It is young people who are leading the struggle. Young people demand a future and the only way is socialism. The Young Socialists stand with Palestinian youth and support their drive for unity. We stand alongside the Libyan youth and alongside the workers and youth of Greece, Portugal and all countries.’
Young Socialist Editor Paul Lepper was addressing over 100 trade unionists and youth at the Workers Revolutionary Party rally at the Africa Centre in Covent Garden on Sunday afternoon at the end of the May Day march in which more than 10,000 workers and youth had marched from Clerkenwell Green to Trafalgar Square.
Banners on the march included POA Wandsworth, GMB Southern Region, RMT Finsbury Park, Unite Clerkenwell/St Pancras, TUC South East Region, Unite South London Busworkers, Newham NUT, and Equity North-East London and there were large delegations of Tamil workers and Turkish and Kurdish parties.
Workers Revolutionary Party and Young Socialists slogans on the march included: ‘Victory to Gadaffi! Imperialist troops out now!’ ‘Forward to a general strike!’ ‘Workers, students youth unite! One struggle, one fight!’ ‘One state Palestine, from the river to the sea!’ ‘Low pay, no way! Youth are not slaves!’ ‘Capitalism is collapsing – socialism now!’ and ‘Occupy to stop closures! Defend the NHS!’ and ‘No privatisation – defend all services!’
Other banners included Justice for Sacked Gate Gourmet Workers.
Opening the rally, Lepper said: ‘Yesterday NATO attacked Libya, killing Colonel Gadaffi’s youngest son and his grandchildren. They’re out to kill Gadaffi and get regime change.
‘There was a revolution in Libya and imperialism wants its oil back.
‘The way to end imperialist war is to bring down the British government. There’s a huge revolutionary movement all over the world. In Tunisia, Egypt and Britain.
‘The same people who are closing down our NHS are bombing hospitals and schools in Libya.
‘Capitalism destroys lives. Here they are destroying the NHS. Everyone needs the NHS. They’re destroying education as well. They’re scrapping EMA, so students won’t to be able to pay for their books or travel.
‘They are attacking benefits and we’re seeing the destruction of the Welfare State. The Welfare State was not given to us. It was struggled for. The government wants to make £90 billion cuts to public services.
‘Britain’s foreign policy is an extension of its home policy and a revolution here will be a blow and a beacon for the whole world.
‘Now’s the time to go forward to a socialist United States of Europe. Forward to victory. We have to bring down this government with a general strike. Forward to socialist revolution.’
Jonathan Lovett, NUJ Father of the Chapel North London and Herts newspapers, said: ‘We work on the papers owned by Tindall Newspapers. We’ve just finished a two-week strike.
‘It’s not about pay. One third of our editorial staff have left in the last 18 months. Now we’ve got three reporters churning out nine newspapers, working twelve-hour days. We said enough is enough.
‘This two-week strike has been a very positive experience. We’ve had fantastic support across the country, and also, we’ve gained great self-respect.
‘The mass of the copy going into the newspapers is just recycled press releases. Local journalism is dying because of naked exploitation. It’s ‘churnalism’, not journalism.
‘Nine Enfield staff are striking over this.’
Anna Athow, from the BMA General Council said: ‘In the USA it looks like they are about to abolish Medicare and Medicaid.
‘Here the government intends to make £81 billion cuts to the public sector, £20 billion cuts in the NHS.
‘The Health and Social Care Bill means total privatisation of the NHS.
‘They intend to close five out of the eight A&Es in north-west London, and bring 890 job losses in the London Ambulance Service.
‘If you’re going to make such huge cuts you are going to murder people.
‘The NHS will just become a kitemark, a brand, run by “any willing provider”. They want to get rid of NHS terms and conditions. They want a totally privatised system.
‘Good for the RCN with their 97 per cent vote of no confidence in Health Secretary Lansley. There’s a massive wave of opposition. This so-called pause isn’t really a pause.
‘We need a general strike here. Everyone needs to come out together.
‘Our campaign at Chase Farm Hospital for an occupation is really important.’
Sacked Gate Gourmet worker Jaswinder Kumar said: ‘We did not strike on the day we were sacked.
We were called to a mass meeting in the canteen. We were then told to go back to work within three minutes or you’ll be sacked. But our senior union convenor said no, stay here. We were then forced to go down.
‘Then we went to the tribunal with our union solicitors, but they did not prepare our cases properly.
‘So now we are taking the union to court for neglect of our rights.’
Dom Barone, Unite member and former Visteon worker in Enfield, said: ‘In 2001 Ford created another company – Visteon.
‘On March 31 2009 we went into administration and were given 16 minutes to get out. But we weren’t going to take it.
‘We occupied the factory for eight weeks. They took our convenor and deputy convenor to court and we ended the occupation, but we wouldn’t let them take out the machinery.
‘Eventually they gave in and gave us a good redundancy package.
‘If they close our hospital we have to occupy. We have to show we won’t accept closures.’
Rob Bolton, Delivery Unit Rep South Central CWU, said: ‘One of our slogans on today’s march was “Hands off Royal Mail, No to Privatisation!”
‘This government has now resurrected the last government’s attempt to privatise Royal Mail. This is the fourth attempt at privatisation. We had two strikes recently, in 2007 and 2009.
‘In the last strike it was the London area that was the backbone of the strike. Currently 40 per cent of mail has to go through London.
‘Recently closures of Mail Centres have been announced, two in London.
‘They intend to weaken that and they are doing it with the full connivance of the CWU leaders.
‘Now they will be imposing compulsory redundancies and it looks as though we’ll be coming out again very shortly, but we have to get rid of these old leaders.
‘In the CWU it is the young people who are the backbone of the struggle.’
Workers Revolutionary Party General Secretary, Frank Sweeney said: ‘Today we send special greetings to the embattled people of Libya and their leader Muammar Gadaffi, who has had a son and three grandchildren murdered.
‘Gadaffi is always described as a madman. The madness he carried out was to have a revolution and nationalise the oil.
‘What we are seeing in Libya is an attempt to steal back the oil on behalf of the oil companies.
‘If Gadaffi is guilty of any crime it was to trust Tony Blair and BP.
‘The NATO campaign has nothing to do with protecting children. We give our unconditional support to the Libyan government.
‘The people who are bombing Libya are the same people who are attacking our NHS, education and other services.
‘A victory for the Libyan people will be our victory and vice versa.
‘The Libyan and British workers have a common enemy: British imperialism.’
‘The crisis of the system has reached a point which has to be resolved.
‘The huge escalation of food prices is the driving force of the eruption that took place on January 14 in Tunisia, this at a point when we have the means to feed everyone on the planet.
‘When this coalition government got elected we described it as a very weak government.
‘They wanted a strong Tory government and the only reason they’ve got away with their attacks is because of the Labour and trade union bureaucrats.’
‘British capitalism and imperialism must be got rid of through a socialist revolution. The entire world will be a better place for it.’
‘All over the world it’s like there’s a volcano about to erupt, and it is a question of leadership. If anyone doubts the revolutionary situation all you have to do is look at Egypt. What you’ve got being played out there is the permanent revolution, because the Egyptian working class cannot live with capitalism.
‘Capitalism is in a terminal crisis. We have to bring it down before it drags humanity down with it.
‘Get rid of capitalism and put it in the dustbin of history before it brings all of humanity down with it. Build the revolutionary leadership!’
