The Tories’ mini-budget has been variously described as Thatcherism on steroids, a bludgeon to workers, the launch of all-out class war. It’s all of the above and more, with shameless plans to effectively outlaw the ability of workers to withdraw their labour in resistance.
The critical question is what the organisations of the working-class majority, and specifically their leaderships, are prepared to do to combat this brutal, indeed unapologetic Tory assault on millions of us on behalf of the millionaires, billionaires and bankers.
Now the seemingly endless royalist mournfest is past - with its relentless display of sycophancy towards unelected, fabulously rich royals, and the pomp, pageantry and prolonged displays of naked state power in all its fineries and military might - the class struggle continues.
The same week that at least £10m, and probably far, far more of public funds was splurged on a state funeral, Scottish charities reported countless cases of misery and degradation for people who simply can't survive, let alone live a meaningful life. Parents telling them “I just eat leftovers from the little one’s plate"; others describing that going without meals to ensure their kids are fed means they’ve lost so much weight their jeans fall from their waist, but they can't afford a new pair; many admitting they are literally suicidal in the face of mounting poverty.
While grovelling media editors obsessed over their health concerns for the thickness of King Charles’ fingers, frightening reports of escalating deaths from cancers - due to lack of NHS resources to treat people early enough - peeked through the fog of ‘one nation’ propaganda.
All this in a state where we’ve been bludgeoned with the 24/7 media propaganda of us being ‘one nation’, kings and commoners alike; where anyone who dared suggest otherwise, or advocate a democracy without monarchs ruling their subjects, faced summary arrest and vicious verbal abuse.
Tory Class War Doesn't Respect the Dead
Leaders of the CWU, RMT and other unions were, on balance, tactically wise to suspend planned strikes in the immediate aftermath of the Queen's death, to avoid splits in their own ranks and unprecedented vilification by a craven media. Where many of them failed badly, however, was in their explanations of why they'd done so.
Instead of often echoing the grovelling tone of the Tories, Labour and indeed SNP leaders towards the medieval monarchical system, these union leaders should have called for the Tories and profiteering employers to match the sensitivity of workers’ unions by publicly declaring an end to their assault on wages, jobs, workers’ rights and public safety. Because that would have exposed the stinking hypocrisy of the Tories and capitalist exploiters, who never for one second paused in their pursuit of a class war against workers and their families, for the benefit of a grotesquely rich handful, which the whole institution of the monarchy both epitomises and helps sustain, by fooling some of the people at least some of the time that we are all one big happy family.
Tory Daylight Robbery
Those who thought the obnoxious Boris Johnson was the problem, rather than the entire Tory party and rip-off capitalist system they represent, got a harsh lesson in class-based politics in the mini-budget.
The expression ‘daylight robbery' arose in the 1690s when King William 111 levied an additional tax on any house with more than six windows, forcing many to brick up these sources of sunlight. In 2022 the Tories applied this term with ruthless zeal, handing £100billion of taxpayers' money to subsidise the profits of giant energy companies who already made £170billion in ‘excess profits’ this year; giving twice as much ‘relief’ to the richest 10% of households as to the poorest, through their misnamed Energy Price Guarantee and NIC rates; making everyone on incomes below £155,000 worse off, in a proud, boastful declaration of ‘free market', red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalism.
Even the anti-socialist Times revealed the poorest three million households will only be 63p better off – per month! – from the NIC changes, whilst bankers can now award themselves limitless bonuses “to make the City of London finance sector attractive"!
Alongside which Kwarteng and Truss scrapped the ban on fracking and issued 100 new North Sea Oil licences; abolished the obligation on ‘developers’ to meet affordable housing targets and environmental standards; and plan legislation to enforce ‘Minimum Service Standards’ during strikes in transport and other sectors, plus manacle unions even more than the hated Maggie Thatcher dared to.
The biggest tax cuts for the rich since those of Chancellor Anthony Barber in Ted Heath's Tory regime, in 1972 – which caused the economy to tank – will add to the savage slaughter of jobs and public services, in an economy the Bank of England reports is already in recession, and as desperate people need frontline services just to survive.
Defy or Comply with Tory Butchery
The response of the Scottish government is a warning that the working class need to rise in collective revolt rather than rely on salvation from the SNP/Scottish Green coalition. John Swinney has already announced ‘tough decisions' to slash £500million from public services. This highlights two intertwining issues: the case for independence, but ‘not as the SNP know it’.
Instead of meekly implementing the horrendous cuts by Westminster, a Scottish government worth its salt would here and now lead a mass mobilisation of Scottish workers, communities and young people to win back some of the £billions stolen by Westminster. And to escape Tory butchery, or its tartan imitation, Scottish workers need to be mobilised around the vision of an entirely different type of society: an independent socialist Scotland.
Unions Need Decisive Leadership
The STUC, representing over 600,000 organised trade union members, rightly slated the Tory mini-budget as “acceleration of free market, trickle down economics that deepen inequality and embeds social injustice", declaring that “workers are in for the fight of their lives... it’s a fight we intend winning.”
Absolutely! But the crunch question is what is done to turn this into mass action, led by the trade union movement.
