PM Cameron was yesterday pledging ‘action on welfare’ to ensure, as he put it, that ‘work is always a better option’ – not by raising wages but by cutting the benefits of the poor.
Cameron has returned to the historic Tory theme that there is something basically wrong with the poor and the working class, and that both have to be beaten into profit-creating shape.
In the period when capitalism was developing, a disciplined working class was created with the aid of the whip, the branding iron, and by slitting noses and cutting ears, and later by the work-house.
Cameron’s method is to starve the working class until it is willing to work for a pittance.
He said yesterday: ‘When it comes to extending opportunity – there is a right track and a wrong track.
‘The right track is to recognise the causes of stalled social mobility and a lack of economic opportunity.’
This cause turns out to be definitely not the crisis of capitalism and its huge economic collapse.
It is: ‘Family breakdown. Debt. Addiction. Poor schools. Lack of skills. Unemployment. People capable of work, written off to a lifetime on benefits.’
This is the modern working class according to Cameron and Duncan Smith.
The way forward is to: ‘Recognise those causes, and the solutions follow. Strong families that give children the best start in life. A great education system that helps everyone get on. A welfare system that encourages work – well paid work.’
The solutions are to slash their tax credits, slash housing benefits and smash the Welfare State to pieces to ‘save’ another £12bn.
He added, again ignoring the massive crisis of capitalism: ‘The wrong track though, is to ignore the causes, and simply treat the symptoms of the social and economic problems we face.’
Welfare payments and tax credits turn out to be an immoral appeasement of the poor since they encourage debt, addiction and people capable of work, not accepting slave labour wages.
Cameron continued: ‘Take for example the complacency in how we approach the crucial issue of low pay. There is what I would call a merry-go-round.
‘People working on the minimum wage having that money taxed by the government and then the government giving them that money back – and more – in welfare.
‘Again, it’s dealing with the symptoms of the problem – topping up low pay rather than extending the drivers of opportunity – helping to create well paid jobs in the first place.’
The message is to starve them back to work, or, for youth, make them work for a pittance as compulsory ‘apprentices’.
Cameron and Osborne aim to slash the tax credits, and the housing benefit of the 4.5 million families that receive £29bn in annual tax credits, as well as the Child Benefits bill. In fact nearly 70% of these families have someone in some form of employment.
He also said he is ‘sweeping away the ridiculous rules that stop children being placed in a loving
Many of the ‘failed families’ under attack will see this statement as a threat to take their children away!
It is well known that Cameron and Co reserve their special spleen for migrant workers.
The RCN nurses’ union warned yesterday that a new pay threshold for migrants means non-European workers will have to leave the UK after six years if they are not earning at least £35,000.
The RCN said that by 2017 more than 3,300 NHS nurses could be affected.And by the end of the decade the numbers could be double that – a potential waste of nearly £40m when all the costs of recruitment are taken into account, the RCN says.
RCN general secretary Peter Carter said: ‘The immigration rules will cause chaos for the NHS and other care services.’ Carter also stressed that most nurses earn ‘nowhere near’ £35,000, with most on salaries of between £21,000 and £28,000 a year.
African and Asian migrant nurses are to be deported to make way, no doubt, for youth drafted in as apprentice nurses on £3 an hour.
Trade unions and the TUC leaders must defend workers and youth by calling a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government and socialism. This will solve the problem of massive unemployment and low or even no pay.
