BUILD MASS DEFIANCE OF TORY CUTS

The thousands who join the Scotland United Against Austerity rally this Saturday, 20 June, in Glasgow's George Square will be united in sending a simple, stark message to the Tories: you have no mandate to rule and ruin Scotland, and we're not going to lie down and accept your butchery!
Only 10 per cent of Scotland's voters backed the Tories. Yet Cameron, Osborne and their Old-Etonian bootboys plan an assault on our lives that surpasses even the Dark Ages of Maggie Thatcher. 

SHOCK AND AWE
They plan a 100-day blitzkrieg on benefits, public spending and workers' rights. Virtually every day they declare another attack on yet another section of the working class, including the poorest and most vulnerable. 

details of the STUC rally HERE

They clearly hope to imitate the methods of George W Bush - who infamously deployed his 'shock and awe' military onslaught on Iraq - seeking to overwhelm resistance to their savagery by its sheer scale and speed.

Tory plans include £30billion cuts to public spending, £12billion of it from welfare.
An estimated £5billion slashed off in-work Tax Credits, hammering the lowest-paid, part-time workers, whilst making stomach-churning claims to being "one-nation Tories, party of the blue-collar worker".
Abolition of young people's housing benefit. A 40 per cent reduction of those getting Carers' Allowance. Cuts to child benefits.
The list marches on, mercilessly.

WORKPLACE DICTATORSHIP
The same government that only gained a derisory 24 per cent of all UK voters is hellbent on wiping out workers' rights, imposing near-impossible thresholds of a 50 per cent turnout, plus at least 40 per cent of all actual union members voting for industrial action, before it's legal.
Plus they plan to rip up facility time for elected union reps - to make them impotent in the face of escalating employers' attacks on workers - and to remove the ban on conscripting Agency workers to scab on strikes.
They want to impose workplace dictatorship, in pursuit of even bigger profits, lower wages and fewer jobs.



UNIONS HOLD THE KEY
With such brutality coming down the track at us, the STUC and the unions that together organise 630,000 Scottish workers have a pivotal part to play in resisting the Tory onslaught.
The 20 June rally must not be a mere token gesture, but the launchpad for a concerted, determined course of further action, building an alliance of trade unionists, people on benefits, communities, and socialists prepared to defy and defeat the Tories. 

No time should be wasted over the summer months; as the Tory blitzkrieg unfolds, the unions should prepare the grounds for united, militant action to halt Cameron's juggernaut.

BUDGET DAY
On Tory Emergency Budget day - 8 July - the SSP plans protests to highlight opposition to the butchery that Osborne will announce. How much more significant it would be if the STUC coordinated events across Scotland that day to give notice of the resistance that will be built over the next few weeks and months.

Potentially the STUC has unique power to spearhead a movement to stop austerity, raising concrete alternative policies at the same time as coordinating militant action.
Embracing 630,000 worker-members, it also has the advantage of not being officially tied to either the sinking ship of Labour, nor the SNP - which won a landslide by claiming to be anti-austerity, but has a real-life track record of passing on Westminster cuts at both Holyrood and council levels over the past four years. 

MAKE HOLYROOD DEFY CUTS!

The STUC and its affiliated unions need to call further mass events to bombard the Scottish government with demands to implement the mandate the SNP won for being anti-austerity, by refusing to implement a single penny of the budget cuts Scotland faces from Westminster.
They should demand the Scottish government set out spending plans this Autumn that, as a bare minimum, save all jobs and public services, and boost workers' pay - and build a mass Scots rebellion demanding the funds off Westminster for these plans, rather than devolve Tory cuts to councils, FE colleges, schools and other vital services.

ANOTHER £2-3billion IN CUTS
This is critical given the eye-watering scale of cuts forecast in new Scottish government spending projections. They expect a further cut of £2billion to Scotland's budget over the next 3 years; maybe even £3billion. At least half of that will hit councils.
As Professor John McLaren of Fiscal Affairs Scotland wrote, "Scotland, like the UK, is only about half way through the cuts to public services initiated by the UK government. Unlike earlier years it's expected to be day-to-day budgets, rather than capital budgets, that take the hit. At over 5 per cent in each of the next two years, the cuts could be more than double the average seen in the past four years."
Others have calculated the councils' share will mean the equivalent of losing 9,700 secondary teachers, plus 8,900 senior social workers, plus 16,000 cleansing department workers.

DEFY - OR DO TORIES' DIRTY WORK
So not only Holyrood, but local councillors, face a stark choice: stand up and defy the Tory cuts, building a mass movement of workers and communities to win back the stolen £billions off Westminster - or be forever condemned for carrying out the Tories' dirty work.

The STUC needs to launch a plan of action to push politicians into resistance, to make it politically unviable for the Tories to impose their plans. A whole nation in rebellion couldn't be ignored.

More "Defy the Tories" Demo pics here

At the first sign of any group of workers being blocked by anti-union laws, the STUC should build support for defiance of these laws. It's better to break bad laws that allow the Tories to break workers' backs!

