TODAY the working class and the majority of the middle class must put the Cameron government out of office and return the Labour Party to government with a clear majority.
The hit list of cuts that has been prepared by the civil service, that is the capitalist state, well in advance of the election, for whichever party or coalition takes office, is a powerful confirmation of the position of the WRP to stand seven candidates today on the basis that voting Labour is not enough.
The depth of the capitalist crisis, and the plans to turn the UK into a nation of paupers means that the working class must be prepared to go forward to socialism via the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and its state apparatus. For some time, the civil service has been planning huge cuts on the basis of the legislation carried in the last parliament by 520 votes to 22, that the Labour Party voted for, to cap welfare spending every year for four years.
If the cap of £120bn is breached, then the government must propose measures to slash welfare spending and seek parliamentary approval. The civil service, knowing that the cap will be breached since the government will not be able to keep welfare spending below £120bn a year despite its proposed welfare cut of £12bn, has proposed a list of measures.
According to the Guardian – which has leaked documents in its possession – these measures include: abolishing statutory maternity pay and barring under-25s from claiming incapacity benefit or housing benefit, and increasing the bedroom tax.
Getting employers to contribute more to the cost of statutory maternity pay – or as an alternative abolishing it entirely and freezing benefit payments at current levels across the board.
Limiting welfare payments by family size and forcing single parents on income support to seek work when their youngest child reaches the age of three (currently five).
Making it harder for sick people to claim state aid when they are out of work by introducing ‘stricter’ fit-for-work tests and/or tighter limits on eligibility.
The Labour government will be hoisted by its own petard. It voted for capping legislation and the demand will be that it must ‘save the country’ by savaging the working class and the majority of the middle class. That is if the parliamentary process gets this far.
The bosses and the bankers are already predicting that a Labour victory, or the formation of a Labour-led coalition government, will so shake the confidence of the city that there will be a shares collapse and a run on the pound sterling that will demand immediate emergency action to save the situation.
The action that is being considered is the formation of a national government, with Miliband and Cameron at its head, to bring in the most savage attacks on the working class ever seen – these being the only ‘medicine’ that can restore confidence into the ranks of bankers and bosses.
This crisis situation that is now emerging is the reason why the WRP is standing candidates in the general election – to build the revolutionary leadership that the working class requires to win its life or death struggle against a capitalist system that is in its death agony, by going forward via a socialist revolution to a socialist society.
We have the policies for this crisis.
If the Tories manage to win the election, then the mobilisation of the working class to bring this extremist administration down, to go forward to a workers government, will be the order of the day.
Any attempt to enlist Labour to form a national government must be met with a general strike to go forward to workers power and socialism. A majority Labour government will be the best outcome since it will be the signal for the working class to make the big push forward, to go beyond the attempt to reform capitalism in 1948, to overthrowing it in 2015.
There is no doubt that in this struggle the leadership of the WRP will play a decisive role. Join it and the YS today!