COMMUNITY steel union representatives from all of the Tata Steel plants are meeting at the TUC today to discuss and plan the struggle to defend their steel industry, their jobs, their families and all of the jobs that depend on the steel industry in the UK.
The Tories are not interested in saving the steel industry – Tory business secretary Javid’s holiday at the decisive moment proves that point, as well as Cameron’s rush to leave the country as quickly as he returned from his holidays, stating as he went that Tata Steel would not be nationalised.
The Tory Chancellor, Osborne, fresh from the latest rewrite of his budget, has gone into hiding allowing Cameron and Javid to face the music. As is well known, the capitalist system is in a desperate economic and political crisis. It is currently awaiting the next banking crash, expected to be far greater than its 2008 predecessor, and has been practising super-austerity, all the better to rescue the bankers when they again demand rescue, as they did in 2007-8.
They were not refused then and they will not be refused in the future. It is the working class that is 100% expendable as far as Cameron and Co are concerned, to the point where they will not reveal what negotiations have taken place so far with Tata, Krupps, etc, concerning manning levels, wages, hours of work and pensions.
The law of rescue exists only for the bosses and bankers. There is no such law for the working class. Faced with the capitalist system in its death agony, it is therefore quite disgraceful that the leaders of the UK trade unions and the TUC will not demand the nationalisation of the steel industry under workers’ control and then management.
It is also a disgrace that Labour Party leaders, Corbyn and McDonnell, are playing a game of left politics and refusing to demand the complete, permanent nationalisation of Tata Steel, instead of the policy of temporary nationalisation until a deal is made for the bosses to rip some new entity to pieces, cutting jobs, wages and pensions.
There is only one way out of this crisis for the working class. This is to fight with everything it has to win the struggle – otherwise it is back to the 1930s with a vengeance.
The junior doctors are already in struggle to prevent the Tories imposing a contract on them for seven days’ work for five days’ pay, to create the conditions for the privatisation of the NHS. They will shortly be joined by many sections of the working class and the middle class whose jobs, homes, wages and pensions, as well as the education of their children are under attack. Capitalism can no longer offer these things.
This is why Cameron prefers to make deals with the Stalinist bureaucracy in China to making deals with the workers of the UK, and will not allow such issues as the closure of Tata Steel to get in the way of their project to work with the Chinese Stalinists.
The steelworkers must take the decision to fight for their jobs, wages and pensions.
They must occupy all of the Tata Steel plants, and set up councils of action, to build up mass support for a general strike and to make the TUC call it.
The TUC leaders must be made to call a general strike to defend the Tata Steel jobs, the NHS and the Welfare State. A general strike will be directed at bringing down the Tories and bringing in a workers’ government and socialism.
This will expropriate and nationalise the entire capitalist economy, its industries and banks, and bring in a planned socialist economy to satisfy people’s needs. In fact, the junior doctors are taking strike action on April 6 and April 26-27. There will be a lobby from 8am on Wednesday 27th of the TUC General Council to demand that it calls a general strike.
All workers must strike with them and join the mass lobby of the TUC General Council on April 27th to demand it call a general strike. This is the way forward! This is the way to win the struggle for jobs, wages, the NHS and a better life under socialism. Only the WRP fights for this perspective. Join it today!
