11.07.1996

Labour leads the attack

New Labour now promises that it will do nothing to help the unemployed or poverty-stricken pensioners - but it will cut public spending. Believe Blair’s promises and fight back now

Tony Blair unveiled his vision of life under a Labour government last week. Ten million people will soon be receiving copies of the 36-page ‘pre-manifesto document - New Labour, new life for Britain. All those lucky people who live in target marginal seats, thus entitling them to a copy, will even get cards printed with the five main pledges and the comforting words: “Keep this card and see that we keep our promises”.

What are these “promises”?

Simple: to cut infant size classes to 30; to halve the time from arrest to sentencing for young offenders; to cut NHS waiting lists; to get 250,000 under-25s off benefits and into work; and - crucially for new Labour’s credibility - to set ‘tough’ rules for public spending and borrowing. In other words, more of the same.

At the ‘pre-manifesto’ launch, Blair announced, “There has been a revolution inside the Labour Party”, referring proudly to New Labour, new life for Britain. However, for once, The Independent was more honest in its assessment, commenting: “New Labour was stripped of its last remnants of socialist baggage ... that had weighed down the party’s hopes for election victory” (July 5).

New Labour has washed its hands of the unemployed - officially. Out goes the ‘symbolic’ commitment to “full employment” (which we knew was always a lie). In comes a commitment to “high and stable levels of employment”. Poverty stricken pensioners have also been promised nothing by Blair. New life for Britain has unceremoniously dumped any aspiration to keep state pensions in line with general earnings - unlike the 1992 manifesto which ‘promised’ a princely increase of £5 for single pensioners and £8 for couples, linked thereafter to average earnings. Even that is too much for the reborn Labour party, as it scents electoral victory in the air.

‘Honest’ Tony, of course, shot straight from the hip, telling the unemployed and pensioners that they should not “feel disappointed that we’re not making huge promises that we may not be able to keep”. Obviously, they should be thanking Blair instead for his honesty.

Communists and revolutionaries certainly ought to for helping to dispel any remaining illusions that life will be better under his party. Thanks to Tony Blair and New life for Britain, there can be no doubt what a Labour government would be like - more unemployment, more poverty, more NHS ‘reforms’, more ‘law and order’, the same old anti-trade union laws, and so on. Even the House of Lords and Trident missiles are safe in Labour’s hands.

Blair does not want an “old-fashioned war between bosses and workers”. No, he wants the working class just to surrender without a fight and put their cross next to Labour, come the glorious day.

This would be a disaster. We say: no support for the Labour Party. The time has come to build a real fighting revolutionary alternative to Labour. This task must begin now, not after the general election - that would be too late.

Paul Greenaway