Not a very British revolution – just another attempt at a bourgeois coup

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THAT an ex-SAS officer from the 1970s, with current military-police commissioner connections through his succession of security businesses, as well as ‘strong connections to senior Conservatives’, should have been chosen to deliver confidential information concerning the fraudulent practices of MPs to the Daily Telegraph (allegedly in return for £100,000) is no great surprise.

That the police are not even to question SAS veteran Wick is par for the course.

This is no ‘very British revolution’. This is an attempt at another ruling class coup, to rid parliament of its more corrupted elements that are blamed by the military and the police for all their problems in Afghanistan and at home, and are thoroughly detested by them.

In the place of those who are about to be purged and ‘punished’ will come patriotic volunteers, doing the job of making the working class pay for the capitalist crisis, out of their sense of duty, if not for the sheer love of it – volunteers of the likes of Colonel Collins, the hero of Basra, no doubt.

These are no modern Cromwells. He led the English revolution that smashed the remnants of feudal society. There were two civil wars in which over one hundred thousand died, King Charles I was executed as a traitor, and weak parliaments were shut down by a revolutionary army because they were not willing to carry the struggle forward to the end.

Today’s military-police people are purging parliament to assemble gangs of out-and-out reactionaries, who may be free from corruption, but will be determined to make the working class and the middle class pay for the capitalist crisis.

This is an attempt at a counter-revolutionary coup, by tapping into the revolutionary anger that is accumulating in the working class and the middle class, and use it for reactionary purposes.

And as the Daily Telegraph makes clear, the object of the exercise is to force an immediate general election and to bring back the Tories, the ‘natural rulers’ – there is nothing very revolutionary about this.

In his piece in the Telegraph, Wick’s ‘I’ suddenly becomes ‘we’ and reveals a ‘plan’.

He relates how ‘A tabloid newspaper attempted to buy certain names. Another mid-market paper saw a small sample disc and immediately published details from it. None of this was part of the plan, or how we wanted to proceed.

‘Throughout much of April, we were in discussions with The Daily Telegraph. The paper wanted to do the project justice.

‘After much discussion with those who had obtained the information, we decided to push ahead on the basis that the Telegraph would treat the story in a balanced manner.’

On the same day that this statement appeared in the Telegraph, its editorial thundered: ‘Voters want an election and they should get one.’

This is not the first parliamentary coup that has been promoted by the ruling class.

In 1924, with British capitalism confronted by a major post-war crisis, and its first Labour government, the ruling class was determined to drive Labour out of office.

The SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) forged a letter from the Secretary of the Communist International, Zinoviev to the Central Committee of the British Communist Party.

On the eve of the 1924 general election, the letter was handed to the Daily Mail and was published and used to frighten the middle class into driving the Labour Party out of office, clearing the way for Baldwin to provoke the 1926 general strike.

Wick’s handing of information to the Telegraph is for the same purpose – to force a general election and the return of a reformed Tory party that will then proceed to carry out policies that will do the impossible, make Brown look like some kind of socialist.

The News Line is not for an immediate general election. We are for the calling of a general strike to bring down the Brown government, and go forward to a workers government that will expropriate the bosses, shut down both Houses of Parliament and bring in rule through workers’ councils.