Separating rhetoric from reality over general strike call

Talk of a one-day general strike against ConDem policies is being floated, led by the Unite union. While any action against this most reactionary of governments is to be supported, we need to separate the rhetoric from reality.

Last September, the TUC Congress voted to investigate the legality of a general strike. Most legal opinion indicates that, given the scope of anti-union laws, all-out action would be deemed unlawful and challenged in the courts.

So a general strike would have to be in defiance of the draconian legislation introduced by the Thatcher government and upheld by New Labour. For over 30 years, the trade union bureaucracy has run absolutely scared of the laws that prohibit spontaneous strikes, solidarity action and mass picketing.  

Any defiance wouldn’t, naturally, have the support of Labour, which is heavily dependent on Unite’s money. A Labour spokesman said: “There is no consensus for a general strike across the trade union movement. Strikes should be a last resort, and we are not in favour of a general strike.”

The record of actual resistance to the ConDems’ austerity drive by trade union leaders is poor to non-existent. Apart from the civil servants’ PCS union, whose members are on strike again today, there has been no sustained challenge.

Unite and Unison have constantly thwarted strike plans against cuts in jobs and services at local council level. When the ConDems announced plans to reduce public service pensions, Unison general secretary said he had a “war chest” of £20 million to back strike action. In the end, the government went ahead with its plans with minimal opposition.

In a submission to the TUC, which meets later this month to discuss the issue, Unite says it  believes a 24-hour general strike "would be a landmark in our movement's recovery of its morale, strength and capacity to play a leading part in a society crying out for credible and honourable leadership".

But any general strike – even a one-day protest - is much more than that. It is a challenge to the state and its power, its authority and legitimacy.  

You can be sure that the ConDem coalition will meet any challenge in the spirit of Stanley Baldwin, the Tory prime minister at the time of the historic 1926 general strike. He famously declared: “Constitutional government is being attacked… the General Strike is a challenge to Parliament and is the road to anarchy and ruin.”

The TUC had threatened a General Strike as a negotiating tactic to try and prevent a cut in miners’ pay and a lengthening of their working day. But their bluff was called and the strike got under way without any serious preparation.The army and the police were mobilised and strike-breakers recruited.

TUC leaders quickly entered into secret negotiations and the indefinite general strike was called off after nine days, with the miners abandoned to their fate.

In 1926, between 400 and 500 Councils of Action emerged in the course of the general strike. Made up of strikers and their supporters, they took responsibility for co-ordinating the strike, propaganda, communications, transport, entertainment, picketing and the delivery of food. They represented, in effect, the emergence of potentially alternative sites of power to the state at local level.

A showdown is coming with the ConDem government and the state as justified grievances over a pay freeze, spending cuts, the break-up of the NHS and the attack on the welfare state, come together.

Instead of waiting for union leaders to get serious, trade unionists and their supporters ought to prepare for confrontation now. They should create People’s Assemblies in each area, bringing together trade unionists, the unemployed, private sector workers, older people, campaign groups, small businesses, students, black and ethnic minority communities and everyone in the firing line.

Assemblies can do what the union leaders won’t – take seriously the implications of a general strike and the question of who rules Britain. They can plan for a transfer of political and economic power away from a ruinous capitalist elite and their lapdog politicians into the hands of ordinary people. In other words, going beyond resistance.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Historic strike against austerity must become turning point

The historic, co-ordinated pan-Europe strikes and marches taking place today are the clearest indication yet that the struggles against the governments that have imposed austerity policies are coming to a head.

With more than 25 million out of work, all major unions will be marching to oppose further devastating cuts in salaries, pensions, benefits and social services, tax increases and new limits on trade union organisation.

The strike is expected to cause near or total shutdowns of the four most debt-battered countries — Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece.

There will be solidarity marches elsewhere organised by new movements like Spain’s M15 as well as trades unions. Demonstrations are planned throughout France. Rail workers in Belgium are striking, as are unions in Malta and Cyprus.    

And from Germany and Switzerland to Turkey, eastern Europe and Scandinavia, workers and many organisations have promised to rally around the single message: No to austerity.

In Britain, the Trades Union Congress has organised precisely nothing, however. A statement declared that its main action had taken place on October 20, when an estimated 150,000 people marched through London on a Saturday afternoon. New general secretary-designate Frances O’Grady will, however, address an evening rally outside the European Commission’s offices in London. That’ll frighten them!

Mounting anger forced the European Trades Union Confederation, representing 85 trades union organisations from 36 countries, with 60 million members to support the action. But the ETUC’s hope that the protest will encourage the European Commission, the European Central bank and the International Monetary Fund to get the economy “growing” instead of cutting deficits, were dashed even before the sun began to rise.

