Strike together for a real pay rise
Build a new mass workers’ party
Ryan Aldred, Socialist Party national committee
Lift the cap on bankers’ bonuses and bailout energy bosses’ profits; these are the first acts of Liz Truss’ new government to deal with a cost-of-living emergency.
The energy companies’ gargantuan £170 billion ‘excess’ profits will be protected by the government borrowing over £100 billion to deal with the energy crisis. Perhaps they’ll get bankers to pay for the loan out of their bonuses and break with the Tory tradition of hammering the poor?
Meanwhile, the rest of us are wondering how the hell we’re going to get through winter – 14% of families are already behind on their bills. The most expensive government intervention on energy in Europe means that we’ll still be paying double what we did a year ago from 1 October.
Implementing her campaign promise to reverse the National Insurance hike won’t be enough. The poorest 10% will save a whopping £7.66 a year on their annual tax bill! Meanwhile, those earning over £100,000 will save £1,800. The Tories’ mini-budget offers little prospect of a lifeline for workers.
But workers are fighting back. We’ll see the largest coordinated strike action so far this year when rail and Royal Mail workers, together with dockers at Liverpool and Felixstowe, strike on 1 October.
The Trades Union Congress, which brings together the trade unions in Britain, has an opportunity to seriously build for even bigger coordinated strike action with a number of unions calling for linking up strikes, and more unions balloting for strikes this autumn.
It’s become abundantly clear that enough is enough. But what do we do at the ballot box? If we hold our breath waiting for any fight from Keir Starmer then our faces will be bluer than his policies! With Labour shadow cabinet members banned from speaking out on picket lines and being sacked for doing so, workers need a party of our own.
Labour has firmly ruled it out, but we need rail, mail and the utilities back in public ownership, this time democratically controlled. What better to put that case than a mass party made up of rail staff, posties and the millions of workers being hammered by profiteering bosses and the Tories?
Over 6 million people are trade union members in Britain, with millions more workers behind them desperate for change. If we can challenge the bosses in the workplace and their representatives at the ballot box, we can stop people from having to choose between heating or eating, and instead leave Truss and Starmer out in the cold! Let’s build a movement to kick them all out, and build a socialist alternative to profit-driven capitalism.
