The ex-Home Secretary Blunkett was forced to resign after interfering to get his lover’s nanny special treatment from the passport office, and then seeking to cover up what had happened.
Before him Peter Mandelson was forced to resign over an undeclared loan from a Labour millionaire.
Home Secretary Clarke yesterday pleaded guilty to his department allowing over 1,000 ‘foreign criminals’, some convicted of murder and rape, to leave prison after serving their sentence, and return to the community, instead of being deported to their country of origin.
It has been alleged that some of these reoffended committing serious crimes including murder and rape.
Clarke yesterday said in the House of Commons that he was not going to resign, and earlier admitted that he had offered Blair his resignation, but was told that he should not resign.
The opposition parties in the House of Commons including Cameron and Davis for the Tories, and Campbell for the Liberal Democrats, while indicating that Clarke’s position was ‘untenable’, did not demand that he resign, and certainly did not promise a campaign up and down the country to force the the Home Secretary out.
This is after they accused him of dereliction of duty that endangered the lives and even cost the lives of ordinary citizens.
The tone of the opposition was that the Home Secretary’s position was untenable, but that it was up to him or Blair to decide on the question of resignation. When the time arrived to go for the kill, none of the so called ‘hitmen’ were willing to do the job.
The reason for this reticence as far as the Tory leadership is concerned is because they support Blair’s policies, his war drive against Iraq and Iran, and his privatisation drive against the working class.
They want to ally themselves with Blair and Clarke not bring them down. They fear that the result of this would be the Labour Party swinging to the left and the undoing of the privatisation programme.
They are unconvinced that they would win an election because of the continuing hostility to their party after its 18 years of Thatcherite government.
Their feelings of unease grow worse when they see the way that Blairite Health Secretary Hewitt was booed and baited at the Unison Health and the RCN conferences.
Their feeling is that if they bring down Blair they will be clearing the way for the working class to surge forward in a way that hasn’t been seen since the days when the miners brought down the Heath government in 1974.
The present crisis is therefore one that offers great opportunities for the working class, the revolutionary party and the struggle for socialism.
Now is the time to challenge the trade union bureaucracy that holds back and betrays every struggle of the working class, and to build the new revolutionary leadership that will mobilise the working class to take the power and establish socialism.
The worsening crisis of capitalism, the massive inflation of oil, gas and commodity prices and the flood of manufacturing jobs out of Britain, allied to the ruling class assault on pensions and the NHS is creating a tidal wave of working class anger, whose semblance we saw in the way that Hewitt was baited yesterday and on Monday.
Already the demand is going forward at trade union conferences for a day of action to defend pensions, jobs and the NHS. Once this gets going it will quickly turn into a one day general strike.
Capitalism is in crisis, its ruling parties are in confusion and its trade union bureaucrats are in disarray. This is the time for the building of the revolutionary party that will organise and mobilise the working class to take the power and establish socialism.
Workers and youth should join the WRP to build this revolutionary leadership, and should join the WRP and YS contingent on next Monday’s May Day march.
