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Top 10 Tory Terrors
At some point in the next couple of months there’s going to be a General Election.
It’s looking frighteningly possible that we’ll be under the rule of Dave “I’m just an ordinary bloke” Cameron and his gang of merry buffoons.
Scared yet?
You should be.
Leftfield presents the Top 10 Tory Terrors…
1. They want to strip back women’s abortion rights, piece by piece, until we’re left with no choice and nowhere to go.
2. They want to force people on Jobseeker’s Allowance for more than 12 months to do community service. That is, effectively creating a slave workforce of the unemployed.
3. They want to cut benefits to single mothers in order to ‘encourage marriage’ – or just punish women stupid enough to get pregnant to men who’ll leave them with the wean.
4. The Conservatives plan to repeal the fox hunting ban, making it perfectly acceptable to rip an animal to shreds just for a laugh.
5. Their determination to stop immigration has caused them to come up with some crazy ideas – not only are they going to set up a Border Police Force, but they’re going to force any woman entering the country with a man other than her father or husband to a private interrogation. WTF?!?
The Tories on a YBF school trip.
6. They plan to allow anyone to open up a school, in the ridiculous belief that exposing schools to the capitalist free market and competition will improve standards, in a move criticised by the Association of School and College Leaders.
7. Tory candidates and activists are trained by the terrifying Young Britons’ Foundation, who want to scrap the NHS and shoot environmentalists. The YBF took the young Tories to meet scary American right-wingers and shoot machine guns. Sounds like one of those terrorist training grounds they’re so worried about…
8. The Tories have promised to bring us a new age of austerity, slashing public spending, freezing pay for public sector workers and putting thousands of people out of work.
9. They want to completely privatise the Royal Mail, and have already been in talks with some private vultures bidders who are up for buying it. This will lead to a crappy service, posties out of work, and those kept getting shite pay and conditions.
10. In return for the support of the right wing papers he owns, the Tories have basically offered to let Rupert Murdoch and family write their media policy. This means major cuts to the BBC, weakening of regulation of his media empire, and generally much less good telly and media, as Rupert expands his stranglehold with government support.
Young David and chums in their uni days. Cameron is second from the left in the back row, Boris Johnson is sitting on the right
I tried to make a link in the photo caption above but couldn’t get it to work. The photo is of Cameron and Johnson as members of the Bullingdon CLub, an exclusive posh dining group at Oxford, who also into getting fucked and trashing things:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullingdon_Club
I’ve made the photo link to the wikipedia article. It’s the first I’ve heard about the Bullingdon club, crazy stuff…
Either Labour or Tory, the next government will have to slash public services to pay for the massive bailout given to the bankers. But I think it is better for the Left that Labour are increasing their vote, it makes it more likely there will be a hung parliament with Labour reliant on the Lib Dems. That means at a time when its necessary for capitalism to have a strong government to make cuts that were worse than Thatcher, they will actually have a weak and unstable one – thats a much better opponent for the Left to take on.
BTW if you think the YBF are mental, you should see what the Federation of Conservative Students got up to in the 80′s. They distributed “Hang Nelson Mandela” posters and supported the Contras. They were so right-wing they went too far for Norman Tebitt and he dissolved them!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_of_Conservative_Students
Yeah, overall I think the best we can hope for is a hung parliament. Cuts wise there’s probably little to distinguish a Labour and Tory government, the only slight advantage is that the Tories are still really socially reactionary, as shown by some of the stuff here. The main point is that we all need to get ready and start organising to fight the massive assault that’s coming whoever’s in power after the election.
A Tory Government is best for polarising politics around the national question and a Labour minority Gov or hung parliament increases the bargaining power of the SNP. Anyway only independence can give the Scottish people the democratic space to decide how to minimise or avoid capitalisms counter reforms. Vote SNP.
Voting in an SNP government thus far doesn’t seem to have taken us much closer to independence.
But I agree on one level, hopefully the outcome of this process will hasten the break up of the British state.
I do think people should be wary of the fallacy that a really bad Tory government will automatically lead to more militancy. It’s one possible outcome. However, the election of a Tory government does overall represent a balance of forces where the working class is relatively weak, otherwise it wouldn’t happen. The Tories are a powerful fighting political machine. It’s just as possible that resistance isn’t strong, gets defeated, and the ruling class consolidate their gains even further. Which is why organising needs to start taking place NOW.
To be perfectly honest I don’t see an iota of difference between Labour and the Tories.
