ON 16 JUNE Tony Blair, Labour home affairs spokesperson, welcomed as "sensible' the decision Howard to allow the testing of a vicious extendable, side-handled police baton to replace the existing short truncheon.
It should be remembered that as Home Secretary Kenneth Clarke resisted police demands for this move. As an upstanding 'moderniser" Tony Blair wouldn't want to be outflanked to the right by the Tories: it is absolutely symptomatic of the surreal Character of British politics now that the Tony Blairs of this world are the spokespeople for the main party of the working class.
For the Tories today are weak and wounded, but continue to lash out at working people. They have defeated the miners, they have imposed a law which allows employers to pay trade unionists less than non-unionists and they are now attacking, of all things. Invalidity Benefit.
But the Labour front bench response to all this is so pathetic that even the likes of the GMB's John Edmonds criticise their lack of fight. Britain a cheap labour economy "
But John Smith and the other Labour leaders can be forgiven for taking John Edmonds' outburst with a pinch of salt.
For the 'now realist' trade union leaders have got the Labour leadership they wanted. Edmonds and the rest of the TUC tops backed Neil Kinnock all the way, and then piled in behind Smith.
New realism More than that, it was the imposition of new realism, from the 1982 print workers' NGA Warrington dispute, through the miners' strike to Wapping and beyond, which created all the defeats.
The political conclusions followed as night followed day: John Smith and Tony Blair are the direct product of the abandonment of the miners and all the other class fighters who confronted the Tories in the 1980s.
John Major and his team appear clucless and divided about how to "The only way that such a programme can be resisted is by the labour movement piling into struggles like that at Timex, which are the cutting edge of the struggle to make grammes on offer. Kong-isation' of Britain. over-priced labour. 10 get into Europe. cope with economic crisis and the huge budget deficit, that doesn't mean that the Tories have no proThe most articulate is that put forward by Andrew Neil, Sunday Times editor and sometime L.BC Radio pundit. His programme is for the "Hong This states simply that the future for Britain is as an offshore finance centre and cheap labour economy. This is how Britain can compete with Germany and France, with their Slashing wages, cutting the wel fare state, de-unionisation and a cowed working class can make Britain an attractive centre for inward investment from the US and Japana low-priced channel for their goods This fits in very well with what the Tories are actually doing. The only way that such a programme can be resisted is by the labour movement piling into struggles like that at Timex, which are the cutting edge of the struggle to make Britain a cheap labour economy at the mercy of the It means uniting the struggles against all the closures, wage cutting and imposition of new management techniques which are pushing Britain into becoming a new Hong Kong.
Last week, while the Timex pickets kept up their vigil, the British ruling class was carrying out one of its annual ceremonies of conspicuous consumption at Ascot.
'Unreasonable'
The leadership of the AEEU made no secret of considering the Timex workers 'unreasonable" in not accepting a deal which would give them a weekly wage no greater than an Ascot champagne lunch for two.
The fact is that Timex shows the future for the whole British labour force unless the sabotage of the new realists is defeated.