THE sight of PM May ‘dancing’ onto the Tory Party conference podium’ no doubt celebrating that she had survived the Tory Party conference thus far, and then joking that she had been up all night nailing fittings onto the walls to avoid last year’s collapse evoked some laughter and sympathy, but also the feeling of oh how far the once mighty had fallen.
She failed to say what plan she had worked out for avoiding being served a P45 of the type that was handed to her at last year’s conference – after the debacle of her calling a general election with a 20 point opinion poll lead and finishing up with having to pay the DUP over £1bn to prop the Tories up in office. She also failed to mention her Chequers plan at all! That was binned. It was a world of make-believe.
Contrast her pantomime performance with that of Thatcher just barely 40 years before, who provoked a war with the Argentine to show who was the boss, then took on the miners in a vicious one year civil war, and after that took on the printers and then tried to impose the poll tax, bringing street fighting to the cities, which ended with the 1922 Committee evicting her from Downing Street in tears, and bringing in John Major.
The Thatcher regime was really the last stand of British imperialism.
After Major came Labour’s Blair and Brown, selling the gold reserves, and then the crash, and over 10 years of super austerity that is set to continue and has already shredded the living standards of the working class. Workers are now determined to do battle until they get back every penny that has been, and continues to be stolen from them.
The current volcano erupted when Cameron and Osborne committed the colossal mistake of calling a referendum over the EU, which the ruling class must now reverse. For this task May will need the support in particular of the right wing of the Labour party. She spent the earlier part of her speech swooning over the memory of Gaitskell and Callaghan and other true right wing Labour patriots.
She then ranted and raved at Corbyn, the leader of the ‘enemy within’, whose premiership she fears will set millions of workers on the rampage to smash capitalism, and resolve the banking crisis through expropriating the bankers and bosses.
The prospect is that May will return from Brussels with a deal, that includes subservience to the Customs Union, the single market and the European Court of Justice. She will then require the support of Labour’s right wing to form a government of national unity to knife Brexit and remain in the EU.
The millions of workers in the trade unions and the many new members of the Labour Party must get ready to answer such a move by calling a general strike to bring down the government and to go forward to a workers government. Labour leaders such as Tom Watson and even Corbyn have already told May that if she needs help she should support their ‘six tests’ for remaining in the EU, and that Labour will support her.
In fact an incident during the Labour Party conference tells all. The Labour MP for Nantwich and Crewe Laura Smith told a meeting of the Socialist Campaign Group that Labour should work with unions to mount a general strike if Mrs May refused to call an election. ‘Comrades, we must topple this cruel and callous Tory government as soon as we can. And if we can’t get a general election, we should organise with our brothers and sisters in the trade unions to bring an end to this government with a general strike.’
Deputy party leader Tom Watson said: ‘I’m sure she got a little bit carried away.’ The truth is that the only general strike that Labour and the trade unions right wing would support is one to remain in the EU. Many Labour right wingers are opposed to a general election because they do not want to see a Corbyn government, and would prefer to mount a rescue operation for May and the EU. The issue is clear. May wants to remain in the EU. She needs the help of Labour’s right wing for this.
Workers must organise a general strike to bring down May, and form a workers government to leave the EU, expropriate the bosses and bankers to go forward with workers in Europe to bring down the EU and bring in a Socialist United States of Europe.
