Campsie Scottish Socialist Party Branch meeting this Saturday 14 January at 11am in Kirkie Puffer. Discussing issues such as this:

  NO RETREAT ON CUTS FIGHT 

 By Richie Venton, SSP national workplace organiser

 11 January 2012

The experiences of 2011 and prospects in 2012 for working class people can be captured in one phrase: grim - and grimmer!
Food bills, domestic fuel, transport costs and daily essentials rocket as wages are frozen.

The sick, disabled and unemployed are hounded and demonised by the Westminster millionaires' Cabinet, with threats of withdrawal of their measly benefits unless they find jobs that don't exist.

One in three Scottish children officially lives in poverty, with an appalling 52 per cent of kids in north Glasgow.

Meantime the richest 10 per cent of the population are on average £100,000 better off than they were in 2005.

Workers living in fear for their jobs are bullied by bosses into working massive amounts of unpaid overtime – the equivalent of working for absolutely nothing up until 24 February this year – and enough hours to create 2 million new jobs, whilst a million young people rot on the dole!

Workers whose faces don't fit are to be stripped of the paltry rights at work they currently 'enjoy', as the Twin Tories rail against health & safety 'red tape' and plan to charge workers £1,000 just to go through an Employment Tribunal against unfair dismissal.

Things can only get worse!

All this mayhem and exploitation even before the Coalition's fangs sink into jobs, incomes and services, as they have only just begun to do.

Last year 24,000 Scottish public sector jobs were lost; forecasts abound of up to 100,000 more to go in the next year or so. No wonder the SSP's warnings of 'another lost generation' - first coined three years ago - has now become the currency of many commentators and Labour politicians on the make, trying to appear anti-Tory after 13 years of acting as the New Tories in government.
But as the multiple assaults impact, workers and communities have increasingly joined the resistance, challenging the axe-wielders with quiet fury, protests, and strikes. The most spectacular display of working class resistance in several decades was the November 30 strike by over 2 million public sector workers.

At least 300,000 Scottish trade unionists came out in a fight to defend their pension rights. But that issue also acted as the vehicle for struggle against all other aspects of the unprecedented cuts to jobs, conditions and public services.

Crossroads

That battle is now at a critical crossroads, and the outcome will heavily influence workers' conditions for years to come.
As the SSP warned in advance, the Tory/LibDem razor gang have used every dirty trick to try and derail a movement that, behind the smug arrogance, terrifies them.

On the eve of the historic N30 strike, Cameron & Co offered fake concessions, and tried to isolate strikers from the rest of society by issuing blood-curdling exaggerations of the economic ruin it would cause. That, and their hard-faced announcement of even deeper cuts in Osborne's autumn statement in parliament literally the day before, only hardened the resolve of workers and strengthened the strike.

Cameron then tried to demoralise workers by dismissing it as "a damp squib", but in the face of the derision and anger this provoked, had to then admit it was "a big strike".
By taking united, militant action, the unions attracted 100,000 new members in the period of the St Andrews Day showdown; confirmation that decisive action is the way to build the unions as powerful weapons of resistance to the millionaires' butchery.
Having failed to cow public sector workers, the government resorted to an age-old strategy; they sought to use the most right-wing, spineless 'leaders' of the TUC and individual unions to undermine the momentum and unity of workers taking action.

Right-wing treachery

Ten days after the biggest show of workers' power in generations, the TUC's Brendan Barber, GMB leaders and fake-radical UNISON leader Dave Prentis argued for acceptance of the government's allegedly 'new and final offer'.

In fact, as PCS union general secretary Mark Serwotka rightly said in point blank refusing to accept this deal, there is nothing new about it. It is a minutely-adjusted version of what was on offer prior to N30.
Coalition Minister Danny Alexander subsequently boasted to the parliament on 20 December that their 'new' offer did not involve a single penny less in 'savings' than their pre-N30 proposals. It is merely a rearrangement of the misery, peppered with crude attempts to divide and conquer the millions of workers who had displayed such magnificent determination to fight the cuts.