Yesterday, the Bank of Portugal slashed its growth forecast for 2013 from minus 1% to minus 1.6%, following an expected 3% contraction this year; and a new report from respected US forecaster the Conference Board foreshadowed a continued slowing of the world economy through to 2025.

Many eyes are watching events unfold in Europe and elsewhere with more than a little trepidation. Reuters news agency tried its hardest to play down the threat contained in the mounting anger, fulfilling its role in attempting to calm the volatility on the financial markets and encourage the global corporations.

In a piece hopefully headlined “European austerity protests far from revolution”, it claimed that things are looking good for investors: “While US carmaker Ford has announced plans to scrap 6,200 jobs in Europe to reflect tough auto sector and wider economic conditions, its decision to shift some output to low-cost Spain underlined that social tensions there were not a concern.”

This is a report from cloud-cuckoo land. In Spain, people are laying siege to banks that have repossessed over 300,000 homes in the last couple of years. The police union says it will back any members who refuse to help with evictions. Seizing the banks has become a practical notion in the eyes of many Spanish households.

Reuters noted that though “the sense of alarm has reached better-off youths in northern Europe, it is often tempered by a mood of resignation and inability to define a political alternative”. There is some truth in this observation.

Across the world, strikes, demonstrations and protests of all kinds – a massive action is planned in the United States next week against the anti-union corporation Walmart - are powerless to stop the accelerating contraction of the global capitalist economy. This – and not some misguided policies - is what is driving governments to cut spending and drive down conditions.

The struggles against austerity must not be allowed to founder in a futile effort to get governments to "change course". It is high time to begin the construction of a not-for-profit replacement, and we’ll be working with others on the blueprint – a new Agreement of the People - this Saturday.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor

Real democracy on the march

In a bold and inspired move, Spain’s Real Democracy Now! movement is taking the struggle to towns and villages throughout the country, so that the issues they have raised can be presented and developed by many more people.

The movement (DRY or M15) is organising marches from towns in the north, east, south and west of Spain: Valencia, Barcelona, La Rioja, Galicia and Andalucía. It is in line with the desire of the democracy campaigners to be as inclusive, to break down barriers and to have the widest possible debates about the way forward.

Two legs are already underway, with over 100 marchers setting off from Barcelona earlier this week. Despite soaring temperatures, the protesters hope to walk 21 kilometres each day. The Valencia route is around 500 kilometres long. The plan is for all the marches to arrive in Madrid on July 23 for a rally and the presentation of demands to parliament.

Last Friday, as the Spanish parliament passed new laws against the rights of unions, democracy collectives agreed to begin planning for a general strike on October 15 to coincide with other direct actions.

The M15 campaigners are not, however, asking the largest trade unions – the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT) and Confederación Sindical de Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) to call strike action. They feel that these unions are too closely aligned with the Socialist Party (PSOE) government.

DRY has been holding rallies, assemblies and encampments in city centres since May. The occupation of Madrid’s Puerta Sol saw tens of thousands of demonstrators – young and old – gather to reject the country’s established political parties, the PSOE and the right-wing Popular Party (PP).

With slogans like “They don’t represent us”, and “Don’t Vote for Them”, the DRY movement denounced the privileges of the ruling elites, insisting that “the current status of our government and economic system does not take care of these rights and is in many ways an obstacle to human progress.”

Assemblies in Barcelona, Madrid and elsewhere have posted lists of demands ranging from greater democracy and political change to basic rights to jobs, quality of life, housing, public services, respect for the environment, reduced military spending and the abolition of the monarchy.

The call for a general strike poses the question of what such an action is for. Showing politicians and businesses that “if we stop, everything stops”, as a spokesperson from the M15 movement suggests, will not be sufficient to achieve the aims of the marchers. And, whilst rejecting their politically-compromised leadership, the members of the major unions cannot be ignored, if a general strike is to succeed.

A general strike as a protest – such as the two-day strike starting in Greece today – cannot by itself reverse the course of events, politically or economically. Both are inextricably linked and driven by a globalised crisis of the capitalist system of production as a whole.

Just as the unrepresentative political elites are inseparable from the system of private ownership of the means of production, so the financial system sits on top of the system of production for profit. Changing that means addressing the issue of ownership and power.

For true economic and political liberation, the issue of the state and power cannot be evaded. As A World to Win has noted: “The present state has to go and power has to change hands, from the minority to the majority, in revolutionary practice. Corporate and financial power could be co-owned and controlled and exercised through a network of people’s assemblies.”

In our view, that is the precondition for establishing real democracy now in place of the capitalist version that is discredited in the eyes of large sections of ordinary people. This is an urgent question because undoubtedly the far right is waiting in the shadows with own sinister plans of its own to “clean up democracy”.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

General strike is a defining moment

Union leaders threatening sustained and co-ordinated action, if there is no agreement with the government on pensions, intend to use what would amount to a general strike simply as a negotiating ploy. That is a serious, fatal miscalculation.

