Fight Against Cuts In Education LONDON SATURDAY MARCH 25 Assemble 1pm Embankment
FACE
March 2pm to Hyde Park TONY BLAIR's 'Mission Impossible' appears to be to salvage the crumbling unity and dwindling electoral fortunes of the Tory Party.
He appears to be pursuing this objective on several fronts at once: by embracing the unpopular notion of a united capitalist Europe; by refusing to offer the slightest support or encouragement to those fighting cuts in education and other council services or the NHS; by flirting with (and now apparently dropping) unpopular ideas of regional government in England while still rejecting genuine self-government in Scotland; and by ditching Clause Four, dismantling any relic of radicalism in Labour's economic and social policies.
The combined message is plain: a Blair government would replicate many of the policies that have reduced John Major's government to historic depths in the opinion polls. Far from offering any radical alternative, the Labour Party appears to be challenging voters to find a reason to vote for it.
Absurd
Blair's absurd Commons motion on Europe - supposedly aimed to exploit divisions in Tory ranks - was so fanatically pro-EU as to seem calculated to push the 'whipless' Tories back into the government lobby, which it duly did.
But the episode has served also to underline the utter servility of Labour to the project of consolidating the bosses' European Union.
So craven is the party leadership's support for greater 'inte. gration' with European capital that sections of the European capitalist class are debating whether the controversial 1996 mental conference should be postponed by a year to maximise the chances of negotiating with a Labour government.
And while Blair - just days before the devaluations of the Spanish and Portuguese currencies- added his two pennyworth to the support for a single European currency, he remains silent on the implications of the resultant Europe-wide economic policy, which would impose even more stringent austerity and cuts in welfare spending.
Already in Germany metal workers in IG Metall are fighting back in defence of living standards (see back page).
Standing back
Perhaps this is one additional reason why Blair's team and their co-thinkers in local government have stood back from the mounting struggles across ine country against cuts in education and social services.
Shadow Education Secretary David Blunkett has opposed teachers taking protest strike action, while right wing Labour councillors have once again obediently begun implementing Tory cuts.
Far from backing the movement with a commitment to reverse the spending cuts and ensure a reduction in class sizes, Labour is left trailing limply behind local community campaigns. And on the NHS, where the Tories are openly in disarray, Margaret Beckett is equally ineffective, unable to promise even to keep open Guy's Hospital.
Stranded
Just as Blunkett was left stranded by Blair's singlehanded policy switches on private education and on sending his son to an opted-out religious school, so John Prescott was left Maastricht Il'. inter-govern-., floundering as Blair. publicly.. harder td kick ther out: abandoned Labour's promise to introduce a system of regional The 'new realist technique of deciding Labour's policy on the basis of MORI opinion polls is beginning to cause serious problems as Blair, under fire from John Major for his shambolic policy on local government, discovers that his plan for regional assemblies has little or no support in England, except perhaps in London, where Labour shies away in fright from any restoration of the GLC.
Nor does it help Blair's case in fighting for the abandonment of Clause Four to find that in the run-up to Labour's special conference the headlines have been dominated by news of extortionate board-room salaries, bank collapses and the general anarchy of the capitalist market system.
No doubt Mr Blair, like Mr Major, will be relieved that Dutch bankers have stepped in to bail out the bankrupt Barings Bank. But the episode has underlined the fact that a Labour government which rejects socialist policies would be even more impotent than the Tories in the face of such crises.
Council elections As the campaigning opens for May's local government elections, the early forecasts are that Major's party could come a poor third overall, losing over a thousand council seats But this is reckoning without the Blair factor. A few more weeks like the last fortnight could do more to restore Tory fortunes than John Major could ever hope to achieve.
Socialists in the unions and Labour Party have a fight on their hands, against the Tories in blue and Blair's team of reactionaries who are making
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 79. March 11 1995, Page 4.