Stalin Would Blush at this Government’s Workfare Tantrum

Senior ministers are lying through their teeth about workfare. Opponents are smeared and demonised. The free press are coming under attack, simply for not kowtowing to the party line. Documents have disappeared or are being hastily rewritten to cover up ministerial falsehoods. Now the police are being ordered in to stamp out any dissent against this government’s policies. And all of this to defend the undefensible, forced labour.

Stalin would blush at the activities of the government this week. It’s true that politically orchestrated famine has yet to materialise. Instead the policy seems to be to euthanise those deemed unproductive via suicide, poverty or homelessness. Political dissenters are not yet condemned to the Gulag, but say the wrong thing, at the wrong time on facebook and you may well find yourself disappeared for four years.

It is somewhat ironic that the government should be falsely blaming the trot left for public opposition to workfare, whilst acting like mini-soviet dictators themselves.

The truth is that the SWP and their rivals the Socialist Party, have done little more than attempt to colonise a debate which has rightly seen the public erupt in fury. They do not represent the millions of people who are outraged by the activities of this government. Just like Cameron they care only about political power and are equally duplicitous in their pursuit of it. But luckily it’s not really about them, whatever government ministers try to claim. The tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people who have threatened pickets, boycotts and direct action aimed at the companies involved in workfare have nothing to do with the SWP. All Cameron’s cronies have done is further enrage the public by attempting to smear and misrepresent them. Well that and made themselves look very silly indeed.

Whilst the likes of Emma Harrison and McDonalds pick up millions from forced labour schemes, the government employs ever more dubious means of attempting to suppress true dissent. This has always been the true face of the Tory Party. Big business running rampant with the Stasi ever ready to pounce on those who object. It was true under Thatcher, who introduced ever more draconian laws to suppress dissent, and it appears to be true under Cameron. That they should pretend to be in favour of ‘small government’ and against the ‘nanny state’ is just more doublespeak. Workfare slavery is freedom after all.

Except there is one huge difference. Iain Duncan Smith is no Jo Stalin. Cameron is certainly no Thatcher. This bunch of over-privileged braying toffs are just making themselves a laughing stock. Already derided across Europe,  Cameron is fast becoming a national joke here as well. A fucking embarrassment to be honest.

This government are nothing more than snivelling little public schoolboys, most of whom have never done a day’s real work in their lives. The very worst of the effete upper classes. Not clever enough for business, or brave enough for war, they slunk into politics in the desperate bid to gain some meaning in their empty cossetted lives.

As for their lib dem lapdogs, well perhaps they should be pitied. And then put down.

In an effort to bolster their flagging egos, they are now calling on police to halt next weekend’s National Day of Action Against Workfare which will see protests across the UK, with action planned in 15 towns and cities so far. This has not been organised by the SWP or the Socialist Party  although their supporters will no doubt be welcomed as long as they resist their natural instincts to attempt to hijack them. The day was called by Boycott Workfare, in a feat of spectacular foresight, some time before the workfare row blew up in the press. Boycott Workfare is an unaffiliated claimant led organisation that has been campaigning against workfare since it was shamefully first introduced by Labour. Some other claimant led groups (and by no means all of them) can be found at Benefit Claimants Fighting Back.

Everyone opposed to workfare should get out on the streets next weekend and show that we are not an SWP front or reds under the bed. We need to show that opposition to workfare comes from every sector of society and we demand it is abandoned. And most importantly we need to show that we will not be intimidated by lame threats from the Tory press.

For the latest list of events taking place next week visit Boycott’s Workfare’s website, or you can find a round up of the plans so far on facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/#!/events/108260229303114/