Ed Miliband won't even MARCH against cuts

Ed Miliband is the leader of the Labour party, the official parliamentary opposition to the Coalition government. Ed was elected on the back of trade union votes to this position, and relies on the subs paid by ordinary trade union members to keep his party going.

So with the Coalition – remember, the ones that Ed’s official job is to oppose – embarking on the biggest offensive against the welfare state since its inception, surely the natural place to find him would be at the forefront of resistance to their austerity measures of cutbacks, job losses, wage freezes and VAT rises?

Alas, no. In fact, probably the only time you’ve seen Ed anywhere near the headlines since his election has been over a cabinet reshuffle last week, and his earth shattering decision last year to not attend any of the student protests. Not even the nice NUS candlelit vigils.

Last week, Ed came out and said that he opposed co-ordinated strike action to defeat the cuts. This is no great surprise, but a blunt display of how markedly to the right the Labour party are from even the mainstream union leadership, who at least are employing the rhetoric of industrial action, if not the action itself. As we reported last week, Miliband has also been pandering to the right-wing press over the mythical ‘Royal Wedding Strikes’, saying that he finds the idea “appalling” and “totally condemns it”.

On top of this, not-very-red Ed has “strongly implied” that, nevermind backing strike action, he isn’t even willing to march against the cuts. And we’re not talking about some semi-legal student kettle frenzy, the march in question is about official as demonstrations go: the one organised by the Trades Union Congress for Saturday 26 March in central London – the demo that the TUC leadership have eventually called about a year after everyone wanted them to. Instead, all Ed can say is this: “What we are not going to do under my leadership is go back to the heroic failures of the 1980s which set the party back… Industrial action is not the way you change governments. You do it through the ballot box.”

Well that’s us told. Sit tight for the next four years and then on 7 May 2015 we’ll elect a Labour government and everything will be fine. Or not, as the case may be. RMT leader Bob Crow is right when he says that we “don’t have the luxury of waiting for the next general election… Con-Dem attacks on jobs, services and standards of living are hitting us now”.

26 March will be a key date for the movement to beat the cuts and the coalition. Hundreds of thousands – maybe more – will march in London. Unions are mobilising members from across the country – a number of trains have already been booked to run from Scotland, and dozens of coaches will also be heading down.

Let’s be clear, marching in itself will not be enough to defeat the ConDem’s agenda. But it can be a springboard for the sort of action that can. The student movement which exploded off the back of November’s NUS demo is a good example of what a big demo can achieve, managing to spark action across the country and bringing the coalition to the verge of their first defeat, thinning their majority dramatically.

Regardless of the attitude that the officials and bureaucrats within the trade union movement, the NUS or, for that matter, Ed Miliband , think, a huge militant demo has the potential to give a confidence boost to millions of workers across the country, and kickstart momentum for industrial action.

Autonomous groups have already started building for mass resistance on the 26th. A mysterious website, purporting to be from the ‘armed wing of the Trades Union Congress’ have initiated a call-out for decentralised mass action in London on the day. They’ve also got a wee bit ahead of themselves and started calling for all power to the soviets, but we share the general sentiment. Last weekend’s ‘Network X’ conference, of anti-cuts activists from across the country, also supported the call-out for direct action on 26 March that goes beyond simply being herded from one park to another to listen to speeches by a few TU leaders.

The Labour party have had 10 months now in which to show which side they’re on. The party’s leadership have no interest in fighting the cuts, being careerists of the worst kind, who’d rather sit back quietly for the next few years and hope they get elected sometime in the future. The time to fightback is now, and hopefully March 26 can prove to be the beginning of the end for this government’s austerity programme.