A Rally for Cuts and Debt.

The TaxPayers' Alliance have pledged to lend the Rally Against Debt the 'debt clock' it paraded through the streets of London last year in a bid to secure a Conservative victory at the General Election. Ironically this populist rally for less government debt is effectively a rally for more debt per household. The household debt is set to rise from £1,560 billion in 2010 to £2,126 billion in 2015 which would represent an increase of 36%. Since the decline of the workers' share of GDP began in the late 1970s and social mobility has stagnated, the loss in wages had to be substituted for in debt by a great deal of working-people. By 2015 it is projected that public debt will be reduced by £43 billion whilst household debt will have skyrocketed by £245 billion. This should not be a surprise given the situation in the economy, the process of financialisation which was undertaken in the 70s and has intensified over the years. With the 'Big Bang' of 1986 in which Thatcher liberated the financial markets from regulations and taxes, of which UKIP and the TaxPayers' Alliance are admirers.

The fall in aggregate demand created by the financial collapse of 2008 will be made up for through an even greater reliance on debt. Credit is the only way for consumption to increase in a time when there is mass-unemployment, high inflation, stagnant wages and a VAT hike. The cuts will dispossess millions of people of an adequate safety-net which has the potential to force a lot of people to fall back on credit and take on even more debt. Since the financialisation of the economy began in the late 1970s and early 80s debt has been used to substitute for the losses in wages. The economic crises over the last 30 years have been a result of this process of financialisation. The austerity measures are part of an attempt to ensure the survival of the financialised economy we had before the Crash of '08. The prevention of a turn to social democracy, or worse socialism, along with the destruction of the welfare state are a part of this process. The public has to flip the bill for this process at a time when the population has been left jobless by the recession.

The current line about the national debt and the budget deficit exacerbated by the recession blames New Labour for "irresponsible" spending and giving "too much" to benefit claimants. This line reeks of bullshit. Even though public spending is low when compared to the rate of expenditure in the social democratic era which spanned from the 40s to the 70s. The amount of debt is also small compared to the immediate aftermath of WWII, when it was around 260% of GDP and today the debt is 70% of GDP. As right-wingers like to point out, in a war the national debt and budget deficit increases due to the impact of war on a country. This is often used to defend the position that the amount of spending under New Labour was unusual and irresponsible. It is conveniently left out that it is the norm in a recession for a deficit to emerge as public spending, which would normally be sustainable, becomes unsustainable as tax-revenues fall due to the economic collapse. The amount of debt incurred by such crises is then used to justify a series of deep cuts, this has been standard practice for over 30 years.

The joke about tuition fees and cuts to higher education is that the national debt is 70% of GDP and spending on higher education is 0.7% of GDP. So to pay-off less than 1% of the debt students are expected to take on around £30,000 in personal debt. Naturally, the subjects - science and math - prioritised are potentially valuable in Canary Wharf and Wall Street. Similarly absurd are the cuts to benefits which amount to £18 billion over 5 years, supposedly to deter benefit fraud (which costs £500 million a year) and to reduce the deficit. All the while defence has been essentially ring-fenced and the Trident missile programme is being renewed, even though it is under the control of the American nuclear command system and will cost £80 billion to renew. All the while there are billions being accumulated in offshore accounts at the expense of the public, various loopholes in the tax system allow the ultra-rich to get away without paying their full share. The estimates range from £25 billion to £125 billion as to how much this costs the Treasury.

Not that the Labour Party offers an alternative to cuts, it is totally on board with the cuts agenda in a less extreme form. Ed Miliband has only jumped on the back of the anti-cuts movement and sought to use it to further his own political career. Labour stands for across-the-board cuts of 10% rather than 12%, which would hit front-line services and working-people. It should also be remembered that it was New Labour under which the financial crisis came about, as a result of policies which are supported by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats as well. If there had been a Conservative administration in office the Crash would have still occurred. Down to the disillusionment with Labour, as well as the Establishment in general, and the usual herd behaviour amongst voters the outcome of the election was a hung Parliament. Those who claim there is a democratic mandate for a Con-Dem Coalition along these grounds are mistaken, a minority Conservative government maybe but not a coalition.

There may not be an alternative promised among the political class, but there is an actual alternatives to the cuts. At the Glasgow Media Group, Greg Philo has researched the possibilities of a one-off wealth tax of 20% which could wipe the deficit and replenish the government's coffers. It could rake in £800 billion to the Treasury from the £4 trillion in wealth accumulated by the richest 10% in this country. It would stabilise the stock market and the 10% would get their money back in the long-term. Even without this tax public spending can be used to supplement the fall in consumption and investment. Once the economy has recovered and growth is rising, tax-revenues would recover as employment increases and businesses recover. The country's debt could be paid off over time as spending which was temporarily unsustainable once again becomes sustainable. These are just two alternatives to the cuts, which do not exist according to the BBC and the mass-media.

