Two Britains
Thirteen years of New Labour and Britain is still scarred by poverty, a land of haves and have-nots.
Yet since the credit crunch last year, Gordon Brown’s government has given hundreds of billions of pounds to the millionaire bankers.
Labour bailed out the banks and rich financiers. But they didn’t bail out the working class.
We’ve been made to pay for the bankers’ crisis:
And it’s set to get much worse. All three main parties – Labour, Tory and Lib Dem – are preparing massive cuts in jobs, pay, college courses, benefits and healthcare after the election.
That’s why the working class needs a new party of our own. A party that says: we didn’t cause the credit crunch, so we’re not going to pay for it!
And that is why a new force – the Anticapitalists – are standing Jeremy Drinkall in the Vauxhall constituency in the 2010 General Election.
Hard Labour
Thirteen years ago, Labour won a landslide, because millions were sick of the Tories, who had ruled for 18 years.
Under the leadership first of Thatcher and then of Major, the Tories looked after the millionaire elite, cutting taxes for the rich and selling off public services to their wealthy friends. They made sure working class people paid the price through mass unemployment, and they pared benefits for the jobless down to the bone. To stop us fighting back they brought in laws banning effective trade union action – the worst anti-union laws in the whole of Europe.
So when Blair’s New Labour got in back in 1997, millions of working people rejoiced, hoping they’d reverse the misery of 18 years’ Tory misrule.
But today inequality is just a bad as it was back in ’97.
Labour has doubled the tax of the lowest paid, carried on privatising services, stopped councils from building the new affordable homes we need and let rich bosses get away with their tax avoidance schemes.
Labour followed George Bush into America’s bloody wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – even though the majority of the British people have always opposed these wars, because they are really about profit and oil.
Labour joins in with Tory and Lib Dem attacks on “welfare scroungers” and “single mums”, disgracefully attacking the very people who are forced to live in poverty, because the state provides no childcare and the system provides no jobs.
On estates, their ASBOs and their schemes to pay people for grassing up their neighbours over benefit claims threaten to turn neighbour against neighbour and young against old. They have poured huge numbers of police on to our streets. This hasn’t solved crime – it’s just created a climate of fear and persecution.
And when police get out of control, like they did at the protests against the G20 last year when they killed innocent Ian Tomlinson, and like they did when they shot dead innocent Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell tube, Labour has done nothing to bring the killers to justice.
Labour was elected by millions of working class people to stand up for our interests. But they betrayed us. Like the Tories, they’ve ruled for the rich, not for the poor – for the millionaires, not for the millions.
The capitalist parties
The three main parties cry crocodile tears about inequality, but they never say what they will do about it. No wonder: Tories, Labour and Lib Dems all back the capitalist system, which is based on inequality.
Capitalism is the system of the so-called “free market”, in which everything is produced for the private profits of the millionaires, who own big companies. Under capitalism millions of working class people work for a pittance, while the boss pockets a huge profit.
In this system, when a boss can’t make a profit out of something, it doesn’t get done – even if there’s a burning need for it. That’s why there are thousands of unemployed building workers in Britain today… even though we need millions of affordable, new homes, and to repair and rebuild our crumbling housing estates.
The politicians of the main parties back capitalism 100 per cent, because they are part and parcel of the ruling class. Tory leader David Cameron went to the super-posh Eton school and hobnobs with the super-rich. Labour’s Peter Mandelson holidays on his billionaire friends’ yachts and says he’s “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”. And Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg told bankers’ paper City AM in February, “I’ve got no problem at all paying them a lot of money – give them a big chauffeur-driven car, free membership of a golf club.”
The capitalists think it is right and proper that they get millions while we get a bare minimum. They tell themselves it’s because they are much cleverer than us, that they create more value than us, and even that they work harder than us.
What rubbish. Why should a nurse, who saves lives every day, a teacher, who helps give our children a future, a fire fighter, who risks her life for others, get paid a pittance, while a City speculator, who creates nothing of value, gets a small fortune every month?
Everything real that is produced in this society is created by working class people. We built every building, harvested every crop, assembled every manufactured item, operated every machine.
All the capitalists ever brought to the show was money. But that money is nothing more than a profit clipped from each and every one of us, nothing more than our unpaid labour.
They are not the “wealth creators”. We are – and we are seeing that wealth robbed from us by capitalists, day in, day out.
No wonder all the main parties say there is no alternative to capitalism – their leaders are benefiting from the system and the inequality it brings. That’s why they hate it when workers fight back. All three parties condemned the brave strike in March by British Airways cabin crew, whose greedy bosses are attacking their working conditions.
The Labour, Tory and Lib Dem leaders take sides with the bosses against the workers every time. They try to divide us against one another, try to get us blaming each other so we don’t blame them – white against black, Christian against Muslim, old against young, and so on.
The main parties and their rich backers fear what would happen if the working class united. Because there is an alternative – the ANTICAPITALISTalternative!
Thirteen years of New Labour and Britain is still scarred by poverty, a land of haves and have-nots.
Yet since the credit crunch last year, Gordon Brown’s government has given hundreds of billions of pounds to the millionaire bankers.
