbs designed to pacify. The workers must struggle for power over the essentials of life, to take the energy system out of the hands of profiteers, to smash the servility of the state to foreign masters, and to build a system where the interests of the masses, not the empire, determine policy.
Until the working class asserts its own rule, the cycle will continue: crises manufactured, debts piled up, and the people forced to pay with their health and their lives. Only through the organised struggle of the proletariat, led by a party that will not compromise with capital, can this parasitic system be overturned.
