Dave Murray, Socialist Party National Committee
“There is nothing wrong with the system – the problem is you.” This is what the wrongly accused subpostmasters were told by Post Office investigators as they were fitted up for fraud and false accounting, but it might as well be the slogan of the UK’s dead-on-its-arse Tory government and the deeply cynical ruling class.
The issues keep piling up which show increasing numbers of working-class people that none of the capitalist parties look out for anyone other than the bosses.
Post Office and Fujitsu
Even as insiders warned that Fujitsu’s new IT system for local post offices was riddled with errors, local post office operators were pressured into making up losses from their own pockets, accused of fraud, and even jailed for a problem that was entirely the making of those who were running the prosecutions.
The scandal has implicated every mainstream political party. Tories, Labour, and Lib Dems were in government as the faulty IT system was unleashed like a wrecking ball into people’s lives.
The leader of the Lib Dems was postal affairs minister as the problems started to emerge, and the Tories have given former senior Fujitsu UK executives well-paid jobs at the centre of government, including the cabinet office, while failing to exonerate and compensate the victims.
Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, then the state’s most senior prosecutor, failed to use his power to stop the prosecutions.
We cannot trust the main parties to defend anyone other than the rich elite.
Yemen and Gaza
It’s no surprise, then, to learn that Starmer pre-approved Sunak’s military attacks on Yemen this week – showing that they are happy to protect the commercial interests of the corporations but refuse to even oppose the slaughter in Gaza.
Socialism
There has to be an alternative to these parties: we need a new mass workers’ party!
The Socialist Party’s message to all those who have followed the Post Office scandal with horror, who have marched and spoken out against the brutality suffered by Gaza, who oppose the attacks on working-class people’s lives and living standards is this: there is nothing wrong with you, the problem is the system. Let’s organise to replace it with socialism.
