UNITE leader Len McCluskey has pointed out correctly some of the immediate implications of the Miliband-Balls line that Labour will honour and continue with the Tory cuts and austerity policy until British capitalism is rescued.
Writing in the Guardian, McCluskey correctly states ‘Balls’ sudden embrace of austerity and the public-sector pay squeeze represents a victory for discredited Blairism’ adding that when the unions ‘unite to oppose the real pay cuts for public-sector workers over the next year . . . it seems we will now be fighting the Labour frontbench as well as the government.’
He adds again correctly, condemning both Tory and Labour Party leaders, that ‘The political elite . . . is now united in asserting that ordinary people must pick up the tab for it. It leaves the country with something like a “national government” consensus where, as in 1931, the leaders of the three main parties agree on a common agenda of austerity to get capitalism – be it “good” or “bad” – back on its feet.’
Quite. What Miliband and Balls have done is to assure the bosses and bankers that they are ready, willing and able to form a national government with the Tories and Lib-Dems to unload the entire crisis onto the backs of the workers. They are modern RamsayMacs.
McCluskey concludes: ‘that way lies the destruction of the Labour Party as constituted, as well as certain general election defeat in my view. It is time for those who want a real alternative centred on investment, job creation and public intervention to end the slump – and a Labour Party that will articulate that to get organised in parliament and outside.’
It is necessary to say that another 1931 could be just weeks or months away and emerge rapidly out of the collapse of the euro and then the pound. The issue is how to prevent this development. We cannot just wait for it to happen.
The plain fact is that this worsening economic and political crisis situation demands urgent action to prevent the Labour leadership forming a national government with Cameron, and to go forward to a workers government that will defend wages, jobs and basic rights, by putting an end to UK capitalism.
Unite, in the past three years, has put up to £20 million into the Labour Party – all it has received in return is betrayal. Now it must immediately stop all financial payments to the Labour Party and halt payments of the political levy.
It must demand an emergency meeting of the TUC general council and urge all other trade unions to carry out the same policy, and to organise an emergency TUC Congress to force through a purge of the Labour leadership, beginning with the resignation of Balls and Miliband, and the election of a new shadow cabinet.
The criteria for shadow cabinet membership will be opposition to all cuts in workers’ jobs, wages and benefits, and the organisation of a national plan to create millions of jobs.
At an emergency TUC Congress the central item must be a decision to call an indefinite general strike to bring down the coalition, and to create the conditions for a workers government to take office.
This will be through a revolutionary struggle to implement a socialist programme to expropriate the bosses and bankers and to develop a programme of jobs and homes for all.
The desperate crisis of British capitalism and the complete treachery of the Labour Party leaders makes a parliamentary road towards socialism, such as was attempted in 1945, out of the question.
The coalition will have to be brought down by mass strike actions, and a workers government imposed on the situation, through utilising the strength of the working class and the mobilisation of tens of millions of workers, youth and the ruined sections of the middle class.
The capitalist Humpty Dumpty has fallen off the wall and all of Miliband’s, Balls’ and Cameron’s men and women will not be able to put it back together again.
In fact, the storm that their policies are creating, and will continue to create, is developing the mass movement among all classes in society, that will provide the huge forces needed to get rid of capitalism and go forward to socialism via a socialist revolution.
