TUC don’t flee from your duty, organise a general strike!
For student and workers’ assemblies to decide a workers way out from the EU!
Unite our strikes against the bosses and government!
For a workers and socialist exit from the EU!
By ISL – International Socialist League
Theresa May is Prime Minister in name only – what vanity to wait around in the hope of signing a Brexit deal. She should go now. She only remains because parliament is not worth a penny more than she is as they all want a quiet transition. They were going to take control on 27 March and what happened? They could not pass any of the eight motions presented. They should resign collectively!
The Labour Party betray workers to go back into the EU with a plan A or a plan B. All the parliament parties and the left in general are waiting for a quiet way out, but there is none.
The call by the International Socialist League for a general strike is more necessary than ever. The left parties that refuse to fight now for a general strike and wait for a Labour government under Corbyn are betraying workers and letting the capitalists drive the political crisis comfortably towards their own interests.
This shows again that there is no way out for a Capitalist Brexit. Only the British working class allied to the European workers can find a way out in a joint struggle against the EU. And there are powerful fights. Just look at what the second most powerful country of the EU is doing now, Macron is mobilising the military in Paris against the yellow vests that have not stopped going to the streets since 17 November – that is the true face of the EU! And Labour want to push Britain back under their control! Take the road of French workers, mobilise to get rid of May!
Running through all the debates is the fact that food poverty, food banks, social security cuts, homelessness, precarious work and climate destruction has been normalised not only by the Tories but all the main parties including the Labour Party.
One Labour MP recognised that parliament is paralysed, he wrote in the Times, “I’m a Labour MP who voted remain, representing a constituency who voted heavily to leave. I’m torn in two. I want to be accountable, I want to be involved but I sit uselessly and helplessly trapped in a Commons that is falling to pieces at a time of national crisis. I’m one of the 650. We’ll all get the blame when the ship sinks, but in truth you might as well have put a dead cat in there instead of me; it would have had as much of a role as I’ve had in the Brexit discussions.”
Unify the strikes for a general strike
While Brexit is in paralysis austerity is not. The government and parliament have been destroying public services and workers’ rights, and Labour councils have implemented austerity on the instructions, sent in December 2015, from Jeremy Corbyn.
Strikes have been organised by RMT, the Bakers’ Union, the UCU, Unison, Unite and the new unions against job loss, outsourcing and precarity. Bu we need to unify our strikes to build a general strike to bring the government down, for a workers way to leave the EU and to end austerity.
In all the chaos and turmoil that is exposing the Tories (and parliament) neither the Socialist Party nor the Socialist Workers Party boldly and loudly demand the TUC call a general strike. They only talk, like the SWP, about the sham of capitalist democracy in a propagandistic way and mention socialism as if it were something for the far future.
These parties mention the need to co-ordinate strikes but make few efforts to do so, and what better way is there to co-ordinate strikes than to fight for a general strike?
The vote to leave
The working class are getting more impoverished every day. The vote to leave the EU is the result of great social tensions that have built up for four decades.
EU institutions work in the interest of big business, big banks, and against the interests of hard-working people. The European Union has become increasingly undemocratic, and that accelerated with the crisis of 2007/08 to an incredible extent, where the EU Commissions, ECB and the IMF decide on all budgets and applications of austerity plans and privatisation plans through Europe for services, infrastructure and make laws according to their interests.
If we can overthrow May, and we can, then we can also decide by ourselves through democratic institutions. We call for student and workers assemblies open to all from below to decide a workers’ exit from the EU, how to stop the Tory government attacks on workers and refugees, end austerity, and end the destruction of the environment. Make the banks and big business pay!
We think these assemblies should fight for an anti-capitalist programme, helping to build the European working class struggle, and fight for the destruction of the EU. The policy for a second referendum is a policy of distraction to stop any eruption of workers’ struggle and lead us back to the type of situation French workers are facing.
Kick the Tories out
We say, as many do, kick the Tories out, but that can only be done with a mass struggle of workers organising a general strike with the new unions and working class communities.
We say that the UK has to leave the EU, but not on the terms imposed on us by the ruling class, as Britain leaves we will have to fight all anti-working class attacks. Our struggle must be based on a fight for a class programme:
Bring down Theresa May, TUC must organise a general strike now!
Build student and workers committees to leave the EU.
No payment of any debt requested by the EU.
End austerity!
Kick private companies out of the NHS and all public services!
Nationalisation of banking to obtain financial resources for these plans.
Democratic control by the workers of the different economic sectors. Let us produce according to the needs of the majority not for the benefit of a few.
Immigrants are welcome!
Build a workers’ government!
European wide workers’ struggle to destroy the EU!
For a free Socialist United States of Europe!
