THOUSANDS of workers, students and youth will be marching today to defend the ‘Welfare State’ from the attacks of the current Labour government, and to keep the Tories out on May 6, since they are planning the complete destruction of the Welfare State.
There is however no doubt that while tactically on May 6 the aim must be to prevent the return of the Tories, strategically what the working class requires in defence of the Welfare State is a workers government.
This is crystal clear from the way that Labour has showered the bankers with £1.2 trillion of gifts, loans and guarantees, has sacked tens of thousands of civil servants, is privatising the public sector and the NHS, and the way that Health Secretary Burnham has confirmed that, after a May 6 general election victory, Labour will proceed to cut and close NHS hospitals.
He told the King’s Fund health ‘think-tank’ last week that ‘a political moratorium on the redesign of services is, in my view, not a credible response to the times we are in – and is in fact a recipe for the NHS to stagnate and slip backwards.’
This is why the WRP will be standing seven candidates in Labour seats on a platform of defending the welfare state, in the only way that it can be done, by going forward to socialism.
We will be spelling out that whatever government emerges out of the May 6th general election, Labour, Tory, or a Labour right wing/Tory national government, the trade unions and the working class must be prepared to bring it down through a general strike, and to bring in a workers government that will expropriate the bosses and the bankers, smash up the capitalist state and go forward to a socialist planned economy.
This is the only way that the ‘savage cuts’ policies of all three major parties will be defeated.
Labour’s pledges that it will not get down to the business of savage cuts for a year, is meaningless since it is not in control of the situation.
Big business is already saying that unless these cuts take place immediately, the capitalist crisis will deepen and the pound sterling will disintegrate.
In the same way that Brown rescued the banks at our expense, he will respond to a threat to sterling by introducing all of the emergency measures required to sustain it.
The working class must therefore act for itself in the most decisive fashion, and respond to attacks from the new government with a general strike and the taking of power.
For this to be carried through requires a new and revolutionary leadership in the working class.
The current trade union and Labour leadership is wedded to capitalism, a willing slave of the anti-union laws, and is prepared to work with the state against the interests of its own members.
At Corus steel, the Unite union leaders refused to occupy the plant to prevent the furnace being put out, and have proved incapable of occupying the plant and demanding that it be renationalised.
The same leaders have worked might and main to stop the strike actions of the BA cabin crew. They have now decided to postpone a decision on the next days of strike action in BA because Walsh is willing to meet with them.
Walsh has been chastened by the effectiveness of the cabin crew strikes. Will the Unite leadership press this home? NO! To please Gordon Brown and Walsh, they have once again postponed strike action with a view to ending the action.
It’s the same story at Royal Mail where the CWU leaders have made a deal with Royal Mail, which is now being balloted on, and will require the delivery section of the union voting the Mail Centre membership out of their jobs by accepting a very large number of Mail Centre closures.
Such leaders have not the slightest intention of leading the working class forward.
They must be replaced at once by leaders who are prepared to fight to win the struggles that are being imposed on the working class and go forward to socialism.