It’s no accident the Tories are hell-bent on hamstringing workers in their right to strike even more severely than the most repressive anti-union laws in the western world already do. These class enemies of the working class – indeed of ‘the 99%’ – recognise that the right of workers to strike is what makes us different from the slaves of ancient millenia. And the best way to defend the right to strike is to strike together, decisively – with clear, fighting demands that can inspire millions to fight back against a government and economic system that will confront vast numbers of people with a choice, literally, of freezing or starving, or both, this winter.
That’s why the renewed wave of strikes and protests this autumn, after the summer of solidarity, needs decisive leadership from the trade union movement.
Striking Back
Each group of workers in different industries or services will of course need to democratically thrash out – through forums of their elected union representatives - distinct, effective forms of strike action and other protests, for maximum impact on their employers. Sometimes a gradual escalation of the duration of strikes; sometimes targeting major events or financial deadlines; other times all-out indefinite strikes, after thorough preparations amongst the members.
But increasingly, as the general onslaught on the standard of living of workers of varied occupations by governments and profiteering employers becomes more obvious, the call for coordinated strikes has gained popularity. As I and the SSP as a whole have often expressed this in recent months, “march together, strike together, win together! “
Coordinate the Strikes
But what does coordinated strike action mean? Let’s use two contrasting cases to illustrate the different answers.
In the recent local government strikes, initially involving council cleansing, roads and parks departments, failure by union leaders to agree on strike tactics led to the totally unacceptable situation where overwhelmingly low-paid members of one union (GMB) were confronted with the choice of whether to cross the picket lines of another union (UNITE), often comprising supervisory workers and certainly much fewer workers, because UNITE were on strike more days both before and after action by the GMB. Instead of that divisive situation, hitting low-paid workers hard in their pockets, there should have been an agreed package of strike dates, since all the workers in different unions are in the same workplaces. A simple lesson for the future.
In the very different situation on the railways, where train drivers are overwhelmingly members of ASLEF, and most other railway workers in the RMT, it would be daft to insist on them all being out just on the same day, all of the time, when one-day strikes are being used to defend wages, jobs and public safety. Coordination in this instance could mean a mixture of common strike dates to maximise the feelings of solidarity and unity between members of the 3 railway unions, and staggered days of strike action, planned by united committees of the separate unions, for maximum impact on employers with minimum loss of wages.
Build a 24-hour General Strike
However, as the SSP has persistently advocated in speeches, articles, leaflets and in our own unions over the months since May, the spreading strike wave raises the case for another, higher form of coordinated action – the call we’ve initiated and popularised for a 24-hour general strike. Not instead of the previously described strikes in each company, but an additional, integral part of coordinated, collective workers’ action.
Such a one-day general strike would serve the purpose of showing workers across sectoral, occupational and trade union boundaries the latent power of a mobilised working class. Equally to the point, it would warn the employers and governments of that collective class power, and help bludgeon them into retreats and concessions.
Fighting Socialist Demands
To be effective, a 24-hour general strike should not be a passive stay-away, but an active display of working-class unity and power, involving rallies in towns and cities as well as mass pickets. And critically, tied to clear fighting demands on an agreed set of measures that would match the interests of millions of working people and their communities.
For instance, currently, that would need to include demands for a pay rise for every worker that as a minimum matches current RPI inflation, without any cuts to jobs, terms or conditions; and implementation of a minimum wage of £15-an-hour, as recently demanded by the TUC - not in 2030 as the TUC has called for, but immediately.
Public Ownership of Energy
In face of the fuel poverty catastrophe, a one-day general strike should also be a mass mobilisation around demands for cuts to energy prices to their pre-April 2022 levels; nationalisation of all forms of energy to scrap profiteering, slash bills and provide clean, green affordable energy instead; alongside calls for the Scottish government and local councils to invest in a massive programme, hiring thousands of council workers and apprentices, to retrofit every house and public building with new boilers, insulation and draught proofing - free of charge - to slash fuel bills, fuel poverty and carbon emissions. A new TUC analysis proves nationalisation of energy would save every household an average £4,400 over the next two years, backing up a policy which the SSP is alone in consistently, publicly campaigning for.
Beat Governments into Retreat
Such a 24-hour general strike would evolve beyond narrower sectoral economic demands to broader, unifying political demands, on concrete, material issues facing the working class as a whole. It would be a powerful lever in forcing embarrassed politicians into retreat, on a vastly greater scale than the courageous strikes by a few thousand cleansing workers which forced the First Minister into helping to broker a much-improved offer (10% for lower-paid workers) compared to the miserly 2.5% offer by COSLA for months before, in keeping with the 2.5% pay cap imposed by the same SNP/Green Scottish government.
Above all, at a time when strikes are resuming on the railways, Royal Mail, BT and Openreach, and new sectors are voting for strikes - including teachers, university staff, civil servants, NHS staff and others - the call for a 24-hour general strike takes on renewed force, as part of building an autumn and winter of solidarity.
Workers’ Class Power
It would show at least hundreds of thousands in Scotland that they are not isolated, not just a worker in a particular job or union, but members of one big, powerful class – the one productive class in society, who should collectively own and control the wealth and services their collective labour creates and provides.
Workers face the fight of their lives. Leadership is critical if we are to defy and defeat the catastrophe being implemented by the Tories. It requires courage from the tops of the unions; mass involvement of members in deciding the most impactful forms of action; coordinated strikes, including a 24-hour general strike; and a vision of a socialist alternative that can inspire masses of people that it’s a future worth fighting for.
