TRUE to form, the voice of the trade union bureaucracy, the Stalinist Morning Star counted tens of thousands of marchers on the TUC’s May Day march from Clerkenwell Green to Trafalgar Square.
It was obvious to the rest of us who were very generous with our counting, that up to 5,000 joined the May Day march, that took place on the same day that up to 270,000 civil servants took strike action.
Once again the Morning Star was carrying out its historic role, that of trying to cover up the tracks of the trade union bureaucracy, which had made damned sure that record-breaking numbers of workers would not be turning out on last Tuesday’s May Day march.
It is a fact, that after the PCS civil servants trade union publicly announced its one day stoppage its leader went to a meeting of the TUC general council and urged it to organise its trade unions to take part in the action.
The general council refused. It wanted nothing to do with what would amount to a one-day general strike, that would have seen a march on May 1 as big as the biggest marches against the Iraq war.
From the time that the general council said ‘no’ to the PCS, there has been a rapid sharpening of the class struggle.
The RCN announced for the first time in its history that it was going to have a ballot on what kind of industrial action it was going to take in defence of the NHS.
At the UNISON health conference members walked out in opposition to financing the Labour government, booed a visiting Labour health minister, and voted for a resolution for a strike ballot if the government did not make a new and acceptable wage offer to about 500,000 health workers.
On Friday April 20th, the CWU postal workers union sent out a letter to its members, declaring that the management ‘offer’ of nothing on basic pay meant ‘there is no prospect of us reaching an agreement and a major dispute is inevitable. . .
‘Our priority is to reach an agreement but we are left with no alternative other than to also prepare for a national Industrial Action ballot.’
At the same time as all this was going on the junior doctors have been up in arms, rocking the government with their anger, and the Esol teachers and students have been marching.
In truth, there is enough inflammable material around to start a forest fire, or even make a start on the British socialist revolution.
This was what terrified the ultra-reformist capitalism loving TUC into aborting May Day.
The last thing that this citadel of anti-revolutionary treachery wanted to do was to bring a lot of the explosive material that was developing, together on a May Day march.
A call from the TUC, that since it was Public Services Day on May 1, all trade unions should join the May Day march in the biggest possible numbers would have been enough. This they would not do.
Instead they spent the day buttressing the defences of the trade union bureaucracy, announcing the birth of the new big union Unite, made up of Amicus and the TGWU, created by a ballot in which just 27 per cent of the two unions’ members voted.
At the same time as the May Day march was due to start, Simpson of Amicus and Woodley of the TGWU were having a joint press conference, and photocall for the media, consciously creating an alternative to the May Day, TUC organised demonstration.
As far as these two leaders are concerned Unite is to be used not to advance the cause of the working class and to fight for socialism. it is to be used to make a better working relationship between both Labour and Tory governments and the trade union bureaucracy, since the latter hopes to have the ability, as the only union in a number of key industries, to keep the working class under tight control.
These opportunists see no need for the national organisation of the TUC, thus their contempt for the May Day demo and the rally in Trafalgar Square which they did not even bother to address.
Workers must respond to the bureaucracy’s attack on May Day by joining the WRP and building a new revolutionary leadership for the trade unions to lead the struggle for socialism.
