For mass pickets--Down with New Labour's strikebreaking!
VICTORY TO THE FBU!
This battle is no longer just about a pay rise for the firefighters but has become a test of strength between the unions and Blair's New Labour government. Earlier the government gloated that it would "crush" the Fire Brigades Union (FBU). As a government spokesman put it, "Industrial relations have always been Labour's Achilles' heel. But not this time" (Financial Times, 16/17 November). But last week's two-day strike was enormously popular among workers and minorities. Millions of public sector workers and others know that their pay and conditions and the very future of their unions depends on the outcome of this battle. The hundreds of thousands who protested the impending war against Iraq several weeks ago know that Blair's priorities are not in the interest of working people. Let's win this strike!
Blair has threatened to use the army to seize and operate modern firefighting equipment--the same army that is regularly employed to carry out the dirty work of the British bourgeoisie abroad, from Iraq to the Balkans to closer to home in Northern Ireland, where it is an instrument to oppress the Catholic minority. The last time large-scale army strikebreaking was employed was the General Strike of 1926. Now waffling over sending in the troops, the government moots that the cops might be used. In response to threats of army strikebreaking, FBU leader Andy Gilchrist declared that "Firefighters are neither prepared nor looking to hinder the armed forces." A leadership that proposes passive acquiescence in the face of such union busting is not a leadership! This is contrary to the interests of firefighters and all workers looking to the FBU for a lead. A battle conceded before the fight is a battle lost.
No one wants a small, losing confrontation against the forces of the capitalist state. What is necessary are mass pickets to ring the fire stations. This was successful in backing down the Callaghan Labour government when it tried to send troops across picket lines in the 1977 strike. The FBU must not stand alone! Millions of trade unionists are itching to strike a blow against Blair's union-hating government. They must be mobilised to join the FBU picket lines. Bring out RMT and UNISON council workers on strike now! Screw the TUC and government's "picketing guidelines” and anti-union laws! The only "illegal strike" is one that loses. If troops are used, the FBU must appeal to the soldiers, many of whom are of working class origin, not to be used for strikebreaking. The union issued such an appeal during the 1977 strike.
Oozing with hatred and fear of union militancy, the government and the capitalist media earlier attacked the FBU leaders as "Scargillites". Now Murdoch's union-hating Sun calls the FBU "Saddam stooges" while defence secretary Geoff Hoon implies that further union strikes would hinder the planned military invasion of Iraq. Union leaders who buy into or capitulate to the government's war drive undermine the ability to wage class struggle at home. To wage imperialist war abroad, the bourgeoisie needs "class peace" at home. The events of last week made it crystal clear that the working people and the semicolonial masses of Iraq have a common enemy in the war-crazed gangs in the White House and No 10 Downing Street and the capitalist classes they represent. Imperialist war and union-busting at home are flip sides of the same coin: the capitalist system is predicated on the exploitation of labour, and driven toward war in competition over spheres of trade and exploitation. We call for defence of Iraq against US/British military attack, without giving an iota of political support to Saddam Hussein. Blair and Co accuse the firefighters, who daily risk their lives to save others, of undermining public safety. These hypocrites want to blame the workers for the results of their own wage slashing and social spending cutbacks. Everyone knows the privatised railways are death traps, and Blair wants to do the same with the London Tube. The RMT is already balloting for a strike as Tube workers have been threatened with discipline for rightly refusing to drive trains without fire cover. The transport, rail, construction and other unions must set up union safety committees, with the power to shut down unsafe operations. RMT leader Bob Crowe should get off the London Transport management board! This is an instrument of class collaboration that undermines the ability of the union to defend its own interests.
In Islington, North London members of Day-Mer, the Kurdish-Turkish Solidarity organisation, brought sweets and food to picketing firefighters. During the 1984-85 miners strike, the black, Asian and other minority communities were among the staunchest supporters of the NUM as it courageously battled the scabs and strikebreaking cops. Unlike the rank-and-file soldiers, the cops are simply racist, anti-union mercenaries. Anyone who says otherwise--groups like the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) or Socialist Party (SP), who preach that the police are "workers in uniform" or who support cop strikes--are lying! Blacks, Asians and Irish Republicans have experienced first hand the brunt of state and racist cop persecution. Down with Blair's "war on terror"! The ultimate target of this wholesale assault on civil liberties, which singles out South Asians and Muslims for racist victimisation, are the unions—they are the real "enemy within" in the eyes of the bourgeoisie. The workers movement must be mobilised to defend the rights of immigrants and asylum seekers. For full citizenship rights to all immigrants!
