The News Line: Editorial
Saturday, 3 May 2008
BROWN=92S POLICIES ARE HELPING THE TORIES TO RETURN
BROWN=92S =91bad night for Labour=92 was the direct result of a self-
inflicted wound =96 Brown=92s Thatcherite policies =96 that cost Labour up
to 300 council seats, with its share of the vote falling to 24%.
The Tories got 44 per cent of what was a miniscule 35 per cent
turnout.
This debacle happened because the Prime Minister not only insisted on
carrying on with the completely discredited privatising, wage cutting,
deregulating policies of the former Prime Minister Blair, he actually
decided to speed them up, and deepen them in the face of the
developing crisis of capitalism.
Brown emphasised the essence of Blairism, that nothing can be allowed
to get in the way of the interests of the bosses and the bankers.
Under Blair and Brown this had seen Britain develop into a country
where the poor were on a higher rate of tax than the rich, and where
big business was enriching itself out of the privatisation of the NHS
and education.
Brown=92s premier****p coincided with the eruption of the US sub-prime
mortgage crisis, and its spread worldwide.
Brown=92s response was to give the Northern Bank over =A3100 billion to
prevent its collapse, and to pledge to the British banks =A360 billion,
to begin with, to provide them with cash reserves, with their bad
mortgage and credit card debts accepted as collateral.
Under Brown the job of the government is to defend the interests of
the bankers and the bosses, no matter what. The role of the working
class is to hand over the cash to allow this policy to operate.
Unlimited subsidy to the banks has gone side by side with the robbery
of the working class and the middle class. To keep the banks
subsidised, Brown has decreed three-year wage-cutting deals for the
public sector workers, offering a less than 2.5% =91wage rise=92 a year,
at a time when the real cost of living, in terms of basic working
class necessities, has rocketed up by about 30% in the last year.
To rub in his basic principle that the poor must sacrifice for the
rich, Brown insisted in pu****ng through his policy of ending the lower
rate of tax for the poor of 10%, and making them pay a higher rate
than the rich, of 20%.
This pushed five million of the lowest paid into greater poverty. It
is these policies and this approach that has seen the sup****t for the
Labour Party collapse.
This is the approach that led Brown to bring in anti Labour
politicians such as Lord Jacks and military men, such as Admiral West
into his government.
This is at a time when oil has reached $120 a barrel and is tipped to
reach $200 a barrel, and when millions are frightened that they are
about to lose their jobs, pensions and homes.
One thing is for sure, the bankers men and women that make up the
Brown cabinet will not change their policies.
What is required in this case is surgery, the cutting out of the
cancer, before the Brown government succeeds in bringing back a Tory
government with a massive majority.
This means that the member****p of the trade unions, the organisations
that built and still finance the Labour Party, must insist that the
trade unions act to tell Brown to go, or else they will refuse to
finance the Labour Party, and will only back, finance and sup****t
local Labour parties and candidates that stand for socialist policies.
Prime Minister Brown and his policies are the biggest aid to the
return of the Tories.
For the working class and the middle class to have a future,
capitalism must be overthrown and socialism brought in through a
socialist revolution.
The revolutionary leader****p of the WRP must be rapidly built up
inside the trade unions and from the millions of youth who hate
capitalism and the bourgeois order.
The way forward is to make sure that the Brown government is brought
down from the left, not the right.
This means mobilising the working class for a general strike to bring
down the Brown government, in order to bring in a workers government
that will expropriate the bosses and the bankers and bring in
socialism.
http://www.wrp.org.uk/news/3136
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