THE reaction of the Brown government to the eruption of the capitalist crisis has been to champion the interests of the banks, pledging to them unlimited state aid, which has already reached over £150 billion, without requiring the banks to provide collateral for the ‘loans’ or gifts.
At the same time, the Brown government has pledged the opposite treatment for the working class, which is to bear the full brunt of the capitalist crisis, created by the bosses and the bankers’ capitalist system.
Its policy is to cut wages with three-year wage-cutting pay deals at a time when massive price increases are already cutting wages around the clock.
The Governor of the Bank of England has further explained that government policy is to raise interest rates much higher if its wage cutting policies are resisted or are broken.
The object of the rate rises is to further cut the credit supply to industry causing much heavier unemployment as an essential tool for further cutting wages.
The government is seeking to depict the working class as being the cause of the crisis. It is already being told that it is buying too much food, and throwing £8 a week’s worth of food away, thus contributing to the demand for food that is pushing food prices up all over the world. Clearly if the working class eats less the world will be a better place!
The Calvinist Brown is also championing an increase in vehicle tax duty that will hit nine million drivers, but will of course lead to less petrol consumption, and help to drive working class drivers off the roads.
It is the poor who are to suffer! After all it was the Calvinists who believed that only the rich were godly.
Central to the Brown policy is the selling off of the public sector in order that the state can put billions more at the disposal of the banks.
So far public sector services valued at £79bn have been privatised. Now this process is to be speeded up with Enterprise Minister Hutton due to fly round the world selling off state property.
The government’s Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform (BERR) has just published a report on the further outsourcing of the public sector.
The fact the ministry ‘forgot’ to invite the trade unions, who have millions of members in the public sector to take part in the review, is just par for the course for the Brown led Thatcherite government.
The review was in the safest of hands. It was carried out by DeAnne Julius, an economist and former member of the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee.
The review, commissioned by Business Secretary Hutton, recommends a long-term commitment to open up public service markets, and to make it easier for private and ‘third’ sector organisations to bid for public services. It also promotes the ‘export potential’ of outsourced services.
UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis commented: ‘Public services are being exposed to the economic bad weather and to destructive market forces.’
Commenting on the BERR report PCS leader Mark Serwotka commented: ‘There has been no public debate about this.
‘Yet we now have the horrifying prospect of a Labour secretary of state jetting off round the world to persuade business leaders that our cherished public services are not only for sale, they are ripe for the picking.’
The Brown government is irreconcilably anti-working class and anti-trade union.
The millions of trade union members must demand that the trade union leaders refuse to hand this government up to £8 million of their members’ money to rescue the Labour Party from its financial crisis.
Every action this government takes weakens the working class and makes the Tories stronger.
Trade unionists must tell the union leaders that they must fight the Brown government or else resign and make way for leaders who are prepared to fight.
Further, that the way to keep the Tories out is for the trade unions to bring down the Brown government and to bring in a workers government that will carry out socialist polices to defend and develop the public sector not demolish it.
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