TORY THIEVES AND LIARS TURN 'LIVING WAGE' INTO PAY CUTS

It should come as no surprise, but Tory Chancellor George Osborne is not only a thief but a brazen liar.
He unleashed naked class war on the working class in his Emergency Budget on 8 July, whilst conjuring up a contrick that a master magician would eat his heart out for.
The headline-grabbing talk of a 'National Living Wage' is a cynical attempt to throw dust in people's eyes, to blind them to the Tories' theft of incomes from low-paid workers, young people and parents with the audacity to have more than two children.

CLASS WAR UNLEASHED
This Budget was a bloodcurdling awakening to anyone who thinks 'class' is an outdated, ante-diluvian concept: from behind all the recent bullshit about the Tories being 'the party of working people', One Nation Tories, leaps out a Budget that makes the bankers, billionaires and big business even more bloated in their opulence, by robbing the rest of us. It's undiluted class war, disguised by the confusing guff about 'a National Living Wage'.

WINNERS...
Before dealing with the issue of wages, let's glance at a few features of this first Tory Budget since 1996.
First, some of the winners. Corporation Tax on big business was 28% in 2010, when Osborne first took up his rent-free residence in No 11 Downing Street. Now it's set to plummet to 18%, the lowest business tax in any country in the western world. By contrast, for example, German corporations are taxed at 30%; those in France 33.3%; and 40% in the USA.
Even before this bounty to big business, analysts at the University of York have shown that in 2012-13 the government gifted big business £58.2billion in subsidies, grants and Corporation Tax benefits - whilst only getting in £41.3billion in Corporation Tax that year. Now Osborne's openly capitalist government is set to give big business an obscene £93billion in such handouts. That means every household has been forced to pay - without even being asked their leave to do so - an average of £3,500 in subsidies for big corporations. And the winners include many Corporation Tax-Dodgers.
Another major set of winners are those in receipt of inherited properties worth £1million without having to fork out any Inheritance Tax. One figure quoted is that 26,000 such estates gain a giant £2.5billion.
The Tory warmongers didn't want to make their pals in the City of London feel left out in their handouts to the rich: contrary to the headlines, they'll gain from the replacement of the bank levy by the less 'punitive' (?) 8% bank profits tax. And those profiting from war and death can sleep peacefully in the knowledge Osborne has agreed to jack up defence spending to the 2% of GDP demanded by NATO.

...LOSERS: workers, young people, the disabled and children
A small minority are winners, but they gain £billions. In contrast there are millions of losers - overwhelmingly the 'hard-working families' we hear such repeated, hypocritical prattling about from Tory (and Labour) politicians, especially pre-elections.
Whilst handing out £93billion to big business, the Tories are stealing £35billion from working class people in benefits - especially in-work benefits.
Over 5.3 million public sector workers - half a million of them in Scotland - have suffered pay cuts since 2010. According to UNISON, a 3% pay rise in the past five years, whilst inflation rose by 17%. Now they are condemned to another four years of a 1% pay cap.
That's not a decade of suffering a Pay Freeze, it's a modern Ice Age for workers in the NHS, councils, education and the likes.
Disabled people deemed fit to work stand to lose £30 a week. Young people will have all their benefits withdrawn if they decline unpaid work placements. Grants for working class students are to be scrapped in favour of loans. Housing benefit is to be wiped out for people aged 18-21. Council and housing association tenants are to be given a miserly 1% cut to their rents, but if their household income is above £30,000 (and the official average wage per person last year was £27,200, don't forget) they will have to pay the full market rent.
Nearly all working age benefits are to be frozen until 2020, despite forecasts of rising inflation by then. The household benefit cap is to be slashed from £26,000 to £20,000.

OSBORNE OUTSTRIPS KING HEROD
In a measure that King Herod would have blushed and baulked at implementing, the multi-millionaire Gideon Osborne is to deny any additional housing benefit, Tax Credit or Universal Credit for any more than two children. As the Children's Commissioner, Tam Baillie, was moved to comment, "Parents and carers must feed and clothe all of their children, not just the first two. This is denying millions of children their basic human rights."
An estimated seven million children face savage cuts to their families' incomes from the overall Budget. And Osborne's rule about 'two kids only' smacks of class hatred and a form of eugenics; only the rich are allowed to breed, it seems.
One of the biggest component chunks of cuts is that suffered by low-paid workers through attacks on Tax Credits, including Working Tax Credits. A horrendous £4.5billion is to be robbed off some of the poorest-paid this year alone.

OSBORNE STEALS OUR INCOMES - AND OUR LANGUAGE
But that's where Osborne the ruthless thief becomes Osborne the shameless liar. To distract and confuse those outraged at his daylight robbery of the incomes of workers, students, disabled people, young people and parents, he perpetrates the monstrous lie that "Britain needs a pay rise and Britain is getting a pay rise". Stealing not only our incomes, but also our language, he then plays dirty, disgraceful tricks with the term 'Living Wage'.
To unmask his lies, it's useful to recap a few simple facts - which even some who hate the Tories with justified loathing don't always remember or make plain for all to see and understand.

