10,000 WORKERS, trade unionists and youth were on the London May Day March on Thursday from Clerkenwell Green to Trafalgar Square.
The march was led by the RMT Fishburn Band, which was followed by thousands of RMT members carrying flags and wearing t-shirts picturing Bob Crow, the union’s late general secretary who died just a month ago.
They carried scores of RMT banners, including Waterloo, Bakerloo, Blackpool, Humber, Paddington, Manchester, Hammersmith & City, Jubilee Line, Scottish Region, Liverpool, Yorks & Lincs, Clyde, Portsmouth, Three Bridges, Chiltern, Plymouth, Dover and Cambridge.
Then followed other trade union banners, including Aslef, NUT, PCS, Unison, Unite, BECTU, POA.
There were huge red flags carried by Turkish and Kurdish movements and there were other banners from Sri Lankan workers, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and others.
The Workers Revolutionary Party and the Young Socialists had four banners, including a Victory to Palestine banner. They kept up constant chants of: ‘TUC get off your knees – Call a General Strike! No Ghost Stations – Defend Every Job! Capitalism is Collapsing – Socialism Now! No Zero Hours Contracts – Youth Demand Jobs! Hands off Ukraine – Imperialism Out! Defend the NHS – No Privatisation! No Cuts No Closures – Kick this Government Out!’
Many marchers spoke to News Line.
Fred Potter, RMT Tutor and retired seafarer, said: ‘It’s a diabolical situation. We’re going back 50 years at least. A general strike is long overdue. We have to bring the government down. At P&O in Dover we’ve got kids working on ferries on zero hours contracts.
‘They are paid going out to Calais and Boulogne, but if the passenger numbers are down and they say they are not needed, they aren’t paid for coming back. The next thing is they’ll be told to pay their own fares home. It’s the same at Stena Line. Zero Hours contracts are like a plague and it’s getting worse.’
Janey Mac, from Occupy London, said: ‘We are just launching a campaign on payday loans, on debt bondage and wage slavery. Local councils are passing their responsibilities to loan companies.
‘The first thing we want is a ban on all advertising by payday loan companies, they are grooming our children. The reason people are using them is because of benefit cuts, Bedroom Tax, fuel prices, etc.
‘Capitalism has got to go.’
Phil Simpson, RMT Chester, was carrying the RMT Supports the Shrewsbury 24 Campaign banner. He told News Line: ‘This banner was made for us by Bob Crow. Bob was a keen supporter of the Shrewsbury 24 Campaign and he came with us to Downing Street in December last year to hand in 100,000 signatures demanding to have the papers released from the trials of the Shrewsbury pickets and calling for justice for the Shrewsbury 24.
‘I am from Chester RMT branch and Dessie Warren was born and bred in Chester. The case for the release of the papers has now been submitted to the CCRC (Criminal Cases Review Committee) and shows the Shrewsbury 24 were all set up and wrongly convicted. We are now waiting for the CCRC to send the case to the Court of Appeal.’
Paul Jackson, London Underground Engineering Branch Secretary, said: ‘This week’s two-day strike was 100% solid and we are looking for it to be equally solid next week for another three days, which will definitely be on. People understand this is about them and us, you are either on our side or not.
‘This is about our class, fighting cuts. This is about money. This is purely Tory cuts, trying to make the working class pay for the bankers. Well, let them pay. The RMT backs the call for a General Strike 100%. If the TUC are too spineless to call one then they must hang their heads in shame.’
Steve Hedley, RMT Assistant General Secretary, said: ‘It’s international workers day and it’s appropriate we’re commemorating Bob Crow on this day, who attended every May Day march.
‘This is in contrast to other trade union leaders who have spoken about a General Strike but can’t even co-ordinate with us on London Underground. We’ve been out now in a second wave of strikes and we’re going out again on Monday night for another three days.
