Many have argued that we are faced with an extensive and systemic breakdown of trust in our society: between citizens and many of the major institutions in civil society and between the individual, the state and the political process. 

Much of this suggested breakdown derives from the global banking and economic crisis in 2007 and the continued world economic down-turn and the anaemic recovery in the UK, triggered by scandals in the banking sector and recent corporate failures in other sectors which has led to extensive questioning of the ways in which our economy and society is run….
 The orthodoxy of the neo-liberal, free market philosophy which has dominated governmental, political and economic thinking over the last forty years is now being widely challenged for the first time in many years. This widespread disillusionment has led many people to look for alternative, more ethical and socially responsible ways of organising businesses and services, particularly those run on a co-operative, mutual or not-for-profit basis. 

At the first whiff of grapeshot, the right-wing leaders of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), history will show, turned and ran straight into the arms of the ConDem coalition over cuts to public sector pensions.

Yesterday the TUC ruled out any further co-ordinated industrial action along the lines of the November 30 strike which brought two million public sector workers out on to the streets.

A fear of what a repeat of this action could lead to was undoubtedly instrumental in the decision of the TUC’s public sector liaison group to block calls for more strikes and, instead, to seek a deal with the government through further negotiations.

Last year, Derek Prentis, secretary of the million-strong Unison union, was making firebrand speeches at his conference and got the backing to hold a strike ballot. As one suspected, it was hot air and no substance.

Prentis, supported by TUC secretary Brendan Barber, saw November 30 as something to get out of the way before making a deal on the terms set out by the government. This will mean higher contributions, working longer and reduced pensions on retirement.

Other unions, representing another one million teachers, civil servants, local government and health workers, have declined to sign up to the general framework agreement announced by the government just before Christmas.

Most are willing to resume negotiations but one, the civil service PCS union, doesn’t even have that opportunity. It has been excluded from future talks because of its outright rejection of the “agreement”.

PCS's national executive committee yesterday unanimously reaffirmed the rejection of the government’s plans to increase contributions from April, link the retirement age to the state pension which is rising to 68, and impose a switch in indexation that means a cut in the value of pensions of around 15% to 20%.

PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka said: "We will continue to call for proper negotiations on the key issues of paying more and working longer for less.” The PCS will try and work separately with other unions holding out to organise more strikes.


Behind the split in union ranks, which will gladden the government no end, is undoubtedly the hand of Labour. The party distanced itself from the November 30 strike and wants no repeat. Prentis, who has refused to support action against spending cuts by local, often Labour-led, councils, would not have needed much persuasion.

It remains to be seen whether other Labour-affiliated unions like Unite take their resistance much further. Don’t put your money on it. Their aim is to wait until the next scheduled general election in 2015 (!) and hope that Labour is re-elected in the forlorn hope of a few favours returned. With Ed Miliband accepting that further spending cuts will have to be made and planning Labour’s very own austerity package, public sector pensions will stay under siege.

Ultimately, the TUC bureaucrats fear the consequences of the crisis of capitalism which is driving the government’s attack on the public sector. They hope that by appeasing the ConDems, ministers will back off. This is an illusion. As outright recession becomes a real possibility, the government is in no position to weaken its resolve, especially as it will have to borrow more not less on the international money markets.

The decision of the PCS to lead further resistance is welcome but it is in a position to go further. Politically, there are no solutions to hand, with a ConDemLab coalition taking shape, while the economy’s woes are revealed as a crisis of the system itself. By sponsoring a conference to initiate a discussion on creating political and economic alternatives the PCS could make a real contribution to the struggles ahead.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

Only a rank-and-file revolt in defence of their pension rights stands between leaders of most public sector trade unions and what will surely rank near the top of a long list of betrayals.

With the honourable except of Mark Serwotka, leader of the PCS civil servants’ union, virtually every other official – leader is definitely the wrong term in this context – signalled in one way or another the end of the short-lived campaign over pensions.

