TUC - Get Off Your Knees

Yesterday around 500 activists demonstrated in Manchester, where the TUC conference is taking place this week.Tony Church and Noel Corry attended, so our branch was represented.The demonstration was called because although trade unions throughout Europe will be having demonstrations against public spending cuts on September 29th (many in fact will be staging one day general strikes), the TUC, who are supposed to be the leadership of the British trade unions, have so far failed to call any demonstration against the policies of our own Con-Dem government. We were in Manchester to put pressure on the TUC to effectively get up off its knees and name an early date for a national demonstration that all trade union members can attend to show the potential for defeating the cuts agenda.

The demonstration, which included both an outdoor and indoor rally as well as a march, was excellent. Speaker after speaker made the point that the policy of the TUC General Secretary, Brendan Barber, and those around him of trying to have a 'constructive dialogue' with Prime Minister Cameron and Chancellor Osbourne is ridiculous. The Tories (for it is now clear the Lib Dems have no real role except to make up the numbers) are waging a war against working people; they don't want to talk to us, they want to annihilate the services that those of us who do not have the privledges of the Eton and Oxbridge lifestyle depend on and the jobs that go with them. It is the most blatant example of class politics for decades.

The TUC have a choice to make this week and we hope that it is the correct one. If, however, the TUC General Council fail to grasp the nettle, there are thousands of actual and potential activists in Britain that will in the coming months push them aside to provide the leadership that members need and deserve. This war has to be won by us.