18 September 2022
Britain’s ruling class and its new Downing Street administration are preparing a fresh offensive against people’s living standards and democratic rights, the Communist Party warned at the weekend.
‘Millions of people will find that they have “bread and circuses” but without the bread’, Andy Bain told the party’s executive committee meeting at Ruskin House, Croydon.
‘While monarchs old and new are used to mask a society based on exploitation, oppression, militarism and imperialist war, Prime Minister Liz Truss and her regime are drawing up plans to subsidise big business super-profits, cut and privatise public services and further restrict hard-won rights to strike, dissent and demonstrate’, he declared.
Welcoming plans by rail unions RMT and ASLEF to resume strikes, the CP industrial organiser urged these and other unions to coordinate industrial action for maximum impact on employers and the government.
He also emphasised the important role that anti-austerity campaigns, trades councils, Labour Party organisations and the left must play in building solidarity for workers in struggle.
‘Liz Truss and Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng are racing to defend the interests of the big corporations as Britain and the international capitalist economy slide into recession’, Mr Bain pointed out.
‘There will no more talk of “levelling up” as the bankers’ bonus tax is abolished and public money is used to shore up the super-profits of the big energy companies’, he added.
According to Treasury estimates, these companies will reap up to £170bn in ‘excess profits’ over the next two years, although the Tory government refuses to extend the current windfall tax which is expected to raise just £5bn in its first year.
Britain’s Communists called instead for a 100 per cent windfall tax, while insisting that this is no substitute for the return of the energy industry and North Sea oil and gas to public ownership and control.
‘Nationalisation is the only basis on which we can plan to meet future energy needs at a reasonable price for domestic and industrial consumers, developing safe and renewable energy supplies that are not at the mercy of capitalist markets and speculators’, Andy Bain insisted.
The CP executive committee condemned the Russian government’s anti-Soviet, anti-Leninist and expansionist war in Ukraine and the Kyiv government’s ban on trade unions and opposition parties including the Communist Party. It repeated its call for a ceasefire and a negotiated settlement in place of NATO, Russian and Ukrainian war-mongering and the risk of nuclear warfare.