THE LibDems, who sealed the coalition by stabbing millions of youth in the back by agreeing to tuition fees of up to £9,000 a year and then voting for the privatisation of the NHS in the House of Commons, are now squealing ‘betrayal’ – after the Tory leader has shown that the unity of his party is more important to him and the ruling class than any deals with the middle class Liberal humbugs.
In fact, on the issue of House of Lords reform the ruling class has called Cameron and Osborne to order.
They were able to accept ‘new’ Tory policies such as same sex marriages only with the greatest difficulty, but the notion of an elected House of Lords is a bridge too far.
Tory spokespersons are insisting that having the majority of the House of Lords elected would lead, in a situation of a huge social crisis of intense class struggles, to a dispute over who runs the country.
The ruling class has a longish memory and has never forgotten the consequences of the last time such a thing happened.
This was in the 1640s when the issue of the primacy of the Commons over the Lords was settled by a victorious revolution which saw the King lose his head, the House of Lords abolished, a republic established, several parliaments closed down and rule established by Cromwell and his major generals for a number of years.
As much as the Liberals may shriek, they have already sold their souls over tuition fees, and the EMA , and the NHS, and the whole world knows that these scurvy little careerists will do anything to hold onto office, both high and low, and will never allow principle to have priority over their more material gains.
The Tories are now, therefore, debating dismissing their Liberal ‘partners’ and discussing whether the experience of over a month of an Olympics circus, worthy of Nero, plus a shuffle of Tory leaders might create the right ‘we’re all together’ atmosphere to call a snap general election.
That this would be a risky proposition with the Tories already more than 10 points behind Labour in the latest polls is obvious, so the prospect is that the coalition will stumble on from one disaster to another, with the Liberals clinging desperately to their jobs mouthing threats as they do so, until either the parliamentary term comes to an end or they are brought down by the working class.
For the working class the issue is becoming more and more obvious, that capitalism equals war and permanent austerity.
This year is the 40th anniversary of the working class breaking the Pentonville Five dockers out of prison where they had been placed by the police, operating the Heath Tory government’s anti-union laws, complete with industrial courts.
The five dockers were arrested at the Midland Cold Store for picketing and jailed.
Their comrades picketed out Fleet Street and many other industries and created such a rise in the political temperature that the TUC was forced to call a general strike.
At that moment the Tories lost their nerve and found an ‘official solicitor’ to let the dockers out.
The working class however did not stop. It proceeded with miners’ strikes that brought the Heath government down in 1974. He made the mistake of calling an election to decide who ran the country – the Tories or the trade unions.
Labour was then forced by the massive movement of the working class to repeal all of the anti-union laws.
Today the working class is gearing up for another display of the revolutionary Pentonville spirit.
This time they must not halt at a Miliband government, that is, another Wilson-Callaghan type Labour government that will betray.
The working class must drive forward for a workers government and a socialist revolution to put an end to capitalism. Only the WRP fights for this policy. Join it today.
