A monster indeed stalks this awful Internet forum, and its name is CAPITALIST COMPLACENCY.
Go to protest against the G8, stand man to man with the international proletariat? "No, I'd rather stay here and post posts about how wonderful Tony B. LIAR is!"
As I recall, I was savaged by one of the so-called mods (Jim Eden) who is still posting here, so it is no surprise that the rule of the right wing bully prevails. Only by securing this thug's IP address (as well as those of the cowardly clique who attacked me) could I stem the slander against my name.
For those who don't want to drown in the bog of apathy that this forum clearly wants to engender, check out this excellent article which can be found, among others, on the
www.workerspower.com site. Remember - when the snowball starts rolling, it's too late for the snowflakes to start voting!
Turn Brown’s first 100 days into a hot summer
Workers Power 316 – June 2007
May saw another major collapse in the Labour vote. Many workers rightly withdrew their support from Labour and, as a result, the Tories made gains in the north of England for the first time in over a decade and are resurgent in the South East.
In 2006, Labour lost 319 councillors, their worst result for 30 years. In 2007, they lost a further 505. They lost control of eight councils, including Sheffield, Blackburn and Oldham.
They won only 27 per cent of the vote. The party lost their majority in the Welsh Assembly and fell behind the Scottish National Party north of the border.
This is a serious blow for Labour. The bosses will warn Gordon Brown that if he puts a foot wrong – gives an inch to the unions, makes a mistake on the economy, or does not battle for British imperialism’s interests on the international stage – then there is a premier-in-waiting, David Cameron.
Union leaders ignore majority
The big union leaders – Tony Woodley and Derek Simpson of Unite, Dave Prentis of Unison and Paul Kenny of GMB – will no doubt use this as yet another excuse not to resist Labour. Their tacit support for Brown was based on their assumption that only he could win back the middle class and well-off workers – and stop the Tories.
But for many, Brown is a disaster. More than 12 million workers – a fifth of the population – live in relative poverty; 1.5 million are unemployed.
Of the 1.5 million migrants, who have come to work in Britain in the past three years, the vast majority slave under intolerable conditions in factories, agriculture, the hotel, catering and building trades. Those without work permits are even more vulnerable.
Families living on neglected, sub-standard housing estates face daily discrimination from employers and harassment from police and the authorities. Pensioners fight a weekly battle to find the money to pay for food, heating, rent and travel.
It is to these workers and youth that we unashamedly turn to lead resistance to Labour. For them Brown’s 58 months of uninterrupted “economic growth” have not brought security or prosperity. For them the danger of the Tories returning to office is not the immediate one – three more years of hard Labour is. For them there is no alternative but to fight today’s battles.
Gordon Brown may regret “massive unemployment in Iraq”, but he won’t pull the troops out or undo the rip-off oil and gas contracts secured by BP, Shell and co. He will continue to impose the 2 per cent real pay cut on public sector workers, while handing out tax breaks for the mega-corporations. He will tie any funding in services to market “reforms”, privatisation and cuts. Hiving off 85 post offices to WH Smith and shutting 2,500 more: this is what Brown’s policy means in practice.
The union leaders want Brown to do a deal with them, a second Warwick agreement, so-called after the accord signed in 2004, which guaranteed union support for Labour’s election campaign the following year in return for minor reforms, most of which Labour reneged on. We don’t need another worthless deal. We need to bust Brown’s policies.
100 days to shake Brown
Gordon Brown wants to start his premiership with 100 days of policy announcements and initiatives. Since they are virtually all a continuation or worsening of Blair's attacks we need to fight to get the unions and the antiwar movement to turn this into 100 days of struggle.
We need a united strike across the public sector to smash the 2 per cent pay cut. Dave Prentis has suggested to other unions, “where there is industrial action we coordinate where possible such action”. Fine, but it must not be limited to one-day strikes, and then called off for “new talks”. We must fight for all out and indefinite action until every section has won.
Most unions are committed by conference decisions to opposing to the war in Iraq. Yet Brown supports the war. Unions must demand publicly and unequivocally that Brown pulls the troops out now. When he refuses they must declare war on him. We need to fight to get unions to boycott all work related to the war, to halt the movement of supplies to war zones. The unions must be won to strike action to prevent any attack on Iran.
Unite and the GMB general unions have started to organise migrant workers. Now they must support their demands for citizenship rights and work permits for all and to stop deportations.
Organise from below
Of course Prentis, Woodley, Simpson and co. have no intention of fighting Brown. They still hope to the government and the employers to enter into “partnership” with them. To this end they are ready to accept job losses, factory closures and outsourcing. Of course they will protest. They know full well the new jobs on offer will be less secure and worse paid. All they care about is that they are consulted and are able to “negotiate” away their members jobs wages and conditions.
That's why, as well as demanding that the union leaders do the jobs we pay them for, we must pile on the pressure from below and, crucially, organise the battle against Brown without and against them when they fail to do so. In the coming weeks and months, rank and file workers and activists need to build up their own organisations so that they can fight Labour and the bosses – and resist any attempt by the union bureaucracy to limit or sabotage our struggles.
Every section of workers under attack should organise workplace and branch meetings to discuss tactics and strategy to smash the 2 per cent pay limit, to defend jobs and to halt and reverse privatisation, cuts and closures - and to elect strike committees to run the dispute.
Unlike the officials, these committees should be fully accountable to and recallable by the members. By linking up nationally they could provide an alternative strike leadership, one more closely in tune with the members. They could provide the basis for a rank and file movement dedicated to transforming the unions and freeing them from bureaucratic control.
In every town and city, we need to organise public meetings with representatives from every workplace under attack and from community campaigns fighting to save schools, hospitals and services – in order to co-ordinate the fightback and set up committees of action with delegates from every sector and area. If the union leaders won't forge a united front, we should build fighting unity from below, making it more difficult for them to sign separate deals and leave others in the lurch.
Finally, we should not abandon “big politics” to either Labour or the union tops. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the neoliberal onslaught on our jobs, benefits and services and the slew of repressive laws attacking our democratic rights and civil liberties – these are our business, too. We need a new working class party based in the unions and won to a revolutionary programme.
Throughout the struggles ahead, the crisis of working class representation must not be forgotten. The lack of a working class party hampers us in our daily battles and prevents us from launching a real struggle for power, so that we can abolish the capitalist system that Brown so admires.
If you agree with this course of action, then you should contact us, work alongside us and join Workers Power.
Workers Power 314
Fifth International volume 2 issue 1 - OUT NOW!
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