The Socialist 31 July 2019

Force a general election

Boris, Brexit and British capitalism

CWI refounded with determination and confidence

"The longest, darkest days of my life": fighting Universal Credit

Build a working-class movement to force an election

Labour promises to end council privatisation: councils must do that now!

Tories look in wrong place for climate solutions

Lib Dems: little bosses' party elects eager pro-austerity leader

Aristocrats are rich after all... and getting richer

Mass movement topples governor of Puerto Rico

Hong Kong: the struggle for democratic rights escalates

Lobby the TUC for workers' action to defeat Johnson

Northern Ireland: Harland and Wolff shipyard workers enter occupation

"Enough is enough": 20,000 Northern Ireland civil servants strike against pay restraint

Plymouth posties deliver defiant message to bullying bosses

"BEIS: stop pISSing about and give outsourcing the boot!"

Hackney transport strike - blockade foils employers

Sainsbury's distribution workers' second 24-hour strike against cuts to sick pay

Nottingham Deliveroo riders strike against unfair algorithm

Bromley library workers strike against running down

Enfield: 100% council homes at Meridian Water!

Walthamstow shopping centre fire: people's plan - not disaster capitalism

Tolpuddle festival 2019: socialist policies to end Tory rule and austerity

Barking: campaigning over housing safety

July climate strikes: link up with the workers' movement

Ilford: parents and teachers unite against school cuts

Boris Johnson 'coronation' - demos say: boot him out!

The Socialist Party has moved!

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Build a working-class movement to

Force a general election

Mass workers' action can oust the Tories, photo Senan (Click to enlarge)

Lindsey Morgan, Leicester Socialist Party

With Boris Johnson 'elected' prime minister by just 92,153 Conservative Party members, he's keen to present himself as a representative of ordinary people.

But his policy announcements are anti-worker and pro-big business through and through.

Johnson's minority government is propped up by the tiny, right-wing DUP, and is careering towards the impending establishment crisis of a no-deal Brexit. His fear of working-class anger has led him to propose some measures supposed to dampen the inequality caused by the Tories' austerity project.

Meanwhile, in the finest traditions of the main party of British capitalism, he is steering through more tax cuts for big business and the rich as impoverishment grows among the many.

More than four million people in the UK are now trapped in "deep poverty," according to a report by the Social Metrics Commission. Their income is at least 50% below the official breadline, meaning an unjust weekly struggle to afford essentials that the bosses take for granted. Under the Tories, seven million people, including 2.3 million children, were at this level of poverty for at least two of the last three years.

The Social Metrics Commission is chaired by a Tory peer, and argues there is a "pressing need for a concerted approach to the problem." The Tories' view of the "problem" seems to be that the bosses aren't rich enough, and their "concerted approach" involves more tax cuts for them.

One of Johnson's proposals is for 'free ports', whereby areas of the UK such as Belfast and Teesside would have Singapore-style tax-free zones, allowing big business to cream off even bigger profits without paying in to public services.

Attacks on workers will continue with Boris Johnson, cheerleader for cruelty, as our prime minister. But as vile as he is, Johnson is only a symptom of the capitalist system controlled by the parasitic super-rich class. His job is to protect the profit system.

The Tories represent big business and have just 138,809 voting members. The trade unions have over six million workers as members and rising. Workers need a party of our own.

Jeremy Corbyn should use the huge enthusiasm which was created by his anti-austerity platform to start pushing the pro-capitalist Blairites out of Labour and throwing open the doors to workers and unions to control it instead.

The unions could mobilise the huge anger at inequality by building for a mass demonstration for a general election, and joint strikes as well if necessary.

A working-class movement like this could force a general election, get the Tories out, and push a Corbyn-led government towards socialist policies. Policies like taking the banks and big business out of the hands of the tax-cutting super-rich and putting them into public ownership under democratic workers' control and management. Fighting for socialism is the only answer to the capitalist system keeping so many of us destitute.