Workers over 50 have been granted minor concessions, but will still lose 20 per cent of their pension through the switch from Retail Price Index (RPI) to Consumer Price Index (CPI) as a measure of inflation.

Retirement age is to be tied to the state pension age – 67 or 68.
NHS workers earning under £26,000 are to be granted a year's delay in the implementation of the misery, but that will be funded by deeper attacks on NHS staff earning more. Likewise with local government workers - but only so the assault commences in 2014. A year's respite for a lifetime of cuts to their deferred wages!

Triple whammy remains

The three-headed monster attack on pensions - payment of more in workers' contributions, for longer, for lesser pensions - remains at the heart of this latest offer. It still seeks to double-tax public sector workers - not to improve the state of pension schemes (many of which are in the black, all of which are set to cost less over the next decade), but to fill some of the hole in government funds caused by the bankers' bailout and the recession that has been exacerbated by the ConDem cuts.

To their eternal shame, some UNISON leaders, keen to get back to their quiet lives, undisturbed by outbursts of action by hard-pressed members, blurted out the cynical opinion "this was always going to be a damage limitation exercise"! Not exactly the views of the pickets on N30!
The spineless posture of more right-wing union leaders gave the government the opening to issue a monumental lie through the media at the height of the holiday period; that a deal had been reached. This, alongside repeated assertions that the pension plans were going ahead regardless from April 2012, was designed to browbeat workers into surrendering. And for good measure, the union that has spearheaded the battle in the wider movement - the PCS - was excluded from the so-called negotiations: an attempt to isolate and demonise them, and a back-handed compliment from the arch enemies of workers to this socialist-led union's success in inspiring others to join the fray.

Socialist alternative critical in unions

The obscene readiness of union leaders like UNISON's Prentis and GMB to cave in after the momentous scale of action by millions underlines the dangerous pitfalls of accepting the idea of ANY cuts.

Echoing Labour (and SNP!) talk of the cuts being "too deep and too soon", these union leaders lack a vision of measures that make ALL cuts entirely unnecessary, and so they are outrageously willing to capitulate in the face of a government that puts on a hard face. It is no accident that PCS especially have been firm in opposition to this deal; they have rejected the case for any cuts, calling for taxation measures and investment in jobs instead. The political viewpoint of unions becomes critical in determining what kind of fight they put up.

But when the Tory and LibDem boot boys looked to the TUC right wing for salvation, they reckoned without the furious resistance of union activists and members, who have lobbied their leaderships with demands to not sell out their pension rights even before the battle properly engages. A whole succession of union leaderships has since rejected the deal: PCS from day one; the teachers' unions NUT and NASUWT; POA: university and college lecturers' UCU; UNITE sectoral committees in both the NHS and local government.

But the united front against the cuts has been seriously breached by the decision of UNISON to accept the ‘Heads of Agreement’ – the framework for talks - thereby suspending further industrial action for at least the short-term. The national leadership’s surrender pre-Xmas did enough to confuse and undermine the confidence of branch delegates to their sectoral committees. But UNISON members should still bombard their leaderships with demands that unless the attacks on pensions are withdrawn during the negotiations, rather than delayed by a year, the fight is back on, alongside other unions who have rejected this shoddy package.

Now is the time to fight, not flee

In a remarkable confirmation that now is the time to escalate the fight against an enfeebled government, the doctors' BMA has announced plans to consult 130,000 members in what could be their first industrial action in 40 years.

As the Voice goes to press, the TUC Public Sector Liaison Group meets. Union members who have fought to save the deferred wages of millions from grand theft by the millionaires' government are demanding that they name the day without delay for further, united strike action.

Despite UNISON leadership’s weakening of the united front, the other public sector unions should forge ahead with further united strike action – as PCS, NUT, UCU and UNITE appear to be committed to.

Such a day of action could also involve sections of private sector workers, who a increasingly up in arms at cuts to their own pension schemes, wages and jobs. For instance, the UNITE members in the construction industry, battling and balloting for strike action against mind-boggling 35 per cent cuts in their wages; and Unilever workers taking their first ever national strike action against abolition of their final salary pension scheme by the giant multi-national with a previous reputation for paternalism, high quality tied houses for their workers, model villages, etc.

