AT a time when the working class is starting to roar like a lion and demand and vote by over 90 per cent majorities for industrial action to smash Brown’s three-year wage cutting deals, the trade union bureaucracy are acting like lambs. They are seeking to sustain the Brown government that has completely betrayed the working class.
Banks are collapsing, and the Brown government is pumping billions of state aid into them, accepting as collateral the banks’ worthless debt-ridden mortgage contracts.
At the same time, the government is seeking to force wage cuts onto millions of workers and is getting rid of their final salary pension schemes, while gas, oil, electricity and food price rises are rising rapidly, further cutting wages.
Not content with this, the Brown government is engaging in two imperialist wars, one in Iraq and another in Afghanistan, and continues to spend billions of pounds financing them, despite the fact that it is these wars that are helping to drive oil prices sky high, and with them the cost of living for millions of workers.
The prosecution of these policies of plundering the poor to aid the rich has made the Brown government hated, by everybody except the trade union leaders. The Labour government remains their government! The fact that this government is helping the Tories back into office with every action that it takes means nothing to the trade union leaders.
The working class is getting ready for a summer and autumn of mass strike actions – while the trade union bureaucracy is already organising to sell the working class out.
Derek Simpson is the leader of the just amalgamated Amicus and TGWU trade unions, now a giant called UNITE, whose membership is enormously powerful, yet whose jobs and pensions are under non-stop attack from the bosses and the Brown government.
Yesterday morning Simpson told the Today programme: ‘The first thing is to try to convince those core Labour voters that appear to be deserting in droves that the Labour party is on their side and is pushing for their interests, rather than the interests of others.’
The working class is not stupid. It knows that Brown serves the bosses!
Asked if Unite could withdraw funding from Labour because of its membership’s concern about the party’s direction, Simpson said: ‘You only need to examine what the last Conservative government did to trade unions and to the working people that they represent to understand that merely deserting Labour and losing faith is not the answer, because it leads to a Conservative government, which is certainly not in the interests of the vast majority of British people.’
In fact fighting the Labour government is also fighting the Tories that stand behind them, and are waiting for Brown to hand over to them.
Labour has added to the Tory anti-union laws. It is Simpson, who is prostrating himself in front of Brown, and is willing to hand over millions of union members’ money to the Brown government so that it can carry on with its Thatcherite policies, who is assisting the Tories to make a comeback.
The Tories dread a massive summer strike wave that has the potential to bring Brown down and keep them out of office by preparing the way for a workers government in Britain.
All that Simpson would say yesterday was, ‘I’m pretty sure that if Gordon came out and spoke about a windfall tax on the petrol companies and taking action on a number of the issues I spoke about earlier, his popularity would be restored.’
But Brown won’t tax the oil companies. He won’t even speak about it as requested. He’d rather target the lower paid. But still Simpson is prepared to hand over millions of his membership’s money so that Brown can carry on with Thatcherism!
The News Line calls for the working class to take action to fight Brown and his government. We are for trade unions refusing to fund his government and taking political strike action to remove it to create the conditions for the formation of a workers government. This will carry out socialist policies, including nationalising the oil companies and renationalising North Sea oil and gas fields.
The trade union leaders must be replaced by a new and revolutionary leadership. They must go because they would prefer to see Brown hand over to the Tories, rather than see workers bring down Brown and go forward to a workers government.
