LASHING out viciously like a wounded predator, John Major's crisis-ridden Tory government is beginning the new year in the way it ended the old: piling on the agony for millions of the poorest and most vulnerable people.
Undeterred by a stream of sleaze scandals, and a succession of humiliating defeats in the courts in which ministers including Douglas Hurd and Michael Howard have been shown to have acted unlawfully and incompetently, the cabinet clings shamelessly on to the reins of powel.
Brushing aside the appalling evidence of their unpopularity in the Dudley West by-election - the worst such defeat at the hands of Labour for 60 years - and even Daily Telegraph opinion polls suggesting up to 60% would vote Labour, they are hatching new schemes to rob the poor and benefit the rich.
Smarting from the parliamentary defeats they have suffered at the hands of their own back-benchers on Post Office privatisation and on VAT on heating fuel, Major's team is taking revenge by pushing through Rail privatisation, tax increases and the most sweeping attacks yet mounted on the welfare state.
Ignoring the pundits who now almost universally predict his demise as leader in 1995, Major himself has decided to make an electoral issue out of 'patriotism'- described by Dr Johnson as the last refuge of the scoundre! - and opposition to any form of democratic assembly in Scotland or Wales.
Chauvinism
This reactionary line will appeal to some layers of English chauvinists in the Tory heartlands, and dovetail neatly with the overtly racist policies of Major's government: but such rabid defence of the integrity and sanctity of the British 'Union' sits oddly with the Tory goverment's embarrassing impotence to decide and uphold its own policies within the postMaastricht European Union, as shown by recent decisions on fishing rights, and rights of part time workers.
Major's strength for the time being is precisely the depth of the divisions within his own party. The varying factions that want to see him removed hate each other almost more than they now hate Major. Though the terms 'left' and right seem bizarre in the context of the Tory party, there are rival camps which are most easily described as 'centre left' and right wing.
Each side has scored significant victo ries which underline their potential to disrupt the government: the centre-left killed off Post Office privatisation and VAT on fuel, while the right wing Euro sceptics went further and defied a vote of confidence; nine of them have been punished by exclusion from the parliamentary whip.
The two wings of Tory opposition are themselves at loggerheads. Many of the Major: from despair to oblivion? Euro-sceptics are Thatcherites who angrily denounce Major and Heseltine for retreating on Post Office privatisation, support VAT on fuel, and favour hefty spending cuts to pay for more tax reductions. The centre left includes Euro-enthusiasts, and their leading figures are the most pro-European ministers.
Major is therefore still able to play one group off against the other.
Tory MPs campaigning to force a leadership election in November failed by only three votes to get the necessary number of signatures. But the reason these names were missing was because supporters knew their favourite potential candidates were not yet ready to step into the open.
The 'centre left' backs Kenneth Clarke or Michael Heseltine: but both were freshly tarnished with recent fiascos. Clarke is the architect of the VAT disaster, while Heseltine steered the ship of Post Office privatisation onto the rocks.
The Thatcherite right's man in waiting is Michael Portillo, but he is more popular among party hardliners than among the general public, and there is no reason to believe that amid such widespread popular rejection of Tory policies Portillo would deliver any more votes than MaJor.
Straddling
The contest was postponed: but the crisis continues. Major awkwardly straddles the pro and anti European factions, while targeting hefty cuts in welfare spending with the hopes that tax cuts will again buy enough votes for a majority at the next election.
And on many of these cuts, he knows he can count on support right across the Tory back benches. 1995 will be a year of frontal assault on the welfare state.
• Around 250,000 unemployed men and women will face cuts or outright loss of benefits under Kenneth Clarke's new Jobseekers Allowance, which will replace unemployment benefit. Thousands Bottomley: walking liability more are being denied benefits every week under a crackdown by Portillo's Department of Employment and Peter Lilley's Social Security department.
• Over a million claimants currently receiving invalidity benefits will be subjected to compulsory medical checks, face a complex questionnaire and ruthless new criteria designed to strip tens of thousands of their entitlements under the new Incapacity Allowance.
• With over 400,000 people now homeless in Britain, at least 50 projects for homeless people will have government cash cut off, with many more facing a 50% cut. Clarke's Budget cuts will slash housing association house-building crucial battle ground; and welfare rights offer winnable issues to rally mass opposition to the Tories. by 40%. And with 1,000 families a week having lost their houses through repossession in 1994, the Budget changes will strip mortgage payers who lose their jobs of state support to cover interest payments for the first nine months of unemployment.
• Local councils all over the country are running out of cash to fund community care for the frail elderly, and this will get worse as each year thousands more patients are added to the queue for care. Meanwhile pensioners are already being forced to spend their life savings and sell their homes to pay for their own care in private nursing homes in one of the most cynical of the Tory privatisation schemes. • Government-imposed cuts on council budgets are again savaging education services, with thousands of teaching jobs at risk. Students face a further squeeze on poverty-line grants. • Health authorities are still forcing the pace with plans for hospital closures and the threatened cost-cutting massacre of the Blood Transfusion Service. These cuts will all hurt, and hit hardest at those least able to fight back. They are all immensely unpopular. But in a sense they can all be seen as aimed at soft targets: Tony Blair's Labour Party, preoccupied with courting the prosperous middle class with endless pledges not to increase taxes or public spending, has shown no interest in fighting on any of these issues.
No answers There has been no Labour campaign in defence of benefits; no Labour policy to tackle homelessness; Labour shamefully supported the Tory community care reforms and has done nothing to campaign on the issue; the Party's education policies are in total confusion, reeling from the double blow of the arrival of the disastrous David Blunkett and the notorious decision of Tony Blair to endorse opt-out schools; and the Party has been tonguetied on the NHS since Margaret Beckett took over in the autumn.
Yet the last 12 months have shown that campaigning can force some retreats.
It was not Labour's leadership but the valiant campaigning by pensioners groups across the country which kept the VAT issue alive and eventually forced a Tory defeat.
And strident public campaigns against hospital cuts have notched up important victories in Bristol, in Surrey and most recently in London, with a retreat over the closure of the casualty unit at Central Middlesex Hospital.
Now a new government policy document on the workings of the NHS 'internal market' has been drafted to include 'get-out' clauses allowing ministers to over-ride market criteria and block closures of 'popular hospitals.
The welfare state is a crucial battle ground; and welfare rights offer winnable issues to rally mass opposition to the Tories.
Rather than wait for the Tories to collapse of their own accord, campaigns must be built which exploit the obvious divisions and unpopularity of the ruling party, and which mobilise and organise the working class.
That offers a useful new year's resolution for every socialist.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No.75. 7 January 1995, Page 4