MlLIBAND, Balls and co are like circus performers on the highest of high wires, being buffeted by a huge economic gale that is pauperising millions. As jobs and living standards plunge, they advocate getting rid of all safety nets, especially the Welfare State and its universal benefits, and allowing the masses to be pauperised and sacrificed for the benefit of capitalism.
Miliband has repeated that he will keep all of the Tory cuts, and even bring in some new cuts to further slash living standards and jobs. Now he has pledged that he will make no additional borrowing if Labour becomes the government.
At the same time as he is publicly embracing the Tories he says, out of the other side of his mouth, that his government will be like that of Attlee’s, a ‘radical government’, flourishing in the midst of a catastrophe.
He does not say how this miracle will be accomplished – in fact, it is the thinnest-ever propaganda disguise for betrayal.
The Attlee-Bevan government brought in the NHS and the Welfare State with all of its universal benefits.
The source of its radicalism or socialism in 1945 was the fact that the returning troops and the working class at home were in a very revolutionary frame of mind, and were determined not to be returned to the 1930s, and to advance to socialism.
This is why they dumped the ‘war hero’ Churchill, and gave Attlee a message that it was socialism or else.
Attlee was forced to bring in the NHS, the Welfare State with its universal benefits, and to nationalise the railways, the mining industry, the aircraft industry, the water, gas and electricity industries and much more, including beginning the massive programme of council house building.
The mood of the time was expressed by Aneurin Bevan in the House of Commons when he declared to the ruling class: ‘We are the masters now!’
The economic fortunes of the government were based on its programme of nationalisation, and helped by the destruction of the Italian, German and Japanese economies which allowed dilapidated British industry to expand, and even repay some debt.
Miliband, when he summons up the ghost of Attlee, is trying to fool the masses with a cloak for his betrayal. He is also showing contempt for their intelligence.
He is not talking about re-nationalising the railways etc, or developing and expanding the Welfare State and the NHS and the system of universal benefits (in fact, his political friend Burnham has already declared that the battle to defend the NHS has been lost to privatisation).
Miliband has arrived on the scene to praise Attlee and help the Tories to bury the gains that his government was forced to make.
The NHS, the Welfare State, council housing and universal benefits are to be ended to try to save the bankers and capitalism.
The truth is that by joining hands publicly with Toryism he is volunteering to be the leader or co-leader of a national government to save British capitalism, by smashing the gains that the working class made between 1945 and 1951 to smithereens.
There is only one way that the gains of the 1945 Attlee-Bevan Labour government can be sustained and developed, and that is by carrying out a socialist revolution to get rid of the bankrupt British capitalist system that can no longer even tolerate a whiff of a Welfare State.
The trade union bureaucracy, led by McCluskey and Prentis, that is campaigning for a Miliband-Balls-led Labour government is also selling out the working class.
The union leaders complain about wage cuts, mass poverty and mass unemployment, and the destruction of people’s lives but refuse to call a general strike to bring down the coalition and go forward to a workers government.
We urge workers and youth to build a new revolutionary leadership in the trade unions and to join the WRP to do so.
Defending the NHS and the Welfare State means organising a general strike, bringing down the coalition and bringing in a workers government to carry through a socialist revolution to put an end to British capitalism.
