Predictably, union leaders used last week's TUC conference to make a show of their reluctance to stand up to the bosses' and Tory attacks. Just as predictably this attracted endless comments from the media pointing to the present "weakness" of the trade-union movement compared to what it was two or three decades ago.

Indeed, more time was spent in Manchester insisting that there would be "no return to the 1980s", meaning no head-on confrontation with the job-slashers, than to draft an effective course of action aimed at stopping cuts in jobs and services, whether in the public or the private sector.

The TUC in search of a partnership

During this conference, the spotlight of the news was focused on the call for co-ordinated campaigns and industrial action against the cuts adopted by delegates, not to mention the call for "civil disobedience" made by RMT leader Bob Crow.

But such calls ring hollow in view of the TUC General Council's "statement on the economy" which was adopted by the same conference.

In this document, among other things, the TUC leaders hail the fact that unemployment "never reached the peak hit in previous recessions" and congratulate themselves for the fact that "employers and unions worked to avoid job losses".

No doubt, British Airways' check-in and maintenance workers, in whose name GMB and Unite leaders have just signed up to 500 job cuts, will appreciatethis! So will the thousands of Royal Mail workers whose jobs have been slashed as part of a deal made by CWU leaders. Not to mention the growing army of part-timers who are forced off the jobless count only to be paid starvation wages!

But it was even before the conference that the cat really came out of the bag, when TUC leader Brendan Barber stated in an interview: "I am hopeful that he [Cameron] will meet us before the spending round". This offer was reinforced by the TUC document stating that "unions do not oppose negotiated change or genuine efficiency savings" - i.e. jobs and services cuts, in plain English.

The TUC leaders' "response" to the attacks faced by the working class is not that they should be fought, therefore, but rather that they should be "negotiated"!

This is something that the Tories and their capitalist masters can live with. No wonder Tory minister Francis Maude jumped on the opportunity to offer union leaders a "genuine partnership" on BBC4's Today programme.

Building up the right balance of forces

The TUC conference did come up, however, with what union leaders call a "timetable for action". But the only real action is scheduled for... March 2011! As if standing up to the bosses' offensive wasn't a matter of emergency, as was shown, last week, by the notices of cuts in wages and conditions served last week on 26,000 Birmingham council employees!

Meanwhile, the TUC's agenda for "action" comes down to... lobbying coalition MPs, as a means of "mobilising the community" against the cuts. It even claims that this was the way the poll tax was finally defeated under Thatcher! As if the large-scale protests, which took place at the time, were not the decisive factor - prompting the bosses, who feared that their profits might be affected, to order Tory politicians to repeal the tax!

So, yes, the lessons of the poll tax should be remembered, but not the TUC's distorted version. And so should the lessons of the 1980s. At the time, union leaders allowed the bosses and Tories to take on one section of workers after another. steel workers, miners, dockers, sailors, print workers, NHS workers, were all left to fight on their own. If they were eventually defeated, it was not because they lacked determination, nor because the Tories and bosses were too strong, but quite simply because of the union leaders' deliberate policy to leave each section of workers to fight in isolation

Like Thatcher yesterday, today, the Con-Dems fear only one thing - that the anger of the working class will reach the point where it threatens the profiteering of their capitalist masters.

We live in a society which is awash with cash when it comes to luxury and speculation, but "strapped" when it comes to necessities for the majority. If this is to be reversed, if the capitalist class, which is both responsible for this crisis and its main beneficiary, is to be made to pay for it, the working class will have to show its strength and to voice its anger, by joining forces across all sections, in order to create a balance of forces which leaves the capitalist class no alternative. And the sooner, the better!