| The choice is there for the working class: capitalism, religion, ignorance and war — or socialism, where workers take responsibility for the future of the country... |
No to state control — yes to a workers' Britain
WORKERS, JUNE 2005 ISSUE
This article is an edited and updated version of a speech given at the CPBM-L May Day Rally in London last month
The working class of which we are part has refused so far to face its historic task of replacing capitalism with socialism. It has chosen instead to chase the mirage of bourgeois parliamentary democracy (whether British or European) with its false promises of a better life. In clinging to illusions, the working class of the industrialised world is losing ground.
Being economical with the truth (now a tired phrase) has been replaced with veracity shortfall. This respectable parliamentary language should be treated with the contempt it deserves: Blair and Straw are liars — merely the latest in a long line of apologists for the capitalist imperialist system. But they were put in power by British workers, who were unwilling to contemplate the alternative — taking power themselves.
Rumsfeld lied that victory in Iraq would come swiftly, while he admitted in private that it would be "a long hard slog". British troops are still bogged down in Iraq, their families waiting anxiously, and Iraqis are dying every day, while Blair dismisses the caveats in the Attorney General's advice as a damp squib. Under all the charisma and the fake tan, the arrogance of the career politician will out.
Straw is already preparing the ground for an illegal Anglo-American alliance against Iran — this time involving the EU. Yet Iran, named as part of Bush's "axis of evil", has never attacked another country. Straw echoes the US government lie machine in an almost identical build-up to that of Iraq.
The conclusion of the International Atomic Agency's Director-General, was that "Iran has no nuclear weapons programme". He repeated, "So far I see nothing that could be called an imminent danger, I have seen no nuclear weapons programme in Iran. There is no evidence that Iran has made a decision to build nuclear weapons." Straw pretends it is all about upholding the UN Charter. He suppresses the fact that the Charter is about preventing war through respect for national sovereignty.
Why are politicians threatening Iran? Israel has nuclear weapons, and American bombs, but no oil, so other nations must not be entitled to a deterrent on equal terms. Nor take a stand independent of the US. Israel is part of America's "aggressive foreign policy".
Harnessing religion
Capitalism has its tentacles everywhere, and has harnessed religion and political correctness to moral superiority — in the service of war and the quest for oil — epitomised by the religious vote for Bush, who claims "to detect threats before they emerge" (does he have supernatural powers?), epitomised too by Blair's personal belief in the rightness of war, the imposition of faith schools in Britain, and the criminalising of free speech by his Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill. Fundamentalist Islam, funded by big money, has created the war on terror as the perfect smokescreen for capitalist designs.
Post-Second World War Britain was an industrial, highly productive, and increasingly educated country, in which workers' knowledge of the world and science was derived uniquely from the practice of their skills at the workplace, especially in engineering, toolmaking and manufacturing.
Then came the systematic dismantling of industry, speeded and promoted by Thatcher, and the accompanying loss of science departments in universities, followed by the even greater onslaught on manufacturing under Blair — a million jobs gone in the past eight years, most recently at Rover — without even a last-ditch struggle and barely a mention of the EU's role in this.
Into the place vacated by industry have stepped the pseudo sciences, such as creationism, a world view influenced by the scriptures which interprets the Bible literally and opposes the science of evolution. This American import is taught in some British schools, with Blair's support, in science lessons.
Generations have stood for science, reason and truth against ignorance and superstition. And what have we got? Blair. And his cohorts in cabinet, like little vicars of Bray — whatsoever king may reign, etc — all waiting to ingratiate themselves with the next incumbent.
The unions, too, become sycophantic at election time. They are ominously silent about Iraq and the sabre rattling over Iran. They once spoke out against the Vietnam War, but do not celebrate the great Communist victory that it really was against US imperialism. The unions are now among the hardest places in which to criticise the ideas that divide and control the working class.
Opposition to the Iraq war was impressive at first, but there have been only sporadic calls for troops out of Baghdad
Device for division
One device used by capitalism precisely for purposes of division is immigration — just the mention of the word reduces some in the unions to apoplexy and threats of violence. It is taboo. The government and the TUC have seen to it that the debate has been poor to non-existent. They concentrate on the crude fascism of the BNP, which is obvious to everyone. The underlying questions are, however, obfuscated.
The need for political asylum and asylum policy is not what is in dispute. It is the insatiable appetite of the employers for cheap labour that is being suppressed in this debate. Meanwhile, the countries of origin of migrant workers — whether from Africa, Asia , Australasia, or Europe — are robbed of the chance to build up their own skilled working class.
