Independent: If trade unions don’t fight the workers’ corner – others will
Our Prime Minister certainly has few doubts about who’s orchestrating the backlash against workfare. “Trotskyites!” Cameron boomed during Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions; if he’d thrown in “wreckers”, it wouldn’t have been a bad impression of Andrej Vyshinsky, Stalin’s semi-hysterical prosecutor during the 1930s Show Trials.
And yet Cameron barely had time to put down his ice pick before news trickled out that the Government was abandoning sanctions for the work experience scheme. Here was the vindication of that well-known Trotskyist transitional demand: that people should not be forced to work for free against their will.
Workfare is battered, but not defeated. The Mandatory Work Activity (the clue is in the name) and the Community Action Programmes remain intact, all of which compel the growing ranks of the unemployed to work for free or have their measly benefits slashed. But it was a slap in the face for the “protest doesn’t change anything” brigade, and another victory chalked up for the burgeoning alliance between small groups of activists and the Twitterati.
The truth is that direct action and social media are filling a vacuum. A coherent opposition to Cameron’s Britain is as lacking as it is needed. The Labour leadership is hobbled by the fact that, from workfare to NHS privatisation, they laid the groundwork for much of this Government’s agenda. If there’s any force uniquely placed to challenge the most far-reaching transformation of British society since the Second World War, it’s our trade unions.
Lot of Labour MP’s love workfare, that is the problem these days, you would have said OK I will vote Labour, now you say Labour will do the same. Tory Labour the difference is small oh so small.
treborc
March 4, 2012 at 2:54 pm
Owen, I have treated your ‘naivety’ as just that. Naivety; Yesterday you outright lied to my face, which means it is not naiivety. It is just you lying to exploit people for a career. You don;t know very much. We can’;t fight disenfranchisement while you pretend Labour represents us.So now I will take a great deal of pleasure watching the same happen to you as Sunny Hundal. You will make yourself a joke. I wm’t have to do anything but keep highlighting the holes in the narrative you are part of selling/ Thank you for lying about me yesterday- the minute you showed you were willing to outright lie and smear rather than address your misleading narrative you assured your career would last no more than 6 months. Not my doing. You witter about the death of the liberal class and do that. People can see you. Many of the chatroom that is twitter dont know you are talking rubbish- those of us who you wax lyrical about saving- DO.
You can’t change that or the way you behave. Good luck. I’ll ask in about July or August of next year how the career is. I imagine it will be over. You can fool some of the people, some of the time. Andrew Neil was the first sign. He made you look stupid. That will happen a lot now, You wanted the place on the left wing coconut shy so you could exploit people. You got it;-D Welcome to the job of managing the Labour message for your own career. It isn’t really as it is described.
defytheeconomy
March 26, 2012 at 5:15 pm
What else would you expect from Cameron. This guy knows just nothing. He behaves in the same way like he sees in EU and his attitudes are even worse. The same old stuff with Privatizing Profits, Socializing Losses. Trade unions will be joined by student movements, immigrants and so on. I just hope the protests would be peaceful and would not fall into some rioting and violence.
In the economic sense, the austerity measures won´t help at all. We will just experience another economic downturn. I really suggest you to check the Freefall book, it explains the stupidity of the undergoing process.
johnberk
March 9, 2012 at 8:27 pm
“Here was the vindication of that well-known Trotskyist transitional demand: that people should not be forced to work for free against their will.”
And yet you seem to support the idea of taxpayers working for free against their will..
rondaldo
March 27, 2012 at 7:59 pm
[...] Owen Jones wrote one of the best political columns I have ever read in my life in yesterday’s Independent “We’re now governed by the political wing of the wealthy” – here. [...]
Owen Jones in the Independent: A Real Comrade. « Tendance Coatesy
March 31, 2012 at 8:49 am