Weekly Worker Times Than All the Others Put Together! It Has Been Little Else) That Labour Is Now “A Bourgeois Party”
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Ten years of Workers Power - p5 weekly Taaffe’s US dissidents - p7 Tories play nationalist card - p8 AWL and programme - p9 Nellist and Oddy - p10 € n politics, as in nature, everything of the future does however resonate liberties posed by ending hunting by have bifurcated at the top. The To- in the search for a weapon Tory eyes produces its equal and opposite with the least competitive companies dogs is a smokescreen. The real is- ries have moved against Blair’s re- naturally light upon the unionists. Ireaction. Tony Blair’s constitu- and, perhaps more to the point, a mass sue is the unelected House of Lords formist solution in Northern Ireland. With unionist disloyalty the Tories tional revolution from above is no ex- of atomised voters epitomised by the and the constitutional “time bomb” The opposition, like the devil, is in hope to break New Labour. ception. four million readers of The Sun. primed by Hague. Ominously The the detail. Ireland’s right to self-determination Initially the constitutional revolu- Party and class never neatly nor Daily Telegraph urges an “ermine Blair pushed for Sinn Féin ministers has again been denied and remains tion elicited nothing much from the automatically fit. New Labour is a revolt” in order to “uphold the con- before IRA decommissioning (in their the central, unresolved, contradic- Tories - except idiotic prattle and complex hybrid. Politically it serves stitution”. All government legislation absence decommissioning is already tion. But partition post-1998 eschews dumb rage. The party of Thatcher finance capital; sociologically it is should be blocked using the Lords: undergoing a slippage away from May gerrymandering and overt discrimina- which energetically smashed the staffed by middle class career politi- crucially Blair’s disenfranchisement 2000). Hague and his media auxiliaries tion. More than that, Blair aims to win once mighty NUM after a year-long cians; electorally it relies on the pro- of “several hundred of their number” in contrast instinctively sided with the consent, if not the active support, civil war in the mining communities letariat in the ballot box. Trade union - “one of the most autocratic bills in Trimble - not as first minister, but as of the catholic-nationalist population. and pit villages, the party that sys- influence has shrunk qualitatively. recent history” (June 29). The Tories leader of the Ulster Unionists. Sinn Each concession given to, or wrested tematically rolled back the welfare The Tories appear to have abandoned explicitly link foxhunting and the Féin must “be excluded from the ex- by, the minority increases the pres- state and created a destitute genera- their historic alignment with big capi- House of Lords and have taken to ecutive”, Hague insisted, while the sure on the majority. The Ulster Un- tion, the party of endless privatisa- tal in favour of an English version of the streets in huge numbers. Last IRA remains “fully armed” (The Daily ionists find themselves with little tion, job insecurity and globalised Poujadism. Before our eyes they are year’s 250,000-strong Countryside Telegraph July 5). Against the letter room for manoeuvre. In front of them capital crassly celebrated the static metamorphosing from the preferred Alliance demonstration in London and the grain of the Good Friday deal is the Paisleyite DUP, waiting to steal virtues of Britain’s supposed ‘unin- party of the bourgeoisie into a right- saw the government quickly back- he also agitates for an end to prisoner their base in the event of a ‘surren- terrupted’ thousand years of consti- wing English nationalist party. Obvi- track on foxhunting and then com- releases. The Daily Telegraph edito- der’ to IRA gunmen. At their back is tutional history. (Ignoring the ously such transformations, by New promise on 90 hereditary peers. rial recognises that under such circum- the British-Irish Agreement, which separate linguistic, cultural and royal Labour and the Tories alike, are prem- Blair’s promise on the BBC’s July 8 stances it would be necessary to redefines the union with Great Brit- histories in the British Isles, the 1066, ised on the disappearance of the work- ‘Question Time’ to ban hunting with revert to solving the problem vi et ain and necessitates an historic com- 1642, 1688 and other revolutionary ers as a political class (albeit in Britain dogs “as soon as we possibly can” - armis: “Army patrols should be promise with Irish nationalism. Either ruptures and the elementary fact that as the subaltern pole of Labourism). ie, after the completion of the first brought back, the emergency powers way, a disloyal ‘no’ majority amongst Britain was only united politically in Today the working class exists as stage of the House of Lords reform - act restored in full” and “measures the