In rejecting the government's not-so-new deal, the UCU called for another one-day strike before university half term holidays in mid-February. Time is of the essence. Another mass strike could include lobbies of council buildings, as councillors throughout the land set budgets, with demands that instead of wielding the knife on behalf of their paymasters in Westminster and Holyrood, they should set 'No Cuts' Defiance budgets, and help build mass movements that demand back the stolen £millions from central government, to save every job, wage and service. 

Councillors once again face the stark choice: defy or destroy! Faced with mass strikes, even a single council taking this principled route would add another layer of rebellion, another front facing the troubled Westminster cuts Coalition. 

And closer to home, an immediate mass strike of all public sector (and sections of private sector) workers would pound the SNP government with the demand that they stand up for Scotland, for services, for social justice - instead of Swinney and Salmond aping the Tories with their pay cuts, service cuts and job losses. The SNP rightly tell Cameron and Osborne to stop interfering with Scottish democracy on the issue of an independence Referendum; they need to be hammered into something of the same resistance to Westminster 'interference' in Scottish jobs, public services and pay packets...or be exposed as the Tartan butchers that they are.

The unions, with their millions of members - workers who are indispensable in providing critical daily services - are pivotal to the battle against cuts. The union leaders have a duty to lead, not surrender at the first threat of retaliation by the Tory bullies. If they capitulate on pensions, that would be a serious blow to the wider anti-cuts struggle. A serious battle to save pensions will require further, united, national strikes and demonstrations, which would embolden workers, communities and students not even in a union to join the resistance to all aspects of cuts. And at the heart of all this lies the issue of boldly advocating an alternative that explodes the myths that cuts a necessary or unavoidable. The Scottish Socialist Party has consistently broadcast the CSS for taxation of the rich and big business, and democratic public ownership, as the core of a socialist alternative. At critical moments, like right now, the socialist case against all cuts is the difference between confusion, division, and acceptance of very slightly lesser cuts - or unity, confidence and a sustained struggle that can defeat the Eton boot boys and their spineless local servants. 

Guest blogger: FIGHTING THE CUTS: fine words and defiant deeds

By Richie Venton, SSP national workplace organiser 14 Sept 2010

The fiery speeches at the TUC congress in Manchester dominated the media headlines. People at work talked about the prospect of widespread strikes. Women at the school gates picking up primary kids commented “we’re all going to be out on strike”. Many workers relished the idea of action, together. And the very fact they had noticed the TUC debate on the ConDem cuts is a reminder of the potential power of the trade unions to give a lead. That potential now needs to be tapped into through action, not just fiery speeches.
The devastation looming towards communities and workforces – both public- and private-sector –is beginning to sink into the minds of millions. In recent days, a series of hard-hitting facts and studies have exposed the realities we face, unless a mighty movement of rallies, demonstrations and ultimately coordinated strikes (alongside civil disobedience) is built to halt the Millionaires’ Cabinet.

Poorest hit hardest
The planned slaughter will hit the poorest hardest – and ratchet up the obscene levels of inequality still further. The poorest 10 per cent of the population will lose 13 times more by the cuts than the richest 10 per cent.
Pensioners, low-paid families, the sick and unemployed will pay a terrible price for a crisis created by the bankers and billionaires. Meantime profits, perks and downright pilfering of public funds by top bankers, bosses and bureaucrats in quangos and the public sector run riot.

As the TUC warned, a million jobs could be wiped out if the Tory-LibDem butchers get their way. Around 72 per cent of the cuts will be borne by women, who make up 65per cent of public sector workers. Young people will be hammered – with a million under-24s already on the scrapheap.

And the catastrophic loss of 10,000 Scottish jobs threatened in the shipyards as a result of Defence cuts is a harsh reminder that public sector cuts mean private sector redundancies too.

