Britain's Hung Parliament

[William Prest]

Yes! It's a hung parliament, but unfortunately there was no rope involved. There wasn't even a tour of the gallows. Considering the crimes
against the unemployed, the coal miners and the poor, they should
have been shown the ropes at the local collieries. If this were not
enough, the British capitalists are about as non-green as a
capitalist can get. According to local coal miners, there is enough
coal under Britain to run Britain's power needs for the next
millennium. However, since 1984 under Thatcher and her successors
working for the coal bosses, these mines were shut down, over a
hundred thousand sent to the streets and coal was imported from China
because labour costs were a lot lower than unionized mining jobs at
home. This was clearly an exercise to bust the unions and force the
working class into destitution of the building shock doctrine of
absolute capitalism and maximum profit. Plenty of fossil fuel was
burned to ship coal, itself a fossil fuel, all the way from China to
Britain just to burn it there to run power plants and to slap the
collective working class across the face.

As a result, the British decided to leave the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher and voted labour. Labour has since taken a
trouncing under the most recent election with some controversy. There
is no clear majority, leaving the field open for coalitions. The main
controversy is that not everyone got to vote as the backlog of voters
was turned away when the polls closed. Few figures are as yet
available as to what percentage was not allowed to vote in this phony
exercise in democracy. But it is clear that the labour government has
dug their own grave through scandal and the breaking of even the most
basic of promises. Instead, they have relied on anti-terrorist
jingoism backed by the terror might of the US military industrial
profit machine. They are also relying on anti-immigrant hysteria so
that desperate domestic workers are pitted against foreign workers
for bottom of the barrel, underpaid, dangerous, unhealthy and heavy
labour once the domain of the immigrant hired because of the low
wages, desperate working conditions and few of no rights. Now the
domestic working force has been pitted against the immigrant work
force that is increasingly being told “Go home!”

The controversy of voters turned away, thus negating the election due to the inability of all the voters to exercise their “democratic
right” is just the start of the next period, which presages what
democracy is all about under capitalism. As it stands now, there is
jockeying among the various parties to form coalitions. Labour is
flirting with Conservatives to form a voting block. Other parties are
doing the same in a bid to create a majority by fusion. All this
demonstrates that in essence all the various parties are on the same
platform, that is, in league with the bankers, the corporations, the
landlords, the military and the real bosses that run the state and
are against the power of the working class, many of whom are now
unemployed and who were deceived to vote what they thought were their
representatives into power. Instead, their so called representatives
represent only their own interests and the interests of their bosses,
the real power exercised from money brokers and the ruling elite.

But the real power lies at the bottom where all the real value is created. It does not lie with all the parasites the skim a living off
the blood, sweat and toil of those who actually create something
useful. The working class has to wake up to their power and act on
it, much like what the Greek workers and the people in Nepal are
doing now. It is time to organize at the street level and initiate
the general strike; to create dual power for a working class society.