Trickle Down Bullshit!

 

The Right have coalesced to organise the Rally Against Debt, RAD for short, with the media already drawing comparisons between the rally and the Tea Party in the US. According to the Rally against Debt website the march will be "polite" and attended by "civilised people" who consider many government initiatives unworthy of funding. These "civilised people" who want to see public spending slashed include: the TaxPayers' Alliance (who represent less than 20,000 rich people), the UK Independence Party and Toby Young. In other words, the ultra-rich Tory donors and the extremist wing of the Conservative Party gone AWOL have called for a rally to defend the cuts agenda. Oh and the son of Michael Young is involved, the man who coined the word "meritocracy" must be so proud of Toby. There has already been populist talk of the "quiet majority", hopefully that phrase was not an appropriation of Homer's silent majority which actually referred to the dead. Though it might as well as the rally will be minute in comparison to the March for the Alternative.

Supposedly this "quiet majority" is made up of middle-class organisers of free-schools and devotees of supply-side economics, the people who want a small state, that's assuming this "majority" is not the dead. These are the sort of people who favour tax avoidance, apparently, the billions owed to the Treasury will create jobs by being hoarded in an account somewhere. The main organiser behind this street campaign for austerity is Annabelle Fuller, a member of UKIP and adviser to the Party leader Nigel Farage. On Fox News Farage has expressed the view that taxes are "too high" and government is "too big" in the US. Keep in mind this comes from a man who has leached over £2 million in expenses from the EU over the years. UKIP will have it's chance to demonstrate that it really is the Tea Party of Great Britain, even though it will effectively be taking the side of the government and the Europhilic establishment it officially rails against. These people pledge to set an example of "polite" and "civilised" behaviour, followed by the occasional purchase at Fortnum and Mason's.

In the same message on the Rally Against Debt website you can also find further insights into the intellectual inclinations behind the rally. Aside from the obvious implications of leanings towards the hard Right, specifically towards that rightist sector who want to pull out of the EU and sell off everything except the military and the police. In the following claim the trickle-down theory can be detected "Trips to see Vodafone and other high street chains will result in congratulations to the company for providing jobs and growth in the UK." The trickle-down theory holds that by cutting corporation tax and the top rate of income tax, the government can encourage expansion by entrepreneurs, leading to job creation and thereby decrease unemployment. But as pointed out by the public school boys at Private Eye, this is the Vodafone which has got away without paying £6 billion in taxes and has cut several hundred jobs in Britain in recent years. Vodafone is about to close its Banbury call centre, which will cut 400 jobs. 



Conservative MEP and self-described libertarian Daniel Hannan has come out in support of the RAD. We shouldn't forget his verbal assault on the NHS when he appeared on Fox News back in 2009. Not to mention his admiration of Margaret Thatcher and Enoch Powell. The undertones of the rally are Thatcherite and will not go down well. That is just going on the fact that Mrs Thatcher was never more popular than her own party and was removed from power after the mass-demonstrations against the Poll Tax turned violent in 1990. The Conservatives have had to pretend to be those wets Tebbit compared to Nazi collaborators because a Conservative government cannot be elected on an openly Thatcherite platform. So naturally there will be a counter-march to this counter-march organised by the Coalition of Resistance, an umbrella organisation of leftist groups and parties united against the tri-partisan agenda of austerity measures. This development is no surprise as the Coalition of Resistance has been instrumental in the rallies and marches of recent months.

To Daily Mail Readers Everywhere.

Today there was a demonstration against The Daily Mail and it's malicious slanders against the most vulnerable of British citizens. It was organised by the group 'Claimants Fight Back!' in reaction against the exaggerations and outright lies peddled by the Mail to stir division among the public. A favourite line being that the benefit claimants are pampered and are really just work shy scum. Even though benefit fraud costs £500 million a year and the over-payments cost £3 billion, whilst the cuts to benefits are at £18 billion. The hateful attitude of the reactionary press towards the unemployed is not surprising if you consider that Richard Littlejohn is convinced that Jody McIntyre is not disabled and therefore deserved to be dragged from his wheelchair. So it would seem the understanding of disability accepted by society is not shared by the right-wing media, from which The Daily Mail has consistently tried to distinguish itself as a middlebrow newspaper of Conservative persuasion appealing to the middle-classes. Though it is often accused of being a fascist rag for a reason...

