N30 We are the 99% – Protest, Strike, Occupy!

• All out on 30 November
• Joint strike committees in every town
• Workers and students unite – forward to a general strike
AS ANTICAPITALISTS continue their camp in central London, over two million workers look set to launch a united strike at the end of November in the biggest day of industrial action Britain has seen since the general strike of 1926.
This shows how angry people are with the coalition government, which lied its way into office and has no mandate for the cuts, privatisation and unemployment it is inflicting on all of us.
This is a bankers’ government through and through. And just as the Occupy movement has caught the imagination of millions in its militant defiance in Wall St and the City of London, so too has the call to arms from education, civil service, local government and NHS unions.
Pay more, work longer, get less
The strike is in defence of pensions. Millions of workers will lose tens of thousands of pounds each if the cuts go ahead. They are being told to double their pensions contributions, work till they’re 68 and expect a far smaller pension in return. At the same time CEO’s bonuses are going through the roof.
The argument that we are living longer is rubbish; the life expectancy of managers and bosses has indeed risen, but the gap between them and manual, clerical and service workers has grown.
Besides, this is plain robbery. Our pensions are deferred wages, paid for out of the value created by our labour. No minister or official has shown that any of the schemes are unsustainable. On the contrary, they have hundreds of billions in assets. The attack is simply a smash and grab raid to rescue their ailing capitalist system.
General strike
When this is viewed alongside the rest of the Tory-Lib Dem offensive, the scale of workers’ anger is easy to understand. Unemployment stands at 2.5 million with a lost generation squeezed out of work and priced out of education. Vital services are being cut, cut and cut again.
The NHS and state schools are being starved of funds and prepared for privatisation. Inflation is eating away at wages, pensions and benefits.
Now the banks are demanding more money, while economists expect another recession or maybe years of stagnation. The crisis could suddenly get much worse. The euro crisis could bring the problems of Greece and Italy much closer to home.
That’s why we need a general strike to stop all the cuts and make the bankers and the bosses pay for their crisis. Only an indefinite general strike can sweep up all our discontents – the unemployed, those in precarious jobs and young people – and mobilise the whole of the working class against the government.
Would such a movement pose a political threat to the coalition? Of course it would. It would offer the chance to kick out the government of the 1% and for the 99% to run society. We could nationalise the banks’ assets, not just their losses, and use their vast wealth to renew and expand public services, guaranteeing everybody a comfortable and carefree retirement.