THE TIME is here when workers must respond to the growing chorus from the professional servants of the bourgeoisie for savage, and even more savage cuts in workers’ jobs, wages and pensions to save capitalism from the crisis caused by the capitalist system.
At the same time as the most bloodthirsty calls for cuts to workers and young people’s lives are being made, the bankers assure the world that they are indeed tightening their belts. They are holding their bonuses down to £1million a head!
As the bankers flaunt their contempt for workers and the middle class, their political servants such as housing minister John Healey say that it is a good thing that people who cannot afford to pay their mortgages are being repossessed by the very same banks!
Yesterday, a group of bourgeois economists demanded in the Sunday Times that the government must act more quickly to cut Britain’s huge budget deficit.
The group of 20 say that the lack of action is undermining the currency, allowing inflation to rocket upwards and threatening to push up interest rates that will deepen the slump.
Signing the letter were ex-members of the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee and Sir Howard Davies, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England.
They demanded major cuts in government spending this year! The experts wrote: ‘However, in order to be credible, the government’s goal should be to eliminate the structural current budget deficit over the course of a Parliament, and there is a compelling case, all else equal, for the first measures beginning to take effect in the 2010/11 fiscal year.’
They want to see the elimination of some £200bn of debt in one parliament. These ‘experts’ won’t be happy until they see workers fighting for their lives in the streets! The present government is pledged to just halve the budget deficit in one parliament.
Also yesterday, the leading ex-Thatcherite minister Ken Clarke pledged that a Conservative government would not rule out raising taxes in order to shrink the UK’s deficit.
Clarke then went much further speaking a language that workers will immediately understand.
The Shadow Business Secretary said that a Tory government would have to be much tougher on public spending than ‘Margaret Thatcher ever was’.
He described his party as being ‘vague’ on possible tax increases, such as raising VAT and advised that, ‘This is the longest, deepest recession anyone alive can now remember. . . In percentage terms the level of spending cuts we are contemplating is probably going to exceed those of any modern government.’
As Clarke penned his message to the Times, the Bank of England was getting ready to pen a letter of its own.
The Bank is prepared for next Tuesday’s inflation rate figures to show a big increase over the December 2009 figure.
It is being predicted that the CPI interest rate could reach four per cent in Tuesday’s figures, meaning that there has been a big rise in the price of basic necessities at the same time as millions of workers are having a wage freeze imposed on them.
It is clear that the bourgeoisie are preparing to open the gates of hell for the workers and the young people of the UK.
Workers in the trade unions must demand that their leaders call a general strike and remove them if they will not.
A general strike will bring millions of workers, supported by 90 per cent of the country, face to face with the ruling class and its state apparatus.
The next step will be the mobilisation of the working class to take the power, expropriating the bankers and the bourgeoisie and smashing their capitalist state, to bring in socialism and a planned economy based on peoples’ needs, and not on the requirements of bankers.
