IT MUST be a grave crisis indeed when Reid the Home Secretary – who only a week ago was posing as carrying the entire burden of the world’s security on his shoulders, and was intent in seeing this job through to victory – announces that he will be gone by the end of June on the coat-tails of his master, Prime Minister Blair, and that he wants to take advantage of the situation to ‘recharge his batteries’.
But what about the vital world shattering importance of the ‘war against terror’, and splitting the Home Office into two separate government departments so that he could do battle, like superman, for the hearts and minds of the disaffected both abroad and at home?
All that was obviously so much guff for the simple minded.
He is getting out, following the example of Milburn, Blunkett, Clarke, his master Blair, and with the other new Labour chieftains and Welfare State wreckers, Hewitt and Tessa Jowell soon to join the band – all of whom will, no doubt, be busily recharging batteries.
What has happened is that the Blairite vision of a rampant imperialism and a defeated working class, with its welfare state destroyed, has been shown to have been a fanciful mirage.
In Iraq and Afghanistan the British army is being destroyed much to the alarm of the officer corps and the British ruling class, who know that they are going to need it at home.
At home, the Blair-Brown government has launched vicious and continual attacks on the Welfare State and now sees all sections of the working class, from nurses and doctors, to all NHS workers, civil servants, postal workers, airport workers and teachers either planning or organising industrial action to defend their jobs, wages and basic rights.
The Blairites are also seeing their devolution policy bear poisoned fruit, and rebound on themselves as its first victims, with the Labour Party in Scotland no longer the biggest parliamentary party.
They brought in devolution to strengthen the nationalists and the Tories in the north and weaken the working class. Now they are facing an SNP that wants to restore Britain to its pre-capitalist boundaries and permanently split the UK working class!
The demoralised Blairites are now looking for a way to carry forward their programme for a deregulated, Welfare State-free Britain at a time when they are hated by the working class, and their leaders, Milburn, Blunkett, Clarke, Reid etc have had to give up all hope of one of them challenging Brown for the leadership of the Labour party to take the premiership.
Their attitude to Brown is that he is too wedded to the Labour party. They do not consider that he will stand up to the trade unions in the next round of the class struggle that is rapidly sharpening.
The Blairites have no affection for the Labour Party. It is simply a party that they have made use of for a number of years, during which they have always sought to get rid of its trade union base, the roots of the cash for peerages scandal.
They now consider that they are much closer to Cameron, the Tory leader, than to Brown, and that with their support he may be able to carry forward the Blairite counter-revolution.
Reid’s resignation means that they are moving into opposition, and want to give themselves the freedom to ally themselves with the Tories on such matters of legislation as those they found they could not get carried without Tory support while in government. Such collaboration can lead to the formation of a national government with the Tories when the economic situation deteriorates significantly and a crisis programme becomes necessary.
However, the defeat of Blair and his coming notice of resignation as Premier, due to be made Thursday, will enormously encourage the working class to drive forward in mass strike actions to win living wage increases and to defend the Welfare State.
Workers will take strike action to prevent the privatisation of the NHS, the Royal Mail, and to defend state education.
We call upon the working class to build a new leadership inside the trade unions to lead this struggle to its victory, meaning that the trade unions must bring down any Brown government and replace it with a workers’ government that will carry out socialist policies.
This is the only way to defend our basic rights and keep the Tories and treacherous Blairites out.
