MG Rover: The Ugly Face of Capitalism

MG Rover – 20,000 jobs under threat

The Ugly Face of Capitalism

"OUR ECONOMIC record will be at the centre of the election campaign"
declared Tony Blair. A few weeks later over 20,000 workers in Birmingham, the
West Midlands and elsewhere face losing their jobs with the collapse of MG
Rover.

Christine Thomas

One million manufacturing jobs have been destroyed since New Labour came to
power in 1997. At the same time the number of millionaires has doubled.

Blair and New Labour gave their full backing to the ‘Phoenix Four’ who were
given Rover for just £10 in 2000. ‘Vulture Four’ would be a more apt name. In
five years they have bled MG Rover of £40 million to line their own pockets,
while the company was making massive losses.

6,000 Rover workers, their families and thousands more working-class people
face an uncertain future of unemployment, low-paid jobs (if they’re lucky) and
insecure retirement. But Phoenix bosses don’t have to worry about their
future. They’ve robbed £16.2 million from Rover to build a pension pot for
themselves.

The maximum redundancy pay for a Rover worker (with 12 years experience or
more) will be just £3,360!

The Financial Times called this "capitalism at its ugliest". We say this is
capitalism full stop. MG Rover is not an exception. The capitalist free-market
system is all about the super-exploitation of workers to maximise the profits
of a rich elite. It’s this ‘ugly’ system that New Labour, the Tories and the
Liberal Democrats all support.

The Socialist Party stands for a different way of organising the economy
and society; one where companies like MG Rover are publicly owned and
controlled so that the economy can be democratically planned to meet the needs
of the majority not to enrich a privileged few.

If you agree with that, then vote socialist on 5 May. But don’t stop there.
Join the Socialist Party and help build a new workers’ party that can fight
for a better future.