DAVID Cameron’s speech outlining his ‘five-year plan to fight extremism’ was in reality an outline of the Tory government’s war plans for both the working class at home and regime change in the Middle East.
This keynote speech came hard on the heels of Cameron’s pledge to US imperialism, made in an interview on American television, that Britain would openly join in the bombing campaign in Syria despite the fact that parliament voted against such military action in 2013.
In fact it emerged last week that RAF pilots had secretly carried out air strikes in Syria, with the full knowledge and approval of Cameron and the Ministry of Defence, in a blatant act of defiance to this vote.
In Monday’s speech, Cameron made it quite clear that his intention to bomb Syria went hand in hand with a declaration of war against the working class at home. While the speech itself was billed as being directed at Islamic extremism and the threat posed by radicalisation of Muslim youth, his actual words revealed its true content.
Cameron opened saying: ‘There are people born and raised in this country who don’t really identify with Britain.’ What Britain is Cameron talking about? The bankrupt capitalist Britain of billionaire bankers and oligarchs who demand that the £1.5 trillion national debt, run up bailing them out of bankruptcy, be paid for by the working class through wage cuts, zero hour contracts and a life dependent on the charity of food banks?
Millions of workers and young people don’t identify with capitalist Britain that offers no future except poverty, and it is this ‘enemy within’ that terrifies the ruling class as it is emerging as a revolutionary force determined not to starve in order to keep capitalism going.
That this movement of workers, and especially youth, is the real enemy was explicit in Cameron’s speech when he tried to link Marxism, which fights for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the advancement of humanity to a socialist society, with Islamic terrorism.
Cameron said: ‘Like so many ideologies that have existed before – whether fascist or communist – many people, especially young people, are being drawn to it.’ Cameron is talking rubbish. Young people are not being drawn to fascism (unlike those pillars of British values, the aristocracy). What scares him is that millions of workers and youth are being forced to the conclusion that capitalism is rotten to the core and ripe for overthrow.
Before Cameron’s speech, Tory home secretary, Theresa May, spelt out that new legislation would be passed with powers to take action against individuals or groups who are considered to be espousing extremist views, even if they are not proposing or advocating acts of violence. This is a recipe for banning any socialist party or trade union that doesn’t wholeheartedly go along with the Tory plans to ‘save’ British capitalism.
Any opposition, strike or even speech calling for action against cuts or hospital closures, will be viewed as an act of ‘terrorism’ against the capitalist state and dealt with. Trying to justify putting troops into Syria, Cameron advanced the ludicrous argument that all the destruction of modern secular states like Iraq, Libya and now the attempt to smash up Syria has absolutely nothing to do with the rise of groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS.
He called this ‘grievance justification’, conveniently ignoring the fact that these groups never existed in any of these countries before they were invaded and bombed to smithereens by the imperialist powers. They are the creation of imperialism and have acted as its allies in the fight to destroy Libya and now Syria.
They pose no threat to the existence of the capitalist state and are being used as cover for the introduction of the most vicious anti-working class laws at home and an excuse not just to bomb but to send troops into Syria to get rid of the Assad government.
In Britain the urgent task is to stop all these attacks by mobilising the working class to bring down this government through a general strike and advance to a workers government and socialism.
