The sheer breadth and depth of the cuts has angered hundreds of thousands. Activists across the country have responded with local anti-cuts alliances, organising demos, lobbies and sit-ins, targeting universities, councils and tax-dodgers. The student rebellion catapulted this resistance onto the national stage.
The successful Coalition of Resistance (CoR) conference on 27 November could not have been better timed. The question of the day for the 1,300 who attended was: how can we turn local resistance into a mass movement that can challenge the government nationally?
Two left MPs and three union general secretaries spoke from the platform, along with socialists and antiwar leaders. John McDonnell MP drew warm applause when he called on the TUC to organise “generalised strike action”. New Unite leader Len McCluskey pledged support for local anti-cuts groups and the CoR.
The importance of CoR is based on the need to coordinate the efforts of local committees, campaigns and the unions. Only with a national strategy can we stop the cuts completely.
Workers Power is proud of the role we played on the CoR planning committee. Despite resistance from those who saw the Stop the War Coalition as the model, we argued that the declaration should include a call for strikes and coordinated action by unions in the public sector, and that the conference should have the right to amend it.
The Socialist Party (SP) did not get involved, claiming CoR was “undemocratic” and “imposed” on the movement. The SP is now trying to get the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) to initiate another “all-Britain anti-cuts campaign”, the only difference being that the SP would be in charge. This is nothing more than a criminal act of disunity and is recognised as such across the movement. Only the SP denies it.
The Socialist Workers Party, on the other hand, after initially resisting CoR in favour of its own Right To Work campaign, has now been forced to recognise the huge pressure for unity that exists across the movement and will hopefully now stop sectarian jockeying for leadership, and throw their weight into building a united democratic resistance, within which the different strategies of the various political organisations can be freely debated and above all tested in struggle.
We have a great opportunity to organise mass, coordinated action against the cuts. Local anti-cuts groups and unions at the local, regional and national level should affiliate to CoR. For our part, Workers Power with several members elected to its national committee, will fight to commit CoR to organising action without the say-so of the offical union and labour leaders.