A FEW VITAL FACTS
The current National Minimum Wage is £6.50 an hour - once you're aged 21. It's set to rise to £6.70 this October. And, crucially, it's legally enforceable.
The current Living Wage Foundation figure for a Living Wage is £7.85 an hour. It will be uprated in November. It's a huge deal better than the legal National Minimum Wage, and therefore very welcome. But it has two crucial flaws.
The best known weakness is that it's entirely voluntary, optional, not legally enforceable, left to the whims and fancies of employers. Which helps to explain why only 200 employers in Scotland have volunteered to sign up to be Accredited Living Wage Employers, most of them smaller employers, affecting only a tiny minority of workers. That's why the SSP has always fought for a legally enforced living minimum wage.

£7.85 IS NOT A REAL LIVING WAGE!
The second profound weakness of the current Living Wage is known by hardly anyone! In fact it's an admission that £7.85 is not a genuine Living Wage at all. Because the figure calculated for the Living Wage Foundation is based on a very important assumption: it assumes the full uptake of all forms of in-work benefits, including Tax Credits and Housing Benefit. Otherwise, its own authors admit, it would have to be far, far higher. To give one example of this: if it wasn't for the top-ups assumed in the Living Wage figure, today's London Living Wage would not be £9.15 but almost exactly £12-an-hour.

GIDEON GIVETH, GIDEON TAKETH AWAY!
There's the rub, the essence of the God almighty lie perpetrated by Osborne and the Tories. It's a Biblical case of Gideon giveth, and Gideon taketh away!!
Osborne manufactured media headlines - in a masterly distraction ploy from his slaughter of benefits and wages - by talking of 'a National Living Wage' of £7.20 by April 2016, with "an ambition of this rising to £9 by 2020". None of the media seems to mention that weasel phrase "an ambition".
But leaving that for now, one key point is that £7.20 next April is a mere 50p up on the impending National Minimum Wage, in itself derisory.
Furthermore it is well below the current 'Living Wage' of £7.85, even before that is uprated this November.
Perhaps most telling of all, it disguises the theft of Tax Credits which will mean low-paid workers will lose, not gain, from Osborne's sham 'National Living Wage'.
To quote a few initial calculations by various economists in the wake of the Budget baloney about "Britain getting a pay rise".
A couple, with two kids, both working full-time on the current £6.50 minimum wage would gain £1,560 in wages, but lose £2,200 in Tax Credits.
Two workers, both earning £9.25 an hour, with two kids, would be £850 a year worse off.
A family with two at work, currently earning £20,000, would have a fall in their income of £2,057 a year.
A single parent now earning a pathetic £10,000 would lose £1,455 of that under Osborne's deceitful package.

DON'T DARE BE UNDER 25!
And those are just sample figures for workers who qualify for his grossly misnamed 'National Living Wage' by dint of being aged 25 or more! Over two million workers under the age of 25 are to be denied the Tories' bountiful 'increase' - but will be hammered, like older workers, by cuts to Tax Credits.
Far from being a recipe for 'a high wage economy', this Budget is amongst other things a recipe for replacement of older workers by those under 25 as a source of dirt-cheap labour.

£10 NOW! - FOR ALL AT 16
The SSP has never favored a pathetically low, legal national minimum wage. Nor have we restricted our fight to support for a voluntary, unenforceable 'Living Wage' - especially one which is not actually a genuine living wage at all, since it depends on top-ups, which in turn come out of the pockets of workers' taxes.
Since our formation, the SSP has demanded a decent living minimum wage, legally enforced, based on the formula of two-thirds male median earnings. I've expanded on this case in many previous articles. In 2015 figures that means we demand a national minimum wage of £10, here and now.
And critically, the SSP's demand has always been that this applies to all workers and apprentices aged 16 and over. Not the over-21s as applies now. Not the over-25s as Osborne plans. And not accompanied by cuts to in-work benefits.
The fact is, a £10 minimum, right now in 2015, not five years hence, would constitute a genuine living income, and is the level required to remove reliance on state top-ups, which constitute a £30billion annual subsidy to bosses who pay their workers peanuts in pursuit of ever-higher profits.
The trade union movement and socialists need to cut through the crap perpetrated by the Tories on this issue, and mobilize workers in struggle for a living minimum wage of £10 now, for all over 16, with equal pay for women.
The Budget is enough to make anyone's blood boil in anger at the bitter class war by the rich it represents. But it should also put fire in our bellies and steel in our resolve to fight back.

CALMAC FERRIES: SOLD DOWN THE RIVER?

CalMac ferry workers - members of the Rail, Maritime and Transport workers' union (RMT) - are taking industrial action in defence of their pensions, jobs, conditions of work - and against privatisation by the Scottish government, who seem set to hand the publicly-owned CalMac ferries over to the private, profiteering Serco.

They start with an overtime ban, followed by a 24-hour strike.

The workers run lifeline services to remote communities on the Clyde and Hebrides CalMac ferries.

These RMT members deserve and need the solidarity of every worker in Scotland.

They are themselves often members of the island communities who depend on these lifeline services. They are dedicated and hardworking, going out in all weather, and have only resorted to this action because of the threat to the services they provide as well as the jobs and conditions they've gained through collective union efforts.

SWEEPING MAJORITIES FOR STRIKE

They decided on this course of action by sweeping majorities in a ballot of RMT members, who make up about 680 of the 1,400-strong workforce. In a decisive 60% turnout, on a two-question ballot, 98% of them voted in favour of industrial action short of strike action, and 92% in favour of strikes. Even if the Tories' vicious hurdles against the right of workers to withdraw their labour had already been made law, there would still be a legal majority for the action!

