[Militant 411 – 23rd June 1978 p. 1 and 16]
By Lynn Walsh
Mrs Thatcher claims she is maligned. “Labour will try to paint me as a reactionary, implying a sort of early return to the Middle Ages,” she moaned recently.
What she really wants, the Tory leader explained, is “to get everyone a capitalist … so they can start with nothing and end up with something.”
Wonderful! But how do the Tory leaders propose to help those with “nothing” – e.g. the 1½ million unemployed, the 4½ million workers on less than £50 a week, the pensioners, the sick, the millions of children who live in poverty?
For a start, by slashing public spending, pruning nationalised industries, sacrificing “lame ducks”, and by giving the blind “market forces” their head, they would soon put hundreds of thousands more workers on the dole. If you have “nothing” and the bosses won’t give you a job, hard luck!
Next, vital services would get the chop. In the NHS, for example, the Tories would increase prescription charges, impose “hotel” charges in hospitals, put in more private beds. If you have “nothing” and get sick, well, tough luck!
Michael Heseltine assures us that a Tory government would pass a law to force councils to sell council houses. If you have nothing, and can’t afford a mortgage, too bad!
James Prior promises that a Tory government would suspend key sections of Labour’s Employment Protection Act. So if you’re unfairly dismissed, or the boss refuses to have you back after having a baby, and you have “nothing”, sorry!
The Tories’ main target, however, is the trade unions – which prevent the bosses riding rough-shod over workers.
Sir Geoffrey Howe recently denounced the trade unions’ “profoundly undemocratic domination of the Labour Party.” But the Labour Party was created by the unions as their political arm. Its basic, democratic aim is control of society by the majority who create the wealth, the working class.
Who do the Tories – these people who rant about “democracy” and “freedom” – stand for?
Money talks, and it’s big business that finances the Tories.
Take a few examples. Last year, Guest Keen & Nettlefords (profitable, private steel-makers) gave the Tories £25,000. S Pearson & Son (a big ‘conglomerate’), Bowater Corporation (the big paper monopoly) abd Cadbury Schweppes (the giant food monopoly) each gave the Tory Party £10,000.
This year, in the run-up to a general election, big firms will give hundreds of thousands to their party.
The directors of big business cream about Labour ruining “their” businesses and taxing them almost to penury.
But they are really not doing so badly!
Mr Barrie Health, for instance, the Chairman of GKN, was paid a cool £63,000 last year (not counting “fringe benefits” and “perks”). Three top directors of Pearson, Bowaters and Cadbury’s were paid £152,770 between them.
These are the people who buy private medicine, who send their children to public (i.e. private, fee-paying, schools) who travel by chauffeur driven car.
Is it any wonder that through their Tory mouthpieces they are clamouring for the destruction of the NHS, a boost to private education, and the slashing of all expenditure on the health, welfare and education of ordinary people?
The rich and powerful who run the big firms which finance the Tory Party are the top 2% who own 80% of the country’s personal wealth. Are they going to share out their wealth with the workers, so everyone can be a capitalist? Is this what Mrs Thatcher has in mind?
No. In reality, Mrs Thatcher and her cronies yearn for the “good old days”, when more people mistakenly believed that if they “worked hard” and “got on” they could be big tycoons, send their son to a top Public School (fees currently £2,000 a year), have their appendix out in a luxury private hospital (now about £2,000), etc. etc.
What the Tories really want is to go back to primitive, ‘free for all’ capitalism. Not so everyone has a “fair chance”. But so big business can make even bigger profits, without paying “exhorbitant” taxes, without the “burden” of social services, and without the obstacle of strong trade unions.
Only the organised labour movement stands in the way of their barbarous plans. That’s why the Tories want to bind and fetter the unions with reactionary new laws…
Only the labour movement can defend the living standards and rights of working people. But to make sure the Tories are defeated in the approaching general election and to guarantee a Labour government that will work in the interests of working people, the labour movement must fight on socialist policies.
● A guaranteed job for everyone, with a £70 minimum wage for all.
● A 35-hour week without loss of pay.
● Reverse the public spending cuts.
● A public construction programme to provide homes, hospitals, schools.
● The nationalisation of the banks, finance houses and 200 big monopolies, with compensation only on the basis of need, to be run under workers’ control and management.
● A socialist plan of production.
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