For decades, our Party has been saying, ‘Rebuild Britain’. Under a capitalism in absolute decline, the capitalist class has been set on destroying industry as a way to destroy the British working class.
Britain needs a national plan for becoming self-reliant in our most important manufacturing needs. What do we need?
We must retain the skills and production bases that we still have, because modern manufacturing industries need lots of production experience and capital. We need to bypass the banks and invest and lend directly into manufacturing industry, transport and services. We must invest in science, R&D and in educating more people in the most advanced skills, particularly production engineering.
We need to make the goods that people need – cars, planes, trains and ships, earth-moving and building equipment, power-generation plant, pharmaceuticals, household appliances, machine tools, electronics, textiles, steel, and telecommunications systems.
We have to boost the nation’s savings and channel more of them into planned industrial investment. So we need to get our hands on our own money. Pensions are deferred wages, and pension funds alone could rebuild British industry. We could also use the £255 billion that should have been paid in tax, which is hidden in tax havens. We need to bring back controls on the export of capital and ensure that it is invested here.
We could charge those borrowing for vital industrial investment at lower interest rates than for ordinary borrowers. We need to control the money markets, control imports through state trading agreements, and protect our home market, to give our reborn industries time to grow.
We need to take charge of energy, take control away from the companies that are bleeding householders dry, plan – without EU restrictions – for a future without blackouts and rebuild our coal, oil and gas systems. We need to launch a programme of public housing, buy up from developers and buy-to-let speculators at the bottom of the market, offer state mortgages and house the people.
We need to reclaim our waters for fishing and end the misuse of our farm land. We need to plan investment in agriculture to help us to grow what we need, with greater self-sufficiency in food, and to invest in local industries and in rural infrastructure - transport, Post Offices, local bank branches, schools, medical practices and libraries.