FACED with the crash of the pound and the enormous 182,000 leap in the number of unemployed in the three months to October, the CBI bosses organisation has been forced to revise its perspectives.
It now says that by the end of 2009 the bosses will have put another 1.1 million workers onto the dole.
The CBI has also revised downwards its growth forecasts, so that it expects the British capitalist economy to contract by 1.7 per cent.
In this situation the Chancellor and the government are calling for interest rates to be cut, and the Bank of England is expected to cut rates to as low as 1.5 per cent.
This is expected to give some support to exports of food, but result in a further run on the pound down to the one dollar pound.
This huge devaluation of the pound sterling will drive up inflation and massively increase the price of all imported commodities. It will also force a rise in interest rates to prevent the complete destruction of the pound sterling and national bankruptcy.
The only way that the threat of state bankruptcy can be countered is through devastating attacks on the Welfare State, shutting down large numbers of hospitals, completely destroying council housing, privatising the Royal Mail and the National Health Service, and ruthlessly cutting the wages, jobs, and pensions of all public sector workers.
Continuing to spend billions propping up the banks and the bosses is going to require as its direct consequence the destruction of the public sector and the most massive cuts ever seen in government spending.
This is the capitalist madhouse that must be put an end to by a working class-led revolution.
In fact, another 1.1 million rise in the numbers of unemployed will be met by the government with big cuts in the Job Seekers Allowance and Housing Benefits, while opening up an avalanche of repossessions.
This is the situation that the working class is being thrust into, by the crisis of the completely bankrupt capitalist system, and the policies of the Brown government to maintain it at any cost, and a trade union leadership that acts as a servant of the Brown government and the bosses.
The working class, however, will not accept the role of being the victim of the crisis, to be sacrificed along with its families to prop up bankrupt banks and capitalists.
Workers will not allow the growth of millions of unemployed.
They will remove trade union leaders who serve Brown and the bosses and argue that capitalism is the only possible system.
They will occupy plants like Vauxhall and Luton GM to defend their jobs, and will fight for them to be nationalised under workers control.
Postal workers will occupy the dozens of Mail Centres that are to be shut and stop the entire postal industry in the fight for their jobs.
Workers and youth will form councils of action to occupy hospitals and prevent them from being closed.
The working class has always had, and still has, the heart and the force to wage the battle to put an end to capitalism and go forward to socialism.
What it needs is the emergence of its head, that is the revolutionary party that is theoretically and practically equipped to lead the struggle for socialism against the most vicious ruling class in the world.
The WRP, along with its youth section the Young Socialists, is the party that has the capacity, the revolutionary will and the knowledge to lead the British socialist revolution.
This party must now be built up with every ounce of energy that we can muster.
These are the vital issues that are going to be addressed at the News Line Anniversary rally (see page 1). Make sure that you are there.
