The fight against the self-defeating economics of austerity must be a broad one, involving all those opposed not just to cuts but the ideological war being waged by the state against our class and 60 years of social progress.

As part of this mass mobilisation Unite is proud to be a founding supporter alongside other trade unions, campaigning and direct action groups, the anti-cuts network, community organisations and faith groups of the People's Assembly - a unified "coalition of the willing" organising actions in villages, towns and cities across our nations.

The People's Assembly is giving an opportunity to millions of men and women, families and communities to become part of a collective movement of resistance for the first time in a generation.

And the need to resist is great. All that we now take for granted is under threat - our NHS and welfare state, the security and education of our young and the dignity of our elderly.

We have a duty as a movement to stand up with those who can and for those who can't. To stand up with communities largely ignored, if not deserted, by an increasingly detached political class at Westminster.

We are the seventh richest nation on our planet. If we have money to propose war on Syria, we've got money to wage war on poverty, food banks, unemployment, homelessness and loan sharks.

We've got money to put our people back to work, invest in the infrastructure of our nations and build the social housing we so desperately need.

We can control rents and energy prices, end low pay, put our children into school and university not debt and support collective bargaining as a route out of poverty for millions, redistributing the wealth we create fairly and to all. We can do this and more, and we must.

Unite is working hard to extend our social and political reach beyond our industrial membership.

Our community membership scheme offers a home within the union to all "not in paid work" - volunteers, carers, students, retired workers and the unemployed.

This is a political decision that recognises the need for mass mobilisation "beyond, but not separate from the workplace" and the extension of core trade union values into the communities in which we live.

Over 5,000 members have now established some 50 local groups and Unite has opened Community Support Centres offering welfare buddying and assistance, organising training and a programme of open access education as well as a space for group and public meetings in Barnsley, Belfast, the Forest of Dean and Tower Hamlets.

The fifth will open on November 15 in Durham, a joint venture with comrades in the National Union of Mineworkers.

Taking our campaigns to the streets on issues from the Bedroom Tax and threatened evictions to workfare, zero-hours contracts, high street loan sharks and the living wage, it is Unite members at the forefront of a network of local groups making a real difference in communities across Britain and Ireland.

Mobilising against the closure of local services - libraries, leisure facilities, playgroups and youth services.

Joining forces with direct action groups like UK Uncut to expose the tax avoiders and campaign groups opposing the privatisation of our NHS. A new grassroots movement is emerging.

Working people have seen the longest decline in living standards since the 1870s and while top CEOs pocket record payments averaging £4.3 million per year 3.5 million British children now live in poverty.

This is obscene and the failed politics of neoliberalism and ideological austerity have no answers.

It's up to us to defeat these attacks and our challenge, the challenge of a generation, is to build a mass movement capable of doing it - to unite our industrial membership and their struggles with their communities, to reject the language of division and to inspire a generation.

A better, fairer society is possible. These are political choices and of course there is an alternative. We have a great responsibility on our shoulders - we must not betray that responsibility.

It's our destiny.

Steve Turner is Unite's assistant general secretary.