The role the NSSN has played in the struggles so far

The left was seen by many to have taken its time to organise a proper fightback to the cuts and austerity but we can be in no doubt now that the trade unions and the left is here and fighting back. We in the National shops stewards network can feel very proud of the role we have played so far in the struggles against the cuts and privatisation.

The increasingly important role the NSSN is playing in the anti-cuts movement means that the democratic debates which took place at the beginning of the year on whether the NSSN should launch an anti-cuts campaign at all now seem a distant memory.
Events have quickly confirmed that the NSSN was right to do so.

Split from SWP
Nonetheless it is worthwhile briefly commenting on recent developments in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) because they have so clearly confirmed many of the points made by the Socialist Party in the debate at the beginning of the year.

In the run up to the January NSSN conference the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) was among the most vociferous opponents of an NSSN anti-cuts campaign being launched on the spurious grounds that it would unnecessarily divide the movement to launch another national anti-cuts campaign when Coalition of Resistance (CoR) and Right to Work (RtW) were already in existence.

In the anti-cuts movement there is rightly and inevitably a mood for unity. Nonetheless, as was understood by a large majority of delegates at the NSSN anti-cuts conference, to attempt to use that mood as a reason to oppose the NSSN launching its own anti-cuts campaign was completely disingenuous.

The NSSN has consistently argued for the maximum possible cooperation between the national anti-cuts campaigns. To give just two examples from recent weeks the NSSN invited RtW and CoR to speak on its stages at the TUC demo and has taken part in joint delegations to discuss with the TUC.

However, to merge the three campaigns into one organisation would only be a step forward if the net result was an open, democratic anti-cuts campaign organised around a clear, fighting programme.

So as we move towards the autumn with the high possibility of big mass strikes to come in the public sector we feel that the NSSN has and still is playing a key role in the fight against the cuts. I do feel at present though we do have to keep trying to reach out to other parts of the working class such as the reserve army of workers AKA the unemployed, the disabled, the elderly and women too of course.

On 30 November, two to three million public sector workers will be on strike to defend their pensions. More workers will be out than on the first day of the 1926 general strike.

The NSSN is proud of the role that it's played in paving the way. On 11 September we lobbied the TUC Congress and held a rally under the slogan of a 24-hour public sector general strike. Over 700 shop stewards and trade unionists listened to leading union speakers such as Mark Serwotka of the PCS and Bob Crow of the RMT.

This government of millionaires can be defeated by coordinated strike action. Millions of workers striking together can stop the Con-Dems in their tracks. And if one day is not enough to force a u-turn, we must prepare for a two-day strike as the next stage of the escalating action.

In all the workplace meetings, shop stewards' committees and union branch committees, the message has to be hammered home that workers shouldn't pay the price for the bankers' crisis.

Workers have shown their determination to fight at every opportunity they've been given this year. Over 500,000 marched against the cuts in London on 26 March and over 750,000 civil servants, teachers and lecturers went on strike against the pension attacks on 30 June.

But the first job for 30 November is to win the strike ballots with an overwhelming vote. Meetings have to be organised in every workplace. Where there is more than one union, these could be joint meetings. Members of the PCS, NUT, UCU and ATL unions who were out on 30 June and have live strike mandates should be invited to speak. This can give confidence to the many workers who haven't been on strike before.

These can be supplemented by public meetings and rallies in towns and cities and on estates to draw in other working class people - young people and all those who suffer from and oppose the cuts, including private sector workers who also face job losses and pay and pension cuts.

The NSSN encourages all private sector workers involved in current disputes to consider coordinating their industrial action with the strike on 30 November. As Mark Serwotka said at the NSSN rally on 11 September: "Low-paid workers in the private sector are exploited by shareholders and executives, not by fellow low-paid workers in the public sector."

A victory for public sector workers on pensions, by forcing a retreat or even the downfall of this government, would raise the confidence to fight back.

