Nancy Taaffe
On the 20 October 2012 TUC demonstration against austerity, photo by Paul Mattsson (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)
Do the Tories suspect that they won’t be re-elected? Their plan was for the private sector to rise like a phoenix from the ashes of the destroyed public sector to create growth. But this plan has not materialised. It has been more like the Dodo, a flightless bird which became extinct.
But on behalf of their paymasters in the finance houses and drinking clubs of the city, the Con-Dems are pursuing a scorched earth policy. They intend to pummel the working class with cut after cut and attack after attack in the time they have left, confident that a future Labour government will not reverse these decisions.
20 October 2012 TUC demo against austerity , photo Paul Mattsson (Click to enlarge: opens in new window)
Shamefully Labour leader Ed Miliband came out in front of 150,000 people in Hyde Park on 20 October at the TUC anti-austerity demo and confirmed that a future Labour government will make cuts. I would suggest that we heed his words and put no faith in the idea of Labour as our salvation. This shows the urgent need to fight for a new mass party that opposes austerity.
We have to build in the trade unions and workplaces for generalised strike action to defeat cuts and we have to do it now.
On 14 November we witnessed something that has never happened before. The coordination by some of the trade union federations in Europe to strike on the same day. This introduces into the minds of millions of workers another force in the anti-austerity drama.
It is this force, the working class, that has the potential here in Britain to defeat the shock tactics of the Con-Dem government.
That is why the National Shop Stewards Network is organising a lobby of the TUC general council on 11 December, to demand the urgent organisation of a 24-hour general strike against austerity.
