Some local resistance, we need more

It’s still true - and has been for quite a long time - that “There is far too little strike action in Britain.” The big question is “When will this change?”

Brendan Barber was right when on ‘Any Questions’ last night he described the situation at the moment as “a phoney war”. The battles are going to come, mainly but not exclusively, after Osborne’s ‘Comprehensive Spending Review’ on 20 October. The problem is that the TUC isn’t getting ready for the battle that Barber is telling us will come. We must give them credit for getting the propaganda out. Today’s Guardian leads with the TUC report that that the proposed Tory cuts will hit the poorest ten times harder than the richest:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/sep/10/coalition-cuts-poor-tuc

But this isn’t enough. There is a danger that the attacks will find many on our side like the proverbial rabbit in the headlights. So there is a need to be there where the action is. This week’s Socialist Worker features two excellent examples, both local, the angry 400 strong lobby against local authority cuts at Bolton Town Hall and the protest in Buile Hill Park, Salford, against the closure of Hope Maternity Unit. We need lots more of these and I’m sure we will get them but I’m not sure they will be organised on the scale and at the speed necessary. We need to get the message across that there is organised resistance so no one feels isolated and abandoned.

This is why the demo outside the Tory party conference is so important. It’s true that some are much easier to organise than others but we have to get it across that our enemies aren’t as confident as they like to portray themselves. Compared to Thatcher, they aren’t starting off against the background of the biggest global economic crisis since the 1930s, they aren’t able to portray the unions as the enemy and people no longer see privatisation as preferable to nationalisation. Rather, as in any battle, the enemy will look for weakness. It’s clear from the battles in the 1970s that those who resisted often succeeded. Those who didn’t went to the wall.

We mustn’t forget how vicious this government is. Lib Dem MP Bob Russell, the MP for Colchester, make the point, if in absurdly polite way when he tells the Today programme: "Yes, let's deal with the welfare cheats. But the notion that they are responsible for all the ills of the nation is in fact a smokescreen and it's not very ethical."

Tomorrow, Sunday’s, lobby of the TUC, calling on it to organise a national demonstration now, focuses on how the TUC is so far failing to give a lead. A brief glance at our history shows how this is no surprise. The nine months notice given by the Conservative government in summer 1925 was used by government and employers to build up coal stocks and a scabbing organisation, the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies. The TUC did precisely nothing. And that was a TUC with much bigger left than today’s TUC. They didn’t invite Stanley Baldwin to address them as the current general council Cameron to address the congress.

The lobby of the Lib Dem conference in Liverpool in a week’s time is a step in the right direction but when union leaderships leave it to branches to organise transport, the limitations of organising from the top down become clear.