What you can do:
If your union is balloting, you could organise a workplace meeting, if applicable jointly with other unions. This should form the basis for democratic control of the strike
You could organise a public meeting in your town or city with the unions in dispute or trades council, anti-cuts campaign or NSSN. Explain the need to prepare for further action if necessary
Plan a demonstration in your town or city on the day of the strike
All united - invite private sector workers, young people, unemployed, pensioners, etc to any public meetings, rallies and demonstrations

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In this issue


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Building for 30 November strike

Mass strikes can


Many call for unity at these times but certainly on the industrial front against cuts this is key and teh NSSN i feel is leading the way showing a lead in the struggles against the boss's. With big unions and trade union leaders now backing the network such as Bob Crow and Mark Serwotka two of the more militant trade unin leaders out there are highlighting the role the NSSN has played in putting pressure on the TUC to call for a 24 hour public sector general strike. We feel that we added to the feeling and the pressure by lobbying the TUC on the 11th of september and will happily do so again next year if need be. We will not rest and sit by while our fellow workers in the public and private sector are under attack. We need a organisation like the NSSN to bring together all of the struggles unite under one banner and give support quickly and effectively when needed to workers.

The NSSN is key in the struggle as it gives rank-and-file trade unionists a voice and a network to organise in. To learn off each other and unite our struggles.

I think we can feel proud of our role and i hope the NSSN continues to grow and remain strong, democratic and a fighting organisation for militant trade unionists.

who are the striking workers on november 30th going to vote for next year ?

Who are the strikers going to vote for in the May 2012 elections?
Next May sees local government elections across the country as well as elections for the Greater London Assembly and London Mayor. We need to start preparing our campaigns now. Raise the issue with your local anti-cuts campaign and local trade union branches. Do they want to support an anti-cuts candidate?
In London, initial discussions have taken place between union representatives in the RMT and FBU at a regional level and it has been agreed to seek support from other trade unionists to stand anti-cuts candidates for the GLA.

TUSC networking in the South East is underway
Brighton TUSC has recently won over socialist greens to join them:http://bit.ly/mn4I9R. Dave Hill from Brighton recently spoke at Lewes TUSC to make connections there. If you are setting up a local TUSC then let us know and we will advertise it in the bulletin tuscbulletin@yahoo.co.uk – it will encourage others in your region to do the same.

Get writing to the local press – it is quick and free publicity for TUSC

This is very important i feel as if we can gain some national publicity we can really start to broaden out our message and appeal to more. I feel that having struggles with big strikes will help raise the ideas fora new workers party With Ed Miliband and his Labour party looking to move further away from the trade unions and ordinary working people by weakening the democratic structures of his labour party even more.

The question will come back again next year who do workers vote for if labour do seemingly do not represent us ?

Well there is an alternative its TUSC, Trade union and socialist coalition. standing against all cuts, to all jobs and services saying no to privatisation.

you can find out more at our site here
www.tusc.org.uk

The need for a new workers party has more traction more than ever the conditions are right but the contiousness still isnt quite there. The main thing is ordinary people get to know they have a voice if they wish to use it. If they wish to stand for TUSC or get involved in our campaigns we'd be happy to involve anyone.

As long as you oppose all cuts to all jobs and services and stand with ordinary working people and not look to make a quick career driven financial gain we'd be happy for you to help us fight for workers.


National meeting of TUSC Independent Socialist Network – can you make it?

The ISN is for all socialists and trade union members who are not members of existing left groups (eg SP, SWP etc) who want to build a new socialist party to represent the working class and who want to build TUSC as part of that process. The first national meeting of the TUSC Independent Socialist Network will take place on Saturday October 29 in central London – it will start at 12 noon and finish at 5.30. The venue and agenda will be carried in the next bulletin. There will be a registration fee to pay for the venue. If you want to attend or would like more information e-mail wsmcmahon@yahoo.co.uk




So Next year 2012 looks to be a even bigger year than 2011 where alot has happened. But after the 24 hour public sector general strike on 30th november workers will be wondering who can we vote for. We have to get the message out there that there is a party for them and trade unionists. TUSC will stand shoulder to shoulder with all striking workers and lend support wherever we can.

