Below is a text of the speech I gave for the Together We Can meeting, alongside Natalie Denny of Liverpool People’s Assembly, Hannah Walkom my co-speaker from the Young Greens, Cllr Frank Hont and Theresa Griffin MEP.

I was walking near here this week and saw the familiar sight of a duvet on the floor, in a space someone had decided was most appropriate to make their own space, in their most desperate situation. It was hard to tell yet if there was a man beneath the duvet. At the same time, an enquiring little girl was dangling happily off her mum’s arm, until she spotted the duvet and I saw her face straighten. I thought, are children still shocked when they see the many homeless on our streets? Have they been forced to accept their prevalence as we are? Or how long has this been going on now: is this just normal to them. I imagined the child asking her mum: why were there so many people without homes? I imagined her being told, in the terms simplest for her curiosity, that so many people are homeless because the rich people want to keep all the money, and there is none left for those who need it.

But this implicates blame, and a child on their terms would demand a resolution. The simplest questions are often the most raw. We are all humans, so how could a man, who has more money than he can spend, live in a country where men sleep on the hard streets of cities in their increasing hundreds? How is that fair?

Those who have power do not want to relinquish it. This is the very basis of any kind of class struggle. This government has taken the support networks from the very most vulnerable men and women because their friends, the rich, want to still increase their wealth. They will engineer spectacular and cunning ways to see us fall, and starve, and die. This same government is subject to a UN inquiry into the systematic violations of disabled people’s human rights. This same government has had an International Criminal Court complaint filed against it for their roles in the deaths of Britain’s sick, disabled and vulnerable. A strong Left is not only desperately needed, but it is happening. We are getting stronger by the hour.

It is with great relief and hope that I state the following: the socialist MP Jeremy Corbyn won leadership of the Labour Party in September with nearly 60% of the vote. Sometimes I let those words run past my glassy eyes when I feel downhearted. But many have tried to prop his victory up as the beginning of a sharp decline of the Left as a whole. The media are diligently searching for flaws in his basic motivation, that austerity isn’t fair, that austerity is criminal. Left wing political parties such as the Green Party have, at the same time, been condemned as surplus to requirements, as the main socialist democratic party go back to their roots.

But, parties like the Greens, Left Unity and TUSC are important placeholders on the left of the political spectrum. Not to mention regional forces SNP and Plaid Cymru. Without them, there is a danger that there would be no strong Left. Without the determination of fringe politics in Britain, the main parties are free to move the centre to wherever they feel is most appropriate to acquiesce to those who hold the most power. Take for example, the Women’s Equality Party: the media will scoff at this single policy movement, but with their pressure we could see important advancements for women being fought for, harder and louder, in the centre political ground. Pressure can come from all sides, but we have to be vigilant. We have to take down, one by one, the policies that only serve to starve and kill us. Monday night’s tax credits vote shows there are ways and means. Pay attention, for example, to the people behind the online petitions, such as Gill Thompson’s unending battle for justice for her brother David Clapson, who died when he was sanctioned, and could not afford electricity to keep his insulin refrigerated. Know what these campaigners are about, and support them.

We have the most genuine and organic motivator on our side: not the drive for profits or power, but with compassion, compulsion, and love. I went to see Suffragette the other day, and there Carey Mulligan’s character flailed on her strength. When presented with the need to act she said, “I can’t”. To which Ann-Marie Duff’s character replied, “you can’t not”. Therein we have all the power we need. We can’t not.

This piece first appeared on Emma’s blog – https://emmabraydee.wordpress.com/2015/10/30/compass-onlines-together-we-can-291015/.