As of 2011 the Mail has a circulation of over 2 million people today, but back in the 1930s it had a readership of around 1.5 million and at the time it consistently supported the rise of National Socialism. The headline "Hurrah for the Blackshirts!" is well known as the endorsement of Oswald Mosley by The Daily Mail in January of 1934. The editorial was penned by Lord Rothermere and in it he praised Mosley's "sound, commonsense, Conservative doctrine". The support given to the British Union of Fascists by the Mail is well known. But less well known is that Lord Rothermere was a friend and supporter of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. The fascist leanings of Rothermere were reflected in the pages of The Daily Mail. In 1933 there was the headline which marked the advent of National Socialism in Germany, it read "Hurrah for the Sturdy Young Nazis!" Around the same time Rothermere remarked in defence of the Nazis "The minor misdeeds of individual Nazis would be submerged by the immense benefits the new regime is already bestowing on Germany."

This went as far as Lord Rothermere saluting Hitler in July 10 1933 with an editorial article under the banner of 'Youth Triumphant' which went on to be utilised as Nazi propaganda. At the time the British establishment, which went as far as the Royal Family and aristocracy, the commentariat and the literati, were riddled with Fascist sympathisers. From Edward VIII, along with the Duke of Westminster and Duke of Kent, to the flirtations of DH Lawrence and a juvenile Philip Larkin. Hitler once said of Edward VIII "I am certain through him permanent friendly relations could have been achieved. If he had stayed, everything would have been different. His abdication was a severe loss for us." Though a lot of reasonable people thought Hitler was the saviour of Germany, it should be noted that the kind of support lent to the Third Reich by the likes of Lord Rothermere and Prescott Bush. The support of high society and the business community for Fascism has been forgotten. It was IBM which drew up the "traffic management plan" for the Holocaust and the concentration camps were used to produced cars for companies like BMW and Ford.

The Third Reich attracted support among the English middle-class because of its racial romanticism and the promise of an organic society which would arise beyond the commercial and industrial landscape of the times. The class structure would not be demolished but transcended through class cooperation so that the glories of the nation could be realised in a radical alternative to Bolshevik socialism and liberal capitalism. The Jews would be painted as both dangerous radicals and sleazy bankers. Into this tension the Fascist offers an organic order in which individuals, classes, political parties and trade unions are subordinated to the nation as an ethnic entity. The emphasis was on 'Blood and Soil' with the imperative that we "think with our blood". Fascism presented an answer to the working-classes and the middle-classes, it eventually gained the support of the elites, all of which had been devastated by the economic turmoil of recent years. It was a horrible answer, the consequences of which we all know, which was posited as a "third position" to capitalism and socialism. Along with class, individuality and the state, even left and right was to be transcended by racial purity.

The Mail has been involved in spreading propaganda against asylum seekers for decades. In 1938 the scapegoats weren't Somalis but Jews who were fleeing persecution by the Nazis in Europe. The Daily Mail objected to the Jews seeking asylum in Britain: "The way stateless Jews from Germany are pouring in from every port of this country is becoming an outrage. The number of aliens entering the country through the back door is a problem to which the Daily Mail has repeatedly pointed." We might want to tell ourselves that the right-wing press were not conducive to the rise of Fascism in Europe and the ultimate consequences of Nazism. As part of the cultural amnesia of post-WWII Britain the tendencies in the Establishment which effectively appeased Hitler, and cheered him on in some cases, have been forgotten. It should be remembered that if there had been a German invasion of Britain, we could have had experienced the kind of occupation witnessed in France. There would have been death camps on British soil and a puppet government in Whitehall. We should never forget that Winston Churchill was a maverick and that is why he is so great.

The right-wing rags have a great deal of influence and shape discourse. We still hear the usual lines that people have the independence of mind to resist propaganda. And yet we have Fox News, which is basically the propaganda wing of the GOP, where Glenn Beck calls Obama a "racist" as well as a "communist". As the Nazi Party knew all too well, big lies are the ones which are believed and swallowed en mass. The mass-media actively disseminates such lies, often in the most sensationalist terms of sex and death, in a bid of competition. We have reached the point that you don't even have to read a right-wing newspaper to come across the latest story. When told that the media is not infuential always remember the words of Hitler in September 1942 ''The attitude of the Daily Mail at the time of our reoccupation of the Rhineland was of very great assistance to us . All the British of the Beaverbrook-Rothermere (The Daily Express and The Daily Mail) circle came to me and said 'In the last war we were on the wrong side'."