They almost fell over themselves to meet a pre-Christmas deadline set by the ConDem coalition to reach a negotiated settlement covering more than two million local government workers, NHS staff, teachers, lecturers and civil servants.

Whatever agreement is reached, it will inevitably cut further into the living standards of public sector workers who are already the victims of a government-imposed pay freeze (which union officials, with their own fat pensions preserved in aspic, have meekly accepted).

On the eve of the talks, the government announced that it would unilaterally impose higher pension contributions on teachers and civil servants. Most civil servants and teachers will pay an extra 0.6-2.4% from April. Did the teaching unions walk away in the face of such a provocation? Not at all.

The only outright opposition yesterday came from the PCS which said it had rejected “the government’s latest attempt to force public servants to pay more and work longer for less in retirement”. It was promptly excluded from further talks.

And so the apparent unity of the 29 unions who staged a one-day strike of at least 1.5 million workers less than a month ago was fragmented at a stroke. The government’s strategy of divide and rule proved more successful than this feeble coalition could ever have imagined.

At a meeting at the Trades Union Congress headquarters, general secretary Brendan Barber, who has been in secret talks with the government throughout, stressed that further industrial action was off the table and negotiations would resume in the new year.

“We have reached a stage where the emphasis in most cases is in giving active consideration to the new proposals that have emerged rather than considering the prospect of further industrial action.” The proposals include the abandonment of the final salary basis for pensions in favour of career average salaries.

To seek a negotiated settlement after giving it everything you’ve got is honourable; to run up the white flag with a hardly a short fired is nothing short of cowardice in the face of an enemy that is waging open class warfare.

For all the fiery talk of general secretary Dave Prentis, the leader of Unison, it was predictably hot air. The union’s head of health, Christina McAnea, admitted that “we always knew this would be a damage limitation exercise aimed at reducing the worst impacts of the government's pension changes."

The TUC and union bureaucrats have implicitly accepted the principal reason for the attack on pensions – the government’s budget deficit that is the result of a recession precipitated by capitalism’s financial meltdown.

Public sector workers are, in effect, being told to pay for the crisis through higher contributions and worse pensions. Behind the scenes, the leadership of the Labour Party has worked might and main to get unions to abandon further strikes and do a deal with a government.

The last thing Ed Miliband wanted was a long-running strike campaign that could have fatally wounded a weak and divided coalition whose policies his party barely opposes (except to demand a harder line on crime).

PCS general secretary Serwotka, urged unions to fight the changes: "We should call further industrial action in the new year because this is so unfair, we have got to stand up against it... Our message really is that those unions will have to be accountable to their members for what they do."

A campaign to reject the sell-out over pensions (and the wage freeze) has to mobilise rank-and-file anger in ways that are linked to the removal from their posts of all those involved in this shoddy surrender. In some ways, it’s a last chance to save the trade union movement from total disaster.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor

The largest and most powerful strike for a quarter of a century, in defence of public sector pensions, must lead to a movement to bring down the ConDem government or it will have no chance of success.

Prime minister Cameron has nailed his colours to the mast over pensions, claiming that they are “unaffordable”. In practice, the attack on pensions is part of a calculated two-fold strategy.

The first part is to make civil servants, teachers and council workers pay for the financial crisis in higher contributions to help reduce the government’s budget deficit. Secondly, by making people work longer before getting a pension of any kind, exploitation is being extended closer to the grave.

With the Lib Dems on board over pensions – unlike the NHS changes now mostly abandoned – the coalition has chosen to stand or fall over pensions as well as other cuts imposed by chancellor George Osborne

The magnificent response yesterday by 750,000 teachers and civil servants from four trade unions in response to a one-day strike call shows that workers are ready to fight to finish on this issue.

Up to 100,000 took to the streets of Britain’s town and cities in demonstrations – more than 20,000 marched in London – and shut thousands of schools in England and Wales. Over 90% of the police support workers in the capital went out on strike. Courts were shut along with many museums.