An indefinite general strike is a political weapon with revolutionary implications; the ruling classes understand this even if the bureaucrats at the Trades Union Congress and Unison general secretary Dave Prentis do not.

A general strike is a challenge to the state and its power, its authority and legitimacy. Looking at such action in any other way is dangerous and foolhardy. General strikes as protests have little effect, as the experience in Greece demonstrate.

You can be sure that the ConDem coalition is preparing to meet the challenge in the spirit of Stanley Baldwin, the Tory prime minister at the time of the historic 1926 General Strike. He famously declared: “Constitutional government is being attacked… The General Strike is a challenge to Parliament and is the road to anarchy and ruin.”

The TUC had threatened a General Strike as a negotiating tactic to try and prevent a cut in miners’ pay and a lengthening of their working day. But their bluff was called and the strike got under way on May 4 without any serious preparation. Baldwin refused to talk while the strike was on. But secret contacts were made and the strike was called off after nine days, with the miners abandoned to their fate.

Moving on to 2011, and we learn that secret talks are already taking place over public sector pensions, which the government intends to erode through higher contributions and making people work longer before entitlement. What is their to negotiate about, you may well ask?

Any changes to pension schemes can only be to their detriment. Take firefighters, for example. Currently most pay a massive 11% of their salaries into pensions, but that may rise to 14% under government plans. A survey of nearly 8,000 members of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) suggests that 27% are considering leaving if contributions rise.

In addition, most public sector workers have had their wages frozen, resulting in a pay cut due to inflation and tens of thousands are facing the sack because of spending cuts.

When Prentis talks of a “campaign of strike action without precedent” if the government fails to negotiate in “good faith”, we should be wary. Prentis is riding a tiger of a membership angry with its leaders for refusing to fight the cuts or oppose New Labour’s introduction of the private sector in the NHS.

Prentis boasted that unlike the miners’ strike of 1984, Unison members would not be starved back (the union has reportedly built up a £20 million strike fund). But the miners were not starved back. They were isolated by the TUC, who ran scared of Tory anti-union laws and refused to back the miners.

Nevertheless, the Coalition may call Prentis’ bluff and confront the trade union movement over pensions. The changes are central to the government’s spending cuts and part of the reorganisation of the state driven on by the capitalist crisis.

In 1926, between 400 and 500 Councils of Action emerged in the course of the General Strike. Made up of strikers and their supporters, they took responsibility for co-ordinating the strike, propaganda, communications, transport, entertainment, picketing and the delivery of food. They represented, in effect, the emergence of potentially alternative sites of power to the state at local level.

A showdown is coming with the ConDem government and the state. Of that there can be no doubt. Instead of waiting for it to blow up when the government chooses, trade unionists and their supporters ought to prepare for confrontation now and develop the Councils of Action approach.

They should take the initiative and create People’s Assemblies in each area, bringing together trade unionists with students, the unemployed, private sector workers, older people, community groups, small businesses, black and ethnic minority groups and everyone in government’s firing line. Assemblies can do what the union leaders won’t – take seriously the implications of a general strike and the question of who rules Britain.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Breaking out of the logjam

Meetings around the country are discussing where the anti-cuts movement can go from here. Despite the massive turnout, the TUC’s March for the Alternative has not, as everyone knows, stopped a single attack on jobs, services, benefits or grants to the arts.

A discussion at the weekend in London, organised by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, revealed some of the issues and challenges. Both young and older speakers from a wide range of organisations revealed the desire to continue the struggle. At the same time, it proved hard to break with the notion that protests and strikes in themselves remain the only option.

The meeting heard Mark Barrett from the People’s Assembly Network seek endorsement of the motion passed at January’s National Education Assembly for a long-term strategy of city-wide permanent assemblies. But the appeal to broaden out the struggle in new ways was pretty much ignored.

Yet the cuts are getting deeper. An NHS worker from University College hospital said that 500 jobs were being cut in St George’s hospital alone. He called for support networks to be set up around hospitals. Some suggested that UNITE general secretary, Len McCluskey was evidence of a “left” tendency within the TUC leadership. There were calls for strike action in the NHS, and others for limited general strike action.

The discussion reflected the variety of actions being proposed by the spectrum of left organisations more widely. The Socialist Party, for example, says that a 24-hour public sector general strike “would terrify the ConDems”. Others call for a national anti-cuts organisation to be formed. The Socialist Workers Party has been calling for a general strike. The Right to Work campaign believes that March 26 showed that “we have the power to stop Cameron and Clegg” and that more protests, demonstrations and strikes are the answer

But the underlying issue of what is driving the Coalition to force through the cuts and wind up the welfare state was left in the dark. The unmentioned elephant in the room was the global crisis of the capitalist system, the financial crisis that has brought countries like Greece, Ireland, Iceland and Portugal to their knees, and the deepening recession.