The EU free-for-all, the tearing down of borders, will — if we let it — throw 450 million workers into the biggest piranha pool of cheap labour that we have yet known. But when workers attempt to knock down the shibboleths of European union, immigration, race and religion, they are denounced — as Little Englanders, imperialists, racists, xeno-phobes, lacking in respect.
In fact, avoiding the debate shows lack of respect for the intelligence of fellow workers.
Those who have lost their fishing fleets, or their manufacturing jobs, or seen farming reduced to a housekeeping exercise, know that the EU plays a far from benign role in the world. At its treacherous heart lies unbridled capitalism, privatisation, corruption, and a military—industrial complex to compete globally for resources in the interests of the strongest powers in Europe — Britain, France and Germany. In the words of the President of Namibia: "These Europeans, they have formed a political union and again they want to get our raw materials without paying us."
French and German arms manufacturers are pouring funds into the YES to the Constitution Campaign. They are dreaming of profits from war, in the knowledge that the Constitution does not require compliance with the United Nations Charter, the foundation of international law. The EU Constitution — unless we refuse to ratify it — would force Britain "actively and unreservedly to support the Union's common foreign and security policy in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity". But there are pockets of the working class who are saying NO to war, to religion, to the election, to the EU, to being pushed around.
Opposition to the Iraq war was impressive at first, but there have been only sporadic calls for troops out of Baghdad. Blair was punished at the ballot box, but those around him have formed a consen-sus on regime change. Intervention in the affairs of others is the order of the day. Parents and teachers in the US and Britain have had enough of religion being rammed down their children's throats. They have rumbled the Vardy Foundation: 70% said NO in Conisborough and there have been campaigns in London, at Abbey Wood and Walthamstow against Blair's city academies. In West Yorkshire, Ofsted upheld standards against a madrassah-style Islamic Institute for its over-emphasis on religion at the expense of other studies. In Monmouthshire a US-based Christian drug rehab group which was forcing teenagers to attend Bible study as a condition of receiving treatment had its grant withdrawn, on grounds of the misuse of public money.
The Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill fell partly because time ran out, but chiefly because of opposition in and out of parliament. Although millions went to Rome for a funeral, Italian churches remain half-empty, and in Ireland, there are few takers for the priesthood. Although Jean Paul was "great", people evidently did not agree with him on contraception, fertility treatment, AIDS (40 million affected worldwide), and so on. In other words, he was great — apart from his religion.
In Sri Lanka it was reported that thousands turned their back on religion after the tsunami. While Jack Straw said we were all at the mercy of nature, the Sri Lankans called for the technology of warning systems. In the US a federal judge ordered the removal of stickers saying "Evolution is a theory not a fact" from science books.
On the question of ethics, British peers have made progressive decisions, as on the vote in favour of new life to save the life of an existing child. British people in general do not like interference in morals, and we have a history of censorship battles (Mary Whitehouse, the Film Board, Lord Denning and Lady Chatterley).
The assertion of professional control, however, whether against our government or Brussels, is a form of resistance that goes largely unnoticed. An example of this is where childcare professionals have insisted on well-trained staff and qualified specialist teachers to work in children's centres, exposing the government's Sure Start agenda as inadequate for children and patronising to parents. Or where tourist guides throughout Europe are taking charge of their training and standards, and have reached agreement not to encroach on each other's territory.
The RMT staged a march from the North to London for the re-nationalisation of the railways and against EU privatisation, but the election elbowed even that aside. Other unions, such as the Community and Youth Workers, have taken a stand against the EU.
Embarrassed
There is an embarrassed silence from politicians who clearly think France and Netherlands could vote NO to the Constitution — or Yes only by a small margin. There is over 80% opposition in Britain, but lack of debate is ominous. Blair has already indicated he might call off a referendum here. That would be to quash debate before we have barely started to have one.
If there is a French NO, we must demand a referendum to make it difficult for them to come back with a revised plan to force us to vote YES. And if our government won't hold one, the British people will have to organise their own. We must decide our own way forward.
We must end the intervention in our private lives and the non-intervention in industry. We must stop granting a mandate to politicians at election time to return with a capitalist agenda generation after generation. We must choose reality, not illusion.
NO TO STATE CONTROL — YES TO A WORKERS' BRITAIN!
