120,000 trade unionists and their supporters, including over a hundred workers who are part of the occupation of the Waterford Crystal plant, marched through Dublin on Saturday.
Their march put the do-nothings of the British TUC led by Barber, and Unite’s Woodley and Simpson to shame.
Unite members in Waterford have occupied a plant to fight for their jobs, while the TUC leader Barber is presiding over a vast trade union movement which has not lifted a finger while unemployment has rocketed to over two million in the UK, where tens of thousands of workers have had their homes repossessed, and a death sentence is hanging over the whole of the UK’s manufacturing industry.
The Unite leaders Woodley and Simpson are even refusing to publicly name the big motor car plant that they say will close in a few days.
They are keeping faith with their friends in the employing class and the Brown government, while workers are desperately worried as to what they will do if they lose their jobs, then their homes, and then their families.
Woodley and Simpson are responsible for the situation that erupted at BMW in Cowley last week, when 850 workers were sacked with one hour’s notice, and were not even warned about what was afoot by the union leaders, who did not lift a finger to stop the sackings.
Workers were reduced to angrily confronting their leaders and yelling at them that they were supposed to represent the workers not the employers.
Other workers pelted the local union leaders with fruit.
Now we learn that all of the GM plants in the EU are under threat of mass redundancies and/or closure.
However, the UK union leaders remain mum on these issues and do nothing to warn, or mobilise workers to defend their jobs, wages and homes.
The Irish workers, and the occupation of Waterford Crystal, have shown the way forward.
Now workers in the trade unions in the UK must occupy plants to defend their jobs and sack all those union leaders who put their relations with the bosses and the Brown government before their duty to defend the interests of their members.
Woodley, Simpson and Barber must be made to resign, and the TUC must call a one-day national demonstration in defence of jobs, on a working day. This one day general strike will show that the working class will not be pitched back to the hungry 1930s.
All factories where the employers wish to cut the numbers of workers or close up must be occupied, and a national campaign must begin to fight for them to be nationalised under workers’ control, the only way to defend jobs.
Brown, who is currently setting out to privatise the Royal Mail, will fight the nationalisation of the major industries tooth and nail.
The trade unions must therefore be ready to bring down the Brown government and bring in a workers’ government that will put an end to crisis-ridden capitalism and bring in socialism.
Trade union leaders who are not prepared to fight the Brown bankers government and bring it down must be made to leave office and be replaced by leaders who will take the necessary action.
On the Dublin mass demonstration last Saturday worker after worker told News Line that their mass demonstration was just the start and that if it took a general strike to defeat the government and its plans, this is what will be done.
Workers in the UK face the same problems as Irish workers.
The workers of Britain and Ireland must go forward to organise socialist revolutions that will put an end to capitalism and bring in socialist societies whose planned economies will lead to a better life for everybody.