04.07.1996

The lesser evil?

Cuts in jobs, services and attacks on workers’ conditions - whether at work or in health, education or housing - have led millions to despair. But instead of looking for a real alternative the working class, lacking any vision of its own potential to take over the running of society, is reduced to seeking out the ‘lesser evil’

‘Get rid of the Tories - Labour can’t be any worse’ is the hopeful cry made by many up and down the country.

Yet there is plenty of evidence that the Labour Party has not the slightest intention of lifting a finger in favour of working people. Tony Blair promises nothing but more of the same capitalist medicine. He has not committed himself to a single genuine improvement for ordinary workers. We get nothing but platitudes and threats.

Take Labour’s ‘new, improved’ NHS. Will Blair’s party reverse the cuts and rationing forced on the health service through the ‘internal market? No, he will not spend a penny more.

Instead shadow health secretary Harriet Harman has come up with a cosmetic exercise - a sort of patient’s charter, Labour-style. Apart from the populist approach of proposing unspecific cuts in the NHS bureaucracy and ‘too many managers’, Harman is attempting to appeal to middle class voters with her ‘personalised appointment system’ for hospitals and community health services. In other words, you can choose yourself where to get your second-rate treatment (if you are lucky).

Harman admitted that that might not be most people’s priority - but unfortunately it was the best she could come up with.

Although Labour is promising nothing, that has not stopped the Conservatives trying to blow up any hint of ‘radicalism’ as proof positive that the leopard has not changed its spots and poses a renewed threat to middle class lifestyles. Labour’s response has been to tone down even more any proposed change to Tory policy, to swing more to the right - coming down even more firmly on the side of the bosses and against the workers.

Blair simply chooses to rewrite party policy - without bothering to consult his own shadow cabinet: last week’s furore over devolution for Scotland and Wales was a case in point.

Yet the protests at his dictatorial attitude - whether from the party’s nationalist wings in Scotland and Wales or the so-called ‘left’ - have been remarkably muted.

Glenda Jackson, Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate, explained why: “We are sick and tired of waking up the morning after a general election with nothing but the memories of a glorious yet unsuccessful campaign and the prospect of five more years of Conservative government.”

‘Leftwinger’ Tony Banks added: “I happen to believe that any Labour government is better than any Tory one. Not a principled statement, but were it not true, there would be no point to my life.”

Perhaps we will see a number of suicides among such valiant defenders of our class after the election. There again, perhaps we won’t.

We must start to build our own, genuinely working class alternative to all the capitalist parties. Only workers themselves can build a better world.

Alan Fox