The News Line: Editorial
Wednesday, 9 July 2008
BRITAIN IS RIPE FOR SOCIALIST REVOLUTION
THE British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) quarterly re****t has just
discovered a situation that every worker and every shopper has been
acquainted with for months.
This is the situation where prices of the most basic commodities are
rising savagely, where banks, the service industries and what is left
of manufacturing industry are reeling from huge share collapses and
heading for a slump, and where more and more people are facing the
prospect of negative equity and their homes being repossessed.
The stockmarket and the FTSE-100 index fell more than 20% below its
2007 high point of 6,732, to below 5,385 points in early Tuesday
trading, a full 20% fall and a =A3300 billion collapse in share prices.
Housebuilder Persimmon has cut 1,100 jobs, stating that completions of
house sales in the first six months of the year were down 30%,
following the example of Taylor Wimpey.
Meanwhile the Bradford and Bingley bank, which private equity predator
Texas Pacific was going to invest =A3179 million into, at 55 pence a
share, has now been declared worthless by the city after shares fell
by 38 per cent on Monday and early Tuesday. Stockbroker Pali
International has cut its target price for that bank to zero.
The housing market then suffered a further blow when the Bank of
England said mortgage approvals had plunged by 28% in May and were 64%
lower than a year ago.
Workers also have a good idea who is expected to pay for this crisis,
since Brown has declared his doctrine that the banks must be propped
up however many billions it costs, while the wages of the working
class must be savaged by three-year sub-inflation wage cutting deals.
These deals are said to be vital to keep inflation at bay.
Meanwhile, over =A3150bn has been handed over to the banks as gifts from
the capitalist state, since the banks have not provided any viable
collateral, only bad debts. This practice is held to be =91non-
inflationary=92!
The doctrine that the working class must pay has now been further
extended by the prime minister=92s latest declaration that working class
families are wasting =A38 a week by throwing away food, and that this
must stop since he holds that the practice is partly responsible for
the vast increases in food prices.
The super markets are being urged to increase their food prices and to
halt =91two for one=92 bargains so as to conserve food supplies.
Meanwhile, the government plans to use more agricultural land for the
production of biofuels, following the disastrous failure of their war
in Iraq. At the same time bourgeois authorities are predicting that
the slump will add 300,000 to the growing army of the unemployed in
the coming year.
This emerging crisis means that the working class must use its trade
union and political strength to defend itself and its families from
pauperisation, from job losses, and from becoming homeless due to
repossessions.
Workers must defend their interests just as determinedly as the bosses
and the bankers are using the Brown government to defend theirs.
This means that there must be indefinite strike actions to smash the
three-year wage-cutting deals, and that the trade unions must base
their pay claims on their own cost of living index and insist that the
payments be revised upwards to keep up with monthly inflationary
leaps.
There must be no sackings. Workers must insist that there be work
sharing with no loss of pay.
Workers must be secure in their homes and the banks must be told that
repossessions of workers=92 homes must stop, or they will face
nationalisation.
The fantastic inflation of oil prices must be halted. The government
must be made to slash fuel duties and the oil and gas companies must
be nationalised so that inflation can be tackled and the oil funds
used to finance a programme of public works, for the building of
millions of new council houses.
These measures can defend the working class. However, to resolve the
crisis, the working class must bring down the Brown government and go
forward to a workers government that will end capitalism in Britain by
expropriating the major industries and the banks.
http://www.wrp.org.uk/news/3347
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