A people’s assembly, how about a workers assembly?

This weekend sees the people’s assembly’s national centre piece in Westminster hall. While all forms of getting together of anti austerity advocates is to be welcome I am left wondering about this mass gathering of the great and the good. I think we should be rightly wary of such an event and should not be afraid to raise our criticisms already. We may be told oh well it hasn’t happened yet don’t write it off just yet well I’m sorry we on the left have history with those who are involved and are backing this latest campaign. The Socialist Party's standpoint on fighting the cuts has been well received by many rank and file trade unionists, anti-cuts campaigners and others. Among its key elements are the need to oppose all cuts, call on anti-cuts councillors to refuse to vote for cuts, for trade unions to disaffiliate from the Labour Party; and especially for immediate preparation for coordinated national trade union action - in particular the naming of a date for a one-day general strike. The People's Assembly (PA) has received considerable funding from major trade unions, including Unite, and has attracted an audience to its regional launch meetings. The Socialist Party welcomes any forum of workers and anti-cuts activists that gives an opportunity for debate on how to take the struggle forward, so we participate in the PAs. However, they will only play a useful role if they allow democratic debate, and crucially, add their voice to those who want the trade unions to lead a serious struggle against austerity. Otherwise the PA rallies will be used as a fig-leaf by some trade union leaders to avoid their responsibility to name the day for a 24-hour general strike against the cuts. The NSSN has asked if it can have a speaker at the 22 June PA in London - to raise the campaign for a 24-hour general strike - and has offered the PA a speaker at the NSSN 29 June conference, but has not yet had a response. Nor should the genuine desire for unity among anti-cuts activists be used as an excuse to uncritically welcome people who vote for cuts onto PA platforms. Unfortunately, it's not unusual at these events for councillors who have imposed cuts at local level to be given an uncriticised platform. For example a platform speaker, Jack Scott, who was welcomed to a People's Assembly in Sheffield by its organisers last month, was the Labour council cabinet member responsible for waste management who oversaw cuts and even a strike-breaking operation against the city's recycling workers last year. Around 30 GMB members took 30 days of strike action against council cuts and a privatised waste management service that was drastically reducing their working hours and therefore their pay. Labour, Green and other councillors who pass on the Con-Dem cuts argue that it's not 'realistic' to refuse to implement every cut. Not only is it realistic - the money exists in society and more can be raised - but it's very divisive to accept some cuts, however reluctantly, and not others. Among those who put this position are defenders of the idea that after the next general election a Labour government can be pushed by its trade union affiliates to use a lighter hand with the cuts axe. Yet not only should no cuts be made, but the Labour leaders have asserted that they will uphold and continue with the present torrent of them. Those who fail to warn that Labour will be little different to the Tories are dangerously playing into the hands of Ukip. Instead of lessening Labour's cuts, right-wing union leaders of Labour affiliates such as Paul Kenny of the GMB and Dave Prentis of Unison are complicit in Labour's attacks on the working class. Demonstrations and rallies The big turnouts at some of the PA and other anti-cuts rallies and demonstrations reflect a growing desire of many people to hear an alternative to austerity and to combat it, as markedly did the massive - over half a million - 26 March 2011 TUC demonstration against spending cuts. Large events can give participants a boost by their size, but this will be combined with disappointment if the proposals from the platforms fall short of what's needed to mobilise a mass anti-austerity 'army' with a programme and strength that can decisively defeat the government's attacks. The actions being put to the 22 June assembly are: A day of civil disobedience and direct action, a day of coordinated local demonstrations, and an autumn union-backed national demonstration. These can be useful steps in contributing to the building of the anti-cuts movement but are not enough in themselves to turn the government back. Strike against cuts! The 2002-3 anti-war movement organised local actions, big rallies and a two million-strong demonstration, but those events were not enough to stop the war on Iraq, as the Socialist Party warned at the time. We argued that only through the millions in the trade unions threatening and seriously preparing for industrial action, could Blair's war plan be stopped. Many speakers at the PAs express support for strikes that have taken place and for the idea of more, which is welcome, but unfortunately it is usually without emphasising the immediate necessity of rapid preparation for national coordinated action across the public and private sector. This isn't surprising when, for example, among the leading supporters of the PA is the same right-wing Unison leadership that poured cold water on the idea of Unison members striking against a derisory 1% pay increase. The issue of democracy is crucial in the anti-cuts movement if it is to be able to challenge and overcome obstacles and arrive at unity in its direction and action. Yet in advance of the 22 June PA there is no invitation for anyone to stand for election to its leadership and the proposals being put forward can't be amended until next year. At a number of the regional PAs, supporters of the Socialist Party's ideas have been undemocratically denied a chance to speak. During PA and other anti-cuts events the Socialist Party will continue to support the right of all organisations to express their views and distribute their material. But we also call for the maximum possible unity around a clear programme of refusing to accept any cuts, of councillors refusing to implement them, and of building the momentum for determined industrial action, as the central planks of defeating austerity. We urge all those who want to build unity on this basis to attend the NSSN conference taking place at the Camden Centre in London on 29 June National Shop Stewards Network conference 29 June, 11am to 5pm Camden Centre, Judd St, London WC1H 9JE www.shopstewards.net Socialist Party news and analysis Cuts can be bea Extracts from this week’s main article in this week’s socialist http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/770/16906/19-06-2013/cuts-can-be-beaten

