The Failure of Starmer & Streeting to Give Any Support to the Nurses Proves the Irrelevance of the Labour Party - We Need a New Working Class Socialist Party
As you can see from the video the NHS strikers have overwhelming public support. But public support doesn’t translate into victory against a government which is committed to transferring wealth from the poor to the rich.
We
have had neo-liberal governments for the past 40 years and in that time the
rich have grown richer. Since 2020 the richest 1% have, according
to a new Oxfam report, grabbed nearly two-thirds of all new wealth worth
$42 trillion created since 2020, almost twice as much money as the bottom 99
percent of the world’s population. During the past decade, the richest 1% have
captured around half of all new wealth.
The
table below shows
how, beginning with Ronald Reagan in the United States, wealth flowed from the
poor to the rich. In 1967 the richest 20% had 43.6% of wealth. By 2014 this had
increased to 51.2%, whereas the share of the poorest 20% declined from 4% to 3.1%.
This continued under the Democrats and under Trump, with his tax cuts for the
rich and Biden, the trend has continued.
According to Statista and the Sunday Times Rich List the UK’s top 10 richest people are wealthier than ever. The cumulative wealth of the top 10 billionaires in the UK has grown from £47.77 billion in 2009 to £182 billion in 2022 - an increase of 281%.
Following
the 2008 crash, UK’s billionaires have seen a steady and steep incline in their
wealth. The upward trend continued despite the pandemic, which saw the UK’s economy shrink by 20.4% in the second quarter of 2020. 30.5m people
in Europe were pushed into poverty. By way of contrast the UK’s 250 ultra
wealthy saw their collective wealth surge to a record high of £653 billion in
2022.
George
Dibbs, the head of the Center for Economic Justice at the Institute for Public
Policy Research, explained
how we are seeing a widening wealth gap
As we enter a once-in-a-generation cost of living crisis,
the Sunday Times rich list shows us again that vast wealth often begets more
wealth. That has proved particularly true during the pandemic, when the
wealthiest accumulated more wealth than poorer people, who saved nothing.
As most
people faced a cost of living crisis Rishi Sunak and Akshata Murty joined
the UK rich list with a combined £730m fortune. Dominic Raab, now Deputy
Prime Minister, said
it was “fantastic” news that Sunak
had joined the rich list.
“He’s a fantastic example of
someone who’s been successful in business, who’s coming to make a big impact in
public service. I think we want more of those people. I think it’s fantastic
that you’ve got someone of British-Indian origin, showing all people in our
country that you can get to the top of politics.
The UK now has a record 177 billionaires, up six on 2021. Their combined
wealth is up 9.4% to a record £653bn.
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Nurses Picket Outside Brighton's Sussex County Hospital
This is the background to the current strike wave. It also explains the
new anti-strike
laws and the further attack on public protests with the new Public
Order Bill. These bills have nothing to do with preventing ‘disruption’ to
the public despite government’s
lies. They have everything to do with defending the right of the rich to
get richer.
The refusal of Starmer and Streeting, both of whom support further
privatisation of the NHS, is contemptible. If they had a shred of honesty they
would change the name of the Labour Party to ‘The New Tory Party’ but Honesty
and Starmer is an oxymoron.
At the same time we have seen massive corruption arising from giving COVID
contracts to friends and cronies of the Tories. Just 10 Conservative MPs
and peers referred
companies to a “VIP lane” that won £1.6bn of PPE contracts. The “VIP
lane” was recently declared
unlawful by the High Court but no one has been prosecuted by the Police
because their sole focus is on benefit claimants. Government corruption is not
their concern.
One Fifth of Covid contracts ‘raised red flags for possible corruption’. We have a corrupt government and a corrupt capitalist system where wealth
flows upwards, away from workers to the parasites who preside over this system.
When Sunak and Starmer tell workers that we ‘cannot afford’ 19% pay
increases for nurses we should bear in mind that the average pay packet of
Chief Executives in the FTSE 100 companies jumped
by 39% to £3.4 million. The average UK
CEO now collects 109 times that paid to the average British worker, up from 79
times in 2020.
About
this Starmer, Reeves and the rest of the traitorous Labour MPs have nothing to
say. After all Labour is now ‘business
friendly’.
What we need to create is a genuine working class socialist party that defends the poor against the spivs, speculators and parasites who have plundered the economy whilst telling us that we ‘cannot afford’ to pay decent wages and benefits. Neo-liberal capitalism means privatising the public sector and allowing the capitalist pigs to hide their ill gotten gains in tax havens whilst avoiding paying taxes.
Corbyn
still does not understand that the ‘anti-Semitism’ allegations were designed to
remove him and nothing more
People
should sign up to the Socialist Labour Network’s appeal for a new mass working
class party. The time is for socialists to get together and organise after the
debacle of Corbyn who has proven that he couldn’t fight his way out of a paper
bag with his appalling interview
with Liz Kendall when, despite everything, he still accepted that there was a
genuine ‘anti-Semitism’ crisis in the Labour Party.
.jpg)
Nurses Picket Outside Brighton's Sussex County Hospital
It
is time for the trade unions to fight back. Individual strikes are not enough.
Only a general strike that challenges the privileges of the idle rich and their
supporters in parliament will challenge the Tories. It is clear that although
welcome, the current strike wave, uncoordinated as it is, is not enough.
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Nurses Picket Outside Brighton's Sussex County Hospital
Meanwhile
everyone who can should join the strike picket lines and reject the divide and
rule tactics of the ruling class. The trade union bureaucrats want a quiet life
and would prefer to accept minimal concessions rather than lead a fight back.
They need to have their feet held to the fire. We need a strategy of outright
defiance of the trade union laws. Anti-strike laws are a negation of the most
basic principles of a democratic society. It was Hitler who outlawed
strikes
and unions on May 2 1933. The anti-strike laws are nothing but a
continuation of Hitlerism by other means.
Tony Greenstein
Starmer, Sunak & Streeting are a disgrace.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this important piece Tony. Not sure my original comment went through so re-posting in case. Heres a few observations from an NHS worker;
ReplyDeleteIn the 4 or 5 years I've been in the NHS, no ones ever promoted unionizing, at least not to us lesser/unskilled workers. Its something you have to seek out yourself. Colleagues who are in them keep it to themselves.
A week before the strikes, a manager, whose apparently from a working class background, got another staff member to scab.
Some staff believe its only nurses who should strike - "your not a nurse" was said by one colleague to another when asked if theyre striking.
In a pre-strike meeting, I got told I couldn't attend as in different union thats not balloted yet, and then when accepted, told am there in support, not an equal, and not allowed to hold RCN banners or appear in photos.
On the picket line, strikers from a different trust were told to stay at the back and people were under strict instruction not to criticise the trust.
What is to be done to fight against all the depoliticizing and union busting antics and how can we build solidarity across the NHS ?
Mick Lynch makes a point to say the RMT represents all transport workers, not just drivers. Should the RCN take a leaf from his book ?