FIRST OF MAY BRITAIN

For a permanent anti-austerity United Front of the workers’ parties, the left, the Trade Unions and all their social allies. 

On the first of May 2015, there will be Communist parties, left Socialists and left Social Democrats, along with new and more combative organisations like Focus E15 women, the people’s assemblies, Trade Unions in struggle, unemployed workers, and the PCS strikers who oppose the privatisation of the National Gallery. The latter have already mobilised the whole of their PCS Union nationally. They sought, and found solidarity in the FBU Union, and received support from the base of most Unions nationally. They are supported by 2 CGT branches in France – and in Britain, by students, intellectuals, and artists like Ken Loach. British students who recently occupied LSE gave their support too, denouncing the way their universities are becoming ‘factories’ where all aspects of culture tend to become commodities.

CGT workers April 2015

CGT workers April 2015

In Britain, Europe and the world, ‘austerity’ is the global strategy of the capitalist system to make the masses pay for its crisis. The anti-austerity struggle therefore needs to be closely united at national and international levels. As this challenges the power of the ruling class, the power of the multitudes must be allowed to grow. Venezuela is a good example of a country where the masses challenge the power of capitalism. They do it mostly through a government won to their cause, but also through Communal Councils of popular Power, and other forms of popular control. The struggle against austerity raises the need to organise popular power. This is why we propose the above kind of United Front.

Through new and combative leaderships, the countries of Latin America create social organs of continental integration like UNASUR, ALBA, Celac and the G77+China. Thanks to their mutual economic, financial and military partnerships, as well as their economic and military links with Russia and China, these organisations have become a strong block in defence of their members’ national sovereignty and right to development.

Imperialist predation is in terminal crisis because it can only continue by killing people by the hundreds of thousands – indeed by the millions. The US & Nato deploy nuclear weapons of first strike capability around China and Russia, but they are incapable of building societies. Ukraine is a case in point, where capitalism has only war, ruination and austerity to offer. In the world, layers of soldiers, Church leaders, intellectuals, artists and even secret agents of capitalism lose confidence in the system. This is the significance of Wikileaks. The steady loss of authority of world imperialism strikes blow upon blow at the imperialist sectors in the Labour and Trade Union leaderships.

It is well recognised that the British masses and workers are well to the left of their leaderships. Mass organisations have grown against the Third World War that has already started, against fracking, the TTIP, the privatisations and the evictions – and in defence of the environment, the unemployed and the marginalised (now relying on food-banks). This dawn of militancy outside the traditional organisations of the working class is an act of liberation from the tutelage of the Labour and Trade Union bureaucratic structures.

The Miliband Labour leadership is set to continue the policy of cuts and austerity. This is the policy wanted by capitalism. But the reason why Labour is set to be losing MPs by the dozens is precisely because it has ignored the workers’ needs for decades, to reassure capitalism. For its own preservation however, it will have to yield to some of the anti-austerity pressure that is mounting from below and from organisations more to its left, like the SNP, the Greens and the trade unions’ strikes and other mobilisations. And this is why it is still correct to vote Labour.

This explains why Cameron thinks that Sturgeon is a “dangerous” woman. The capitalist class sees that Labour – regardless of the strenuous reassurances of Miliband – can no longer keep the masses strictly within parliamentary limits. Which was Labour’s role. This is the political cost of the loss of the colonies, and the political cost of the mayhem that world imperialism inflicts daily on the ex-colonies.

Austerity is rooted in inequality

The SNP’s opposition to Trident is supported throughout Britain, and so is Sturgeon’s rebellion against the heartless colonial arrogance of ‘Westminster’. This comes less from a particular aptitude of the SNP than from the general repudiation of British colonial arrogance. The population in all the parts of the country is ready to stand up against austerity, the financial rottenness of capitalism and its degenerate wars.

A great electoral reverse is hitting Labour because it has despised and disarmed its working class base for years throughout the land. Now the growth of left-wing nationalists opposed to Trident exerts a leftwards pressure not only against capitalism, but against the Labour leadership itself. This creates a situation favourable to the closer unification of the Labour left, the Left groups, the students, the Unions in struggle, the Peoples Assemblies, the Community groups, and others.

The struggle against austerity brings growing layers of the population into confrontation with a tiny but unaccountable capitalist elite that syphons off most of the country’s wealth. That elite is not hereditary, but its power rests on its alliance with institutionalised forms of birth power and privilege, like the house of lords and the monarchy. As austerity grows and seems intractable, the need for equality and respect between all the parts of Britain demands a Socialist Republic.

The mobilisations against austerity in Greece, Spain and the rest of Europe already unite workers, strikers, trade unions, associations and community organisations. The same struggle against the austerity of capitalism is happening (under other forms) in all the ex-Workers States of Eastern Europe. Internationally, the conditions exist to propose a European United Front of Trade Unions and workers’ parties to reject austerity and demand that production is for human need.

  • For an organic and permanent United Front in Britain, of Trade Unions, strikers, workers’ & left parties, and community organisations to repudiate the debt, the cuts, the TTIP and austerity!

  • Down with birth privilege, the monarchy and the House of Lords! For the Socialist Republic!

  • For the defence of Argentina against British imperialism in the Malvinas (Falklands).

  • Britain out of Nato, Nato out of Britain, and the same for Europe.

  • For a European United front – from East to West – of Trade Unions, strikers, community organisations, workers’ and left parties against the debt, the TTIP, the troika and austerity.

posadiststoday.com – 28.04.15

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