TUC Votes For Co-ordinated Action

The TUC has voted this morning for Co-ordinated action aginst the Cuts and Privatisation, as the BBC has reported. Only one union voted against the composite. BALPA questioned whether such action was the best way of winning Public Support. They are wrong. When someone is about to hit you over the head, your first response has to be to raise your arms to block the blow, not look around to see whose assistance you might enlist! The question is not whether co-ordinated action is needed, but what kind of co-ordinated action should be taken.

Matt Wrack of the FBU pointed out what should be obvious, and his view was partly echoed by a commentator from IPSOS, the polling organisation, on the BBC News. An IPSOS poll shows that only 30% of people are definitely opposed to the Cuts. But, as he says, this does not relate to how people feel about cuts that might affect them. This is precisely the point that Matt made in his speech. It is one thing for people to say, in the abstract, that they accept the Government's line that the Cuts are necessary - the Government has the advantage of an appeal to "Common Sense" - but when it is no longer a matter of considering it in the abstract, but of considering the closure or lack of maintenance to your kids school, the closure of the Care Home, or withdrawal of Social Workers that assist your elderly relative, the closure of your Library and so on, then it may not appear to be such "Common Sense" after all. But, it is necessary for the unions, and the LP to get this over to workers, in their communties, now not wait until the Spring, when Local Authorities will begin making these cuts in earnest.

At the Council where I used to work, the Housing Department enlisted the assistance of its workers, to go out into the estates, handing out leaflets and organising meetings, to convince tenants of how beneficial to them the handing over of their Council houses to an ALMO would be. The unions need to do the same thing now, but to convince workers in their communities how devastating the withdrawal of particular facilities will be to their lives. National Demonstrations etc. are all very well and good, but they are fighting on that abstract level, which is a space in which the Liberal-Tories have an advantage. Everyone can imagine that what appears to be "common sense" is so, so long as it is thought to affect someone else. If widespread support is to be built, such that the inevitable attempt of the Liberal-Tories, to split Public Sector from Private Sector workers can be defeated, then it is vital, and urgent, that such a campaign be built from the ground up, from within each community, giving concrete examples of the services that WILL be axed, or reduced. The strength of the anti-Poll Tax movement was precisely that it grew up out of such community based campaigning.

But, there are other things that can be done immediately too. Every union Branch should ballot for industrial action to black any work on formulating Budgets, which are based on a requirement to cut jobs and services. A strike is a blunt tool, that frequently hurts the workers, who depend on the service, at least as much as the employer - in fact, as Engels says there are times when employers seek to save money, when they welcome strike action. The Left has frequently spoken about "Workers Control" in the abstract, linking it in a Utopian manner to the demand for nationalisation. But, here is an opportunity to use the idea of Workers Control in a concrete, practical way. Rather than a blanket strike that withdraws vital services from those that need them, why not actually take industrial action that asserts such Workers Control over the work process, and which directly hits the employer. If UNISON pulled out all of its workers responsible for collecting and processing Council Tax, and rents and other income that would be popular with those who were not being taxed, and would immediately hit the employer without hurting those who need the services. Withdrawal of Cashiers from Sports Centres, whilst leaving supervisory, and manual staff in to run the service would have the same effect - in fact it would probably increase Sports Centre usage no end! HMRC staff could follow a similar line of action ensuring that rebates were paid out, but blacking action on collection.

And, as I have previously suggested, if such action is built from the ground up uniting both Public and Private Sector workers, a plan for actual defence of facilities needs to be put in place. Government workers are used to having to deal with Emergency Planning. That expertise needs to be used now, to put in place plans to defend Public buildings and facilities. Any facility threatened with closure should be occupied, and kept running by the community, and by its workers. Better still, having taken it over, and brought it under direct Workers Ownership, we should demand it stays that way, to prevent the State from merely waiting until a better time for it to renew the attack. As I've written previously, it was great that Liverpool Council built lots of Council Housing in the 1980's, but if those houses had been transferred to the ownership of the workers who lived in them, by establishing a Housing Co-operative, the later attacks on them, in the form of higher rents, and privatisation could never have happened.

The problem is that the TUC leadership on past experience will talk a good fight now, but any action will be limited to the kind of action that fails to challenge Capitalist property, fails to challenge the right of management to manage, and is limited to a series of tokenistic gestures, which unless they are properly built for from the ground up will be damp squibs which will then be used to justify calling off any further action. That is its function, to absorb the pressure form below to negotiate with the employer, and to sell out for some kind of shabby compromise deal. That is another reason that, if the fight against the Cuts is to succeed, it has to be based on the establishment of local Rank and File Committees of workers inside and out of the Public Sector, and has to be co-ordinated by a National Rank & File Steering Committee.

But, we should take heart. As Chris Bambery said at the NSTC meeting against the cuts, the Government is not the same as the Thatcher Government of the 1980's. It is a weak Government. That is true. This is not the 1980's, which is a point I have been making for some time. Every Trade Union militant knows that the attitude of bosses to strikes is not the same all the time. There are times when, as Engels says, employers welcome strikes, when they have an excess of goods to sell, when they need to save money, and a strike saves them wages, for instance. At those times a wise union militant will look for alternative actions to take than just the strike the employer wants them to employ. There are times when the employer does not welcome a strike, but when they will endure it rather than concede, because they cannot afford to make concessions. Under such conditions, a strike is likely to be long and bitter, and risk the possibility that even if succesful, it might be at the cost of the business closing down. Finally, there are times when the employer does not welcome a strike, and where the costs of it will outweigh the profits they could be making, and the market share they might be losing, and so they will quickly make concessions. In the 1980's, as in the 1930's, the global economy was going through a Long Wave decline. During the 1960's and 70's the Rate of Profit was falling, and when the Slump arrived, the use of Keynesian measures only drained the available stores of profit, with no sign of a sustained recovery during which they could be replenished. Ultimately, Capital decided that the costs of conceding were greater than the benefits of resisting.

But, this is not the 1980's. For the last 11 years, the world has been in a Long Wave Boom, rates of profit have been rising, and around the globe massive amounts of profits have been stored up as Money Capital, sitting in sovereign wealth funds in Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere, as well as on the Balance Sheets of the big corporations. Only a portion of those reserves were mobilised to stop the crisis caused by the Banks. The profits to be made by Capital by an early resumption of the global boom are immense, the costs to it of a renewed recession are equally immense, not just in economic, but also in political terms. The Tories, like other right-wing governments in Europe, are not carrying out this policy because Big Capital needs it, or because it is in the interests of Big Capital, quite the opposite is the case. That is a big difference from the 1980's, and a fundamental weakness of the Government's position. It is no coincidence that sections of the State, most dear to the hearts of the Tory faithful - the Police and Armed services - have over recent weeks been issuing repeated statements about the calamity that will befall the nation as a result of the Cuts. In the last few days we have had heads of the Police coming out, and talking, for instance, about it being like Christmas for the criminals. We should not and cannot rely on these elements within the State fighting our battles for us, nor should we even think of making common cause with them simply to defeat the Tories - our interests do not coincide except superficially and momentarily. But, we should recognise the real basis on which the Tories are fighting this battle, and recognise the weakness of their position. We should recognise that just like the bosses in that last scenario, a determined and effective campaign can quickly defeat the Government, because immense pressure will be placed upon it by the big bosses to do so, once the threat to their profits becomes even more apparent than the string of bankrupties, and profits downgrades already makes it.