Merry Christmas, you scum.

I found out yesterday apparently most of the proceeds from the ongoing public sector pay freeze (and pension contribution rise) have gone toward the £5 billion capital investment announced today. Public sector workers, doesn’t that make you feel better all that money going to good causes, like Michael Gove Novelty Schools ™ ? You’d have only spent it on things like food, clothing, rent and whatnot.

Surely now this year can be written off as the worst, most calamitous year in working class memory, living memory. A year of Olympics, Royals and no strikes, no big ones anyway. There was the Olympic bus strike, on balance a success, but after that things kept on rolling the ruling class’s way. Unite the resistance: what resistance? There has been a vital question posed of the public sector unions, to be or not to be, to fight austerity at the point it’s being applied, to fight and to lead the wider population in that struggle, or not. They chose not to fight. We need a drastic re-evaluation of British trade unionism (let alone what the fuck the alleged Party of Labour thinks it’s up to).

The latest statement from Gideon Osborne is yet another flip-off to the poor. There are further benefit cuts (the biggest benefit payout being working tax credit – in the end a subsidy for low wages and underemployment). We already have seen a 23% rise in homelessness , concentrated among the young. April will certainly be the cruellest month, when universal credit and the room tax kick in. On the other hand he has cut corporation tax (the optional tax, judging by Starbucks, Amazon and so on) by 1% and cancelled a planned 3% rise in fuel duty, so that’s Nigel from the golf club sorted. The rest of you can fuck off.

Merry Christmas, you scum.

The ruling class agenda

The Tories are aiming to destroy the basis for working class intervention in public life and they are aiming to do it in one term. They must be fought. Anyone who tries to delay or divert struggle is objectively on the government's side. This cannot be emphasised enough. 

 
Two more examples 1) Michael Gove plans to cut 1,000 jobs from the Department of Education. He wants to reform Britain's education system yet he is cutting back on the people supposed to be delivering his reforms. He does not want reform, he wants chaos in comprehensive education. 2) Cuts in government grants to local councils are being targeted at poorer, i.e. Labour voting boroughs. Such grants make up 50% of a council's budget - 25% is formed by business rates, also distributed by central government, the remainder (not including day to day revenues) comes from council tax, which has been capped. Local government is now a fairly hollow democratic formality, no GLC or People's Republic or South Yorkshire will give Cameron and co any trouble. 
 
To fight any part of the Tory agenda is to preserve some kind of future for ourselves, and we can fight ALL of it, but man have we got to turn things round quickly. There can be no waiting for Labour.

To be or not to be...?

There is a debate going on about the meaning and significance of the October 20th TUC demonstration. This is a good thing and a natural thing, although beware, there is some right cobblers being peddled.

Was the demo a success? Compared to the last TUC march or the coordinated public sector strikes last year of course it was not. Half a million into one to two hundred thousand is a decline. But this is not comparing like with like. A year has passed in which several unions leaderships allowed pension dispute to die. No new national struggles have been organised, although the Olympic bus dispute was an interesting, rare phenomenon; an offensive strike that was (mostly) successful.

I was expecting the recent march to be much smaller than it was. The major union leaderships had no interest in delivering a conspicuously large demonstration that might raise members’ expectations. The leadership don’t want a fight, but some part of the union movement clearly does. It may be a minority, but it’s a big minority, and that’s where we start from.

So the question is, apparently, general strike or tax evasion campaign? Really, is that the best we can do?

Firstly, the proposed tax evasion campaign: why this is counter-posed to strike action (you probably know who I’m referring to)? The labour movement has just turned out another hundred thousand plus demonstration. We clearly are civilised human beings that can walk and chew gum at the same time. There are also tax evasion campaigns out there, successful ones that do not need to be replicated. Can’t the unions back those instead?

Finally on tax evasion, it is perfectly possible to be anti-tax evasion and pro-austerity. Tax evasion is part of the issue, it is not the issue. The issue is whether the capitalist class pass on the cost of the recession to the working class (and future generations of working class let’s not forget).

Secondly, on the matter of a general strike: of course the people who want a general strike or even co-ordinated industrial action are not in the driving seat. But we need not confuse strategy with tactics. It goes back to the minority we mentioned earlier, who do not want to duck a fight. The minority in the labour movement must come out of the shadows. A discussion about general strikes at this point is a way of getting the minority to recognise itself. Who wants to fight back? I do!

The Tory-led government has had far too easy a ride so far. It will take everything unless it is resisted. Unions resist by collective withdrawal of labour, and when they resist they draw support, inside and outside the union movement. This is because millions of people can see that the working class is finally in the game. This is what set piece industrial action does. We need increased resistance on the part of the unions. If we can’t have a general strike now we need one and we need to be discussing how to get one (whether this involves manoeuvring within existing unions structure or rank and file pressure, like the sparks campaigns is another argument for another time).

Lastly on the general strike, there will be one on November 14th across Europe. Its key support will be in Spain, Greece, Portugal and Cyprus. Why is such action good enough for them but not for us? Must we wait until we’re in the same wretched state as the Greeks before we lift a finger to defend ourselves?

We are at war, whether we want to be at not. Tax evasion campaigns or politely waiting for Labour, which is what’s actually being proposed here let’s be honest, amounts to pacifism.

I can has strikes?

It’s approaching conference time, and TUC leader Brendan Barber is putting out press releases about the stark condition British society is being forced to endure. There is an undeniable element of “I’m still here”, like Len McLuskey’s occasional fighting talk, and Brendan Barber’s plan, his only plan, is to ask nicely, but it is also the run up to a major demonstration: A Future That Works.

It is an A to B march, and we have been here before. But we cannot pull strikes out of a hat, not in our present condition. The fact that the British trade union movement seems to need a set-piece demonstration to work itself up for any kind of confrontation with the government (not forgetting how quickly these confrontations are also abandoned to apathy), should be cause for debate. I am a trade union member, not a battle hardened convenor or rep but enough of a member to know we need a change of direction.

We have been here before with mass demonstrations. We need to find a way for demonstrations to become strikes and for strikes to stick. We need what’s known as a rank and file perspective. It’s all very well saying people need confidence before we start building, but we will be forever be in the hands of the likes of Brendan Barber and Dave Prentis, the kind of leaders who would not stir themselves even if they were the last union members left alive, let alone in work. There’s nothing like starting now to build confidence.

None the less, let’s be on the October 20th demo, in large numbers. The government and 

the mass media will want to pretend austerity is popular, or at least accepted, for as long 

and hard as possible. A big demonstration will be another blow to the Tories.

Countdown to disappointment...?

The University and Colleges Union has called off industrial action over pensions, what's the odds now that the NUT will do the same? I sincerely hope they don't but, there's that word... hope. What's left except the hope that the British organised working class will actually do something to defend itself (and by extension the rest of the working class)?

We've tried and tried and we will keep trying to rouse people. If you don't fight you will lose. At what point do you conclude they just aren't going to listen? How long are the trade unions going to insist on being terrorised by the ghost of Margaret Thatcher and the Miners Strike? Are we really heading into a new dark-age of right-wing ascendancy? If it's a possibility we have to consider it.