’Tis the season to defend welfare state

Published: 23 December, 2010

• YOUR reporter Terry Messenger correctly pointed out that, at the recent picket organised by Islington – Hands Off Our Public Services (IHOOPS) outside a Conservative Party carol service in Clerkenwell, most protesters accepted mince pies and mulled wine from the hands of the local Tory organiser (Minister goes missing so critics get teeth into mince pies instead, 17 December). 

It’s equally true that some of us declined, and quite forcefully, this kind “hospitality” from a party hell-bent on shifting the full burden of the current crisis ever more heavily onto the shoulders of ordinary working people.

The alleged season of goodwill notwithstanding, the politics of resistance to the current round of savage cuts is not a polite game to be played by the traditional rules in a debating society, in Parliament or in town halls up and down the country – where, after the verbal sparring has ended, the opposing speakers adjourn together for a drink in the spirit of “all good friends and jolly good company”. Rather, this is a deadly serious struggle on the part of workers, students, pensioners and all the other sectors of our society which are bearing the brunt of a fierce and ruthless attack by the ruling monopoly capitalist class and its agents in government, be they Tory, Lib Dem or (had they not been removed from office for the time being) Labour. Now is not the time, if it ever was, to be sipping wine with the enemy.

Furthermore, although we applaud all the work of IHOOPS, to which we are proudly affiliated, we feel an obligation to point out that, while bankers’ greed and corporate tax avoidance are both perfectly legitimate targets for anti-cuts protesters, the real, underlying crisis is one of overproduction.

As long as there is capitalism, there will be a contradiction between the bosses’ need to make a profit and their equally urgent need to drive wages down in real terms. That’s what we’re seeing here: the workers who produce all the commodities in our society can no longer afford to buy them! There’s plenty of everything to go around, but if it can’t be sold at a profit it’s just left to rot and ordinary people are told to go without. Bearing this in mind, let’s continue to sharpen the struggle in defence of the concrete working-class gains represented by the so-called welfare state. 

Let’s bring the fight to the Con-Dems while stressing that the capitalist Labour Party, which itself is no stranger to imposing draconian cuts, is also part of the problem – not the solution. Socialism is the answer, and we need to begin building for it.

STEVE COOK
North London secretary, Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)