Their fight is our fight.

What next to defeat the cuts

in this week socialist paper from the socialsit party is a excellent editorial frm Hannah Sell assistant general secretary of the party who will be speaking in stevenage on Monday 18th of July if anyone is interested.

this article below takes a snapshot of where we find ourselves and the way forward, from a socialist perspective, you may or may not agree with all the proposals put forward but thought you'd be interested to hear Hannah's thoughts.

"They thought we wouldn't do it, they thought we'd lie down and let them walk all over us. They were wrong". This is how Mary Bousted, general secretary of the most 'moderate' union taking part in the 30 June strike - the ATL, summed up the mood of the strikers, to huge applause, at the London rally.

Those who took part in the strike action are now walking a head taller. A new generation has been imbued with the confidence that comes from taking part in effective collective action.

If the huge TUC demo on 26 March was a powerful show of strength by the trade union movement, on 30 June battle with the government was engaged for the first time.

This was the biggest single day of strike action since the 1980s. The strikes were overwhelmingly solid - decisively answering the government propaganda that a majority in the unions taking action did not support the strike. Overall at least 200,000 - 84% of PCS members - took strike action, far more than the 70,000 who voted in the ballot.

As Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS civil service union put it: "It is not voting in the ballot that matters, it is voting with your feet." PCS members in Downing Street even took strike action, as did 90% of all civilian police support workers, who are organised by the PCS.

For the first time in five years PCS members from the Cabinet Office organised and ran a picket line outside the main entrance to their department. The teachers' strike was just as solid, with more than 11,000 schools closing for the day.

And this was definitely not a 'duvet day' strike. In London a third or more of all NUT members participated in the demonstration. The same could be said of the marches and rallies that took place in virtually every town and city in Britain.

While all the major capitalist parties in Westminster attacked the strikes, with only a handful of MPs - who really do have 'gold-plated' pensions - refusing to cross the PCS picket lines, it is a different story with the population as a whole.

It is widely understood that the strikes were about defending all public services from the Con-Dems' slaughter, as well as the right to a decent pension. The picket lines and rallies were deafened by the constant sound of drivers honking their support for the strike.

Support

Click for gallery. 12 pics Manchester, photos Hugh Caffrey (Click to enlarge)

The latest opinion polls show the Con-Dems have lost the argument on public sector pensions, with a clear majority opposing the government's proposals. There have been desperate attempts by the capitalist press to whip up anti-strike hysteria - including the Daily Mail trying to blame the strike for the tragic death of a school student who was killed by a falling branch.

But the polls show opinion as being evenly divided. A new Guardian/ICM poll found 41% support the strike, as opposed to 42% who did not, with YouGov finding similar. However, among women, young people, and those in the North and Midlands a majority supported the strikes.

The government looks, and is, very weak as it scratches around to find a justification for its wholesale attack on pensions. As the pressure mounts on the government the cracks in the coalition are beginning to widen over a whole number of issues.

The latest divisions to be revealed could lead to another u-turn. Cracks are forming between sections of the Tory Party over the consequences of their brutal attacks on benefits. A letter written by the private secretary of Eric Pickles, Tory communities minister, to Cameron in January has come to light. It pointed out the glaringly obvious; that 40,000 or more families will be made homeless as a result of the government's housing benefits cuts.

It is clear that Eric Pickles is driven by the fear of the electoral consequences of 40,000 families living on the streets - and the economic cost of keeping them in hostels, which would be greater than the current housing benefit bill. This government is very weak and its vicious cuts agenda can be defeated.

