TUC National Demonstration Assemble 11.00am, Victoria Embankment, Central London, for march and rally at Hyde Park
26 MARCH
No cuts... No fees... No sackings... Make the bankers pay!
February 2011 www.counterfire.org Dougal Wallace
Why we must all march
The TUC demonstration on 26 March must unite workers, students, and anti-cuts campaigners in a monster show of defiance, as Elly Badcock explains. On 26 March, hundreds of thousands of ordinary people will march through the streets of London to proclaim an alternative to the cuts. We will demand investment, job creation, a green transition, and a society that caters for the needs of the many, not the profit of the few. The student revolt at the end of last year has inspired resistance. But a fight limited to fee increases – or any other single issue – is likely to fail. The Con-Dem Coalition is attacking everyone, and it wants ordinary people bickering over who gets cut. The 26 March demonstration has to unite the largest possible number of people in defence of the welfare state and in rejection of the millionaire mantra ‘there is no alternative’. It must bring together people from all sections of society – unionised and non-unionised workers; the unemployed and the disabled; racial and religious minorities; school, FE, and university students; climate activists and anti-cuts campaigners; anyone and everyone who opposes the Con-Dem plan to ‘transform’ Britain in the interests of the rich. Building a mass movement The trade unions still have the potential to organise the biggest and the broadest demonstrations, mobilising large sections of society. They have the resources and the networks to reach millions of people in a way that activists working alone cannot. The biggest single student protest at the end of 2010 was that called by the National Union of Students. In recent times, the NUS has consistently stood to the right of other mainstream unions, last year declaring that ‘students need industrial action like they need a hole in the head’. If a call by leaders who say things like that can produce a militant demonstration of 50,000, imagine the potential in a call by the TUC. For all its failings, it represents virtually every unionised worker in the country, and this
means a monster demonstration on 26 March is possible. But no demonstration builds itself. The bigger it is, the greater the surge of confidence and hope it transmits across working-class Britain. The bigger it is, the greater the chance it will prove the launch-pad for a wave of protests, occupations, and strikes powerful enough to defeat the regime. That means every activist – in the unions, among students, and in the campaigns – has to go all out over the next month to build for 26 March.
To win, the resistance must be organised, national, and united The Arab world is offering a dramatic illustration of the kind of popular power we need in Britain. Mass demonstrations and strikes have brought down Ben Ali in Tunisia and threaten Mubarak in Egypt. The shock waves are being felt across the region. The relationship between street protests and the confidence of workers to take strike action could not be clearer. Demonstrations matter Radical change will require mass strikes and workplace occupations. The working class is the majority of society, and, because it is concentrated in the workplaces and creates the wealth of society, it has the potential to paralyse the economy, take over the running of society, and bring down a right-wing government. But to take this kind of action, workers must feel themselves part of a mass movement. They will have the confidence to strike when they sense they have clear backing from large sections of society. Mass demonstrations with broad and diverse support provide this backing. That is
one reason demonstrations matter. Another is that they can give a firm push to vacillating and half-hearted union leaders. Only mass pressure from below will stop them backing down. A third reason for building 26 March is that the cuts are a national issue. They are being imposed on millions of people by central government. Numerous and disparate local protests are necessary to build the movement and resist specific cuts, but they cannot stop the governmentdriven ‘austerity’ programme as a whole. To win, the resistance must be organised, national, and united. It is crucial that, as the anti-cuts movement gathers momentum, it concentrates all its forces in one place, at one time, to challenge head-on the entire cuts programme. The Coalition of Resistance To help make it happen, we need a national, coordinated campaign to oppose all government spending cuts. That is what the Coalition of Resistance aims to be. Launched in November last year at a 1300-strong founding conference with the aim of uniting local anti-cuts groups in a national framework, CoR’s Week of Resistance from 14 to 19 February is designed as a steppingstone towards the 26 March demonstration. The planned culmination is a day of street stalls and other activity on Saturday 19 February. The Con-Dem Coalition of millionaires has all of us in its sights. It is aiming at nothing less than the destruction of the welfare state and the eventual complete privatisation of all our public services. None of us can beat them on our own. We have to build a mass movement of resistance from below. We are going to need a wave of strikes, occupations, and direct action to make Con-Dem Britain ungovernable. The TUC demonstration on 26 March is the next key stage in the struggle to bring down Cameron and Clegg.
