Crisis has returned with a vengeance. Britain is now officially back in
recession following two quarters of economic contraction, something
which will come as no surprise to many workers on the breadline. The
Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the British economy contracted
by 0.2% in the first quarter of 2012, which follows a 0.3% decline in
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the final three months of 2011.
Crisis has returned with a vengeance. Britain is now officially back in recession following two quarters of economic contraction, something which will come as no surprise to many workers on the breadline. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the British economy contracted by 0.2% in the first quarter of 2012, which follows a 0.3% decline in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the final three months of 2011.
It is the first double-dip recession in the UK since 1975 and deals a heavy blow to the Coalition. All those economists who dismissed such a possibility, believing the crisis was over, now have egg on their face.
The ONS said the fall in GDP was driven by the biggest fall in construction output for three years, while the manufacturing sector failed to return to growth.
"It’s a very tough economic situation. It’s taking longer than anyone hoped to recover from the biggest debt crisis of our lifetime”, said George Osborne, while adding that there was no scope to ease up on the Government’s austerity measures.
British workers face the grueling prospect of years of austerity, mass unemployment and falling living standards. This is the real meaning of capitalist crisis.
Such a discredited system needs to be thrown into the dustbin. There has never been more need for a socialist planned economy, with the “commanding heights of the economy” owned and run in the interests of working people.
