Trade union activists, socialist politicians and single-issue campaigners are working hard to establish common cause – and common ground – ahead of the big student demo planned for November 9 and the TUC’s Day of Action against the Conservative-led coalition’s cuts on November 30.
Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite, Mark Serwotka of the PCS, Matt Wrack of the FBU, Bob Crow of the RMT and Michelle Stanistreet of the NUJ joined forces with left-wing MPs John McDonnell, Katy Clark and Mike Wood, and veteran socialist Tony Benn, to back the students next month.
They said: “We give our full support to the student demonstration against education cuts, student debt and privatisation called by the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts. We believe that education is a public service which should be owned publicly, controlled democratically and funded by taxing the rich.
“We recognise that the fight against the coalition Government’s cuts is a joint fight, by workers and students, in defence of a common interest. We support students campaigning against the Government’s higher education white paper, we stand alongside school and college students planning to walk out and we oppose any attempt by the authorities to curb their right to protest.”
The success of the student protest on November 9 could give an indication of the scale of support for the trade unions’ Day of Action on November 30. More than twenty unions – including Unison, Prospect, the GMB, the NUT, NASUWT, ATL, UCU, POA and NAPO – are backing the protest over cuts to public sector pensions. TUC general secretary Brendan Barber has promised it will be “the biggest union mobilisation in a generation” against what Unison leader Dave Prentis has described as the Government’s “unprecedented” attack on workers.
Union officials, at national and local level, have been working hard to make the campaign as broad-based as possible, involving not just those who are directly affected – the workers whose pensions have been targeted by the Tories – but those, the rest of us, who use the services that public sector workers provide.
This week the modern-day Jarrow marchers held a well-attended rally in Sheffield as the youth unemployment total hit the one million mark.
Youth Fight for Jobs are recreating the Jarrow March of 1936 by walking 330 miles from the north-east of England to London to demand “a programme of job creation not job destruction”. Marchers include the great-grandchildren of some of the original Jarrow marchers as well as unemployed young people, students and young trade unionists.
Bob Crow said: “If the trade union movement doesn’t stand by the young people in the front line of the Con-Dem attack on jobs and services we will witness a re-run of the Thatcher Government’s cynical dumping of a whole generation to the scrap heap. This ideological Government of millionaires, backed by big business, could not care less for those who get trampled in their dash to drive a bulldozer through our communities.”
