IT is an expression of the depth of the crisis of British capitalism, that Duncan Smith, the ex-Tory leader, the would-be Puritan workhouse master – whose mission is to discipline the working class, the youth and the disabled into ‘becoming one nation’ – who will always be remembered as the author of the hated Bedroom Tax – finds himself at war with the traditional rulers of the Tory party.
These are the ‘natural rulers’, the Eton and Oxford trained millionaires, who run the party and the country, who are convinced that their mission is to smash the NHS, the Welfare State and the trade unions to allow capitalist Britain to rise again.
The position of this ruling class is that British capitalism has to be refounded, and for this to be done the UK trade unions, the Welfare State, the NHS and the basic rights of the working class have to be destroyed. Duncan Smith and others are worried that the arrogant conduct of Osborne and Cameron, such as the cutting of disabled benefits at the same time as making tax concession to the well-off, will ‘divide the nation’. He fears that the reckless duo will cause a revolution. While they lash out wildly at the disabled he insists that we should ‘all be in it together’, even if it is just as far as appearances are concerned.
In fact the British capitalist crisis is part of the world capitalist crisis – which is producing another banking and industrial disaster – but it has its own characteristics. Britain was the first capitalist country, created the world market and built a worldwide empire that it super-exploited making Britain very rich and powerful, giving the impression that it could stand alone, while trying to keep the peace in Europe by backing France against Germany.
This situation was terminated by the Second World War. Britain was on the winning side but it came out of the war a loser, without its world empire, but despite this it was forced to make huge concessions to the working class, summed up in the NHS and the Welfare State.
Now the ruling class is absolutely desperate to smash all of these gains, and to reposition itself – the question is either in or outside the EU. The problem is that one section of the ruling class is willing to subordinate itself to Germany inside the EU, and the other half wants to quit the EU and clutch the US with one hand and its ex-empire with the other.
Big business and the banks want to collaborate with the EU bankers and bosses, and small business wants to to look to the rest of the world. In the UK Cameron represents the pro-EU wing, that sees Britain’s future as acting as the representative of the USA in the EU. The other wing that seeks to look outside the EU to the countries of the old empire are represented by Duncan Smith and Co.
The Labour Party and the trade union leaders are looking to Cameron and the EU, regardless of its current war against refugees, the way that it has crushed Greece, its war-provoking intervention into the Ukraine, and the international trade deals that it is negotiating that will allow the USA to have a veto on EU legislation alongside the EU Commission.
The crisis of whither the UK, has split the Tory party and the differences are unbridgeable. It is this split in the ruling class that will usher in its downfall! In a situation where the UK ruling class is seeking to smash all of the gains that the British working class has made since the end of the Second World War, ‘parliamentary democracy has been badly holed’ and the way is being opened up for a socialist revolution in the UK.
The working class must now take action in this situation to defend its interests.
It must vote to quit the EU in the June 23rd referendum. It must build up the revolutionary leadership of the WRP to take the lead in organising for an indefinite general strike supporting the junior doctors and all those sections in struggle, including the disabled.
Such an action will bring down the Cameron government and bring in a workers government that will nationalise the banks and the major industries under workers’ management and bring in socialism. As well it will take action alongside workers in Europe to bring down the EU and replace it with the Socialist United States of Europe!