THE News Line fully supports the call by the secretary of the Young Socialists Student Society for next week’s lobby and rally by the NUS and the UCU to be supported by a general strike of all trade unions.
The action has been called for Thursday 9th December – when MPs will be voting on the proposal to triple fees – to show them just how angry workers and youth are at the proposed measure, that will turn higher education into the preserve of the rich.
Students have not been fooled by all the talk from the LibDems and Tories that this will somehow benefit poorer students – they recognise that the government’s plans will result in the wholesale destruction of the courses deemed by the capitalist class to be superfluous to the requirements of capitalism.
Higher education will be completely transformed into a commodity, to be bought and sold in the market place.
Young people today are now aware that under this crisis-ridden capitalist system they have no future in terms of education or jobs.
The very revolutionary reaction of students and school youth to this prospect, and their mass defiance of the state, has had an electrifying effect on the working class, and led to the leaderships of some of its organisations, such as Unison, the University and College Union (UCU) and the civil servants union (PCS) calling for their members to support the student actions on this date.
But calls for workers to offer their support do not go far enough and do not address the burning issue of the hour, namely the removal of this coalition government, and bringing it crashing down.
Let there be no mistake about this: the time has never been better to smash the coalition plans and bring it down in order to bring in a workers government and socialism.
This is an incredibly weak and divided government, one that is rotten-ripe for overthrow.
The WikiLeaks exposures of secret US diplomatic cables have shown just how weak the likes of Cameron and his colleagues in the coalition really are.
Cameron, we learn, takes his orders from the governor of the bank of England, Mervyn King, a man who recently confessed that he has not got a clue about the present economic crisis and how it will develop.
Also revealed is the US ruling class estimation of Cameron as a ‘lightweight’, not up to the job.
Meanwhile, the LibDem’s economic mastermind, Vince Cable, cannot make his mind up whether to vote for the increase in tuition fees on the 9th or abstain – it is, after all, only his own policy.
The contempt with which these ‘leaders’ are held is even apparent in the sporting field.
Cameron, the future heir to the British throne and a world famous footballer rolled up in Zurich confident of their god-given right to claim the World Cup, only to suffer the humiliation of securing only one vote (apart from their own).
There is surely nothing more pathetic than these puffed up representatives of a bankrupt British capitalism attempting to lord it over the rest of the world and being completely humiliated.
That this coalition government survives for a minute is due, not to any strength, but to the abject refusal of the leadership of the trade unions to bring it down.
The way forward is clear – the call by unions to support students on the 9th must be transformed into the general council of the TUC calling every one of its member unions out behind the students and youth in a general strike that has as its aim the bringing down of the government and its replacement with a workers government.
The working class has overwhelmingly demonstrated that it is completely behind the students and youth fighting for a future. now is the time for the unions to use their power with a general strike to force the coalition out, replace it with a workers government and go forward to socialism.