‘A general strike is overdue. We support the POA (Prison Officers Association) calling for a general strike 100% and the TUC really need to act on it. It’s the only way we are going to defend working people.’
The Young Socialists and Workers Revolutionary Party organised a May Day meeting following the TUC march.
Dave Wiltshire, secretary of the All Trades Unions Alliance said: ‘A hundred and twenty five years ago in 1889 the First Congress of the Second Working Mens International called for international demonstrations on May Day for the a legal eight-hour day. This commemorated the Chicago strikers shot down by the police for fighting for the eight-hour day in 1886.
‘The conception was one of revolutionary struggle in fighting for their rights under capitalism and is to be found all over the world today. Miners were shot down in South Africa in 2011. The massive crisis of capitalism is being resolved on the backs of the working class, by austerity cuts, throughout the advanced countries. We see this in Greece, Portugal, Ireland and the USA where 44 million people live below the poverty line with no health insurance.
‘Those with jobs are suffering wage cuts that haven’t been seen since the end of the 19th Century. In local government there have been three years of no wage rises followed by two years of below inflation pay rises. Others have had no rise at all for five years. Workers have lost £2,600 on average, and some up to £6,000 since the coalition came in.
‘That’s the employed. But there are over a million on zero hours contracts, a form of slave labour. Millions are forced onto the benefit system in order to pay their rent or mortgage. The government are forcing young people onto the streets, into conditions similar before trade unions existed in the 19th Century.
‘Its all very well the trade union leaders talking today in Trafalgar Square about the “glorious struggle”. They have done nothing about this situation. They talk about the attacks on the welfare state, but they haven’t lifted a finger to defend a hospital or one hospital bed.
‘A film was shown of Tony Benn saying that it is not the winning that is important but the struggle. This is rubbish. We are interested in winning. A motion was passed at the 2011 TUC Congress to consider the practicalities of organising a general strike. Over the next two years, they decided not to call one. Why? It would get tremendous support from the working class and sections of the middle class. Workers don’t want to protest in sections. They want the full strength of the working class mobilised.
‘The question of leadership is the most important question, wrote Trotsky. Imperialism is in decline, waging war against the working class at home and against the masses in the rest of the world, as we see in Ukraine.
‘Workers demand unity – not to go forward to a Labour government, but to a workers government.
‘These treacherous trade union leaders need to be removed and replaced. The mass movement of the working class is mobilising.
‘In South Africa, the African National Congress (ANC ) which has ruled since 1994 on the strength of the Mandela legacy, is now in huge crisis and split, only propped up by the trade union leaders and the Stalinists. Workers are forming new unions like the AMCU.
‘It’s the same in Britain. Workers are on the move. They are spontaneously coming into conflict with the old leadership. What is required is a conscious leadership to struggle for power. It does matter. This system is bankrupt. It can only destroy. The future of humanity rests on the working class taking power and putting an end to this vicious bankrupt system.
‘There has never been a period like this in history. The upcoming ATUA conference is our opportunity. The struggle for power in this country is an immediate issue. This crisis has placed in front of us this historic responsibility.’
Chairman of the Young Socialists Joshua Ogunleye, said: ‘We are preparing to change society. Youth unemployment is sky rocketing. There are 1.4million people on zero hours contracts, at the beck and call of employers, who do not want them for a lot of the time. There is no security, no sick pay and no holiday pay.
‘They are cutting youth centres. Young people are being sanctioned, stopped and searched.
‘Young people are refusing – in Spain there has been mass insurrection and in Greece they have been taking on the police and the state. In South America and Portugal, young people are in the fore front.
‘Capitalism can’t provide a future for young people. The workfare programme is cheap labour for the bosses, for the likes of Primark, Tesco or Poundland. They want 30 hours a week with no wages. This is cheap labour to undermine trade union agreements and drag back conditions.
