Labour Party

Members of Liverpool Solidarity Federation were amongst the crowd of 300 people who gathered outside Liverpool Town Hall to protest as the council set its austerity budget. With £91m of cuts on the table, local people and community campaigns - including the Park View Project to rehabilitate alcoholics and the Whitechapel Centre for the homeless as well as more than a few nurseries and SureStart centres - joined activists and campaigners to make the council hear their message.

At first, people huddled on the pavement on both sides of the road. Spirits were high and there was a lot of shouting and chanting, but it wasn't until one woman walked into the road with a banner and everybody else joined in that things really kicked off. This buoyed everybody's spirits even further and there was a mood of defiance in the air.

Lately we’ve witnessed some crass but unsurprising opportunism from the Labour Party. Recent student and trade union demonstrations in Liverpool and elsewhere have been addressed by Labour politicians and officials cynically attempting to convert widespread public anger and uncertainty into Labour votes.

‘Automatic' union recognition is here at last. But all the signs are it is far from automatic'.

The much-heralded legislation giving unions the right to force employers to negotiate over hours and conditions is now in force. But, as so often is the case with New Labour, it doesn't add up to much.

The legislation is modelled on US labour laws and has not prevented union membership plummeting to below 18% of the workforce. To make sure it stays that way, bosses in the UK have been learning from US ‘experts' on how to confront workers to keep unions out of the workplace. UK legal firm Eversheds has been prompted to put on a nationwide roadshow tour, aimed at providing precisely this advice to employers. Meanwhile, PTI Labour Research, an anti-trade union US consultancy firm, have stated that they have held meetings with a number of legal firms interested in union busting work.

Over 5 years on, and life under Labour is in many ways been worse than it was under the Tories.

The Labour government since coming into office has embarked on a strategy of forcing people into ever-more casualised, low paid jobs. Sure, it is all dressed up in the language of empowerment. Young people, single parents and now the unemployed in general have all found themselves empowered into jobs paying just over £4 an hour.

Egged on by Labour, there has also been an assault by bosses on working conditions. Again, it is all dressed up in the smooth-talking New labour language of ‘flexibility'. In other words, part-time working, short-term contracts and the increasing use of agency staff. This is the means by which bosses can intimidate workers and hire and fire at will. Millions of us in modern Britain have been reduced to little more than day labours with little or no job security.

Remember the Tories looking after the rich at the expense of the poor? Remember the jubilation when the Labour Government was finally elected in 1997? Remember all the promises? Well, the latest research from the Institute for Fiscal Studies says the total poverty gap - the total income by which families fall short of the poverty line - has increased under Labour.

The report concludes that children who live in the poorest UK households have less of a chance of escaping poverty than when Labour came to power. Yet, child poverty is one of Labour's key targets, and has been at the heart of the political agenda since 1999.

Many on the Left, including those who constantly advised us all to “vote Labour without Illusions”, are now convinced that there is no difference between the Tories and the Labour Party, in this, they are wrong. One difference is that the unions still fund New Labour to the tune of millions of pounds.

There are, however, growing signs that trade unionists are growing increasingly angry at handing over their money to such an openly anti-working class party as Labour. In a number of unions, campaigns have been launched aimed at breaking the link with Labour.

Here we are with the world teetering on the edge of economic depression and having to spend trillions sorting out the mess caused by banks and what does the Labour government come up with - the part privatisation of the Royal Mail! It just demonstrates how market thinking has captured the very soul of the Labour Party, even at a time when the free market is causing havoc they still cannot see any alternative to privatisation. One wonders just what it will take for Labour to kick their free market addiction.