BRITISH capitalism is on the rocks and has started to break apart!
This is the significance of the total outstanding government debt of the UK rising to a record £799bn, or 56.6 per cent of UK GDP – the highest since records began in 1974.
Borrrowing is shooting upwards. New borrowing in June reached £13 billion, twice as much as last year, while the Office for National Statistics states that income tax revenues fell by £32bn in the last year.
This unity of opposites is the surface appearance of the developing economic catastrophe.
This is unleashing the greatest class struggles that have ever been seen in Britain.
The ruling class has to cut wages, destroy the Welfare State, including privatising the NHS, and destroy millions of jobs, so that it can move towards balancing its books, and maintaining itself in power, on the backs of the working class and the middle class.
The working class is already picking up the gauntlet that is being thrown down by the bosses and fighting back, despite the disgraceful policies of its union leaders, who are doing everything possible to help the bosses and the bankers weather the crisis.
At Lindsay, the mass strike action of thousands of engineering and power workers defeated the attempt of Total and the employers to sack 647 workers, and drive trade unions out of the industry – despite the fact that the only union that officially supported their struggle was the GMB.
In the Royal Mail, the mass of postal workers have defeated the attempt to part-privatise the industry and are now demanding a public sector alliance and national strike action to defeat Royal Mail and the government.
Meanwhile their leaders shilly-shally about, hoping that something will turn up to defuse the struggle, but nothing will, because its essence is that either one side or the other, the working class or the employing class, will prevail.
Workers however are not just content with strike actions.
The depth of the crisis is forcing them to occupy factories and plants and to demand that they be nationalised and taken off the bosses – beginning a struggle for power.
This is what emerged at the Visteon plants in Belfast, Enfield, and Basildon where workers occupied and demanded their jobs back.
Their fight was partially successful. They won compensation, but the refusal of the leaders of the Unite trade union to officially support their occupation, and to spread it, prevented them from winning a complete victory.
The working class is continuing to push forward.
On Monday night at 7.30pm workers at Vestas in the Isle of Wight, most of whom are not in a trade union because the employer is so anti-union, occupied the plant to prevent it being closed this Friday, July 24.
Not only have they occupied, they have demanded that the plant be nationalised so that they keep their jobs.
Workers throughout the motor car industry face the same struggle as the Vestas workers and will follow their example.
At GMM Luton and GM Ellesmere Port, workers either face wage cuts and mass sackings or closure.
Workers at Honda in Swindon, and Jaguar Land Rover in the Midlands and Liverpool are in the same crisis.
They will take the same road as the Vestas workers – occupy and demand the plants be nationalised, and will develop the struggle to force the nationalisation of their industry.
To do this they will have to sack their Unite union leaders who are opposed to both occupations and to nationalisation, arguing that the latter is ‘not appropriate’.
Workers in the UK and throughout the world are about to make a big leap forward to get rid of capitalism and bring in socialism.
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