SATURDAY’S mass marches in London, Glasgow and Belfast were marches to bring down the coalition, regardless of the intentions of their TUC organisers who favour saving capitalism with less harsh cuts than those carried out by the Tory-led coalition.
Marchers made it very clear that they wanted a general strike to put an end to the Tory destruction of the Welfare State, while the presence of EU trade union leaders made it clear that the march was part of an international class struggle against capitalism.
The militancy of the marchers did throw the trade union bureaucracy into consternation, with Bob Crow finding himself to the right of Unite’s Len McCluskey.
Crow called for a 24 hour general strike, ie a bigger one-day demonstration, while Unite’s McCluskey was so moved by the massive demonstration that he put it to the vote at the Hyde Park mass meeting whether the vast crowd was in favour of an unlimited general strike, and was rewarded by a forest of hands in a unanimous ‘yes’ vote.
While spontaneity worshippers will read into this episode that the trade union bureaucracy is changing course for the better, the ultra-lefts will say that the bureaucracy is just looking both ways and intends to do nothing at all. They will point to the vote at the TUC Congress to ‘consider the practicalities of a general strike action’, while the same leaders one week later at the Labour Party conference hailed Miliband’s ‘One Nation’ Tory speech as the best thing since the Sermon on the Mount.
Neither view is correct. The capitalist crisis is deepening rapidly, and the Tories are poised to bring in the most vicious measures seen since the 19th century, at a time when the working class is already boiling with anger.
Neither the Cameron government nor the TUC trade union bureaucracy is in control of the situation. Both are being driven by it, and both do not know what new catastrophe they will have to face next.
It is this rapidly deepening crisis situation, and the impossibility of the workers accepting what the bosses want, that is putting a general strike on the agenda, not the intentions of either the Tories or the TUC.
The TUC may well be forced into calling a general strike because the anger of the working class leaves it with little alternative except to try and emulate 1926 – call a strike to betray it.
If the TUC refuses, it faces a South African situation where the anger of the masses erupts and sweeps it out of the way as it loses control over them – as the NUM has lost control over the South African miners. This suggests that the TUC will be forced to call action to maintain its control of the movement in order to sell it out as quickly as possible.
It is in this developing revolutionary situation that the building of the revolutionary leadership of the WRP is decisive.
This must be done in the struggle to organise a general strike and to prevent the Tories closing down the NHS and the Welfare State.
This means bringing the masses into the struggle by organising Councils of Action in every city in the country, to stop the destruction of the NHS and the closure of industries by mass occupations and strike actions.
The building of Councils of Action and occupations to stop hospital closures will prepare the way for a general strike to bring down the coalition and bring in a workers government.
This government will not be a Labour government but will be a revolutionary government since the defence of the NHS, the Welfare State and the basic rights of the working class will require a socialist revolution.
This is the way forward.
Now is the time to join and build the WRP. Come to our News Line and Trotsky Anniversary rally next Sunday