THE capitalist state has had to admit that its war on two fronts means that it cannot rely on the British army for strike breaking at home against workers who play a strategic role in the capitalist economy, such as the firefighters and the petrol tanker drivers.
This is a burning problem for the ruling class since the ever deepening capitalist crisis means that draconian measures have to be taken against the working class by the Brown government.
These draconian measures have already begun ie the three year below inflation wage cutting deals in the public sector, at a time of huge inflationary price increases, and the speeding up of the privatisation drive to sell off the remaining state owned industries and services.
These policies alone will touch off massive strike movements, such as the over one million-strong strike of local government workers due on July 16-17.
The answer of the government to this crisis for the bosses is to bring in the private security agencies. It is to sign a contract with Group 4 Security for its personnel to break strikes of firefighters and petrol tanker drivers which the government is convinced its policies will provoke.
The fact that both firefighting and tanker driving are highly skilled operations, which require training and experience, and that deaths and serious injuries can happen if these are lacking, does not seem to pose a problem for the government.
Its number one concern is to save capitalism by forcing the working class and the middle class to bear the huge cost of propping up the banks and the bosses.
The strike breaking plans are being drawn up by the Cobra Civil Contingencies Committee, utilising the Civil Contingencies Act.
A framework document drawn up by the government and the Chief Fire Officers Association recognises that ‘it cannot be assumed that the Armed Forces will be available to provide cover in the event of industrial action by firefighters’.
Their answer to this crisis is Operation Fireguard, under which 33 Fire and Rescue Services in England and Wales will employ a private contractor, Group 4 Security, to supply emergency service personnel at times of crisis.
The model for this operation is the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies that was set up by the Tory government one year before the 1926 general strike was provoked by the government.
This organisation was built and trained to move all necessary supplies around the country using the armed forces to escort columns of strike breaking vehicles, using armoured cars, through factory and dock gates guarded again by soldiers with machine guns.
This was at a time when the middle class was opposed to the strike action and thousands of students rallied along with the army and the police to try to break the strike. Even then the bosses had to rely on the TUC leaders calling it off after nine days of struggle, when it was getting stronger and stronger, to save their system.
Tomorrow’s revolutionary struggle that is emerging out of the deepening capitalist crisis is being fought under entirely different conditions.
As we have already heard, the army has not got the forces available for organised strike breaking.
Not only is the army short of strike breakers, but the middle class are being hit just as badly by the capitalist crisis as the working class. Along with the students who have had their free state education stolen from them, they have no great love for the bosses and the bankers.
The fact of the mater is that despite all of the strike breaking preparations that are being made, the working class is by far the strongest class in society.
Its weakness is that it still has the same timid reformist, ‘we can never win’ type of leadership at its head that betrayed the 1926 general strike.
The most important issue facing the working class is the rapid building of a new and revolutionary leadership in the trade unions that will lead it to victory and socialism in the period directly ahead.
That leadership is the WRP. Join it today.