That in itself illustrates the strength of feeling of a workforce that has tried every other option to get guarantees on their pensions and against compulsory redundancies. 

PAWNS IN PRIVATISATION PLANS

They feel they are pawns in a completely unnecessary exercise by the Scottish government, who say they are obliged to put the contract out to tender under European Union rules. 

As the RMT rightly say, it appears the SNP government hasn't even tried to challenge these EU regulations, let alone confront them head-on in defence of the vital public services these ferries provide to the island communities, or in defence of the workforce. So much for 'a strong voice for Scotland'!

PRIVATISATION OF NORTHERN ISLES FERRIES 

And the same SNP government, for all its talk of 'standing up for Scotland', has form.

Back in May 2012, the Northern Isles ferry service was privatized by the Scottish government, who handed the £350m contract to private company Serco, in preference to the bid by public sector CalMac. 

Now, the Shetland Times has revealed that CalMac's tender, which was believed to be cheaper than Serco's, was returned unopened by Transport Scotland, an arm of the Scottish government!

The SNP government boosted the public subsidy to Serco by about £40m, a 20% increase. 

The Serco contract led to redundancies, and a threat to workers' pensions, which was only withdrawn after RMT members voted overwhelmingly to strike. 

BEHIND VOTERS' BACKS 

Now the £1billion contract for Clyde and Hebrides CalMac ferries has been put out to tender by the same government - seeking a contract for eight years from October 2016.

The RMT and the other ferry unions are deeply concerned, and suspicious that this amounts to plans to privatize that ferry service too - but with the announcement delayed until after the May 2016 Scottish elections! A cynical attempt at backdoor privatisation, behind the backs of voters.

And workers' conditions are again threatened, which has provoked the RMT members' strikes.

RMT STRIKER SPEAKS OUT

Three weeks ago, I spoke to an RMT member with the Clyde and Hebrides ferries about the issues at stake. 

"Since last December we've had meetings of the STUC and the four trade unions involved - RMT, Unite, Nautilus and TSSA - with the government and sought guarantees on job security, conditions of service and pensions off the companies tendering for the Clyde and Hebrides ferry service. 

"We thought we'd reached an agreement we could live with, but then we were told the Scottish government would only underwrite our pensions if the Pension scheme was reformed by the end 2015. 

"We had written to CalMac earlier, insisting on written guarantees on job security through no compulsory redundancies, defence of conditions and no change to the pensions without union agreement. They gave no guarantees, and on the back of that we met with Keith Brown and Derek Mackay from the Scottish government - we are meeting them again this week.

"We will be telling them the demands on us are totally unacceptable. 

"One big issue is pensions. They've given us only 6 months to reform the pension scheme. And the reforms they are demanding are that our contributions increase from 6% to 9.5%; that the pension is tied to the state retirement age, meaning we could be working until we're 68; and that it is downgraded from a Final Salary to a Career Average scheme. So we're being asked to pay more, work longer, and get less when we retire! 

"Against our better judgement, the CalMac ferries were put out to tender. The government hoped for at least five companies bidding for the tender, but nobody is interested because there's a clawback of some of the profits to the government. So the only two companies tendering are CalMac and Serco. 

"We don't think Serco are fit to bid for a public service contract, given their financial state and their track record with the Northern Isles ferries and Caledonia sleepers. 

"It looks to us as if CalMac is being set up for privatisation. Because both CalMac and the unions had a gun put to their heads, giving us just 6 months to reform the pension scheme, so that when that doesn't happen they can claim CalMac is not fit to run the service. 

"And CalMac at the moment seems to be run by consultants on £1,400 to £1,500 a day - overruling directors on over £100,000 a year! Something's not right. 

"This doesn't add up to the alleged Memorandum of Understanding between the Scottish government and the STUC!"

MESSAGES OF SOLIDARITY 

Send messages of solidarity to the Calmac strikers via richieventon@hotmail.com and I will send them to the workers striking back for all of us.

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.

LAY SIEGE TO SCOTTISH TORIES AS THEY DECLARE BUTCHERY!

JOIN SSP DEFIANCE DEMOS AGAINST TORY DICTATORSHIP ON DAY OF TORY QUEEN'S SPEECH

Wednesday 27th May

Several locations - at TORY offices across Scotland - including Glasgow, Ayr, Hamilton, Edinburgh, Arbroath, Inverurie, Paisley 

The SSP is staging a coordinated series of protests outside Tory party headquarters and Tory MSP's offices across Scotland this Wednesday, 27th May, as the new Tory government announces its Queen's Speech.

The Tories have absolutely no mandate to announce their butchery of benefits, slaughter of services, and wipe-out of workers' rights with an effective ban on the right to organise unions or strike. 

Across the UK, 63% of people voted against them. 

In Scotland, only a minuscule 10% of registered voters actually voted Tory. 

Yet they plan (amongst other butchery) to slash Working Tax Credits, young people's housing benefits, Carers' Allowances, 1.9 million public sector jobs, and impose dictatorial obstacles to workers' unions, to prevent working people fighting back.

The SSP appeals to local people to join us in a show of defiance against Tory dictatorship. 

Join our peaceful protests on Wednesday to send the Tory butchers a clear message: hands off our benefits, jobs and workplace rights - we refuse to bow down to your dictatorship!

