In the wake of his funeral on 30 January, with political and media pundits pouring forth a torrent of gushing tributes, it is worth taking a look at what the life of John Prescott really amounted to.
Lord John ‘Two Jags’ Prescott might be described as a giant in physical stature, but he was a pygmy in his intellectual, political and moral stature.
He was the very embodiment of the Labour aristocracy; of the bribery of the leadership of the working class. Of the labour-dominated trade union leadership’s sell-out and servility. And of the Labour party’s absolute loyalty to the system of imperialism.
Labour party control of the working-class movement is the secret to the continued domination of Britain by the ruling-class billionaire elite in the City of London, and John played his part well. Starting as yet another vaunted ‘militant’ of the seamen’s union and a leader of the RMT, he rose to become deputy leader of the Labour party under Tony Blair.
Together with his partners in crime Prime Minister Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown, Deputy Prime Minister Prescott was a master at justifying his regime’s thoroughgoing assault on the pay and conditions of British workers. From the introduction of the minimum wage (to which impoverished level an increasing proportion of British workers have had their wages reduced) to zero-hour contract insecurity. From deregulation to boost the profits of City financiers to Asbo control orders for the working-class youth.
It was the Blair, Brown and Prescott cabal which deemed that “aggressive beggars” should be criminalised, while agreeing that the financial gangsters should be saved from the 2008 stock market crash of their own ‘subprime mortgage’/‘collateralised debt obligation’ making.
The criminal British bankers, we were told, were “too big to fail”. £800bn must be gifted to them by the state. But don’t worry, their profits would remain private, and all debt would be transferred to the working people via austerity and an increasing tax burden.
The ‘Labour’ government in which Prescott served degraded the country’s educational system to the point where it felt more like a penal colony – for staff and pupils alike – and then sent parents struggling with their children’s school attendance to jail.
That same regime was chiefly responsible for the privatisation of the NHS, via the now notorious mechanisms of ‘public-private partnerships’ (PPP) and ‘private finance initiatives (PFI). They changed the role of the health (and social services, remember those?) minister from being the ultimate provider of healthcare to British citizens to a glorified ‘ombudsman’, overseeing the distribution of funding and contracting out of services – ie, the privatisation of public services and the ‘regulation’ of the new entities.
And, of course, it was under the guiding hand of Blair, Brown, Prescott and health secretaries Frank Dobson and Alan Milburn that the role of (now Sir) Simon Stevens was elevated until he became one of the key movers behind NHS privatisation. This Oxbridge graduate, who would go on to serve as president of the international arm of the world’s largest global health insurance company ‘UnitedHealth’, was appointed to advise on the destruction of the NHS by the Labour of Tony Blair and John Prescott. And now Wes Streeting and Keir Starmer are back to finish the job.
Prescott, let it never be forgotten, was among the chief cheerleaders of the new colonial wars, fought for the aggrandisement of British financial capital, arms manufacturers and oil conglomerates. Together with Blair, Brown, foreign secretary Jack Straw, home secretary David Blunkett, and of course defence minister turned Nato general secretary ‘Lord’ George Robertson, backed the genocidal war against Yugoslavia, bringing conflict back to Europe for the first time since the second world war.
They launched war on tiny Sierra Leone to secure its mineral and labour resources. And, of course, they manufactured and fought two genocidal wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, “shoulder to shoulder with the USA” in the form of Bill Clinton and George W Bush.
It is well known that Tony Blair was richly rewarded for his services to finance capital, amassing a personal fortune running into hundreds of millions of pounds and a huge property portfolio – all of which enabled his own son Euan to become a tech millionaire by the age of 40. Poor old Prescott, as the ‘working-class fig leaf’, had to content himself with a few million and his two Jaguars. His cheapness reflects his value.
In his September 1944 speech ‘Serve the people’, Chairman Mao Zedong said: “All men must die, but death can vary in its significance. The ancient Chinese writer Szuma Chien said: ‘Though death befalls all men alike, it may be weightier than Mount Tai or lighter than a feather.’
“To die for the people is weightier than Mount Tai, but to work for the fascists and die for the exploiters and oppressors is lighter than a feather.”
Indeed.
