Society’s poorest will suffer the most from Brexit – which is why we should take to the streets to stop it

We have to mobilise for the Put It To The People demonstration on 23 March and cut the ground from under the feet of those who would like to see a return to the status quo of 2015

Just six days before the dreaded Brexit day, campaigners are gearing up to once again take to the streets in a march for a People’s Vote on Brexit.

It is remarkable to see that in the five months since we – around 700,000 of us – were marching on the streets of London, nothing has changed.

Our jobs, our rights, our healthcare system and our futures are still held hostage by a disastrous and incompetent Tory government. And yet, this is the time we need to demonstrate that lessons have been learned. Lessons from the referendum campaign, lessons from the referendum result and also lessons from the campaigning we have done since.

The People’s Vote march in October was huge, but it was also largely devoid of political guidance.

Now, at the eleventh hour, with the threat that Brexit poses on jobs in manufacturing, worker shortages in agriculture, social care, healthcare and more, as well as the attack it represents for our workplace rights and regulations, we must ask the following: where are our unions and will they finally lead us in demanding that the government give us a say in this?

Whatever others may like you to think, Brexit is fundamentally a working-class issue and a working-class disaster in the making. That is, the whole of the working class, not just the white sections of it.

It is the poorest in society that will suffer the most, it is the most precariously employed among us that will pay the price for Brexit, and it is the duty of the wider labour movement to stand up for working people now.

The sight of well-meaning supporters of the People’s Vote draped in EU flags marching with their families, their friends and their colleagues was not the carnival of middle-class intellectuals that some on the right will have you believe it was.

But it also manifestly wasn’t the revolt of the labour movement that we desperately need now. As a proud union member, a proud Labour Party member, and a proud Momentum member, I demand that we finally rise against the threat of Brexit, against this government and against the menacing attack on migrants that we are half-knowingly supporting.

The events of this coming week, with the ratification amendment due to be voted on in parliament, must finally give all of us on the left the decisive mandate to shut the city down and force the government to step back from the disaster of its own making.

Labour needs to whip for it hard, and we need to put the political cowards of the Independent Group to the test in supporting the amendment. And then, Labour and the trade unions must let us, all of us – British and foreign-born – step in and dictate the course of action onwards.

The labour movement has to mobilise for the Put It To The People demonstration on 23 March, but it needs to take it further.

We need to cut the ground from under the feet of those who would like to see a return to the status quo of 2015, of those who are deluded to think that they can avoid making the argument for the thoroughly good thing that is migration, of those who mistakenly think they are furthering the Remain cause without attaching it to a radical Reform agenda.

So this is my call to you, fellow trade unionists and left-wing campaigners – come out on 23 March, make it huge but make it different! Join comrades in the TSSA and GMB, bring out the TU banners, bring out the Labour flags, bring out your solidarity and put migrant voices front and centre.

We all need to see the end of this government and its callous threats with Brexit, and if we can’t make it happen in parliament, we can on the streets.

Alena Ivanova is a Tower Hamlets Momentum and Labour activist