10.10.1996

Hard talking falls on deaf ears

Tory attempts to whip up enthusiasm for their ailing Party had little effect on the population at large.

Their attempt to win support was based on a barbaric and viciously rightwing agenda. Plans for ‘workfare’ go much further than the already implemented draconian Job Seekers Allowance.

US-style crime and punishment was taken to its limits by Howard. But the Tories are not the only ones to learn American. The slide into barbarism in that country is being copied by Labour as well as the Tories.

The only difference is that the user-friendly language in which Labour drapes its anti-working class agenda can be hailed by the bourgeois press and middle class voters it seeks to woo, since it has not had 17 years of government to wreak havoc on its credibility.

The only way the Tories reached the headlines this week was through their continuing hypocrisy over the Hamilton corruption scandal and their deep divisions on Europe.

The IRA’s bomb in the Six Counties stole the Tories’ thunder. With the ‘peace process’ clearly off the rails, all the rhetoric against ‘men of violence’ could not hide the fact that Major’s tough talking has failed to bring any results for imperialism, even in this arena.

European integration is one problem that is not going to go away no matter how much Major tries to ignore it. As plans for the European currency begin to be made concrete all nation states are now forced to act in one way or another.

The Eurosceptic wings of both the Tories and Labour offer no viable future for the interests of British capitalism. Nevertheless little England-ism and chauvinism run deep. Lord McAlpine (a man of influence and money) announced his support for Goldsmith's Referendum Party; a warning of an even more vicious right-wing agenda and organisation emerging from the heart of British capitalism.

An anti-working class Labour government by no means guarantees a leftwing reaction in society: it could shift in the other direction. We must ensure that it does not.

Linda Addison