"What is astonishing is that the demonstrations, which at first glance appeared to have a groundswell of popular support, are being orchestrated by a small number of highly disciplined Left-wing revolutionaries."
—
The ToryTelegraph
The right wing press is being strangely complementary of the revolutionary socialists this week. Apparently we’re single-handedly bringing down the government’s workfare scheme (or more accurately, half a dozen of us are) which is quite the feat!
Workfare is a scheme to allow massive companies to hire unemployed people for 8 weeks so that the government will give them benefits which are less than minimum wage. This allows companies to undercut employees who require minimum wages and undermines the value of labour and the capacity for people who are in service sector jobs and the unemployed to be able to support themselves. This is being posed by right wing press as “work experience for the young” but to me it looks like free labour for already massive exploitative corporations being promoted and funded by the coalition government.
Campaigns such as the Right to Work, largely SWP and union promoted, and Youth Fight for Jobs, similarly SP and unions predominately, have hardly been hidden over the last year and most people who have followed what the far-left socialists have been up to will already know about them. Yet to the right wing press this is suddenly a surprise and is being portrayed as an elite, disciplined cabal. Shows what happens if you only get your news from one source …
An article in The Sun uses (un)surprisingly similar language when painting the SWP as the “villains of Westminster.” In the same article, Jack Straw is the hero of Westminster because Maggie Thatcher likes him. Shows where the class allegiances of bourgeois press really lies, huh?
Here’s to Eric Joyce, at least someone in Parliament has the right idea.