And we appeal to the trade union movement to defy the Tories head-on. It's better to break bad anti-union laws than let the Tories break workers' backs!

Scotland has just witnessed a landslide vote to fight Tory austerity. The SSP is demanding powers for the Scottish parliament to halt and reverse Tory welfare cuts; introduce a Scottish £10 minimum wage for all over 16, and repeal all anti-union laws.

Wednesday's protests are just for starters! 

Let the defiance of Tory dictatorship begin as they declare vicious class war in Westminster on Wednesday in their Queen's Speech.

ELECTORAL UPRISING: NOW DEFY TORY DICTATORSHIP

Words fail to adequately convey the enormity of the political revolution witnessed in the General Election.

An unprecedented tsunami of support for the SNP swept all before it, winning 50% of all votes cast. Labour plunged to its worst election result in Scotland since 1918. The treacherous LibDems were wiped out, with the loss of 4 million votes, in punishment for their collaboration with the Tories the past 5 years.

But the results at UK level could not have been more profoundly different from those in Scotland - setting us on a collision course with the Westminster Tory dictatorship that will hasten the day when Scotland demands outright independence.

TOO LEFT WING?!

To judge what the people of Scotland need to do now, we first need to look at a few myths and fundamental features of the outright majority for Cameron's Tories, the cataclysmic downfall of Labour's 50-year domination over Scotland, and the sweeping parliamentary conquest by the SNP.

Some, including Tony Blair, David Miliband and competitors for Labour leader since Ed Miliband's resignation, have argued Labour was too left wing for England; that they need to woo 'the aspirational middle class' to compete with the Tories. Their underlying idea is that England has swung to the right. That is far too simplistic, and downright dangerous in its implications.

NO TORY LANDSLIDE

For starters, the Tories did not win some landslide mandate for their plan of brutality against the working class, benefits and basic rights; 63% of those who actually went to the polling stations voted against them.

They only got 24.4% of the total electorate. Their share of the vote crept up a minuscule 0.4%. They gained 26 of their seats from the spectacular, richly deserved collapse of the LibDems, especially in South West England.

There is a vast variation in voting patterns across the regions of England. In the richest South, with half the population and half the seats, the Tories gained from their relentless propaganda about their success with the economy, and critically the doubts of voters about the economic competence of Miliband and Labour. In areas of substantial opulence, this message fell on fertile ground. Significantly, in areas of multiple deprivation, like London itself, the Tories were rejected - but they won in rich suburban outskirts of the city.

PLAYING WITH ENGLISH NATIONALISM

The Tories abandoned all hope of winning Scotland, and stooped to unscrupulous anti-Scottish propaganda, with their scaremongering about a minority Labour government being in the pocket of the SNP, stirring up resentment amongst a minority in parts of England who already feel hard done by. But they only got away with this because of the abject failure of Labour to challenge the fundamental Tory narrative.

Labour more or less stood still in its share of the vote, creeping up by 1.4%, winning 10 seats off the Tories, but losing 8 to them elsewhere. After 5 years of savagery by Cameron's regime that is abject failure. And it's not because Labour was "too left wing for England"!

LABOUR FAILED TO INSPIRE

For decades - going back to the 1980s - Labour has abandoned its working class roots and origins, seeking to woo 'Middle England'. Even during the election campaign, including on TV debates, they emphasized their agreement with the Tories on the need for austerity cuts; hardly a message to inspire people to dump the Tories in favour of a Tory-lite Labour. They stumbled around, trying too little, too late, to win back workers' votes with half-hearted promises on 'tackling exploitative Zero Hours Contracts'; raising the minimum wage to an £8 level it would reach through inflation anyway by 2020; a mansion tax to fund NHS investment; a one-off tax on bankers' bonuses; a temporary freeze on energy prices. Significantly, it was when they highlighted these mild measures against bankers, rip-off energy companies and the obscenely rich that Miliband's and Labour's ratings temporarily improved in the polls.

But after their record in government, easily recalled at least by voters over 30, these belated whispers of reforms were drowned out by their noisy promises of austerity cuts, which meant large numbers in England who told the pollsters they'd vote Labour actually stayed at home and didn't vote at all. The overall turnout in England was 65%, compared to poll predictions of 74%.

WORST OF BOTH WORLDS

In a sense Labour got the worst of both worlds: they enraged the very rich with their milk-and-water measures against bankers, mansion-dwellers and energy multinationals, but failed to inspire millions of working class people that they meant business, in terms of radical redistribution of wealth that would transform the lives of those suffering the savagery of Cameron. And when Miliband effectively said he'd rather let the Tories win than join forces with the SNP to lock out Cameron, that not only sealed Labour's fate in Scotland, but repelled many potential Labour voters in England too.

ANTI-AUSTERITY APPEAL

As part of their indescribable surge in Scotland, the SNP also attracted the support of substantial numbers of English voters, precisely because in the TV debates Nicola Sturgeon spoke of being 'anti-austerity'. In fact, not only did I hear people in England ask on radio phone-ins whether they could vote SNP or join the SNP, but in some polls the SNP won 9% - in England and Wales!!

The anti-austerity message also chimed with the 1.1 million in England who voted for the Greens.

