Child poverty increases again under New Labour

Back in 1965, when the Child Poverty Action Group was formed, there were 500,000 children living in poverty. The Labour Party said at the time that the organisation would fold within a year because they would eradicate child poverty within the next 12 months.

Replying to a letter from the CPAG on 20th January 2006, Tony Blair confidently wrote:” I can promise you that we share your ambition to make child poverty history in our country. It is why we have publicly said we want to halve child poverty by 2010 and eradicate it completely by 2020. ”What is nauseating about this is that Blair is telling the CPAG, who in 1965 complained that there were officially half a million children in poverty, that by 2010 he will halve child poverty – ie. slash the number of impoverished children from 3.4 million to 1.7 million (in Jan 2006 child poverty stood at 3.4 million).

Today The Guardian reports that child poverty now stands at 3.8 million!! 42 years after Labour promised to end child poverty, the problem officially is almost seven times as worse!!
Of course, come May 3rd, Blair and co will continue to depend on working class historical amnesia to carry them through, confident their lies and betrayals and rampant hypocrisy will be concealed by surfeit of promises for the future and pathetic excuses for past failings.

Incidentally, if you do suffer from political amnesia, try clicking on this remedy: LABOUR SLEAZE

The Labour Party Leadership Battle

Countless column inches and seemingly endless hours of news reports have been given over to the leadership crisis the Labour Party is currently engulfed in. Speaking up for Prime Minister Tony Blair, Home Secretary Charles Clark said Blair would stand down when he was good and ready to do so and he accused Chancellor Gordon Brown of “absolutely stupid” behaviour in challenging Blair, commenting that Brown needed first to prove his fitness to lead.

Fitness to lead? Now there’s a thing. It assumes leaders have some special qualification acquired over years of study and self-sacrifice when the only real qualification is the ability to hoodwink others into thinking you possess knowledge and qualities they do not. Unlike other professions – doctors, surgeons, architects, physicists – whose skills come via many years of hard slog – politicians require none whatsoever. The only requisite credentials needed when standing for election are that you are over 21 years of age, not insane and with no recent prison record.

Despite this, many workers think we cannot function without leaders. This is a fallacy and one perpetuated by the master class to help them maintain their rule over our lives. Indeed, so prevalent is this philosophy, that from the cradle to the grave we are taught to mistrust our own intelligence and to feel somewhat inadequate, to look up to our ‘betters and superiors’ (schools, church, politicians, parents etc) for their expert guidance and to accept without question the plans they draw up for our future.

Moreover, the whole concept of leadership and the need to choose the candidate most fitted for the post of leader is keenly promoted by aspiring leaders. In truth, history confirms them to be pitiable exemplars of honesty, integrity and compassion, forever paying lip service to truth and justice and other grand notions equated with leadership.

Blair has proved to be just as deceitful, dishonest and corrupt as every British prime minister that preceded him, ready always to defend power and privilege over the real needs of the people who elected him. From the moment he won a fourteen minute standing ovation from a CBI Conference just prior to the 1997 Labour victory, through the myriad scandals his Party has been caught up in, and right through to his perfidious reasoning to invade and occupy an immiserated but oil rich country, he has constantly lied to the electorate, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and bullied anyone bold enough to stand up to him.

Nothing Brown has said or done inclines us to consider he will act any differently. As Prime Minister he will lead the executive of the capitalist class – what else are governments but the national administrative arm of capital? - and as leader he had better be seen to be “batting for Britain”, defending the interests of big business at home and abroad. This is the real remit of the leader in capitalist society.

It is assumed by many that leaders run the world. Well, I rather think it is we, the workers, who run the world. Politicians might make government policy, which becomes law, but it is we who build and work the hospitals and schools. It is we who build the bridges, roads and railways, ports and airports; all the products that humans need to survive. It is we who produce everything from a pin to an oil-rig and provide humanity with all the services it requires – we the working class! We don’t depend on leaders for these skills or for their guidance. They have no monopoly on our knowledge and intelligence or on the inventions we dream up to enhance the quality of life. If all the worlds’ leaders died tomorrow, few would really miss them and society would function just as before.

