BY IAN GRANT
LONDON - Prime Minister Anthony Blair and other government figures used the platform of the Labour Party's annual conference the first week of October to showcase policies that will target workers' social wage. The National Health Service, state funded pensions, sickness and unemployment benefits, and access to further education were all earmarked for "radical reform."

Many ruling-class commentators remained unimpressed. Financial Times columnist Philip Stephens commented, "So far ..all we have had is rhetoric. Mr. Blair promises political will to accompany it. But serious welfare reform will be unpopular. There is no painless way of taking money from people. And this is a prime minister who has only experienced adulation."

Blair's keynote address to the conference used the themes of national pride and partnership between workers and bosses that marked Labour's election campaign earlier this year. "For business this will be a government on your side, not in your way." he said. There was "no place for militant trade unionism or uncaring management today."

Packaged as "compassionate with a hard edge," the thrust of the government's program continues a campaign by the rulers to scapegoat those receiving social benefits. Following close behind Home Secretary Jack Straw's probes a few days earlier around the introduction of youth curfews, young people were also the target of Blair's speech, which pledged Labour to adopt "zero tolerance" anticrime policies. The Labour government would not dodge the "tough choices" Blair warned.

For the big-business press, however, Blair's "tough choices" were all ahead of him. "In theory his programme... is as bold as any since the 1945 Labour government, including Baroness [Margaret] Thatcher's," wrote Robert Peston in the Financial Times October 4. "But.. he has yet to face any really `hard choices.' So far his road in government has been relatively smooth. But there is a rocky ascent ahead."

Avoiding debate on austerity
The potential for the government's anti-working-class measures to run up against resistance from workers themselves was an unspoken assumption underlying many of the conference debates. Rejection by working people of deeper austerity and belt tightening demanded by the capitalist class lay at the root of the Conservative's election defeat in the May ballot. Government figures collaborated with top trade union officials, who wield powerful block votes at the conference, to keep tensions generated by this reality to a minimum.

At a side meeting addressed by Trades Union Congress (TUC) general secretary John Monks and Peter Mandelson, minister without portfolio in the Labour government, the two faced off over the level of a proposed national minimum wage. While claiming to await the deliberations of the government's "Low Pay Commission," Mandelson echoed statements by other government figures that a lower minimum might apply to workers under 25 or to trainees. Monks said that the unions expected the minimum wage to apply to "all fully trained adult workers under 25." Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU) general secretary William Morris in remarks made at the conference conceded that "trainees" and workers under 18 should be excluded.

Mandelson reasserted the government's commitment to give a legal right to union recognition where the majority of workers voted for it, but claimed the "legitimate concerns" of employers opposed to this limited measure would need to be resolved before the publication of the government's promised policy document on "fairness at work."

The government and the union officials also avoided a brush on the issue of railway renationalization. Deep attacks on the conditions of rail workers, which began before the sale of the state rail system to individual capitalists but have since intensified, have led to industrial action by some workers in recent months. Challenged by a motion from the railway union bureaucrats to renationalize a part of the railway system, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott countered by arguing that it would cost the government 4.5 billion (US$7.3 billion) to "buy back" the industry from its new owners.

Delegates were persuaded to drop motions opposing government plans to charge students tuition fees of 1000 (US$1,500), and end student grants. Several thousand predominantly young people demonstrated outside the conference against the government proposals. Student bodies are currently building for a national demonstration opposing these measures on November 1.

Moves to privatize pensions
Using popular demagogy, veteran Labour Party stateswoman Barbara Castle criticized plans by the government to establish a system of compulsory private pensions to replace the state scheme. "I'm darned if I am going to hand my social conscience over to the man from the Pru!" she declared, referring to Prudential Insurance Company. The week of the conference saw one mutual life insurance company fined 450,000 (US$675,000) for "mis-selling" private pension schemes. In the last year, 49 insurance companies have been fined over 2 million (US$3 million) for wrongly advising hundreds of thousands of people to leave occupational pension plans.

Frank Field, minister for welfare reform, has recommended that mutual insurance companies should play a prominent role in replacing state schemes. However, the conference motion Castle was addressing, which called for linking state pensions and average earnings, was also remitted for further consideration another time. Secretary of State for social security Harriet Harman told delegates, "Because people live longer, we all have to save more." Harman has been in the fore of presenting the attempt to dismantle welfare as "compassionate."

In the face of the advances made by fighters for Irish unity and independence over recent months, Marjorie Mowlam, secretary of state for Northern Ireland, put forward several minor reforms. The government committed itself to abandon the provision to intern suspects without trial, unused for several years, when it replaces the existing "antiterror" laws with a new bill. They also propose to scale back, but not to scrap, juryless trials in the six counties of the Northern Ireland statelet.

In a minor upset for the government, left-wing MP Kenneth Livingstone was elected to the Labour Party's National Executive Committee (NEC) in a runoff with Blair favorite Peter Mandelson.

A package of measures eroding internal party democracy was agreed to, including reducing the constitutional rights of the conference to formulate policy. While Labour governments have never considered themselves bound by party policy, the conference has in the past provided a focus for opposition to unpopular government policies. Reforms to the structure of the party NEC reduce the influence of the trades unions and local Labour Party organizations.

Blair is also preparing to counter future opposition by seeking allies outside of his party who will assist in pushing ahead unpopular government policies, against resistance from the Labour Party's working-class base. The Labour government has pursued closer collaboration with the Liberal Democrats, Britain's third-largest bourgeois party. In his conference address Blair stressed his affinity with so- called "radical reforming leaders" in recent history, including among them Liberal Party prime minister from 1916 - 22, David Lloyd George.

Ian Grant is a member of the Transport and General Workers Union at Ford.  
 
 
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