majority British-Irish is now in the 18th century.) wage slaves, but not as the bearer of is sure to provoke a parliamentary and should be taken to facilitate the con- place. Perfect - for Hague. Behind the Tory nonsense there a social alternative to capitalism. extra-parliamentary storm. Hague will viction of terrorist leaders, including Formal negotiations over the North- was, of course, Tory sense. Abolition We in Britain are surely in the midst do his utmost to maximise the de- forensic admission of telephone inter- ern Ireland executive have been de- of hereditary peers, devolution, the of something unequalled since the structive impact of his militant mi- cepts and the testimony of anony- layed till October or even November. Lab-Lib politics of coalition and the death of the great Liberal Party and nority (Journalists have foolishly mous informers” (July 19). But the next big hurdle, and therefore possibility of PR for Westminster elec- the rise of Labour in the first quarter interpreted Blair’s move as an attempt Such a plan B is obviously unwork- the next Tory opportunity, is likely to tions effectively rob the Tories of their of the 20th century. Whether the to appease Labour’s “traditional” core able as a consensus settlement. Nei- be RUC reform under the auspices of divine right to govern the whole coun- present forms endure or quickly pass voters. In reality it is hegemonic. Sev- ther the SDLP nor the Ahern a Blairised Chris Patten. The Hague try through a minority of votes and away is another matter entirely - the enty percent of the adult population, government in Dublin could accept Tories could yet find themselves a the unelected House of Lords. The class struggle will decide. including traditional Tories, report- it. As to the IRA, it has proved be- ready-made armed wing if the RUC spectre of permanent marginalisation Beating the English nationalist edly support a ban.) yond a shadow of doubt that it can were to be radically reformed (dis- haunts them. drum is Hague’s answer to devolu- Ulster is key to the success of any withstand anything the British state banded in unionist-speak) as part of The Tories could, and did, say ‘no’ tion in Scotland and Wales - since it Tory revolt. Northern Ireland is the can politically afford to throw against the attempt to appease catholics. to every innovation emanating from was established as a statelet in 1920 United Kingdom’s main weak link and it - internment, SAS assassinations, Mass resignations, passive mutiny, Downing Street - Scottish parliament, Northern Ireland has caused no ago- therefore the main weak link in Blair’s criminalisation, etc. The Tory plan B uniformed protest demonstrations are Welsh assembly, Lords reform, Lon- nising over the so-called West Lo- constitutional revolution. For nearly is not an alternative to Blair’s stalled all on the cards. don mayor, etc. That hardly consti- thian question. There are 163 Tory three decades Britain’s inability to plan A. Once more it is a cynical A constitutional collision between tutes a viable strategy. In recognition, MPs - all English seats. None in Scot- rule the Six Counties in the old way wrecking device. the Hague Tories and New Labour albeit driven more by blind instinct land or Wales. Naturally Hague claims and the refusal of the nationalist The old Conservative and Unionist ought to provide an opening for mass than grand vision, William Hague is to be discouraging English national- masses to be ruled in the old way was Party lives again in the alliance ce- activity. With the right programme beginning to hone a programme. How- ism. An opposite intention is trans- a festering ulcer on the Elizabethan mented between Hague and David rapid advances can be made. Yet most ever, what is noticeable is that the parent. He yearns for a bigoted monarchy system. There is no longer Trimble. It should not be assumed, comrades on the left are blissfully Tories are not so much readying them- English backlash. Hague’s speech to a revolutionary situation, but the however, that there exists a deep- mired in economism (bourgeois poli- selves for government in 2001 or 2002. the Centre for Policy Studies (see p8) counterrevolutionary situation is pre- seated affinity between the two men. tics of the working class). The con- They are readying themselves to was a bid to capture what he called carious. Northern Ireland remains a Hague is a grammar school Tory in stitution hardly exists for them as a wreck Blair’s constitutional revolu- “an emerging English conscious- cockpit of crisis, as testified by Blair’s the non-aristocratic mould of Heath serious political issue. Thankfully we tion through a reactionary revolt. That ness” and fuel resentment against inability to strike a deal on his June and Thatcher. A conventional career communists hold to a different ap- might well mean another term in op- Scotland on the basis of per capita 30 deadline and the subsequent serio- politician from head to toe.