Labour bailed out the banks and rich financiers. But they didn’t bail out the working class.
We’ve been made to pay for the bankers’ crisis:
- Hundreds of thousands have been thrown onto the dole
- Millions have had their pay frozen
- Our school leavers can’t get courses or jobs
- College places are being cut.
And it’s set to get much worse. All three main parties – Labour, Tory and Lib Dem – are preparing massive cuts in jobs, pay, college courses, benefits and healthcare after the election.
That’s why the working class needs a new party of our own. A party that says: we didn’t cause the credit crunch, so we’re not going to pay for it!
And that is why a new force – the Anticapitalists – are standing Jeremy Drinkall in the Vauxhall constituency in the 2010 General Election.
Hard Labour
Thirteen years ago, Labour won a landslide, because millions were sick of the Tories, who had ruled for 18 years.
Under the leadership first of Thatcher and then of Major, the Tories looked after the millionaire elite, cutting taxes for the rich and selling off public services to their wealthy friends. They made sure working class people paid the price through mass unemployment, and they pared benefits for the jobless down to the bone. To stop us fighting back they brought in laws banning effective trade union action – the worst anti-union laws in the whole of Europe.
So when Blair’s New Labour got in back in 1997, millions of working people rejoiced, hoping they’d reverse the misery of 18 years’ Tory misrule.
But today inequality is just a bad as it was back in ’97.
- In London two in every five children will grow up in poverty
- The bottom 10 per cent of households have possessions worth on average £3,500 and many have much less
- The top 10 per cent have possessions worth on average £900,000
- The average pay of an investment banker at Barclays Capital last year was £191,000 – twenty times the minimum wage of the workers who clean their offices.
Labour has doubled the tax of the lowest paid, carried on privatising services, stopped councils from building the new affordable homes we need and let rich bosses get away with their tax avoidance schemes.
Labour followed George Bush into America’s bloody wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – even though the majority of the British people have always opposed these wars, because they are really about profit and oil.
Labour joins in with Tory and Lib Dem attacks on “welfare scroungers” and “single mums”, disgracefully attacking the very people who are forced to live in poverty, because the state provides no childcare and the system provides no jobs.
On estates, their ASBOs and their schemes to pay people for grassing up their neighbours over benefit claims threaten to turn neighbour against neighbour and young against old. They have poured huge numbers of police on to our streets. This hasn’t solved crime – it’s just created a climate of fear and persecution.
And when police get out of control, like they did at the protests against the G20 last year when they killed innocent Ian Tomlinson, and like they did when they shot dead innocent Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell tube, Labour has done nothing to bring the killers to justice.
Labour was elected by millions of working class people to stand up for our interests. But they betrayed us. Like the Tories, they’ve ruled for the rich, not for the poor – for the millionaires, not for the millions.
The capitalist parties
The three main parties cry crocodile tears about inequality, but they never say what they will do about it. No wonder: Tories, Labour and Lib Dems all back the capitalist system, which is based on inequality.
Capitalism is the system of the so-called “free market”, in which everything is produced for the private profits of the millionaires, who own big companies. Under capitalism millions of working class people work for a pittance, while the boss pockets a huge profit.
In this system, when a boss can’t make a profit out of something, it doesn’t get done – even if there’s a burning need for it. That’s why there are thousands of unemployed building workers in Britain today… even though we need millions of affordable, new homes, and to repair and rebuild our crumbling housing estates.
The politicians of the main parties back capitalism 100 per cent, because they are part and parcel of the ruling class. Tory leader David Cameron went to the super-posh Eton school and hobnobs with the super-rich. Labour’s Peter Mandelson holidays on his billionaire friends’ yachts and says he’s “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich”. And Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg told bankers’ paper City AM in February, “I’ve got no problem at all paying them a lot of money – give them a big chauffeur-driven car, free membership of a golf club.”
The capitalists think it is right and proper that they get millions while we get a bare minimum. They tell themselves it’s because they are much cleverer than us, that they create more value than us, and even that they work harder than us.
What rubbish. Why should a nurse, who saves lives every day, a teacher, who helps give our children a future, a fire fighter, who risks her life for others, get paid a pittance, while a City speculator, who creates nothing of value, gets a small fortune every month?
Everything real that is produced in this society is created by working class people. We built every building, harvested every crop, assembled every manufactured item, operated every machine.
All the capitalists ever brought to the show was money. But that money is nothing more than a profit clipped from each and every one of us, nothing more than our unpaid labour.
They are not the “wealth creators”. We are – and we are seeing that wealth robbed from us by capitalists, day in, day out.
No wonder all the main parties say there is no alternative to capitalism – their leaders are benefiting from the system and the inequality it brings. That’s why they hate it when workers fight back. All three parties condemned the brave strike in March by British Airways cabin crew, whose greedy bosses are attacking their working conditions.
The Labour, Tory and Lib Dem leaders take sides with the bosses against the workers every time. They try to divide us against one another, try to get us blaming each other so we don’t blame them – white against black, Christian against Muslim, old against young, and so on.
The main parties and their rich backers fear what would happen if the working class united. Because there is an alternative – the ANTICAPITALISTalternative!