Dougal Wallace
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Library campaign throws the book at Con-Dem cuts Dan Poulton reports on one of the front-line services facing cuts and fighting back. The Con-Dem attacks on education and on libraries are of a kind. They do not want ordinary people to think about the world around them and to try and change it. They do not need workers who think critically. So libraries are expendable. Hundreds of libraries across the country are threatened with closure. New Labour floated planned library closures; the ConDems have picked up the baton and are running with it. Doncaster, a working class area still reeling from Thatcherism and pit closures, is one of the places where the cuts will hit deepest: there are plans to shut down over half its libraries. Severe library cuts are also tabled for Brent, Cornwall, Gloucestershire, Leeds, Lewisham, Oxfordshire, and many other places; nowhere, it seems, will altogether escape the Con-Dem hatchet. The government whines that library use is falling anyway, and claims that eager volunteers are available to staff any that are really needed. But in the Age of Austerity only a small minority will have the time and money to work for free. Doncaster-based Counterfire activist John Westmoreland has described the projected library cuts as a ‘declaration of war’, saying, ‘It’s the most sickening thought to see Cameron and Clegg, millionaire public schoolboys and Oxford graduates with plenty of access to books and computers, cutting off opportunities to
The Arab revolution The revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt are the biggest popular movements in the Arab world in decades. They could change the face of the Middle East, argues Peter Stäuber, and they can be a model of resistance for the rest of the world.
Egypt in revolt Inspired by the success of the Tunisian movement, Egyptians also took to the streets at the end of January. Day after day, thousands of people marched through the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, and other cities. The ruling party headquarters was burnt down and thousands defied curfews to battle riot police and state security. As in Tunisia, where the protest movement is led by students and workers, the uprising in Egypt is supported by large sections of society. For too long – 30 years – the people have suffered under the regime of President Hosni Mubarak, who has been clinging on to power through sheer force and terror. The people’s grievances are similar in both countries: unemployment is high, corruption endemic, and freedom of speech severely restricted. Especially in Egypt, protesters are demanding an end to police brutality, to which the wider world
was alerted last year, when the website Wikileaks published thousands of secret US diplomatic cables. The way the pro-Mubarak forces have responded to the protests – with savage violence – has further alienated the Egyptian people from the regime. As one protester said, ‘The psychological barrier between us and our president has been broken by teargas. The government created this uprising, and now they will face the consequences.’
Power and wealth are linked. Egypt needs both democracy and social transformation. Revolution and counter-revolution Mubarak tried to ease the pressure on him by dismissing his government and appointing his intelligence chief as vice president. This failed to satisfy the protesters. He then announced he would not stand for reelection in the autumn. This, too, was not enough. So he then unleashed his thugs on the demonstrators. The regime’s supporters – the rich, the powerful, and the corrupt – want a breathing-space to engineer a fake ‘transition’ that changes nothing except a handful of faces at the top. The Egyptian people need thoroughgoing democracy and complete social transformation. This is the vital issue now at stake. Because Egypt plays such an important role in the region – with 85 million inhabitants, it is the biggest country in the Arab world – a successful revolution could reshape the whole of the Middle East. It could bring democracy to a region which has suffered under dictatorship and imperialism for too long. That would be a massive blow to the power of the US, the oil
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corporations, and Zionist Israel. Until now, the US has been a staunch ally of Mubarak. While banging on about ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’, it is the US that has funded and armed the Egyptian regime’s half-million-strong military. The fall of Mubarak would be the greatest setback for Washington since the toppling of the Shah of Iran in 1979. No wonder they are scaremongering about an ‘Islamic’ takeover. But in fact, something far more radical, and certainly far more desirable, is possible. Democratic and social revolution The way this revolution unfolds in the immediate future is likely to be crucial. In order to achieve full and lasting democracy, not only must power be taken from the regime, but wealth must be taken from the rich and the corporations that dominate Egyptian society. Power and wealth are linked. Mubarak and his cronies, encouraged by their Western allies, have adopted neoliberal ‘free market’ policies wholesale. The gap between rich and poor has widened massively. Grotesque wealth at the top of society contrasts with unemployment and poverty for tens of millions at the bottom. Egypt needs both democracy and social transformation, and the possibility exists that as workers and students push forwards the struggle for political freedom, their revolt will grow over into a wider struggle for popular power, workers’ control, and radical social reform. The revolution also needs to
Can we bring down the Con-Dem Coalition?
spread. The wider it goes, the harder it gets for the US, the Zionists, and the Arab dictators to reverse the tide. Already, there are mass demonstrations in Yemen and Jordan against their pro-Western governments. Most Arab regimes are like those in Tunisia and Egypt – authoritarian, corrupt, undemocratic, and presiding over societies afflicted with high unemployment, not least among graduates, high living costs, and a ‘social wage’ eroded by decades of neoliberalism and IMF-backed cuts.
