THE use of police dogs to ‘protect’ scabs at a south London fire station during yesterday’s one day strike by London FBU members shows the advanced state of the class war today and the determination of the capitalist state to break the unions.
The strike took place after talks between the union and local authorities collapsed on Sunday.
According to FBU leaders the employers stuck rigidly to their guns.
They insisted that the FBU cave in and agree to all 5,500 London firefighters being forced to accept new, imposed terms and conditions or face the sack.
Despite the willingness of the FBU leadership to find a compromise negotiated settlement on the issue of attendance patterns, the employer – backed by the government and the capitalist state – has shown that they are not interested in any negotiated settlement, they are out to crush the FBU.
What FBU members now face is an absolute showdown, not just with the Fire Brigade and the local authorities but with the government and capitalist state.
Already we have Tories and their spokesmen in the bourgeois press calling for the FBU to be treated in the same way Ronald Reagan treated the striking Patco workers when he sacked the entire air traffic control workforce and had their union leaders dragged off to jail in chains.
The capitalist state has also emerged as the defenders of the professional scabbing operation being launched by the private company AssetCo plc.
The use of police and security dogs proves the gloves are off with a vengeance in a dispute which has revealed itself to be an all-out war in which one side or the other must emerge victorious.
It is not just a strike that involves the FBU, it is one that is crucial for the entire working class and its union organisation.
At its heart is the determination of the coalition government and the capitalist class to destroy trade unionism. To transform the unions from independent organisations fighting for their members into servile organisations that exist only to transmit the dictats of the employer to workers and ensure that they are obeyed.
For this reason the fight by London FBU is not just a question for the firefighters but for the entire movement.
Every union must come out in support of the FBU.
Those leaders who bleat about legality, and hide behind the anti-union laws to explain why they cannot mobilise their membership in defence of the trade union movement, must be removed immediately.
The trade union movement in Britain was built under conditions of illegality, and the unions today cannot be defended through legal means.
Calls to bow down to bourgeois ‘legality’ are completely treacherous.
What is required urgently is the building of a revolutionary leadership within the unions, prepared to break anti-union laws that attempt to bind the working class hand and foot.
It must be a leadership that understands that this is a class war to the finish, with no compromise or negotiated settlement possible, and that the entire strength of the working class must be mobilised in a general strike to defeat the employers and the government and go forward to socialism.
The march by the Young Socialists from Manchester to London with its central demand of a general strike to bring down the coalition and replace it with a workers government, leads the way in this struggle and must be supported by every trade union branch and the entire working class.
The youth and the trade unions must march arm in arm, together to bring down the coalition and go forward to socialism.
