Unite the working class against the Tories

Submitted by martin on 31 January, 2023 - 2:45 Author: Editorial
Prostesters

On 1 February half a million UK workers will strike, the largest number so far in the wave growing since last summer. To win, we must make that day is a launchpad for much more widespread, coordinated and sustained action — and organise so it contributes to building up a bigger, more united, more conscious and dynamic working-class movement, longer-term.

Sadly, two unions whose strikes helped launch the wave, RMT (rail workers) and CWU (postal workers), are sitting out 1 February. RMT in particular is in danger of running its key disputes into the ground. The RCN (nurses) and other health unions have also avoided 1 February.

Still we have not enough discussion of how strikes can coordinate to be most effective, and too much reluctance about escalating to the levels of action necessary to win. Alongside the demands of individual strikes, the semi-collapse of the NHS, the new anti-union laws, and other issues will and should be prominent on 1 February, and concern the whole working class.

2022 saw the most days “lost” since 1989 — well over two million. But in the late 70s, when much of the UK working class did manage to win pay rises outpacing high inflation, the number of strike days was many times that, in 1979 almost 30 million.

In 1970 the Tories introduced the first anti-strike law since the repeal of war-time Order 1305 in 1951, the Industrial Relations Bill. There was widespread protest for months before the Bill became law in August 1971 and came into force fully at Easter 1972. It included a TUC march of hundreds of thousands in January 1971, the biggest demonstration in Britain for many decades. That paved the way for strikes that confronted and beat back the law in mid-1972, then for an incoming Labour government to repeal the law in 1974. Now, with the “minimum service” bill for rail, education, health, etc. speeding along, we have so far had only a few protests, the largest a thousand or two.

The issue is not a technical one about this or that tactic or form of campaigning.

It is about whether the labour movement, weakened and fragmented over decades, can out of the current battles revive itself as a powerful force. Or, from another angle, whether the working class can organise, educate and unite ourselves enough to revive the labour movement as a force.

Socialists argue for workers and the labour movement to fight these battles in the spirit of class conflict: with as much class consciousness and determination as the Tories and the class they represent show against us.

Activists must argue and organise for what is necessary at every level of existing union structures. But we also need to create spaces and channels and a culture in which workers at the grassroots can discuss what is necessary and organise to push from below, starting with such things like encouraging strikers to visit each others’ pickets.

The more this can feed into formal position-taking and decision-making the better. Some Trades Councils are reviving as local coordinating bodies for union branches and workplaces.

Sector-by-sector wage demands are only part of it. Decent pay rises for public-sector workers already pose the question of more funding for services

We need much more, more determined and politically clearer campaigning for pro-working class demands on a range of such issues — including a big fight to restore a universal, fully public, well-funded NHS. We need to demand taxing the rich and seizing chunks of their wealth to fund what is needed.

We need policies passed by union conferences to come off the page and drive real, visible, mobilising campaigns. We need a union push to popularise and win them in politics, including through forceful campaigning in and around the Labour Party.

Our movement needs to get serious about fighting the anti-union laws. We should argue for a big national demonstration to stop the “minimum service” bill; for local discussions, meetings and protests; and for strong demands and campaigning to repeal all the anti-strike laws, not just tinker with the most recent.

Aware that a united working class could pose a serious threat, the Tories are constantly looking for wedges to divide. Hostility to migrants, particularly refugees, and to trans people are the sharp edges of their drive. A labour movement that fails to stand up for equal rights and working-class solidarity reinforces divisions and undermines its own struggles. Socialists fight for migrants’ rights, free movement, and lowering Europe’s borders (external and internal).

To shape and power the struggle on all these fronts, we need to spread class-struggle socialist organising and ideas. Even in defensive battles, our fight will be stronger, the bigger the element in it committed to a long haul of week-in-week-out action for a better world.

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