Time to use our collective strength!

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Workers' Fight workplace bulletin editorials
11 October 2017

Despite the increasingly damning economic chaos generated by their delusions of grandeur, the Brexit politicians are more than ever embroiled in guerilla warfare.  In fact, the more this chaos exposes their glittering promises as deliberate lies, the more frantic they become in their overbidding.
    So much so that, with numerous candidates now lining up to jump into May's shoes, speculation is rife as to her political future.  Not that this should matter to the rest of us, of course!  After all, isn't May just one more of them, willing to go the way the Westminster wind blows, for the sake of her career!
    But this permanent in-fighting and overbidding between irresponsible politicians, who will do anything it takes to satisfy their ambition, comes at a price for all of us.  Hasn't their chronic in-fighting already brought about this Brexit madness in the first place?  If anything, this is another reason to be on our guard!

The Brexiteers' catastrophic record

Meanwhile, the chickens are coming home to roost.  That their Brexit process would be a mess and wreak havoc in the economy, was never a question of if, but a question of when - and how badly.  And this is what is happening now, under our very eyes.
    Instead of the bright economic future for Britain outside the EU hailed by the Brexit politicians, the only thing that's bright these days is the red warning light shown by every single economic indicator.  One after the other, all the glittering promises they made to lure voters into following them down Brexit's slippery slope, have been exposed for what they always were - lies!
    They hailed the fall of the pound, claiming that it  could only boost exports - and, therefore, generate new, decent jobs.  Instead, exports have been falling, companies have stopped investing, inflation has been rising, household debt has exploded, consumption has been shrinking and retail jobs are being slashed!
    As to the famous economic "growth" which, according to every government, has always been the litmus test of successful policies, it has had to be revised down, month after month, to the point where, today, the British economy is lagging far behind the other industrialised countries.
    And the cost of all this mess is rising for us, workers.  Not only do we have to pay for it through rising prices and bills, but we are beginning to pay with our jobs too.  The thousands of Monarch Airline workers who were made redundant last month, because of the company's rising kerosene bill, are just the tip of the iceberg.  As to the 4,000 workers of the Bombardier factory, in Belfast, whose jobs are threatened by Trump's protectionist policies, what do they think today, about the Brexiters' promise of a "priority free-trade deal" with the US?

Standing up to the bosses' offensive

In fact, on top of the Brexit chaos, there are many more threats coming.
    Take Universal Credit, which started to be rolled out this month and will push millions into worse poverty.  Yet reversing the benefit cuts involved would only cost £6bn/yr - peanuts compared to the £80bn/yr tax cuts awarded by previous Tory governments, mostly for the benefit of the wealthy and companies.  Nothing to do with Brexit, but everything to do with making the working class pay for the capitalists' profits!
    Or take the case of BAE.  It has just announced 2,000 redundancies, under the pretext that it has seen a slow down in orders for Typhoon aircraft.  But wasn't it BAE which recently hailed its 11% profit increase in the first half of this year?  Up to £1bn, or £500,000 for every job they plan to cut!  BAE's job cuts will just pay to boost shareholders’ dividends!
    Likewise for the so-called "gig economy".  Uber and Deliveroo complained that they "couldn't afford" to pay NI contributions or the National Living Wage - as they would have to do, if they treated workers as employees, rather than as "self-employed".  Yet another case of these bosses’ sheer racketeering, which is denying workers of the decent livelihood they should be entitled to!
    Meanwhile, many companies are now dividing workers into several tiers, with different pay rates and/or conditions for doing the same jobs.  And most are coming up with pay offers which are way below the rate of inflation, while cutting pensions, like the recently-privatised Royal Mail.
    The truth is that the bosses and their politicians are seeking to take advantage of the present Brexit climate, just as they took advantage of the financial crisis, to turn the screw on the working class.  And it is high time their profit drive was stopped.  Brexit or not, there is only one way to defend ourselves against their offensive.  We haven't used our collective strength for a long time, but it's there.  We can use it and we should!