Cuts, cuts and even more cuts. This is the
message now being shouted by the leaderships of the Tories, the
Liberal-Democrats and – disgracefully – Labour. Indeed they are all trying to
outdo each other in presenting ever more severe programmes of public spending
cutbacks as part of what has been called a ‘race to the bottom’ on the part of
the three parties.
The national press has been awash with
stories of the “crisis” in public finances and the need to get cutting. It
seems that having been forced to hand over billions of pounds to prop up big
business and the banks, we are all being invited to pick up the bill on their
behalf. Meanwhile the banks are back at their old game of awarding themselves
nice fat bonuses.
Despite all the talk by the Tories that they
will protect core services and will not attack health or education, the reality
is that they are all too keen, once safely in power, to set about slashing
public services “in the public interest.” Naturally the huge hand outs to the
rich in the form of tax breaks etc. will not be touched. They are already using
words like “middle class welfare” as a means of preparing the public for the
withdrawal of benefits such as free bus passes for the elderly and universal
child benefit.
They have now been joined by the Liberal
Democrats. Their leader, Nick Clegg has announced the need for “cuts, cuts that
are savage and bold.” He too has talked about getting rid of universal child
benefit and abandoning the promise to scrap university tuition fees. Vince Cable,
the Lib Dem treasury spokesman has outlined the sort of figures they are
thinking of with plans to cut public spending by £14 billion with no ring
fencing of protected areas. No wonder Tory leader Cameron has been reported as
saying of the Lib-Dems: “There’s barely a cigarette paper between us in all
these areas.” All those silly middle class twits who came out at the last
general election and said that they were voting for the Lib Dems as the only
“radical” option should now be holding their heads with shame. Scratch a Lib
Dem and you will always find a Tory underneath.
We should expect all this from the two main
capitalist parties. Sadly, we have also come to expect this from the leadership
of New Labour. First Blair and now Brown have gone against the wishes of party
members, trade unionists and the many millions who voted Labour in three
general elections, by promoting the interests of the City of London over the population at large. Brown’s
statement at this years TUC conference to “cut costs, cut inefficiencies, cut
unnecessary programmes and cut lower priority budgets” should be translated as
cuts to public services and cuts to benefits. In response, loyal ministers have
started rushing out their own figures for cuts as the treasury begins the task
of drawing up reductions. Ed Balls has been first off the mark with his
announcement of two billion pounds in education cuts, with 3000 posts to be
cut, ‘saving’ around £250 million a year. So much for “Education, Education,
Education.” By the time you read this, other cuts will have been grandly
announced.
How bad could things get after the next
general election? A treasury document from this April has “assumed” a 9.3 per
cent reduction in public spending over the next four years, starting in April
2010.
Meanwhile the Institute Of Fiscal Studies
has outlined the sort of cuts they think the next government will need to carry
out. These include limiting child benefit and child tax credits, cutting winter
fuel payments to pensioners, freezing all welfare payments and – for good
measure – raising VAT to 20 per cent and removing items such as childrens
clothing from the VAT-exempt list. The advantage for big business of this tax
hike is that it hits the poorest hardest whereas the rich will hardly notice
it. No wonder the Tories have also floated this. Remember it was Thatcher who
last pushed up the rate of VAT during her time in office. As usual the social
consequences of such cuts are not considered, just the fiscal.
However it could get even worse. According
to the Daily Mail (20th September): “Secret plans to slash public
spending by up to 30 per cent, affecting public transport, the Armed Forces,
schools, hospitals and welfare benefits are being drawn up by Whitehall
Mandarins.” They go on to say that this will amount to cuts of £75 billion,
“the biggest cut in British history.” What does this mean in reality? Well the
Daily Mail has suggested that this will convert into cuts of 112,000 nurses and
129,000 teaching posts with public sector pay being frozen and benefits sharply
cut. Now it can be fairly suggested that the Daily Mail is no friend of the
public sector and may well have an ulterior motive in making lesser but still
severe cuts sound acceptable. Certainly Whitehall
bosses have been hard at work preparing the ground for public spending cuts –
and such “doomsday” plans may be part of this strategy.
In passing we should also note that the
pressure on public services has already increased as a result of the recession.
The Local Government Association (LGA) has reported that one in five local
authorities have noted an increase in demand for school places as children are
taken out of private education by cash-strapped parents. 86 per cent of
councils have seen an increase in housing benefit applications with 90 per cent
reporting increases in residents seeking welfare or debt advice. Meanwhile the
LGA have also noted that all this extra
load is being handled by a local government workforce that has already lost
7,000 staff.
There is a concerted campaign by Westminster politicians
and their friends in the media against the public sector and the working class
as a whole. We are being required to pay for the bosses’ blunders. The fiction
that all public sector workers are overpaid, do little useful work and to top
it all have very good pensions must be challenged. Yes, the managers at the top
do all right but most public sector workers are low paid and put in long hours
because they believe that what they are doing is in the public interest. They
should be treated better not worse. The attacks on benefits must also be
challenged. This represents nothing more than a crude attempt to reduce the
standard of living of the worst off in society and pass that cash to the rich.
Whatever plan is finally adopted by the
next government it will be bad, very bad. The only response must be to fight.
These cuts can be defeated if the might of the organised labour movement is
brought to bear against them. Thatcher brought in the hated Poll Tax, she was
defeated because people organised and stood up to the Tories. The bosses at
Lindsey tried to break the union but they were pushed back because the workers
remained firm. If you fight, you can win. Labour’s ranks must make clear their
opposition to the cuts and demand a change of course by the leadership. The
trade unions must start to mobilise and organise a united fightback against
whichever government tries to bring in these cuts. Above all, it must be made
clear that the responsibility for these attacks and the crisis which caused
them lies with capitalism and capitalism alone. They must pay, not us. The
struggle for a socialist programme which can address the root causes of the
problems of society must now be at the top of the agenda.
