FRFI 135, February/March 1997
Gordon Brown has declared war on the working class. That is the meaning of his pledge that an incoming Labour Government will neither raise tax rates during its possible five-year life nor change Tory public spending plans for the next two years. In other words, vote Labour and there will be no change. The Tory tax robbery system will stay in place. This means that the richest 10 per cent of earners will continue to benefit to the tune of £16 billion each year compared to what they would have paid in income tax in 1979. Whilst they pay 23 per cent of their income in all forms of taxes, the poorest pay 39 per cent, penalised as they are by VAT and council tax; they have lost £13 per week since 1979. And if those on benefit find low-paid work, they face an effective tax rate on earnings of up to 98% through deductions from benefits. Meanwhile tax on business stands at 5.9 per cent of GDP compared to an average 10.5 per cent of GDP for the G7 group of leading capitalist countries. But Labour will not change any of this! By ruling out even an increase of the top tax rate from 40 per cent to 50 per cent they are ensuring those who earn £100,000 or more that they can hang on to the £43,000 they have pocketed from to tax policies.
Labour’s commitment to Tory public spending plans means that they will continue to cut real spending on state welfare, education and health. 4.3 million children live in poverty, but only 1.4 million children are able to have free school meals. No wonder two million children are now malnourished. But Labour have agreed not to change this either. The Tory budget for 1997/98 imposed cuts of £500 million in housing expenditure, raised prescription charges to £5.65, cut the local authority education allocation by £121 million, and froze health spending in real terms for the next two years. All this will stay the same if Labour come to office. Nor will they change the ruling that single people living alone will only get housing benefit equivalent to the average rent of a room in a shared house.
Blair, Brown, Straw and all the rest of New Labour are looking after their own – the affluent middle class, the lawyers, journalists, doctors, professionals and managers from whom Labour draws its MPs, councillors, members and support. The forthcoming general election will therefore be a complete charade. The Tory Party will fight it on the basis of robbing the poor to pay the rich. But then so will the Labour Party. This is what is laughably called British democracy. We are supposed to make a choice between Tweedledum and Tweedledee and live with the consequences for the next five years.
Let there be no doubt about the vicious character of this Tory government. In the five years since the last general election they have continued where the previous three administrations had left off. In the north of Ireland they have continued to sustain the loyalist sectarian statelet through the charade of ‘peace negotiations’. In the Middle East they have allowed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children to die through their support for the UN blockade. They have supported nationalist and fascist forces in the bloody war in the former Yugoslavia. At home they have piled repressive legislation upon repressive legislation, most notably with the Criminal Justice Act and now the Police Bill. They have extended the powers available to police under immigration legislation to allow them for instance to mount ‘fishing expeditions’ in workplaces to look for ‘illegal’ immigrants. They have passed the Asylum Act and removed social security benefits from those seeking asylum, leaving hundreds destitute, dependent on charity to survive. Living standards have continued to fall for the poorest sections of the population. Further changes to the way the jobless total is calculated under the Jobseeker’s Allowance means that the official total has fallen below two million whilst in reality it remains over four million.
But where will Labour make a difference? It will retain and extend all the repressive legislation that has been passed over the last 17 years. The absence of significant internal divisions, the insignificant left-wing, and the removal of any inner-party democracy means it is far better placed than the Tories to mount a concerted attack on state welfare spending. It will continue with a bipartisan foreign policy and will maintain its support for the loyalist ascendancy. It will retain all existing immigration controls. It will not repeal either the Asylum Act or the Jobseeker’s Allowance. In fact it will be more oppressive, more racist, more anti-working class than the Tory government it is almost certain to replace.
Democracy in Britain today means the exclusion of the working class from all political life. Their interests do not matter to rich politicians, nor particularly do their votes. It is, after all, in the marginal, predominantly middle class constituencies of the South East and to some extent the Midlands that the outcome of the 1997 general election will be determined. In fact, the only concern that the middle class have for the poor is whether they will be good domestic servants – there are now a million doing the washing, cleaning and child-minding for these parasites. In such conditions we call for a complete break with Labour. There is no choice for the working class but to begin the fight to establish its own independent political organisation and to assert its own interests against those of the rich and powerful. The message is: don’t vote – organise!
Fight for jobs, homes, decent benefits and a living wage for all
- organise to defend the unemployed, the homeless, families threatened with homelessness, the low-paid, the pensioners fight the Jobseeker’s Allowance
- end all means-testing
- for a decent minimum pension linked to the rise in average pay fight the anti-trade union laws
Fight for a decent education for all
- abolish private schools and the grant-maintained school system
- abolish all forms of selection
- restore free school milk and dinners for all primary school children
- restore all cuts in local library services
Fight for a decent health service
- end the NHS internal market
- abolish GP fundholding
- abolish the Private Finance Initiative
- end the compulsory tendering of services
- end all prescription charges, and all charges for eye tests and dental treatment
Defend democratic rights
- defend the right to silence
- repeal the Prevention of Terrorism Act, the Public Order Act, the Criminal Justice Act, the Security Services Act and the Police Bill if it becomes law
- reinstate the right to challenge jurors
Fight for women’s rights and an end to discrimination on grounds of sexuality
- state-subsidised nurseries and childcare available to all who want it
- full employment and pension rights for all regardless of length of time in a job
- immediate end to all anti-gay and lesbian discrimination
- free abortion on demand
Fight to defend the environment
- stop the roads programme
- for a cheap and integrated public transport system
Fight racism!
- repeal all immigration controls
- repeal the Asylum Act
- self defence is no offence – fight racist attacks
- defend all under attack from the racist police and courts
Fight imperialism!
- oppose British occupation of Ireland: troops out now!
- oppose British imperialist collaboration with Zionism and Turkish fascism
- oppose imperialist threats against Iraq and Libya-hands off the Middle East! Self-determination for Kurdistan!
- support for liberation movements in all oppressed nations
- oppose the US blockade of Cuba
