Worthless Tory promises¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter excoriates the Tory election platform as a fraud built on the ruins of capitalist decline, arguing that the Conservatives forced a snap election precisely to prevent the working class from experiencing the full force of the coming slump. Churchill’s rhetoric of toil, tears, sweat and blood is presented not as wartime necessity but as a permanent programme of austerity. The Tories originally intended to campaign on promising nothing, but mass discontent forced them into the same demagogy Lloyd George deployed after the First World War. The text exposes the gap between promise and reality with specific figures: the Tories pledge full employment while knowing unemployment will reach four to seven million; they promise housing while planning only 300,000 units in three years against a stated need of 9.6 million; they promise food while cutting rations; they invoke freedom and the Atlantic Charter while shooting down Greeks and starving the Indian people.
The chapter situates this within the broader context of imperialist decline and inter-imperialist rivalry. The rush election is a deliberate manoeuvre to stampede the electorate before the next six months reveal the horrors capitalism holds in store. Already “redundancy” and wage slashing have begun. The text then pivots to a polemic against capitalism itself: the working class asks only for the minimum—food, shelter, security, decent conditions, recreation—yet capitalism cannot provide even this, despite the machinery and resources existing on a world scale to guarantee a paradise on earth. The obstacle is the capitalists’ rapacious greed for profits, which leaves machines idle while masses starve and pits workers of different nations against each other.
The chapter’s central polemic, however, is directed not at the Tories but at the Labour Party and the organised workers who still place faith in it. The Revolutionary Communist Party’s own programme is outlined: nationalise mines, banks, railways without compensation; extend friendship to German and European workers; break down national boundaries; build socialism. But the text laments that the majority of class-conscious workers still trust Labour, explaining its past failures by the absence of a clear majority. The chapter counters this with a damning indictment of the two previous Labour governments: unemployment increased, workers’ standards were not raised, police were used to break strikes, and more Indian workers were shot and imprisoned than under the Tories. The reason, it insists, is that Labour leaders were never prepared to break with the capitalists. The chapter thus functions as a sharp intervention in the 1945 general election, arguing that a Labour majority will change nothing unless the working class abandons reformist illusions and adopts a revolutionary socialist programme.