We gotta fight fight fight fight, fight all the cuts

500,000 marched, but what now?

A ‘Coalition of Resistance’ is set to get off the ground in Glasgow over the next few weeks, with a view to bringing together the various strands of the anti-cuts movement in the city. SSY has been involved in initiating the group, as one of the signatories to an open letter, an edited version of which was published in the Sunday Herald this week.

An initial organising meeting is set to be held this Thursday evening, at 7pm in the STUC offices on Woodlands Road. It is hoped that COR will develop into a regular cross-city forum, which can play an important role in organising and mobilising resistance to austerity and cuts over the coming period. If we’re to see anything like the kind of resistance which has swept parts of Europe recently, having such organisations – with a broad base in the workers and students movement – will be vital. With the student movement in the UK, we’ve already seen flashes of this – over November and early December last year, an intense period of struggle saw near weekly mass demonstrations in most cities, and student assemblies springing up across the country.

The time is now ripe for broadening the struggle to unite workers, students, claimants, pensioners and all other suffering the attacks of the ruling class. The government are already running scared: just yesterday, Business Secretary Vince Cable wheeled out threats of making the anti-trade union laws even harsher, in a speech to the GMB union’s conference. Today, the GMB responded by promising “the biggest civil disobedience campaign Cameron and Clegg’s tiny little minds have dreamt of” if any attempt is made to change the strike laws.

Nonetheless, there’s been a lot of frustration recently at the apparent unwillingness of the TUC, and the large public sector unions, to really take on the government. Yes, upwards of 500,000 may have marched on March 26th, but since then, not a great deal has been forthcoming, particularly in the context of the fighting talk at last September’s TUC Congress. Things may begin to change on June 30th, when hundreds of thousands of government workers in the PCS union are set to strike over pensions. In England, teachers from the NUT and ATL unions are expected to join, while the UCU lecturers’ union are currently deliberating on the matter too, meaning up to 700,000 workers could be on strike across the UK on the day. This is an important first step, and there’s talk of further action in the Autumn, when larger unions like Unison, the GMB and Unite may also join in. However, if stopping the austerity programme by toppling the Coalition government is the aim – which it surely must be – then a 24 hour public sector co-ordinated strike sometime in the Autumn will simply not be enough. In Greece, the trade unions confederations have now organised over ten 24 hour general strikes coupled with mass demonstrations, yet the IMF imposed austerity programme continues unabated. In France last year, a series of mass demonstrations and strikes in key sectors of the economy brought the country to a virtual standstill, nearly bringing Sarkozy’s government to its knees. Yet the movement ultimately failed, with the pension reform passing. In Britain, we can’t even get a general strike on the go, so what the hell kind of hope do we have?

The movement needs to broaden out and radicalise. It needs to be embedded in every community and workplace for a mass campaign of defiance and resistance to the cuts. The organisations of the traditional left do have a key role to play in this – the weight of the trade union movement in the UK is still considerable, representing 6.5 million members and the old adage rings true: while 1000 striking students can bring a train to a standstill, a 1000 striking railway workers can bring a whole country to a standstill.  But it would be foolish to rest everything on the ability of the public sector trade unions to bring down the government. The majority of people, and particularly young people, are no longer organised in a union, and ways must be found around this. One notable aspect about the recent mass anti-austerity demonstrations that have swept Spain has been a conscious rejection of the traditional organs of the left. Spontaneous in nature and largely organised online, the mass protests and assemblies have not relied on left political parties nor trade unions, although undoubtedly both have played some role. The labour movement does appear to be increasingly coming to recognise the need for a fight that extends beyond the workplace – indeed, figures like Unite’s Len McLuskey have spoken openly on the need to extend the fight across society.

In Scotland, we’re obviously also in a unique situation when it comes to fighting the cuts, with a pro-independence majority now in Holyrood. The SNP have no real solutions though, and although blaming Westminster for reducations in their block grant, will nonetheless be forced to implement huge cuts. Post-independence, the SNP strategy of slashing corporation tax and reliance on oil revenue is not a sustainable basis on which to build a country in which “the poor won’t be made to pick up the bill for the rich” and where “the profit from the land shall go to all”, as Alex Salmond promised to the Scottish Parliament recently. These contradictions will become more and more exposed over the next couple of years.

In the meantime, we need to build the kind of organisations that people will look to as the cuts begin to bite. SSY is hopeful that a Coalition of Resistance group in Glasgow can be a useful tool in aiding this struggle, in uniting organised workers with students, the unemployed and the unorganised, and we urge people to get along to the open planning meeting this Thursday, with the aims of immediately building solidarity with those striking on June 30th, and building the resistance from there.