EDITORIAL

Their Morality and Ours
Major, Blair and Ashdown stand united in their place at the head of the new Moral Crusade. They have used a number of violent incidents-Dunblane, the murder of Philip Lawrence-as pretexts for a campaign of hysteria designed to strengthen the State and police powers and to bolster a climate of opinion which condones the scapegoating of the poor and further attacks on any little freedom in this society.

Social conditions are in sharp decline, and the decline of British capitalism is further aggravated by problems within capitalist society world-wide. This means that previous welfare reforms-themselves forced out of the boss class through the threat of a confident working class- are being dismantled. As welfarism collapses, the Labour Party is quick to abandon all talk of social reform and welfare rights and indeed to lead attacks on any idea that economic hardship leads to deteriorating social conditions and rising levels of crime. Increasing polarisation is leading to a situation where unrest is simmering.

Whoever is in government after the next election, greater and greater repression and State violence will be used to push through the further dismantling of welfare benefits, and to smash unrest in the workplace and on the streets.

What can we make of people who come over as shining knights of "morality", the same people who are attacking the health service and forcing many to wait long periods for operations, condemning them to pain, stress and possible death, who have thrown hundreds of thousands out of work and into poverty, who supply arms to the militarists all around the world so they can carry out genocide like the Rwanda massacres? These are the same people who take bribes in Parliament, the same people who regularly carry out Stock Exchange scams.

All of this is hypocrisy, but hypocrisy in order to prepare for tough law and order measures as social unrest threatens to ignite.