SCOTLAND'S BALLOT BOX REBELLION

It was this anti-austerity message that was key to the SNP's historically incomparable landslide here in Scotland. They battered Labour mercilessly, with swings from 20% to 40%. In large part, the 1.4 million votes for the SNP was a continuation of the 1.6 million who voted Yes in the referendum, with the SNP seizing a near-monopoly of the Yes vote, because those thwarted last September saw the SNP as the main vehicle to get the self-government they voted for. So despite Nicola Sturgeon repeatedly saying this was not a vote about independence - both during and since the election - in part it indisputably was. But only in part.

CORRUPT, REMOTE LABOUR DUMPED

The SNP won over ex-Labour voters who had voted Yes, but also many who had voted No. Partly by denying this was about independence; partly by reflecting the desire for more devolution with their slogan of a 'Stronger Voice for Scotland'; partly as an anti-Tory vote as Cameron whipped up xenophobic anti-Scottish scaremongering; but above all due to their anti-austerity theme. And the SNP were the overwhelming beneficiaries of a revolution in consciousness against a Scottish Labour machine that was rightly seen as remote, corrupt, and having inexcusably spent two years in bed with the Tories in the Referendum campaign.

The SNP's was both an anti-Tory and anti-Labour vote, but especially a vote for change, for an end to austerity.

TORY CLASS WAR LAUNCHED

After the euphoria of crushing Labour comes the reality check for all those who've invested their hopes of change in the SNP and 'Nicola'. What issues loom, and what will the 56 'Strong Voices for Scotland' do about it?

Despite the hard facts about 63% voting against them, Cameron's Tories feel immensely emboldened in their mission to destroy the remnants of the welfare state, which they ideologically detest. They imagine they have a popular mandate to carry out crucifying austerity cuts, which within days of being elected they've said will be fast-tracked, with the £30billion public spending cuts carried through in two years rather than three. Cameron has hopes of an immediate 100-day blitz. Before the election the Tories feared their plans would need to be watered down under a Coalition deal. But now they can let the dogs of class war off their leashes.

WELFARE BENEFITS WARFARE

Within that overall butchery is the £12billion cuts to welfare benefits, clobbering some for the poorest to satiate the appetites of the new influx of Tory MPs. Plans leaked or announced include means testing unemployment benefits; limiting Child Benefit to the first two children; taxing Disability Living Allowance and Personal Indpendence Payments; removal of housing benefit for young people; reduction of the benefit cap for any household from £26,000 to £23,000. They hope to slash the numbers getting Carers' Allowance by 40 per cent. And if anyone falsely imagines it's only those unfortunate enough to fall sick, be disabled or simply unemployed that are in the Tories' gunsights, think again; the reactionary outfit that Cameron had the gall to label 'the party of working people' plans to rob £3.8billion off Tax Credits, which low-paid workers rely on to survive.

PUBLIC SECTOR DESTRUCTION

Vicious measures like the Bedroom Tax will be implemented in full.

In brutal contrast to this systematic robbery off millions, with the claim it's 'necessary to wipe out the deficit by 2018', Trident will be renewed next March, at a cost of £100billion.

Savage cuts to departmental spending on jobs and services include councils and fire brigades, and NHS privatisation is set to rocket.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies predicts that the Tories' plans will wipe out 1.3 million public sector jobs by 2019. The same IFS reckon self-employed jobs (average earnings currently £10,000 a year!) will exceed public sector jobs by 2018. Zero Hours Contracts and insecure temporary jobs will let rip even more than before 7 May.

SMASHING THE UNIONS

And as an integral part of this plan to rob millions on behalf of the millionaires, the Tories have already made clear their determination to effectively wipe out trade union rights. They've already priced workers out of any semblance of justice with their 2013 introduction of fees for Employment Tribunals, starting with a minimum of £1,200. Now the new Tory Business Secretary, Sajid Javid, has announced that the Queens Speech on 27 May will include plans to make it virtually impossible to take strike action on jobs, wages or workplace victimization. They will pass laws that require a 50% turnout in any union ballot for action, plus a threshold of at least 40% of those eligible to vote - not 40% of those voting, but of all members.

And to establish even harsher dictatorship of big business over workers, they will also lift the current ban on the use of Agency workers to scab on strikes, so they can dragoon workers suffering terrible job insecurity to help undermine other workers' wages and conditions. This Scabs' Charter runs alongside the Snoopers' Charter planned, giving frightening powers to the police and secret services to spy on people's emails, texts and social media.

CHOICES FOR THE SNP 56

So what will the 56 SNP MPs need to do in the face of such wholesale butchery, which flies in the teeth of everything Scottish voters gave the SNP a mandate to pursue?

As the third-largest party at Westminster, the SNP carry the hopes of millions of Scots on their shoulders for stiff resistance to the Tory austerity which the SNP spoke out against during the election.

They've spoken about how they are there to be constructive, not to destroy. Of course they should use every parliamentary committee, every Westminster debate, every Prime Minister's Question Time to expose and oppose the scorched earth policies of the Tories towards benefits, jobs, public services, workers' rights, civil liberties, and against Trident renewal.

But they face a stark, simple choice: even if they convince some or all of the other opposition MPs to vote with them against Tory measures, they will still lose the parliamentary vote, and then either mobilize 'extra-parliamentary' mass movements, or end up impotent as a minority at Westminster.

