Tories Arm Battle
Socialist Press1979 1979-05-16Read it in the scan (PDF), scan page 1 →
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know them". The truth of this old i adage was richly confirmed this week in the first actions of the new Tory government.
A mere two weeks after a brutal killing of anti-fascist Blair Peach by truncheon-wielding Special Patrol Group thugs, Tory Home Secretary Whitelaw announced a cash handout for the police.
They are to receive an immediate 20% pay increase on top of the 20% already paid to them last September by the Callaghan government.
Promised by Callaghan The next day Defence Secretary Pym announced a similar 8% bonus for the armed forces.
These hefty pay rises to the armed bodies of men that defend British capitalism had, of course, been promised for future payment by the Labour leaders, whose anti-working class policies opened the door and laid out a welcome mat for Thatcher's return.
But the Tories' rush to purchase the enthusiastic allegiance of these uniformed strikebreakers is a clear expression of their determination to prepare the ground for inevitable large-scale confrontations with the working class at home, and an intensification of the imperialist. war in Ireland.
Anthony Wedgewood Benn's decision to pull out of the Shadow Cabinet and withdraw to Labour's back benches is a cynical attempt to cover his tracks and reupholster his tattered and threadbare left' image.
Benn has correctly recognised that within the defeated Labour Party the climate will now be increasingly favourable to those fighting for socialist policies against Callaghan's right wing positions.
No opposition But of course Benn has no such socialist policies to offer. Nor can he even claim to havel stood out in opposition to the anti-working class policies of either Wilson or Callaghan.
For both these leaders his presence in the cabinet was a useful 'left' camouflage.
They knew that while Benn occasionally made loud ambiguous noises, he always helped to defuse any real opposition to their programme of wage cuts, unemployment and repression in Ireland.
Benn now claims that the Labour government went "off the rails" at four turning points: its abandonment of nationalisa-
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PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report "By their friends shall ye
Bein runs from fight