TODAY’S march called by the TUC is a massive demonstration of the anger and hatred felt by the working class, whole sections of the middle class, students and young people towards the Tory-LibDem coalition government and its policies.
In Wednesday’s class war budget the chancellor, George Osborne, repeated the fiction that salvation for British capitalism lay in the hands of the private sector expanding – a fiction that had already been exposed with the release of figures, earlier in the week, that despite all the savage attacks on wages, jobs and pensions already made, the British economy is still collapsing.
This fact will only spur the coalition on to increase their slash and burn attack on the working class and youth.
The beloved diversion of the TUC, a rival ‘Plan B’ to save capitalism without massive suffering and super- exploitation, is a fiction – it does not exist.
There is no alternative for the ruling class waging a savage war against workers and their unions at home, while at the same time waging war against the Libyan people to re-colonise their country and snatch their oil wealth.
The position of the TUC leadership and that of the Labour Party is one of agreement: that workers must pay for the crisis. The only area of disagreement is on time-scale – whether the savage cuts need to be brought about so quickly. They all agree that they will have to be made!
What is clearly worrying them is that the cuts have produced an explosive response amongst workers and pensioners, and in particular amongst young people.
The working class is not prepared to sit back and accept passively the destruction of the welfare state, the NHS and the education system, and being transported back to the ‘Dark Ages’.
Workers are demanding a fight to stop this attack. They want this coalition to be brought down, and they will not tolerate leaders who restrict the battle to verbal ‘question time’ type exchanges.
Rather than see themselves and their families driven back to the conditions of the 19th century with its workhouses, private medicine and education available only to the wealthy, they want a general strike to bring down the coalition and to go forward to a workers’ government and socialism.
In place of leading this fight, the TUC leaders are openly restricting themselves to a ‘fight’ for the non-existent ‘Plan B’.
As the crisis of the capitalist system deepens and the class war sharpens, this role of the trade union leaders, as the main social prop of capitalism, becomes more and more unacceptable to the working class.
The only alternative to capitalism dumping the bankers’ crisis onto the backs of the working class is the mobilisation of the enormous strength of the workers in a general strike to bring down the coalition and begin the British socialist revolution.
Today’s march must be a milestone in this fight.
From this massive demonstration workers must battle inside their trade unions for an indefinite general strike this summer to defend the jobs, wages and pensions of the working class and to secure a future for the youth.
In the course of this fight, leaders who want to live in a world of left talk only will be removed and be replaced by leaders who understand the need for action to put an end to capitalism and go forward to socialism.
Only the Workers Revolutionary Party fights for this position and is building the alternative revolutionary leadership that the working class requires to win the class war that the Tories and LibDems are stoking up at every turn.
All workers and youth who understand that the time for talking and making fake left speeches is over, and that the time for decisive action has arrived, must join the WRP and the Young Socialists at once, to make sure that the working class does not once again go down fighting, betrayed by its leaders, but rises to the historic occasion and takes the power to put an end to capitalism.
