The news this week that Unison, the largest public sector union, has launched a legal challenge to the coalition government’s white paper on the NHS begs the question, what will Unison do when this legal action either fails or at best merely provides a slight delay in plans that represent the destruction of the National Health Service?
An amendment to a resolution on the NHS by Unison that calls on the TUC to ‘challenge proposals legislatively and by working with patient and campaigning organisations,’ gives the answer.
So the working class is being told that defence of the NHS is down to the capitalist courts and fine interpretation of the law with the alternative being a vague campaign of protest.
The ‘lefts’ within the trade union leadership, epitomised by Bob Crowe of the RMT, strike a more militant sounding posture when they call for a campaign of action on the lines of the anti-Poll Tax movement of the 1980s which brought down Margaret Thatcher.
Behind this rhetoric, however, lies the uncomfortable fact that the determination of capitalism to smash up the welfare state can in no way be compared to Thatcher’s Poll Tax.
The Poll Tax was never an absolute requirement for British capitalism.
The destruction of the NHS along with the privatisation of education and the savage attacks on wages and pensions is an absolute imperative if bankrupt British capitalism is to survive.
This government will not be diverted or pressurised by any amount of protest.
All this demand for a Poll Tax-type campaign does is to divert responsibility for the fight away from the leadership of the trade unions, attempting to confuse and mislead workers who are increasingly sick to death of impotent trade union ‘campaigns’ that have not stopped a single factory or industry closing or saved a single job.
Meanwhile the leadership of the TUC is engaged in its own campaign, that of engaging in secret talks with the coalition government.
An article in Tuesday’s Independent newspaper revealed that ‘beneath the radar’ contacts have been taking place with a view to seeking a deal with the government rather than confrontation.
That the TUC leaders are seeking cosy relationships with the government is no secret, Brendan Barber (TUC general secretary) invited both David Cameron and Vince Cable to address this year’s Congress, an unprecedented move.
A campaign by the News Line to overturn these invitations won massive support amongst trade union branches forcing the TUC leaders into a humiliating climb down.
Despite this these leaders are desperately attempting to ‘engage’ with the government.
They have invited the government’s leading banker, King, to address Congress. He has publicly praised the growth of unemployment as being progressive in keeping wages down and called for more cuts.
When asked to confirm the Independent’s report a TUC spokesman said: ‘There is nothing secret or surprising about Britain’s biggest voluntary movement engaging with the government of the day.’
The Tories and LibDems are equally keen to embrace these right-wing reformists.
They are acutely aware that the working class is in a state of rebellion over being forced to bear the burden of the capitalist crisis through savage cuts that would turn the clock back to the 19th century.
This weak coalition government knows that it is forced to rely on the treachery of the trade union leadership to head off the insurrectionary movement of the working class.
Union branches must bombard the TUC with resolutions demanding that Barber and the rest of the right-wing be thrown out of office, and that an emergency resolution be put to this TUC Congress that Congress organise a general strike to bring down the Tory-led coalition government and bring in a workers government.
This is the only ‘engagement’ the working class wants with this reactionary coalition.