The concept of leadership has emerged with class society and will end when we abolish class society, when we abolish the capitalist mode of production and all that goes with it. The master class have been allowed to lead because of their control over the means of living and by virtue of their control of the education system and their monopoly of the media and other and information processes.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The greatest weapons we posses are our class unity, our intelligence, and our ability to question the status quo and to imagine a world fashioned in our own interests. Leaders perceive all of this to be a threat and so will do anything to keep us in a state of oblivion, dejection and dependency. Our apathy is the victory they celebrate each day. Our unwillingness to unite as a globally exploited majority and to confront them on the battlefield of ideas is the subject of their champagne toasts.

Remember this as the battle for leadership of the Labour Party hots up.

Big Prezza is watching you

Most of today's papers run with the story about John Prescott, the deputy prime minister, telling tax inspectors they can use satellites to spy on householders’ attempts to improve their homes. Prescott would have tax inspectors use satellite imagery to find out who has built garages and conservatories, or extended their kitchen, in order that the mendicants can have their council tax, inheritance tax or capital gains tax increased.

Prescott’s department will supervise the creation of a database which contains details of every house in the country to help tax inspectors calculate new charges. Not only can tax inspectors enter your home to take

photographs, they can use the latest technology to bring in a stealth tax on home improvements.

That such a move is proposed by a man who has three residences smacks of utter hypocrisy. Prescott has official residences at Admiralty House and Dorneywood as well as his constituency home in Hull, yet pays council tax on his Hull home only. The corrupt bastard is thus is let off paying £3,256 a year in council tax. When he was in charge of transport and presiding over a fuel crisis, Prescott got away without paying for his petrol too.

If you want similar perks – numerous houses, several cars, free petrol – it seems the best way to go about it is to shove your tongue as far as you can up Tony Blair’s arse. Undoubtedly, hundreds of other new Labourites can testify this works wonders.

Whatever you do, though, don’t complain to Prescott about it – you might get a smack in the mouth.

Into the national security state with New Labour

Sent to the Shields Gazette, 27/01/05

Dear Sir,


As I write, it is with having just heard that the Home Secretary has proposed the house arrest of UK citizens ‘suspected’ of involvement in terrorism, inclusive of curfews and tagging. British citizens are being included in these proposed changes after the law lords declared the present powers were discriminatory because they could only be used on foreign suspects.

Currently we are witnessing Labour politicians taking measures calculated to turn the United Kingdom into a national security state. The impact of this on those millions of decent working people who have over decades voted for the Labour Party must be utterly shattering. Socialists oppose the Labour Party because we stand for social ownership and democratic control of the means of life, while Labour promotes the flawed idea that capitalism can be legislatively humanised. That said, we sympathise with the motives of workers who vote Labour even if we wonder at their credulity as Labour aims to outdo the Tories in every area of repression of working class aspirations.

Now we have to ask Labour voters are they concerned, even frightened, at this savage curtailment of personal freedom and democratic rights? These authoritarian careerists in the Labour Party need your vote in the forthcoming elections; in exchange they will grant you the freedom to do what you are told.

Labour is attempting to induce in us the psychosis of threat, such as now exists in the USA where fear has become the natural condition of many Americans and which lends legitimacy to Bush's repressive actions. Just as Bush told the world, "either you're with us, or with the terrorists", so to is Labour telling us "either you're with Tony or you're with the terrorists." Blair's logic is that we will be so afraid of terrorists that we will gladly agree to anything he claims to do in our name. How long before pacifists, human rights activists and critics of Labour are denounced as unpatriotic?


It is surely ironic that at a time when the media is urging us to think about Auschwitz and the growth of fascism the Labour Party takes its first bold steps down the road to the savage denial of basic democratic rights.

Yours,

John B

New Labour

Can't remember when I wrote this piece, or even if it is a completed article or the notes for one - just found it on my pc, so stuck a 2002 date on it:

To begin with, the great swing to New Labour at the May 1997 General Election was hardly a mass endorsement of Blair’s policies by the electorate. A quick look at the statistics shows the turn-out at the 1997 election to be the lowest turn-out on record – if anything the abstentionists won the election. Rather, it was more a case of voters simply desiring a change of government, believing Blair could offer some digression from 18 years of Tory rule. In reality, the voters were simply electing to office Thatcherism with a smile on its face.

