Saturday, October 20, 2012

No Hope in Milliband

 Instead of conceding their central complicity in the global economic crisis, the rich have emerged richer and even more unregulated than ever. Banks’ profit are not influenced by widespread poverty among the common people. These firms profit while the ordinary citizens encounter hunger, unemployment, and all manner of hardships. US bank Goldman Sachs’ net profits for the third quarter to the end of September were $1.5bn (£930m). The bank makes most of its money from providing services to big institutional investors such as multi-national corporations and pension funds. Net revenues more than doubled to $8.35bn from $3.6bn a year earlier While many banks were bailed out by governments at high costs, it is now working people who are no made to pay for the crisis be it through unemployment, wage and pension cuts or the cut-back of welfare services more generally. The government is reducing ordinary people’s wages, pensions and hard-won welfare rights. They tell us we are all in the same boat and should all do our bit. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are certainly not all in this together. The rich are not affected, when there are cuts to the National Health Service. They have always had their private health plans and hospitals. It is really working people, who rely on public services, which suffer from these cuts. While the tabloids accused individual CEOs over greed and bonuses their deeper rooted view and the message they continully put out blames welfare scroungers, the disabled, and a work-shy underclass for the current problems.

Trade unions in the UK have not given up and continue the struggle against austerity cuts that threaten their living conditions and their rights. Last year saw the highest number of working days lost to labour disputes in more than two decades.

Ed Miliband, leader of the Labour Party, is taking part in todays protests. With friends like him who needs enemies?  The Occupy Movement got it right: 1% of the population owns just about almost everything, to the detriment of everyone else. Like the Con-Dems, the Labour Party too are bought and paid for and they are as hell-bent as their rivals on doing all they can for the one percent. The difference is that they talk a good story when it is convenient to do so, and often workers believe it. The will to believe is a mighty force. The unions demonstrate the futility of supporting the lesser evil. The Labour Party empty the unions’ coffers (£17m in donations since 2010).and mobilise their rank-and-file to do the foot-slogging, door-knocking canvassing work getting Labour Party candidates elected, demanding little in return and getting back even less. At the recent Labour party conference, Ed Miliband warned that a future Labour Government would have to continue making public spending cuts and defended public sector pay freezes. Today, our economy is a dictatorship of the 1%, where maximising profits comes before human needs. Socialists are for organising the economy democratically, where those who produce the wealth are the ones who decide how it should be used. The purpose of the Socialist Party is to assist in the emancipation of the workers from its enslavement to the capitalist class.

To those who still support the Labour Party we would appeal to them to reconsider their position. What does its boasted achievements amount to after all? With many on the Left calling for the re-formation of a Labour party, members of the Socialist Party ask "why bother?".  In office and out, Labour is a party for capitalism. It is a party that has regularly and routinely acted against the working class. Yet we are constantly told not to give up hope. Every time an election comes round the different left wing groups tell us to vote Labour. Can Labour be changed? We think that its history offers ample proof of the impossibility of changing Labour. Labour long ago gave up any pretence at wanting to get rid of capitalism.

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