While the friends of the Tory Party have been looting the public purse for months and profiteering from Covid, it is clear that the Tories are passing all the burden of the costs of the pandemic onto working class people.
The spending review announced by Chancellor, Rishi Sunak yesterday in the Commons is a crushing blow to workers, coming on top of the decade-long squeeze in living standards, already the longest for generations.
If the British capitalist system is facing its greatest crisis in 300 years, then it is the system that needs to be junked, not preserved at the expense of working-class people. The economic devastation caused by the pandemic has put the British economy in what has been described as a “quasi-wartime” footing. That is a very apt analogy, because as it was in the Second World War, most of the sacrifices are being made by the ‘little’ people – ordinary workers and their families – while big business and a multitude of spivs are profiteering from the sacrifices and pain of everyone else.
Overwhelmingly damaging to workers
Barring a few minor cosmetic measures thrown in for ‘balance’, Sunak’s spending plans are overwhelmingly damaging to the daily lives and the prospects of most workers. While billions have been made through secretive and uncompetitive contracts thrown at the Tories’ friends, workers, those on benefits, small businesses and the self-employed have all been left in the lurch. For the millions who will be losing their jobs in the coming months there is nothing on offer but the demoralising experience miserably low level of benefits.
The worst and most hypocritical measure of all is the almost total freeze on public sector wages. Nurses and doctors have been exempted, for fear of the public’s understandable reaction. But paramedics, porters, laboratory and NHS support staff will all be asking what about us? Workers in the care sector will be asking the same question. As will those in transport and in retail, many of whom have risked and lost their lives, because of their public-facing jobs. What about refuse workers, and those in local authorities in general? What about schoolteachers, expected to mix daily with children and young people who have only a passing acquaintance to social distancing?
A very modest wage rise for the very lowest paid – and even that will be hedged around by all kinds of obstacles and conditions – does not make up for the added financial insecurity faced by the overwhelming majority of workers.
Clapping in Spring, Slapping in Winter
All these workers, correctly described as ‘key workers’ when the pandemic took off, are now being kicked in the teeth by millionaires like Johnson and Sunak. We all remember the images of Boris Johnson outside the door of Ten Downing Street, clapping every Wednesday evening. Johnson is clapping them in Spring and slapping them in Winter.
What is worse, is that by his own words, Rishi Sunak has admitted that the pain will go on for a long time. “Our economic emergency has only just begun”, he told the House of Commons. What he means is that his friends will continue to loot and profiteer as much as ever but workers will be squeezed until the pips squeak. The director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that “we are in for a pretty austere few years once again, or for some significant tax rises”. Boris Johnson’s ‘end of austerity’ is going to be like Trump’s ‘winning’ the US election – a fantasy for public consumption only
Brexit will worsen conditions
The results of the Tories approach to Brexit are still to play out, but we can be sure of one thing – that the agreements on trade that come out of negotiations with the EU and US will not be of any benefit to workers and, on the contrary, will only further underline the historic weakness of British capitalism. Covid has reduced the output of the British economy by over 11 per cent; Brexit could very well add another 2 per cent to that decline. British capitalism, with the most corrupt political party for generations at its helm, has nothing to offer the big majority of the population except blood, toil, tears and sweat. What is more, the pain and the sacrifices will never be enough.
But the measures that the Tories are introducing are not going to be taken willingly and many workers and sections of society will not take matters lying down. There will be a tide of anger and opposition building up in the next few months and into 2021 as the scale of the sacrifices to be made becomes clear and as more information about Tory corruption leaks out.
A test for labour movement leadership
This wholesale attack on living standards will be a test of the mettle of the Labour and trade union leaders. The leaders of the trade unions have a particular responsibility to protect the interests and the livelihoods of their members. They ought not only to support their members taking action to defend their livelihoods on their own account, but they ought to be launching campaigns from the top, to fight for decent pay and conditions. That is what leadership should mean. Unite, Unison, USDAW and GMB, the four biggest unions affiliated to the Labour Party, will be shaken by the new attack on living standards and their leaderships will be forced to respond to events or they risk being pushed aside by their members.
Kid gloves and the mailed fist
The new assault on the livelihoods of workers will also be a test of Keir Starmer’s leadership and that of his front bench. He has not exactly covered himself with glory in his first six months of office, with kid gloves used on the Tories and a mailed fist shown to this own party membership.
The language used by Labour’s spokespersons is so telling. It speaks volumes that Shadow Chancellor, Anneliese Dodds, should respond to Sunak by accusing him of “taking a sledgehammer to consumer confidence”. What she is implying here is that for the ‘business-friendly’ Labour leadership, the ‘market’ and the ‘system’ is not being helped enough by the Chancellor. How much better would it have been if she had stated the obvious – what most workers are thinking – that Sunak’s measures were “taking a sledgehammer to living standards”? The Labour leadership around Starmer seem to be organically incapable of voicing the concerns of workers.
If the Labour leadership are not prepared to put up a bitter and no-holds barred fight against these anti-working class measures; if they are not prepared to call out the Tories’ corruption for what it is, then they need to stand aside for a Labour leadership who will.
Nothing is fixed and forever in politics even in ‘normal’ times and there has been no political period in modern times like the present, for its volatility and unpredictability. It will not be the personal wishes of political leaders that decide whether they stay or go, but the underlying social and economic conditions. The greater the social convulsions, the greater the political impact that will be made. Both Johnson and Starmer will be tested by their behaviour during and after the pandemic. If they are found wanting, and it looks that way, they may pay the political price.
For the left of the Labour Party, the coming months will also be a test. We need to shift the arguments away from anti-Semitism and broaden the fight in the Labour Party for socialist policies in the interests of working-class people and for policies that point at a fundamental change of society. We need to campaign for measures like these:
*For the immediate restoration of local authority and NHS cuts so that there are adequate finances to manage the crisis and post-crisis.
*All NHS contracts related to Covid, including vaccine contracts must be in-house, and all NHS services brought back in-house
*All workers quarantined, must be guaranteed normal, full pay.
*In ‘high tier’ or full lock-downs, rents, mortgage payments and utility bills must be suspended (not just postponed) for the duration
*NHS, education and other workers must be protected from excessive workloads and the appropriate numbers of staff must be employed and trained to provide adequate services.
*Labour should use the crisis to campaign for the nationalisation of the whole of the health sector, including pharmaceuticals, so its workforce and technological resources can be managed for the benefit of public health and not for profit
*All those on benefits should have them maintained, irrespective of missed interviews or appointments. If the worst comes to the worst, the government should foot funeral bills for any Covid-19 victims who were on benefits.
*There should be no redundancies in any field of work, arising from trading conditions during the coronavirus outbreak. Any companies threatening job losses should be nationalised and run democratically by its workforce for the benefit of society as a whole. Work or full pay for workers facing redundancy.
*Extraordinary times need extraordinary measures. If the system is broken, and offers nothing but sacrifices, then we need to change the system. Labour must campaign for a socialist economy, for the public ownership, not only of the utilities, but for the main levers of the economy like the banks, finance and industry, to be able to deploy the skills and wealth of the country in a planned and organised way.
At present we have a government of millionaires, for millionaires and by millionaires. What Labour needs to fight for is its opposite: a government of workers by workers and for workers.
November 26, 2020