When Labour had 50 Scottish MPs in the late-1980s/90s, they were dubbed the 'Feeble 50' for their refusal to lead a movement of mass non-payment of the Tory poll tax, imposed by Thatcher's parliamentary majority. The same fate awaits the SNP 56 if they were to repeat that failure to use their elected authority to spearhead mass movements on the streets, in workplaces and communities against what is probably an even more savage package of attacks than those of Thatcher.

MORE POWERS

The SNP have made the welcome demand for far more powers to be devolved to Scotland, including welfare, income tax, the minimum wage, employment law, business tax.

Cameron is likely to make at least some concessions on powers in the face of the SNP tidal wave, in the hope of not becoming 'the last Prime Minister of the UK'. It's not the most likely scenario, but you couldn't even rule out some version of 'Full Fiscal Automony' being granted by the Tories, as a device to let the SNP government carry out its own cuts, thereby undermining the attraction of independence!

MASS DEFIANCE - OR DEVOLVED BUTCHERY?

But serious questions need to be pondered by the 1.4 million who entrusted the SNP to oppose austerity - and especially the 80,000 new members who stampeded into the SNP to fight austerity and win full independence: are the SNP leadership going to lead a mass movement to defy and defeat the Tory butchery, or just make fine speeches in parliament and then pass on the cuts whilst blaming the Tories?

Will the SNP government at Holyrood refuse to pass down cuts to the Scottish budget from Westminster, and mobilize the newly awakened masses in a huge movement to win back our stolen £billions in defence of every job, service and pay packet? Or will they continue what they've done for the last four years, devolving about £4billion of Tory/LibDem Coalition cuts to colleges, councils, and public sector workers?

Will the SNP demand powers over employment law so as to repeal every single anti-union law on the statute books? And to replace them with a Charter of Workers' Rights, including the right to strike, and to take solidarity action with fellow-workers, even when the strike is deemed 'political'? Certainly they've never promised to do so up until now. Yet that is the minimum required in the face of Cameron's onslaught.

When they call for control over business taxes to be devolved, all their past policies suggest this would be in order to cut even further the taxes on profits paid by big business, rather than restore Corporation Tax to its pre-Thatcher 50 per cent level, as demanded by the SSP.

SOCIALIST PRINCIPLES MATTER

The SNP is at best a party that fuses civic nationalism, neo-liberal capitalist economic policies and social democratic reforms. It was the latter that mostly won them the landslide; they were better at being the old-style Labour than Miliband and Murphy's Labour Party ever could be. They are not, and never have been, a socialist party - contrary to the thousands of self-declared socialists who recently joined them.

And that's where the ideology and principles of a political party are critical. Without a socialist vision and mission they are not driven by the aim of fundamentally ending the rule of big business and the economic policies that follow.

They claim to be anti-austerity, but their 'modest spending plan' of 0.5% per annum would leave intact at least 15% cuts to the public sector already imposed by Westminster. And try telling council workers in authorities they control, or FE college students, that the SNP is anti-austerity!

BREAK THE ANTI-UNION LAWS

The looming Juggernaut of cuts by Cameron spells disaster unless a mass movement is mobilized to resist, defy and defeat the Tory Mission to Destroy.

As STUC general secretary Grahame Smith rightly wrote in the Sunday Herald, "Democracy is about more than politicians and parliaments...the unions are well placed to provide a legitimate and effective voice if the Tories' cruel plans are to be thwarted".

He also wrote: "New anti-union laws will be fiercely resisted and, if they remove our democratic right to organise, broken."

That's precisely the spirit that needs to become decisive action, and without prevarication.

Mass demos to garner public opposition to the cuts by a Tory government with absolutely no mandate in Scotland should be called the STUC, with or without the active support of the SNP 56.

These could build confidence for more decisive action, including coordinated strike days and civil disobedience, such as community occupations of threatened facilities.

Such mobilizations outside parliament should be used to pound the MPs, MSPs and councillors - whether SNP or what remains of Labour - to defy Westminster's cuts, set No Cuts Defiance budgets when the time comes at Scottish and local authority levels, and mount a struggle of the increasingly expectant Scottish working class to win back the funding off Westminster, rather than simply make parliamentary opposition speeches and then surrender to the inbuilt Tory majority.

STOP PROPPING UP LABOUR

Politically, the unions in Scotland need to stop propping up the bankrupt project that is Labour. We were told to reject independence last year and get 'social justice with a Labour government' in 2015. That's failed, utterly.

We've seen attempts by the biggest of all unions, UNITE, to drag Labour back to the left. That's proven utterly futile.

We now see a rising chorus of demands for Labour to return to undiluted Blairism, to appeal to 'the aspiring middle class'.

It's about time the union leaderships broke from these failed attempts to reclaim a party that is a shell, dominated by pro-capitalist place-seekers, with a Scottish Labour leader about as popular as herpes. They should instead combine with the SSP and all genuine socialists to build a mass, working class, socialist party to stand up for Scotland's working class majority population - not the ephemeral 'aspiring middle class'.

SECOND REFERENDUM

There's been an electoral mass uprising for change, sweeping change. But to tackle the underlying causes of austerity cuts, we need not only taxation powers, but the powers and political will to take the banks, energy giants, transport companies, construction and big business into democratic public ownership. That's why the socialist vision and socialist policies of the SSP are more indispensable than ever.

And rather than succumb to another five years of escalated class war from a Tory dictatorship at Westminster with absolutely no mandate in Scotland, we need to call for a mandate in the 2016 Scottish parliament elections for a second Referendum - and demand that the SNP leadership do likewise.

