THE POET Shelley helped inspire a 50-strong meeting launching Plymouth’s fight against the cuts. 90-year-old pensioners’ campaigner, Paddy Ryan, quoted Shelley: “Rise like lions after slumber in unvanquishable number. Shake your chains to earth like dew, which in sleep had fallen on you. Ye are many – they are few”.
Rob Rooney
Trade union representatives from Unite, Unison, RMT, PCS and CWU, and claimants’ union and asylum-support workers all indicated they had had enough, that this is the time to fight on the basis of ‘no cuts, no compromise’.
The magnificent example of the anti-poll tax campaign was invoked as a means of mobilising working people. One speaker warned against strike action, suggesting instead that workers should refuse to cover the work of departed colleagues but a CWU full-timer said that action short of a strike is: “Like having a machine gun to your head and fighting back with a toothpick.”
The No Cuts campaign hits Plymouth’s streets soon and Socialist Party members will play a full part. For the campaign to reach its full potential, it will need to have an inclusive, open structure.
