IN his Emergency Budget, the Tory Chancellor Osborne said his government’s intention was to eliminate the ‘structural current deficit’ of the government by cutting Public Sector Net Borrowing from £149 billion this year to just £20 billion by 2015-16 – a cut of almost £130 billion!
What has emerged openly since then, is that in order to make this ‘saving’ for the government, the working class, the middle class and the poor are to be driven back to the days of the Victorian workhouses.
The last government which attempted to introduce these ‘Victorian Values’ was the Thatcher government of the 1980s. Her attempt ended with the Poll Tax uprising which saw Thatcher being driven out of office, reduced to tears.
Her policies were moderate and timid when compared to the policies of today’s coalition, led by Cameron and Osborne. Their savage cuts policies will lead to revolution and a situation where capitalism will be overthrown, provided there is the revolutionary leadership ready, and willing, and trained politically to do so.
The recent Budget targeted the jobs, wages and benefits of the old, the poor, the sick, the working class and the youth with its savage cuts.
It also seeks the complete destruction of council housing, through either bulldozing what is left of it, or handing it over to private landlords for their super exploitation.
Osborne’s budget has a special hatred for Housing Benefit, and aims to slash it to pieces.
This directly threatens the roofs over the heads of millions of workers, and, if the Tories are not stopped, will see many thousands losing their homes and put onto the streets.
Osborne in his budget address said of Housing Benefit: ‘Costs are now completely out of control. We are now spending more on Housing Benefit than we do on the police and universities combined . . .’ This is to be resolved by a ‘resetting and restricting of Local Housing Allowances’ and other measures which include ‘Limiting social tenants entitlement to appropriately sized homes’. This phrase can be summed up in one word: evictions.
These measures, said Osborne, ‘will save the country £11 billion by 2014-15’. There is no doubt that these measures will cost tens of thousands of people their homes. This is obviously a price worth paying to save capitalism, as far as Osborne and Cameron are concerned!
Council housing is to be privatised or demolished, while housing benefit is to be savaged, all adding up to millions of homes destroyed and a massive army of homeless, with British capitalism unable to provide homes, and with its housing crisis now greater than at any time in the last 50 years.
The decision of Labour councils, like Southwark, to go along with these Tory plans to ‘regenerate’ London and other cities by restoring the private landlords, and by destroying their council housing stocks is another big Labour betrayal.
In Southwark, the Labour Council is poised to demolish the Heygate Estate, after the previous council moved most of its tenants, but with some still refusing to move. There is no private cash to rebuild private accommodation, yet the council, which has a massive housing list, will not refurbish and reopen the estate.
Not content with this, it has another estate, the Aylesbury Estate, in its sights for demolition. Its tenants have already been told that they will have to leave the estate.
This is again treachery, as far as workers and the homeless in the area are concerned. This is a council for landlords not workers!
In this situation, the only way forward for the working class in the face of the enormous housing and jobs crisis is to build Councils of Action to defend public services, and jobs, stop the demolition of the council estates and halt the evictions.
The Tory-led coalition must be brought down by a general strike. Only a workers government, that will nationalise the building land, the banks and the building industry, and launch a national campaign to build millions of new council homes, can solve the housing and jobs crisis which capitalism is incapable of solving.
Join the Workers Revolutionary Party to fight for a workers government today that will solve the housing and jobs crisis.
