THE deepening crisis of the world capitalist system is causing alarm in the ruling class in Britain, causing them to revaluate their perspectives.
The bile spewing out from the mouths of the capitalist press, the Tories and the bosses against Gordon Brown, one of the most loyal servants ever of capitalism as Chancellor of the Exchequer for 10 years, then as PM, shows the scale of the crisis and the need of the capitalist class for much more drastic measures against the working class.
Brown has gone from being ‘Joseph Stalin’ with the ‘clunking fist’ in the eyes of bourgeois propagandists to ‘Mr Bean’ in roughly a fortnight.
As far as the ruling class is concerned a Labour government with one leg resting even lamely on the trade unions is not enough to do the job of destroying the welfare state in Britain, which is what the ruling class is now demanding.
As Chancellor, Brown pioneered the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) that handed billions upon billions of taxpayers’ pounds to the private sector.
He also made sure that wages in the public sector were held down, to the point where civil servants in the Department of Work and Pensions were reduced to pay rates little more than the benefits they were processing.
He was the Chancellor who guaranteed that whatever funds were necessary would be made available to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As prime minister, Brown carried on where he left off as chancellor, declaring that the ‘reconfiguration’ of the NHS would go ahead despite the mass opposition to hospital closures and privatisation. He told the public sector they would have to go on taking pay cuts, despite rising inflation and mortgage rates, and gave the green light to Royal Mail bosses to bring in ‘flexible working’, pension cuts and 40,000 redundancies.
He has declared his enthusiasm for spreading the Blairite City Academy project for the privatisation of schools and for driving the disabled and single parents off benefits.
Brown has also told police chiefs he supports their demands for virtual internment by doubling the period of pre-charge detention from 28 days to 56 days, and is willing to put Britain on a virtual permanent state of emergency.
Under Brown’s leadership, the government has also tried to bail out the Northern Rock bank to the tune of £30 billion from the taxpayer, risking state bankruptcy.
Brown couldn’t have done more for the ruling class, but under the conditions of the world crisis it is not enough.
The recent outbursts by former military chiefs of staff that the funds they are receiving from the government are woefully inadequate to keep the army intact and maintain the position of British imperialism in the world, indicate that what the ruling class is seeking is much more drastic measures to deal with the working class, to prop up British capitalism.
They see the budgets of health (around £80 billion a year) and the military (around £30 billion a year) as being the wrong way round.
To change them round means war on the welfare state and war on the trade unions. The ruling class wants a return to a Tory regime, where the military chiefs will have the decisive say, a British regime of Colonels or Lord Generals.
Already, Tory leader Cameron has attacked Russia over its refusal to recognise an independent Kosovo and has called for more British troops to be sent to the Balkans.
The question is becoming more and more whether this government is going to be brought down from the left or from the right.
The working class is not about to surrender its gains and workers and youth are pushing forwards to defend the NHS, state education and their basic rights.
The working class must bring down the Brown government to prevent a return of the Tories, allied to the military, and to bring in a workers government that will expropriate the bosses and bankers and bring in socialism.
