unity!
April 2016
Communist Party
Workers of all lands, unite!
Trident
Our health, homes, T jobs and education
An expensive threat to peace and jobs
T
HE SYSTEM of capitalist exploitation and inequality lies exposed. One law for the rich and another for the rest of us. Cameron’s family fortune is tucked away in a tax havens along with £trillions of rent, interest and profits which the rich have salted away. Meanwhile our wages and savings are held hostage to an unending government programme of wage freeze and spending cuts. Osbourne’s Budget was packed with giveaways for big business and banks. Corporation tax is to be cut to 17 per cent by 2020 even though Britain’s 20 percent rate is already the lowest in the entire G20. Osborne’s pretence that transnational tax avoiders are to be targeted was exposed the moment he let Google off the hook. Now the whole world knows how his Eton schoolmates stand downstream to a fortune in untaxed wealth. Capital gains tax is also to be cut — the headline rate from 28 per cent to 20 per cent and the basic rate from 18 to 10 per cent in another bonanza for the richest. Business rates are to fall, with calculations switched from CPI inflation to RPI inflation, and more council cuts are coming our way. Osborne says in future that all council funds are to be raised locally. Another measure to ringfence the rich and dump on working class areas. How councils will make up for the
resulting losses without far greater revenue raising powers is not mentioned — because they won’t. Cue more bed-blocking in hospitals as elderly patients cannot be safely released due to gutted local care services, more library and youth club closures, more women’s refuge and children’s centre closures — the further destruction of communities. Tory dogma dominates government thinking. Public ownership of steel is ruled out and an industry vital for Britain’s economic revival as a manufacturing nation is left to market forces while well paid and skilled jobs are abandoned. Alarmingly, even some Labour figures, including that EU retread Stephen Kinnock MP appear to rule out public ownership. From outlawing ethical investment by local authorities to gerrymandering parliamentary constituencies to attacking opposition funding and seeking to cripple trade unions, this government is dismantling democracy. This was the first Osborne Budget to be answered by a socialist leader of the Labour Party. The rejection of the entire austerity programme stood in stark contrast to five years of mixed messages from Labour over the lifetime of the coalition government. Recent developments in Labour economic policy show a renewed emphasis on public and co-operative ownership. Millions agree, including many Tory voters.
And John McDonnell’s fiscal rule, while clearly an act of positioning to challenge Tory myths that Labour spending broke the economy, allows the party to move beyond Keynesian inspired sticking plasters and to look at the fundamental causes of injustices and inequalities in the British economy — which are not about how much money we have but about who’s got it. The Labour leadership remains fragile, with significant hostility within the PLP, and the labour movement has yet to understand the scale of the task that faces it — or the severity of the consequences if it fails. It is time we took on this challenge. The People’s Assembly stands at the heart of community struggles to resist the austerity of Osborne. The Communist Party is committed to strengthening the People’s Assembly, which must become the street wing of a labour movement that can help realise the true potential of the Corbyn revolution. The Communist Party backs the junior doctors and all health workers. We welcome the call from the teachers’ unions for a combined effort of health and education workers. We stand with the housing activists in London and throughout the country who are challenging homelessness, the sales of social housing and sky high rents. Communists call for controlled rents and massive programme of council housebuilding.
HE COST of the Trident nuclear missile system is £167 billion over its lifetime. Scotland’s annual share of this cost would be roughly £500m – almost exactly the size of the cuts being imposed on local government over the next few years. The Trident nuclear missile system has no realistic military purpose in terms of the threats currently facing this country. It is simply a symbol of Britain’s status (a subordinate one) in the US alliance and NATO. Its renewal escalates the nuclear stakes and sets back the process of disarmament. It creates danger not peace. The joint CND-STUC study in 2007 found that the number of jobs sustained by the nuclear-armed submarines in Scotland at Faslane and Coulport is around 500. All these workers could easily be transferred to other functions within the Faslane base or in the local economy. By contrast proceeding with Trident renewal will cost many more jobs – not least in the defence sector. Two years ago BAE were budgeting on building 13 Type 26 frigates on the Clyde. Now the number has been cut to eight. How many less jobs will this mean for the Clyde yards over the next two decades ? Communists call for the establishment of fully-funded Nuclear Arms Conversion Agency within a remit to ensure that alternative work was found for the shipbuilders and engineers at Barrow and Derby and those employed at Faslane. In the United States such redeployment of defence workers is mandatory on the Federal government. In Britain it could supply the skills need for redeveloping industrial capacity and creating a world-beating renewables industry. Trident is dangerous and wasteful. Cancellation would release funds desperately needed elsewhere.