WORKERS IN ACTION
Several sections of workers are courageously taking action already: Dundee hospital porters; Glasgow homeless caseworkers; Calmac ferry crews against attacks on pensions, conditions and the threat of privatisation. 

How much less painful would these workers' struggles be if the laws were scrapped that ban solidarity action by fellow-workers?
And neither Labour nor the SNP can lay claim to being on these workers' sides.
Glasgow city council is Labour, but has kept strikers out on picket lines for 12 weeks, as well as refusing to reinstate sacked UNISON rep Robert O'Donnell at the SECC, which the Labour council owns 91 per cent of!
The SNP government is heading towards privatisation of the Clyde and Hebrides ferries, as they did the Northern Isles ferries back in 2012.
The unions need to spearhead an independent political alternative that defends workers' rights and incomes. They should stop funding Labour's anti-working class lost cause; they should instead stand on the socialist principles of labour movement pioneers.

SCRAP THE COUNCIL TAX & DOUBLE THE MONEY!
The SSP has pioneered proposals that the STUC should take up and popularise; a fully-costed alternative way of funding councils, scrapping the unfair Council Tax, replacing it with an income-based Scottish Service Tax that would make 77 per cent of Scots better off, and literally double the funds for local jobs, wages and services. 

This proposal has the potential to help shield Scotland from austerity, especially as councils employ 247,000 workers and provide vital services.
Councillors - Labour, SNP or Green - face the stark choice of helping to build centres of resistance to the Tory austerity plans, building alliances of workers and communities to win the necessary funding, or they will be cursed for being central to the savagery of job losses and service decimation.

POWERS TO PROTECT WORKERS
But the issue of austerity cuts goes far beyond the boundaries of councils. The SSP appeals to trade unionists, community activists and their organisations - including the STUC - to join our campaign for powers to protect the Scottish working class to be devolved to the Scottish parliament. 

In facing the cataclysmic Tory attacks on jobs, wages, benefits and workers' rights, we demand devolution of the powers to reverse all welfare and benefits cuts; to defy pay cuts by implementing a Scottish £10 minimum wage for all aged 16 and over; to repeal all the anti-union laws and establish full workplace rights; to take all services, banks, energy and big industries into democratic public ownership, so as to create well-paid, secure jobs and begin to build a society that matches the needs of the millions, instead of the millionaires.

Join the SSP; help commit your trade union, your community group and your family to defiance of the Tories, and to the pursuit of socialist measures that could eradicate any and all excuses for cuts.
We live in an immensely rich nation: demand use of that wealth for the working-class majority population, not for the profits, perks and privileges of the stinking rich and their Tory henchmen.

BETTER TO BREAK BAD LAWS THAN THE BACKS OF WORKERS!

In an ancient ritual harking back to medieval times, the unelected monarch delivers the Queen's Speech on behalf of a Tory government elected by only 24.4 per cent of all eligible voters. And in the case of Scotland, a government supported by a minuscule 10.5 per cent of registered voters! 

But the Queen's Speech is saturated with hellish plans to butcher benefits, wipe out workers' rights and slaughter services - class warfare on the millions by a government of the millionaires with no mandate.

That perfectly captures the undemocratic nature of capitalist rule through Westminster. It truly is Tory dictatorship. And it must be defied by a united mass movement of resistance, or generations to come will suffer the consequences.

NO TORY MANDATE

Osborne could not stop the smirks as anti-union measures announced by unelected monarch 

With callous disregard for the facts, David Cameron declares: "We have a mandate from the British people, a clear manifesto and the instruction to deliver. We will not waste a single moment in getting on with the task".

They plan to forge ahead with a blitzkrieg on workers' rights, human rights, and the incomes of millions already struggling to survive.

Scrapping the Human Rights Act threatens the attempts by tenants to challenge the brutal Bedroom Tax, which of course will continue, with rumours of the bills being increased.

Extending the Right to Buy to housing associations will add another twist to the spiraling housing crisis, as the best public sector stock is sold off and virtually no new social sector homes for affordable rent are built, especially as Westminster slashes funding to local authorities.

Shameless, racist measures designed to whip up division amongst the victims of Tory rule include new immigration laws that amount to 'deport now, appeal later' - which in many cases would mean appealing against deportation after death in the war-torn countries people have fled from.

WORKERS' BENEFITS TARGETED 

The core of the Tories' class warfare is directed at the working class majority population. A blitz on benefits and wipeout of workers' rights.

Of their total £30billion cuts, an additional £12billion butchery of benefits is planned. And even the far-from-socialist Institute of Fiscal Studies has analyzed these plans, concluding that it will especially be the working poor, particularly those with children, who will suffer the most severely.

Reigns over us: Benefits scrounger announces measures to impoverish the rest of us...

They point out that the much-trumpeted benefits cap, being cut from £26,000 to £23,000 for a household, will hammer families with several children and high rents, cutting about 24,000 families' incomes by £3,000 a year. 