Mass trade union response to austerity needed to channel anger

There is the real danger of peoples anger which is growing by the day in Britain to spill out in unconstructive ways including riots and other counter productive expressions. We do not condone riots as socialists but they could become all too real again if peoples anger at the cuts mass privatisation and hefty austerity is not opposed in a positive constructive avenue. The Socialist Party has consistently called for the unions to organise and coordinate strike action, including a 24-hour general strike against austerity. This is urgent. Even more than the two million-strong N30 strike in November 2011, effectively a one-day public sector general strike, this type of action would get huge support across the public and private sectors. The N30 strike rallies and demonstrations were massive but since then people's anger against Con-Dem cuts, including in the NHS and now the hated Bedroom Tax, has only increased. There is huge potential to build support for generalised strike action among the wider working class, large sections of the middle class and especially the youth. Measures are needed to help precarious workers facing intimidation to unionise. Youth Fight for Jobs has begun this work with its Sick of Your Boss initiative showing the potential for trade unions to reach out to unorganised workers. A 24-hour general strike would be a mighty demonstration of the power of the trade unions and their appeal would grow enormously. But since N30 there has been no follow-up national coordinated action by the unions although there were numerous local and sectional disputes, securing a number of victories such as that of the sparks against the construction companies' vicious attempt to slash a third of their pay. PCS members have organised group action in many government departments, often securing significant concessions or even outright victories, such as preventing compulsory redundancies in the DWP. However, millions of other workers will be asking, 'What about me?' By April 2014, all public sector workers will be paying increased pension contributions, another pay cut on the back of a five-year pay freeze or below inflation pay rises. Tory minister Pickles has just imposed a 1% pay rise on millions of council workers - a 2% pay cut in real terms - with strings! Teachers are facing attacks on all fronts - on pay, through academisation and on workload. In September 2012 the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) brought 1,000 union activists to Brighton to lobby TUC Congress in support of the POA motion that called for the "practicalities of a general strike" to be considered. The TUC General Council of union leaders is meeting on 24 April to discuss each union's submissions on this after it was passed. The anti-trade union laws present a certain obstacle - as they have done in southern Europe. But as has been shown in Greece, Spain, Italy, etc, the ability of the government and employers to use the anti-union laws depends on the concrete balance of forces. When prison officers, who have no legal right to strike, organised action on 10 May 2012, the government did not dare to use the law against the POA, as they knew it would escalate the struggle. As the Socialist party has said, if the TUC was to name the day for a general strike, and then make it clear to the government that if any unions or workers were threatened for participating in the strike the TUC would immediately call another 24-hour general strike, the anti-trade union laws could be pushed aside, losing their power to hobble the trade union movement. The left unions won the vote at a recent TUC executive to get the left legal experts Keith Ewing and John Hendy to the April General Council to explain their opinion on how a general strike could be legal. We welcome this discussion - but there is already the potential to build mass joint action. This could start in the public sector on pay, privatisation, redundancies, etc, and then the appeal could go out to workers in the private sector to ballot on the innumerable grievances that face them. For example, the CWU facing planned privatisation of the Royal Mail and the RMT and the other rail unions have the prospect of the devastating McNulty Report. The NSSN is calling for a lobby of the 24 April TUC General Council meeting. It will demand that the trade union leaders do not just consider the general strike submissions but name the date. But the union leaders don't need to wait for that meeting; they should already be discussing coordinating ballots and action for late June. PCS is following up the recent 20 March budget day strike with a half-day stoppage on 5 April - the final day of the tax year. As PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka outlined at a TUC pre-budget rally, this will herald a series of group and departmental actions of various durations, in the build-up to a likely one-day strike on 26 June, when Osborne sets out the next phase of the cuts in his Comprehensive Spending Review. Since then the NUT and NASUWT teaching unions have announced regional strikes, starting with the North West on 27 June. This should be turned into a national strike, coordinated with the PCS, who have appealed to other unions to strike with them. Activists will not be content to sit and wait while the TUC deliberates and living standards are eroded. It was pressure from below that forced the trade union leaders to vote for the POA motion and even greater pressure must be applied to force them into taking the much-needed action. Branches and workplace meetings should pass resolutions urging their union leaderships to take up the call from the PCS for serious discussion among the left unions' leaders. Those unions should go to the April General Council with the confidence and knowledge that their members and the rank and file of other unions will not be satisfied with anything less than a strike date. Some on the left, with the financial backing of Unite, are pushing the People's Assembly on 22 June as a vehicle to resist austerity, organised a week before the NSSN's 7th annual conference. The Socialist Party and the NSSN will use every opportunity and platform to put pressure on the union leaders to call decisive action. But there is a danger that this event, which will give an uncritical stage to Labour and Green politicians as well as the union leaders, could be a talking shop, helping to kick the idea of mass strike action even further into the long grass. There is no alternative but mobilisation around a serious strategy to coordinate and escalate action by the most powerful organisation in British society, the labour movement. The trade union leaders should not hand leadership of the anti-cuts movement to an unaccountable, unrepresentative nebulous People's Assembly but organise action themselves. A 24-hour general strike could transform the situation. The Con-Dems have had some success in their pernicious attempts at division: young against old, low-paid workers against unemployed, etc. Coordinated action by even a section of the 6.5 million workers in the unions would make the case for united struggle and undermine the Con-Dems' divide and rule tactics. It would instil confidence in the anti-cuts campaigns and it would show this hated and despised government that they cannot get away with destroying our lives. This will be the key issue for discussion at the NSSN conference on 29 June because it is the key question facing the working class. What is needed now is a real 'Workers Assembly' - a 24-hour general strike at the end of June, which can mobilise mass demonstrations in every town and city - a movement of millions to force this government back and open up the way to a victory against the cuts. With extracts from this week’s editorial of the socialist http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/757/16343/20-03-2013/trade-unions-must-lead-anti-cuts-fightback