Blair in fact had much praise for Mrs Thatcher. Prior to the election he declared she was someone “Britain needed at the time’” and she was amongst the very first invites to 10 Downing Street in May 19997 when Blair took office. And though critical of Tory policies whilst in opposition, it was Blair himself who told voters that new Labour would be adhering to Tory pending plans for 2 years – so we feel we have every right in “lumping the Labour party in with the Tories.”

Throughout their term in office, and just like their predecessors, the Labour party have proved themselves to be the party of capitalism, a party f reactionaries, more than ready to suck up to their cronies in big business and to clout the poorest at every opportunity

Prior to the election, Blair so enthralled a CBI conference that they gave him a 14 minute standing ovation. He even travelled to Australia to meet with right-wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

In 1996, Blair accepted a ride in the private helicopter of Sir Anthony Bamford (of JCB), later announcing they shared “common purposes”. At conference that year he declared “we are on the same side. We are on the same team.” Within 3 years, JCB were fined £24 million by the EU for restrictive practices. In February of 1996 Blair had even told another audience of businessmen: “I want to see Britain become an audience of millionaires.”

Seeing profits at every turn, Blair would go on to tell the Green Alliance/CBI Conference (sponsored by BP) and at which such matters as alternative energy sources were discussed: “We should see protecting the environment as a business opportunity.” A shame BP was not listening, for they have just announced record profits of £24 million per day. And of this how much is invested in sustainable energy (an alternative to oil)? – 0.05 per cent of it!

Sidekick Peter Mandelson could be found on the other side of the pond in January 1999, telling an audience of business people how Labour “is intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich

Labour Party Shenanigans

Seemingly oblivious to the fact that the biggest cause of crime is poverty, Tony Blair, in early May announced his intention to deprive of child benefit and housing benefit the most impoverished families in Britain because their children are alleged "tearaways". Many impoverished families struggle to pay the smallest bills. Their housing benefit (average £43.60 per week) and child benefit (£15.50 for the oldest child) is a lifeline they can ill afford to lose. But under Blair's plans, this would be stopped if their children stray from the straight and narrow. The obvious corollary of this is that by pushing people into greater hardship you force them to commit crime simply to make ends meet. And who would blame them – is survival a crime? Whatever happened to New Labour's promise to slash crime and reduce child poverty? His latest proposal increases both.

Meanwhile the real criminals get away Scot-free. We speak of the master class, for whom Blair and his cronies act as an executive body - those who see to it that every aspect of our life is subordinated to their profit-hungry desires, whose system is the root cause of a thousand social ills that blight the existence of millions.

On a brighter note we are pleased to announce that David Blunkett Home Secretary extraordinaire, managed to extricate his head from Tony Blair’s bottom long enough to admit the Labour Party had made a another ‘blunder’. He was referring to Labour’s plans to extend the reach of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act which would have given a host of government departments, local councils and sundry quangos powers to demand, on their own authority, access to our email records, and telephone data. He also withdrew a draft order giving the same public bodies the authority to conduct surveillance against individuals to use informers.

Please don’t celebrate yet, though. Plans are underway to make our email and internet information accessible to the police and intelligence services of the European Union under a ‘common code’ on data retention.

Blair, it seems, is determined to make Britain the most repressive regime in the Western world.

New Labour - the continuing saga

In his new found role as St. Francis of Assisi, Tony Blair jetted off to Africa in February to lecture African workers about the new threat of global terrorism, about ‘self interest and mutual interest’ and how these two concepts were ‘dependent on each other’. At the same time he was in Africa the British press were reporting how Britain’s arms sales to Africa had quadrupled since 1999. Self interest? Mutual Interest? Well maybe for the arms manufacturers and the leaders of those African states that purchase the British weaponry that helps them quell internal dissent and wage war on their neighbours.

The Continuing Saga of New Labour It seems these interests are at the forefront of much of Blair’s thinking. A week after he returned from India in January – remember he travelled there to help them solve the Kashmir problem in a verbal manner – the British press were reporting of a new arms deal with India, which was worth £1 billion and inclusive of 60 Hawk jets.

