THE Rail, Maritime and Transport union (RMT) have submitted a motion to next week’s TUC congress calling for the TUC to organise a co-ordinated ‘fight-back’ by the unions and local communities against the savage cuts being imposed by the Cameron coalition government.
This motion calls for the TUC to organise an immediate conference of unions to discuss co-ordinated industrial action to defend the welfare state, jobs, pensions and conditions and for the TUC to ‘consider’ calling a conference of unions and users of the welfare state and publicly funded services to establish a ‘broad alliance’ against the cuts.
Further, the RMT motion urges the TUC to organise national demonstrations and national days of action including a lobby of Parliament to protest against these cuts.
Speaking about the motion, Bob Crow (general secretary of the RMT) stated that the coalition government has decided to ‘unleash all-out class warfare’ on the working class and its communities.
Crow’s response to this declaration of class war reveals the total bankruptcy of these ‘lefts’ within the leadership of the unions.
Instead of demanding an all-out mobilisation of the entire trade union movement for a general strike, that is, placing the unions on a war footing just as the Cameron government is doing with its forces, he calls for a campaign along the lines of the anti-poll tax movement of 1990.
This is not 1990 and the cuts being introduced by this government can in no way be compared to the poll tax.
Crucially, the poll tax was never central to the survival of British capitalism: the Tory government of the day was able make a retreat, discarding it in the face of the determined resistance by workers and youth.
Today, the crisis of capitalism is so acute that only by driving the working class down, smashing its organisations and destroying all the gains of the welfare state, can British capitalism hope to survive.
One-day strikes, protests and lobbying – which have as their aim pressuring this government into easing back – are not just inadequate but are potentially lethal for the working class, insofar as they become a mere ‘safety valve’ designed to head off an insurrectionary working class and dissipate the energy of workers through a series of protests.
Far from being deterred from pushing ahead with its attacks, the government has signalled that it intends to increase them as Chancellor Osborne made clear this week when he announced a further £4 billion cuts to welfare benefits. The urgency of the situation has been re-emphasised with yesterday’s announcement that the coalition is to proceed with legislation to privatise the Royal Mail in just a few weeks.
Crow is correct. The coalition has declared class war. It is obvious that the working class and its unions must respond with equal determination to win this war, not mark time marching the troops up and down the hill.
The situation demands that next week’s TUC congress call a general strike with the aim of bringing down the government and bringing in a workers’ government.
Talk of joint protest action between unions and community organisations must be dumped and replaced with concrete action to build Councils of Action in every community as fighting organisations to defend the working class and support a general strike.
A general strike raises point blank the question of power and who runs the country – the workers or the bankers? Only a leadership that is prepared to take the working class to power can answer this huge question. All those leaders who oppose this struggle must be forced to resign and be replaced with those prepared to fight.
Next Monday, the WRP, Young Socialists and ATUA will be lobbying the TUC to demand that it calls a general strike to bring down the coalition government and replace it with a workers’ government. Join our lobby on Monday!