Shift in opinion
Since the day they were NOT elected, the Twin Tories have bombarded the population with daily propaganda that the cuts are necessary, unavoidable, and therefore inevitable – all for our own good! That makes it all the more remarkable that in a Populous poll for the Times newspaper, 3 out of 4 people reject the ConDem cuts strategy. That is a powerful starting point for the trade union leaders - who have rightly lacerated “the demolition government” - to mount a serious, systematic campaign not just of explanation, but also of united action.

Winter of our discontent
The media headlines about the TUC debate on cuts painted lurid - and mostly viciously inaccurate - pictures of the 1979-80 ‘Winter of Discontent’. Their aim was to scare the living daylights out of the middle class, and even sections of workers, with images of rubbish piling up in the streets and the dead left unburied … to try and stop a wave of support for the “coordinated campaigning and industrial action” that the TUC motion calls for.

Unity is strength
We need a sober, serious examination of some key issues if we are to help defeat the wild axe-men of Westminster, not to mention the little axe-wielders in Holyrood and every one of Scotland’s 32 councils.
Unity against the cuts is critical. Tory Chancellor Osborne’s vicious, oily lie that “we are all in this together” is ripped apart by the facts, as reinforced by the various recent reports. The rich will get richer, the rest of us poorer, if they’re not stopped. Divisions between workers and those on benefits, private- and public-sector workers, pensioners and pupils, would be the death of any resistance – and the government are relentlessly trying to whip up such division.

So the motion agreed (with only the one Airline Pilates’ Association delegate against!) at the TUC, - which has 7 million trade unionists in its ranks - for coordinated campaigning and action is extremely welcome to all who care for the defence of a half-civilised society.

Trade union right-wing hesitate
But what did the central leaders of the TUC actually agree? Here there’s a distinction to be made between left and right union leaders.

The right-wing of the unions has stubbornly resisted calls for a demo in London on 23 October, days after the government’s Comprehensive Spending Review. They instead talk of a demo in March – when the cuts will be signed, sealed and delivered!

Contrary to the more colourful media headlines, they mainly want “coordination of a campaign” against the government’s arguments – and that in itself is a vital part of the battle; to build on the growing scepticism about the case for the cuts; to demolish it in the minds of millions, and critically to put forward a convincing economic alternative.

But the reluctance of the TUC right-wing to go for actual action, sooner rather than later – even initially in the form of a demo – should ring alarm bells for trade union members. It reveals an unhealthy reliance on “fine words” convincing the government to change tack, when we all know this ruthless capitalist coalition will only retreat if confronted by a mass rebellion.

Underlying this approach is a mind-boggling reliance on working for the return of a Labour government – as blurted out openly by Derek Simpson of the country’s biggest union, UNITE. As if we hadn’t just experienced 13 years of New Labour! And what are workers and communities meant to do for the next 4 years, ‘til the next election?

Poll tax rebellion
Top TUC leaders, like Brendan Barber, grab the headlines with talk of a rebellion like that against the poll tax – but then criticise calls for mass, peaceful civil disobedience against the cuts, from unions like the RMT. But it was precisely mass civil disobedience, a refusal to obey Thatcher’s laws and the collection of her government’s hated poll tax, which tossed it (and her) in the dustbin of history.

Unions and communities
One of the key differences however, is that the anti-poll tax rebellion, in the form of mass non-payment, was overwhelmingly community-based, whereas the unions are far more centrally positioned as organisers of 620,000 public sector workers in Scotland alone, when it comes to fighting the cuts.

Of course, community-rooted anti-cuts campaigns are critical, and will flourish as the material effects of the cuts impact fully on people. But the unions have a greater onus to give a lead, in united action, and in unison with community, pensioners’ and youth organisations, than they did in practice against the poll tax.

Green light for action
The TUC decision gives the green light to union branches, activists and left-led unions to put fine words into defiant deeds. As Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS union, rightly told delegates at the TUC, none of the coordinated action and strikes will happen unless left-led unions and rank-and-file activists fight for it through their unions.

