All bark and no bite

There was dismay and anger amongst the several thousand trade union members who crowded Westminster Central Hall; some including a large number from the prison officers union, couldn’t get in to the TUC’s anti-cuts rally. People had travelled from Lancashire, Devon, Cornwall, Northamptonshire and around London to take part in the protest meeting and lobby of MPs.

As well as the Prison Officers Association, there were big delegations from Unison, actors’ union Equity, rail and transport workers, public services unions UNITE and GMB, the National Union of Teachers and the Right to Work Campaign. Screen actors Benedict Cumberbatch and Roger Lloyd Pack said they opposed cuts in the arts which will privilege the rich. They all shared a deep anxiety as it emerged that around half a million jobs are to go by 2015.

Tony Woodley, joint secretary of the UNITE trade union, pointed out that for every four public sector jobs scrapped by the cuts, three more would follow in the private sector. He pointed out that the Lib-Con coalition has no mandate for the cuts, and that people “did not vote for the dismantling of their schools, hospitals and communities.”

“Cuts on this scale make no sense,” he said – but they make sense to the coalition, the bankers and the IMF. It’s the survival of the capitalist system that is at stake for them.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber continued the myth that the cuts are just a political choice, not an economic necessity for the ruling class: "They want us to believe....this is economic necessity. Yet economic experts across the spectrum warn us that the cuts are too deep and too rapid.”

Dave Prentis of Unison warned that if the government doesn’t listen, “we will be back. For every one of us in this room today, we will bring a hundred more. We’ll march in our thousands and we’ll vote in our millions,” he said in a fit of demagogy. But vote for what? For New Labour Mark 2?

None of the trade union leaders have any answers. In fact they are determined to hold back any serious movement by workers in the face of the re-shaping of the entire British state. Asked why the British workers were not angry as those in France, Woodley cited the anti-trade union laws making striking difficult. But if they were serious about halting the cuts, trade union leaders would bring every member out and let the law go hang. By directing all their fire towards parliament and the next election nearly four years hence, they hope to act as a lightning rod to defuse and disarm any movement.

And where was Milliband? He was in hiding from the trade union leaders who got him the Labour leadership. The reality is a New Labour government would be doing the same – and it may not be too long before they too are co-opted into this government of desperate decline.

Today’s spending review is not the result of a nasty bunch of old-style Thatcherite Tories. It is a response to the most serious economic and financial crisis of the capitalist profit-based system. As Bank of England governor, Mervyn King, speaking in the Midlands, made plain. Deep tensions underlay discussions at the International Monetary Fund meeting last week, he said.

Global currency conflicts, particularly between the US and China, are evidence of profound disagreements about the way to deal with the crisis. A 1930s-style collapse of business activity and international trade is possible. So much for the cuts being an “ideological exercise”! They are the ruling class’ response to an uncontrollable crisis of the system.

Fighting against the cuts agenda means challenging the ruling class by working for a transfer of power, property and control to a democratically elected and accountable network of peoples’ assemblies http://aworldtowin.net/frontline/BuildPeoplesAssemblies.html. Come to the Beyond Resistance conference on December 11 to make this come alive.

Corinna Lotz and Peter Arkell
A World to Win

Support unions' call for new People's Charter

Leaders of two major unions laid down a significant challenge at the weekend by calling for a mass campaign for a new People’s Charter, echoing the spirit of the great struggle for representation and political power waged by the 19th century Chartist movement.

Bob Crow of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) workers joined with Brian Paton of the Prison Officers Association (POA) to open a debate on a new course that goes beyond parliamentary politics. Speaking at a conference called by the RMT, Crow explained how his union had been expelled from New Labour after making the decision “to give money to organisations which support the working class more than the Labour Party”. New Labour “stands for privatisation, the continuation of anti-union laws and a European super state”, as did the Liberal and Tory parties.

The RMT leader also condemned the Trades Union Congress for providing “no leadership whatsoever as tens of thousands, if not millions, now face redundancy” and rightly insisted: “The people with real power are the global capitalists who dictate what the government does”.

It was urgent to work together in a better way and a campaign for a People’s Charter would provide “an alternative to what was taking place” and to involve millions in signing and debating. Nothing would be achieved, he stressed, by protesting outside conferences in Blackpool or Brighton. “It was better to sit on the runway”.

Brian Caton, general secretary of the Prison Officers Union, which in 2007 held an illegal strike for higher pay, warned that the far right would fill “the political vacuum” if an alternative movement was not built. The main political parties provided no real choice at all, he told the gathering.

“A People’s Charter is a good first step, based on objectives which we all share. We want trade union and human rights and we won’t get them from this government. We want liberty, justice and peace. I want to see the shackles that currently tie us down broken.” His next union conference will invite a range of left parties together to work for an alternative in the spirit of this approach.

Mary Davis, of the London Metropolitan University's Centre for Trade Union Studies, added a historic dimension to the call for a Charter. The Chartist movement of the 19th century had created the first political party of the working class, but explained that “our real history is hidden from us”.

The conditions for going beyond electoral politics were also raised by MP John McDonnell, chair of the Labour Representation Committee . He told the conference: “Electoral politics may not be where it’s at in the coming period. Not asking people for votes but organising for direct action. We may see forms of mobilisation on a mass scale which we haven’t seen for generations.”

Perhaps he had in mind possible reactions to the imminent government approval for a third runway at Heathrow, despite massive local opposition to the plans. McDonnell welcomed the concept of a Charter – whether it was a People’s Charter or a Workers Charter – to provide an alternative political analysis. Discussions and collaboration, recognising and appreciating each others’ differences would make a more sophisticated debate possible.

A World to Win unreservedly welcomes this powerful new call for a People’s Charter. In October, A World to Win launched its own People's Charter for Democracy to raise the question of a revolutionary alternative to the political and economic status quo.

As a speaker from the Wirral asked at Saturday’s conference: “Who is going to implement this Charter?” Our Charter does not appeal to the existing government or the state behind it. Rather, it suggests new ways in which the unrepresented masses can achieve new forms of representation and organise a transfer of power itself out of the hands of corporations and the capitalist state. We submit AWTW’s Charter as a contribution to this crucial debate to which the RMT and POA have given a tremendous boost.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary