WHEN even Kenneth Clarke says Labour is too obsessed with cuddling up to the City things must be really bad.
The Labour Party leadership seems determined to rip up ever decent policy in advance of the election.
Chris Smith's recent statements are indistinguishable from the Conservative party front bench. "It is time to get away" he says "from the sterile battle lines between public and private".
So it looks like private finance initiatives will be here to stay under a Labour government. The battering of health, education and housing will continue.
The media have devoted much space to the internal rivalries of Brown, Mandelson, Smith and Prescott. Tensions do exist.
But their differences are all about personal ambition. Not politics.
Many supported Blair's removal of Clause 4 because they thought it a necessary price to pay to secure the election of a Labour government in order to defend schools, hospitals and pensions.
The decision to abolish free universal education shows the direction of the party. Blair has no regard for the lives of working class people.
All the talk about community and stakeholding is hot air-the obsession with keeping down tax means continuing Tory austerity. Beveridge's Welfare State rests on a progressive taxation system.
The post-war settlement was flawed in many ways. It was necessary to fight to defend welfare provision so that benefits were index linked and that services democratically accountable to users and workSingle issue campaigns against cuts and closures in many parts of the country continue to grow ers But the joint anti-welfare offensive by Labour and Tories now throws even minimal provision up in the air.
We are told that final decisions have not been made on removing child benefit from 16-18 year olds.
This cuts little ice where constituency and trade union involvement in real decision making have been seriously undermined.
lust staye The recent Policy Forum in Manchester contained no genuine debate.
If Blair has his way there will be no democratic discussion on the manifesto-just a rubber stamping exercise by plebiscite.
But there is resistance.
The Welfare State Network organised a picket of Smith's surgery the week of his major speech and held a fringe meeting at the Policy Forum as part Photo: Linn Hort of its weekend of action in defence of the welfare state.
Single issue campaigns against cuts and closures in many parts of the country continue to grow.
In Scotland and Oxfordshire action against education cuts has been particularly buoyant.
Socialist Outlook supporters are fully committed to playing their part in all these activities, linking them to the battle inside the Labour Party.
Socialist Outlook 102 • May 25, 1996.
State hounds