The opening speeches of this year's TUC conference all echoed the words of TUC leader, Frances O'Grady who said that "the TUC's priority is making sure that working people don't pay the price of the vote to leave the EU".

And so it should be, if what they mean is to build up towards a general fight back against the new attacks on our living and working conditions that the capitalist class and their government are already cooking up.

Because the government may well try to play down the impact of Brexit, but this is just political pretence.

For a start, someone will have to pay for the tens of billions already poured into the financial system since June - plus the additional £10bn offered to speculators this Tuesday. And, from our experience of the last bank bailout, we know what this means: more cuts in public services and social expenditure.

Already we're being told that "something has to give" in the NHS, to avoid a complete breakdown of the system. Of course this may have nothing to do with Brexit. But wasn't Brexit meant to provide the NHS with new funding? No more. It was a lie!

And this is just the beginning. Companies are now delaying new investment plans - or cutting them, like Ford. If this were to carry on for any length of time, let alone gather momentum, this would mean job and wage cuts right across the working class.

"Fighting" for directorships?

So, yes, a general fight back needs to be prepared in order to pre-empt the coming attacks and to ensure that if "something has to give", it shouldn't be our living standards, but the profits and accumulated wealth of the capitalist class.

But there's not a word of this in the TUC's speeches. Instead, O'Grady urges May to "work to keep the advantages we get from membership of the single market - for all of our industries, not just the City". But who's that "we"? Certainly not us workers. The single market was always designed to benefit British bosses, while we only got the crumbs. Shouldn't trade unions set themselves the objective of reversing this state of affairs? But no. O'Grady's real "priority" is to rush to the defence of British capital and its bosses!

However, she lets the cat out of the bag when, having denounced the indecent rise in company directors' salaries, she adds that "Theresa May must deliver on her promise to put workers on company boards" and that, on this basis, "we are keen to roll up our sleeves."

So, that's it. The TUC leaders have no plans to organise any sort of fight back. They just want to help British bosses to get a Brexit which is good for their profits and, in return for "rolling their sleeves up", they want a few cushy seats in company board rooms! But what would these "workers' directors" do on these boards? Exactly what they did in the "good old days" when unions were represented on the boards of nationalised companies: they would help management to turn the screw on workers, because that's what these boards are for!

For a real kicking of the establishment!

Unite leader, Len McCluskey, had a point when he said in his speech that the vote to leave the EU was an attempt to "give the establishment a kicking".

Only it didn't and it couldn't. The referendum asked voters to arbitrate between rival factions in the establishment. And whichever way they voted, their ballot paper was bound to reinforce one of these factions - not to kick them!

A working class movement worth its salt would have denounced this trap laid for workers by the politicians of the capitalist class. This, in and of itself, underlines the urgency for the working class to build up a party of its own - a party which really represents its class interests by refusing to adapt to the institutions of the capitalists.

At the same time, our real battles have still to be fought. Our strength is intact because it has never been used and because we still produce all the wealth in this society.

But in order to prepare for our future fight backs, we need to close ranks and, in particular, protect those workers who are targeted by the recent wave of anti-migrant attacks - and lend them all the solidarity they need. Arkadiusz Józwik, the Polish worker who was beaten to death in Harlow, on 27 August, was one of us, just like the 28-year old Polish worker who narrowly escaped the same fate in Leeds, on 9 September. By attacking them, it is the whole working class that these thugs are attacking. And it is the whole working class that should respond, against anti-migrant thugs and against all the attacks that the bosses and their political establishment are preparing for us.