Two members of West London

November 24, 2011 at 9:49 am #87073

Keymaster

Two members of West London branch attended the pre-strike rally in Kingston last night along with about 30 others. In view of the number of unions involved there is going to be a one-day public sector general strike next Wednesday.The official TUC position, as set out in one of the leaflets at the meeting, is:

Quote:

It’s wrong to make public sector workers pay an unfair contribution to reducing a deficit they did nothing to cause. Unions want proper negotiations. We have done fair deals before. That is why the TUC has called a day of action for pensions justice on 30 November. It’s a chance to stand up for decent pensions and tell ministers to start negotiating.

In other words, A Fair Pension for a Life’s Fair Work. Of course Socialists who will be affected by the brutal changes will be on strike too, even if we wouldn’t employ the language of justice and fairness, but rather that of class struggle over the division of material wealth.The mood of the meeting was rather different. Most there felt, rightly, that trade union action needed to be supplemented by political action, but saw this as reformist political action (some even defended the Labour Party) to impose an alternative economy policy. A PCSU pamphlet on this merely advocated a return to Keynesian policies (to try to spend a way out of the crisis) which have failed in the past.Even so, the strike will hopefully be a signal for a revival of the defensive class consciousness that trade union consciousness represents; which will make it easier for us to urge the next step: political class consciousness to win political control to end capitalism and bring in socialism as the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, with production for use not for the market or profit and distribution on the principle “from each their ability, to each their needs” not according to ability to pay.