October 21, 2022 - No. 32
Resignation of British Prime Minister
Britain Flounders While Ruling Class Descends into the Slough of Despond
Demonstration in Birmingham against
Conservative Party's austerity agenda in Birmingham,
October 2, 2022.
• No Let-Up to Mass Protests in Britain
Resignation of British Prime Minister
Britain Flounders While Ruling Class Descends into the Slough of Despond
Demonstration greets Liz Truss
outside 10 Downing Street, September 5, 2022, after she became
Prime Minister.
The Slough of Despond, as described in the Christian allegory Pilgrim's Progress, written by the English writer and Puritan preacher John Bunyan in 1678: "This miry Slough is such a place as cannot be mended; it is the descent whither the scum and filth that attends conviction for sin doth continually run, and therefore is it called the Slough of Despond: for still as the sinner is awakened about his lost condition, there ariseth in his soul many fears, and doubts, and discouraging apprehensions, which all of them get together, and settle in this place; and this is the reason of the badness of this ground."
This pretty much describes the current state of England's protestant nation-building project initiated by the Tudors four centuries ago. It describes the animus of the British ruling class lurching from crisis to crisis as a result of its refusal to build the new. The economic and political system brought into being in the 1660s following the English Civil War can no longer give the ruling elite the benefits they seek to make themselves richer based on the system of exploitation of labour and theft for private gain.
Having Boris Johnson as a leader prior to Liz Truss was proof positive of the corruption, entitlement and ineptitude of the elite. They rule a cartel party system based on the expropriation of the wealth produced by the working class of Britain and the massive theft from the peoples of Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Caribbean past and present.
An infinitesimal number of UK voters replaced Boris Johnson as leader of the Conservative Party in Britain with Liz Truss who therefore became Prime Minister. She was so incapable of governing Britain that just 44 days later, on October 20, she was forced to resign. Truss delivered a short speech saying she had informed the King of her resignation as leader of the Conservative Party. She said she spoke with the chair of the party's "1922 Committee," which conducts Conservative Party elections and reported:
"We have agreed there will be a leadership election to be completed in the next week.
"This will ensure we remain on a path to deliver our fiscal plans and maintain our country's economic stability and national security.
"I will remain as Prime Minister until a successor has been chosen."
Whoever constitutes the "we" she speaks of will "remain on a path to deliver our fiscal plans and maintain our country's economic stability and national security" only in her dreams.
This
resignation was as predictable as it was unavoidable because
Britain is
experiencing yet another crisis of the worn out capitalist
system whose
political form can no longer sustain the contradictions tearing
it
asunder. The English nation-building project has long since lost
its
lustre. When
it was brought into being to replace the medieval system of
serfdom and
indentured labour with the capitalist system based on the
exploitation
of wage labour it used the advanced productive forces and
military as a
base to seize the lands of Asia, Africa and the Americas and
brutally
enslave and
traffic the peoples of the world under colonial rule.
What is happening in Britain today is confirmation that the capitalist economic system and the old constitutional order are in a crisis so profound they cannot be reformed and must be replaced. The task at hand is for the working class to constitute the nation and bring in a modern constitutional order which puts human beings at the centre of nation-building projects to humanize the natural and social environment.
All the neo-liberal measures taken in the last forty years, beginning with those of the "Iron Lady" Margaret Thatcher, are nation-wrecking. The rich are wallowing in ill-gotten wealth while privatized public infrastructure from the nation-building railway system to social institutions such as the national health system lie in tatters. The strain of war production on the economy is unsustainable. Even private property is under attack through sanctions and other self-serving means on the part of the financial institutions whose main role is to steal the wealth they are supposed to protect.
Thatcher's panaceas from 1979 to 1990 to Make Britain Great Again were taken up by all subsequent governments no matter what their political stripe. These include the warmonger Tony Blair whose bogus "Third Way" was used in a futile attempt to hijack the voice and power of labour to realize Thatcher's dream of making Britain indispensable. The result is an ever deepening crisis and the incapability of the ruling class to wield the political power supranational private interests have usurped.