The action by four unions came on the day that doctors overwhelmingly backed a ballot on industrial action over NHS pensions plans. The Royal College of Nursing, representing more than 400,000 members, warned that it may end up doing the same.

Mark Serwotka leader of the Public and Commercial Services union hailed the turnout as proof of the anger felt towards the government by public sector workers, and said of the government:

"What they now need to do is get around the negotiating table and try to negotiate an agreement. They haven't done that yet, but hopefully having seen how strongly feel today they will have a change of heart.

"It's a very, very clear signal to the government that they have been rumbled. This is not about pensions, this is about making public sector workers pay for the economic problems, and we are determined to keep going until they change direction."

There was contempt for Labour leader Ed Miliband who denounced the strikes as “wrong”, saying the “the public have been let down by both sides”. Mary Bousted, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, told the London rally that his comments were a "disgrace”. Bousted, whose union has never before gone on strike, said Miliband should be ashamed of himself. "If our strike is a mistake, what has he done to oppose this devastating attack on our pensions?"

The four unions who took action yesterday are not affiliated to Labour and Serwotka called on the major unions who were not out yesterday to join a big strike movement in the autumn if talks fail.

But suspicions are mounting that the leaders of Unison, Unite and the GMB – urged on by Miliband – are desperate to reach an agreement with the government and avoid a confrontation that could assume general strike proportions.

They may not get the opportunity to do a deal, however. "If Cameron backs down on this one, he's a busted prime minister," Nottingham University politics professor Steven Fielding told Reuters. "He's nailed his colours to the mast."

In this context, calls for a one-day general strike to browbeat the government are seriously wide of what is required. Such actions have had no effect in Greece, for example. An all-out confrontation is looming, despite behind-the-scenes manoeuvres.

Those unions who took part in yesterday’s action have to mobilise the rest of the labour movement and the community at large to bring down the ConDem government. With Labour clearly no alternative, this would create the conditions to create fresh political solutions to deal with the capitalist crisis.

Paul Feldman

Communications editor

Political innocence is one thing. But desperately hanging on to a blinkered point of view in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is altogether more dangerous.

A blunt refusal to grasp that the system of capitalism is in crisis was all too evident at an anti-cuts conference called by the South East Region of the Trades Union Congress (SERTUC) at the weekend.

SERTUC President Martin Gould told union representatives that the LibCon spending cuts were “ideologically” driven. The economic situation, he insisted, was “the bankers’ crisis, not our crisis”.

He was taking his cue from TUC general secretary Brendan Barber, who repeated the mantra that government policy is, “not driven by economics but by a political project” (October 21). And that the spending review was “not an economic necessity but a political choice” (October 19).

There was not the remotest suggestion from leaders who spoke that there might be a real, objective global economic crisis, manifested in mountains of debt. that was driving the British state to withdraw from its post-World War II role of providing social support.

On the contrary, they said that “a lot of money can be squeezed out of the rich and the bankers”. In the face of “60% of the population believing that the cuts are necessary and inevitable”, Christine Blower of the National Union of Teachers said that a campaign of education was the answer. She compared the cuts agenda with the sinking of the Titanic, in which the rich passengers got the lifeboats while the poor had no chance. Heather Wakefield of UNITE called for “a battle of ideas” and “mass mobilisation”, saying there was a need to “get political” and “challenge council officials”.

Never the remotest suggestion that it was time to get off the sinking ship of capitalism altogether and transfer ownership and management of resources into the hands of the majority in society.

Behind the claim that there is no serious debt or financial crisis and that pouring money into job creation (a total failure in the US) is the answer, lies an unstated assumption. The trade unions and working class must be kept chained inside the system of production for profit and the political status quo. Of course, if the cuts are purely “ideological” in their nature, it follows that they can be reversed or halted through pressure – within the system.

The Public and Commercial Services union has issued a popular pamphlet “There is an alternative”, which calls for resistance to the cuts and for a “new economic strategy”. Nonetheless, it says that the government should be forced to implement it. Yes, the PCS is right. We need a new vision. But the notion that the LibCons or New Labour will deliver it is totally in their dreams.

