Today Lloyds TSB shareholders voted to accept a taxpayer subsidy while also voting to buy out one of their biggest rivals.  People must be wondering why a bank that can afford to be buying other banks needs a state subsidy.  It is like asking for housing benefit so that you can afford to but a second home.

Meanwhile, the Government spend more public money on TV advertisements calling on people to report benefit fraud.  Today we have witnessed a glaring example of an undeserving and dishonest claim for state help, get phoning!

The SNP answer was to have HBOS taken over by their wealthy supporter Sir George Matthewson.  According to Alex Salmond Sir George is the man to protect Scottish banks.  When Matthewson was in charge of the RBS he presided over 18,000 job cuts, and he is still paid by RBS as a consultant.

Solidarity believe in the democratic nationalisation of the banks and financial institutions to provide cheap credit for housing and for the economy as a whole.  To read Capitalism in Crisis - A Socialist Reponse, passed unanimously at the recent Solidarity Conference, click 'read more' below

Capitalism in crisis – A Socialist Response

This conference recognises that capitalism is in turmoil and faces its biggest crisis since the world slump of 1929-1933. The catastrophe that has engulfed the world’s banking system has forced the most openly neo-liberal government in history – the Bush regime in the US – into unprecedented state intervention, including nationalisations of failing financial institutions. While in Britain Northern Rock was also nationalised and others may well follow.

These events represent a huge ideological defeat for capitalism and especially the neo-liberal wing that has held sway for the past period. As Semus Milne commented in the Guardian recently: “What is certain is the dominance of the free-market model of capitalism which held sway across the world for two decades is rapidly coming to an end.”

But it is not just the banking and finance sector that is in crisis. The G7 nations, including Britain and the US are all in, or likely to enter a recession, in the next few months. As a consequence unemployment is likely to increase rapidly. While attacks on wages and living standards will be accelerated by the employers and the bosses. 

Solidarity notes that the response to this crisis by the main parties including New Labour and the SNP has been woeful. Because they are wedded to capitalism they have no long-term solutions to this unfolding crisis. In contrast we believe that the socialist polices of democratic public ownership as a step towards a socialist society to replace capitalist chaos and to end to fat cat privatisation and greed will become increasingly popular.

Solidarity therefore agrees to campaign for:

• An immediate increase in the minimum wage to £8.50 an hour. The introduction of a sliding scale of wages that would see wages increase automatically to cover for rises in inflation. Pensions and benefits should also rise automatically to compensate for inflation.

• The setting up of committees of workers, pensioners, single parents, consumer groups etc to monitor prices and calculate the real cost of inflation for working class communities.

• The opening of the books and accounts of the big companies that control the economy to help expose their real profits and the pay and bonuses of the top bosses.

• Implement a windfall tax on the oil, gas and power companies that have made a killing from recent price hikes. Bring these companies and all the privatised utilities into democratic public ownership to be run by the workers and consumers for the needs of all.

• The democratic nationalisation of the banks and financial institutions to provide cheap credit for housing and for the economy as a whole.

• A democratic socialist and sustainable planned economy to replace the anarchy of capitalism.