Editorial
Ask a silly question …
TONY BLAIR is staging a major campaign in an effort to "sell" his welfare reforms to an increasingly sceptical party membership. Having hog-tied themselves with Tory cash limits and Maastricht criteria, they have asked the wrong questions, and come up with predictably reactionary answers.
The wider public, and even sections of the Tory press and mass media have shown that they are more sceptical still, and even less likely to be convinced. Those most directly affected by the first wave of Labour attacks on the welfare state – students, lone parents and disability action groups – have already demonstrated their rejection of the Labour proposals.
In a series of up to 40 "roadshows", which began last month in Dudley, Blair’s team will crusade for their New Testament Toryism.
Those Labour party members who have not already resigned in disgust or tacitly withdrawn from activity, and who manage to pass through the ever-more stringent screening by Peter Mandelson’s sinister Millbank machine, may be among the select few invited to listen to Blair proclaiming the need for action to stem the tide of social security spending.
Meanwhile pensioners scrape by on an embarrassing pittance, hospital beds and services are closing for lack of cash, private firms are taking profitable bites of NHS building projects, and a new round of council cuts is threatening schools with increased class sizes and decimating social services.
Every one of the "tough choices" so far taken by the "new" government has come down against the interests of the poorest, while the profits, pay, perks and privileges of the rich remain intact.
Nothing could more clearly bang home the point that the Tories are still in charge, with a more ruthless crew now pressing home the policies which made even Thatcher flinch.
After fabricating a spurious "crisis" of allegedly runaway welfare spending – when British spending (and the level of benefits) is lower than the rest of Europe and one of the most miserly in the industrialised world, Labour’s spin doctors have now tried to foist the idea of an "affluence test" in a desperate effort to force through the abolition of universal benefits.
Of course many more prosperous households already fall foul of a form of "affluence test", leaving parents to bridge the gap in student grants. Many low-waged households also fall foul of another mean-spirited "affluence test", and wind up saddled with exorbitant prescription charges and fees for dental treatment cynically racked up by Thatcher. Tens of thousands of frail pensioners have discovered to their horror that their savings and the houses they have bought mean that they must fork out the full cost of continuing care services in private nursing homes.
But even mainstream newspaper columnists like Peter Kellner have been quick to point out the folly of using more "affluence tests" to deny pensions, child benefit, maternity pay or disability allowances to those on exceptionally high income: why set up a complex new bureaucracy of means-testing when the simplest answer is to use the tax system, and to tax the rich?
The erosion of universal benefits would of course be just the beginning of a process in which the better-off, convinced that the state system has nothing to offer them, would be encouraged, little by little, to "opt out" and pay privately – for what would almost inevitably be inferior insurance cover.
Even the financial pages of the Tory press have now begun warning that compared with the limited private cover available "the welfare state gives very good value for money".
Yet already, behind the scenes at the DSS, "Mad" Frankie Field, fresh from giving the Keith Joseph Memorial Lecture to venerate the memory of a Thatcherite pioneer, is hatching up his Chilean-style scheme to compel workers to take out a second – private – pension to top up the state pension which Labour, obedient to Tory spending plans, is reducing in value year by year. He even wants to privatise the provision of disability benefits, though who would pay the premiums has yet to be explained.
Worse, the ground is already being cut from under the feet of those fighting back. UNISON, which has done nothing to challenge Blair’s anti-welfare offensive (but which is trying to outlaw branches campaigning to change its policies) has now issued a press release – with no mandate from its members – welcoming the idea of compulsory second pensions!
Blair’s honeymoon ended with the Formula 1 affair – but the carnival of reaction continues. In the 61 Labour MPs who abstained or voted against the cuts in lone parent benefits, in the protests on the streets and in the exodus from Labour membership we can see the seeds of a revolt.
The task for socialists is to ensure that this revolt develops into a political fight at every level of the labour movement for the socialist policies we need to defend and extend the welfare state.