THE sacking by Keir Starmer of Labour MP Sam Tarry from his post as shadow transport minister has sent shock waves throughout the Labour Party and the trade unions.
Tarry was dismissed by Labour leader Starmer for the crime of attending a picket line of striking rail workers at Euston station on Wednesday and speaking out in support of the struggle for above inflation wage increases.
This flatly contradicts the position of Starmer on pay.
The position of Starmer, and the right-wing in control of the Labour Party, is that workers must accept pay cuts to fund the war against Russia and to keep the gigantic profits of the bosses rolling in.
By calling for above inflation wage rises Tarry had broken the ‘collective responsibility’ that binds Labour front benchers to this treacherous line that workers must pay for the inflationary crisis.
Starmer’s action has caused a huge upsurge of anger, amongst trade unions and within the Labour Party, over the open hatred of the Starmer leadership for the working class that is fighting against a system that is driving millions into abject poverty and starvation.
Tarry told LBC yesterday that he had taken calls from seven union general secretaries ‘absolutely fuming’ at his sacking and are now on a ‘direct collision course with the Labour Party’.
Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite union described the sacking as ‘another insult to the trade union movement’, adding: ‘Labour is becoming more and more irrelevant to ordinary working people who are suffering.’
Manuel Cortes, general secretary of TSSA hit out directly at Starmer saying he was not ‘worthy of leading’ the party if he couldn’t understand ‘the basic concept of solidarity’.
RMT general secretary Mick Lynch attacked Starmer, accusing him of ‘playing up to the agenda of Liz Truss and the right wing press’.
Truss this week promised if she was elected as Tory leader she would bring in laws making strikes virtually illegal within 30 days.
Labour MP and former shadow chancellor John McDonnell told Sky News that Labour should be supporting the strikes, and that there should be a general strike if workers did not get a decent pay rise ‘that protects against the cost-of-living crisis’.
The issue of calling a general strike, one dismissed as a fantasy by Labour and trade union leaders, has been growing as workers increasingly demand real action over a cost of living crisis that will drive tens of millions back to the poverty of the 19th century, the time when trade unions were illegal and workers had the choice of starvation levels of pay or the workhouse.
It is this massive, and insurrectionary, tide of anger that has forced the issue of a general strike firmly on the agenda. This anger of workers is also the driving force behind the move by Starmer and the right wing to split the Labour Party, driving out any MPs expressing support for strikes and further cementing a historic split between Labour and the trade unions.
Starmer has precipitated this split in order to prepare the way for a national government, in which the reactionary rump of the Labour Party will play the role of containing the working class and rescue bankrupt capitalism from the fast developing insurrectionary movement of workers and youth.
With the Tories so weak that they cannot function as a party, to the extent that Boris Johnson is now widely touted to return as the leader and ‘saviour’ of the party, the ruling class are increasingly looking to a national government as the way to hold back workers from revolution.
For workers the only way to resolve this crisis is to dump Starmer and the right wing and immediately demand the TUC call a general strike to bring down the Tory government and go forward to a workers government, that will expropriate the bosses and bankers and bring in a socialist planned economy.
This insurrectionary situation demands a new leadership in the unions that is prepared to take a general strike forward to the seizure of power.
Only the WRP and its youth section the Young Socialists fights for this policy and perspective – join us today to build the revolutionary party to organise the victory of the British socialist revolution. This is the only way forward for the working class and the majority of the middle class!