With the biggest cuts since the 1920s now unrolling, the very survival of the postwar welfare state is at stake. Just how weak is the government, and what will it take to stop them? Neil Faulkner analyses the balance of forces in Britain today. Nasser Nouri
The spirit of revolution sweeps through the Arab world. What we have been witnessing in Tunisia and Egypt are not military coups, but popular uprisings against dictatorial regimes. Events are still unfolding, but it is already clear that this series of mass demonstrations represents the biggest upheaval in the Arab world in decades. In Tunisia, the protesters succeeded in forcing President Ben Ali from power. After a month of peaceful demonstration, starting in December, they finally overthrew a 23-year-old dictatorship. But the gains so far are limited. The interim government formed in mid-January still includes several members of the ruling party, and protesters continue to demand a full break with the old regime. The revolution is not over.
A Tunisian protester calls for the withdrawal of the RCD, Ben Ali’s old party, from the transitional government.
working class communities. They despise us and know that they are adding cultural to economic deprivation.’ He reports that people have been queueing up in the street to sign petitions, and read-ins have been staged to illustrate that education belongs to ordinary people – not just the rich. A major national campaign against library cuts is a serious possibility. Just weeks after writer and campaigner Alan Gibbons put out a call for a day of action in defence of libraries on 5 February 2011, at least 80 events were organised up and down the country. Protests have already taken place in Newport, Milton Keynes, Taunton, Oxford, and elsewhere. On the day of action, hundreds of people demonstrated, held read-ins, and occupied libraries to resist the ConDem cuts. Billy Bragg made the link between civil liberties and public access to information and learning. Acclaimed author Phillip Pullman criticised what he described as the ‘market fundamentalism’ to which the Con-Dems subscribe, and New Cross library was occupied into the night. Students did not hesitate to occupy their universities in response to crippling fee hikes. Nor should we hesitate to organise read-ins, protests, petitions, and direct action in defence of our libraries, the communities they serve, and the workers whose livelihoods are at stake.
Just before Christmas, deep splits were seen inside the Con-Dem Coalition government. Business Secretary Vince Cable bragged to two undercover journalists that he could bring down the government if he chose. Hot on the heels of this revelation came a series of other reports of off-message outbursts by Lib-Dem ministers. Perhaps the most forthright was that of Scottish Secretary Michael Moore, who declared that raising student tuition-fees was ‘the biggest, ugliest, most horrific thing in all this … a car crash, a train wreck’. What brought on this rash of political angst? It certainly was not pressure from the New Labour ‘opposition’. Ed Miliband – whose slogan seems to be ‘vote Labour for slightly slower cuts’ – is the proverbial dog that does not bark. Something more fundamental lies behind the tension inside the government than ‘opposition’ in a Parliament whose democratic substance has been hollowed out by identikit neoliberal politics. The fact is that the electorate voted left-of-centre in May 2010, but got a hardright government. Even Tory voters did not endorse the biggest package of cuts since the 1920s. In contrast to Thatcher, who famously declared that there is no such thing as society, Cameron bangs on about ‘the big society’; however vacuous, it is not hard-right rhetoric.
But the case of Lib-Dem voters is far more extreme: their votes were cast for a left-of-centre programme of moderate reform. Participation in the Con-Dem Coalition has involved the wholesale abandonment of LibDem commitments, including, of course, the flagship pledge to oppose tuition-fee rises and to work for their eventual abolition. It is for this reason that the parliamentary fault-line runs through the middle of the Lib-Dem Party. However eager the party’s millionaire politicians may be to get their legs under the cabinet table, they need to retain their parliamentary seats. Since they garner votes by appearing to be other than what they are, they risk electoral meltdown when exposed in office as liars and careerists. Once recent poll showed a drop from 21% at the time of the general election to 8% today. What brought the crisis to the surface just before Christmas was the student revolt. This acted as a prism of the democratic deficit. Everyone has a vague sense that politicians are self-interested and hypocritical. But the student revolt focused intense attention on one of the biggest betrayals of recent times. But if 50,000 on the streets and a few broken windows can provoke a minor governmental crisis, what might the impact be of 500,000 later this year? Just how vulnerable is the Con-Dem Coalition? A weak and vicious government The vicious right-wing character of the regime should not be mistaken for strength. British capitalism is in long-term decline, faces growing competitive pressure, and is heavily distorted by reliance on finance, property, and speculation. The worst global economic crisis since the 1930s confronts Britain’s rulers with greater challenges than most. The British ruling class has become so dependent on bank profits that it is prepared to take the political risks inherent in selling off the welfare state in order to provide the state finance to underwrite the City. This is not
strength, but weakness. It is the policy of a political and business elite threatened by financial meltdown and cutthroat competition. Otherwise, it is impossible to explain their decision to launch a full-scale frontal assault on the entire postwar welfare settlement. Thatcher in the 1980s, in a much stronger economic, political, and ideological position, chose a drip-drip-drip approach, pushing through one privatisation at a time, taking on one group of workers at a time, avoiding advancing on several fronts at once and triggering generalised resistance. When she became overconfident and abandoned this policy, she was brought down. The poll tax was an attempt to shift the burden of local taxation from the top 20% (the rich and the middle class) to the bottom 80% (the working class broadly defined). It provoked mass resistance from below, with up to seven million refusing to pay, and hundreds of thousands on the streets. Demonstrations, strikes, and direct action During 1972, mass strikes smashed a Tory government’s programme of wage cuts and union busting. Two years later, the Tories lost the general election. In 1989, mass direct action defeated the poll tax, and the following year Thatcher was given the push by her own party. In April 2003, between a million and two million people demonstrated against Blair’s war on Iraq. The decision to go ahead in the face of such opposition was a narrow one, and Blair never recovered from the political infamy he incurred as a warmonger. The British working-class movement has a long history of resistance and a record of major victories over reactionary governments. If we build an inclusive, united, mass campaign against the cuts, and if we stoke a wave of militant demonstrations, mass strikes, and widespread civil disobedience, we can defeat the Con-Dem Coalition. The TUC demonstration on 26 March is the next key stage on that road.
