TRADE UNION leaders are angry that the government has organised police and army scabbing on today’s four-hour NHS strike over the refusal of the government to accede to paying all staff the miserable 1% ‘pay rise’, (in fact, a pay cut in relation to the rate of inflation).
The union leaders are complaining that the government did not even bother to talk to the unions about what emergency cover they were going to provide, so keen were Cameron and Co to have a real dig at the NHS unions.
In fact, the government was and is desperate to establish a precedent for state strike-breaking, leading on to legislation making 50% turn-outs a necessity before a trade union ballot can even be recognised as having legality, and then of course to banning strikes in the public sector entirely – from the NHS to the Fire Service and the Tube.
The perspective of the Cameron government is to put the working class and the trade unions under Martial Law!
Behind this drive is the continuing deepening crisis of world capitalism.
British capitalism is now in the position that the only contracts that it can afford to give to workers are zero-hours contracts, creating a situation where the explosive rises in the cost of living, in not just foodstuffs but in rents – are creating millions of working poor who are dependent on food banks, on a scale not seen since the days of Charles Dickens.
While the government has declared a regime of permanent austerity, the millions of the working poor are being driven along the road towards desperate and explosive class actions, even revolutions, not to be able to afford the luxuries of life, but to pay the rent, feed the kids and pay for transport to and from their low-paid work.
In this situation of acute capitalist crisis, with indebtedness growing not lessening, the bankers and bosses cannot just depend on the trade union leaders to sell their members out; the conditions have to be created where trade unionists are threatened by strike bans or new Combination Acts, where striking becomes an illegal act of defiance of the state, entailing consequences for those taking part.
Faced with this critical situation, the actions of the trade union leaders are absolutely pathetic.
The TUC at its 2012 and 2013 Congresses was forced to discuss the practicalities of calling a general strike, and vote to keep the issue on their agenda.
At its 2014 Congress this approach was dumped and a general strike was declared to be ‘childish’ as the TUC general secretary fawned all over the Governor of the Bank of England, who was a special guest of the Congress!
Instead of a general strike, we were told that the TUC would be co-ordinating strike actions against the government and its austerity programmes.
This approach has already collapsed with the local government unions and the RMT settling disputes, leaving the NHS workers, the PCS and the UCU to strike alone.
The TUC leaders are making it perfectly clear that on the eve of the biggest class struggles in the history of capitalism in the UK, the only thing that they are capable of coordinating is surrender.
With state strike-breaking now a fact, and new anti-union legislation on the agenda to prepare the way for the destruction of the NHS and the Welfare State, the time for decisive leadership has arrived.
Nothing less than an indefinite general strike to bring down this government and bring in a workers government and socialism will suffice in this situation.
This is why the message of the hour for the millions of trade unionists is that a new and revolutionary leadership of the trade unions must be rapidly built up that is not frightened of using the gigantic power of the working class to win the struggle between capital and labour.
The News Line is calling on the millions of youth who are already in revolt against the oppression of capitalism to join the Young Socialists to provide the spearhead of the revolutionary leadership that the working class requires.
We call on the workers who are now fighting in the trade unions to join the WRP to build a new and revolutionary leadership inside the trade unions that will use the power of the unions to overthrow capitalism with a socialist revolution.
This is the only real and valid answer to the state scabbing and the state attacks that are being organised against the working class today.
