19.06.1997

Labour set to hammer workers

As Labour prepares to make the deepest, most vicious cuts yet, the working class must brace itself for a fresh onslaught on services, jobs and working conditions.

Labour has willingly committed itself to the Conservatives’ projected spending limits for at least two years and so in health, education and welfare John Prescott warns us that nothing is ruled out. “It’s like the hospital service,” he said.

“We’re told they’re hundreds of millions of pounds short and they may be closing hospitals. The schools are being told that they are desperately short and the buildings are falling down.”

Health secretary Frank Dobson also feigned shock as the new minister who had opened the books and found a situation “much worse than I thought”. But in health, just as in education, Labour ministers are not proposing measures to make real improvements, let alone provide what workers need: the whole tenor of their statements is that they will try to stop the rot.

Of course even in bourgeois terms extra funding could be found simply through raising taxation or government borrowing. But both have been ruled out as New Labour has fallen into line with the Thatcherite consensus that the state must disengage from its post-World War II role as welfare and service provider. At the same time one eye is kept on the Maastricht criteria.

The government has three options then. Firstly, it can look to the private sector to “ensure the investment was not classified as public expenditure” (Prescott). That is why Labour is now actively pursuing the possibility of privatising the London Underground and the post office, at least in part, as well as extending the Tories’ private finance initiative in other areas, including health and education. The government could try to sell off other assets. The Independent advises it that “big old Victorian hospitals could be turned into luxury flats” (June 16).

The second option is more cuts - in these two main areas especially. As The Independent editorial pondered the next day, “It is hard to believe that the Thatcher-Major years have squeezed every excess penny out of the public purse” (June 17). True to form, despite warnings from health professionals and NHS authorities that there is no room for further cuts, Dobson told the Institute of Health Services Management: “I am now asking you to look at other immediate ways of saving money and putting it to better use. That is what good managers constantly on the lookout for.”

Those “savings” will include healthworkers’ pay and conditions of course - with the possibility of a pay freeze being attempted. In education too already overstressed teachers could face drastic cuts in their annual holidays, longer hours and mass redundancies.

The third possibility is to impose further charges “at the point of need” in the health service. “Charges for GP visits and hospital accommodation were investigated several times under the Conservatives but ruled out as politically unacceptable,” The Daily Telegraph reminds us (June 16). But nothing is to be ruled out in the treasury’s review, including raising and extending prescription charges and slapping a bill on hospital patients for their meals and use of facilities.

As yet workers have shown little resistance to this onslaught. Far from being booed off the platform, ministers are being acclaimed by union conferences. “Frank Dobson won a standing ovation from 1,500 nurses despite a grim pay warning,” The Independent reported (June 11). Admittedly they were Royal College of Nursing delegates, but unfortunately ministers are receiving similar acclamation at other union gatherings.

The Telegraph assesses why this is so. After calling on Blair to introduce a whole new range of health charges, its editorial continues:

“Reform [read ‘dismantling’- AF] of the NHS is one area where Labour could be more radical than the Tories. The Conservatives have never been trusted on health: despite increasing spending on the NHS by 55% during their term of office, they are still widely blamed for spurious ‘cuts’... Given that resources are finite, it makes sense to ration them. When the last government tried to do this, it was called ‘uncaring’. But this government can draw on reserves of public goodwill on health. It can point out again that the reason for efficiency is not to satisfy hard-faced accountants, but to maximise spending on patient care. With Labour in office, voters are more likely to listen” (June 16).

There could be no clearer statement of why even some of the most reactionary sections of the bourgeoisie are now backing Labour. But the question remains: why do so many left groups line up to support a party which the establishment now believes can attack workers more effectively?

And why do these groups continue to talk of a ‘revolution of expectation’ (AWL) and ‘huge expectations’ (SP) for working class advance?

Alan Fox