Even a year ago the phrase "working poor" was not widely used. There have always been historically low-paid workers, both employed and self-employed, such as hospital porters, cleaners, sales reps and unskilled factory workers.

While "luxuries" such as home ownership or an annual foreign holiday may have been out of reach for people like this, in was also true that being in work used to pay more than being unemployed.

Work meant bills were paid and there was enough money for the odd meal out, a night in the pub, a basic week's holiday for the family, household items could be replaced when broken or new items needed and perhaps a few pounds a week could be squirrelled away in a Christmas savings club.

These were the kind of people lauded by John Major and the Tories back in the early 1990s as people doing their best to get by.

Then we were "low-paid workers." Now we are the army that is rising relentlessly under this coalition - the working poor.

What does it mean to be working poor? Different people will have different views.

For some it will mean that after paying bills there is virtually nothing left over each month any more.

Others will inform you that being working poor means you can no longer afford treats for the children - they can't have clothes like their classmates or extra-curricular activities like cinema visits.

At the bottom of the scale, some working poor will tell you of their visits to food banks because after they've paid their bills there is no money left for food.

This is exacerbated if you have children but do not meet the criteria to receive free school meals.

Being working poor can make people feel resentful of the unemployed. Despite being a socialist, I sometimes feel like this. But I know it is the government tricking me. It's the old maxim of setting us against each other in our struggles.

Who is more worthy of help? Poor v working poor, old v young, sick v disabled, British-born v immigrant?

We have had this policy of divide and rule rammed down our throats for nearly four years of the coalition.

I admit that when I am frantically trying to pay the mortgage, utility and transport bills, feed the family and pay for school lunches I have envied the unemployed who have had their rent paid and free school lunches.

But then I immediately think of the bedroom tax on the shoulders of council tenants and the desperation of those who are forced to visit food banks and my politics of envy disintegrates.

We are all equally worthy of government support in austere times. I want to make sure that message is heard loud and clear.

The outlook for 2014 is fearful. People on low pay are already struggling to pay the bills - how long until they cannot cover them at all? Like a gerbil going faster and faster, round and round on its toy wheel, so we, the working poor, are trying harder just to stand still.

The language being spewed from Department of Work and Pensions is that of more sanctions, more hardship, more rules - first for the unemployed and then it will be the turn of the working poor.

While Major and a few back-bench Tories have urged David Cameron to be more humane, Iain Duncan Smith and the DWP seem set on demonising the low-paid.

Under universal credit the mantra seems to be "if you are low paid, you must get a better job or take on a second job."

If you are self-employed but earn under £11k a year you will be given a few months to increase your earnings.

If you do not, you will be stripped of self-employment, switched to jobseeker's allowance and forced to seek employment.

Working is not enough. You must gain employment that lifts you entirely out of the tax credit system and thus out of being working poor.

This is the fairyland Duncan Smith exists in. The idea that there are jobs available for all low-paid workers to take them out of being low paid is farcical to anyone who has a brain. Only IDS believes this mantra.

So what can the working poor look forward to in 2014? Relatively little.

Once the DWP under the stewardship of IDS has made the lives of the unemployed unbearable and food bank use the norm for anyone on benefit, it will be our turn next.

The message will be that we should be doing more work for more money.

Ed Miliband has stated that if Labour gains power in 2015 he will set up a board to look in detail at how universal credit is implemented.

We can only hope that demonising the working poor is not on the agenda and that Duncan Smith's draconian measures will be scrapped.

The low-paid should either continue to be supported in the form of tax credits or, better still, Miliband should bring in a living wage for workers.

This army of working poor is getting bigger daily and is feeling more ostracised than ever before.

I know of Tory-voting low-paid workers who really believed the mantra of "hard-working people doing the right thing." They believed they were in that club of "strivers." Now they feel desperate, unable to pay their bills and feed their families. Some have to care for sick or disabled family members on top of their work too.

Thankfully many of them have seen the light and won't be voting Tory in 2015. But they need to know there is a socialist Labour Party which will protect them.

Let's have some firm policies on poverty.

I will be telling the Labour Party what I expect from it to gain my vote. It's not a given. My vote is too precious for that. I hope the rest of the working poor army will do the same