It’s not only through spending our taxes on the rich that the capitalists aim to make us pay for the crisis. They aim to make us pay for the recession through our jobs, through our pay and through our working conditions.
In order to get away with this, they blame the crisis on the very people who suffer from it most. The 2008 Labour Party conference made this clear. When Gordon Brown made his speech against “something for nothing society” and those “who take more out of the system than they put it” one might have imagined that he was talking about people like the former CEO of HBOS, Andy Hornby. Hornby is now being paid £60,000 per month to organise the job cuts in the merger between Lloyds TSB and HBOS, making a fortune out of working people losing their jobs.
Actually, the speech was addressing those unable to find work in the current economic crisis. He stated that everyone who “can work must work”. The government has now prepared policy documents for the introduction of “workfare” – the idea that one must work to receive benefits. In practice this can mean working normal hours on a government scheme, whereby they pay you only the rate of benefits. This could mean working for as little as £1.51 per hour!
Perversely the government are not just blaming the jobless themselves for unemployment but are pushing to blame immigrants for taking up jobs that they say could belong to “British” workers. Phil Woolas MP, former NUS careerist said “when we’re moving into a recession, the length of which we do not yet know, the immigration policy suitable for a boom is totally unsuitable”. Immigrants are welcome in Britain when the bosses want them to work for cheap, but when unemployment comes back on the agenda the capitalists blame them for the failures of their system.
In February 2009, wildcat strikes broke out across the UK as workers in energy and construction took action against contracts in Britain being awarded to foreign companies, some of which were hiring European workers from outside the UK. This was despite the fact that British workers hold more jobs in Europe than European workers hold in Britain. Workers on the strikes held Union Jacks with the slogan “British jobs for British workers”, whilst the fascist BNP worked overtime to exploit the issue for their own racist purposes. As the recession grows, socialists must stress internationalism and reject chauvinism in the workers movement, after all the working class have no country. But lets not forget – the slogans used on the strikes came from Labour MPs and right-wing tabloids. They will step up their assaults not only on “immigrants” but on any workers who they deem not “British” enough.
Socialist raise the slogans, “Jobs for all!” and “Blame the bosses – not foreign workers” in response. Racism is a tool used to divide the workers as the nationalist wildcat strikes show. If we want to make sure that this crisis of capitalism is turned into a victory for socialism then fighting racism and fascism is a major task for workers and youth.