Blair arrogantly sneers that if firefighters get their 40% claim, other public sector workers would want the same. The government wants to designate firefighters as "professional," not manual workers, in order to justify giving even less to manual and council workers, as if these workers don't also deserve a living wage. To even begin to approach what is necessary, council workers and other public sector employees should have their wages doubled! After decades of capitalist decline, Britain is notorious as a centre for exploitation of low-wage labour. Hundreds of thousands of council workers currently make less than ₤5 an hour, with two-thirds of council workers earning less than ₤13,000 per year. Women and immigrants earn even less. This points to the urgent need for council and other workers to link up in struggle with the FBU.
In the Short Strand area of Belfast Catholic and Protestant youth set aside sectarian chanting to compete in applauding the striking firefighters. This demonstrates again that proletarian struggle can transcend this deeply-rooted communalism. We fight for revolutionary unity of the struggles of British and Irish workers! For immediate unconditional withdrawal of British troops from Northern Ireland! And outside the British Isles the FBU strike has struck a chord as well. French rail workers have promised industrial solidarity. The Uniformed Firefighters' Association in New York, hundreds of whose members lost their lives in heroic rescue efforts after the criminal bombing of the World Trade Center and which now faces layoffs, says it will send pickets to Wales.
Blair has never hidden his desire to break New Labour from dependence on the unions, refashioning it on the lines of the capitalist Democratic Party in the US. But union leaders like Andy Gilchrist, echoed by fake socialists like the SWP, have argued to retain the union link to New Labour. Blair's threat to use the mailed fist of army/police strikebreaking ought to make crystal clear the futility of pressuring New Labour. Others like the SP have condemned New Labour for breaking with its "socialist past", which is fictitious, and call for a new union-based party modelled on "Old Labour." Yet it was Old Labour that called out the army during the last firefighters strike in order to enforce the "social contract," i.e. wage cuts. The same government of Wilson/Callaghan implemented racist "virginity tests" for immigrant Asian women at Heathrow airport. Neil Kinnock and the TUC tops knifed the miners strike in 1984-85, handing Thatcher her greatest victory, and ultimately paving the way for Blair. And the Labour Party has pursued the interests of British imperialism abroad, supporting both interimperialist world wars and the Korean War. Labour governments carried out bloody colonial policies in India and the Near East, murdered workers and peasants in Malaysia and Greece in counterrevolutionary wars after WWII, and sent troops to Northern Ireland in 1969. We need a party which is not only based on the working class but which represents workers' fundamental class interests, from defence of workers and minorities at home to anti-imperialist solidarity with our class brothers and sisters overseas.
The trade unions must be built on the broadest possible industrial basis to maximise the unity of the working class against the capitalist exploiters. At the same time, we fight to forge a multi-ethnic communist vanguard party whose purpose is to sharpen the differences between competing political tendencies in order to raise the consciousness of the working masses. A "party of the whole class" based on union bloc affiliation of the unions is antithetical to this end. In contrast, we seek to assemble the most advanced workers and revolutionary youth in a Leninist party whose purpose is to lead the workers to state power.
The British bourgeoisie and their Labour Party lieutenants have run this country's manufacturing base into the ground, destroying the livelihoods of millions. Entire swathes of the population in Wales, Scotland, the north of England and elsewhere are condemned to permanent unemployment. The shutting down of the mills in places like Oldham and Burnley has devastated these areas and turned them into spawning grounds for fascist filth. It is possible to undertake a renewal of economic life and vastly increase the presently pathetic quality of life for British working people, but not within the framework of capitalism. What's needed is not the "Old Labour" programme of piecemeal nationalisations that have only enriched the bankers and bosses but the expropriation of the entire capitalist class through socialist revolution and the establishment of a workers government--one based on workers councils, not the capitalists' parliament. Such a government would set about reviving economic life through a collectivised economy, including a couple of ambitious five-year industrialisation plans, and would fight for a socialist united states of Europe on the way to a world socialist order.
Victory to the firefighters strike!