The logic of the Tories are the most evil people in the world brigade is that at the end of the day you have to vote Labour.
I thought we’d put that particular mistake to bed well before 1997.
Labour and the Conservatives are the same in terms of being right wing capitalist fuck bags.
But there is one key difference – women’s rights.
The Tories want to make it really, really difficult for me to have an abortion – and then after they’ve forced me to have a child I’m not ready for, they’re going to tax me more and give me less benefits for being a single mum.
If you’re a woman, living under a Labour government looks a hell of a lot better than a Tory one.
On abortion – if you live in Scotland health is a devolved issue.
No, it is not. Abortion being kept under the control of the UK government was one of Jack Straw’s little pet projects, and he succeeded. We are still under the auspices of the totally stupid Two Doctors system.
http://news.scotsman.com/devolution/Jack-Straw-accused-of-coverup.5903407.jp
You are absolutely right Lynsey, my partner tells me there is division in Abortion Rights campaign between those who want to keep it that way and those who think it should become a devolved issue.
None the less I think any idea that the Tories represent a quantitatively more reactionary government on key issues is badly mistaken.
I think the lives of women, men and children are going to get immensely worse on every count over the coming years, regardless of which government is elected.
Back in 1997 I was joint editor of the magazine of the Scottish Socialist Alliance, ‘Red’.
We decided to go with a line that said that Labour would actually be WORSE than the Tories.
http://www.lumison.co.uk/~walkerslater/ed/rednet/issue2.htm
In 1997 that went totally against the narrative of the time, Blair was supposed to be the great bringer of relief from the nightmare of the Tories, “Things Can Only Get Better”.
But we were right to do that because just 3 years later we were able to produce a poster of Thatcher morphing into Blair that was to become a symbol of the way that people felt about the betrayal of hope;
http://scottishsocialistparty.s3.amazonaws.com/images/posters/thatcherblair.jpg
I think what I’m driving at is that I think it’s dangerous to get sucked into a oh no the evil Tories are coming perspective.
The logic of it sucks you into defending the indefensible, how can you argue against re-electing a Labour government ?
Because the plain fact of the matter is that the Labour government elected in 1997 has done far more real damage to the lives of people around the world than even Margaret Thatcher could have dreamed of.
Thatcher crushed and destroyed trade unions and working class communities.
Blair took up the mantle of Thatcherism and projected the UK’s military power, steadily built up under the Tories, to bring death and destruction to millions of people around the world.
It was with Labour in government that the British State worked with the US to kidnap and torture Muslim caught up in the War On Terror.
We were right, the worst was yet to come.
Auld Yin – Longest comment we’ve received thus far. Blimey!
Anyway – yes, Labour have done some terrible and awful things and will continue if given half the chance. The Tories have, and will, too.
I recognise all of the awful things Labour have done, but I think that the issue of abortion IS enough to consider the Tories to be worse, if in every other issue they and Labour are one and the same.
It doesn’t mean I’m happy to be living under a Labour government. But I’m not ashamed to say that if Labour (or any party other than the Tories) do win the General Election, I (and a lot of other women) will be breathing a big sigh of relief. The struggle will go on, but I’ll sleep a lot easier at night knowing that my reproductive rights are intact.
The same goes for LGBT persons I think
I remember the same argument coming up during the us elections, with people hoping for an obama win mainly because the other guy was anti-choice. I pretty much agree with that logic. If labour wins, I’ll probably be slightly relieved, though I wouldn’t advocate votong for them. It’s going to be horrible no matter who wins, so we’ll be better off having a horrible government with some womens’ rights than without.
Sarah – originally, one of the top 10 was about homophobia, but when I was looking for a link to back it up with all I could find was Dave saying he’s totes not a homophobe – they’re obviously worried about this, and trying really hard to portray themselves as being for lgbt equality – despite nearly all individual tories thinking that gay people are unfit parents and shouldn’t be allowed to care for children.
I was talking to a couple of people about this and the point was made that in the UK abortion has never been an issue that political parties have made pledges or had policy on, it’s always been a matter of ‘individual conscious’. So it’s not the Tories as a party that have made statements on abortion on or have made pledges on policy, it’s individual Tories, in this case Nadine Dorries, who will try to have another go at reducing the time limit.
The problem is that there are anti-abortionists in every political party, particularly in Labour in Scotland and of course none other than George Galloway is a hardline anti-abortionist.
The biggest threat to women’s reproductive rights will be the huge cuts in health service spending that are on their way, cuts that will be made regardless of which government is in power.