It is to their credit that the Scottish TUC (unlike the British TUC) has called a Scottish demo in Edinburgh on 23 October, as an immediate response to the government’s Spending Review on 20 October. That must be built as a mass show of united resistance, to boost the confidence of individual workers and workforces that we are “all in this together”, that we do not stand alone, that the massive latent power of working people will stand up in resistance.

Street Rally and STUC Demo
But building it requires more than a few circulars to union HQs. That is one of several reasons a big turnout to the Street Rally on 2 October in Glasgow, called by several union branches and community groups, is a critical contribution to building up the sense of strength through united action.

When some on the right of the trade unions baulk at calling strike action or committing to peaceful civil disobedience – as happened in the TUC debate – they often quote “the need to win over public opinion” Surely one of the best methods of doing that is to reach out to the public, show them action in the streets, spell out the case for no cuts on any job or service, as this Street Rally will seek to do?

And why wait ‘til after the Twin Tories – and in turn the Tartan Butchers in Holyrood – have set their cuts plans in stone in late October and November respectively?

United shows of opposition will help to rock a government that is far from strong, with glimpses and whispers of turmoil in the treacherous LibDems leaking out even before the storm hits them.

Defiance Budgets
And the political situation in Scotland is far different again, to the great advantage of workers and communities who seek to stop the cuts.

The Scottish government, and virtually all 32 councils, are run by parties other than the Tories and LibDems. If any of them are worth a carrot they would declare their refusal to pass on Westminster’s cuts, set No-Cuts Budgets, Defiance Budgets, and rally masses of workers and communities round a fight for the funds to retain every job, every penny in pay, and every single local service.

That is what SSP councillor Jim Bollan will demand and pursue in West Dunbartonshire council. It is what SSP members and others in local government unions will demand of councillors and MSPs. And it got a tremendous response at the Scottish UNISON anti-cuts conference, with UNISON general secretary Dave Prentis stating “I agree with every word that was said” when this proposal was put forward by NUJ president and SSP member Peter Murray.

Scottish Service Tax – an extra £1.6bn
Those union leaders – including STUC general secretary Graham Smith – who emphasise the need to win over public opinion - should also embrace the dynamite that is contained in the SSP’s proposed alternative to the hated, unfair Council Tax. As detailed in the last issue of the Voice, by scrapping the Council Tax and replacing it with a Scottish Service Tax, based on ability to pay, with rising bands of taxation on income, most Scots would pay less than now and yet an extra £1.6bn would be raised to fund council jobs and services.
One simple step, which the SNP government could legislate for through an emergency Bill, demolishes the excuses for cuts, and creates a surplus for services whilst also re-distributing some of the obscenely bloated incomes of the very rich to the rest of us.

Pound the politicians
Trade unionists, pensioners’ organisations, community activists, youth groups, women’s organisations – “all in this together” – should pound the SNP government with demands for a defiance budget rather than meek compliance with the Westminster slaughterhouse, alongside demands that they legislate for an income-based Scottish Service Tax – with reminders that they face an election in seven months. Likewise they should bombard councillors with demands for Defiance Budgets.

And the bigger the 2 October Street Rally, the bigger the 23 October STUC demo, the more confidence workers in the front line of assaults will gain in squaring up for future coordinated strike action against the cuts.

The enemy prepares for war!
The powers that be are not twiddling their thumbs in preparation for the widespread strikes that many commentators – and the STUC - have declared to be inevitable.
Tories and employers’ organisations are escalating their campaign to ban the right to strike in “essential services” – the same services which they brand non-essential, ‘back-office’ and dispensable when it comes to cutting them!

And the Police Superintendents’ Association president, Chief Superintendent Derek Barnett, has spelt out the reason his organization is calling for top coppers to be protected from the cuts: so the police can assist the government on the picket lines as social and industrial unrest rises with the savagery of the cuts planned.
A war has been declared on workers and their communities. Every concrete step to unite the opposition in action, not just words, is as important as a mass campaign of explanation of economic alternatives to any and all cuts.

The unions have a vital part to play, in full collaboration with those who rely on the services threatened. The fiery speeches at the TUC which captured the imagination of many now need to be matched by actions that put the SNP government and every local council on the spot – before it’s too late.