THE class basis of the Blairite ‘Third Way’ politics is now being clearly revealed for all to see. It is a one hundred per cent bourgeois, ruling class tendency, which puts the rights of the competing bourgeois individual opportunists to jobs and positions, and to make lots of money before anything else, including the interests of the working class.
Levy, Cherie Blair and John Prescott have rushed out their biographies, displaying their opportunist politics, and their struggle for positions, jobs and cash, plus their mutual relations, akin to a nest of vipers on a bad day.
Their rush to dish the dirt on their rivals comes right at the time when they know that the Tories will use their outpourings to aid their attempt to return to office in order to destroy the Welfare State, by dealing the Labour Party a crippling blow in the Crewe-Nantwich by-election.
The points to note about yesterday’s media ‘revelations’ are that Brown and Blair were the co-founders of ‘new’ Labour, and that their competition for high office began as long ago as 1994, when the too-proletarian Prescott was locked out of the secret negotiations by that ‘shit’ Blair (according to Prescott’s description).
Also, in 2004, when he was contemplating resignation in favour of Brown because of the scandal surrounding the Iraq war, Blair’s supposed fear that the latter would not carry on with his programme proved to be false.
In fact, Brown’s loyalty to Blairism is what has brought the present crisis of the Labour government to a head.
Brown’s accession to the Premiership was greeted by a surge in his popularity, since it was considered that as an ‘opponent’ of Blair he could not be as bad as the latter.
This surge in the opinion polls evaporated when it became clear that not only did he have no intention of ditching Blair’s policies, he had actually hardened them as far as the working class was concerned.
Brown, in fact, speeded up the privatisation of the NHS and education, and told the bosses that he favoured only the lightest touch regulation of industry.
Faced with the economic crisis and collapsing banks, Brown gave the banks a blank cheque of aid (they have already been given £150bn), while at the same time insisting that with food prices rising rapidy he was bringing in three-year wage-cutting deals for the public sector.
To emphasise that he was a bankers’ and bosses’ man he insisted that the 10 per cent rate of income tax for the lower paid was going to be abolished and that the working class and the trade unions were going to have to tighten their belts.
Now the anti-union laws have been added to, with legislation to ban strikes in the prison service, with leaks suggesting that this will be added to, to include the fire and hospital service.
Brown’s and Blair’s 11 years of rule have been a period of complete and absolute betrayal of the working class.
Now, faced with millions of angry workers, the Blairite ship is sinking fast, the officers are taking to the boats, saying it’s every man for himself and to hell with the crew.
The trade unions have a vital duty to carry out in this situation. They built the Labour Party and they still finance it. They must lead the struggle to keep the Tories out by taking back control of the Labour Party and by purging the Labour Party of its opportunist leaders.
They must immediately halt the payment of the political levy and all donations to the Labour Party.
They must demand an emergency conference to dump Brown and his cabinet and his Thatcherite policies, in favour of restoring the 10p rate of tax for the lower paid; ending the NHS and education privatisation programmes, including the abolition of university tuition fees and the restoration of grants; repealing the anti-union laws; and ending wage-capping in the public sector.
They must spell it out that if this is not conceded they will not allow Brown to hand back power to the Tories, but will take action to bring the Brown government down in order to go forward to a workers’ government that will carry out socialist policies.
