Despite minimal, media coverage, images of angry working class protests across Europe filter through to TV screens. The latest of these, which took place in France on September 7th, brought over one million marchers onto the streets against a planned attack on their pension system.
This raises the question of when and how workers in Britain will be given a chance to voice their anger against the bosses' attacks and the cuts being prepared so arrogantly by the Con-Dems.
The TUC in search of a partnership
Over the past two years of crisis, in almost all of the (few) instances where union leaders have taken the initiative (or yielded to pressure from members) to do something against the bosses' attacks, workers have been left to fight in isolation.
In local government, for instance, where blue collar workers were facing the same attacks against jobs and wages everywhere, no attempt was made to build up a national fight back. Likewise, at BA, where cabin crew are still locked in a protracted struggle with a cow-boy management, after 22 strike days so far, Unite leaders are only beginning to talk about spreading the dispute to other sections of workers, despite the fact that they were all facing similar attacks!
Since the Con-Dems first announced their drastic cuts, it has taken four months for the TUC leaders to come up with a "comprehensive" response in the form of a "statement on the economy" for its annual conference. But it is hard to detect in this any real willingness to oppose the bosses' and Con-Dems' offensive against the working class.
Among other things, the TUC hails the fact that unemployment "never reached the peak hit in previous recessions" and congratulates itself on the fact that "employers and unions worked to avoid job losses". The many workers who lost their jobs due to job-cutting "deals" recommended by union leaders will appreciate this! So will the growing army of under-employed workers, who are kept artificially out of the jobless count!
The cat was let out of the bag in an interview given by TUC leader Brendan Barber at the launch of this document, in which he stated: "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's "response", therefore, to the attacks faced by the working class is that they should be "negotiated" first with union leaders!
Building up the right balance of forces
Of course, the TUC document does contain a "timetable for action". But there is no question even of using the local protests already announced by the Scottish TUC on 23rd October to call for a national protest. No, if there is to be a national protest, the TUC does not want it to take place before.. March 2011! The present threats against jobs and services may be a matter of urgency for workers, but obviously not for TUC leaders!
In fact, what the TUC's agenda for "action" comes down to, is a long series of lobbies of... coalition MPs! Its document ludicrously claims that the "poll tax was defeated when government MPs realised that their seats were in danger".
As if the large-scale protests, which took place everywhere at the time, had not been the decisive factor, by prompting the bosses, who feared that the protests might affect their profits, to order Tory politicians to get their act together and repeal the tax!
So, yes, the lessons of the poll tax protests should be remembered, but not the fraudulent version presented by the TUC leaders. The next thing they will tell us is that we must wait till the next election and vote Labour - to get more of the same anti-working class policies!
Because, like Thatcher, 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.
The budget deficit was never more than a pretext used first by Labour and then by the Tories, to consolidate and extend the offensive launched by the bosses against workers' conditions, since the onset of the crisis.
We live in a society which is awash with cash when it comes to luxuries and speculation, but "strapped" when it comes to necessities for the majority. If this 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, then the working class has to show its strength and voice its anger, as loudly as possible. The sooner, the better!