FROM BALLOT BOX TO THE STREETS

The political landscape has been transformed by an incredible movement through the ballot box. But to implement and achieve the aspirations of those who swept the SNP into the hallowed chambers of Westminster, we need a mass movement on the streets, in the workplaces and communities against Tory class-driven atrocities. It's mass movements that bring about real change; witness the downfall of the hated poll tax and its architect Maggie Thatcher, which founders of the SSP helped spearhead.

The unprecedented mass movement for change through the ballot box lays the foundations for a campaign of mass defiance on the streets against Tory dictatorship. The alternative is unthinkable.

After the General Election: FOR WORKERS' ACTION, not pleas to capitalist politicians

The woman serving me a coffee at the STUC Conference in Ayr racecourse spoke volumes in a short chat. After asking where I was from, and me explaining I was representing the SSP, she said: "I've always been from a Labour family, but I don't know who to vote for. I can't stand Labour, but I'll never vote SNP. I don't trust Nicola Sturgeon," she added in a whisper, as if in fear of upsetting polite society. 

But her most telling comment was her parting shot, after we exchanged views and experiences of low pay in retail and catering. "No matter which of them wins I'll still have to come to work on the 8th of May."

Do any of the main parties represent workers?

The election and media circus will move on, but reality will remain for the working class majority: the struggle to survive on poverty pay, Zero Hours Contracts, part-time and insecure jobs, and the ongoing brutality of savage cuts to vital public services.

WORKING CLASS

But the potential power of the working class to change all that is reflected in the language of the competing parties. Back in the 1990s the fabulously rich Tony Blair declared "Now we are all middle class"! In the 2015 General Election, all manner of political parties have suddenly discovered the need to harp on endlessly about "hard working people" and how much their rival brands of capitalist visions 'represent' us.

Even the Tories shamelessly claimed to be "the party of working people". 

Jim Murphy and Ed Milband have borrowed their spin doctors' phrases, e.g. "Scotland succeeds when working people succeed". 

The SNP bid for traditional Labour voters with talk of being "the voice of working people", alongside their central slogan of "standing up for Scotland."

Looking beyond May 7th, workers (and their unions) need to cut through the fog of slick spin and vague promises, and get back to basics. Those joining the annual May Day celebrations of international workers' solidarity need to recall the fundamental features of the society we live in, and how workers internationally have ever won any improvements in life, living standards and rights.

TWO SCOTLANDS

The SSP quite consciously entitled our Election Manifesto "Standing up for Scotland's Working Class Majority."

We are courageous enough to tell the truth. There are two Scotlands, divided by a chasm of class differences.

The Scotland of the richest 100 with combined wealth of £25billion, and the Scotland of 5 million others depending on £30billion from Westminster's block grant budget for the Scottish government to provide jobs and services.

The Scotland where 432 landowners have grabbed half the nation's land, including arable land, and the Scotland of food banks, where 100,000 (36,000 of them children) rely on food handouts to avert starvation.

The Scotland of millionaires like Brian Souter who fund the SNP from the fortune gained through privatisation of transport, and the Scotland of workers socially isolated because they can't afford the fares.

There is a party for the Working class in Scotland...

CLASS

Class is at the heart of society. Class exploitation is the very nature of capitalism. Soaring profits are sourced from the unpaid labour of the working class. 

It requires collective organisation and collective action by the working class majority to overcome that exploitation, that class division, where the richest 10% of Scots own 20 times the combined wealth of the poorest 30%.

Yes, we need to demand the maximum reforms and redistribution of wealth from the millionaires to the millions through whatever combination of parties takes over the reins on May 8th. And the seismic upheaval of Labour being swept aside by an SNP that stands a bit to their left will immensely increase expectations of radical wealth transfers from the rich to the rest of us.

But to secure that requires lighting bonfires beneath their backsides, with rallies, demos and even strike action, or it won't happen - because every single one of the parties likely to be in that government ultimately stands up for big business, for capitalist Britain or capitalist Scotland - not for the working class who produce the wealth of goods and services. 

It's wise to not forget the basics.

The class system - your life in their exploitative hands...

BIDDING WAR ON WAGES

The growing clamour for an end to poverty pay, the modern plague of working people, has forced the rival parties into a bidding war - for votes.

The hateful, upper-class Tories claim the minimum wage will 'naturally' rise to £8 by 2020. 

Labour promises an £8 minimum, with whispered asides "by 2020" - which would make it virtually no rise at all on today's pitiful £6.50.

The SNP have very belatedly gone beyond - or at least given the appearance of going beyond - their previous mantra of "supporting the Living Wage", £7.85. That cleverly appeals to workers desperate for a pay rise, without upsetting big business, because the Living Wage is entirely voluntary! Now, to outbid Labour, they've declared for an £8.70 minimum wage, but again not until 2020. In reality that would be less than today's £7.85 Living Wage, although with the saving grace of being legally enforced.

£10 NOW!

Standing out from all this noise about what they'll do for us in five years' time, the SSP has unequivocally demanded a living minimum wage, legally enforced, of £10 NOW, in 2015. Based on the modest formula of two-thirds median male wages. The other critical difference is that we demand it for all workers and apprentices over 16, whereas both Labour and the SNP would retain the monstrous age discrimination of lower youth rates.

