Workers' Fight workplace bulletin editorials - 12 December 2018

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Workers' Fight workplace bulletin editorials
12 December 2018

The Brexit problem has now become even more convoluted.  Fearing for her job, May cancelled the vote over her divorce deal because she knew she would lose it.  She now claims to be seeking "reassurances" from EU leaders, in the hope that this will be enough to tame her party's warring factions and to regain the support of her DUP allies.
    Rings a bell?  It does!  Back in 2016, Cameron went down the same road.  He promised to extract concessions from the EU, in order to appease his Tory Eurosceptics.  But it didn't appease them.  Instead, we were flooded with crass, anti-migrant rants and outright lies about Britain's "great future" outside the EU.  And we got a fake referendum, which only offered us more of the same anti-working class policies, whichever way we voted!
    Yes, this was exactly what we got out of this referendum: 30 months of their very same pro-business policies.  We also got 30 months of horse-trading, factional overbidding and bombastic nationalist posturing by self-serving politicians.  And all of this, because of the bitter in-fighting which was tearing apart the Tory party!
    So is history repeating itself once again under May?  Haven't we had enough of their mess?

What about the "will of the workers"?

Ironically, ever since 2016, the Leave vote cast by just over 37% of all registered voters, has been portrayed by the political establishment as the "people's will".
    Well, we don't know which "people" they mean.  But as far as we are concerned, we know for a fact that none of us voted in favour of the past 30 months of on-going chaos and the way it has been affecting our jobs, conditions and living standards.  We didn't vote for rising inflation and stagnating wages, nor for today's growing poverty among casual workers.
    Nor did we vote for the worsening housing crisis caused by this government's policies, for the on-going collapse of the NHS, for ever-expanding tax handouts to the very rich, etc.  And we certainly did not vote for the wave of job cuts and plant closures which is developing across the economy, as the bosses are using the pretext of Brexit to reorganise production and cut costs in order to boost profits, in anticipation of another predicted crash in the context of the on-going capitalist crisis!
    Of course, no matter how many millions of us are affected by these issues, they will never be put to a vote under this so-called "democratic" system.  The political institutions of the capitalist class were never designed to cater for the needs of the working class.  Their only purpose is to conceal the dictatorship of the capitalist minority and to protect its interests against us.  This is why, the only way for us to defend our class interests is to make our voice heard, in the streets and the workplaces, using our own weapons - those of the class struggle.

They need to be stopped!

The bosses increasingly expect to get away with murder when it comes to their cuts and closures.  But it's not too late to stop them from playing havoc with our jobs.  Nor is it too late to stop their trustees in government and Parliament from playing politics with Brexit.  And it's not too late, either, to stop our living standards from going down the drain and public services from collapsing.
    Everything in this capitalist jungle is a matter of balance of forces.  But the capitalist class is just a mouse that roars.  It's tiny, it produces nothing and it's parasitical, whereas the working class produces all the wealth and makes society run!
    The bosses may shed tears over their "losses".  Fine, but why should workers pay, when we've never gained anything out of the "fat" years?  Let bosses and shareholders empty out their bulging wallets first and let all available work be shared among all available hands, without loss of pay!
    Enough of years of wage freezes and enough of today's price inflation!  We need a big wage increase and we need wages to be automatically increased as prices go up.  If this can be done with train fares, it can be done with wages too!  As to the collapse of the NHS, social care and social housing, there’s a common solution.  Instead of blaming foreign workers, EU and non-EU, for being a "burden" on society, the vital role they've always played in building homes, manning the NHS and caring for the aged, should be recognised - we need them to work and live in Britain, alongside us, as part of our class.
    In France, hundreds of thousands have joined the "yellow vest" protest movement over exactly the same issues.  They haven't won yet, but they have made their voice heard and they seem determined to go as far as it takes.
    Likewise here:  the working class needs to create a "hostile environment" against the capitalists and their profiteering and against their trustees in government.  Until we feel strong enough to get rid of them altogether!