As a fanfare lo rally the ruling class, the Tories" clection manifesto fell flat.
It was filched before publication day. This hardly polished Sailor Heath's inuge as the man to guide British capitalism out of the shuais and reefs of economic crisis.
To rub it in, two leading crew members - Rippon and Keith Joseph -had mutinied: Rippon's army of scabs and blacklegs and Joseph's three milton unemployed to beat the crisis, hardly suggested the Tories were serious about 'national unity.' After this series of hoobs no wonder the press gave the Tory package a rough time. A Sunday Times writer said. *... never before has an apposition party in the short space of six months and with its entire leadership unaltered, felt the need to reverse so many of the pledges it never even had the chance to keep."
SPECTACLE
The spectacle of the Tories on the rack is due to more than bad luck. Their defeat at the hands of the miners lett the ruling class without a strategy.
Since then, the cconomic crisis has got far worse. The working class came out of struggles against anti-union laws and incomes policy with ita strength intact. Any Tory Government which churns out the same actacks on the working class as the last one, will be brushed aside.
The Tories are trying to change tack. They have to fight this election with an insoluble problem. They know that any elected government will have to launch vicious attacks on the woricing class to salvage the atuation for the employers. But now the Tories need a soft approach.
With employers facing economic collapse, the prospect of another Tory Government roughing things up again is enough to make any tranquillisers.
This Tory dilemma explains the tacie national unity approach of their manifesto. It raist be the most Irrelevant guide lo action the employers luve ever read. It tries to hide its bankruptcy by promising something for everyone in the ruling ciass-incomes policy, but of course, more "considerate than Jast time, Control of the money supply, but not, of course, as draconian as the ideas of Keith Joseph NO DIFFERENCE The ruling class know this sort of rubbish will make no difference to the inevitable huge struggles against rising prices and unemployment the working class are going to launch this winter and spring. The Tories admit that none of their proposals for government expenditure can be Implemented unless they solve the employers econontic crisis. But this assumes the working class is going to be defeated first-a very unlikely event. Back to square one It's no surprise that the Tory mani festo blows kisses in the direction of the Liberals and the idea of coalition government. To take the risk of a Parliamentury love-affair with the Liberals may be the only way out of a complete debacle for the Tories in Coalitions in Parliament between the Tories, Liberals, Loyalists and Scottish Nationalists will not soive any probiems for the ruling class A majority in Parhament is no guarantee of success. The hartles ahcad will be decided not in Parliament, but outside it.
That's why the most pathetic line From the Tory manifesto reads like the last cry from a sick dog: "It is in Pariiament, not in the streets, that nalsonal policies must be worked out and disputes fesolved."
The employers, after reading the Tory manifesto, will dump it in the dustbin and roll up their sleeves for the real strugele afier the election.
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