Those with long memories and familiar with Labour’s love affair with the arms trade, will remember the Biafran war of the 1960s, when Britain’s share of arms sales to Nigeria during that conflict increased from 15-75%. St Francis of Assisi? Try Vlad the Impaler!

Poverty
While the Blair government is keen to point out how they are reducing poverty in Britain – something which tends to run counter to the statistics socialists are regularly fond of citing – we draw your attention to a newly published report by the Child Poverty Action Group (interestingly, an organisation set up by the Labour Party many years ago and which was supposed to exist for one year only). The last time such a report came out in 1996, Labour Party MPs used it to ridicule the Tories. This time round it asserts: “…around a quarter of our society was living in poverty in Britain in 1999-2000. The poverty encountered by Children is even greater than for society as a whole. Around a third of children were living in poverty in 1999-2000. Over 7.8 million people were living on the ‘safety net’ benefit of IncomeSupport/ Jobseeker’s Allowance in February 2001. By the mid-1990s the UK had child poverty rates higher than any other industrialised nation with the exception of the USA and Russia.”

When recession hits, as it did at the beginning of the 90’s one of its marked features is the number of home repossessions. In 1991, courts issued 134,000 home repossession orders. Eight years later, Blair safely in power and reassuring us the austerity of the Tory years was behind us, 137,000 families found their homes being taken from them because of mortgage arrears.

The report further adds strength to our argument that under Blair the wealth gap is widening in Britain. It reveals how the wealthiest 1 percent of the population in Britain own 25 percent of all wealth, with the bottom 50 per cent, some 28 million people, owning just 6 percent of Britain’s wealth.

Blair and Mittal Steal
When it comes to sucking up to the big money men, Labour takes some beating. Who could forget the fiasco surrounding the Bernie Ecclestone affair just prior to Labour’s 1997 election victory? In return for a £1 million gift to the Labour Party in January 1997, Blair saw to it that Ecclestone’s Formula One were exempt from the ban on tobacco advertising.

A year later, Blair was kowtowing to right wing media mogul Rupert Murdoch (whose help he sought during the election), phoning the Italian prime minister Romano Prodi, on behalf of Murdoch, and trying to have any hurdles removed that might hinder Murdoch’s acquisition of Mediaset, the Italian media company.

Months ago, the shit hit the proverbial fan again, when it was revealed that George Bush was not the only high level politician to be hit with the Enron splatter, but that the Labour Party also found themselves pebble-dashed. It was revealed Enron (an energy multinational, now bankrupt) had sponsored several Labour Party Conferences after their 1997 victory, that the Labour Party tailored its energy policies to enable Enron build a gas-fired power plant on Teeside and that Labour smoothed the way for Enron to buy Wessex water four years ago without having referred the buyout to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission.

Now come revelations of Blair’s links to steal magnate Lakshmi Mittal. It transpires that Blair wrote a the letter to the Romanian prime minister: “I am delighted by the news that you are to sign the contract for the privatisation of your biggest steel plant with the LNM group…I am particularly pleased that it is a British company [Mittal’s] which is your partner.”

The link, which Blair claimed oblivion of? Mittal had made a £125,000 donation to the Labour Party, his wife Usha giving a £50,000 donation to the local party of former European minister Keith Vaz. The story continues! Just one month before Blair signed the letter, he had attended a big thank-you bash laid on for Labour Party donors (the big guys, that is). And who should be there? Mittal!

It later emerged that LNM’s parent company is registered in a tax haven; that Mittal gets round paying tax in Britain by means of a nifty little loophole the Labour Party conveniently neglected to plug; that his LNM plant in Southern Ireland closed with the loss of 400 jobs and almost £40 million in debts, and that Mittal is one of the brains behind a US campaign to slap a 40 per cent tariff on steal imports, which could well impinge on jobs in the British steal industry. All of which you can be forgiven for, if you sponsor the Labour Party. Thinking of pulling off something big and want to get away with it? A Jewel’s heist, Big Business tax evasion? Simply send a donation to the Labour Party care of 10 Downing Street.