In this context, the government is not for turning, as much for the fact that they are no more in control of the banking system and money markets than you and I. The stark truth is that without a strategy for power, without a political strategy, marches and even general strikes are ineffectual.

Unfortunately for those who believe that the ConDem government can be persuaded to change course by protest, Financial Times’ columnist Robert Shrimsley just about summed it up: “It’s irresponsible to admit it, but this kind of peaceful protest [March 26] is pointless. The system has all the shock absorbers necessary to handle a law-abiding demonstration.”

Those who seek to break out of this logjam, as UK Uncut and anarchists have sought to do, found themselves preyed upon by police provocateurs and susceptible to entrapment and, in the case of one student leader, targeting by the far right.

On the day and subsequently, it has been left to young people in Trafalgar Square and others in Hyde Park, to find another way forward. Inspired by the movement in Egypt that brought down Mubarak, they are still seeking to win support for equivalent action by trying to occupy key places like Trafalgar Square.

The strategy of building a People’s Assemblies Network is crucial as a way of uniting these aspirations with the anti-cuts movement, trade unionists, young people, unemployed, professionals and political organisations and the millions now facing huge cuts in services and jobs. Assemblies have the potential to become more than just unifying organisational forms. They could provide answers to the most important question of all – where power lies and how can it be transferred into the hands of democratic, popular assemblies.

Corinna Lotz

A World to Win secretary

Don't let capitalism off the hook

Embarrassed by the vitality and determination of the student movement against higher tuition fees, some trade union leaders are making militant noises about co-ordinated strike action against the government’s spending cuts. Whether words become deeds is debatable.

Len McCluskey, the new general secretary of Unite, Britain’s largest union, has written in The Guardian that trade unions ought to be “preparing for battle” and should not let the anti-union laws paralyse them in the face of the cuts onslaught.

The Trades Union Congress (TUC), says McCluskey, will meet early in 2011 to discuss “co-ordinated industrial action and to analyse the possibilities and opportunities for a broad strike movement.” But before anyone gets too excited, let’s examine what is happening on the ground.

Yesterday, the TUC general secretary Brendan Barber and union leaders met David Cameron for mince pies and tea at Downing Street at their request. Afterwards, Barber would only say that they had warned Cameron of the consequences of the deficit-reduction plan, as if the prime minister didn’t know already. Only Bob Crow, leader of the RMT transport union, voiced support for McCluskey.

McCluskey, whose union’s endorsement was critical in getting Ed Miliband elected as Labour’s new leader, criticised the party’s front bench for meeting the Tory cuts programme halfway. Somehow he managed to excuse Miliband himself, although the Labour leader accepts that the budget deficit should be reduced. He simply wants the Coalition to move more slowly.

While Miliband quickly distanced himself from McCluskey’s support for strike action – showing that he who pays the piper doesn’t necessarily call the tune – in practice they agree in one key area. Labour-controlled local councils are busily preparing to make substantial cuts. Some like Lewisham have started implementing them already.

Instead of demanding that Labour councils refuse to draw up cuts budgets for 2011-12 based on substantial reductions in central government grant, McCluskey only says they should not be blamed “for the problem” because to do so is a “shortcut to splitting our movement”.

No-one is actually blaming them for the crisis. But local trade unionists rightly are demanding that Labour councils refuse to make the cuts as a matter of principle. Work on drawing up the budgets will begin immediately after the holiday season is over, with a view to getting them through the council by early March.

The TUC demonstration against spending cuts scheduled for March 26 will, therefore, be too late to save tens of thousands of jobs and services from the axe. Conflict between workers and Labour councils is inevitable in the next few months and trade unionists will want to know why McCluskey has nothing to say on this issue.

There is also meeting of minds between McCluskey and Barber on the ground of economic illiteracy. Both insist that the cuts are purely “ideologically driven”, being simply an attempt to destroy public services and the welfare state and are, therefore, totally unnecessary. If only it were that simple.

As we show in our downloadable Beyond Resistance booklet, the cuts are “ideological” only in the sense that capitalist governments are motivated to do everything they can to sustain the profit system. Britain’s budget deficit is part of the same global debt crisis that brought down the banks.

Deficits are a clear and present danger in so far as both governments and the financial markets are concerned. More to the point Barber and McCluskey cannot explain, for example, why parties in Greece, Spain and Portugal who call themselves socialist, have implemented massive cuts and faced down a series of general strikes.

