ELECTION MANIFESTO: SOCIALISM NOT CAPITALISM Before the 1997 election Blair said: "people want honest politics, and they are going to get it” (quoted in House of Commons, 9 July 1997). But what they wanted and what they got were poles apart. The Blair government has delivered umpteen U-turns: from pensions to prisons, from railways to "rough sleepers", from student grants to sales of arms - you name it, and the people who campaigned over that issue were disappointed. Promises met the bitter reality of capitalism and were broken “Education, education, education" said Blair. The school system is in crisis. Droves of teachers have left teaching and the shortage of teachers has reduced many schools to a four-day week or classes forced to share a teacher. "Britain has 400,000 teachers in its classrooms, and 400,000 who are not" (Observer, 10 December 2000). The announcement that "the day of the bog-standard comprehensive is over", when comprehensives had been a ‘core' Labour policy for decades, contrasted with Blunkett's guarantee: "no selection either by examination or interview under a Labour government" (Labour Conference, 1995). Workers under capitalism get schooled for employment and future exploitation. Only the rich get educated for a life of privilege Likewise the NHS with its rising staff shortages - 1,000 GPs and 14,000 nurses are needed (November-December 2000). The promise of shorter waiting lists has mysteriously become the reality of longer waiting times, ie you have to wait longer before seeing a consultant and joining the waiting list. Capitalism cannot meet the needs of all society The government declared war on 'poverty': they renamed it ‘social exclusion’ But the reality of increasing poverty resulted in 55,000 winter deaths of pensioners from “cold-related illnesses" (December 1999-March 2000), the highest such figure since 1976 (Observer, 26 November 2000). (i)