UNITE against the Butchers’ Budget
by Richie Venton, SSP national workplace organiser - 14/06/2010
The Twin Tory Toffs, Cameron and Clegg, are trying to soften up the public for an onslaught against public services not experienced since the days of Thatcher at her most rampant.
Meantime, many trade unionists (SSP members prominent amongst them) are pressing the union leaderships to organise swift, united demonstrations of resistance to the carnage we face, to prevent the onset of a resigned, defeatist attitude in the teeth of horrendous attacks on jobs, incomes and frontline services.
Excuses for Butchery
Every day the media obediently pumps out the latest Press Releases from the Downing Street Butchers, with a new excuse for the Butchers’ Budget of 22 June.
The Tories and LibDems tell us the public debt is “far worse than they expected”. We “all face tough decisions and hard choices”. According to Eton-boy Cameron “we ALL face pain and suffering for years to come”.
This propaganda is false to the core, a rotten lie designed to dupe people into thinking cuts are unavoidable, the medicine we all EQUALLY have to swallow for the good of “the nation’s” health.
The bankers who enjoyed a bountiful handout from public funds don’t face pain – for example, the hundred of them at RBS who recently awarded themselves a £1million bonus each.
The richest 1,000 individuals whose income rocketed by 30 per cent last year – up £77billion! – face no ‘hard choices’ or ‘painful decisions’.
It is Scotland’s 630,000 public sector workers, alongside workers in the private sector, our families and communities, from the cradle to the grave, who face massacre – unless a united, determined, militant campaign of resistance is built, starting now.
Where are Scotland’s ‘Champions’?
Instead of initiating and leading such resistance in Scotland, the Scottish parliament’s cross-party Finance Committee last week warned local authorities and other public bodies that they are “not taking the preparations for cuts seriously enough”!
The SNP made much noise about electing “Champions for Scotland” in the recent general election. What are these ‘champions’ doing to call the people of Scotland out into a rebellion on a scale not seen since the defeat of the hated poll tax?
True face of Labour
And in contradiction to their new-found taste for pretending to be an anti-cuts party, now they have lost the power to carry out their cuts in both Westminster and Holyrood, Labour has displayed its true face in Glasgow.
As rulers of Glasgow City Council, Labour is showing just how ‘serious’ they are about implementing cuts – even before the Tories have got down to the details of just how much they are demanding!
Glasgow Labour council is dumping the experience of thousands of workers aged over 50 through a redundancy scheme, and aims to shed 4,000 by 2013.
They are busy slashing the wages and holidays of Culture and Sport Glasgow staff.
They are using obscure outlets like the official Journal of the European Union to seek private companies as ‘partners’ in the running of the bin collection service and several other aspects of public provision, with loud threats of cutting back bin collections to fortnightly.
Three of the city’s libraries are running without a librarian!
Last year they jacked up charges for nursery places. Now they plan to attack working class people at the other end of their lives by increasing the cost of council burials by 50 per cent to £808, with cremations to cost £521 (up £173).
What is to be done?
The litany of crimes against community services, closures of local halls and facilities, the loss of jobs and attacks on pensions and pay is endless. And the Tories, LibDems, Labour and SNP all trot out the same old lie that “cuts must come, we have to live within our means”.
The critical question is what is done to combat, resist and defeat them.
EIS conference agreed to ballot members for a strike in March 2011 against the cuts – which would be the first such action since 1989.
UNISON conference, meeting as we go to press, has had powerful debates about fighting the cuts.
As previously reported in the Voice, PCS conference agreed to help build anti-cuts coalitions, and of critical importance, adopted a series of socialist economic measures that would make cuts entirely unnecessary – many of these being proposed by SSP members in the union.
Budget day protests
On Budget Day itself, a succession of lobbies and protests will occur across Scotland. Lunchtime and early evening lobbies in several cities and towns are being organized by anti-cuts committees and alliances of trade unions, with SSP members in the midst of these.
Workers in every Tax Office plan through PCS union to hold lunchtime pickets on Budget Day.
The SSP will also hold street protests that evening to declare a ‘Wall of Resistance’ to the cuts – spelling out the need to unite, but also to mount a campaign of convincing counter-arguments that explode the myth of cuts being necessary.
Twin dangers: division and inaction
But there are two immediate dangers that need to be overcome in building resistance to the cuts: the reluctance of far too many union leaderships to do anything major between the Butchers’ Budget and next October; and the risk of each union keeping their fight separate and apart.
It would be fatal if any union adopted the notion that ‘cuts are inevitable, so just let’s make sure they are not in OUR service’; that would weaken the resistance and guarantee savage cuts in ALL sectors.
That danger has increased enormously with Cameron’s announcement of entirely bogus “consultation” over public spending cuts. This is a vicious trap set to embroil and implicate trade unions, councils, community organizations and individuals in implementing Tory cuts – whilst setting them at each other’s throats over who should suffer the bulk of the cuts; dog eat dog, whilst the rich get off Scot free.
Street Rally on Saturday 26 June
SSP members in the unions have been foremost in arguing for a clear, united plan of action that includes an autumn mass Demo, but also a more immediate public Saturday Rally on 26th June, to give strength of unity and purpose to tens of thousands who right now are frightened out of their wits at what they face.
We welcome the fact the STUC aims to call a Demo in October. We have constructively argued they should name the date immediately, with a good option being 2nd October, when the Tory party conference opens – to send them the message “Keep out of Scotland – hands off our jobs and services”.
What is not welcome is the reluctance of the STUC and several prominent individual union leaders to do anything that could publicly unite workers and communities before then.
Many local union branches and activists share the SSP’s sense of urgency and have supported the call for a union-led Street Rally on the Saturday after the Budget itemizes the Twin Tories’ assault – 26 June.
These include the NUJ Scottish Executive Committee; North Ayrshire UNISON; a gathering number of Scottish branch delegates at UNISON national conference as we go to press; PCS branches at the big tax offices in Cumbernauld, E Kilbride, Aberdeen and West of Scotland; UCU Scotland officers; the Scottish FBU; leaders of the Scottish RMT; Cumbernauld trades council, and others.
Delegates at the EIS conference vocally supported it during the debate on cuts, one (previously not in touch with the SSP) waving the SSP EIS leaflet around from the rostrum, declaring “We should all be there on 26th”.
In arguing for this proposal at national UNISON conference, N Ayrshire branch chair Colin Turbett warned that October is over three months away, and that if the UNISON leadership argued for doing nothing until then in front of an audience of Greek or Spanish trade unionists they would be howled down and driven out of the hall.
Urgent action – and socialist policies
Cuts can be defeated – provided the leaders of the unions and STUC do not slam on the brakes and prevent people from doing anything for another three months. Provided we have unity across the board, rather than one group or sector fighting over who should suffer most, whilst the bankers and billionaires laugh at us.
And at the heart of building a united mass resistance movement is a package of socialist demands for taxation of the very rich handful, and democratic public ownership of the enormous wealth in society, rather than public ownership of the debts and private ownership of the profits; the policies the SSP will continue to fight for within trade unions and communities as we help unite in action against the consequences of the Butchers’ Budget.