Strike together
Build a new mass workers’ party
James Ivens, London Socialist Party
Great news! A terrifying ‘black hole’ is set to devour us all – but the government has a way to stop it.
Tory chancellor Jeremy Hunt says he can stuff it shut with just £55 billion of our cash! Labour leader Keir Starmer says he can do the same.
“No jam today and none tomorrow” was the assessment of the big bosses’ mouthpiece, the Financial Times. Their front page headline: “Hunt paves way for years of pain.”
But we’re in agony already. If you’re like me, you’re not even sure your radiators still work. Nine in ten of us are putting off the first day we switch on heating, said an October poll for the BBC. That same month, the average price on a pint of milk was 65p. The October before, 43p.
It feels hard to make sense of official forecasts. Like living standards plunging 7% in the next two years – the steepest dive since records began. And half a million jobs going. Over a decade into austerity, how can we possibly give up more?
Lots of us are deciding we can’t. The rail workers and posties have downed tools this year to demand jobs we can live off. Now nurses, education workers, civil servants and more are entering the fray.
The dockers’ strike in Liverpool has won inflation-busting rises of up to 18%. The port strike in Lerwick won hikes of up to 38%!
Turns out the bosses couldn’t run a bath without the workforce, let alone an economy. So imagine the power our strikes would have if all unions called them on the same days. The 30 November strikes are just the beginning, with education and postal workers out.
What about Hunt’s ‘fiscal black hole’? Well, the cash isn’t sucked out of the universe. British corporate profits were a record £139 billion in the first three months of this year alone. That’s where all the money we lose goes: to thieves.
Starmer is happy with that. “We don’t quarrel with the number” he told the Beeb, “or trying to get the debt down.” Just like the “very difficult choices” and “not being able to do things” he promised Labour conference, this means: Labour will continue Tory austerity.
It’s not enough for us to win on the picket line just to be robbed at the ballot box.
The working class needs a new, mass party to draw all these struggles together. Imagine the power we’d have if the unions called that too.
