THE general secretary of the University and College Union (UCU), Jo Grady, delivered a stinging condemnation of Labour leader Keir Starmer yesterday after he refused to give any support to university staff fighting against the massive Tory underfunding of the education sector.
Grady issued a press release stating: ‘Today, Keir Starmer was given the opportunity to show support for university staff engaged in industrial action but instead chose to undermine them.’
Grady continued: ‘UCU members are fighting for a sector that properly values staff, and we are proud to have the overwhelming support of students. The leaders of the Labour Party should be backing staff, not bosses.’
In an interview on the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Starmer had attacked UCU strike action for hindering students gaining their degrees and refused to give any support to the fight by low paid lecturers, many of whom are on short term contracts, for pay increases and an end to the cuts in their pensions.
As Grady points out, Starmer has already dropped a previous Labour commitment to abolishing the ‘toxic’ tuition fees.
At a keynote speech setting out his ‘mission’ for education, he further refused point-blank to commit a Labour government to a 6.5% pay raise for teachers.
It has been widely reported, that the pay review body on teachers pay will be recommending a 6.5% increase to the Tory government and that the Tories are determined to ignore this recommendation and impose a much lower increase.
Starmer has now joined with the Tories in insisting that Labour would have ‘clear rules on what we can afford’.
Bankrupt British capitalism cannot afford anything other than poverty for workers, and Starmer’s ‘mission’ is to prove to the bosses and bankers that Labour is the party to force the working class to accept poverty, as the price for keeping them in profit.
Starmer’s drive to make the Labour Party an acceptable, loyal party in a coalition government of ‘national salvation’ comes when the ruling class has given up on the Tories as a government, too weak to carry out a class war on the working class.
Increasingly, the Tory-supporting press are agonising about the failures of Tory governments to impose the will of the capitalist class on workers.
Yesterday’s Daily Telegraph carried a comment article headed: ‘Thirteen years of Tory failure have shifted Britain radically to the Left’ which decried the ‘cult of the NHS’ and the ‘woke take-over’ of Britain.
The following are the main enemies of capitalism, according to the right wing:
‘Lefty’ lawyers and judges who still believe in the rule of bourgeois law and obstruct the Tories from deporting anyone they like.
Terrible militant trade union leaders who are forced by massive votes of their members to take strike action over poverty level wages.
These are the enemies, and the cry now emerging is for a new party to replace the terminally shattered Tories. They want a party that will tear up the law, overrule any vestige of bourgeois parliamentary democracy and get on with the job of smashing the unions, arresting protesters, and jailing any leaders who oppose the naked dictatorship of the capitalist class.
All those who say it couldn’t happen in good old democratic Britain should learn the lessons of history.
When faced with catastrophic economic collapse, the ruling class in Germany and Italy turned to fascist parties to smash the working class and sent trade union leaders to the concentration camps.
A new party prepared to do whatever is necessary to save bankrupt capitalism from an enraged and powerful working class movement, that is being driven along the road to revolution by this crisis, is what the ruling class is now demanding.
While the ruling class is making its preparations, the TUC is burying its head in the sand, clinging to the belief that there can be a peaceful compromise with capitalism.
The burning issue of the day, is to remove these leaders, replacing them with a leadership prepared to organise the huge strength of the working class in a general strike to kick out the Tories and go forward to a workers’ government and socialism.
Only the WRP and Young Socialists fight for this revolutionary programme – join us today to build up the revolutionary leadership to take the British Socialist Revolution to victory.
