15.05.1997

Bosses applaud Labour bills

As expected, there is little for the working class in the new government’s first legislative proposals

Wednesday’s queen’s speech could not diminish the liberal establishment’s enthusiasm for the Labour government.

The new administration’s first fortnight had been marked by bourgeois commentators falling over themselves to welcome Tony Blair’s ‘radicalism’. True, Gordon Brown’s decision to remove control of the bank rate from the government and place it in the hands of the Bank of England marked a pronounced change in the way British capital regulates itself. It was widely interpreted as a move towards an independent Bank of England - one of the stipulations of the Maastricht Treaty.

However, it was the carefully choreographed gestures that bowled the commentators over. The “cabinet of hope and hard work” (The Independent May 9) is to forego this year’s salary increase, it was announced. Nothing permanent, you understand - from next April Blair will pocket the extra £41,000, while cabinet ministers will see their pay rise to over £100,000.

Populist gestures, such as the cabinet using first names, have seen liberal journalists oozing excitement. “There is an impatient energy coursing through Westminster that hasn’t been seen since the heyday of Thatcherism,” enthused Andrew Marr in The Independent (May 9). “The self-confidence and purposefulness of the New Labour leadership is remarkable, surprising and admirable.”

The actual content of the queen’s speech contained few surprises. Health and education are to see a continued emphasis on private finance. Although Labour will abolish the internal market in the NHS, that will in no way hold up the drive to profit-based healthcare. Brown has promised to keep to the Tories’ projected health spending - a meagre rise of 0.3% in real terms over the next year, compared to the annual three percent increase of the previous decade. The tightening grip of the private sector, combined with a changing demography, will ensure that even more devastating cutbacks in health are planned this winter.

The government’s proposals on crime typify the establishment reaction to the inevitable effects of the rundown of welfare provision. As working class youth becomes more and more alienated from the no-hope capitalist society, the ruling class responds with ever harsher clampdowns. Speedier and heavier sentences will be enforced and, where children cannot be made to pay for turning their backs on the society which excludes them, their parents will be forced to take responsibility. Society’s victims are blamed for its ills.

Labour’s vicious attacks on working class youth will be intensified with Brown’s June 10 budget. Youth unemployment will be ‘abolished’ at a stroke, by forcing those claiming benefit into ‘voluntary’ work or an environmental ‘task force’. Alternatively they will be forced into more worthless ‘training’ schemes or government-subsidised jobs at slave-labour pay.

New Labour has been able to hold up its minimum wage promise as evidence that it has the interests of the working class at heart. As if further proof were needed that the figure will be determined not on the basis of what workers need, but on the requirements of capital, it was made clear that the aim is to increase company profits through providing a stable competitive base and preventing ‘excessive’ undercutting. Far from obliging employers to pay a living wage immediately, the government intends to set up a low pay commission which will almost certainly recommend a figure (for adults) of between £3 and £3.50 an hour. Implementation may be delayed until 1999 “to give employers time to adjust their pay rates”.

As expected, the government will press ahead with its ban on all private handguns and with its referendum proposals for a sop parliament for Scotland and a Welsh assembly.

Its claim to stand for democratic constitutional reform was exposed with the appointment of the unelected Sir David Simon, chairman of British Petroleum, as minister for trade and competitiveness in Europe. This personification of British capital will be awarded a life peerage and a seat in the House of Lords.

Alan Fox