SCARGILL CALLS FOR A SOCIALIST ANSWER TO THE FINANCIAL CRISIS

A packed meeting in St Helens Merseyside last Wednesday 15th October, jointly hosted by the Socialist Labour Party and the GMB union, heard SLP leader Arthur Scargill make the case for a socialist answer to the financial crisis currently rocking the capitalist world.

Speakers from the GMB had given an up to date report on the fight to keep the Remploy factories open and to reopen the factories that had already been closed by the Labour government. Scargill linked this shameful government action to the attacks on pensions, health and education, and the rise in unemployment and outlined the role of globalisation and the European Union in this process.

Scargill pointed out that the Remploy workers were being made redundant from secure and meaningful employment and told to look for work in the mainstream job market at precisely the same time as unemployment figures had hit a sixteen year high.

Turning to illustrate the attacks on pension rights he demanded that pensioners should be paid the same as the average national wage, having earned the right to retire without the fear of living in poverty.

To applause the SLP leader called for the public ownership of all the major banking and financial institutions and the rebuilding of Britain’s manufacturing industries.

In a lively question and answer session that followed, Scargill made clear that the SLP would oppose any tendency which tried to divert workers into the dead end demand to ‘reclaim the Labour party’, pointing out that the Labour party, as admitted even by Tony Benn, was never a socialist party, but a social democratic party with a few socialists in it.

After the meeting many trade unionists took SLP literature and copies of the book ‘The Enemy Within’ were also sold.

Ends.