What a stinking mess!
Working men and women either allowed or were duped into setting back
while Strongmen took control of the Labor Unions. Back when I was
young, Dave Beck wormed his way to the top of the Teamsters and played
footsie with the corporate bosses with his "Sweetheart" contracts.
Even as the corporations were buying the loyalty of union bosses, they
mounted an attack charging that labor unions were hotbeds of
Communists, dedicated to the overthrow of the government.
Years later, when I was a Union member, working for the department of
services for the blind, I noticed that our agency, some 78 employees
strong, had only one person attending union meetings on a regular
basis. There is some physics law about vacuums needing to be filled.
In the case of empty union meeting halls, the vacuum was filled by
self-serving individuals.
We Working Class folk have only ourselves to blame...with a little
bit of help from Corporate CEO's.
Carl Jarvis
On 6/28/15, Roger Loran Bailey <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/06/22/aust-j22.html
Only socialism and class struggle can end austerity
By the Socialist Equality Party (UK)
22 June 2015
The newly re-elected Conservative government is intent on imposing a
yet-more devastating offensive against jobs, wages and essential welfare
and social services on which millions of people depend.
The Tories are committed to slashing £15 billion in welfare cuts, as
part of an additional £38 billion in cuts. They are to extend the right
to buy to housing association tenants in a move that will eliminate most
of what remains of social housing.
Next month, Chancellor George Osborne will outline an immediate £12
billion in spending cuts across all departments including the National
Health Service and schools.
However, this is only the beginning.
Osborne has complained, “We have got 1 percent of the world's
population, 4 percent of its GDP, but we undertake 7 percent of the
world's welfare spending” and that this is “unsustainable”.
What is planned for the UK is to plunge workers into the appalling
levels of poverty now prevailing in Greece. After five years of the most
savage attacks and the biggest decline in living standards seen outside
of wartime, Greece now faces fresh demands for escalating cuts—targeting
workers who have seen their incomes slashed by 40 percent, and who face
mass unemployment and the denial of basic services such as healthcare.
Look at Greece and see the future planned for Britain and the rest of
Europe. Millions of people want to fight back against this offensive
being mounted on behalf of the super-rich, the banks and corporations.
But they will not find this under the programme and leadership offered
by the People’s Assembly.
The People’s Assembly is led by political apologists for the trade
unions and for the Labour Party. Together these organisations have
demobilised every single struggle against the destruction of jobs, wages
and essential social services and have handed power back to the
Conservatives thanks to these betrayals. The other main political
beneficiaries have been the Scottish National Party (SNP).
After the Conservatives were first elected in 2010, it took a year until
a national demonstration was called by the Trades Union Congress. The
unions then sold out one strike after another, including the public
sector pensions dispute that was touted as the focus of opposition to
the government. Hundreds of thousands of jobs were destroyed, and tens
of billions in cuts were imposed.
It was under these conditions that the pretence of opposing austerity
was taken up by the People’s Assembly—made up of the Communist Party/
Morning Star Stalinists, what remains of the Labour Party “left”, the
Green Party and the pseudo-left group Counterfire. Their job is to cover
the exposed rear of the trade union leaders who fund the group.
Since the re-election of the Conservatives on May 7, national strikes by
rail and steel workers have been called off in rapid succession—with the
rail strike called off twice.
Yet Steve Turner, assistant general secretary of Unite and co-chair of
the People's Assembly, has the gall to declare that “the trade unions
are, and will remain, at the heart of the anti-austerity movement”, Len
McCluskey, the head of Unite—Labour’s biggest donor at £2.5 million this
year—will head today’s platform in London.
The People’s Assembly states that it is “linked to no political party,”
before adding, “We need a government to reverse damaging austerity… We
can no longer tolerate politicians looking out for themselves and for
the rich and powerful.”
Who then is to provide such a government?
The People’s Assembly claims that what “blocks” progressive policies is
the “the tiny millionaire class that do so well from austerity, and
their current overwhelming political power.” But political power is
exerted through political parties that do the bidding of the
super-rich—the Tories, Labour and the SNP alike.
The PA’s leadership almost all support the Labour Party—unless they want
to build relations with the SNP government to secure access to the
corridors of power north of the border. But they cannot state this so
openly because Labour is so discredited and hated.
Even as today’s demonstrations in London and Glasgow take place, Labour
is holding a leadership contest in which Jeremy Corbyn, the nominal
“left,” only secured a place on the ballot thanks to a handful of
right-wing MPs wanting to maintain the pretence of a “broad-church”
party that at least includes someone formally opposing Tory policies.
Corbyn is now being touted as the “saviour” of Labour. But the contest
will be won by one of the three candidates now insisting that Labour
lost the election because its central message of support for big
business and austerity was diluted with rhetoric about poverty,
zero-hours contracts, etc.
Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall, one of whom will be the
next leader of the Labour Party, have all refused to even attend today’s
demonstration.
Once again, it is Greece that provides the most devastating indictment
of the People’s Assembly’s perspective for opposing austerity.
Today’s demonstration is being advanced as a contribution to “a European
bottom up mobilization” in defence of Greece, based upon an appeal
signed by Greek trade union bureaucrats and activists. It calls for
“pressure” to be placed upon the European Union (EU) and the
International Monetary Fund to end their “unacceptable behaviour”
because the “Greek people decided, by voting a left government to
support them, to break the neoliberal consensus.”
This refers to the election of Syriza in January, which claimed that
austerity could be ended through an appeal for an “honourable
compromise” with the European Union while leaving Greek capitalism
untouched.
The result has been an unmitigated disaster. The only deal being offered
to Syriza is one where they agree to impose the next tranche of
austerity measures dictated by the EU, the European Central Bank and the
International Monetary Fund. This too is a foretaste of what faces the
working class in Britain if they do not break from the bankrupt politics
of the People’s Assembly.
The only genuine means of combating austerity is the independent
political mobilisation of the working class. The only government that
can reverse austerity is a workers’ government, pledged to implement
socialist policies based upon planned production for need and not profit.
Above all, the working class must join and build the Socialist Equality
Party to challenge the parties of big business and create new
organisations of class struggle through a political break with the trade
unions. This offensive must be waged as part of a continent-wide
mobilisation against the EU and all its constituent governments and for
the United Socialist States of Europe.
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