IN the seven short weeks since Tory Prime Minister Theresa May announced out of the blue that she was calling a snap general election, the entire campaign by the Tories has been completely turned on its head.
May’s intention back in April was for a short, sharp campaign with her as the great leader who would guide British capitalism through the Brexit negotiations with a massive majority of over 130 Tory MPs. The Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn was dismissed as unelectable.
How things have changed since those first heady days for May and the Tories, as now in the final day of the election campaign Brexit has dropped off the agenda to be replaced by May demanding a vote to give her a blank cheque to rip up all human rights legislation.
May’s response to last Saturday’s attack in London was to proclaim ‘enough is enough’ and that there has been ‘far too much tolerance of extremism’. If re-elected, May will be taking on the power to impose long prison sentences on anyone suspected of being a terrorist by her and the security services and even if they don’t pose a threat that can be proven, they can have their freedom ‘restricted’.
The way a person’s freedom will be restricted is to intern them without trial. Ripping up human rights laws lays everyone in the country open to accusations of ‘terrorism’ if May decides they pose a threat to the stability of the capitalist state.
Every striker and trade union member, in the memorable words of May’s heroine, Margaret Thatcher, is viewed as ‘the enemy within’. Indeed, the working class and its unions are clearly a much bigger threat than ISIS or al-Qaeda as far as May is concerned.
How else to explain the fact that the man responsible for the Manchester bombing was not only known to the state security forces but was permitted and actively encouraged to travel to Libya as an ally of the British government in its war to overthrow the legitimate Libyan government of Gadaffi.
The same with those responsible for the London attack, one of whom had been reported to the anti-terrorist squad on numerous occasions and had even appeared on a Channel 4 documentary, ‘The Jihadis Next Door’, waving an ISIS flag!
Another was on an international terrorist database sent to MI5 after telling Italian police who stopped him boarding a plane on his way to Syria that ‘I’m going to be a terrorist’. They were not considered to be enemies of the state or terrorists but allies of British capitalism in its war to overthrow the secular governments of Syria and Libya.
The Home Secretary who presided over this aiding and abetting of these terrorists, who came backwards and forwards to Syria and Libya, was none other than Theresa May, and now she has one more use for them as a desperate campaign tool in her quest to become the supreme leader of a Tory elected dictatorship.
May and the Tory government were extremely tolerant of Jihadist extremism when it was an ally. Now, she expects to be elected on the back of atrocities committed by these one-time allies to lead a Tory government that would smash up the civil rights of every person in the country, while simultaneously waging a war to impose permanent austerity on workers, and privatise the NHS out of existence.
We call on workers to vote Labour to kick out the Tories and bring in a Labour government committed to ending all military involvement in the Middle East, recognising the state of Palestine and stopping all austerity cuts at home. But it must be stressed that a Labour government once elected will have to face the full effects of the imminent world capitalist crisis, a crisis that will directly pose the issue of the working class overthrowing capitalism and advancing to socialism.
That is why we are standing candidates in five constituencies and where there is a WRP candidate we call for a vote for the WRP and for WRP voters to join in building the revolutionary leadership that has the theory and practice to lead the working class to take power through the victory of the socialist revolution!
