THE working class of Europe is rising up to fight the savage spending cuts now being imposed by governments across the Continent.
When the UK coalition brings forward its Comprehensive Spending Review on October 20, the working class, youth and poor will rise up in Britain.
The ruling classes of Europe are already shaken by the scope of the strikes and demonstrations that took place on Wednesday, with the governments of Greece, Spain and Ireland in the firing line.
Workers were clear that the crisis of the capitalist system is not their fault and they are not prepared to pay the price for it.
All appears ‘calm’ in Britain, but the response of the working class to the coalition’s savage cuts after October 20 will be as great if not greater than in any other land.
British capitalism is the ‘sick man of Europe’. Its banks are broke. Industry has gone. There is no empire and billions have been wasted on unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The ruling class’s answer to this crisis is to do away with the Welfare State to pay off the ‘deficit’, by driving the working class back a century.
However, millions of ordinary people will not simply surrender the NHS, social security, their jobs and their homes to keep capitalism going. They will fight like tigers to defend their gains, and do everything that is necessary to do so.
That is why the coalition of Tories and LibDems that is seeking to force through cuts of 25-33 per cent in government spending from next month is relying on the Labour Party and the right-wing trade union leaders aiding them in their hour of need.
There is no fundamental difference between the coalition and the Labour Party. Their only disagreement is with the ‘pace’ of cuts, with Labour preferring to cut government spending by hundreds of billions of pounds over 10 years, not five.
This was demonstrated at the Labour Party conference where new Labour Party leader Ed Miliband got up to make his acceptance speech and told the conference that he certainly wasn’t going to support strike action against the coalition and that in parliament he would be voting for ‘some things’ the coalition proposed, even things ‘we won’t like as a party’, and that – if he becomes prime minister one day – ‘I will not be able to reverse’.
Miliband represents the ‘new’ generation of ‘New Labour’ that supported junking Clause Four to turn the Labour Party into the loyal lieutenants of capitalism.
They continued Thatcherism after Thatcher had been finished off by the working class, agree that the workers must pay for the crisis, and will now try to save the ruling class from the mass anger of the working class.
Miliband has been elected as the Labour leader with the support of the right-wing leaders of the biggest union, Unite, Simpson and Woodley, and together they will act as a ‘human shield’ for the coalition as it imposes savage cuts.
They will work might and main to stop any serious strike action by the working class and seek to limit the working class to fruitless protests and stunts that won’t stop the cuts.
Miliband and his Shadow Cabinet will vote decisively in parliament for measures that the working class will absolutely oppose, including attacks on the Welfare State and the privatisation of Royal Mail.
Spurring them on will be the openly Blairite right wing, ever-ready to cross the floor of the House of Commons to join the coalition government, if Miliband should wobble.
But all their plans to protect the coalition and save British capitalism will begin to come unstuck when the working class refuses to be kept ‘under control’ and millions of angry youth revolt.
The only way to defend living standards and defeat the treachery of the Labour Party leaders and their right-wing allies in the unions is to build the Workers Revolutionary Party, to take the working class forwards to do away with bankrupt capitalism and establish a socialist society by bringing this coalition down.
The Welfare State cannot be preserved and developed without the overthrow of the capitalist order and the establishment of a socialist planned economy.
Forward to the British and European socialist revolution!