Read the latest Scottish Socialist Voice HERE

WHAT'S NOT EXPLOITATIVE ABOUT THEM?

The same milk-and-water promises are made into headlines by Labour and the SNP on the modern serfdom that is Zero Hours Contracts. 

Both of them repeatedly talk of "tackling", or "clamping down", on what both Labour and SNP insist on calling "exploitative Zero Hours Contracts".

When are they not exploitative? Why not just pledge to abolish the lot, and bring in secure contracts with guaranteed hours, full-time or part-time?

Labour has elaborated that they will introduce a system where after 12 weeks of regular hours worked, that would become the contract hours. But what's to stop employers dodging such 'regular hours', or simply shedding workers and replacing them after 12 weeks - like the avoidance tactics used towards improved agency workers' rights?

The truth is that it's only because some unions and the likes of the SSP have spearheaded persistent campaigns demanding £10 NOW, and outright abolition of Zero Hours Contracts, that these mainstream parties have gone as far as they have. 

And the underlying reality is that only collective action by workers, up to and including strike action, will enforce either a decent living wage or secure job contracts for all.

WORKERS' RIGHTS NOT MENTIONED!

That's where the strangling repression of workplace rights - the most vicious anti-union laws in Europe - play their part in holding down workers' conditions. Which makes it all the more significant that in contrast to the noisy bidding war of words between Labour and SNP over wages, there is deafening silence from both of them on repealing the anti-union laws - invented by Thatcher's Tory governments of the 1980s, fully retained by Labour from 1997-2010, and made substantially worse since by the Tory/LibDem Coalition.

It is no accident that wages as a share of national wealth, GDP, peaked in 1975. That was an era of massive union membership and several waves of strike action for better wages. The reign of terror of the last 30 years has reversed that process, leaving wages at their lowest share of GDP on record. 

It is no accident that inequality was at its lowest when 83% of workers were covered by collective bargaining, through their unions, whereas inequality is now at its worst, when only 23% are covered.

STRIKES IN THE USA

Workers learn from international experience too. In the heart of the capitalist beast, the USA, wages have plummeted since the 1970s. For most of that time, labor union leaders capitulated, merely begging the capitalist Democrats to be their friends. 

Since 2012, a wave of courageous actions have been taken by brutally low-paid workers in the fast food and retail sectors. Several strike days and protest marches by Walmart workers and fast food staff have won more concessions on wages from their multinational employers than 40 years of pleading by union bureaucrats. 

Wednesday 15th April saw the biggest fastfood strike in history with 60,000 workers involved in over 200 cities, demanding a minimum wage of $15 (£10). Walmart recently conceded $10 and McDonald's pledged to beat each state minimum wage by $1 an hour. Cities like Seattle and Chicago have agreed to phase in $15.

INTERNATIONAL LESSONS

So as we head for the ballot box, and march on May Day events, working class Scots should take inspiration from the struggles of our own past, and the present struggles of fellow workers in the USA. They have defied anti-union laws, taken militant action, marched for decent wages, and at least won substantial concessions. 

Those are the methods of struggle, the collective action, that will be required to squeeze something out of whatever government is elected, and off the unelected, obscenely overpaid boardroom bosses of companies whose whole source of profit is the wages they don't pay workers.

REIGN OF TERROR

The anti-union laws have been instrumental in enforcing a reign of terror on the 'shopfloor' in recent decades. That's why they need to be repealed, and replaced with a Charter of Workers' Rights. 

That's why those workers rightly abandoning the Labour Party that long ago abandoned them, should not in turn be blinded by the SNP's kindly rhetoric.

Not once, ever, has the SNP or Nicola Sturgeon pledged to dismantle the anti-union laws. 

They make welcome noises about "embracing the unions", "respecting the unions' voices", "recognizing the value of collective bargaining". 

Compared with Labour, both in words and deeds during 13 years of Labour government, this is very welcome, and sounds "progressive", to use Nicola's current buzz word. But it's mostly all candlelight and mood music, a wooing of the working class, with no sharp, defining, concrete measures to guarantee workers' rights and ability to organise collective action. 

SOCIAL PARTNERSHIP

It's very akin to the Social Contract of 1970s Labour governments, with their talk of partnership between employers, unions and government, denying the fundamentals of conflicting interests between the profiteers and the workers who produce the profits. 

That ended in massive strikes by the lowest-paid, and massive disillusionment with Labour, as prices and profits rose like a rocket, whilst wages fell like a stick.

WORKERS' ACTION

Post-election, workers need to organise in action for a living minimum wage, secure jobs, redistribution of wealth, resistance to escalated austerity cuts, and workplace rights - with collective action, where necessary in defiance of the anti-union laws concocted to help the capitalist minority rob wages and public services off the working class majority.

Workers will need to organise and demand concessions from a government that will be in crisis, as the ruling-class panic at the demise of their most reliable prop in the working class - Labour. Not as spectators at an election circus - heavily populated by clowns and opportunist politicians juggling words and principles - but as the one reliable active force for change and progress. 

The socialists of the SSP will continue to stand up for and with the working class majority in pursuit of a fundamental redistribution of wealth and power. We will not plead for crumbs off the capitalist politicians, but advocate and take workers' action to win a decent life for the likes of the woman at the STUC coffee bar. No matter who wins on 7 May, we will be back to work for socialism on the 8th!