Tue 24 Mar 2020, 05:05 AM | Posted by editor
LETTER from Tom Smith, Newport West Labour Party
So the Tories are nationalising wages, ignoring the self-employed and leaving the big firms in private hands. Big business has hundreds of millions of funds in America, Britain, Canada, in fact in all the nations of the world. Quantitative easing has lined the multinationals pockets with cheap credit used to buy up shares and takeovers. There was no productive use made with the credit, no investment to speak of and they have exploited cheap labour rather than invest in labour saving technology. This madness has left corporate debt, household debt, government debt, even student debt at levels that can never be remedied unless workers are prepared to accept a dreadful fall in living standards when this virus is conquered.
Workers did not fear socialism
The Tories are now spending even more than Corbyn proposed in the Labour manifesto. They have found a magic money tree and left major capitalist thinkers astounded and worried about the future.
My dad was around in 1945. He thought the revolution had come. Stalinism had taken over Poland, Hungary, East Germany. Churchill campaigned along the lines that labour was the equivalent of the Gestapo. However, workers did not fear socialism. The planning forced onto the business world during the war prepared the way for the NHS, nationalisation of coal, steel and the railways. The then Labour government never lost a by-election, The reasons as to why Labour lost the general election six years later are beyond the scope of this short letter and I’m sure other articles can explain the reasons. But briefly, in 1945, Labour did not nationalise the banks and left profitable industries in private hands, and left private land ownership intact. You cannot plan what you do not own and because workers were forced the pay a price, Labour lost in 1951. Then followed the world boom.
More mouths to feed
I personally think the Tories hope to make workers pay for this crisis with never-ending austerity, massive levels of unemployment and homelessness. We will be faced with the stark choice of socialism or the joys of depression and poverty. The mess will escalate with trade wars and even another banking crisis.
Workers I met are telling me that their sons and daughters are returning home because they have lost their jobs. They cannot pay the rents. I asked one worker how he felt about this. He said he had been panic-buying at the supermarket. After all he said he now had to buy for more mouths to feed.