Contrary to what McCluskey and Barber think, economic growth and tax justice is not an alternative to the cuts and lets capitalism off the hook. For any strike action to be effective, is will have to be part of a wider movement to bring down the Coalition while working up plans to replace the present madhouse with a not-for-profit economic and financial model. In other words, we need an ideologically-driven struggle against capitalism itself.


Paul Feldman
Communications editor

TUC's shameful betrayal

The Trades Union Congress decision, to hold a national demonstration against the spending cuts to take place over five months after they were announced and on the eve of their implementation is shameful.

Worse, it is scheduled to take place on a Saturday, on 26 March 2011, to avoid any idea that it is a call for mid-week strike action instead of gentle stroll through the streets of London.

The context of the decision announced by TUC leader Brendan Barber on Saturday, makes it an act of betrayal as great as any during its more than 140-year history.

With 500,000 public sector workers destined to lose their jobs as the result of the deepest spending cuts in the history of British capitalism, the TUC and its main members have abandoned any pretence of resistance. The decision to hold a march in five months was supported by the main public sector unions, Unison, GMB and Unite. Since the Spending Review was announced, these unions have stressed that they will not take action against the coalition.

A few hundred yards away, just as Barber spoke, striking London firefighters were on the march. They are threatened with the sack and the destruction of their union. The TUC is leaving the Fire Brigades Union to face destruction on its own.

Talk about the impact on jobs, pensions, wages, services etc - and that's it! It’s not simply sluggish – it’s deliberate inaction behind a smokescreen of consultation, education and protest. The TUC is acting like a focus group for the Coalition, promising to feed back public anger so that the government will "see sense".

On Saturday, Barber spouted pseudo-fiery words against the City rich:
“And the bankers who caused this mess,” he said, “will not be affected at all because the pathetically small banking levy will leave them popping the champagne corks right across the square mile.”

The real intention is to reinforce the fiction, that the Con-Dem cuts are simply “ideological”: "The impact of this brutal, ideological and cripplingly unfair [our italics] austerity will be truly devastating,” Barber told London Trades Councils representatives at Congress House.

In other words, there is no crisis of the capitalist system driving the cuts – simply a few greedy bankers.

And public service union GMB leader Paul Kenny continued the fake war by threatening the Coalition with a loss of votes: "As the plan unfolds and its impact is felt in homes and communities up and down the country, the Tory/Liberal authors will find life increasingly difficult at the ballot box," he said.

Some threat.

Some critics of the TUC want next year’s demonstration brought forward and for unions who want to fight the cuts to organise a one-day public sector general strike. But this is inadequate for a variety of reasons:

- it divides public from private sector workers (who will also lose jobs as a result of cuts)
- by limiting the strike to 24 hours turns a general strike, which has revolutionary potential, into a protest,
- it assumes that the government will capitulate under pressure.

Experiences on the Continent, most recently France, show the opposite is true. Several general strikes have failed to move Sarkozy over pensions. At the end of last week, state forces were used to end blockades of fuel depots while the Senate approved the changes. Sarkozy is not for turning and nor is the Cameron/Clegg coalition. At their backs is the global economic crisis and yawning budget deficits which grow larger by the day.

The strike weapon is limited when the issues are about a crisis of the economic system and the power of the state. Strikes need to be supplemented by wider actions. A revolutionary mobilisation is needed to unite communities in a way that challenges the authority and power of government and the state machine.

A strategy of developing People’s Assemblies offers a real way forward to unite all those fighting the cuts. The urgent need is to expose the treachery of the trade union leadership by campaigning for a transfer of power on to a democratically elected network of Peoples Assemblies.

Paul Feldman and Corinna Lotz
A World to Win

Sarkozy forms crisis cabinet while unions dither

As oil refineries and public transport depots are blocked, petrol stations run dry and young people riot in the Paris suburbs, political tensions are rising in France. The unrest will climax today in demonstrations throughout the country intended to influence Wednesday’s vote in the country’s Senate.

To quell the huge mobilisation of workers, pensioners and young people, President Nicholas Sarkozy has formed a crisis cabinet to ensure the continuity of fuel supplies, with three departments – the interior, economy and environment ministries put in charge of preventing disruption of supplies.

The wave of protests against the Sarkozy government’s attack on pension rights has closed schools across France and seen clashes with riot police on the streets. Workers at France’s 12 refineries are in their eighth day of strike. Protesters are blocking access to many fuel distribution depots round the country.

It is the sixth day of weekday protests and work stoppages called by national labour union confederations since June, but the unrest has intensified since last week when unions at railways and refineries began open-ended industrial action, joined now by truck drivers and delivery workers. Since September 7, pension protest numbers have involved a staggering 15 million people, according to official sources.

A majority of French people -- 71 percent in one poll -- back protests against the plan to raise the minimum and full retirement ages by two years to 62 and 67 respectively, a measure the government says is the only way to stem a ballooning pension deficit.

