Communists @ Trades’ Council Conference Blackpool 15th & 16th May 2010
by Gawain Little
Now we need a peoples’ coalition against cuts by Robert Griffiths Big business and the City have got the government they wanted in a hung parliament. A Blue-Yellow Tory coalition will now lead the offensive against public services, jobs and employment and trade union rights. The £6 billion cut in government current expenditure this coming financial year is not even the beginning. (What happened to the LibDems' preelection warning that such a cut would risk a double-dip recession?). New Labour's Budget in March had already proposed a £10 billion reduction in capital expenditure. Of course, these sums are small beer compared with the £1,350 billion spent or pledged in bailing out the banks and money markets during the Great Finance Crash. But they will cost many thousands of jobs & worsen the lives of the most vulnerable people in society. The first Blue-Yellow Tory budget in a few weeks time may stick the knife in even deeper. Certainly, a rise in VAT is on the cards - a regressive tax not based on ability to pay. And we know that civil service chiefs have been drawing up plans to cut budgets by between 11 and 30 per cent - as much as £102 billion. This leaves the whole trade union movement facing an enormous challenge in the period to come.
We have to explain to service users and communities that public spending cuts will unavoidably hit front-line services, as back-up posts and services deteriorate. Workers and unions in the private sector need to understand that slashing procurement expenditure will have an immediate impact on their jobs, wages and conditions. Back in July 2009, a TUC report revealed that 29 per cent - almost a third - of public expenditure goes directly to private sector enterprises in procurement and subsidies. That's a higher proportion of the public budget than the 26 per cent which goes on public sector pay (and which mostly ends up buying goods and services produced by the private sector). The objective basis therefore exists for uniting all trade unions in a huge coalition against public spending cuts. At local level, Trades Councils can play an important role in developing broad-based campaigns of trade unionists, service users and local community bodies to defend our public services. Labour Party organisations, MPs and councillors should also be challenged to oppose public sector cuts. But it will also assist campaigning if a positive alternative to Blue-Yellow neo-liberal policies are put forward. Continued Overleaf
The outcome of the recent general election represents a real challenge to working people. 13 years of New Labour privatisation and war will now be replaced by the one thing that we can categorically say is worse – a Conservative government. Because that is the reality of the situation; LibDems or no LibDems, this government will be Tory through and through. It is working people who will bear the brunt of this government’s policies– as workers but also as service users, in their own communities. The only thing to stand between this government and its destructive agenda is the trades union movement and the wider working class. Over the coming months and years, we will need to build the strength and unity of the movement to withstand the attacks that we will face. The recent rulings on Unite and RMT disputes at BA and Network Rail show the lengths to which employers will go to prevent unions from taking action to defend their members interests. Work must begin now to build the kind of movement which can not only respond to the ruling class offensive but which can put forward an alternative set of policies in the interests of working people. Continued Overleaf