But as fewer than 100,000 families across the UK will be impacted, this will only meet about £0.1billion of the Tories' total £12bn target, leaving far greater numbers prey to their assault.

A TORY SLAUGHTER OF THE INNOCENTS

Abolition of housing benefits to jobseekers aged 18-21 may therefore be extended to all those under 25; an outrageous attack on those starting out in life.

As Tax Credits (£30billion a year) and Housing Benefits (£26billion a year) make up more than half of all 'unprotected' public spending, and Disability and Incapacity Benefits a further third of the total, the IFS rightly forecasts that the bulk of the cuts will target these people.

"Of COURSE I care..." 

As they put it, "About 80 per cent of entitlements to benefits go to working age families, and a large majority of these benefits are means-tested, so it will be very difficult to avoid hitting low-income families - especially those with children - hardest." And they add that 75 per cent of benefits go to families in the bottom half of incomes.

Maybe for us that is stating the bleedin' obvious, but it underlines the tsunami of cuts about to hit the working class and poorest, unless we build mass resistance.

Slashing the numbers entitled to Carers' Allowances by 40 per cent; cutting £3.8billion off Tax Credits, by hounding part-time workers with impossible new targets on additional hours of work; slaughtering an estimated 1.3 million public sector jobs by 2019: these are some of the appalling measures leaked out before Her Majesty even got round to announcing the Tory Butchers' plans for the people who never gave them a mandate.

SMASHING THE UNIONS 

Pivotal to this class warfare are plans to virtually abolish trade union rights. The government that won a grand total of 36 per cent of all votes cast, and a mere 24.4 per cent of eligible voters, is imposing rules that demand a 50 per cent turnout and support from at least 40 per cent of all eligible voters before a union can take any form of legal industrial action in defence of jobs, services or workers' rights.

"Cut, cut, cut! More, more more!"

So in a workforce of 200, at least 100 would have to vote, and at least 80 of them vote for the action - an almost impossible set of hurdles designed to stop effective resistance by the organisations that are the first and last line of defence for workers - their unions.

Their manifesto homed in on introducing the 40 per cent threshold first in "those essential services - health, education, fire and transport"; services they regard as far from essential as they slash their funding! But of course they will spread their legal poison to every sector if they get away with it in the 'essential services'.

CONSCRIPTING SCABS

On top of that, the Tory election manifesto made it brutally plain what to expect if workers dare defy their dictatorship, which is the dictatorship of capital, of the rich, in pursuit of profit maximization at terrible human cost. To quote the Tory statement of intent: 

"We will repeal nonsensical restrictions banning employers from hiring agency staff to provide essential cover during strikes."

So they plan to scrap the current ban on use of Agency workers to scab on strikes, so they can conscript desperate and insecure people into further undermining fellow workers' wages, jobs and conditions.

"The plebs haven't caught us ... yet!"

BUILD 20 JUNE DEMO

The Tory dictatorship must not be allowed to walk all over us. A massive campaign of resistance needs to be mounted, in the parliament, in the workplaces, on the streets, in our communities. 

It is therefore extremely good news that the Scottish TUC has called the 'Scotland United Against Austerity' mass demo in Glasgow on Saturday 20 June - an idea the SSP pushed for from the day after the election outcome. We all need to build that into a mammoth show of unity against all forms of cuts and attacks on workers' rights.

BUILD MASS DEFIANCE

And it needs to become the platform to launch an ongoing resistance. 

This to include a concerted demand for powers over the minimum wage to be devolved to Scotland so we can fight for a Scottish £10 minimum wage for all over 16, with equal pay for women. 

A campaign to win devolution of powers over employment laws, so as to repeal the lot and usher in a Charter of Workers' Rights instead. 

A campaign to win power for Holyrood over business taxes - but not so as to reduce taxation of big business, as the SNP wish, but to restore Corporation Tax to its 50 per cent pre-Thatcher level, as demanded by the SSP.

BREAK BAD LAWS

Whilst fighting for such powers to protect the Scottish working class from Tory dictatorship, the STUC and union leaderships also need to square up to the fact that submission to the anti-union laws means accepting literal destitution and starvation for big sections of working class people. The unions literally wouldn't exist if our predecessors had meekly accepted the 'laws of the land', written and imposed by an upper-class minority hell-bent on squeezing the last drop of profit and privilege for themselves out of the sweated labour of the real wealth-creators.

Nobody would light-mindedly hand over union assets - accumulated from workers' union subs - but unless union leaders are prepared to defy these anti-union laws, workers will have no chance. It's better to break bad anti-union laws than allow the Tories and profiteering employers to break the backs of workers.

Join the SSP in defiance of Tory dictatorship. Help build the STUC demo on 20 June. Resolve to resist the slaughter of jobs, services, benefits and workers' rights by a government with no popular mandate to rule and ruin. 

United in determined action we can defeat the Tory dictators.