FIVE THOUSAND trade unionists marched on Saturday in Cheltenham to mark the banning of trade unions at the GCHQ spy centre 40 years ago, and the sacking of 14 workers for refusing to sign away their rights to belong to a trade union.
Today, the trade unions are facing a bankrupted British capitalism which has already brought in measures to ban legal trade unionism, going much further than Thatcher at the time of GCHQ.
Thatcher in the 1980s was fighting to maintain the declining power of British imperialism.
She organised the 1984-85 state war with the National Union of Mineworkers when hundreds of miners were jailed and also the war to retake the Malvinas from Argentina, with a considerable cost to pay, the death of thousands of Argentinians, and hundreds of British soldiers.
Today’s crisis-ridden Tories, faced with an economy that is collapsing, want to destroy workers’ rights and are seeking to fight a war on two fronts. The first front is against the British working class – the Tories are determined to smash the unions. The second front is to drive to a major war with Russia, to try and smash the great gains of the Russian and Chinese revolutions.
These war preparations are being speeded up, after Russia has successfully fought back the various Ukrainian offensives, which have been financed by the USA and NATO, including the UK.
Faced with a threatened civil war at home, and a war abroad as the UK-US alliance seeks to bring down Russia, the 5,000-strong demo to Cheltenham on Saturday to remember the banning of unions there by Thatcher was completely inadequate – it should have been the first day of a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government and socialism.
This is the time to fight for an indefinite general strike to smash the Tories and bring in a workers government!
Today, the trade unions are extremely powerful. They have the power and they must use it, but the TUC will not call a general strike to smash the Tories and bring in a workers government.
The capitalist world in 1984-85 was in a huge crisis. It eased with the smashing of the Thatcher government! Today, capitalism is in its death agony, and must be removed by the trade unions calling a general strike to bring in a workers government and socialism. This means the smashing of the capitalist state.
This GCHQ anniversary should have been marked by a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government and socialism.
Capitalism is going down the drain and it must be helped on its way by the revolutionary movement of the working class of the world, united in the International Committee of the Fourth International.
We urge all workers and youth to join the Young Socialists and the WRP. We urge all workers and youth to attend our 54 years of the News Line Anniversary Rally, (see page 1) where the programme for the organisation of the British Socialist Revolution will be outlined as well as the programmes for building up mass sections of the Young Socialists and sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in every country.
Capitalism is now going down the drain. Don’t let the ruling class and its agents organise some new World War to keep this rotten system going by a mass worldwide slaughter, that is World War Three.
There is not as moment to lose. Join the WRP and the Young Socialists to organise the British Socialist Revolution.
Help to build sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International worldwide to go forward to the victory of the world socialist revolution, including restoring rule through Workers and Peasants Soviets in Russia and China, and a worldwide planned socialist economy.
