Labour does not represent the destitute masses

Labour, now in Government, does not, any more than it did in opposition, give voice to, does not represent, this vast mass of the destitute. Labour lost four elections in succession for the reason that the privileged stratum of the working class deserted to the Tories. To win, Labour needs, in addition to the votes of the lower proletarian stratum, the electoral support of the upper stratum as well as a section of the petty bourgeoisie. Since, as a result of the breakdown of the Keynesian consensus, it is no longer possible for it to reconcile the interests of the labour aristocracy and of the lower stratum, Labour has, after each election defeat, moved away, distanced itself, from the lower layers - wooing the upper layers and the petty bourgeoisie has become its main concern. Labour lost the 1992 election because its commitment to a mild increase in spending on the National Health Service (£1 bn.) and education (£600 million) proved unacceptable to the petty-bourgeois and the upper stratum of the working class. As a result, Labour dropped all such commitments and moved so much to the right that the bewildered Tories were forever accusing the Labour Party of stealing their clothes. Labour won the last election with not a single promise made in the interests of the working class. Since assuming office, it has, to the admiration of the bourgeoisie, been busy helping the rich; attacking the disadvantaged – the lone parents, job seekers, the disabled; maintaining and deepening the ‘reforms’ of the previous Tory administration in areas ranging from trade unions to those of health and education, with their two-tier service – one for the privileged and the other for the under-privileged; it has played a leading part in the barbaric imperialist war against Yugoslavia and continues its daily bombing of the Iraqi people nearly a decade after the end of the Gulf War. Even more than the previous Tory Government – and this is saying something – Labour is tied hand and foot to big capitalists, who finance the Labour Party and some of whom are at the very heart of this government, occupying important ministerial and other positions. Labour Ministers, while attacking the poor in the name of having to make "hard choices", are guilty of lavish lifestyles, spending enormous amounts of public money on official homes, taking mistresses on foreign trips and staging glittering parties for show biz. Within less than 3 years in office, some of the leading lights of this government have been at the centre of financial and sexual scandals. Even the Financial Times felt compelled to make this observation "Then there are the champagne receptions. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have turned Downing Street into a party zone, with business leaders, show biz celebrities and political allies tripping in and out of receptions late into the evening."

And "Mr Blair’s receptions, with photographers in attendance, have helped to establish him at the apex of the ‘new Britain’, with designers, DJs and pop stars all paying court.

"The down side is that popping champagne corks can be awkward companions to Mr.Blair’s ‘tough choices’. On December 10th he was pictured laughing with Zoe Ball in Downing Street while Harriet Harman was cutting lone-parent benefits in the Commons" (Labour tangles in the trappings of power, George Parker, Financial Times, 25.1.98)

There is ample evidence to demonstrate that the Labour Government is paid for by big business, run by big business, and in the interests of big business. Every socialist, every class-conscious worker should declare a merciless war on this government and the party it represents.

Labour Refuses to Support even Economic Struggles

And yet there are, sad to say, socialists, who without any sense of shame or honour, act as a fig leaf for the Labour Party and the Labour Government, who endeavour to reconcile the masses to the Labour Party and the Labour Government which are tied hand and foot to the city gangsters. Labour does not even support the economic, trade-union, struggles of the working class, let alone the question of the social emancipation of the proletariat. The trade-union leadership, composed by and large of the privileged upper stratum of the working class, is increasingly moving away from the collective representation of the working class to concentrate on the provision of personal services which can only benefit those enjoying higher-than-average incomes. This same leadership fears like the plague any action which might transcend the boundaries of Draconian anti-working class legislation put on the statute book by the bourgeoisie through its parliament over the last 20 years. Most significant industrial struggles have collapsed in the face of police violence, or drowned under the weight of legal cretinism or been simply betrayed by the TUC leadership. One exception to this was the heroic coal strike of 1984-5. During this year-long strike, the miners, led by the most courageous, the most militant and most incorruptible leadership, carried the torch of struggle on behalf of the entire working class against unemployment and for better conditions, and challenged the power of capital to treat workers as so much disposable trash. In doing so they revived all that is noble, heroic and self-sacrificing - the spirit of collectivism - in the long history of the struggle of the British proletariat. But, by the same act, they roused the frenzy of the bourgeoisie, the Furies of private interest. More than that, they roused the wrath of the Labour and TUC leaderships, who feared like death the miners' victory, for by their example the miners threatened to infect other sections of the working class with a spirit of defiance and reellion against the dictates of monopoly capitalism. So the Labour/TUC leadership joined forces with the Thatcher government, the National Coal Board, the police and intelligence services, the judiciary, the bourgeois media, and the blacklegs from the Nottinghamshire coalfields, in order to isolate and defeat the miners. In the end this `exotic' range of forces arrayed against the miners proved too much; the miners, deserted by other sections of the working class, thanks to the treachery of social democracy, were starved and beaten - literally beaten - back to work.

