AFTER the Labour party defeat at Glasgow East, one of the safest Labour seats in the country, the Prime Minister Gordon Brown has stated that he will not be changing the policies of the Labour Party, it will continue to hand billions to the bankers and cut everybody else’s wages.
The union leaders with Tony Woodley, the joint leader of the Unite trade union, have also made a declaration.
This is that there is no question of changing the leader of the Labour Party, that is of dumping Gordon Brown.
He and the other leaders of the trade unions are sticking with Gordon Brown, and his policies, a sure-fire recipe for a daily strengthening of the Tory Party, and helping them back into office.
The message from working class voters at the Glasgow East by-election, who wiped out a 13,507 Labour majority, was ‘dump Brown and the Blairites’.
This message is being rejected by Woodley and the trade union leaders in favour of continuing their alliance with Brown, who they brought to the premiership. Once again – this betrayal is the surest way to ensure that a Tory government is returned to step up all of the Thatcherite attacks on the working class.
Woodley made his remarks yesterday on the fringes of the Warwick Labour Party policy making conference where the unions are putting down over 100 demands on the government, and where the government is demanding over £8 million out of union members’ subscriptions to resolve the financial crisis of the Labour Party.
Before the Conference began, Brown made clear that there was not going to be any concessions to the working class: there would be no easing of any of the anti-union laws, the privatisation of the NHS and education are to be speeded up, and the government intends to carry on with its policy of unlimited aid to the bankers, while forcing below inflation wage cutting deals onto millions of workers whose cost of living has gone up by as much as 30% in the last six months.
Up and down the country workers are demanding that their trade unions, which built the Labour Party and now finance it, go on strike and withhold all monies from the Labour Party until Brown resigns and a workers government is constituted that will carry out socialist policies.
Instead of bailing out the banks, such a government will nationalise the banks and the oil and gas companies, who are making hundreds of billions in profits, to slash petrol, oil and gas prices.
However, the trade union leaders have not the slightest intention of pulling the rug from underneath the Brown government.
They will hand over their members’ money for the most minor ‘concessions’, and continue to prop up Brown, making sure that there will be many more Glasgow Easts and that the Tories will return.
The News Line calls for the working class to mobilise and to build a new leadership inside the trade unions, one that will fight the Brown government and stop any return of the Tories.
There must be a general strike to bring down the Brown government and to bring in a workers government that will carry out socialist policies.
This is the only way to stop the return of the Tories.
Labour leaders who insist on continuing to support Brown and his government must be forced to resign and be replaced by a Marxist leadership that understands that the only way that the crisis of capitalism can be resolved is through a successful socialist revolution.
• The trade unions must bring down the Brown government!
• Forward to a workers government – Keep the Tories Out!
•Nationalise the banks and oil and gas companies!
•Forward with a national plan to build millions of council homes, to house the homeless and to provide jobs and a trade, at trade union rates of pay, for millions of youth.