Just as workers were given confidence by the 30 June strike, the government was frightened, it felt the earth shake beneath its feet. However, one day's action will not be enough to force the government to retreat from its attack on public sector pensions, which is driven in large part by the desire to 'prepare' the public sector for future privatisation.

This was the first such action many of the strikers, particularly the teachers, had taken. Inevitably, there were hopes that a one-day strike might make the government 'listen'. Others, however, understood that the government is listening; the Con-Dems know the pain they are inflicting, but are determined to drive through the destruction of public sector pensions in the interests of big business. And there was widespread determination among the strikers - to escalate the strike action if the government didn't retreat.

Next step
The Socialist Party's call for a 24-hour public sector general strike, received overwhelming support. At the London rally, Mark Serwotka's call for four million to strike in October - "including Unison, Unite and the GMB" was met with a standing ovation.

A massive campaign now needs to be built within all those unions who have not yet balloted for action. Those trade union leaders must be pushed to organise ballots immediately in order to be able to join the strike action in the autumn. The government must not be allowed to divide public sector workers.

The National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) is planning a rally and march to the TUC conference in London on 11 September, in order to exert pressure on the trade union leadership to coordinate a strike of the whole public sector in the autumn.

It was not only on industrial strategy, however, that the Socialist Party's programme got a warm response. Mary Bousted of the ATL, again summed up strikers' fury when she said: "I am glad that the ATL is not affiliated to any political party; Ed Miliband is a disgrace." She went on to ask: "What has he and his shadow cabinet, which is laughingly called an opposition ever done? Sisters, and brothers, we're doing it for ourselves."

The potential for trade unionists to create a new party - that stands in the interests of working class people - has been made crystal clear in the last week.

Even if trade union candidates were to initially stand on a limited programme - opposition to all cuts in jobs, pensions, services and benefits, and repeal of the anti-trade union laws - it would mark a significant step forward.

However, the struggle that public sector workers are currently fighting goes beyond those immediate issues. The pension reform is one aspect of the government's assault on workers' living conditions.

The government's pension reforms are estimated to 'save' £2.8 billion. The mass movement against the poll tax forced the then Tory government to scrap it at a cost of around £7 billion in today's prices. Faced with a determined mass movement the government can also be forced to retreat on pensions.

However, pensions are only one part of the £81 billion that the government is planning to cut from public services, the biggest cuts in 80 years. New Labour supports cuts on only a slightly smaller scale. While we can force the government to retreat on different aspects of the cuts, the struggle against them all is, in reality, a struggle against the consequences of capitalism today and therefore poses the need for a socialist alternative.

"Public sector workers are being asked to pay again for the £850 billion that was used to bail out the banks." Mary Bousted was correct in this, but it is not only public sector workers, but all workers, who are being made to pay for the economic crisis.

As Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, put it, workers in Britain are facing the longest period of wage restraint since the 1920s. Meanwhile the financiers and speculators, the capitalist wolves, are enjoying as big a bonanza as they did during the boom. In the last year the wealth of the richest 1,000 people increased by 18%.

Capitalist crisis
The crisis of capitalism goes beyond bailouts of the banks. The crisis in the financial system was the fault line along which all the underlying contradictions of capitalism have been laid bare. Capitalism has always been a blind profit-driven system based on the exploitation of the majority - the working class - for the profits of a few at the top.

There was a brief period - from around 1950 to 1973 - when capitalism developed rapidly. At least in the more economically developed countries, including Britain, working class people were able to win a few crumbs from the capitalists' table. In Britain a National Health Service and a mass council house building programme made a real improvement in workers' lives.

However, when that post-war period ended, capitalism set about restoring its profits by driving down the share of the wealth taken by the working class.

Production was moved abroad to countries with worse workers' rights and cheaper labour, wages were driven down, and spending on public services was cut back. Of course these processes were taking place even during the last boom.

