THE UK’s negotiator with the EU, Lord Frost, has said that there is still time for the UK and the EU to agree a ‘post-Brexit’ trade deal. His words follow a pledge from PM Johnson to walk away from the talks if a deal isn’t done by 15 October.
Johnson won the 2019 general election after millions of Labour voters in the north decided that they would vote for Tory Johnson rather than vote for a Labour government that was set to organise a second EU referendum.
This was the column of steel that drove the UK out of the EU, and the UK’s workers will not accept any equivocation now!
Indeed, they will sweep the Tories into the dustbin of history if any attempt is made to find a road back to the EU. Britain must leave the EU NOW, as the EU leaders again insist that the UK must not provide state aid for industry, never mind nationalise it, and also that the UK’s coastal waters are British, but that the fish belong to the EU.
The UK must leave the EU now! Workers will not only insist on it, they will also declare that it is for the Irish workers to decide whether or not there is to be a border between the North and the South of the country.
In fact, the truth is that the UK working class has bigger fish to fry – at home!
Figures just obtained by the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act show that British employers planned more than 300,000 redundancies in the months of June and July.
1,784 firms made plans to cut nearly 150,000 jobs in July, almost a sevenfold increase on July 2019. In June, 1,888 employers filed plans for 156,000 job cuts, a sixfold increase on the previous year.
A spokesman for the government stressed that it had already ‘protected’ 9.6 million jobs through the Job Retention Scheme, as well as paying out billions in loans and grants to thousands of businesses.
Unemployment is now set to leap, with some estimates that it will rocket up to over six million with the ending of furloughing on November 1st. With the prospect of an autumn tax-raising budget, the working class faces a huge challenge to prevent itself from being returned to a ‘Hungry 1930s’ scenario.
The problem workers face is, that although they are ready for decisive action to defend their jobs and families as entire industries are collapsed by the bosses, the trade union leaders are on their knees pleading with the bosses in place of fighting them.
With under eight weeks to the end of furloughing the Unite trade union is not calling any action, and is pleading with the Tories. Today it will launch an SOS for Jobs appeal to the Tories at the House of Commons to ‘persuade the prime minister to think again on a focused sector level extension of the Job Retention Scheme (JRS).’
Instead of using the power of the union, the Unite leaders plead that ‘without a change of heart from ministers a tide of job losses will engulf UK manufacturing as employers lose confidence in the future with demand yet to return to pre-Covid levels.
‘This Wednesday (11:00 hours, 9th September) workers – including those from Rolls Royce, Airbus and Ford – will send an ad van off to tour SW1 carrying a message for the prime minister. They are also inviting MPs from all parties to join them to sign a pledge in support of UK workers.’
Pleading ahead of the event, Steve Turner, Unite assistant general secretary for manufacturing, said: ‘This SOS is a heartfelt plea from people who’ve given their working lives to build Britain and position the UK globally as a great manufacturing nation. They are now urging the prime minister “do not abandon us”.
‘They are not asking for bailouts, just a helping hand to share work on reduced hours to retain both jobs and skills in today’s unprecedented circumstances.’
The trade union bureaucacy is on its knees, insisting that: ‘The PM and his government cannot abandon these workers to this fate.’
The working class must bring a different message to the House of Commons. It must be defiant, that it will not tolerate mass unemployment and will build up rapidly a new leadership inside the trade unions, willing to mobilise the working class in the days ahead for a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers’ government.
This will nationalise the banks and the major industries as part of a socialist planned economy that will provide jobs for all. There is no other way forward.