Jenny Sutton, chair of the London Region of University and College Union was the only speaker who took the bull by the horns. “We can’t wait until spring. There must be something before Christmas to embolden people – and not just a protest – we must stop that wheel from turning. There must be a real commitment to a general strike.”

Yes, real action is needed but that action must have a strategy that goes beyond resistance and protest if it is to be successful. The cuts agenda is evidence that the existing economic and political system is well and truly broken and cannot provide for the needs of the majority in society. To deny that is to bury your head in the sand at a time when it's necessary to raise our sights.

Only a truly alternative economic and political system, based not on profit, but collective stewardship, as outlined in the Manifesto of Revolutionary Solutions, can provide lasting answers to the cuts. Working for a Network of Peoples Assemblies on December 11 to implement these strategies is the way forward.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

That the Trades Union Congress (TUC) is even talking about taking action against the Con-Lib government’s planned spending cuts reflects the deep anger of public sector workers and their willingness to fight back. Most union leaders, however, clearly want to avoid a confrontation with the coalition.

The all-embracing composite motion that the TUC is set to adopt in Manchester this week hardly disguises sharp differences within the trade union leadership. On the one side, the transport union RMT and the public and civil servants PCS – led by Bob Crow and Mark Serwotka – want co-ordinated industrial action sooner rather than later.

Crow said at the weekend that if there was a "concerted effort by this new government to attack workers in all different parts of society" then workers taking action should "co-ordinate that resistance to defend working men and working women".

But the major unions like Unison, Unite and the GMB, want to emphasise public campaigns to win support for opposing the cuts agenda. Les Bayliss, who is hoping to be general secretary of Unite, said: "Strikes will also change the victims – our members – into the villains of the piece. The story will get changed from government savagery to union militancy."

In the middle, TUC secretary Brendan Barber is looking for a deal with the Cameron-Clegg government. Behind-the scenes manoeuvres are already in train. The first action point of the resolution calls on “the Government to consult the General Council [of the TUC] regarding the comprehensive spending review”. Reports suggest that senior Tories have already held secret talks with union leaders and that Cameron will meet Barber soon.

The resolution, after 1,138 words of preamble, calls on the General Council to “support and co-ordinate campaigning and joint union industrial action, nationally and locally, in opposition to attacks on jobs, pensions, pay or public services”. Yet, as a report from the GMB union shows, the jobs slaughter is already well under way, with 150,000 redundancies planned across the public sector. If the time to act is not right now, when is it?

The whole mistaken tenor of the eclectic TUC resolution is to label the coalition’s plans as “ideologically driven”. Yet the same motion offers support to workers resisting the cuts in Spain and Greece (as well as other countries), where the governments call themselves “Socialist”, which rather shows that more than “ideology” is involved.

There is no reference to the global economic crisis and the term “capitalism” is studiously avoided. For the fact remains that, for all their bluster, New Labour would be carrying out the same cuts because they are a consequence of the recession combined with the demands of the financial markets that fund government deficits. In fact, many of the job losses now going through are the result of decisions taken by the Brown government and not the coalition.

The TUC has faced three grave crises in the last 80-odd years. The first was in 1926, when a Tory government imposed wage cuts on the miners. A General Strike was betrayed as it gathered strength and the miners were literally starved back to work. In 1984-5, the miners heroically fought to save jobs and communities – and again the TUC stabbed them in the back, this time through inaction.

The third crisis is the present one, against a government that intends to impose the full burden of the capitalist crisis on the backs of public sector workers and those who depend on services of one kind or another. Unions like the RMT and PCS have a responsibility to prevent the TUC right-wing from betraying the movement once again.

This will mean enforcing a split in the General Council against those preparing a deal with the coalition and mobilising communities against the government. Ultimately, this government is not for turning but it is weak and could be brought down by widespread and sustained opposition. What to replace it with is the biggest question of all.

Paul Feldman
Communications editor