THE Trades Union Congress (TUC) will be holding its annual conference in Brighton from Sunday 7th September to Wednesday 10th September.
It is taking place at a time when the crisis of British capitalism and the entire world capitalist economy has never been more acute.
In the UK, economists are openly warning of recession with Professor Jagjit Chadha, former head of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research, recently saying that the economy is at risk of ‘collapse’, and that the financial situation is ‘as perilous as the period leading up to the IMF loan of 1976.’
In 1976, the then Labour government, facing a massive national debt and sky-high inflation, was forced to crawl to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bail-out of £3.2 billion to prevent the UK from bankruptcy.
Fast forward nearly 50 years and the crisis facing British capitalism dwarfs that of 1976 with the national debt standing at a record-breaking over £3.1 trillion – and growing at the rate of £5,170 a second.
Unlike 1976, the IMF – the international banker of last resort for world capitalism – is in no position to bail-out bankrupt Britain again.
Instead, in its latest annual report it issued instructions to PM Keir Starmer and Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves that they must take ‘unpopular decisions’ to halt the collapse into bankruptcy.
These are pushing up taxes on ‘working people’ and savage cuts to public spending on benefits, the NHS and the entire Welfare State.
Professor Chadha spelt out the near future bankrupt British capitalism holds for workers and youth when he told the Telegraph newspaper at the weekend that the UK ‘will not be able to roll over debt, we will not be able to meet pensions payments, benefits will be hard to pay out.’
UK unemployment is at a four year high as British manufacturing and service industries either collapse or cut back on employment under the twin hammers of US president Trump’s trade war and Reeves’ increased tax on employment.
Meanwhile, the boast by Starmer that Labour would ‘save’ the economy by turning Britain into an Artificial Intelligence (AI) powerhouse – where all the jobs in the civil service and NHS would be performed by computers – got a sharp dose of reality last week.
Stocks in tech companies lost $1 trillion in four days following a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that found most AI investments give ‘zero return’ for businesses.
With no economic solution to the crisis, the ruling class has no alternative but to fight it out to the finish with the working class.
The bourgeois media has for weeks attempted to whip up a frenzy over migrant workers and refugees, the majority of whom have been forced to flee countries torn apart by imperialist war. Starmer and the Labour government have been only too keen to join in the hysteria of blaming refugees and migrants for the economic crisis.
Starmer attacks helpless refugees and fuels the neo-fascist groups that are urging the hounding of women and children in hotels across the country while the bankers and bosses are absolved of all responsibility for the capitalist crisis.
The working class will never allow the racists to split it. There is no room for racism on the picket line or in the class struggle, only the unity of workers confronting a capitalist system that is diving into recession and determined to make workers’ pay the cost.
The burning issue at the TUC conference is that, as the capitalist class and its Labour government prepare for a class war to the finish, the working class must respond by organising the strength of the whole movement in a general strike.
The TUC leaders must be forced to act by calling a general strike to bring down the Labour government or be removed and replaced with a leadership that is prepared to organise and lead the British socialist revolution.
The TUC conference must declare the start of a general strike to kick out the Starmer government and go forward to a Workers Government that will expropriate the bankers and bosses and build a socialist planned economy.
Join the Young Socialist lobby of the TUC on Sunday 7th September, demand a general strike now.