France is one of a very few countries remaining where pensions arrangements are almost universally provided by the state. Payments to pensioners are taken out of current tax receipts. Trade unions have fought long and hard to protect the right to a decent income after a lifetime of work.

It is no accident that the French Senate is voting on the same day that the UK coalition government finally gives the details of its unprecedented assault on the public sector. These two events, and many similar are choreographed by the return to recession which marks the end of the phoney recovery. Capitalist society has entered into a period of contraction and nothing can be allowed to stand in its way.

But as the French state steps up its operations, leaders of France’s main trade unions have no plan beyond pressurising a government that is determined to see through cuts in pension provision.

All the union chiefs know that Sarkozy will not give in and are feverishly even now considering their exit strategy even as the fuel shortage worsens and protests spread to the volatile suburbs, the banlieues. As the right-wing daily, Le Figaro, notes, the union confederations are divided over their strategy facing a government which will not give in to their demands. The strategy of the Confederation General de Travail (CGT) faces pressure to call a general strike, something which it has signally failed to do so far. The mass defence of jobs, services, benefits and rights is leading directly to a confrontation with the state, something that they and the other union bureaucrats are desperate to avoid.

Workers and students should join forces with local communities to form People’s Assemblies that can move beyond protest and challenge the French state. The French ruling class and union bureaucrats are haunted by the spectre of the 1968 General Strike, when the possibility of people’s power arose but the opportunity wasted.

Gerry Gold
Economics editor

Coalition prepares for showdown with unions

A massive provocation against the trade unions in the public sector is openly being prepared by the Coalition government as it prepares to force through spending cuts that will destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs and wreck vital services.

The question is: how will union leaders respond to the Coalition’s relentless assault on jobs, wages, pensions and redundancy terms that is building on a daily basis? 

In the last 24 hours alone, there are reports of:

• government departments being asked to prepare cuts in budgets amounting to 40% of current spending, which would terminate much of what they do
• new laws to toughen the already-draconian anti-union legislation introduced by the Thatcher government and sustained by New Labour
• legislation to impose reduced redundancy terms on civil servants after the courts ruled that New Labour’s attempt at the same was unlawful.

Staging an effective strike in Britain is well nigh impossible – if unions stay within the law. Solidarity action in support of other workers is illegal, as is mass picketing. Even sticking to the rules on balloting is no longer sufficient. Employers are challenging virtually every ballot, enjoying favourable judgements in most cases.

Now the Coalition is reportedly planning to toughen the ballot regulations even further. At present, a simple majority of those voting is required. The government is discussing plans to impose a higher threshold and is also being lobbied by business to allow striking workers to be replaced with agency employees.

All this follows hard on the heels of a two-year pay freeze, which even Cameron admitted amounted to a salary cut as inflation moves ahead; immediate cuts to local authority budgets with job losses; and plans for higher public sector pension contributions. In October, the Coalition will announce details of unprecedented spending cuts which will take effect from 1 April 2011.

Cameron and Clegg are calling the bluff of the trade union leaders, who – with a handful of honourable exceptions representing firefighters, rail workers and civil servants – cosied up to New Labour for 13 years to no avail. The biggest public sector union, Unison, sat back as Blair/Brown carved up the health service and public services. Loads of cash was sent New Labour’s way, however, even though muted pressure to drop the anti-union laws was treated with contempt.

Union membership has declined to 6.9 million from over 12 million and is barely present in the private sector. But unions represent almost 60% of public sector employees and so are in a position to organise against the cuts. So far the signs are not inspiring. At its annual conference last month, Unison adopted a 1,300-word motion on the “austerity agenda” that in the same sentence referred to “working with employers who share our aspirations “(!), and being ready to take industrial action “where necessary”.

This will simply not cut the mustard. The Coalition is preparing for war while the main trade union leaders are looking for a deal. There is no compromise on offer, however. The crisis of global capitalism deepens day by day and this is what is driving the Coalition’s attempt to transfer wealth to big business at the expense of working people and the millions who depend on public services.

In September, the Trades Union Congress will meet in Manchester from 13 September. Those who are up for the fight like the rail union RMT have a responsibility to take the fight into Congress. Nothing less than the preparation of a co-ordinated, indefinite General Strike against the Coalition, alongside anti-capitalist policies that answer the crisis, will measure up to the task in front. The time for cheap talk is over.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Rail union calls for 'co-ordinated strikes' against Coalition

The imposition of austerity budgets to reduce budget deficits – adopted across Europe by governments of all persuasions – is suddenly looking too dangerous to investors in the global markets.

Now these gamblers are worried about a self-defeating downward spiral in Europe, and shifting their funds to Japan, whilst piling on the political pressure for President Obama to issue a new pile of fantasy finance by way of the Federal printing presses.

