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Hi ,

Last weekend, we mobilised thousands of people to march from the BBC's London HQ to Whitehall under the banner of Make Them Pay. Amongst our constellation of protest signs, we had three key demands for a more equal society: tax the super rich, protect workers not billionaires, and make polluters pay.

It was wonderful to meet so many of you who'd come out to support us! I ran into Equality Trust supporters who'd come from as far as the Isle of Wight and Cumbria, which was a) incredible and b) deeply shaming of me personally for nearly arriving late even though I was only coming from 20 minutes away.

From the hundreds of organisations who attended, the thousands of supporters, and speakers at the rally outside Downing Street, we heard the same things: fear about the far right, fury at oligarchs and our governments conceding to them; and a deep moral outrage at how unequal our society had become.

Watch Make Them Pay's video about the protest on Instagram here! See if you can spot me yelling with a blue scarf on.

But we also heard a huge amount of hope. Speakers connected the march with the general strike to support Palestine happening in Italy, movements for regenerative farming, trade union mobilisations in South America, climate protestors in America, and much more – it's clear that people increasingly feel that the movement for equality is one struggle and that we in the UK have more in common with the people in Poland, Peru, or Palestine than we ever will with the billionaires trying to buy our future.

We marched because we wanted to make our demands heard, and thanks to this weekend they're starting to be. At the rally, the new Green Party leader Zack Polanski said it was "time to call time on billionaires" and called for a movement of the 99% to challenge inequality of wealth and power; on Sunday at Lib Dem conference, deputy leader Daisy Cooper called for a windfall tax on banks that our friends at Positive Money have been campaigning for (and we've joined many times!).

The momentum is with us. A new grouping within Labour, Mainstream, has formed to push for taxing wealth while in Wales, Plaid Cymru kicked off September by calling for a national wealth tax to fund services and reduce inequality.

We want to keep this momentum going! We're writing to MPs to tell them about the success of the Make Them Pay protest and call for them to act on our demands. Make your voice heard by using our tool to send your MP an email now!
 
WRITE TO YOUR MP
Compass: proportional representation can tame extremist politics 

Stuart Donald, who wrote a fantastic piece for us about PR as a guest researcher, has written a report for Compass about how proportional representation can tame the populist right.

While many worry about proportional systems allowing extremist parties to gain large amounts of seats, he says, his analysis argues the opposite: over the long term, PR systems act to balance views more effectively than first past the post systems. Reviewing the report in the Guardian, writer Polly Toynbee noted the risk of parties winning absolute power on very low shares of the vote, producing deeply unrepresentative governments.
Read more
 

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Weekly Poll: Proportional Representation
 

Do different voting systems encourage moderation or splinter opinion? Should they be the focus of campaigns for fairer representation?

The results will be reported next week!
 
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How do you think corruption most manifests in the UK? You said:

  • "Lobbying by energy, water, business, agents wanting to change the law such as the assisted dying act. Foreign trips and donations such as Israel. Donations from millionaires and billionaires. Oversea tax havens. Loopholes in inheritance tax."

  • "Public-private revolving doors and financial corruption where money buys influence and policy change. A lobbying register will not work if there is no watchdog to ensure undue all influences are registered."

  • "The London Laundromat and the Overseas Territories that act as secrecy jurisdictions and tax havens and which the government refuses to shut down. Also the over-representation of public school educated persons in all of the top professions and politics is a clear sign of how the corruption of who you are is more important than ability."

  • "In the local planning departments, it's very obvious locally. It's also obvious on the highest office in this land, when you look at the likes of the "Boris Files"

  • "Also the UK would be top of the Tax Justice Network's Financial Secrecy Index if you include its satellite havens, making it the world's worst global offender."

  • "The continuing existence of "Old Boys' Club" networks which are used for lobbying for and against proposed legislation, preferential treatment for contracts, positions on quangos, regulatory bodies etc."
Inequality in Numbers

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In The News
Taxing wealth is a feminist issue

Writing for the New Economics Foundation, the senior research and policy officer at the Women's Budget Group Ignacia Pinto writes about the huge divides in wealth between men and women. Men hold about £78,000 more than women do in the UK, their analysis finds, while men are also much more likely to hold their wealth in usable financial holdings like pensions or investments, while women are more likely to hold their wealth in property. What this means is that taxing wealth would also go a long way to begin correcting the gendered inequality of wealth in the UK by taking more from the wealthiest and redistributing it to services that underpin a more equal society.
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Rapid increase in complaints about social housing

As well as a huge shortage of social homes, the ones we still have are being left to rot by deeply underfunded housing services and associations. The Housing Ombudsman Service has revealed another sharp rise in complaints about conditions, with a 40% increase in England last year. They also found evidence of serious failings in many of the largest housing associations and councils, with Lambeth Council having the most findings of severe maladministration of any London borough and L&Q the most for housing associations. Over the past five years the housing ombudsman has warned of an increase in complaints of nearly 500%, indicating a deep and growing neglect of the people living in social housing.
Read more 

The Equality Trust
Square Root Business Centre
Windmill Road
Croydon CR0 2XQ

+44 (0)20 3637 0324

info@equalitytrust.org.uk