Another important step in the fight against the cuts has taken place with the agreement for strike action on November 30 in defence of pensions, jobs and services. This was agreed at the TUC conference as the first day of united action and will be an unprecedented coming together of all public sector workers and communities. If the unions organise and mobilise for this we could see a 3 or 4 million strong strike which would be the biggest since 1926 General Strike.
The anti-cuts movements are European wide and as the crises in Europe deepens, thanks to the banks demanding ever greater austerity measures, unions and youth will have to fight. Greek workers are facing barbaric attacks and youth unemployment in Britain is now officially above 1 million as total unemployment above 2.5 million.
Labour leader Ed Miliband has made it clear that he opposes strike action in the fight for the public services and has said he won’t reverse any cuts if returned to power, thus showing his intention to continue to attack the working class; like the government he lies when he says that cuts are necessary in order to save the country, what he means is they are necessary to save the profits and bonuses of banks and big business who created this crisis. “Save the system” means make the working class pay.
At the Labour Party conference in Liverpool the Labour leader said he was, “Proud of the work our Labour council is doing”. Liverpool’s Labour council has cut £91 million from the budget this year and is closing children’s services, support for the disabled and other frontline services with further cuts of £53 million next year.
Trade union leaders voice their opposition to the cuts but they should be demanding that the Labour Party members mobilise for the November strikes. Some leaders have expressed admiration and support for the students who took to the streets against the National Union of Students leadership and created new organisations of struggle. Now students are renewing the fight and plan to demonstrate on November 9th and support the N30 strikes. Only praise for the students that leads to the same type of actions has any real meaning. Fight all leaders that will not mobilise, replace all leaders that will not mobilise that is the real lesson from the students.
At the TUC conference the Unite General Secretary Len McCluskey gave a powerful warning that unions would head into “terminal decline” if its 6.5 million members failed to stand up and fight. “Every conceivable form of protest and action should be carefully considered, from civil disobedience through to co-ordinated industrial strikes.”
However he went on to attack the youth and Black communities, the most oppressed sections of this capitalist society, who rose up in August against police violence and harassment, unemployment and no prospects. We must pressure the unions to take a lead in support of the working class youth, and attack the excessive and draconian responses of the state to the clashes.
The unions should start by organizing the youth and unemployed as part of the united fight-back against the cuts. The initial response of the state to the youth ‘uprising’ was to introduce the use of plastic bullets and water cannon. This State is preparing and arming itself against the anger of workers that will match the anger of the youth when they begin to rise against the austerity programmes that will devastate their lives, communities and future.
We must build a united national struggle of all anti-cuts and community groups, student and youth groups, trades councils and union branches.
Just like the workers and youth in the Middle East and Europe we are fighting against a severe deterioration in our living standards. The past gains such as the welfare system and National Health Service are being eroded. Capitalism is unable to guarantee anything other than an increasing attack on the working class and widening the gap between rich and poor.
The world economy is in chaos, stock exchanges are falling and some banks are again on the brink of disaster. The IMF has warned that the risk to the international financial system is higher now than at any time since the collapse of Lehman brothers in 2008. As the Bank of England made the decisions to print a further £75 billion Mervyn King said, “This is the most serious financial crisis we’ve seen, at least since the 1930s, if not ever. “
Pensioner groups and unions angrily described this decision as “a Titanic disaster” for savers. Greater austerity measures will follow and their defeat will need a united movement and leadership of all the working class forces across Europe. The leadership of that movement must be based on the principles of internationalism. We are part of the International Workers League, we recognise the need to develop a struggle to include a workers alternative towards the construction of the Socialist United States of Europe.
Capitalism has to be replaced by socialism to prevent this threatening catastrophe. Our future will be socialism or we will face darker days than the 1930s and lose the gains from hundreds of years of suffering and struggle. It took a fight to achieve them and it will take a bigger fight to keep them.
This is an absolutely necessary and urgent task in the process of our struggle. Labour offers no alternative, the working class has to build an alternative that will come from the youth, Black communities, workers and trade unions. In this the new party of class struggle Marxism will play a central role because the continuous fight for class independence and internationalism will be fundamental. The First International began the practice of a common workers fight and continues today in the struggle to rebuild the Fourth International. This is the central core to the work of the ISL.
