LARGE numbers of Labour MPs are opposed to Blair’s programme to renew the Trident submarine based, nuclear weapons delivery system. The eventual cost of this renewal will be in the region of £80 billion – a sum big enough to resolve many of the problems that working people face in Britain as far as health, education and housing are concerned.
The Labour opposition to Blair and Brown on this issue strengthened when it was made public that the US is stationing its advanced radar detectors right up to the Russian border in Poland, the Baltic States and Hungary, a procedure that has been interpreted as part of the preparation of a US ‘pre-emptive strike’ at oil- and gas-rich Russia.
This revelation has led to Russia revising its military doctrine to factor into it what Putin recently called the US and NATO drive for world domination, and to take the appropriate nuclear counter-measures.
Also, the information that Blair has already offered the UK to Bush as the site for US anti-missile defences, making the UK the US’ aircraft carrier and a number one target, has further stiffened the resolve of Labour MPs to vote against renewing Trident in the House of Commons on Wednesday.
64 out of 101 Labour MPs, consulted by the BBC over Wednesday’s vote have said that they will vote against, effectively wiping out the Blair government’s majority.
Both Blair and Brown are however adamant that the measure will go forward and will win despite the fact that the Welsh and Scottish nationalists will also be voting ‘No’, along with some Liberal Democrats.
In fact, Blair and Brown have already been assured by Tory leader Cameron that Tory MPs will vote with them, to save the Blair government from the threat of being forced to resign and to ensure that the programme to renew Trident goes forward.
What is certain is that if this is done the mould will have been set to establish, whatever the outcome of the next general election or even before such an election, the basis for a national government that will carry out what big business wants, regardless of what the working class, the trade unions and the electorate want.
This process will be accelerated in the event of an early election and a hung parliament.
The Blairite rump in the Labour Party, in order to carry on with imperialist wars abroad and the war to destroy the Welfare State at home, will cross the floor of the House of Commons to form a national government with the Tories.
This is what is being anticipated with the Blair-Brown-Cameron alliance to force the renewal of the Trident programme onto the working class of Britain.
The policy clearly is going to be guns not butter with the Welfare State the number one casualty.
With world capitalism already gripped by an economic and political crisis, such a government will proceed to place the whole burden of the crisis onto the working class and the middle class, using the strengthened state apparatus and the reactionary police state laws that are now on the statute books for that purpose.
There can only be one answer to this threat.
A revolutionary leadership must be built up inside the trade unions to mobilise them for a general strike to bring down the Blair-Brown government and then to use the strength of the working class to bring in a workers’ government.
This government will resolve the crisis of capitalism and the threat of new imperialist wars by expropriating the bankers and the bosses, to bring in socialism at home, and to withdraw British troops from Iraq and Afghanistan to deal a body blow to world imperialism.
The only alternative to this policy is to sit back and hope for the best, knowing that the bourgeoisie is preparing the worst.
Only the WRP is preparing the way forward – a socialist revolution in Britain to smash capitalism and imperialism. All workers and youth who want a future should join the WRP today.
