Onto a war footing

So it is war on the public sector. The gloomiest predictions before the Election have been confirmed – indeed outstripped – by the Con-Dem Government’s comprehensive assault on benefits and services, pursued at breakneck pace with reckless consequences.
In a re-run of Tory education policy from a generation ago, the way academies are being rolled out will take crucial resources away from schools remaining under elected local authority control. Cameron himself has said he is “terrified” of sending his child to a state school. Further privatisation is facing the NHS.
The emergency Budget cut £11 billion from welfare payments, notably in housing benefit, and the Government is now additionally proposing to means-test child benefit and the winter fuel allowance. Public sector housing is jeopardised by proposals for short-term tenancies that will run down Council estates – in terms of the standard of accommodation and community spirit alike. The Audit Commission and Food Standards Agency are being scrapped. Budget cuts planned for river, parks and forest management amount to the virtual privatisation of the countryside.
In contrast, the corporate sector is one of the few winners under this Government, which will see British business interests driving even foreign policy. It’s no surprise, then, that – for all the moral posturing during the Election campaign – we are seeing a return of sleaze, as with the lobbying by a Tory donor for the retraction of a loan to Sheffield Forgemasters.
For those seeking continuity with New Labour’s term of office, the war in Afghanistan is another given. However bad the budget deficit – and, as Andrew Fisher’s article points out in this issue, this is increasingly a phony argument to justify ideologically driven cuts – there are no plans to scale back Britain’s war-mongering abroad. For the same reasons, expect the Defence budget to be safeguarded, whatever mutterings there may be from the LibDems.
There is continuity with many of the policies of Blair and Brown: and opposition to much of them also remains a constant. Most people continue to want an end to the unwinnable war in Afghanistan, oppose further NHS privatisation, reject the replacement of the Trident nuclear weapon and are against the poor being made to pay for a crisis rooted in the greed of bankers.
For all its self-confidence, this Government is a fundamentally weak one. Having a partnership with the LibDems gives the Tories the appearance of broad support – but they are sharing power for one reason only: they failed to win a majority. Bringing in discredited New Labour deadbeats like Frank Field, John Hutton and Alan Milburn has the same aim, just as George Bush’s invasion of Iraq sought more legitimacy by drawing in Britain and a few other countries.
All of this is illusory. The LibDems’ poll ratings are in free fall. The overwhelming majority of their supporters did not vote for them to open the door to unreconstructed Thatcherism. It’s questionable whether the Party can survive the growing disgust with their leaders’ pursuit of office at any price.
The Labour Party faces its own contradictions. The New Labour apparatus that has dominated for 15 years is in a state of collapse. Mandelson’s self-serving memoirs underline the level of cynicism and demoralisation at the helm of the Party in the run-up to the Election. However, at the grassroots large numbers of new recruits are flocking to join, recognising instinctively the potential to organise politically against the Tory onslaught.
Whether this potential can be realised depends partly on who becomes the new leader of our Party. The broadest possible movement against Tory attacks on the public sector will not be built by those defending New Labour’s record in office, nor by those who agree fundamentally that the working class has to pay for a crisis of capitalism. Labour Briefing is calling for a vote for Diane Abbott in the leadership contest, as the only candidate with a consistent record of opposition to the betrayals of New Labour.
However, choosing a new leader alone is insufficient. The broadest possible movement needs to be built at the grassroots, drawing in the trade unions, trades councils, tenants’ organisations and other social movements to fight this Government’s cuts and privatisations every inch of the way. In this way, we can build a movement that can not only defeat this weak Government, devoid of a mandate, but also shape the alternative with which we will replace it.