I REMEMBER well the day the Northern Rock crashed ten years ago (Echo, Sept 14).

I watched scores of people queuing outside Northern Rock in Bishop Auckland, worried that their life savings would be lost.

It reminded me then of the queues of people in Berlin on the famous photograph of 1931 when Germany’s biggest bank, the Danat went bust.

History was made on that day in 1931 and it ultimately led to Hitler coming to power and the Second World War.

September 14, 2007 was also a pivotal day in history, because it did immense damage to the reputation of the capitalist system, from which it has never recovered.

It is true that the devastation of the 1930s has not yet happened thanks to the state pumping in over £130bn to bail out the financial sector, but what we have witnessed is like the 1930s in slow motion.

Gordon Brown’s New Labour government and its successive Tory governments under Cameron and May could have made the bankers pay for the mess that they created, but instead they chose to transfer the cost of the foolishness of the superrich on to the backs of the working class, particularly the disabled and the very poor.

Benefits have been slashed and public services cut to the bone. Unemployment in 2017 may be relatively low, but most new jobs are unskilled, paying a pittance, thus keeping millions of working class people in a state of permanent poverty, debt and insecurity.

However so far at least unlike Germany in the 1930s, the British people have not turned to the far right despite a brief flirtation with Ukip by a significant minority.

After ten years most ordinary people, especially the young have had enough and millions are supporting a radical and revived Labour Party led by a man who really cares about them.

The link between Northern Rock’s collapse and the ascendency of Jeremy Corbyn is a complicated one but the link is clear to see.

John Gilmore, Bishop Auckland