Britain

In
1987, Margaret Thatcher, the Conservative Prime Minister, declared in an
interview that, “there is no such thing as society.” It is therefore fairly ironic that 13 years later,
David Cameron, the new Conservative Prime Minister, has announced his plans to
create a ‘Big Society’ in Britain. Throughout the general election coverage,
Cameron had avoided mentioning any specifics on what was meant by his vision of
a Big Society, but now Cameron and his new best friend Nick Clegg, have
outlined what is in store for the country.

Britain is heading for a showdown. The British establishment is taking
stock of the situation. They are fully aware of the social crisis that
is unfolding. The illusions of class harmony have evaporated. They
consider that it is time that the working class learned its lesson that
capitalism cannot afford any reforms. Counter-reforms are on the order
of the day. The workers are therefore being sent to the school of the
coalition government whose programme is “red in tooth and claw”
austerity.

At this year’s Trades Council conference, the West Mids delegate was
asked to do the traditional vote of thanks speech – so he decided to
tell the delegates a little fairy story. Here it is. Please note that
any connextion between this and the current UK situation is purely
intentional!

David Cameron has been crowned. After days of torturous
negotiations, the Tories have finally cobbled together a “principled” deal with
the Liberal Democrats “in the national interest”. Cameron is now Prime
Minister, with Nick Clegg his ever-so-thankful Deputy PM. Five cabinet posts
are to be given to the Liberal Democrats to cement together this unholy
coalition, the first coalition in 70 years, since Churchill formed the war-time
government. Gleggameron is upon us!

As a new Tory/Liberal coalition takes office – in reality an accomodation of two capitalist parties – on a programme of austerity and attacks on the public sector, we look back at the lessons of the election and what it means for the Labour and trade union movement. (Photo – Flickr)

In 1999, the government set a target of eradicating child poverty
within a generation and of halving child poverty by 2010. Progress has
been made and (according to a government report ‘Ending child poverty:
everybody’s business’) 600,000 children have been taken out of relative
poverty, and absolute poverty has fallen by 1.8 million to less than
half the 1998-99 level. But many children still live in poverty and
this is unacceptable. (Photo – flckr)

The 2010 general election has produced the result that the ruling class were dreading: a hung parliament. With one seat to declare, no party has a working majority. So the dirty dealing begins…