The News Line: Editorial
Tuesday, 22 July 2008
Labour victimises the unemployed!
INCAPACITY Benefit will be abolished under the Welfare Green Paper
just published by Works and Pensions Minister, James Purnell.
The 2.7 million people receiving Incapacity Benefit will be made to
work or, if it is accepted that some are incapable of work, go onto a
new inferior benefit, the Employment Sup****t Allowance.
Previously Purnell had been advised by government welfare adviser,
David Freud, that 2 million of the 2.7 million people on Incapacity
Benefit were hoodwinking the government, and were able to work.
The new measure is therefore intended to be a purge of all those who
are on Incapacity Benefit.
The government is actually planning to add two million people to the
army of the unemployed.
This is at a time when this army of unemployed is growing rapidly and
when the Ernst and Young Item Club predicted just yesterday that it
would be rapidly increasing to two million people seeking work by next
year, not counting anybody who is set to lose their Incapacity
Benefit.
At the least the government is already planning for four million
unemployed.
It is typical that the Brown government, instead of going for the
class that is responsible for the collapse of the banks and the
growing industrial bankruptcies =96 the bankers and the capitalists =96 is
instead going for the victims of their failing system, the working
class, the unemployed and the poor.
It has already handed =A3150 billion to failed banks. Not satisfied with
this, Chancellor Darling has announced the end of the =91golden rule=92
and is preparing to greatly increase government debt, up to as much as
50% of the GDP, in order to be able to hand out tens of billions more
to failing banks and industries.
While Brown props up the banks and the failed capitalist system he
canes the working class and the poor and is now working out ways of
doing it better.
The Welfare Green Paper recommends an ever more stringent regime for
the unemployed with the noose tightening around their necks at three
and six months of unemployment.
If the unemployed refuse to take any job they will lose their benefit.
When they have been unemployed for a year they will be forced to carry
out four weeks of community work by charities or private providers,
with the privateers having the option to make the period of forced
labour for a meagre benefit permanent.
After two years, all the unemployed will have to work full-time in the
community for their jobseekers allowance.
They will be made to clean the streets and erase graffiti. The growing
army of the unemployed is to be victimised for the crisis of
capitalism.
Not only that though: the privateers will tender for work in the NHS
and throughout the public sector, and since many of their workers will
be getting no wages at all, they will undercut trade union workforces
and put them out of a job.
Brown wants a slave labour workforce, which as far as the bosses are
concerned is crucial for holding down inflation, and cutting
government expenditure =96 all the better to prop up the bosses and the
bankers.
One of the other proposals is that people who have been signed off
sick will have a new medical check with someone who is not their own
GP.
Drug addicts will have to undergo treatment or lose their benefit.
Minister James Purnell says the plans are =91revolutionary=92. The Tories
say that they thought of them first.
These measures are so anti-working class and anti-trade union that not
even the TUC can swallow them without getting indigestion.
The TUC Congress is in September. A resolution must be put down by the
general council that the government must withdraw these proposals or
else they will face a general strike by all of the TUC trade unions to
bring it down and bring in a workers government.
This is the only way to halt the latest Labour Party attack on the
working class, the poor and the trade unions.
http://www.wrp.org.uk/news/3390
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