British rule parallels Dante's famous Seven Circles of Hell: Limbo; Lust; Gluttony; Greed; Wrath; Heresy and, now, Violence. But contrary to Dante's time in the 14th century when capitalism was being brought into being, or John Bunyan's time when the monarchy was restored following the English Civil War, capitalism gained ground and the constitutional order was imposed, today there is no magic that will install a form of party rule that can hide the reality of a government of police powers in the service of the rich and their striving to dominate the world.
The people of Britain keenly experience their own absence of political power. The halls, chambers and offices of Westminster and rooms of Downing Street are filled with corrupt, entitled and accommodated individuals, many of them integral to the revolving door between government and powerful private enterprises promoting an allegedly green economy, infrastructure projects and national security.
All the maneuvering and deals reveal the desperate striving of the ruling elite to control the productive powers which have escaped the control of the productive forces. The tremendous developments of the technical and scientific revolution put the productive powers beyond their grasp independent of their will. The historical conjuncture reveals the need for the people to have their own outlook and independent politics so that they can provide the problems they and society face with solutions which favour them.
Mass strikes and industrial actions are taking place across Britain which lay the claims of the people for an economy and political rule that provides stable working and living conditions and peace. Unless these claims are met and the stranglehold of corrupt ruling elites is broken, the descent of the British ruling class and Britain itself will continue to spiral downward out of control as will France, Germany and other countries.
(Photos: Don't Pay UK, Westbridgeford Wire, People's Assembly Against Austerity)
No Let-Up to Mass Protests in Britain
In the UK, mass protests and actions by the
working class continue without let-up. On October 1, mass
mobilizations
were held under the slogan Enough is Enough!
against the deepening political and economic crisis. More than
100,000
people are said to have taken part in protests called by the Enough
is
Enough! campaign in more than 50
cities, including London, Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow,
Cardiff,
Brighton and Nottingham.
Enough Is Enough October 1, 2022
action in London.
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On October 2, a convergence called the People's Assembly Against Austerity rallied outside the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham. The Assembly is planning another protest for London on November 5.
Protesters also lent their support to postal and rail workers who are fighting for better working conditions. The 115,000 Royal Mail postal workers, organized in the Communication Workers Union, have been holding national strike actions since August, with more one-day strikes taking place during October. British railway workers held strike actions in June, July and August. The most recent action, on October 8, involved 40,000 workers organized in the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers who work for Network Rail that owns and runs much of the infrastructure and 15 train operating companies.
Other demonstrations are standing up for the rights of immigrants and asylum seekers. Attacks against them, their denigration as well as the racist treatment of national minority communities are being stepped up with intensified calls that all should espouse so-called "British values" and adopt that outlook.
The opposition to the policies
put forward by Education and Health secretaries to further push
privatization and blame teachers and health workers for the
collapse of
these social programs also continues unabated.
In a letter, the National Education Union (NEU) said that the education secretary had until noon on October 21 to give schools the funds to allow them to increase staff pay "at a rate greater than the rate of inflation (RPI) as at September 2022." September RPI figures have not yet been published, but the measure hit 12.3 per cent in August.
The dispute would apply to teachers and support staff working in academies and local authority-maintained schools. A separate letter has been issued with a similar threat relating to sixth form college staff.
Joint
general secretary Kevin Courtney said unless (Education
Secretary Kit)
Malthouse agreed to fund a "fully funded above inflation pay
increase...we will be formally balloting our members for strike
action." Arguing that staff can no longer take real-terms cuts,
Courtney said, "No one wants to take strike action, but
education staff
can no longer take year after year of below inflation pay
increases
which have had a major impact on the value of their pay since
2010."
The NEU has formally asked Malthouse to use his powers under section 14 of the 2002 Education Act, which allows the government to give financial assistance to schools for staff pay and to promote recruitment and retention.
(Photos: Workers' Weekly, People's Assembly Against Austerity, JN news)
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Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca