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We are now ruled by agovernment electedby just 24 per centof the electorate.The Queens speech set out a

litany of attacks that threaten to bedeeper, sharper and more painfulthan the austerity imposed under thecoalition:

12 billion cuts to welfare new anti-union laws cripplingthe right to strike further fragmentation and pri-vatisation of the NHSthe extension of Right to Buyto Housing Association proper-tiesrefuse welfare support for mi-grantsdestroy refugee boats insteadof rescuing people in theMediterraneanpay freeze and job cuts forpublic sector workers

The severity of the Tory plans hasprovoked a mood of militant deter-mination to resist which has partlyovercome the defeatism prevalent inthe last two years.

Just as in 2010, when the imposi-tion of 9,000 tuition fees sparked arevolt which saw mass demonstra-tions, walkouts and occupations thatspread far beyond university stu-dents, young people were the first toreact to the Tory victory - with mil-itant protest.

Demonstrations and meetings to

organise resistance to the new gov-ernment have reflected the mood tofight - surpassing anything seen sincethe high point of struggle in 2011-12.

A new movementEverything is building towards

the demonstration of June 20 calledby the Peoples Assembly. This willbe the first real test of the widerlabour and socialist movementscapac i ty to mobi l i se a show ofstrength in the capital. Young peoplewill doubtless turn out in huge num-

bers but this time the unions must bein the forefront too. But after themarch we need to build a movementthat surpasses in size and effective-ness that of the fragmented anticutscampaigns of the last five years.

We need a movement that canconfront every law before parlia-ment, every government directive,with mass protest, strikes and directaction to block their implementation- or force their repeal.

Whatever structures are mobilis-ing for June 20 - loca l PeoplesAssemblies, Trade Union Councils,

individual campaigns across thecountry - need to step up their activ-i t i es and coord ina t ion a f te r thedemonstration.

They should draw up a l is t ofun ions , campa igns , ind iv idua lactivists and use it to call a meetingor assembly to which delegates fromevery workplace, every trade unionbranch, every ward and constituencyLabour Party, every tenants or stu-dents initiative, every anti-racist andwomens group, should be invited.

The local anti-cuts committeesand competing campaigns need tofound a genuinely democratic feder-ation that thrash out a strategy forstruggle and effectively coordinatenationwide action.!

In this way local peoples assem-blies or action committees can growfrom this mobilisation and becomereal coordinat ing bodies able tomobilise solidarity with every sectorunder at tack, generalising theirstruggles into a nationwide politicalresistance to austerity.

A huge mobilisation for 20 Junecan start to lay the basis for directaction all over Britain, in the work-places and on the streets, to stop theTories in their tracks and kick themout long before their term is due.

All out for 20 June!

KD TAIT

The Tories are planning to use their first 100 days to force through cuts and attack Trade Unions and democratic rights.The task of the labour movement is nationwide resistance in the workplaces and on the streets

100 days of resistanceMONTHLY REVIEW OF THE WORKERS POWER GROUP

ISSUE 384 JUNE/JULY 2015 1 / 2

Can Podemos still do it in Spain?

Camerons Constitutional crisis

Is Labour finished?

FOR THE FORMATION OF A NEW WORLD PARTY OF SOCIALIST REVOLUTION - A FIFTH INTERNATIONAL

Prepare for 100 day offensive

P7

P6

P3

P4-5

2 JUNE 2015 Workers Power

US cops keepkilling, keep lyingFerguson, Baltimore, and now Madisondrive mass resistance on the streets

no. 384

Following the massive uprising ofyouth in Baltimore, US, whichforced local officials to chargepolice with the killing of FreddieGray, a new upsurge of protest is nowshaking Dane County, Wisconsin.

On 12 May, District Attorney IsmaelOzanne declared no charges will be filedagainst killer cop Matt Kenny. On 6March Kenny shot Tony Terrell Robin-son Jr, a 19 years old unarmed mixedrace man, despite warnings by dispatch-ers not to escalate the situation.Like the identical verdict that absolvedthe killers of Mike Brown in Ferguson,Missouri last August, killers, Ozannesaid in his statement that this was a!"law-ful use of deadly police force with theabsurd excuse that Robinson had takenmarijuana and magic mushrooms, show-ing once again how the so-called war ondrugs is used to justify violence againstblack and mixed race youth.

In Dane County, Wisconsin, black peo-ple are around eight per cent of the pop-ulation, but 48 per cent of the prisonpopulation and almost 80 per cent of alljuvenile inmates.

Taken in isolation this is a story of apolice officer who, despite warnings bydispatchers not to escalate the situation,took less than half a minute to shoot andkill a young, unarmed mixed race man.

Taken in the context of US policing,Terrells was the 192nd!death from policeviolence in 2015 and nothing but a con-tinuation of the unwritten policy towardnon-whites. Following the fatal shootingthere were mass walkouts from schoolsand colleges in Madison.

Nearly 2,000 protesters occupied Wis-consin State Capitol, including Terrellsfriends and family, his local communityand a group called the Young Gifted andBlack (YGB) coalition, part of the um-brella protest group Black Lives Matter.The protest saw 25 arrests, as the protest-ers refused to leave the area, demanding

instead a United Nations inquest into thekilling.

Over the intervening months there havebeen numerous Black Lives Matterprotests highlighting the systematic dis-crimination and murder of black peopleby the US state and the police in the wakeof the killing of Mike Brown in Fergu-son, Missouri on 9 August last year.

Across the US, a new civil rightsmovement is being born, demanding anend to systematic state harassment, to theimprisonment and murder of black peo-ple, and calling for the police to be madeaccountable to the community, for offi-cers to face justice for their crimes.

The ruling class in the US recognisesthe anger, and is trying hard to convinceblack people that there is no need for arenewed civil rights movement. Back inMarch, on the 50th anniversary of thegreat civil rights marches from Selma toAlabama in 1965, President Obamamade a direct reference to the killing ofMike Brown in Ferguson, when he said:"What happened in Ferguson may not beunique, but it's no longer endemic, orsanctioned by law and custom; and be-fore the Civil Rights Movement, it mostsurely was."

Yet what happened in Ferguson alsohappened in Sanford, in Cleveland , inBrooklyn, in Oakland, in Baltimore andin Madison... the list goes on. The justicesystem covered up for and legitimised thekillings and only in one case is actionbeing taken against the police.

That is in Baltimore, where the protestsreached such a pitch that the local politi-cal establishment backed down lastmonth. There protests against the killingof Freddie Gray led to an uprising ofblack and working class youth lastingseveral days, pressuring Baltimore's At-torney to charge six officers.

The murder of black Americans by theUS state has been ongoing since the CivilWar. Even the end of slavery and - a cen-tury later - the great Civil Rights Move-ment and Black Power movement thatended the Jim Crow apartheid system,failed to end the intrinsic racism onwhich US capitalism rests.

All workers in the US white, Latino,and Asian, need to join with their broth-ers and sisters in the black communities,to mobilisation in their defence on theprinciple that there can not be freedomfor one until there is freedom for all.

For this reason it will take nothing lessthan the overthrow of the entire US state,and the system of exploitation and in-equality it exists to defend, in order toend a situation where young black andmixed race people are murdered on adaily basis.

SAM COPLEY

What we fight for

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Workers Power is a revolutionary communistorganisation whose politics are founded onthe following principles

CAPITALISM is an anarchic and crisis-rid-den economic system based on productionfor profit. We are for the expropriation of thecapitalist class and the abolition of capitalism.We are for its replacement by socialist pro-duction planned to satisfy human need. Onlythe socialist revolution and the smashing ofthe capitalist state can achieve this goal. Onlythe working class, led by a revolutionary van-guard party and organised into workerscouncils and workers militias can lead sucha revolution to victory and establish the rule ofthe working class in society. There is nopeaceful, parliamentary road to socialism.

THE LABOUR PARTY is not a socialistparty. It is a bourgeois workers party pro-capitalist in its politics and practice, but basedon the working class via the trade unions andsupported by the mass of workers at thepolls. We are for the creation of a genuineworkers party, based on a programme for theoverthrow of capitalism and the implementa-tion of socialism and workers power.

THE TRADE UNIONS must be trans-formed by a rank and file movement to putcontrol of the unions into the hands of themembers. All officials must be regularlyelected and subject to instant recall; theymust earn the average wage of the membersthey represent. We are for the building of fight-ing organisations of the working class fac-tory committees, industrial unions, councils ofaction and workers defence organisations.

OCTOBER 1917 The Russian revolution es-tablished a workers state. But Stalin de-stroyed workers democracy and set aboutthe reactionary and utopian project of buildingsocialism in one country. In the USSR andthe other degenerate workers states thatwere established from above, capitalism wasdestroyed but the bureaucracy excluded theworking class from power, blocking the roadto democratic planning and socialism. Theparasitic bureaucratic caste led these statesto crisis and destruction. Stalinism has con-sistently betrayed the working class. The Stal-

inist Communist Parties strategy of allianceswith the capitalists (popular fronts) and theirstages theory of revolution have inflicted ter-rible defeats on the working class worldwide.These parties are reformist and offer no per-spective for workers revolution.

SOCIAL OPPRESSION is an integral fea-ture of capitalism, which systematically op-presses people on the basis of race, age,gender and sexual orientation. We are for theliberation of women and for the building of aworking class womens movement, not anall-class autonomous movement. We arefor the liberation of all the oppressed. We fightracism and fascism. We oppose all immigra-tion controls. We fight for labour movementsupport for black self-defence against racistand state attacks. We are for no platform forfascists and for driving them out of theunions.

IMPERIALISM is a world system, whichoppresses nations and prevents economicdevelopment in the vast majority of third worldcountries. We support the struggles of theoppressed nationalities or countries againstimperialism. Against the politics of the bour-geois and petit-bourgeois nationalists we fightfor permanent revolution working classleadership of the anti-imperialist struggleunder the banner of socialism and interna-tionalism. In conflicts between imperialist andsemi-colonial countries, we are for the victoryof those oppressed and exploited by imperi-alism. We are for the immediate and uncon-ditional withdrawal of British troops fromIreland and all other countries. We fight impe-rialist war, not with pacifist pleas, but with mil-itant class struggle methods, including theforcible disarmament of our own bosses.

FIFTH INTERNATIONAL We stand in thetradition of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotskyand the revolutionary policies of the first fourcongresses of the Third International. WorkersPower is the British Section of the League forthe Fifth International. The L5I is pledged torefound a revolutionary communist Interna-tional and build a new world party of socialistrevolution. If you are a class-conscious fighteragainst capitalism, if you are an internationalist join us!

Reports of the death of social democracy have been greatly exaggerated

Workers Power JUNE 2015 3

We need to talk about LabourKD TAIT

editorial

The biggest, most far reaching ques-tion posed by the Tories election vic-tory is what will now happen to theLabour Party. Even before all the re-sults were in, the pundits, and its own rightwing leaders, were blaming Labours defeaton its continued links to the trades unions.

Yet, almost immediately, Len McCluskey,of Unite the union, insisted that Labour shoulddemonstrate that they are the voice of ordi-nary working people, that they are the voiceof organised labour. In other words, thatLabours defeat was a result of the weaknessof those links.

These conflicting arguments express thevery real contradiction at the heart of theLabour Party; although its politics and its poli-cies are clearly pro-capitalist, its social rootsremain within the working class. From thepoint of view of the bosses, the bankers, thefinanciers, in a word, the capitalists, thismakes it a potentially unreliable party of gov-ernment, one that cannot be guaranteed toforce through policies that would be bound tohurt its own supporters.

For the very same reason, those supporterssee in the Labour Party a political representa-tive that should at least defend their interests.That this remains the case is shown by the650,000 more votes it won in comparison to2010. But, despite that, Labour lost, and lostbadly and that is why its future is in the bal-ance.

For the right wing of the Labour Party itself,and the capitalists who want to see a more re-liable alternative party of government, theanswer is to resolve the contradiction by re-moving the partys traditional links to theworking class movement, principally theunions. This would create something like theUS Democrat Party and would leave theworking class with no representation of itsown at all.

That would mark a historic defeat for theworking class movement in the UK andshould be opposed by all socialists, whetherin the Labour Party or outside it.

Labours recordWeve been here before. In 2010, the tradesunions cast their block vote to install EdMiliband as Labour leader. The media de-nounced Red Ed and claimed union baronswould now hold Labour to ransom.

As we pointed out at the time, and fiveyears of bitter experience have confirmed,McCluskey had no intention of holding any-one to ransom.

Miliband, having gratefully pocketed thevotes of Labours union membership, actedwith unseemly haste to prove his loyalty, notto the class that funded his entire career, butto its class enemy.

He blocked Labour from playing any usefulrole in the opposition to cuts and pension re-forms, even where Labour was formally op-posed to them. He denounced strikes, backedcuts to services to make workers bear the costof bailing out the banks, and promised aLabour government would stick to Tory aus-terity targets for at least two years.

Under pressure from a Tory campaign

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against union funding for Labour, he forcedthrough the Collins Review, which scrappedthe Electoral College in favour of one mem-ber, one vote and removed the trade unionscollective influence within the party.

In opposition, Labour even refused tocounter the Tory lie that its overspendingwhile in office caused the crisis. This reluc-tance to defend its positive record of reforms;increased NHS spending, pre-school child-care provision, school building and invest-ment, allowed the Tories to start dismantlingthem.

Labours cowardice gave weight to theTory claim that spending on the welfarebudget wrecked the economy. In fact, the bal-looning welfare budget was almost entirelydue to Labours decision to subsidise povertywages instead of making the Tories small andbig business backers shell out.

Like the SNP, Labour accepted the bosseslogic of deficit reduction but, unlike the SNP,it could not present an anti-austerity pro-gramme because it was standing for govern-ment office.

LabourismFor Labours parliamentary leadership, andfor the union leaders, electoral victory meansconvincing the capitalist class that Labour, de-spite its roots in the working class, can be asafe pair of hands to hold government office.

To do that, the reformist leaders adapt to thepolitical centre, the aspirational middleclasses. This was expressed in Milibandsluckless campaign to woo the squeezed mid-dle and has now evolved into the 100 percent that Tristram Hunt, a bland middle classcontender for the Labour leadership, thinksshould be the focus, rather than micro-groups like the hundreds of thousands onzero hours contracts.

In fact, the middle class is not the wholenation, nor even a majority. It is a vocal mi-nority, whose bedrock ideology of compro-mise between the classes stems from itsmembers social position as a privileged layerbent on preserving and enhancing its privi-leges. It does so against the working classfrom below and the ruling class from above.The fact that the working class lacks an or-ganisation focusing and sharpening its classinstincts into political consciousness encour-

ages the middle class to aggrandise them-selves at the expense of workers in their coun-cil houses rather than the rich in theirmansions.

As a leader of workers in the firing line,McCluskey naturally denounced the Toriesand criticised Labours silence. Yet, whenpush came to shove, at Grangemouth, he ca-pitulated to the billionaire Ineos boss, Jim Rat-cliffe. This humiliation without a fight was aserious defeat for Scottish workers and theirmilitant traditions. Although it was not the firsttime that a left union leader demobilised orducked a fight their members could have won,it came at a time that was most damaging tomorale and class confidence in the widermovement.

It was no coincidence that this was on theheels of the Falkirk scandal involvingGrangemouth convenor, Unite Scotland chairand Falkirk West CLP chair, Stevie Deans.When, after years of patiently waiting forLabour to do something, Unite tried to installa candidate in the Falkirk by-election selectionprocess, Miliband backed the right wing witchhunt and actually called for a police investi-gation into the dispute.

Following a Labour internal review, whichrevealed not only that Unite had done nothingwrong, but that it was the rightwing candidatewho had paid the membership fees of his sup-porters, the party suppressed the report. JimRatcliffe took advantage of the ensuing chaosto sack Stevie Deans, provoking the Grange-mouth dispute.

This is just one more example that ex-presses not only the existence of what Marx-ists call the organic link, that is, the thousandthreads from the rank and file to the top offi-cials that bind the labour movement to itsparty, but also the preparedness of both its Leftand Right wings to subordinate the politicalindependence of the working class to its pro-capitalist political programme.

What is to be done?Labour remains a mass party rooted in theworking class. In the absence of a fightingstrategy, the danger is that millions of workerswill agree with their union leaders and waitfor Labour once again. It is the partys rootsand historic identification with the workingclass that make it, along with the trade union

bureaucracy, one of the twin obstacles to aneffective fightback against the Tories.

While opposing all attacks from the rightwing, our tactics for resistance to the Tories,therefore, have to include tactics for breakingup this obstacle. Labour cannot be killed bycurses, or propaganda exposing its past orpresent crimes. Nor should the Left try to by-pass it by joining the Greens or the SNP. Thatwould only fragment the labour movement,drawing activists away and leaving the greatmajority still under the sway of the currentleadership.

The only method is to demand that theLabour Party join a united front of resistanceto the Tories. We should demand this not inspite of its leaders shameful record, but be-cause of it; because millions of workers wholive with the consequences of their betrayalsnevertheless continue to see these leaders astheir leaders. They wont be won to anotherstrategy without witnessing and experiencinga confrontation between rival programmes.

In the unions and the Labour Party, we needto stop the bosses and their media choosingthe leadership. In the constituencies, rank andfile members, left MPs like John McDonnell,journalists like Owen Jones, need to mobilisemembers to defend the union link and unionmembers involvement in choosing theLabour leadership. Milibands principallegacy of service to the bourgeoisie is his re-form of Labours constitution that weakenedthe union link and rendered the conference al-most totally redundant. This needs to be re-versed.

More important than democratic reformthough, will be dragging Labour MPs andcouncillors out of their Westminster and TownHall bubbles and holding them to account infront of the working class that puts them in of-fice to protect jobs and services, not cut them.

Labour and the trade union bureaucracy re-main the leaders of a huge, organised and po-litically aware section of the working class.Only by mobilising this force, alongside thevanguard of activists who have already seenthrough Labourism, can we force the Toriesfrom power. Without their involvement, thereis little hope of stopping austerity, let alone re-versing the cuts and fighting to take control ofsocietys wealth and redistributing it.

That means developing tactics to workalongside Labour supporters and activists andwinning them away from Labourism to a newstrategy and a new type of organisation. Thiscannot be done by simple denunciation ofLabour as a bosses party. The reduction ofLabour to a mere rump of its present organi-sation, as happened to Pasok in Greece and isso eagerly desired by the intelligentsia here,would be a disaster unless some other, better,organisation exists to replace it.

If, in the process, the left outside of Labour,first and foremost those involved in buildingLeft Unity and TUSC, can overcome the self-satisfied sectarianism that has characterisedthe lefts strategies over the last five years,then not only can we repulse the Tory attackand kick them out, but we can build a newmass working class party that can pose thequestions of power; Who rules? Which classshall be the master in society?

MARXIST MONTHLY REVIEW

4 JUNE 2015 Workers Power

Tories prepare 10 The hours and days following the election showed the urgent need for the working c

analysis

Britain now has a governmentdetermined to force through an-other huge programme of cuts(18bn to welfare alone) anddig up cornerstones of the post-1945welfare system: public health, education,housing.

The Tories are likely to be in a hurry,and will take advantage of the first 100days to go on the offensive, for threereasons:

They calculate that opposition will bedisorganised because millions are disori-ented and dismayed by the outcome ofthe election. A Tory majority govern-ment was not the outcome they antici-pated and flew in the face of the pollsand even their own expectations;

The Blairite Labour right will nowlaunch a carefully prepared campaign,backed 100 per cent by the media, totake back the Labour Party, throwingeven the tame centre-left onto the defen-sive and making public opposition to aTory offensive even more muted;

The new government has a parliamen-tary majority of just 15 seats. This willerode over time through by-electionsand the natural attrition of support astheir reforms alienate ever larger num-bers of people. So they cant rely on gov-erning until 2020 without close votes,defeats and even a late-term Callaghan-style confidence vote. With only around19 potential allies in the Commons, in-cluding 10 Unionists from Northern Ire-land, one from UKIP and eight LibDemsto prop them up, the Tories know theyneed to get on with it.

For these reasons, the working classmovement needs to quickly assimilatethe lessons of the election debacle andreorient to resist the imminent Tory of-fensive. We should begin by insistingthat with a minority of votes cast, the To-ries do not have a mandate for their pro-gramme of cuts and privatisation andshould be resisted through a mass move-ment and action outside parliament.

This struggle will be industrial, resist-ing cuts, closures, pay restraint and pri-vatisation by campaigning for jointstrike action, backed by direct actionthrough marches and occupations; it willbe social and community based too.

It will be political, resisting the rise ofthe right in the Labour Party and theunions, renewing efforts to get theunions and the left to establish a newmass working class party.

It will be theoretical, because we willhave to defeat new analyses that willecho the Blairite offensive and throw re-sponsibility for the defeat back on theworking class itself, reviving Eurocom-munist narratives about the workingclass being inherently incapable of beat-ing the British bosses and their partywithout a strategic alliance with liberal-ism (in this case they will probablychoose the left liberal Greens).

The Tories outright victory wascaused not primarily by Britains unde-mocratic electoral system (though just36.9 per cent of the votes has given them

an overall Commons majority), nor pri-marily by media bias (though only onetwo national mainstream newspapersbacked Labour while several cam-paigned aggressively for the Tories), butby the contradictions racking the Toriesopponents.

In Scotland, the independence referen-dum catalysed widespread opposition toausterity into a nationalist upsurge thatconverted Labours prior clear poll leadin Scotland into this unprecedented SNPvictory. Labours historic defeat was itsown doing, caused by its failure to op-pose austerity, its selection of hated arch-Blairite Jim Murphy as leader and above all else by the fact that it cam-paigned in September 2014 not for theunity of the working class in Britain, notfor extending the achievements of theunited British labour movement like theNHS, but alongside the Tories and theLibDems for the preservation of UK es-tablishment. Despite the bourgeoisSNPs actual record of fiscal conser-vatism in office, Sturgeons anti-auster-ity rhetoric contrasted with Laboursnarrative of more caring cuts and bal-ancing the budget in a fairer way. Yeteven the SNPs near clean-sweep wouldnot on its own have given Cameron hisabsolute majority, had it not been forLabours failure to capitalise on anti-austerity feeling in England.

The LibDems were nearly annihilatedand rightly so. The working class and thelower layers of the middle class, unableto send their children to education with-

out being saddled with heavy debt, willnot easily forget how Clegg abandonedhis promises, nor how cheaply his partysold its lightly-held principles for achance of office. Many of the Lib Demsvotes went to the Tories; some, espe-cially the students and hipster middleclasses, went to the Greens; a significantportion went to Labour. But not enoughto win the election. The simple reasonwas that Labour offered no coherent al-ternative to austerity such as could radi-calise the middle class and pull them tothe left, as happened in Scotland.

UKIPs 3.9 million votes may haveonly given them one seat but it repre-sents a significant increase in far rightideas. They made headway mainlyamong Tory voters on the east coast butalso among the less class conscious sec-tions of unorganised and desperateworkers in depressed northern towns,southern England and even Wales.Again, workers who fall victim to anti-immigrant demagogy can only be dis-lodged, neutralised or won over by astronger anti-establishment messagethan UKIP, a more consistent oppositionto austerity, not by austerity lite and softanti-immigrant arguments such asLabour delivered.

In England and Wales Miliband did tryto reconnect with Labours traditionalvoting base but didnt dare to break con-sistently and clearly with Blairism byblaming the cuts and austerity on thebankers, the bailout of the banks and theconsequent spiralling of the nationaldebt. Why? Because this would have

meant a real and serious self-criticismfor the bailout under Brown. InsteadBalls apologized for over-spending onthe public sector and welfare, reinforc-ing the Tories big lie that the crisis wascaused by Labours investment in health,schools and services.

The only alternative would have beento have explicitly broken from thecuts/austerity agenda and to argue formaking the rich pay. All Milibandssoft left policies like the Mansion Tax,the freeze on energy bills, clampingdown on non-dom tax breaks, limitingzero-hours contracts were hugely pop-ular. But they were set in a confused andincoherent context of child benefit cuts,commitments to fiscal control, tight lim-its to public spending. Janus-faced,Labour couldnt capitalise on oppositionto austerity, couldnt rouse an enthusias-tic alternative to the Tories.

This meant that when the Tories andtheir press tried to frighten middle classopinion in England with the threat of aLabour-SNP government pursuing ananti-austerity agenda, those same Eng-lish voters bought it, partly becausegiven Labours policy they barely heardthe case against austerity.

Now, scarcely able to conceal their de-light at Labours defeat, the Blairites areon the rampage, blaming the fallenMiliband for alienating Middle Englandwith mansion taxes and rent controls. Infact Miliband and his trade union back-ers would have had to move much fur-ther left to keep hold of Scotland andunseat the Tories in England. TheBlairites argue that no left-wing LabourParty can ever be elected and the partymust move back to the centre, break withthe unions, and reach out to the aspira-tional, modern, middle classes andworkers in the new economy.

The answer to this self-serving crypto-Tory rubbish is simple, but we wont behearing much of it on the TV and in theLabour Party over the weeks and monthsahead. It is this:

If left-wing anti-austerity policiesalienate voters, how come they just wonoverwhelmingly in Scotland?If Milibands soft centre-leftism wasnot right wing or pro-business enoughto win in the centres of the aspirationalmodern, new economy, then howcome Labour advanced strongly inLondon on 7 May?

If it is somehow wrong for the unionsto influence Labour, why isnt it wrongfor big business to influence the Tories?Why shouldnt our class have an instru-ment of its own, just as the bosses have?Whats the point of winning elections ifit leads to more neoliberal austerityanyway?

At the end of the day, elections expressthe balance of forces in the class strug-gle, the level of political consciousness,confidence, organisation and direction ofthe respective social classes. The starkfact is that the 2015 election reflected aworking class movement that had al-ready suffered a very significant defeat

The working classneeds to assimiliatethe lessons of defeat and reorientto resist the imminent Tory offensive with anindustrial, socialand communitybased struggleagainst a government withno mandate

Labours few left policies werehugely popular butthey were undermined by arefusal to counterthe Tory lie thatoverspendingcaused the crisisrather than the 1trillion bailout ofthe banks

00 day offensive class to prepare its defences - and the desire for resistance that makes this possible

analysisWorkers Power JUNE 2015 5

from which it has not begun to recover.This was the failure of the labour, trade

union, student and socialist organisationsto create and maintain a movement of re-sistance that had the scale, longevity, tac-tics or leadership to defeat the ConDemoffensive in 2010-11. The high point ofthe struggle, after the students were leftto fight energetically but alone, was afew one-day coordinated strikes, eachof which was answered enthusiasticallyby union members but was then discoor-dinated and wound down by the unionleaders. In this Len McCluskey, the na-tional figurehead of the left and leader ofUnite, Britains biggest union andLabours biggest paymaster, is the onemost culpable for The Farce Last Time.

Where then for the left in this new dif-ficult situation?

In the economic or industrial struggle,we need to promote campaigns for strikeaction, backed by marches and occupa-tions, against the Tory cuts, against clo-sures, against sell-offs and pay freezes.This can only happen by working now toform a cross-union rank and file move-ment to both pressure union leaders toact and prepare to take action withoutthem when necessary. The local and re-gional Peoples Assemblies can be rally-ing points for this, if they go beyondplatforms for speakers and become dem-ocratic, delegate-based organisations,local coordinations of struggle, that canmake decisions and launch actions, chal-lenging official leaders when need beand wresting control of strikes and ac-tions from them when possible. Thismans organising people from across thetrade unions, local campaigns, socialistand antiracist groups and, yes, theLabour Party. With nine million votes,the affiliation of several large tradeunions comprising millions of members,with strong growth in support in Londonand as the official opposition, the verynotion that Labour is about to disappear,that we have already heard from some ofthe more superficial commentators onthe left, is simply absurd.

In the political struggle, we need to en-courage and support any left-wingers leftin the Labour Party to stand firm againstthe Blairite challenge, whether it comesfrom Blairs preferred candidate ChukaUmunna or elsewhere, and to stand on aclear programme of opposition to auster-ity, to all cuts, to militarism and war. Butwe can put next to no hope in such achallenge being successful, nor in thesoft left doing anything other thanknuckling down under the BlairiteRestoration. Therefore we need to redou-ble efforts to move towards the forma-tion of a new mass working class party.

McCluskey repeatedly toys with thisidea without having the slightest inten-tion of doing anything about it. In this just as he toys with the idea of a generalstrike he simultaneously recognises thestrategic necessities of the resistance,and obstructs efforts to realise them.Therefore trade unionists need to pushfor their funds to be redirected to a na-

tional conference for working class rep-resentation, and the existing parties andinitiatives of the left TUSC, Left Unityand their component groupings need topush for this too, with the simple goal offounding a new party, one with a clearname and recognisable banner thatworkers could actually rally to. And thisneeds to base itself firmly not on elec-tioneering every few years, but on sup-porting, promoting and extending socialand community struggles, like the resist-ance to gentrification and the housingcrisis that is spreading across east andsouth London, and like the localised re-sistance to the Bedroom Tax and evic-tions, which must surely now assume anorganised national form.

As the Tories work hard to pushthrough their counter- reforms we needto try our best to mobilise massiveprotests outside parliament and nation-wide, as students did over tuition feesand the EMA in November 2010, and asthe union leaders should have done whenLansleys NHS reforms were beingdebated. The aim should be to stop thembeing implemented and make them un-workable.

This means we need a new partywhose number one priority is waging theclass struggle, fighting to beat the Toryattacks through action, before the nextelection. This means the party should de-bate and adopt an action programme thatsets out the way to beat the Tories andlinks it to the fight for an anticapitalistworkers government and social revolu-tion.

In the theoretical struggle, we willneed to challenge the inevitable ideolog-ical consequence of defeat: a surge of re-visionism from the left-wingintelligentsia, which jumps at setbacksfor the working class to promote strate-gic accommodation to the middle classand to liberalism. In 2015 they will sug-gest that the working class and the labourmovement cannot beat the Tories, thatstructural changes in British capitalismlike the decline of manufacturing meanthat the working class cannot win, thatwhile the working class may still be afundamentally revolutionary class some-where, this one isnt, and that non-classpopulism alone can secure a majority ofthe people, so the left should join theGreens and/or the SNP or Plaid Cymru ,or at least reach a strategic accommoda-tion with them. In fact, of course, theradical policies of the middle classGreens and the bourgeois nationalists aresign that their leaders recognise the classinterests of Labours core working classbase and try to dislodge it through left-wing rhetoric, as populists have donethroughout modern history.

It is one thing for working class peopleto be swayed by this under the blows ofthe crisis and Labours lukewarm poli-cies; it is quite another for the self-iden-tified Marxist left to be taken in by it, asif the words spoken by political leaderswere of greater significance than theclass forces they represent and the socialroots of their political machines. There-fore, whilst always calling on the work-ing class supporters of the nationalistsand the Greens to join us on the streets

in the struggles against austerity, racismand war, we must absolutely reject anycalls for political support for the pop-ulists and stand firm on the principle ofworking class independence. Success inthis struggle against the inevitablegrowth of revisionism in the years aheaddepends on the emergence of a strongrevolutionary Marxist organisation.

On Europe, the Tories look set to movequickly towards their promised In-Outreferendum. It would be disastrous forthe left to back those reactionary forcescampaigning for British withdrawal.Without giving a single iota of supportto the undemocratic institutions of theEU, let alone moves towards consolidat-ing a European imperial power, a LittleEngland outside of Europe would be ahuge step backwards for the workingclass economically and in terms of inter-nationalism and solidarity.

Nor should we campaign for Scotlandto leave the UK. Notwithstanding theirclean sweep of the seats, the SNP repeat-edly insisted that the election was not areferendum on independence and cannotclaim that it expresses a majority for se-cession. Unless and until the Scottishpeople as a whole want it, socialists havenothing to gain from the creation of asmall separate imperialist Scotlandalongside an imperialist England andWales. Yes, if Scotland leaves the UK,the English and Welsh working class willbe in a worse position. But so will theScottish working class, devoid of eventhe most attenuated political representa-tion, ideologically tied to their bossesthrough a shared party and a common il-lusion, unprepared to resist an offensivefrom a fiscally prudent, experienced,pragmatic bourgeois government in Ed-inburgh.

The election was notable for an almosttotal lack of any serious discussion of thegreat geopolitical and economic changesthat are shaping our times. Parties de-bated the contribution (or not) that im-migrants make to British businesswithout mentioning the boatloads ofrefugees drowning in the Med as theyspoke. None offered sanctuary to a singleadditional refugee. They made jointcommitments to defence spending whilethe Tories and the generals issued belli-cose threats to Russia and sent troops toUkraine. When Miliband so much asmentioned Britains blame for destabil-ising Libya, he was met with such a cho-rus of bourgeois propaganda that hedidnt dare mention foreign policy again.

The revival of the left in this new situ-ation must take the opposite startingpoint that the bosses offensive is inter-national, effecting workers everywhere,that solidarity with resistance in Greece,and Spain and Ukraine strengthens us,that the workers of all countries arestronger together, and that the resistanceto Tory austerity is part of a broader fightfor a socialist united states of Europe.This is the only strategic alternative tothe wave of nationalism and parochial-ism that overran us on 7 May.

The Tories will tryto push through aseries of attacks inthe next 100 days -it is vital that weuse this period tolay the foundationof a genuinelymass and unitedanti-cuts movement

20 June will be thefirst test of thelabour and socialistmovements capacity tomobilise a show ofstrength in the capital - lets form organising committees inevery town and city

6 JUNE 2015 Workers Power

Crisis and opportunityCameronsattemptstodealwithScotlandandEuropecouldbackfire

KDTAIT

britain

From an early EU referendum toscrapping the Human Rights Act,from devolving powers to Scot-land through to English votes onEnglish laws, the new Tory governmenthas constitutional change firmly in itssights. Their aim will be to see off thehardline Eurosceptics whilst using devo-lution to decentralise and then dissolvethe welfare state.

But the agenda and timescale is notbeing driven by the Tories alone. Theyface three big challenges, none fullyunder their control: the SNPs cleansweep in Scotland, a clamour for Englishregional devolution, and British capital-isms strategic dilemma over the EU andits project for a federal European state.

ScotlandThe No vote in the Scottish independ-ence referendum provoked a huge sighof relief from the British political andmedia establishment who feared disasterwhen faced with polls that had put thetwo campaigns neck and neck. GordonBrowns last minute intervention helpedswing the result with the solemn vow,extracted from all the Westminster partyleaders, to grant extensive new powers tothe Scottish Parliament.

Little was said about these promisesuntil the SNP wipeout of Labour in Scot-land and 3.8 million votes for UKIPsanti-European Union platform made itclear that major constitutional issues areunavoidable and will occupy the centrestage for the coming period.

The Tories are determined to compen-sate themselves for powers lost to Scot-land by recasting governance in Englandand Wales in a way that entrenches theirpower for a generation. They hope to cre-ate new centres of regional authorityfrom which they can override democraticcouncils and start breaking up publicservices, especially the NHS.

These anti-democratic changes are de-signed to create a populist veneer for aprogramme of privatisation and austeritythat they know would otherwise bedeeply unpopular.

The SNPs near monopoly of ScottishMPs combined with a Tory majority atWestminster is the dream scenario forScottish nationalists. In Scotland, evenworkers not convinced of the separatistproject will increasingly see independ-ence as the only defence against West-minster austerity.

Nevertheless, capitalism is capitalism,even in Scotland. The SNP will beobliged to impose cuts and excuse themas the price of partial sovereignty. It is ofcourse a deception that full independencewould mean an end to austerity. What itwould mean is the SNP exposing its truecharacter as a thoroughly bourgeois partywith calls for sacrifices to build the na-tion while continuing to blame Westmin-ster for their straitened circumstances.

Devolution dangerThe concessions promised to insurgentScottish nationalism have produced theirmirror image in demands for greaterpowers for English MPs over health,

welfare, education and civic rights. Thisis embodied in the Tory pledge to intro-duce English votes for English laws(Evel), giving English MPs a veto overissues that affect England.

It is already fanning the flames of a re-actionary English nationalism which theTories aim to use to recover ground fromUKIP. But it could backfire.

To this we must add plans for region-alisation embodied by George OsbornesNorthern Powerhouse plans which willconcentrate investment into a few metro-politan cities and enterprise zones, allow-ing second tier cities to sink into decline.These new entities will be put under thecontrol of Mayors with expansive newpowers to override local councils.

The consequences of devolving powerto the regions might look attractive onpaper granting greater power to localdecision makers. In reality it means hugeamounts of public wealth will be handedover to professional managers, with noexperience of running such services,people already proven to be in hock toproperty developers and outsourcingspeculators.

The inevitable and intentional re-sult will be to accelerate the disintegra-tion of the national welfare state,exacerbate disparity of wealth and serv-ices between the metropoles and declin-ing outer regions and pit workers ofdifferent regions against each other incompetition for diminishing resources.

Eurosceptics, again Hours after victory, Home SecretaryTheresa Mays first statement was to re-ject outright European Union (EU) pro-posals to alleviate the Mediterraneanrefugee crisis by imposing quotas for re-settlement. The British warships in the

Mediterranean are to turn from rescuingrefugees to destroying the boats and fueldumps of the people smugglers on theNorth African coast. From Search andRescue to Search and Destroy.

The new Justice secretary MichaelGove fresh from his attempts to takeeducation back to the 1950s or maybe the1850s, will no doubt seek to restore Vic-torian values here too. After all, in 1998he wrote an article in the Times claimingthat abolishing hanging has led to acorruption of our criminal justice system,the erosion of all our freedoms and ad-vocating a fair trial, under theshadow of the noose. He has made hisfirst order of business the repeal of whatthe Daily Mail calls the madness of theHuman Rights Act.

The in/out referendum on EU mem-bership will prove a carnival of reaction.It is the issue around which a miasma offalse arguments about economic mi-grants, asylum seekers and national sov-ereignty revolve. The Tory (and UKIP)tabloids will do all in their power tomake workers believe low wages andshit jobs, queues in hospital A&E or in-ability to get a doctors appointment, areall the fault of East European immi-grants.

The EU is an institution that allows thedominant European powers France andGermany to exploit the peripheralcountries to their own advantage, whichexplains why Portugal, Spain, Greece,Ireland, Italy have been forced to imposesavage austerity. The economic and po-litical union, combined with Nato, en-ables the European ruling classes tocombine forces and act as an imperialistbloc on the world stage, asserting theirinterests against Russia, China, etc.

This is its function which defines itscharacter as an instrument of capitalist

class rule and why socialists oppose it.But an independent Britain outside theEU or an England, Wales and NorthernIreland on their own, would be no lesscapitalist and no less imperialist that GBInc. The same is true for an independentScotland.

Worse still, Brexit would damageBritish capitals access to its biggest mar-ket and the biggest economy in theworld. British capital would only be ableto reassert itself by an even deeper andabsolute relation with the US and an aus-terity offensive that would make the lastfive years look like communism.

Anyone in the labour movement whocampaigns for a British exit from the EUis acting directly against the interests ofthe working class.

EU referendumThe referendum will pit two sections ofthe bourgeoisie against one another. Onthe one side there is the leadership of theTory party which wants to renegotiateBritains membership in favour of Britishcapital, on the other, the Eurosceptic Toryminority and UKIP who pander to themost reactionary and chauvinist strata ofthe petit-bourgeoisie.

Fomented by the Daily Mail and theDaily Express the petit bourgeoisiechafes against EU legislation that im-poses costs and regulations that eat intoprofit margins, while limiting its abilityto drive down employees wages andworking conditions to compensate. Forbig capital and finance on the other hand,it is a question of defending UK mem-bership of the EU and the access tocheap migrant labour, markets and serv-ices that comes with it.

These are the two choices posed by anEU referendum and both standpointsdefend the interests of different sectionsof our class enemy; it is not in our inter-ests to make a positive choice in favourof either.

Andy Burnham has called for Cameronto call referendum in 2016 a changefrom Milibands previous opposition toa referendum. He did so on the basisthat British business needs a quick deci-sion to avoid uncertainty and to tightenrules on EU migrants claiming benefits.

This reveals the lessons of joint cam-paigning with the Tories in the Scottishreferendum have not been learned. TheTories are the only winners from thispopular front. Labour must not lineup again with the Tories and the bosses.But neither must we do what the left didin the 1970s line up with the reac-tionary little Englanders and Euro-phobes.

Against this bosses club, revolutionar-ies advocate a socialist united states ofEurope, a free association of nationsand peoples, where the working classtakes control of production to managethe continents material, cultural andenvironmental resources in the interestsof the majority of humanity.

CAMERON FACES A BATTLE TO WIN CONCESSIONS FOR BRITISH BUSINESS FROM EUROPE

ShouldthefalteringadvanceofPodemosencouragethelefttoreconsideritsmodel?

spainWorkers Power JUNE 2015 7

Populism and political power

DAVESTOCKTON

In the immediate aftermath of Laboursdefeat, speakers from the Brick LaneDebates group at the 14 May RadicalLeft Assembly referred to the SpanishIndignados and Podemos as models to imi-tate. There was even an attempt to brand the1,000 people in the hall as the 14M Move-ment.

Similarly, in Left Unity, a Podemos Ten-dency has been declared proclaiming: the methods used by Podemos can be effec-tive in this country a shift of focus isneeded We need to redefine politics fromLeft vs Right to Us vs Them, creating a newdiscourse that exposes the privilege of thosewho hold power in society we must bemore populist and use the tactics and strate-gies of mass (and new) media in communi-cating a simpler message.

Workers Power, over the past year, hasanalysed the development of Podemos poli-cies and its form of organisation. Despite its2014 surge in the opinion polls, where itovertook the Peoples Party (PP) and the So-cialist Party (PSOE), despite its continuedelectoral successes the latest on May 24 inthe regional and municipal elections, wehave argued that its populist (cross-class,non-socialist) policies and organisation,need be radically transformed if the party isreally to be a force for radical systemicchange. This would become absolutely crit-ical if they were to win power, either aloneor in coalition, in the general election due inNovember.

When Podemos was founded nearly ayear and a half ago, Workers Power wel-comed its clear commitment to rejectingausterity and defending public services, rais-ing wages and pensions, tackling unemploy-ment and homelessness. The 8 per cent ofthe national vote and 5 seats it won in theEuropean Elections on 25 May last year,only three months after its foundation,promised that it could well imitate the rapidadvance of Syriza, the Coalition of the Rad-ical Left, in Greece. Its roots in a network of900 local assemblies or circulos, promiseda radical democratic process of developingpolicies and choosing representatives.

It was not to be or rather whilst the hor-izontalist rhetoric was maintained, a verti-cal system around Pablo Iglesias, openlymodeled on Venezuelas lder mximo(main leader), Hugo Chvez and his Boli-varian populism was established. From June2014 onwards the supporters of Iglesias,mainly academics from Madrids Com-plutense University, determinedly sidelinedthe other group who had been co-foundersof Podemos and drafters of the successfulEU election platform - Izquierda Anticapi-talista (Anti-Capitalist Left), supporters ofthe Fourth International in Spain. They wereeventually pressured into dissolving them-selves.

The result was the creation of a monolithiccentralised leadership the so-called Igle-sias Team. This was reinforced by the on-line voting for Iglesias as general secretaryof the party, a plebiscite that he, as a TV

celebrity, easily won. When Podemos 8000strong Citizens Assembly met on 18 and 19October 2014, it confirmed this veritablecoup dtat. After this Iglesias set aboutsteering the organisation firmly towards thecentre ground. Since then the rightwardmovement has continued.

On 5 May, Pablo Iglesias presentedPodemos manifesto for the local electionson May 24. It promises a citizens bailout,meaning increased social welfare for thepoorest, but excluded any more radical pro-posals such as suspending home evictions,lowering the retirement age or imposing amoratorium on debt.

These omissions are all casualties ofPodemos attempt to dominate the politicalcentre. Iglesias believes this is the wayPodemos can sweep past the parties of lacasta (the caste), i.e. the political establish-ment that has dominated Spain since the dis-mantling of the dictatorship in 1978.

ElectoralismThis rightward turn has provoked an open

clash within the group of academics at theheart of Podemos. Professor Juan CarlosMonedero, often referred to as the brainsof the project, has resigned, revealing thatthere are tensions at the heart of Podemosbetween people who are more moderate,and people who want to stick to our origins.

Monedero claims that that the party is be-ginning to resemble the political forces ofthe very caste it is seeking to replace. Lastyear, Podemos proclaimed its fundamentaldifference lay in its grass roots circuloswhich would develop policy. Now, accord-ing to Monedero, Podemos is falling intothese kinds of problems because it no longerhas the time to meet with the small circles,because it is more important to get oneminute of TV airtime or to do somethingthat adds to the collective strategy.

Even more ironic, given his role, was hisobservation that when a partys sole aim be-comes reaching power it joins the elec-toral game and starts becoming hostage tothe worst aspects of the state.

The Podemos project was entirely aboutappropriating the language of a mass move-ment, and funneling support into a disci-plined electoral machine that would installIglesias, Monedero, Errejn and co. inSpains parliament within 18 months. Al-though it based itself on the circulos of ac-tivists, it never saw them as the embryos offighting organisations that would, them-selves, seize power from the caste andthereby create the direct democracy talkedabout by the Indignados, the 15M move-ment of 2011.

Whether or not Monederos newfoundcriticisms have more to do with his ejectionfrom the inner clique than with politicalprinciples, the important point is that thesedifferences over direction were not taken tothe membership. The outcome was decidedby the resignation of the loser in whatamounts to a clique fight.

Hegemony or powerThese problems are not just a result of an

opportunist move to capture the centreground, they flow from fundamental flawsin Podemos political method.

The project consciously rejects any classcharacterisation, any identification with thelabour movement or anticapitalist measures,let alone a socialist goal. It even rejectedplacing itself on the left of the political spec-trum.

Instead, it used the terminology of thepeople versus the caste. It emphasisedcorruption rather than exploitation andposed democracy and social-democraticreforms as the solutions to the economic andsocial problems of neoliberalism. This is be-cause, for Podemos, the strategic goal is towin the general election at all costs.

To do that, it thinks it is essential to avoidany policy, even any terminology that is un-acceptable to the whole of the 99 per cent.This, it believes, will allow it to establishideological hegemony over the electorate,displacing the neoliberal narrative or dis-course of the caste with its own populistone.

The great flaw in this strategy is not justthat much of it can be adopted by right wingpopulism, as new party Ciudadanos (Citi-zens) has already shown, but that, even if itis successful in its own terms, and leads toan electoral victory, it does not challenge thereal roots of capitalist power. They lie in theownership and control of the economy itself,not in the chambers of parliament.

Nor would electoral victory mean a fun-damental change in popular consciousness,that will only occur through the self-trans-forming activity of the working class instruggle. As Rosa Luxemburg liked to quotefrom Goethes Faust, in the beginning wasthe deed. It is of course natural for the aca-demic intelligentsia, the ideas people, thewordsmiths, to believe, with the Bible, thatin the beginning is the Word.

PowerThe dilemma that is facing Syriza today,

and would face a Podemos government infuture, shows what Marxists and, in partic-ular, Leninists, have always claimed. It isthe enormous economic power of the capi-talist class, backed up by the repressiveforces of their state, that proves decisive.

If a government limits seeks to limit itselfto reforms it believes are compatible withthe interests of the ruling class then, clearly,the repressive power of that class must notbe touched. On the other hand, if it tries toimplement measures that actually threatenvital interests of that class, it will provoke acounter-attack; capital flight, judicial sabo-tage or open military intervention.

This is the central dilemma of reformismand it applies whether the party involved issocialist, Labour, social democratic or leftpopulist. The difference between these is

whether or not the party in question has or-ganic roots in the working class, for exam-ple, via the trade unions.

For those who believe in the ability of theworking class to carry out a revolutionarytransformation of society, it is an elementaryduty to point out which class currently rulessociety and how it rules. It is equally funda-mental to explain that to break the dictator-ship of the capitalist class requires a socialforce greater than that of the existing state.It will never be sufficient for Ministers, evenif they are armed with an overwhelmingpopular mandate, to enforce their policies ifthey are unable to mobilise millions ofworkers and the oppressed to act for them-selves and deprive the capitalists of theirpower.

No modelIn Britain, the adoption of Podemos-style

populism would be no answer to our prob-lems. It would mean abandoning any clearview of the nature of the different classes insociety. The capitalist class cannot be re-duced to a political Establishment ofBullingdon Boys or corrupt City fat cats.Their privileges are only a symptom, nota cause, of what is wrong with society.

It is not enough to plan merely to tax thewealth they expropriate from workers allover the world. That leaves their system ofownership and control intact and allowsthem to mobilise all their resources for acounter-attack. The only way to removetheir power is to expropriate their property,to take all the essential economic factors intosocial ownership without compensation.Only the working class can do this becauseit is the only class that does not itself rely onprivate ownership of productive property.

While it is certainly true that contrastingthe 99 per cent to the 1 per cent high-lights the grotesque inequality of capitalistsociety, it nonetheless disguises the fact thata significant proportion of the 99 percent,particularly in an imperialist country likeBritain, are engaged in maintaining the sys-tem of wage exploitation and materiallybenefit from it.

Populism, represented in Britain by theSNP, the Greens and UKIP, collapses allclasses into an undifferentiated people andin so doing obscures class consciousnessand obstructs the class struggle necessary tofundamentally change society. When admir-ers of Podemos propose junking the con-cepts of class politics, they are actuallydisarming the working class and preparingthe way for its defeat.

