The Con-Dem’s Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) is an innocuous name for a brutal promise: big business politicians will sacrifice our living standards to restore the profits and bonuses of the fat-cats and bankers. The CSR is a full spectrum attack on working and middle class people. Our jobs, services and benefits will be butchered.
The Con-Dems rhetoric that we are ‘all in this together’ is a scandalous lie. This is a government of millionaires, advised by millionaires, acting in the interests of... millionaires! But the budget deficit that the cuts are meant to ‘fix’ was caused by the bank-bailouts and an economy wrecked by financial speculation. To add insult to injury the cuts are being demanded by the very same bankers and speculators! If the Con-Dems get away with these cuts it will be the biggest rip-off in history.
A mass campaign is needed to turn back these attacks. This was how Thatcher’s hated poll-tax was defeated. As campaigns spring up to save services we need to organise anti-cuts unions to draw all the campaigns in a particular area together.
Trade Union Leaders Act Now !
The trade unions have a central role to play in stopping this government in its tracks. Workers need to organise to put pressure on their trade union leaders to act now. A national trade union- led demonstration, properly built for, could act as a lightening- rod to the anger of millions and fire a warning-shot across the government’s bows. The TUC call for a national demonstration at the end of March 2011 is welcome, but too far away. We need a national demonstration now.
Co-ordinated strike action across the public sector is clearly on the table. If co-ordinated strike action – a 24 -hour public sector general strike – could be organised this would be a massive show of strength on the part of the working class. The government would be terrified. Serious discussions within the public sector trade unions need to begin now about the best way of bringing this about. The promises to do this made by trade union leaders at the TUC in September need to be turned into a reality by pressure from below. General strikes in Greece, Spain, France and Portugal are meeting austerity budgets and slashing governments head- on. These tremendous actions can and will develop in Britain too.
Who Is There To Vote For ?
The Labour Party are opposing the Con- Dem cuts. But this is precisely the problem! It is only the Con-Dem cuts that Labour opposes. If Labour were in government they would be pushing their own cuts through just at a slower pace. In many areas, Labour run councils are the willing executers of Tory cuts. If it’s your job or your service that is coming under the axe it makes little difference who is wielding it. The Socialist Party will work with Labour councillors and councils who are opposed to cuts and refuse to carry them out. But so far this is like trying to find a pig with wings.
Come the next elections people will still be faced with the same old choice between
the ‘lesser of two evils’. But the ‘lesser’ of two evils is still evil and is not good enough. We need to build a new political voice for working people. Labour-affiliated trade unions need to disaffiliate and campaign , along with others, for the building of a new mass workers party. Anti-cuts campaigns should start discussing now if they will stand in the May local elections.
Trade Union & Socialist Coalition
The Trade Unionist & Socialist Coalition stood over 40 candidates in the 2010 general election and represented an important step toward building a political voice for working class people. Crucially, TUSC included militant trade union leaders such as Bob Crow on its steering committee,and other leading trade unionists from the PCS and other unions. In May TUSC wants to organise as wide as possible a challenge in the local elections. The Con- Dems and their Labour shadows need to be challenged at the ballot box. TUSC is organising a conference of potential candidates to take place early in 2011. check website for updates.
United We Stand Divided We Fall ?
United We Stand Divided We Fall ?
The Socialist Party believes that maximum unity is essential to defeat these cuts. But what sort of unity? Unity is a means to an end, in this case stopping the cuts. If achieving this end is made more difficult or even sacrificed in the name of ‘unity’, then we might as well give up the fight now.
Unity has to be on a principled basis around agreement on key ideas. Adopting the position that some cuts are necessary, no matter how small, will doom the movement to defeat. What will the movement say to those fighting against a particular cut that others deem ‘necessary’? Such a position will bring instant division and lead to impotence in organising action or risk a so-called anti- cuts movement being viewed as irrelevant to the fight.
Starting from the need for ‘unity’ without any discussion of programme is a back-to-front and upside-down approach which will fail sooner rather than later. Unity must be built around a clear programme: opposition to all cuts and all job losses.
National Shop Stewards Network
The Socialist Party thinks that the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN – www.shopstewards.net) has an important role to play in the coming battles. The NSSN is rooted in the trade union movement and already has the ear and involvement of some of the most militant groups of workers including workers on the London Underground, firefigters and others. Borne out of an initiative by the transport union, the RMT in 2007, the NSSN is open and democratic and takes a bottom-up approach.
At this stage of building the anti-cuts movement the NSSN’s approach of pressuring the official trade union movement to act, but also organising at the base is proving very effective. This was shown in the NSSN organised lobby of the TUC Congress in September which played an important role in getting the TUC to adopt the demand of a national demonstration, albeit in March next year, and, in words at least, support for co-ordinated strike action. the nssn has called an anti-cuts conference on 22 January to aid the development of a national anti- cuts campaign.
The recession and economic crisis have shown the limits of the capitalist free market and the relentless pursuit of profit. We need an alternative to this discredited system. Taxing the rich and scrapping Trident is a good start, but in themselves are not enough. We need a more fundamental change - we need socialism. The banks and other big businesses and monopolies should be taken into public ownership and run under democratic control. What you own, you can control. Democratic planning of the economy could then begin. This would mean that the needs of all could be met and a decent standard of life enjoyed by everyone instead of just the fat cats and millionaires at the top. Join the Socialist Party!