Indicators of deflation and declining production have emerged as the latest and biggest threat to the global capitalist economy. Not least is the Baltic Dry Index that measures the shipping of bulk goods around the world. This dropped by 40% last month.

These signs of the economy once again falling off a cliff – the much feared “double-dip” - are sure to aggravate the latest phase of the financial crisis. Tomorrow the European Central Bank’s emergency facility of €442bn (£361bn) of one-year loans ends. It’s the largest sum ever lent by a central bank. If the ECB fails to renew the scheme, there are fears that it will trigger a catastrophic banking collapse in Spain.

The chaotic reversals in the bond markets which lend to governments show that neither austerity budgets nor more quantitative easing/printing money can stop the rapid deterioration of the global economy.

In Britain, for example, it is reported that the Coalition’s cuts programme will add another 1.5 million to the dole queue. They will certainly not be taking part in a growth of consumer spending.

In essence, this destruction of people’s jobs and livelihoods is the inevitable consequence of the capitalist crisis – not its cause. It is too simplistic to view the cuts just as old-fashioned Toryism, especially when the Greek and Spanish “socialist” governments are doing the same and New Labour had a similar programme in store if it had won the general election.

This is the context for general secretary Bob Crow’s spirited address to the Rail, Maritime and Transport union’s annual conference. He told the delegates: “‘This ConDem administration has thrown down the biggest challenge to the trade union movement since Margaret Thatcher took on the National Union of Mineworkers.

"I have no hesitation in saying that it will take general and co-ordinated strike action across the public and private sectors to stop their savage assault on jobs, living standards and public services."

He went on: "The trade unions must form alliances with community groups, campaigns and pensioners' organisations in the biggest show of united resistance since the success of the anti-poll tax movement. Waving banners and placards will not be enough - it will take direct action to stop the Cameron and Clegg cuts machine.”

Crow is on the right track, but resistance alone cannot withstand or push back the impact of this crisis. Its scale is unprecedented and opposing the cuts must involve more than trying to force the government to change course, which would be a hopeless and futile pursuit.

A key lesson of the miners’ strike for jobs that Crow referred to is that the state and the discredited parliamentary system is a front for global corporate and financial interests and this is what we have to transform.

“General and co-ordinated strike action” - which would have to defy the anti-union laws to happen - is certainly needed. But the assault on jobs, living standards and public services can only be dealt with if the alliances Crow calls for become the basis for People’s Assemblies in a direct challenge to the power of the capitalist state to rule over us.

People’s Assemblies will go beyond protest, taking control of the resources that make up the productive economy and the financial system, and converting them from the playthings of global speculators into the means of meeting the needs of the majority.

Gerry Gold
Economics editor

Prepare General Strike to bring down Coalition

Tory Chancellor Osborne’s collection of savage spending cuts and dramatic tax changes is intended to engineer a massive transfer of wealth to shareholders, whilst condemning millions to a life of grinding poverty on reduced benefits or on the dole. Claiming that “we are all in this together” is simply a lie.

It follows the £6 billion cuts announced in the days following the election. It comes in the wake of the scrapping of 12 major capital investment projects approved by New Labour in the dying days of its period of rule. And on top of cuts made by the outgoing New Labour government in higher education.

Much worse is to come. In the public sector, reducing the budget deficit will leave most departments – apart from health and international aid – facing a 25% reduction and the certainty of huge job losses. No advanced economy has ever made such drastic spending cuts in state budgets.

Pay for public sector workers will be frozen, initially for two years. As entire services are threatened with the axe, Cameron and Co. will be ratcheting up their caring, sharing approach. They will cynically encourage redundant workers to form co-operatives of volunteers to take them on with a pittance of a contract to cover expenses.

But for the private sector, the plan is quite different. Here the overarching idea is to make Britain an attractive place to do business, boosting profits by reducing corporation tax. Each year for four years the tax rate companies pay on the profits they fail to hide abroad will be reduced by 1%, bringing the headline rate down to 24% - amongst the lowest of all the developed countries.

With some of its measures, the Coalition is trying to disarm some of its potential critics with the appearance of concern for the poorest. As part-payment for the Liberal Democrats’ participation, the income tax allowance lower limit will be raised, exempting 880,000 of the lowest earners from paying tax. But this will be more than offset by the increase to 20% in VAT from next January. With housing benefit capped and child benefit frozen, it will hit the poorest hardest.

Further assaults on living standards are already planned. In a calculated move towards a national government the Con-Lib coalition is to be extended to include New Labour’s former work and pensions secretary John Hutton who will prepare the ground for an assault on state and public sector pensions. And then, in October, Osborne will announce his review of public spending which will detail the cuts to be made, department by department.

