GORDON BROWN’S speech yesterday, at the TUC, was a very poor effort from a politician and a party that have no intention of defending the interests of the working class and the trade unions.
Brown continually repeated his slogan of ‘Working Together’ to try to convince delegates and the working class that however bitter and toxic the pill is that is being shoved down their throats by his government, they must not break ranks and spit it out. They must swallow it to keep the banks solvent.
Brown said that ‘when banks collapse and markets fail, government can’t stand aside’.
Trying to appeal to sentimentality he summoned up the ghost of Jack Jones who ‘could not stand aside’ from the Spanish civil war.
Brown declared: ‘But today these lessons, that when people need help you cannot walk away, are profoundly relevant, because the fears of depression have been precisely the worries of workers, homeowners, savers and businesses have faced in the last twelve months. . .
‘But unlike the 1930s, and having learned the lessons Jack learned from them, we have not stood aside and left people on their own’.
Brown deliberately seeks to confuse the issue. Workers do not believe that one can ignore or stand aside from the greatest ever crisis of capitalism.
They believe that the intervention should be to get rid of a capitalist system that is disintegrating in order to bring in socialism, and a planned economy, that will see everybody working together for the common good.
In fact, Brown intervened to save the bankers and the capitalist system – at a huge cost to the workers.
He has given the bankers and the capitalists £1.3 trillion in gifts, loans and guarantees. They are now re-capitalised and restoring their regime of multi-million pound bonuses, while the working class is being told that their part of the ‘Working Together’ scam is to pay the bill for the entire banking crisis, with interest.
This is why millions are unemployed, why a whole generation of youth have been turned into ‘Neets’, why the NHS is being privatised, why the Fire Service is being smashed, and why the motor car industry faces mass sackings and closures.
This is not working together. This is everybody being forced to make massive sacrifices to save the bankers from their crisis.
Brown is a bankers’ man, and his government is a bankers’ government.
This is why, while it is prepared to have majority state holdings in some banks, for a limited time, with the old gang still in charge, it refuses point-blank, as a point of principle, to nationalise GMM Luton and GM Ellesmere Port, to save tens of thousands of jobs and tens of thousands of families.
Brown even tried to exhibit his ‘bleeding heart’ when he told Congress ‘for me every redundancy is a personal tragedy. Every mortgage repossession is a hope destroyed. Every business collapse is someone’s dream in ruins. And where we can act we will not walk by on the other side.’
These are just the most cynical of crocodile tears!
We repeat that Brown’s policy is not working together, but a Brown government working for the bankers and trying to blackmail the trade union movement into supporting this treacherous policy, by helping to cut the throats of their members.
Brown tried the blackmailing approach when he said: ‘But I tell you that we still have a choice to make: the recovery is not automatic and the road to recovery is still fragile. . .
‘And I say to workers and businesses across our country, don’t risk the recovery by abandoning what we know is now working. . .’
The working class and its trade unions must boldly declare that they will not support a single wage cut, job cut or privatisation measure.
On the contrary, the working class must now advance to put an end to this bankrupt capitalist system with a socialist revolution to advance to a socialist society.
