Britain

This is the first of two articles looking at the decline in the quality
of life for working people in Britain today. This first article focuses
on the workplace, where there has been relative decline in wages and
deterioration in the conditions of employment. The second part looks at
the attack on the ‘social wage’. This consists of the services and
facilities we access such as health care, education, public transport
and local services – all of which contribute towards the quality of
life for working people in modern society. They form the provision in
society of things working people, unlike the rich, could not afford to
buy individually but provided on behalf of people by the State.
Together the two elements – direct wages and the social wage – provide
our quality of life, but both are now under attack, creating an
impoverished life in Britain for working people.

Marxism is the memory box of the class, but more than that it is a
means to an end, a weapon in the hands of the working class. We don’t
stand aside and carp like the sectarians, but play a role in the
movement and try to develop the struggles that take place. This is
precisely the approach that Marx advocated in the ‘Communist Manifesto’
160 years ago.

The class struggle arises from the conditions of life of human beings.
It’s a struggle of living forces; there are complicated and
complicating factors. Different industries have different conditions;
there are different traditions of struggle, different forms of
organisation, different political conditions over time and different
leaders.

The 27th
April marked the 40th anniversary of the coming into force of the
1967 Abortion Act that led to the saving of thousands of women’s lives. The Act
allowed women in England, Wales and Scotland access to safe abortion on the NHS
in a government approved hospital when 2 doctors agreed to the procedure within
the first 24 weeks of pregnancy. We must not turn the clock back by
criminalising women who find themselves in the position of needing an abortion.
We must join the lobby of parliament today to protect the
right to choose and not allow religious bigotry to put women back to the unsafe
abortions of the pre 1967 Abortion Act where thousands of women put their
health and even their lives in danger.

Following on from the disastrous election results of New Labour last Thursday, those left groupings who were hoping to capitalise on Labour’s difficulties also found themselves in a mess. As Ted Grant explained, the working class always ignore the sects and in times of struggle always turn towards their traditional organisations.

A
thousand people gathered in London on Thursday’s 2008 May Day to march through
the streets of the capital in celebration of International Workers’ Day. In
light of recent and threatening developments in Bolivia, different campaigns came together
to organise a joint meeting after the demonstration. The
energy and enthusiasm of the meeting boldly reflected the impact that Latin
American revolutions are having on people here in Britain demonstrating that the May Day spirit
is very much alive and kicking.

This is the final draft of the British Perspectives document worked out and voted on by the comrades of the British section of the International Marxist Tendency at their National Conference in April of this year.

The Brown government has been ruthless in attempting to keep
workers’ wage rises to 2%, causing real pain amongst Britain’s poorest workers.
Their justification was that inflation was only 2% and the “country” could not
afford inflationary pay deals.

They’re back from the dead. We thought we’d driven a stake
through their rotten hearts in the Labour landslide of 1997. Now they’re 13
points ahead in the polls. They should be history. So why are they making a
comeback? Because New Labour have been rumbled. They said they were being
prudent with the economy. They talked about, ‘no return to boom and bust.’ Now
we can see that they were just lucky. Don’t
let the failure of New Labour be the opportunity for the Tories. Reclaim the
Labour Party. It was set up as our party, as a party for the working class.
Fight the Tories with socialist policies.

The government is pushing plans for a third runway and a sixth
terminal. The fifth terminal will open soon. The fifth terminal on its
own is the third biggest airport in Europe. When the go-ahead for a
fourth terminal was given in 1979 Glidewell, the Chair of the Inquiry,
stated, "In my view the present levels of noise around Heathrow are
unacceptable in a civilised society." Right first time. The fourth
terminal was given the nod on the grounds that that was it. No fifth
terminal. Ever. It seems all governments, not just the present one, are
terminal liars.

It is easy to write off Boris Johnson as a buffoon. There is
a real danger he will be running London, a city of 7½ million people in a
couple of months time. Make sure Johnson is not made London’s Mayor in the May
1st elections. As Compass points out, “his buffoonery conceals a
hard line right wing set of views – a type of Norman Tebbitt in clown’s
uniform. The quotes below are taken from their pamphlet Boris Johnson – a man of the Tory hard right.