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What is Counterfire and what does it do? Counterfire is an organisation of revolutionary socialists. We work in the trade unions, student movement, and protest campaigns to link together different struggles, push them forwards, and build resistance to the system. Counterfire members have played a key role in the Coalition of Resistance, Stop the War, and the student revolt. A world system in crisis World capitalism today faces an intractable crisis. The financial crash is tipping Europe into depression and the Third World into starvation. The militarisation of relations between states is a clear and present danger to world peace. Uncontrolled global warming threatens climate catastrophe. These threats to the lives and wellbeing of the great majority of humanity are rooted in a system geared to production for profit and the enrichment of the few. Instead of the chaos, exploitation, and violence of competitive capital accumulation, we need
a system based on democracy, equality, planning, and human need. Change from below Real change has to be fought for through action from below. We cannot rely on either politicians or bureaucrats to change things for us. We have to build broad, democratic organisations of mass resistance among workers, students, and the poor. We have to use the weapons of class struggle – demonstrations, strikes, occupations, and other direct action – to make real gains. The power of the banks, the corporations, and the state are ranged against us. To make permanent gains and bring about radical social transformation, revolution will be necessary, in which the repressive state, with its police, prisons, and armed forces, is replaced with a new order based on mass democratic assemblies. United mass resistance To prevent effective resistance, our rulers and their media
Counterfire lectures These will be held at the Marchmont Community Centre, 62 Marchmont Street, London, WC1N 1AB (nearest tube: Russell Square). Everyone welcome. Plenty of time for questions, contributions, and discussion. Lectures start at 6.30pm on Thursday as follows:
attempt to divide us. We must stand together in solidarity. We must reject all forms of prejudice based on race, religion, gender, age, disability, or sexual orientation. We must unite all working people in a single struggle against the rich and powerful. And we must build links between working people here in Britain and those fighting back around the world.
24 February Climate crisis: capitalism and environmental catastrophe Speaker: Elaine Graham-Leigh 10 March China rising: understanding the shifting global economy Speaker: James Meadway
A revolutionary organisation To do these things effectively, we need an organisation of revolutionary socialist activists committed to building and shaping mass organisations of struggle like the trade unions, the anti-war movement, and the Coalition of Resistance. Counterfire is such an organisation. Our aim is to build local groups rooted in workplaces, colleges, and communities across Britain. The historical stakes have never been higher. We have a world to win. We have a world we must win. Counterfire is at the heart of the resistance. Join us.
24 March Gramsci and us: building socialist hegemony today Speaker: Peter Thomas 7 April How history works: a Marxist approach to understanding the past Speaker: Neil Faulkner 20 April Understanding the shape of modern revolutions Speaker: Feyzi Ismail
Contacting us To contact Counterfire, phone or text Sam on 07872 481769, or Jo on 07730 612105, or email either on sam@counterfire.org or jo@counterfire.org We have activists and local groups in many colleges and towns, including Belfast, Bristol, Doncaster, Kings Lynn, Liverpool, London East, London North, London South, London West, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Newcastle, Norwich, Nottingham, Pontefract, St Albans, Scunthorpe, and York.
Counterfire publications Strategy and Tactics: how the left can organise to transform society By John Rees
Capitalism and Class Consciousness: the ideas of Georg Lukács By Chris Nineham
Eleven Reasons to Resist the Con-Dem Cuts By Neil Faulkner
These publications are available from www.counterfire.org
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