The attack on the welfare state has become a central issue of the British political situation as a weak and divided Tory Government seeks to address a massive budget overspend and accommodate to the pressures from their own right-wing.
A range of imperatives push the Tories towards massive attacks on a welfare state established by a Labour Goverment in the immediate post war period. Not only are they ideologically committed to the market and opposed to the social measures involved in the welfare state, but they face a massive budget overspend created largely by the mass unemployment they have created in order to attack the working class. On top of this, they face the requirements of European integration under the Maastricht Treaty.
At the same time Labour, which is likely to win the next election and to be in office within the next two years, is preparing to continue the Tory attack on the welfare state. This, at root, is one of the pressures behind the move to replace Clause 4 of the Labour Party's constitution. Blair's new clause would be presented as an enabling agreement to continue these attacks.
The trade union leaders are not only tied into this politically but they remain in the framework of new realism and refuse, in most cases, to organise or sanction action to defend sectors of the welfare state when they come under attack. There is therefore a big responsibility on socialists to take up this issue and defend the welfare state at every level - taking this up both in the unions the users of the services.
The most successful campaign recently has been the FACE campaign - Fight Against Cuts in Education - which mobilised 15,000 people on the streets of London with no official support what so ever from the unions. It shows what can be done with broad alliances of this kind which unite a range of people opposed to the cuts. Similar organisation is possible in defence of health care, pensions, benefits and student grants. Official support for the fight against the cuts would transform their effectiveness. There are tens of thousands of jobs at stake in these cuts as well as the destruction of services. The unions have to be shifted on this, but it is a political and social as well as an industrial issue. It raises the need for radial policies based on a socialist economic policy of public ownership and control.
There is an urgent need for a serious campaign to fight within the unions and the Labour Party for action in defence of jobs and services, work with broad campaigns, which could cut against the disastrous road chosen by Blair and the right wing.