As the Financial Times reported last week, wage restraint is not new: "Fork-lift truck drivers in Britain could expect to earn £19,068 in 2010, about 5% lower than in 1978, after adjusting for inflation. Median male real US earnings have not risen since 1975. Average real Japanese household incomes after taxation fell in the decade to the mid-2000s. And those in Germany have been falling in the past ten years."

During the last boom profits reached an all-time record. However, the bosses had difficulty finding profitable fields to invest in. Investment in science, technique and production remained at an historic low. Why? Not because they were not needed but because working class people lacked the means to buy the goods that could potentially be produced.

This is the terrible reality of capitalism. It didn't matter that two billion people are without the most basic necessities of life - they are not 'a market' because they lack the money to buy what is produced. Improving education or health care is only in the interests of capitalism if a profit can be made from it.

Instead of investing in industry the capitalist class made its profits in the last boom by gambling on the world's stock markets in a speculative frenzy. The financial crisis was the inevitable result.

Socialists, like growing numbers of people, argue that the rich should be the ones who pay for the crisis - via dramatically increased taxes for the super-rich and the big corporations.

For most of the 1970s the tax rate for the highest band of income was 83%. Back then big corporations paid 52% of their profits in tax, but that percentage has been reduced step-by-step ever since. It is currently just 28%, with reductions for the next three years planned by the Con-Dems.

Even with the existing low levels of taxation for the rich, the PCS union points out that more than £120 billion goes uncollected, evaded and avoided every year.

But while we favour taxing the rich, we also recognise that the 'markets' - either the big corporations or the bond traders who are holding whole countries such as Greece to ransom - will never meekly accept dramatically increased regulation and taxation.

So what is the alternative to this market madness? The starting point is to oppose all the cuts. Faced with a determined and organised working class, big business will be forced to retreat. However, in its relentless pursuit of profit, capitalism would then come back with other ways of making the working class pay for the crisis, for example by using inflation. That is why we need a socialist solution.

For a start we call for the nationalisation of the big banking and finance companies. Compensation should be paid on the basis of proven need - but without one penny going to the speculators who are demanding that the working class pay for the crisis for which they - the speculators - bear responsibility.

It would then be necessary to introduce a state monopoly of foreign trade - so that it would be a democratically elected government - not the market - that controls imports and exports including capital.

Nationalisation
A socialist nationalised banking sector would be democratically run by representatives of banking workers and trade unions, the wider working class, as well as the government. Decisions would be made to meet the needs of the majority, for example offering cheap loans and mortgages for housing and for the planned development of industry and services and ending all repossessions of people's homes.

However, that would only be the start. Capitalism has led to enormous economic destruction. In Britain around 10% of wealth has already been lost as a result of the recession, due to factories and workplaces closing. This has resulted in 2.5 million, and rising, officially unemployed. Nor is there any prospect of a return to healthy growth. The best prospect that can be hoped for under capitalism is a prolonged period of economic stagnation.

That is why a crucial step towards solving the economic crisis would be to take the big corporations that dominate Britain's economy into democratic public ownership. This would then allow for production to be planned for need and not for profit.

It would be possible to enormously expand the education system and the health service. Building workers, for example, could be put to work building and refurbishing high quality, environmentally friendly affordable social housing for the five million people who want it.

Huge resources could be put into the development of environmentally friendly technologies. The retirement age could immediately be reduced to 60, or even less, for all those that wanted to retire. The working week could be cut, without loss of pay. This measure, combined with an expansion of public services, could quickly eliminate unemployment.

All of these, and much more, would be possible on the basis of a democratic socialist plan of production.

Of course, capitalism is an international system, and any alternative could not stop at the shores of Britain. However, if a democratically elected socialist government in any country was to begin to implement the kind of programme outlined here it would act as an enormous inspiration to workers in the rest of the world struggling against capitalism's devastation of their living standards.

Even more so than the revolutions across North Africa and the Middle East, the ideas of genuine democratic socialism would spread like wildfire.