The response of TUC delegates to Brown's speech at their conference was in keeping with the leadership's total failure to organise workers to defend themselves against the bosses' attacks: they almost gave him a standing ovation!
So much for the hype over the "c" word, i.e., the cuts in public spending which Brown was supposedly afraid of announcing and which TUC bureaucrats spouted such hot air about "resisting".
Brown did mention cuts, of course. But cutting public spending is hardly a change in his policy, even if the scale of this is due to increase significantly. He plans to halve the (estimated) £175bn deficit in 4 years.
Anyway, all of this only goes to show how far from reality official "politics" is. Back on earth, workers throughout the public sector are already facing and fighting cuts. Right now, postal workers are on strike for 1 or 2 days every week because of another 10% - 14,000 - job cuts, being imposed on them by Brown's government! 50,000 civil service job cuts have left Job Centres unable to cope with increasing unemployment. Firefighters have just been told of another round of fire station closures. The closure of whole departments - like A&E and Maternity - continues unabated in the NHS. Are these not the "front line services" Brown said will be "protected"?
Twin political "evils"
Never mind, though. TUC leaders who yesterday were huffing and puffing against public service cuts, still stake the future of the working class on Brown and his party! Before conference, they warned him that he would be "finished" if he "attacked public sector spending" and exhorted him not to do it. TUC leader, Brendon Barber even warned of "riots in the streets" like in the early 1980s if cuts are made. According to postal workers' leader, Billy Hayes, Brown just needed to give people the message they want to hear (!), so that when the union bureaucrats urge workers to vote Labour at the next election it doesn't sound ridiculous! For instance, a bit of hype about taxing the rich was essential, in the TUC leaders' view! Brown obliged.
So although Labour will attack the working class and its vital public services by cutting even more jobs, by ending final salary pension schemes, cutting wages and conditions even more - yes, despite that, the TUC bureaucrats' message is that workers should vote Labour, yet again, because the Tories are worse! That is the same old, same old!
But staking the present and future situation of the working class on the goodwill of politicians, who for the past year have been lining the pockets of the finance sharks with our money is an obvious nonsense.
MG Rover... and now Vauxhall
If any more illustration of this were required, the outcome of the 4-year long MG Rover investigation provides it: the Labour government allowed 6,000 (direct) jobs to be put into the hands of dodgy venture capitalists who everyone knew at the time were into asset-stripping! And then the dodgy capitalists stripped the assets - "legally"!
Today Brown is presiding over a deal at Vauxhall, involving 5,500 jobs, with Canadian parts manufacturer Magna, which could well mean job losses and even the closure of the Luton plant. Brown is prepared to underwrite the deal, but not to place a condition on this of no job cuts. How many companies have had government subsidies like Fujitsu, Ford, Jaguar Land Rover, or even been taken over, like the bank, RBS, yet not in one case did the government ban bosses from cutting jobs!
In fact it doesn't really matter who takes over a company if the bosses have a blank cheque to do whatever they want with the jobs and to do whatever they want with the profits, regardless of the consequences for the working class. This is the real problem!
A Blanket ban on job cuts!
And it means that there is only one sure way for workers to protect their jobs and conditions in both public and private sectors: to impose our own blanket ban on all job cuts and then implement this ban, ourselves! While ensuring, of course, that everyone has a job, if need be by sharing work out between everyone, without anyone losing a penny on pay.
Of course, to achieve such an aim, workers need to have something that the TUC leaders don't have (nor want to have!). And that is the will to fight. The strength to win this fight is there. It is up to us to use it!