THE Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Liam Byrne, yesterday joined hands with Cameron and Osborne with his declaration in the Guardian newspaper that Beveridge, who envisaged the Welfare State, ‘would have been appalled at the spiralling cost of benefits’ and that the reformer considered that ‘ “idleness” was an evil every bit as insidious as disease or squalor’.
Having compared the long-term unemployed to a disease, Byrne continued to say that Beveridge ‘would have worried about the way his system has skewed social behaviour . . . he never foresaw unearned support as desirable.’
Clearly Byrne agrees with Cameron and Osborne that this skewer of social behaviour is responsible, apparently, for what is wrong with the country, and must be swept away with good old fashioned workhouse values brought back.
In fact, as the working class, the youth and the elderly are being pushed to the left to take action against the coalition and its savage cuts policies, the Labour Party leaders are now moving to the right, to give the Tory coalition a helping hand to try and save capitalism
The Labour Party leaders are, however, towing the trade union bureaucracy behind them.
We have already seen how TUC leader Brendan Barber, and Unison head Prentis, sought to bring an end to the struggle to defend public sector pensions by capitulating to the coalition pension busters and splitting the movement.
Now Barber has gone further.
Yesterday’s Telegraph featured a letter signed by over 60 experts and leaders of charities, plus Barber and the BMA and USDAW leaders, Meldrum and Hannett, to the Prime Minister Cameron calling for common action over the plight of the elderly and focusing on the fact that 800,000 elderly people have been left in distress, on their own, to cope with their situations.
The letter urges Cameron to secure cross-party support for ‘lasting reform’, and Labour’s ex-Health Secretary and chief privatiser, Burnham, is due to meet Cameron next week to discuss a joint project.
It states: ‘But the unavoidable challenge we face is how to support the increasing number of people who need care. It is a challenge which we are failing to meet – resulting in terrible examples of abuse and neglect in parts of the care system.
‘This comes at huge cost to the dignity and independence of older and disabled people, but also to our society, family life and the economy: an estimated 800,000 older people are being left without basic care – lonely, isolated and at risk.
‘Others face losing their homes and savings because of soaring care bills.
‘Full-time carers who are forced to leave their jobs to look after frail relatives are being “pushed to breaking point” while NHS hospitals are “paying the price” because the care system cannot cope.
‘We have a duty as a nation to change this – but it requires political leadership.’
Forming a common front with Cameron and Osborne to bring an end to the plight of the elderly is as ridiculous as proposing to the bankers that they should hand over all of their bonuses to help pay for elderly care.
It is the policy of the Tory coalition to rescue capitalism by making the working class, the poor, the young and the elderly pay for it, by working longer, for less pay and less of a pension, by massive youth unemployment, and by privatising the NHS and turning the elderly out of their NHS hospital beds, to die horrid deaths under the Tory regime of non- existent care in the community.
This is the reality.
Burnham and the Labour right wing, and the likes of Barber have simply recognised that capitalism can no longer afford a Welfare State and that their job is to assist the bosses to bring an end to it with as little trouble as possible, through carrying out betrayal after betrayal.
However, the working class, the youth and the elderly are not going to go quietly into the night. They are going to respond by removing the treacherous Labour Party and trade union leaders and by burying capitalism with a socialist revolution.
