LABOUR’S Shadow Chancellor has declared that it is time for the Labour Party to completely dump the union bloc vote in future leadership elections.
Johnson, who got his career in parliament thanks to the support of his union, shares the Blair dream of severing the Labour Party completely from its trade union base.
Once ‘free’ of all union influence, the Labour Party could then take its place in a fully-fledged ‘Tweedledum, Tweedledee’ system like the one in the United States, where the Democrats and Republicans take turns in office and the working class is effectively denied any ‘voice’ in the political system.
Once such a system is established, Johnson and his Blairite gang believe they could really rival the Tories as the genuine party of big business, capable of any action against the working class.
Even the anaemic Ed Miliband, who declares that he supports most of the Tory measures on the economy, is too ‘left-wing’ for the Blairites.
The Blairites agree wholeheartedly with the Tories that the Welfare State is ‘out of date’ and that the working class must be put in its place, and they are ready and willing to work with the Tory LibDem coalition when called upon to see the government’s counter-revolutionary programme through.
The so-called ‘modernisers’, Johnson and Co, in fact, want to return to the 19th century when parties in parliament acted exclusively for the banks and big business and got their support from different factions of big business.
It is one of the peculiarities of the situation that it was the trade union leaders who made Blair, and pushed him forward. They agreed to the dilution of their ‘bloc vote’ and the scrapping of ‘Clause Four’ on common ownership of the means of production, and the deletion of the socialist aim. It was the constituency parties who were opposed to such measures.
Currently, trade union leaders like Woodley and Simpson are telling trade unionists that they mustn’t strike, and that taking strike action to defend their jobs, wages and basic rights will actually help the Tories!
They are telling the working class to wait for five years and put all their trust in some future election and the return of a Labour government.
These trade union leaders are standing by idly while the government gets ready to cut the throats of the working class.
Once again, the reason that Johnson objects to even these ‘benign’ trade union leaders having influence in the Labour Party is that as the capitalist crisis worsens, Johnson wants to be completely free to form a ‘great coalition’ with the Tories and Liberal Democrats to save capitalism.
In fact, the trade unions must use their financial and numerical power to drive the right wing out of the Labour Party and into the ranks of the Liberals and Tories where they belong.
A new and revolutionary leadership must be built in the trade unions that will do whatever is necessary to defeat the coalition’s savage cuts by mobilising the great strength of their seven million members in a general strike to bring the coalition down and go forward to a workers government.
We urge all our readers to come to the News Line Anniversary Rally this Sunday, where the Young Socialists March for Jobs from Manchester to London will finish. The marchers have been taking up this struggle for a new revolutionary leadership for workers and youth as they march down the country.
Come and join them on Sunday!
