Editorial of the Socialist issue 1202
Britain’s economy is already in a recession, which the Bank of England predicts will last two years. Inflation is hitting a forty-year high. The hike in interest rates is the biggest for 30 years, leaving millions worrying about how they will pay their mortgages and their credit cards. More than a quarter of adults in the UK are now reliant on their credit cards to buy food.
Meanwhile, Sunak and Hunt are preparing an autumn statement which is said to include upwards of £33 billion of cuts to public spending. That is on top of the huge real-terms cuts to every public service already taking place as a result of inflation.
Chancellor Hunt’s description of “eye-wateringly difficult” times ahead doesn’t apply to multi-millionaires like him and prime minister Sunak, however. In fact, the pay of the chief executives of Britain’s biggest ‘FTSE 100’ companies soared by 23% this year, to an average of £3.9 million! Meanwhile, the same chief executives are demanding their workforces accept real-terms pay cuts.
British capitalism is in crisis, but it is not the capitalist elite who are suffering as a result, it is the working-class majority. If we don’t fight back, the bosses and the Tory government will be prepared to drive our pay and living standards even further into the dirt.
But as hundreds of thousands of workers have already discovered in 2022, collective action can win. Labour Research reports that more than fifty groups of workers have been able to win inflation-beating pay rises, by taking, or sometimes just by threatening, strike action. Overall, they show a clear correlation between being prepared to strike and winning better pay awards.
The Royal College of Nursing has voted for strike action in Britain for the time in its history. Other health unions, civil servants, teachers and other workers are also in the process of balloting. The trade union movement can defeat Sunak’s ‘austerity on steroids’ and force his government out of office.
The potential exists for the TUC to organise the biggest wave of coordinated strike action this century. If the TUC fails to give a lead, all those trade unions who want to fight should work together to coordinate the action.
However, while 2022 has been the year in which the necessity of workers’ collective action has been demonstrated to a new generation, the working class does not yet have any collective voice in the political arena. Millions are desperate to get rid of the Tories, but are also angry that the only ‘alternative’ on offer is Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘New Labour’ party which has made abundantly clear that, like Sunak and Hunt, it would do the bidding of the ‘markets’ in government. Ultimately, that means doing the bidding of the capitalist elite, who are motivated not by the good of society as a whole but by maximising their own profits. A mass movement forcing the Tories out would be a victory, but would clearly not end the need for a struggle to defend workers’ interests. There is an urgent need to start building a political alternative that will fight for those interests. A start needs to be made at the next general election – with trade union and socialist candidates standing against pro-capitalist Labour candidates – so that the battle that has begun in the workplaces will also have a voice in parliament.
