The new “Age of Austerity” that Cameron promised before the election has arrived. The ConDem budget is a broad and devastating attack on the whole working class in Britain, and part of a drive by global capitalism to make workers all across the world pay the cost of the economic crisis.

The immediate task now facing our movement is to meet this generalised attack by the bosses with mass resistance across the whole working class.

If we don’t, we stand to lose as many as 1.3 million jobs in the public and private sector, as the knock-on impact of savage cuts to public sector jobs and pay impacts on private sector workers. We stand to lose many of the services we rely on with some departments at risk of 33 per cent budget cuts, and a whole generation of young people left on the scrapheap with few job prospects and a poor quality, unaffordable education system. The budget shows the willingness of the Tories to punish society’s poorest with vicious cuts to benefits and pensions.

But despite the savage nature of the ConDem budget, there has been little more than angry phrase mongering from the leaders of Britain’s largest unions who have not lifted a finger of real action against it. We need to demand that the union leaders mount a united all-out public sector strike, and that Labour MPs and councillors defy Westminster and bust their budgets to continue to fund our services.

A rank and file movement in our unions
However the TUC leaders and the likes of Derek Simpson and Dave Prentis have proved time and time again that they cannot be relied upon to mobilise to defend their 7 million members. They have always sought to negotiate their members’ terms and conditions behind closed doors with the bosses, and even funded the Labour government over the last 13 years as it was cutting, privatising and taking us to war. The TUC has invited Cameron to their next congress – they will want to do him a deal using our jobs as the poker chips – unless they are forced to do otherwise.

Bob Crow seems to be saying all the right things in his own ambiguous way when he talks about ‘generalised strikes and community direct action’ to combat ‘zombie capitalism’ and ‘fiscal fascism’. But will this left-wing union leader risk his neck (and his £99,600p/a salary) to pursue the illegal actions necessary to dispose of what Tony Blair boasted were the ‘most draconian’ anti-union laws in Europe?

In practice the policy of broad-leftism and reliance on the left-wing union leaders has led to disastrous outcomes for the left, with prominent figures such as Jane Loftus voting in favour of the rotten 2009 postal strike sellout before being rightly forced out of the Socialist Workers Party for it. The broad lefts already lead a number of unions including Britain’s biggest, Unite, and in most cases pursue the same agenda of double-dealing and compromises as any right wing bureaucracy.

It’s time we built real independent rank and file organisations in our unions, which can hold leaders to account and build up the basis for breaking the stifling bureaucratic strangleholds on our unions once and for all. We need to act with the bureaucrats when possible, and without them when necessary.

Jerry Hicks is standing for election as Unite General Secretary against the ‘United Left’ grouping, which includes the likes of Tony Woodley, the grand sellout of the 2004 Gate Gourmet dispute. Jerry is the only candidate from the rank and file itself and has pledged to end the whole nomenclatural system that sees officials selected by appointment, not election.

We have two months – July and August – to organise ourselves to win the maximum number of nominations for Jerry from Unite branches. Support groups can flier bus garages, construction and council yards, and call Jerry on 07817827912 to arrange public meetings. We can use the contacts we make in this campaign to give the whole fight against cuts some legs at a local level.

Anti-cuts committees for broad resistance
To beat the budget we have to organise more broadly than even the unions – to unite working class communities, students, youth, pensioners, claimants and everyone who will be impacted by the budget together in action.

Campaigns like Right to Work and the National Shop Stewards Network can play a big part in building the committees of action that we need, but they will be unable to do it alone. They need to be more than simply flags of convenience for the main socialist groups that sponsor them and seek to unite in joint committees in every town and city: drawing in as many workers, youth, communities and trade unionists as possible, including union leaders and politicians – but without socialists holding back from criticism of Labour leaders and left trade union tops when they sell us out or sit on their hands.

In every town, and in every borough the left needs to set about building extensive community links through every available avenue, drawing in delegates from every union and constituency Labour Parties. Marxists should argue within these forums for demands that can help bring about the most effective action to stop the cuts and bring down the Tory government, turning the fight against austerity into a fight for working class power – in other words what Trotsky called transitional demands.

We should argue for strikes and occupations against all job cuts and closures, that strikes should be under the control of elected strike committees not just paid officials, that workers should see the financial books when the bosses say they can’t afford to keep us on, and that ‘failed companies’ should be nationalised under workers’ control if they can’t. We should argue for the cutting of our hours and not our jobs, and for full employment for all.

Right to Work, the NSSN and other anti-crisis, anti-poverty and anti-cuts campaigns desperately need to work together. In the short term this could be achieved with a delegate conference, where each vote is representative of an active group, be it a union branch, trades council, residents group or local anti-cuts group. This is the most tangible way to conceive of ‘left unity’ – not a mish mash alliance or new group in which socialists all stop saying what they really think and pretend to be like reformists (like happened in RESPECT), but unity in action that allows the socialists to fight for real proposals and explain their strategies in democratic fighting committees which draw in layers of activists from across the whole class.

Unity in action, freedom of debate and the ability to act with the union leaders and politicians where possible, but without them where we have to, will be crucial in delivering the level of action we need to bring down this coalition: an all-out indefinite public sector strike, backed by occupations and mass protests of service users, the unemployed, students and youth.

A movement combining the industrial strength shown by the miners and the mass action shown in the Poll Tax revolt can win!

And by setting out a winning strategy, Marxists can secure real leadership of the most determined fighters, uniting them into a revolutionary party worthy of the name.

Self defence against the fascists
The ConDem coalition are already seeking to bring through their budget by dividing the working class through bigoted and demagogic attacks – for example against migrants by capping numbers – and turning working class anger away from the great public theft of the bank bailout on to “scroungers” and “benefit thieves”.

In this environment, groups like the English Defence League will continue to grow on the back of these ‘easy solutions’ to the crisis.

Unite Against Fascism remains the public face of the anti-fascist movement. But as the danger from the EDL becomes more acute, so must the contradictions within UAF begin to crack open. Socialists within UAF are being tugged from one side to the other, between the fearless anger of the anti-EDL youth on the one hand and the conservatism of the trade union and labour bureaucracy (and its financial weight) on the other.

When the EDL assembled in Newcastle it was met by two anti-fascist demos of roughly equal size. This cannot be allowed to happen again – we need a united front against fascism that unites the entire working class movement. But there is no point humming and hawing, UAF is failing to unite the antifascist movement for a reason.

And whereas in Bolton UAF activists were willing to confront the EDL, in Dudley the UAF organisers worked flat out to stop confrontation.

UAF needs to call policy making conferences, where local groups of antifascists are represented by voting delegates, giving the whole movement ownership over UAF, without a veto by the more ‘moderate’ officials who are determined to block effective action.

And if we are to drive the EDL off the streets, we will need both a united front against fascism and something more: a disciplined Antifascist Defence League that can take on the pogrom thugs and defend our communities in the only way the fascists understand.