This is further proof of how much contempt the Tories actually have for heavy industry in this country, and the men and women, who work in it. Yesterday Mike ran this story from the Mirror Online, that reported that the Tories, far from seeking to protect the British steel industry, actually assisted the importation of cheap steel from China that’s destroying it: http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/02/10/tories-block-bid-to-help-uk-steel-industry-are-they-traitors-or-simply-enemies-of-the-people/
The article reports that while the Americans slapped a 66% tariff on Chinese imports, the EU only raised theirs by 9%. This was due mostly to Britain.
Unbelievable. But not surprising.
For all their mouthing about being the party of ‘industry’, the Tories – and Blairite New Labour, come to that – represent only a small part of it: the financial sector. They have no understanding of or interest in the needs of the manufacturing sector. One of the Thatcher’s ministers, the only man in her cabinet to come from manufacturing industry, said he couldn’t get the Leaderene to understand how a strong pound actually hurt Britain by making British goods expensive for the rest of the world. Not that Thatcher and her successor, Major, had any sympathy for heavy industry anyway. She destroyed the coal industry, and Major administered the coup de grace because heavy industry means strong unions. And it was the NUM that defeated Ted Heath. The 1984 Miner’s Strike was phase 2 of the conflict, in which the Tories decided they were going to be the winner. And so they were, at the cost of the British coal industry.
The British financial sector is geared to overseas investment. This has been pointed out repeated by everyone from Kinnock, before he converted to the Thatcherite free market, and ‘Red’ Ken Livingstone. And its true. New Labour practically caved into the City when Broon and Mo Mowlan made their ‘prawn cocktail’ offensive to win City backing for New Labour. One of the apparatchiks they installed at the Bank of England, Deanne Julius, was previously a staple of the American banking system. She stated that Britain should get out of manufacturing and concentrate instead on service industries.
So it was almost a foregone conclusion that the Tories would definitely not try to protect was remains of British heavy industry from the Chinese. And particularly as Cameron has spent the past few years shuttling back and forth from the Chung Kuo trying to get the Chinese to invest in Britain. Like building roads, new nuclear power stations and so forth. And obviously, for all this to happen, British industry must suffer in the process.
And again, what really galls is the crass hypocrisy. They claim to be the patriotic party, stoutly defending Britain’s interests against Johnny Foreigner. Remember Thatcher’s 1987 election broadcast, which featured footage of Spitfires zooming about the skies, while an excited voice enthused ‘Man was born free’ and ended with ‘It’s great… to be great again’. Alan Coren took this apart the next weekend on the News Quiz, when he drily described it as showing the Royal Conservative Airforce, and reminded everyone that the first thing the servicemen did when they came back from the War was overwhelmingly vote Labour.
And the EU naturally looms large in the Tory demonology as a monstrous foreign power determined to destroy Britain. Well, in this case, the opposite is true. The EU would have helped Britain. The people, who killed our industry this time, are the patriotic flag wavers of the Tory party. The old saying’s right: ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.’
Tags: 'Mirror Online, Alan Coren, Conservatives, David Cameron, Deanne Julius, Financial Sector, Gordon Brown, John Major, Ken Livingstone, Labour Party, Manufacturing Industry, Margaret Thatcher, miners' Strike, Mo Mowlam, Neil Kinnock, New Labour, nuclear power, NUM, RAF, Steel Industry, Tariffs, Ted Heath, The City, The News Quiz, tony blair, Vox Political, World War II
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