THE Tory-led coalition, faced with this Thursday’s one-day strike by two million workers, is driving forward preparations for new anti-union laws which will make strikes completely illegal and render the unions powerless to defend their members from the savage austerity demanded to keep the banks and capitalism from collapsing under the weight of their huge debts.
The strike involves virtually the entire public sector – from teachers, firefighters, members of Unison, Unite, the Public and Commercial Services Union, and the GMB.
On Sunday morning, Tory cabinet secretary Francis Maude was on TV demanding legislation that a threshold of votes should be achieved before any legal strike could take place, a majority vote for action would not be enough.
Maude was quickly followed that evening by the education secretary, Michael Gove, who vented his spleen on teachers who are taking part in Thursday’s strike.
According to Gove: ‘Teachers should not be striking: they should be in the classroom dedicating themselves to improving the lives of children. The overwhelming majority will not be going on strike this week and the respect owed to their profession is greatly undermined when they do.’
The fact is that teachers spend all their working lives trying to improve the lives of children while Gove spends all his working life trying to smash up the education system through a relentless campaign of forcing schools to become academies or free schools.
Gove has stuffed the education department with multi-millionaire Tory donors who run academy chains that are dedicated to improving nothing except their shareholders’ bank balances.
The Tory plans for new anti-union laws are being touted as the biggest crack-down on trade union rights for thirty years, since the days of Thatcher.
A senior Tory source told the press: ‘Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit pioneered the first wave of union reforms and now it is time to take the next step.’ He added: ‘We hope this will put an end to nearly all public sector strikes’.
Workers will immediately draw parallels with Greece where the government imposed by the Troika of the IMF, EU and European Central Bank, has introduced dictatorial ‘civil mobilisation laws’ where workers are put under direct government order and stripped of their democratic right to strike and conscripting them into the Greek state.
This is precisely the future that the Tories want to impose on the working class in Britain.
A complete ban on the right to strike means the destruction of the trade unions – this is what bankrupt British capitalism is demanding today.
The huge obstacle to this plan is the undefeated nature of the working class, organised in powerful unions.
Time and again, workers have demonstrated that they are not intimidated or scared of the anti-union laws and are quite prepared to break them in defence of their jobs and wages.
In fact, the only ones in the movement who are terrified of breaking the law are the leaders of the unions, who time and again have used the court rulings on the legality of strike ballots to call off actions.
With the Tories now decisively throwing down the gauntlet and openly declaring their intention to make the unions illegal, these leaders must be forced to take up the fight in earnest.
This means that Thursday’s national strike must not be left as a one-day protest but must be the springboard for an all-out general strike with the aim of bringing down this government and replacing it with a workers government and socialism.
The YS march to the TUC conference in September, demanding precisely this fight, has taken on a huge significance in the light of the Tories’ civil war preparations against the unions.
Young people and workers should join the march and demand that the TUC leadership stop prevaricating and call a general strike or be replaced by leaders who will fight for their members.