ON Saturday 10th May, the News Line and the All Trades Union Alliance – the industrial arm of the Workers Revolutionary Party – will be holding a joint conference in London. (See advert)
This conference has been called at a time when the world crisis of the capitalist system is driving the ruling class into a state of open war against workers and young people, a war to smash up every gain that workers have made in the past, to cut wages down to starvation level, smash up the welfare state all in the name of paying off the colossal debts run up in order to bail out the bankrupt banking system.
In Britain, workers have been subjected to years of wage freezes and below inflation pay increases under this Tory-led coalition with Cameron declaring that ‘austerity’ is to be permanent.
What the Tories and the Labour Party leaders – who are in complete agreement that the working class must pay off the national debt caused by the banking collapse – are demanding, is nothing less than a return to the conditions of the 19th century.
Then 25% of the population were living at or below subsistence level, while today 20% of workers are being paid at a level below the rate deemed necessary for a basic standard of living.
With over one million families forced to rely on the charity of food banks or starve, it is clear that capitalism can offer absolutely no future for workers or youth except poverty and the kind of exploitation that the unions fought against since their foundation.
The working class is not sitting back and passively accepting this as their lot under capitalism.
Every section of the working class is up in arms and proving daily that it wants a fight to defend its living standards and the welfare state.
From teachers, who last week voted for strike action over pay and conditions, to tube workers and firefighters who will be on strike over pensions and job losses this week, through to local government and health workers who have voted to ballot one million Unison members for strike action over pay, the working class has demonstrated its determination and strength.
What is clear is that there is a huge mass movement amongst the working class to confront this government and smash its austerity plans. What is lacking in this fight is a leadership in the trade unions that matches the determination of their members.
At every stage the trade union leaders have sought to head off this mass movement and divert it along the path of protest.
Where possible they have tried to stop or call off strikes, while any strike action forced on them by the membership has been deliberately restricted to one or two day actions designed to ‘put pressure’ on the government to act more reasonably.
This government will not be defeated by any protest or pressure, it is a class war government determined to make the working class pay for the crisis of capitalism. The only way to defeat this government is to kick it out, something that the present reformist leadership of the trade unions is determined to avoid at all costs.
For years, the TUC has been sitting on a conference decision demanding they consider the feasibility of calling a general strike and doing precisely nothing about it. This situation cannot be allowed to continue.
The urgent requirement is to build a revolutionary Marxist leadership to lead the working class to bring down the coalition and go forward, not to another Labour government committed to the same austerity policies as the Tories, but to a workers government and socialism.
The News Line-ATUA conference has been called to discuss and organise this struggle to build the WRP and Young Socialists and build the leadership that will lead the working class to victory.
We urge every worker and youth to come to the conference and take up this historic struggle.
