Left wing revolutionaries in search of the militant working class!
Where is the organised and militant if not to say revolutionary industrial working class when you need it? The Labour Party sure as hell would like to find it. However, they are largely responsible for turning the second and third generation of unemployed industrial and agricultural workers into the so-called underclass…a group who lack both a voice and a reputation for militant class rebellion.
This happened because hapless Blair, Brown and Balls “globalised” the British economy exporting jobs to China where there were no trade deals but cheap labour and importing workers from the EU where they would benefit from the Brown welfare reforms of tax credits and “in work benefits” due to EU regulations. The resulting effects were to stimulate the Brexit debate as it became clear that the ex-industrial workers were not finding jobs of equal quality but were being largely overlooked by an economy that could find no useful role for them. The minimum wage didn’t really help. This was intended to “protect” the British workers from the downward pressure on wages that would result from opening up the labour market. It quickly became a maximum wage and with other costs associated with being in work, it deterred British workers from coming off welfare and getting a job.
Any intelligent government would have realised that this worker dislocation should drive policy decisions to correct the effects of globalisation but for Blair, Brown and Co as long as the free market generated tax revenue and these ex-workers could be paid welfare the system was tolerable. The free market was, however, trading in toxicity as became apparent in 2007/08.
The situation has changed little. The ex-industrial and agricultural workers continue to clutter up various public sector waiting rooms and the NHS, producing children with multiple disadvantages, whilst the exporters of their jobs enjoy super-profits that if not tax avoided generates nothing like the tax they should. So who are the revolutionary class now? Well everyone who pays for a Parliamentary system that has failed to reflect the expectations of the people and now simply reflects it’s own need to govern.
The British state and it’s institutions (Parliament, the Law, the military and local government) is bureaucratic slow-witted and out of touch. We have an eighteenth century legal and military system, a nineteenth century parliamentary and penal system and a twentieth-century education and welfare system. In view of this, it is time ordinary taxpayers embarked on a revolution to change for good what the British state does and how it does it and to drive down how much it costs so we can drive down taxation. The industrial workers don’t exist because mass employment in “industry” no longer exists, we have to reflect this in our next revolution by appealing to the new “working class”.
