THE EDITORIALS in Friday’s and Saturday’s Daily Telegraph scream out for action to be taken by Labour leader Starmer to throw Corbyn and his supporters out of the Labour Party.
On Friday, it screamed: ‘Now, purge the rest of this sickening Cult’, while on Saturday it shrieked: ‘Sir Keir needs to kick out Corbyn for good.’
The cause of the Telegraph’s hysteria was revealed on Sunday when its editorial was headlined: ‘Government is wrong to shut down England,’ and gave its support to making the working class ‘live with the virus’ for the sake of the bosses making their profits.
The reality is that the Tory Party depends on Starmer immediately assisting it to remain in government.
Along with the Telegraph, a large number of Tory MPs are opposed to any notion that the health of UK citizens should take priority over the profits of the bosses’ capitalist system, and thus the Tories may have to rely on Labour MPs’ votes to get their pre-Xmas lockdown agreed by a suitable parliamentary majority.
As well, with the UK many billions in an ever increasing debt, with furloughing to be continued, and business demanding even bigger subsidies, a parliamentary crisis of the ruling Tory Party could well touch off a shares collapse, and a collapse of the pound, leading to even greater unemployment and the complete ruin of the middle class.
A united ruling party is needed. With that in short supply the growing demand is that Starmer should step up and agree to join a National Government in the UK, to rescue British capitalism at the expense of the working class.
For this to happen, Labour under Starmer must dump Corbyn, the MPs who support him and the LP members who still see him as the real leader of the Labour Party. A National Government is required to bar the way to a socialist revolution in the UK.
However, what the workers require in the UK is a workers’ government that will nationalise the banks and the major industries, putting them under workers’ ownership and management. Only a socialist planned economy can deal with the coronavirus as the Chinese experience has shown.
The General Secretaries of some of the main trade unions who are affiliated to the Labour Party have just met ‘to put on record our serious concerns about the manner of and rationale for the suspension of the former party leader Jeremy Corbyn from the Labour Party.
‘The publication on Thursday of the EHRC report ought to have marked a moment of reflection and repair for our party. Instead, an ill-advised and unjust suspension has caused division.
‘We therefore call upon the leader, Keir Starmer, the general secretary, David Evans and the NEC to work now with us as affiliated unions to repair this damage.
‘We speak as the leaders of unions representing working people who desperately need a Labour government … We, therefore, urge Keir to work with us on a fairer, unifying way forward.’
Signed ASLEF, Mick Whelan, Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union, Sarah Woolley and Ian Hodson (President), CWU, Dave Ward, FBU, Matt Wrack, NUM, Chris Kitchen, TSSA, Manuel Cortes, and Unite, Len McCluskey.
However, the bankers’ pressure on Starmer will prove to be more ‘persuasive’ than the pleas of trade union leaders for ‘fairness and unity’.
The union leaders must tell Starmer, that they will not tolerate any expulsion of Corbyn, and that they will react to any move by Labour to join a National Government by calling a general strike to bring in a workers’ government and socialism.
It is no accident that the USA, the UK and the EU, the major capitalist states are strongholds of the coronavirus, and have been subjugated by it. It is no accident that the Tories and the Labour traitors say that we must learn to live with the virus, since they consider that capitalism is the only system for them.
In fact, the trade unions must rapidly organise for action. They must purge the TUC of Tory-lovers and mobilise to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers’ government that will put people before profits, deal with the virus and bring in a planned socialist economy.
