The Consumer Prices Index (CPI) measure leapt from 4.7% in August to 5.2% in December, with the Retail Prices Index (RPI), which includes the mortgage interest rate, reaching 5% from 4.8% in August.
However, these figures are nothing compared to the real inflation rate increase which working class homes are subjected to. The annual rate of inflation for energy and other household bills has reached 15%.
The pain that the working class feels is going to be massively intensified in the days ahead since workers are going to have to pay for the £500 billion that Premier Brown is to hand to the bankers, with more wage cuts, massive job losses in the public and private sectors, repossession of homes, and more pension busting.
Workers are becoming more and more angry that the whole of society is expected to sacrifice on behalf of the rich banking class.
Anger at the rise and rise of inflation is fast reaching the point of fury, which will be translated into mass strikes and revolutionary actions.
The trade union leaders, however, reflect none of this fury, for they are in Brown’s top pocket. After yesterday’s inflation figure was released, the TUC did not even mention the issue of wages and were not interested in introducing the struggle for a living wage into their statement.
TUC leader Brendan Barber stated: ‘Today’s inflation figures will surprise no-one but this could well be their peak, with oil prices falling and no real domestic inflationary pressure.
‘The real challenge is now recession, not inflation. Last week’s interest rate cuts were a welcome start, but we still need aggressive cuts in interest rates to underpin the government’s financial package.’
A TUC spokesman, asked if this year’s below-inflation pay settlements should be reopened, replied: ‘That’s for the groups who made those settlements to comment on.’
Asked if he agreed with UNISON that the case was strengthened to reopen the NHS pay deal, he refused to comment, replying: ‘That is for unison’.
Asked if the TUC agrees with the government that below-inflation pay rises are needed to ward off recession, the TUC spokesman replied: ‘We’ve made our comment and have nothing to add to it.’
The TUC and Brendan Barber are in the top pocket of Gordon Brown.
A statement by GMB General Secretary Paul Kenny said of the inflation rate rise: ‘This will inevitably increase pressure for higher wage rises.’
Asked if the GMB was calling for this year’s below-inflation pay settlements to be reopened, the GMB spokesman refused to respond. The silence of the GMB leaders on this vital issue puts them into the ‘don’t rock Gordon Brown’s boat’ party.
Unite’s leaders recently handed Gordon Brown £6 million of their members’ money to stop the Labour Party going broke.
However, their gift did allow Brown to continue to devote all his time to pleasing the bankers.
Yesterday, the Unite leaders were up to their usual game – plenty of making sound and fury without calling any action.
Commenting on the latest rise in inflation figures, Tony Woodley, joint general secretary of Unite, said after calling for a windfall tax on the energy companies: ‘This is where we need the government to continue to show decisive leadership and social fairness. It should abandon efforts to hold down public sector pay and concentrate instead on tackling the real drivers of inflation, and top of that list must be the greedy oil and fuel companies.’
The Unite leaders are not going to break the public sector pay cutting policy by strike action, instead they are appealing to Brown, the bankers’ Prime Minister, to show a sense of ‘social fairness’.
While their members are burning with anger at pay cuts and sackings, they intend to carry on supporting Gordon Brown and his policies. Politically they are more than at home in Gordon Brown’s top pocket.
Union leaders who will not call action against the bosses and the Brown government and are content to see their members being pauperised must be removed and replaced by leaders whose loyalty is to the working class and not to Gordon Brown and the bankers.