Such chasing after populist solutions bymembers of the left intelligentsia is a sign oftheir own disillusion and demoralisation.Typically, they blame all our ills on theworking classs supposed lack of militancyor socialist consciousness, or claim it hasdisappeared altogether. While they may be-lieve they have found a new strategy, theyhave, in fact, rediscovered something veryold, and long discredited.

powerworkers

Tory Business Secretary SajidJavids anti-democratic measuresto restrict strikes and legalisescabbing have the aim of break-ing resistance to austerity.As TUC General Secretary Frances O-Grady warned, they want to make legalstrikes close to impossible.

The new laws aim is to weaken thetrade unions ability to mount nationalstrikes and industrial action in publicservices. They hope this will lead to a cat-astrophic fall in union membership.

By essential services they mean infact most public services: health, trans-port, fire brigades and education.

Why? Because these constitute the re-maining stronghold of the unions, includethose with the most left wing leaderships,and those that mounted resistance to thelast round of austerity.

Anti-strike lawsThe new anti-union law, to be included inthe Queens Speech, will impose furtherrestrictions on the right to strike by re-quiring all strike ballots to achieve a 50per cent turnout and those in essentialservices to win 40 per cent of all those el-igible to vote for action.

The first new anti-union law for 20years will also make it legal for employ-ers to hire agency workers to breakstrikes. Before now bosses have gotround the law by hiring a new workforceand locking out unionised workers, or bytransferring work to a different site. Butthis makes it much easier to run scab op-erations.

The proposal effectively means count-ing abstentions as votes against strike ac-tion and demanding a 50 per cent turnoutis reminiscent of the discredited law totransfer council estates to housing associ-ations.

Unite Assistant General Secretary SteveTurner pointed out this proposal is com-ing from a new administration with just36.9 per cent of the vote. Talk abouthypocrisy.

Add to this the obstacles placed in theway of increasing participation and thefull extent of this assault on democracyemerges. Civil service departments andeven, disgracefully, some Labour coun-cils are cutting shop stewards facilitytime, while withdrawing the check-offsystem, which deducts membership feesat source, forcing the unions to retainmembers by collecting subs in cash or viadirect debits.

Of course the only way to increaseunion membership, participation and ac-tivity is through greater rank and file au-thority and control. But here the unionleaders are nearly always absolutelysteadfast against handing over their pow-ers to the members on the ground.

So who are the laws immediately aimedat?

The National Union of Teachers, Publicand Commercial Services union, the RailMaritime and Transport union and FireBrigades Union have all been at the fore-front of resistance to neoliberalism at onepoint or another over the past 15 years.All provide vital services to millions. Allare in the firing line.

The private sector could also be hit.The Royal Mail, colleges and even petro-chemical workers at Grangemouth, whocould stem the flow of petrol to Scotlandand the north of England: are they essen-tial services? Given the proven militancyof their workforces in the CommunicationWorkers Union, the Universities and Col-leges Union and Unite, probably.

The big three unions Unite, Unisonand the GMB who brought out millionson one day strikes in health, local govern-ment and across the public sector overpensions and pay would all find it veryhard at present to deliver turnouts andwinning margins close to the Tory bench-marks.

Yet the new round of austerity along-side the measures of the first round thathave yet to be implemented will deci-mate public services and jobs. The payfreeze will be reimposed and increasinglysupplemented by deskilling, downgrad-ing, forced unpaid overtime and actualpay cuts.

In short, the unions will be tested very,very quickly. Will they step up to themark?

There has been some fighting talk fromour leaders. RMT General Secretary MickCash said: The trade unions will unite tofight these attacks. Unite leader Len Mc-Cluskey warned before the election,should there be a Conservative majorityin May, there will be a new attack ontrade union rights and democracyWhen the law is misguided, when it op-

presses the people and removes their free-doms, can we respect it? I am not reallyposing the question. I'm giving you theanswer. It ain't going to happen.

Unite will now debate removing thewords so far as is lawful from its de-scription of supportable strike action inits rulebook at a special conference thissummer.

Unfortunately we have heard this sortof fighting talk before. But talk is what italways remains.The bitter truth is that theunion leaders have frittered away the lastfive years of austerity on marches that lednowhere, and one-day strikes that led tosell-outs.

What to doAs soon as the Green Paper is publishedand its parliamentary! timetable an-nounced trade unionist activists, with thehelp of the whole anti-cuts movement,should launch a series of demonstrations,workplace meetings and local ralliesto !alert workers!to the severity of the at-tack and agitate!for action.

Resistance must include the fightagainst all the other anti-union measuresaimed at breaking up the public sectorstrongholds of trade unionism. It shouldalso focus on!solidarity action with sec-tors! ! like the! Network Railworkers! ! about to, orcurrently!taking!action.

Left caucuses in the unions and the so-cialist organisations should organise aconference to launch such a campaignfrom below. We should not wait for theunion leaders or smother criticism ofthem. But neither can we just ignorethem. The left in the unions should!putemergency motions to upcoming unionconferences and to the TUC demandingthat they put their full resources, local andnational, behind the movement to kill theanti-union bill.

Labour MPs too (indeed any partiesclaiming to be left or sympathetic to theunions) must be pressured into filibuster-ing the bill in parliament whilst tens ofthousands demonstrate outside of it.

Doubtless some people will argue thatworkers lack the confidence, or theshopfloor organisation to do this and havelost the traditions of mounting such defi-ance. But such traditions are not builtgradually in times of peace and quiet,!butstart from surprise and indignation at theinjustice of such an attack.

If we can build such a wave of angerand mass protest, then the issue of indus-trial action will be put back onthe!agenda. And in those circumstances itbecomes not just a matter of stopping newanti-union laws, but forcing the repeal ofall the old ones passed by Thatcher andMajor and left in place Blair and Brown.

Rank and file activists should campaigninside the unions for a policy of open de-fiance of the anti-union laws, old andnew, with strike action at the heart of theirstrategy. Any union that is taken to court,fined or shackled should be backed upwith solidarity action, up to and includinga general strike.

United ActionTo fight this vicious Tory government

we need to meet David Camerons much-vaunted first 100 days in office with 100days of resistance.

We cannot wait for the signal for actionto come from the top union leaders. Thelast five years shows that - aside fromspeechifying at union conferences - re-sistance will not start with them. Butamongst workforces under attack andcommunity based campaigns- defendinghospitals against closures, fightingagainst gentrification and for social hous-ing, - it has never stopped. What thesestruggles need is greater coordination andthe realisation that we now face an evenmore united enemy. We ourselves need tobe more united, both locally and nation-ally too. Rank and file unionists in work-places and local branches. need to set uplocal action committees to win the widerworking class to the defence of jobs,wages, services and conditions.

We need a drive to unionise and fightfor the rights of casual, precarious andzero-hours workers, and a campaign toencourage a new layer of shop stewardsto retain existing and recruit new mem-bers.

The severity of the battles ahead meanthat either we raise our game, transfromour organisations into more effectivefighting bodies or the setbacks we havesuffered so far will be as nothing to whatCameron and Osborne mean to inflict.

Tightening the noose

JUNE 102 Workers Power

JEREMY DEWAR

New anti-strike laws could neutralise a powerful weapon in the fight against cuts

workerspower.co.uk @workerspowerL5i [email protected]

NEW LAW COULD MAKE STRIKE TO DEFEND NHS IMPOSSIBLE

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