‘Even charities refuse to accept this. There have been campaigns with people refusing to shop in these places. They’re preparing for riots and uprisings this Summer. We have to prepare the revolutionary leadership as part of the world struggle for socialist revolution. We have to get rid of capitalism and get socialism, where every one has a job, free education and free healthcare.’
Bill Rogers, chairman of Chingford Aslef and Secretary of the North East Council of Action, said: ‘There is now the worst crisis ever. The USA started turning off the taps of quantitative easing by $10bn a month, deepening a crisis they can’t stop.
‘We now have a million households relying on charity food banks. We used to have a welfare state, free education, council houses, grants for university. Now they are doing the unthinkable. The working class does not accept this, as seen in the strike wave. The tube workers came out for 48 hours. But short strikes are not enough. You saw it with the firemen. They still closed fire stations.
Unison workers are being balloted for strike action. At Ealing hospital they won a 16% rise after 11 days of strike action.
‘The working class are prepared to stand and fight. For seven years we fought the closure of the maternity and A&E at Chase Farm hospitals We’re for continuing that fight and we want the services back. Within five weeks, a toddler died and Barnet hospital declared a state of internal emergency as 19 ambulances queued on one day.
‘In that campaign Unison, the GMB, Unite, the BMA and the RCN did absolutely nothing to defend their members. Hospital workers have had to re-apply for their own jobs at Barnet or North Middlesex.
‘It’s the whole NHS. The £20bn QIPP cuts are driven through, while PFI debts drain resources. The Health and Social Care Act forces CCGs to put all contracts out to tender, so that private companies can muscle into the NHS.
‘In Hackney and Tower Hamlets 17 GP surgeries are threatened with closure. Two thirds of hospitals are predicted to go into deficit in 2015/16 Then Hunt’s trust special administrator failure regime can be brought in to shut them rapidly down. This Winter was mild, but hospitals could hardly cope.
‘The trade union leadership has done nothing to defend hospitals or schools or stop redundancies. Next week we want a big attendance at the NL/ ATUA conference. There is not a fag paper of difference between the policies of the Labour and the Tories. A workers government would expropriate the banks and the drugs companies.’
Frank Sweeney, General Secretary of the WRP, said: ‘The great strength of our party is its internationalism. May Day is international workers day. We send our revolutionary greetings to the comrades of those who have died in struggle against imperialism.
‘We salute the 5,000 Palestinian prisoners and those who suffer in the torture chambers of Iraq and Libya and we stand with the Syrian people. The world crisis brings terrible things. Workers go hungry. Contracts are ripped up. The conditions are being created for a huge revolutionary transformation.
‘The most decisive issue is revolutionary leadership. We are that leadership, the WRP, the Young Socialists and the All Trades Unions Alliance. No one else is going to do it. He continued: ‘The movement in the Ukraine is an enormous inspiration. Glimpses of workers views have come through in interviews. Ukrainians don’t want Euro starvation and unemployment as in Greece.
‘This is part of the world revolution. Revolution is developing in South Africa. The African National Congress’s days are numbered. The ANC kept the western banks, and western-owned mines and industry with profits often going to the city of London.
‘Together with the workers in Egypt, the whole of Africa is ripe for revolution. The struggle extends from Syria, to Palestine to Venezuela. At the centre of the struggle is the revolutionary crisis that is developing in the EU and in the United States.
‘What is needed in this situation, where world revolution is developing at a record pace, is the building up of the revolutionary leadership worldwide. The capitalist class know that their system is in massive crisis which is why they launch their wars.
‘The UK’s government is very weak. The Labour and trade union leaders have let them get away with murder. The crisis of leadership in the working class has to be resolved to bring them down.
‘We have to make a huge expansion of membership. There is no reason not to build, whether young or old, we must feel confident. The job is there to be done. This May Day has to mark a turning point in building the revolutionary leadership. That’s the real way to extend the hand of solidarity to the oppressed.
‘Everyone here has to be involved. The only future is the world socialist revolution by taking power and getting rid of the capitalists.’
