TRANSPORT UNION RMT has called on its members and the entire trade union movement to get out on the streets in full support of the student fees protests ‘as the first signs of major cracks in the ConDem coalition begin to open up’.
The RMT has written to all its branches and has directly emailed and texted members urging them to support todays NUS-UCU protest action, on the day that the coalition is poised to bring in tuition fees of £9,000 a year.
RMT General Secretary, Bob Crow, who is speaking at the 3pm rally today, has said ‘we will be out shoulder to shoulder with the students in their protests over the jacking up of tuition fees.
‘It is essential that the entire Labour and Trade Union Movement gives full support to the student protests.’ He added – ‘when your enemy is reeling you don’t give them a chance to regroup, you mobilise the maximum pressure.’
He concluded that ‘the trade union movement should throw everything we can into supporting this week’s protests.’
The GMB and Unison are also supporting today’s action, and the general secretary of the TUC, Brendan Barber, is to address the 3pm rally today.
This support is most welcome, however it must not remain on the level of just fighting talk.
The Tory-LibDem measures will return university education back into being the preserve of the rich.
Their £9,000 student fees package, plus their massive education cuts, are an all out and savage attack, not just on students, but on the whole of the working class – not just today’s working class but tomorrow’s, since once the system is established it will affect countless generations to come, and condemn them all to poverty.
‘Fighting shoulder to shoulder with the students’ and ‘throwing everything into the fight’ are very strong words that must be translated into deeds.
The coalition is reeling, and it must be removed!
This is why the TUC must really throw everything into the fight and call an indefinite general strike of all the TUC affiliated trade unions.
Such an action will bring the reeling coalition down and smash it into smithereens, creating the conditions for bringing in a workers government that will put an end to capitalism by expropriating the bosses and the bankers and restoring free state education.
Trade union bureaucrats will say that this action will be illegal and that their funds could be sequestrated and therefore left words is all that they can give to the students.
The News Line says that the Tory concept of bourgeois legality has to be dumped if there is to be a serious and successful struggle to defend our basic rights.
In fact, the Tory-LibDem actions to smash free state education and destroy the Welfare State are the illegal actions that are taking place, as far as the working class and students are concerned.
All the gains that the working class has made have begun with an ‘illegal’ struggle, whether it was against the Combination Acts, the jailing of the Pentonville dockers in 1972, or the Poll Tax.
Defending free state education is a vital issue for the working class and the youth.
We cannot be held back from this by fear of breaking unjust bourgeois laws.
This bull must be taken by the horns. A general strike is necessary to win this historic struggle and therefore it must be called.
The issue is that the Tories and LibDems are reeling, and they must be given the coup de grace by the TUC calling a general strike to bring them down.
This is the way forward to victory!
