Workers' Fight workplace bulletin editorials, 24 September 2007

The only way to make Labour Party conference interesting is apparently to speculate on whether Brown will call an election or not.

Brown's political sermons - starting with his school motto and continuing with his reminiscences about catching the school bus, are even more boring and filled with platitudes, than Blair's.

Yet the Labour Party conference has just tried to make itself even less relevant to its party members, if that were at all possible!

Indeed, the last tiny chink which allowed the trade unions to raise issues at the conference is to be closed. The Guardian calls this - with some exaggeration - "sweeping reforms to curb the power of conference over policy making". But then Labour conference's power to make policy was swept away already a long time ago.

And maybe talking up an election is a way to ensure that the unions keep their mouths shut about any disagreements before the vote on the final "reform" shuts them up for good.

Anyway, so far the union leaders promised confrontation with the government - starting at the TUC conference two weeks ago - has proved to be a joke, with union leaders huffing and puffing and then shaking Brown's hand and listening politely to the chairman of the CBI.

That said, there are noises being made by the union leaders about the pay freeze, temporary workers rights and the threatened closures of Remploy factories, which provide jobs for disabled workers. No doubt these issues will be raised at this conference.

But no matter how right the union leaders might be - and they are right, to make a noise (at last) on these issues - their protest at Labour conference is not going to make any difference. Not because of Labour sidelining them, but because this was never the means to change anything. Whether that now becomes more obvious or not, the fact remains that the only chance for change is in the hands of workers themselves, in our collective strength.

Chancellor Darling has announced that he will provide a Treasury guarantee for all deposits in every bank up to £100,000. This followed his temporary guarantee of every single penny of Northern Rock's deposits, after the first run on a bank since 1866, threatened to cause a stampede across the system.

The stampede was, of course, thus averted. Which is all very well. But in the event of a real banking meltdown, there is no way that the Treasury would be able to guarantee even a tiny proportion of the deposits which would be affected.

Of course, Darling has hinted that there will be a levy on banks to create some kind of future rescue 'insurance'. Obviously, he understands that he will not be very popular if he asks taxpayers to fork out for bank failures! But whether this is viable proposition is another matter. Especially when one recalls the difficulties that the government had when trying to set up the Pension Protection Scheme levies on private companies.

Anyway, for the time being Darling's attempts to rebuild confidence may have worked, but this is still just paper talk.

In the meantime others have gone for the scalp of Mervyn King, Bank of England governor - who is accused of not acting in time to shore up the dodgy Northern Rock.

King is criticised for making a stand (unlike the European Central Bank) against providing a life line for banks which engage in risky practices to finance their lending. However it turns out that he really had no scruples in this regard. His problem, he said, was that he was not able to act in secret!

Anyway, now the debate on what went wrong hinges on the faults in the regulatory bodies. Nothing wrong with the "fundamentals" of the system itself! Indeed, the government is perfectly happy to "guarantee" this totally insane system which is more and more built on the sand of financial speculation, using mechanisms which operate exactly like a casino!

Yes, a casino in which a few thousand in the City make millions each month. These are the people who are really threatening the system with meltdown, not poor people who cannot afford to pay their mortgages in the US!

Clamping down on them and their ever more extravagant gambling is not on this government's agenda. But even if it would not make the system any more just, surely that is the very least which should be done?