COMMENTING on yesterday’s decision in the High Court banning the BA cabin crew strikes, TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: ‘This is a desperately worrying judgement. A strike that clearly has majority support has been turned over on a tiny technicality. This – and other recent decisions – begin to make it look as if there is no effective right to strike in today’s Britain.’
Even the TUC leader can recognise the developing Tory dictatorship!
In fact, such is the depth of the world crisis of capitalism, and within it the desperate plight of British capitalism, the ruling class has decided that strike action, because of its impact on the capitalist economy, now ranks alongside treason as a crime.
This is why the judiciary has been reduced to proving Mr Bumble’s axiom that the ‘The Law is a ass – an idiot’, in order to ban strikes on minor technicalities that have no bearing on the issue, while there are massive voting majorities for action with well over 50 per cent of members turning out to vote for strike action.
The economic crisis is so great that they have had to sacrifice the reformist illusion of the neutrality of the state in order to halt a strike action.
The cabin crews’ strike actions were banned on the basis that the union did not carry out the letter of the law in informing all of its members of the results of the ballot, including 11 spoilt ballot papers. The result, in fact, was a massive vote for strike action, and a huge kick in the teeth for BA.
There is no doubt that the desperate state of the British capitalist economy is dictating what judges rule, and what bosses and bankers do.
It follows on from this that the union’s appeal will not succeed, and that further attacks will be made on trade unions and basic rights by the state, however angry they make workers.
One such attack is the Cameron coalition’s decision to take pre-emptive action to stop it being blown apart and then removed by a vote of no confidence in the House of Commons, when its emergency budget unleashes a huge wave of working class anger.
Normally, a government is put out if it loses a confidence vote by one. Now Cameron’s rickety and unprincipled coalition with the Liberals can only be removed by 55 per cent of MPs voting for a no confidence motion.
For this to happen it will require 13 Tories to vote against their government.
Cameron, the Prime Minister for the ruling class, intends to impose five years of savage cuts without the support of the majority, either in the country or in parliament!
This will require strengthening the dictatorship, going from judges finding fault with every strike ballot to banning all strikes that are against the ‘national interest’, according to Cameron and Clegg.
The days of legal strikes and parliamentary control over governments are over!
The worsening economic crisis has forced the Tories and the Liberals to break the class compromise that was made in 1948 when the Welfare State was founded. They intend to smash it, beginning with the emergency budget and the measures that they will be bringing in, to make the working class pay for the crisis.
The working class will fight them tooth and nail and will break from reformism, in favour of building up the revolutionary party to put an end to capitalism and bring in socialism.
First of all, every trade union must support Unite against the attack of the government and the employers.
The General Council of the TUC must call a special meeting to discuss this attack and how to deal with the new breed of union busting, job busting, wage cutting employers and their coalition government.
The TUC must defend the basic rights of the working class by calling a general strike to smash the anti- union laws and bring down the dictatorial coalition government.
It must be replaced by a workers government that will repeal the anti-union laws and bring in socialism.