Deepening crisis of British Imperialism

Today, however, the continuing relative decline of British imperialism is increasingly forcing the bourgeois democrats, including those of the Labour Party, to shed much of the sloganising and to confront the mass of the working class with hideous class reality in the form of an assault on the gains of the post-war period. During the past 25 years, the manufacturing workforce has been more than halved (down from 8 million to just under 4 million), while the number of those employed in banking and insurance has nearly trebled.

Within manufacturing itself, one in ten manufacturing jobs are accounted for by the manufacture of armaments. Eleven of the top twenty British companies are involved in the manufacture of armaments. With such an erosion of its manufacturing base, and with such heavy reliance on the manufacture of the merchandise of death, how is British imperialism able to support the increasing proportion of the population involved in unproductive labour - the vast parasitic layers who produce no wealth, no surplus value? The answer, in the main, must be found in the export of capital and the earnings from it. In a good year, Britain’s overseas earnings from capital invested abroad account for a third of all profit made in Britain. With such a proportion of the profits of British imperialism dependent on the export of capital, one can see why banking (the City) and militarism have assumed such monstrously gigantic dimensions. In these conditions, if British imperialism is to continue its parasitic existence (and it can have no other existence), if it is to continue to provide privileged conditions for the petty bourgeoisie and the labour aristocracy, every government policy must be subordinated to the interests of the robber barons of finance capital; every military adventure abroad must be fully and enthusiastically supported in order to make sure of the continued flow of tribute from abroad. The glee with which the Conservative and Labour Governments went to war against Iraq and Yugoslavia respectively, and the support given to these genocidal wars by which ever party was in the opposition are just two of the scores of examples one could cite.

Notwithstanding huge earnings from investment abroad and militarism (sale of armaments), the relative decline of British imperialism continues apace. Faced with this crisis, British imperialism is intensifying its attack on the poorer section of the working class. Nearly half of all employees in Britain earn less than the European Decency Threshold, and with the bourgeoisie now bent on dismemberment, if not the dismantlement, of the National Health Service, and the abolition of universal benefits, we are poised for a massive increase in poverty and the widening of the split in the working class. Increasingly the `contented majority' is turning into a minority, and for the first time since the end of the war, the overwhelming majority of the working class are being sucked into the abyss of absolute poverty, hopelessness and misery.

Thanking you for your observations, I should stress that I feel we are in a FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERENT historical era, in fact just moving into it, and whilst i wouldnt dare to predict exact future events, i dont see any harm in sketching out a few lines, as it were.
On the "spirit of collectivism", i would have to disagree: the British establishment is pretty strong on collectivism, and i would daresay that nowhere in the "advanced world" [dreadful term, but still] is collectivism so strong, and yet any move towards socialism, anarchism or egalitarianism so weak. The educational system seems to be the point at which social contradictions are most obvious. Odd how the uniform mentality persists, which we are told, makes all students 'equal', rich and poor alike. Fascinating ! Is this the same system where state schools stumble alongsid ethe inordinate privileges of Eton, Harrow, Oxford, Cambridge, Roedean &c &c. ? It seems we have PRIVILEGE for the RICH, and COLLECTIVISM for the POOR. Royalist collectivism, admittedly, but this is to beg the question !