The Coalition has embarked on a high risk, “kill or cure” programme based on figures for growth that are already under challenge and that are not possible in the context of the global crisis of capitalism. Eurozone economies are diving deeper into recession, while many German and French banks are reckoned to have solvency problems. They hold piles of Greek and Spanish government debt now worth far less than it was bought for.

This is not a government of strength but one thrown together in an emergency and which has no mandate for the unparalleled cuts it is making. The general election was a fraud because none of the major parties would come clean on what was being planned. So the electorate has every right to fight the Coalition.

Protest campaigns are already underway around the country. Trade unionists, pensioners and community groups are meeting to plan their actions to protect jobs and services. They should begin to create People’s Assemblies to co-ordinate their struggles and to plan for political and economic alternatives to a capitalist system now in profound economic and political crisis.

Unions who are opposed to the cuts will have to step up to the plate in the absence of any resistance from the Trades Union Congress. Brendan Barber, the TUC general secretary, could only say the budget was “economically dangerous and socially divisive”. He offered no challenge to the Coalition or its unacceptable budget whatsoever.

Bob Crow, general secretary of the rail union RMT, was more forthright, declaring: “There is no question that there will be widespread industrial and community resistance to the cuts agenda and RMT will be in the front line wherever people are making a stand.” This is good as far as it goes.

The RMT is part of an alliance called the Trade Union Coordinating Group, along with firefighters, civil servants, university and college teachers and other sections. The TUCG should start a campaign within the TUC to make preparations for an indefinite General Strike against the Coalition government, which is assuming the role of a dictatorship over the working population.

Resistance is not enough. The aim must be to bring down the Coalition and create a revolutionary government in its place. This is the road we have to take to prevent a social catastrophe far worse than that of the 1930s.

A World to Win
23 June 2010

Greek workers light the fuse

The general strike that got under way in Greece today, bringing the country to a standstill, is a foretaste of the struggles to come throughout the capitalist world as the global financial crisis moves from the banking system to debt-ridden sovereign states.

Stock on markets around the world from Europe to Brazil, to the US and Canada fell as the horrible truth dawned on the hedge fund managers that gamble with peoples’ lives. And the truth? It’s a two-headed monster.

Head 1: Greek workers aren’t prepared to accept the pain for a crisis not of their making, including savage wage and pension cuts and tax increases.

Head 2: Greece is just one of the many countries caught up in the consequences of the worsening global crisis and the only “solutions” available will trigger revolt throughout the world.

Spain is reported to be talking to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) about its own bail-out. Iceland remains paralysed after a referendum showed its population overwhelmingly opposed to the terms of the rescue of its banks. None of the major parties contending for votes in Britain’s fraudulent election tomorrow can admit the scale of the assault on the electorate that will follow immediately a government is cobbled together.

According to the Financial Times columnist Wolfgang Munchau, the bailout funds needed for Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland and possibly Italy could add up to “somewhere between €500bn ($665bn, £435bn) and €1,000bn”. The demand for new credit from all those countries will drive up interest rates “at a time when they are either in recession or just limping out of one”.

His conclusion? “The private sector in some of those countries is simply not viable at those higher rates.” It’s a prescient conclusion. In other words it means capitalist production is no longer sustainable. But that doesn’t stop them trying to fix it.

The turmoil in Greece began when the Greek government, led by the “socialist” PASOK party, found it impossible to pay the interest on loans made to cover the country’s soaring budget deficit. But even the three-year bail out package totalling nearly £100 billion, funded by the Eurozone countries and the IMF, may be inadequate for the purpose, such is the level of indebtedness.

Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou, looking both ways, said Greece had been called on to make a "basic choice between collapse or salvation". He said: "It is not going to be easy on Greek citizens, despite the efforts that have been made and will continue to be made to protect the weakest in society." But he then acknowledged the real intent – to win back the trust of the lenders: “The whole idea of the programme is … return to markets as soon as possible, so we’re hoping that next year we’ll be doing that.”

New emergency legislation authorising the cuts and tax rises is now being drafted and is due to be put before parliament for approval by the end of the week in time for the IMF’s Board meeting on Sunday to consider Greece’s application for help. It’s there and in the boardrooms of the capitalist corporations and financial markets that the key decisions are made affecting the lives of ordinary people in every country.

No one anywhere in the world voted for the bail-out of the global banking system funded by colossal sums of government debt. The “choice” in the British general election is non-existent. Only pain, pain and more pain is on the ballot form, in the form of the three major capitalist parties. Greek workers have lit the fuse of resistance which will spread like wildfire over the coming months. It’s time for a new kind of democracy. Join us on the revolutionary road. Sign up for our conference on May 22^nd.

Gerry Gold

Economics editor