Since last year, we've heard the politicians of all of the 3 main parties agreeing on two things.
They all told us that the recession was over. They also said that the only way to "fix" the economy was to cut public expenditure on our backs in order to reduce the black hole left by the bankers' bailout. The only difference between them was one of time-scale. However, what is happening next door, in Ireland, is damning proof that they've been lying all along, on both accounts.
Austerity for nothing and more coming
Early last week, the Irish government announced that piles of dodgy loans held by Irish banks had become worthless and that they had to be bailed out for the 3rd time. On that day, the budget deficit doubled and yet another round of austerity measures was announced.
Yet, it is not as if the Irish state has been "profligate" (as the Tories would say). Already they've had three rounds of public spending cuts over the past 2 years. Everything that could be cut, has been cut - benefits, public sector jobs, wages, pensions. Pension age went up to 66, pension contributions and taxes were increased. Public infrastructure projects were frozen or cancelled. Experts held Ireland up as a "model of financial prudence".
But in the end, the sacrifices imposed on the Irish working class were to no avail. Wage and job cuts only reduced consumption even more and exports to the crisis-ridden US and British markets went on shrinking - both of which resulted in more job cuts. Meanwhile the bankers' time bomb went on ticking in the background, until it finally exploded last week.
But for politicians, in Ireland like here, no policy is too harsh, as long as it preserves capitalist profit. And they find willing partners in crime at the top of the unions. Irish workers never took austerity plans lying down. But their numerous protests in the streets did not stop their union leaders from signing up to everything, under the pretext that the budget deficit "had" to be reduced.
This time round, workers responded to the new bailout by driving a cement mixer with a banner saying "toxic bank", into the gates of the Dublin parliament. Then a large contingent of protesters gave a rowdy welcome to MPs who were just returning from a 12-week recess.
We should wish our Irish brothers and sisters well and hope that, this time, they will find a way of forcing the bankers and the big property developers and landowners, who caused the crisis in Ireland, to foot its bill for a change!
Stopping the cuts before they happen
There are some lessons for us to learn from what is happening in Ireland.
First, if anyone had any doubt on this account, the crisis is still there. It may be partly hidden behind the veil of secrecy which covers the financial system but there is a lot of it that is visible - in particular the on-going job shedding which is taking place across the economy even before the Con Dems start taking the axe to the public sector.
Second, the reason for imposing austerity plans on the working class is never to "fix" the economy, but to increase the proportion of public funds used to boost capitalist profit. What do the capitalists care if everything else goes down the drain, including public services and workers' jobs?
We've already had more than a taste of austerity under Labour, anyway. The large numbers of public sector jobs cut by Brown, among civil servants and postal workers, did nothing to reduce the deficit, let alone to improve the economy. Today, the wage cuts that some big councils like Birmingham, Sheffield and Brighton want to impose on their workforces today, under the pretext that they will have to cut their expenditure, gives us a foretaste of what is in store. Whatever "savings" are made, will go straight into the pockets of private contractors at local government level, and into the pockets of big companies, in the form of reduced corporation tax, at central government level.
Yet, against these threats, the only thing that union leaders are proposing here is to sit tight until the Con Dems' cuts start to really hurt. Then and only then do they propose to oppose them - never mind the fact that, by that time, it will be too late! Once jobs are cut and facilities closed down, it is far more difficult to get them restored or reopened!
So, whatever the union leaders may do or say, it is now, while the cuts are still only a threat, but not yet a fact, that the working class must act, using its only effective weapon - its collective strength - in order to stop the austerity drive in its tracks, before it is too late!