11 delivers his Emergency Budget with his treasury team (left to right) Mark Hoban, Justine Greening, Lord Sassoon, Danny Alexander and David Gauke. Photo: Jess Hurd/reportdigital.co.uk * Editorial The Conservative and Liberal Democrat government has launched a multi-layered attack on virtually every single aspect of working class life in Britain. It is more committed to a radical hard right agenda than even Margaret Thatcher was. VAT is set to rise from 17.5% to 20%, which will push up inflation. There is a pay freeze in the public sector. The coalition has announced £13 billion in cuts and the abolition of numerous public bodies: those responsible for economic development, sustainable development, health standards, infrastructure planning and numerous regulatory bodies. It is out to destroy comprehensive education. In the National Health Service £80bn is being handed to GPs, so it will be reduced from a National Health Service to a National Health Market: almost 1 million NHS staff will find themselves out of work or outside the NHS by 2015. Rail fares are expected to rise by 8%. Job cuts are being planned across the country and, since the public sector buys a lot, firms that sell to the public sector are also preparing Job cuts. Youth unemployment is rising fast because firms are hiring fewer people. In the last 3 years it has risen one-third to 18%. This headline figure conceals a lot of regional differences, with Wales and Scotland being especially hard hit. It is rather less radical in some other aspects of its policy. It is certain to waste £20 billion on replacing Trident and remains committed to Blair's Iraq and Afghan adventures. Services Already there is an overwhelming anxiety among working class people but the extent of what the Con-Dems are proposing is so vast that many have yet to work out the full implications of what it will mean to their everyday lives. It's more than just the 1.3 million job losses that the Treasury is predicting. Councils will provide services which only meet the minimum standards required by law. This will have a massive impact on the ill, elderly and vulnerable. Libraries and swimming pools will be shut. People will be poorer and are faced with retirements on inadequate pensions. The unions are in a very weak position. Last year 60% of strike days were in redundancy disputes. There were 450 thousand strike days, compared to 760 thousand in 2008, 1 million in 2007 and 2 million in 1990. 90 to 95% of the strike days are in public sector. There were no strikes in manufacturing. Strikes in the private sector are often in privatised services. The working class is starting a period of major defensive struggles when the data show that it is neither confident nor combative. This is a situation which socialists have to work flat out to change. Resistance There are two areas where we are seeing some positive developments: one is in the development, on a very modest scale, of local, united, socialist groups. The other is in the development of area based campaigns against the cuts, which aim to mobilise the trade unions. Where unions, or local communities, are resisting the cuts (rather than accepting them) then the possibility exists to build real campaigns. Both these movements have the potential to develop strong local groups which opens the possibility of creating national organisations to focus the resistance. This resistance means building the broadest possible unity against cuts. We reject the need for them and are not interested looking at ways to make them 'less painful'. They are an attack on our class and we have to offer a response that meets the needs of working people rather than the IMF or the City of London. Socialist Resistance fully supports the statement issued by the Coalition of Resistance which says: 'An alternative budget would place the banks under democratic control, and raise revenue by increasing tax for the rich, plugging tax loopholes, withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, abolishing the nuclear 'deterrent', cancelling the Trident replacement. An alternative strategy could use these resources to: support welfare; develop homes, schools, and hospitals; and foster a green approach to public spending -investing in renewable energy and public transport, thereby creating a million jobs.' This is the basic set of demands which can unite trade unionists, young workers and communities to face the most severe challenge the British ruling class has offered us in thirty years.
Editorial: Building the broadest possible unity against cuts
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