THE ‘master’, Cameron, and his well-trained ‘Labour servant’, Miliband, yesterday stood shoulder to shoulder once again, condemning the masses of youth who took to the streets during the recent youth uprising against bankrupt capitalism, and the life that it is offering them.
The duo played the ‘hard cop-soft-cop’ game. Cameron said it was sheer greed and criminality. Miliband, forever the diplomat, said, when he spoke a few minutes after Cameron finished, that it was a ‘cultural’ problem that required a ‘national conversation’.
The massive world crisis of the capitalist system and the way that it is destroying the lives of billions of people, and the way that the masses ‘the many’, are being forced to pay the bill of the ruling class, ‘the few’, did not enter into the issue at all.
Cameron began by stating: ‘But what we know for sure is that in large parts of the country this was just pure criminality.’
He did however tempt fate by stating: ‘These riots were not about government cuts; they were directed at high street stores, not parliament.’ As he will find out, parliament is near to the top of the agenda of the masses!
He continued: ‘No, this was about behaviour.’ He added: ‘As the Home Secretary will explain tomorrow, it will be fixed by completely changing the way the police work.
‘Scrapping the paperwork that holds them back, getting them out on the streets where people can see them and criminals can fear them.
‘Our reforms mean that the police are going to answer directly to the people.’
It is the time of the vigilante. ‘Elected police and crime commissioners are part of the answer; they will provide that direct accountability so you can finally get what you want . . .
‘Already we’ve given backing to measures like dispersal orders, we’re toughening curfew powers, we’re giving police officers the power to remove face coverings from rioters, we’re looking at giving them more powers to confiscate offenders’ property – and over the coming months you’re going to see even more. . .
‘Stamping out these gangs is a new national priority.’
He pledged state intervention – ‘within the lifetime of this parliament we will turn around the lives of the 120,000 most troubled families in the country.’
He continued: ‘Many people have long thought that the answer to these questions of social behaviour is to bring back national service. . . and that’s why we are actually introducing something similar – National Citizen Service.’
He said: ‘It’s a non-military programme that captures the spirit of national service.’ There is no doubt that it will be used to prepare the reintroduction of the real thing, so that youth will be forcibly conscripted into the armed forces.
He continued: ‘Let’s make National Citizen Service available to all sixteen year olds as a rite of passage.’ He did not say whether youth could refuse.
Miliband spoke in solidarity with Cameron, stating that ‘Nothing can excuse. Nothing can justify. That is why it is right that tough punishments are being handed out.’
He has one line for the youth, but quite a different line for the bankers living off state subsidy and the MPs with their criminal expense rackets.
His solution is not getting rid of capitalism through expropriating the bankers and bosses. He wants a ‘national conversation’ about adopting a higher culture, of polite, passive submission to the diktats of the capitalist order, instead of revolt.
Workers and youth will reject Miliband’s conversations. They know that crisis-ridden capitalism is responsible for their problems, and in the days ahead they will eradicate it with a socialist revolution.