LABOUR leader Keir Starmer’s speech at the TUC Congress yesterday spelt out precisely to delegates that this Labour government is determined to inflict all the pain and cuts on the backs of workers demanded by a bankrupt British capitalist system.
Starmer made no secret of the plans for his regime to make the working class pay to bail out a capitalist system drowning in debt, where the NHS and every part of the Welfare State has been mercilessly plundered for profit by the privateers.
Under the capitalist system the lives of working class families in Grenfell Tower were sacrificed to maximise the profits of major corporations, aided and abetted by both Tory and the previous New Labour governments under Tony Blair.
It is these speculators, bankers and corporations that Starmer is demanding the TUC collaborates with to ‘save’ British capitalism from collapse – through making ‘sacrifices’ for the greater good of capitalism.
In his speech, Starmer told delegates: ‘I call now, as before the election, for politics of partnership. With us in government, with business, and most importantly of all, with working people.’
Starmer went on: ‘We have a chance to deliver for working people: young people, vulnerable people, the poorest in society, because we changed the Labour Party. So when I say “country first, party second” – this isn’t a slogan. It’s the guiding principle of everything this government will do.’ Starmer’s only guiding principle is to do whatever the capitalist class tells him is required to keep the profits rolling while the UK plunges over the cliff into bankruptcy.
Just hours after his speech to the TUC, Starmer’s Labour government proved just how it will treat ‘vulnerable people’ by scrapping the pensioners Winter Fuel Allowance, a move that will condemn thousands of pensioners to freeze this winter.
It follows Starmer’s insistence on keeping the Tory two child cap on benefits, condemning millions of young children to abject poverty.
This is just the start of the Starmer Labour government’s drive to impose super austerity cuts in order to rescue a British capitalist system that is confronting not just a £21 billion ‘black hole’ but a national debt of over £3 trillion – and growing by the second.
After the Tories failed miserably to force the powerful working class to accept being driven into poverty and destitution to rescue capitalism from collapse, the ruling class is now relying on the Labour government to win over the trade union leaders with empty promises of ‘partnership’ and his insistence that there is a unity of interest between workers and the capitalist class.
Starmer told delegates: ‘I make no apologies to those still stuck in the 1980s who believe that unions and business can only stand at odds, leaving working people stuck in the middle.’ Workers aren’t deluded by this reactionary reformist nonsense.
They know that every gain made by the working class, in terms of wages, and a free at the point of delivery National Health Service, and the entire Welfare State was not gifted to them by benevolent bosses sitting round the table with union officials.
These great gains were won through a determined struggle by organised workers against the ruling class and the capitalist state. Trade unions themselves were built in the 19th century under conditions of illegality in mass struggle with the ruling class.
Every gain made by workers has been achieved through bitter struggles forcing concessions from the bosses.
Today British capitalism is bankrupt and unable to make any concessions. It can only stagger on by driving workers back to the conditions of the Depression era of the ‘Hungry Thirties’.
Starmer’s role is to try to succeed where the Tories failed by winning over trade union leaders to accept the need for workers to sacrifice their lives for the greater good of the billionaire bankers and bosses.
The working class won’t accept being driven into the gutter by the Tories and they certainly won’t tolerate a Labour government that has declared a class war on every gain made by workers to keep this bankrupt capitalist system from collapse.
This week’s TUC Congress must answer Starmer’s treachery by immediately calling a general strike to kick out this pro-capitalist Labour government and take power by establishing a Workers’ Government and a socialist planned economy.
The Socialist Revolution is the only way forward!
Now is the time to build the WRP and the YS to lead it!
