{"id":6457,"date":"2015-10-26T12:41:42","date_gmt":"2015-10-26T12:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/unitelive.org\/?p=6457"},"modified":"2015-10-26T12:41:42","modified_gmt":"2015-10-26T12:41:42","slug":"remember-redcar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/?p=6457","title":{"rendered":"Remember Redcar"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Next time you hear the Chancellor, George Osborne, talk about the \u00e2\u20ac\u0098march of the makers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, the Northern powerhouse or that the Conservatives were now the party of the workers – remember Redcar.<\/p>\n

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Or the next time you see him in his hard hat, his high vis jacket and playing at being a hod carrier\u00c2\u00a0 -remember Redcar.<\/p>\n

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Frankly when we hear these rhetorical tricks and see these visual clich\u0102\u00a9s we take them for what they are \u00e2\u20ac\u201c political gimmicks.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Redcar, a north east coastal town, relied on the steel industry for its survival.\u00c2\u00a0 Middlesbrough just down from Redcar was laid waste by Margaret Thatcher.<\/p>\n

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We haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seen Osborne or Cameron in Redcar, no doubt as sons of Thatcher toiling in Central Office\u00c2\u00a0they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to replicate that unforgettable image (new readers go to Google) of Margaret Thatcher hand bag in the crook of her arm, head slightly bowed in the middle of wasteland.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Thatcher\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s legacy as Prime Minister was 248,000 jobs lost in the region.\u00c2\u00a0 By the start of the 1990s British Steel had gone from 33,000 jobs to 6,500.\u00c2\u00a0 Jobs were lost in the chemical industry and shipbuilding had virtually been eradicated.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Today Iain Duncan Smith, secretary of state for work and pensions, tours TV studio to proclaim an economic miracle every time it looks as if employment was going up.\u00c2\u00a0 The truth is these are insecure jobs with workers heading for an uncertain future.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In Osborne\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s conference speech he got carried away by the number of construction sites he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d visited and rallied the Tory troops by his insistence that they were the \u00e2\u20ac\u0098builders\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We must give this supreme political tactician credit where credit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s due, after all he spectacularly perpetuated the myth that the banking crisis was caused by the last Labour government\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spending money on schools and hospitals.<\/p>\n

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A lack of any meaningful rebuttal by Labour\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s front bench left the economic field to the Tories and they exploited this mercilessly.\u00c2\u00a0 Their message discipline that they were the only party that could claim the mantle of \u00e2\u20ac\u0098fiscal responsibility’ \u00e2\u20ac\u201c was breath-taking in its scope.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Acceptance of this mass calumny led Osborne to attempt to consolidate the Conservative\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s economic competence against a reckless opposition with his \u00e2\u20ac\u0098charter for fiscal responsibility\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Farce<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n

The \u00e2\u20ac\u0098charter\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 is itself a farce.\u00c2\u00a0Binding a future government on fiscal rules, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even constitutional – not that this would worry the Chancellor since it provided him with another opportunity to wrong-foot Labour.<\/p>\n

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The Tory leadership have turned balancing the budget and having a surplus into a fetish.\u00c2\u00a0 As John McDonnell said in his conference speech austerity is not an economic necessity it is a political choice.\u00c2\u00a0And Labour will bring to an end an ideological obsession that is causing harm and misery to countless thousands of people.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Much has been made of John\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s U-turn regarding the fiscal charter and while the braying Tory backbenchers had much fun with his embarrassment nevertheless we are in the right place.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Despite this merry making by the Tories what should be really embarrassing are the number of broken promises that\u00c2\u00a0are stacking up not least the promise that tax credits would not be cut.<\/p>\n

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It was during the\u00c2\u00a0TV ‘debate’ on April 30 that Cameron told David Dimbleby, the audience in the studio and the viewers watching that \u00e2\u20ac\u0098he did not want to cut child tax credits\u00e2\u20ac\u2122.<\/p>\n

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After the election Osborne in his budget smashed this promise to smithereens.\u00c2\u00a0 Cameron may try to use his weasel word \u00e2\u20ac\u0098want\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 but that won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t satisfy\u00c2\u00a0 Michelle Dorrell, who on Question Time<\/em> was visibly distressed that she was facing tax credit cuts that would mean, no matter how hard she worked, she wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be able to afford to pay her bills.\u00c2\u00a0 She rightly feels let down.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Will the tax credits broken promise be Cameron\/Osborne\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s poll tax?\u00c2\u00a0 We often think that Thatcher was chucked out of office by her Cabinet and her MPs because of her euro-sceptic views.\u00c2\u00a0 That may be true\u00c2\u00a0of the elite but for the masses it was the Poll Tax that brought her down.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Her MPs worried that they would lose their seats as constituents crowded into their surgeries to complain about the unfairness of the tax decided she had to go.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Steel workers have been abandoned by this government despite the unity of the trade unions and the employers that what is required is for the state to intervene.\u00c2\u00a0 As Unite\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s assistant general secretary, Tony Burke said:\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u015bWe need help, we need a strategy and there is no time to waste.\u00e2\u20ac\u0165<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s right.\u00c2\u00a0 There are enough waste lands in industrial Britain as there is without any more.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This article\u00c2\u00a0 first appeard in Tribune October 18<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Next time you hear the Chancellor, George Osborne, talk about the \u00e2\u20ac\u0098march of the makers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122, the Northern powerhouse or that the Conservatives were now the party of the workers – remember Redcar.   Or the next time you see him in his hard hat, his high vis jacket and playing at being a hod carrier\u00c2\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6141,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22],"tags":[269],"wps_subtitle":"No more wastelands please Chancellor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6457"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6457"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6457\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6458,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6457\/revisions\/6458"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitelive.test.igniteamt.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}