Protesting against muslims and protesting against hedge funds invites a different response from the police

Tuesday's raid on the convergence space in Soho is not without precedent. Those of us who were at the G20 protest in 2009, which led to led to the death of Ian Thomlinson by riot police, will recognise a familiar pattern. The police obtain a search warrant from compliant magistrates under the pretext of searching for “illegal weapons”, or criminal suspects. In both cases the search proves fruitless, but in any case the police have gained possession of the building, and protestors have been arrested and taken out of action through the pre-emptive arrest and the imposition of bail conditions, which forbid participation in future protests. Such tactics are designed to intimidate and frustrate protest and protestors. These tactics are invariably used against anti-capitalist protestors. The implicit assumption being that protesting against capitalism must be a criminal - or a potentially criminal, activity. The full weight of public order legislation and anti-terror legislation introduced since the miner’s strike, the poll tax protests and 7/7 is brought down on such protestors. The blatantly political nature of this “total policing” became even more apparent in the attempts to snatch the flags and banners of those marching through the streets of the West End on Tuesday.

Contrast this with the license afforded to the EDL by the police on 27th May. The EDL were allowed their drunken rampage through Leicester Square throwing bottles at passers-by with not a single arrest. It appears that the police desire to protect the “rights” of the EDL to protest against Muslims, but to deny the rights of those who choose a more deserving target such as the hedge funds of Mayfair.

The greenest government ever?

At a press conference in May 2010, Cameron flanked by his then minister for climate change, Chris Huhne, announced to great media fanfare that the incoming coalition would be the “greenest government ever”. The adoption of a green agenda had been one of the ways Cameron would detoxify the Conservative “brand” in the run up to the 2010 election. This involved a number of media stunts, including being photographed with husky dogs in the Arctic, and cycling to work in parliament (never mind the fact that a motorised escort following closely behind). The stunts aside, the government had committed to opposing airport expansion in the south east. In particular, they had promised to oppose the outgoing  Labour government’s support for a third runway at Heathrow.  A decision which persuaded some greens about his seriousness on the environment and convinced atleast one notable environmentalist to go blue.The coalition had also committed Whitehall to participating in the 10:10 campaign aiming a 10% reduction in carbon emissions from participating businesses. Cameron also stated that the coalition would be committed to a new green economy for the UK.

Yet only two years later Cameron would commit one of the most abrupt political U-turns. 2013 marked the year when government policy on the environment in general, and climate change in particular, changed radically.  Following the reshuffle key ministers opposing airport expansion at the Department for Transport were replaced; John Hayes a vocal critic of wind farms was made energy minister; Owen Patterson, an opponent of wind farms and supporter of fracking is made an environment minister; Peter Lilley, a the former Thatcherite minister, climate denialist and non exec director of a gas explorqtion company, was appointed to the parliamentary select committee on energy and climate change.  In November it is revealed that Osbourne’s “dash for gas” will quadruple the amount of “unabated” gas generating capacity, a commitment copper-fastened with tax subsidies, as well as major tax concessions to fracking industry. A decision which would undermine the UKs carbon reduction committments under the Climate Act. Also in November, it  is revealed that Cameron takes the highly unusual step of blocking the appointment of a key civil servant at DECC (Department of Energy and Climate Change) who is seen as being too committed to tackling climate change. And again in November the government announces a commission headed by the disgraced former director of the LSE, Howard Davies, a one time  policy advisor to ex Chancellor, Nigel Lawson (who now runs the climate denialist lobby group the Global Warming Policy foundation). Although the recommendation will not be delivered until after the next election, there can be little doubt  it will favour continued airport expansion at Heathrow. Then to top it all, the government gives the green light to over fourty “zombie” road schemes, which had been  successfully resisted by the direct action movement of the nineties and by local campaigns, such as the Combe Valley, Hasting bypass.

What liers behind this U-turn? Simply put, the failure of austerity to restore growth rates as numerous critical economic commentators had predicted. Robert Skidelsky has pointed out that the 2010 forecast of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) was projected at 2.6% growth in 2011 and at 2.8% growth in 2012; in fact, the UK economy grew by 0.9% in 2011 and flat-lined in 2012. The  abrupt U-turn on the environment, far from representing a break from austerity, represents an intensification of plan A, that is, continuing with more austerity; it needs to be understood in the context of the failure of Osborne's austerity policies to restore either growth rates or profits to the UK economy. This has left the government scrambling around for quick political fixes to placate restive MPs on the back benches that they are doing something restore growth and profits. One way it tries to achieve this is by externalising more of the costs of production allowing industry to load more of the costs of economic growth on the environment and society, such as reducing workers’ health and safety, or relaxing pollution regulations, creating for example, an increased workload for the NHS. So the government's new planning laws will make it easier for business to concrete over swathes the countryside; and Vince Cable's “bonfire of red tape” will worsen working conditions by removing strict liability on employers who breach health and safety regulations. Whether these policies will actually restore growth rates, let alone desirable is a moot point. In his Autumn Statement, Osbourne announced more spending on infrastructure to be financed by increased cuts in social spending. But whether all this will actually restore growth is unlikely. And as Michael Roberts has noted, infrastucture spending has actually fallen under the Coalition. And cutting "red tape" runs the risk of boomeranging on the government as the now unfolding horse meat scandel is revealing.

There is also the question of the political power of the fossil fuel industry to consider. There is a huge amount of capital tied up in the existing fossil fuel economy whether it be gas pipelines, power stations or oil refineries. Furthermore, as Bill McKibben has noted, the stock valuations of oil and gas companies is tied to the exploitable reserves of fossil fuel in their asset portfolios. This concentration of fossil fuel capital creates its own centre of power, which is manifested in many different ways, in the media via public public relations, through the “revolving door” between Whitehall and the industry and directly in Parliament itself through lobbying. Other branches of industry have their own centres of power and their own political lobbies to represent their interests, whether it be the  airline industry lobbying for airport expansion, or the food industry lobbying to water down food labeling laws. George Osborne is one of the most influential defenders of the fossil fuel lobby in government. And other branches of industry have their own centres of power and their own political lobby’s to represent their interests. The renewable energy industry, because it is newer and smaller, does not enjoy the same political influence as the fossil fuel lobby. So for instance, the hostility of many backbench Tory MPs to wind farms should not be understood as concerns due to their aesthetic impact on the English countryside but the playing out of the interests of the fossil fuel lobby. Their concerns for the English countryside seem to evaporate when the question is new roads schemes in their constituency. It will be interesting to observe how many of those MPs opposing wind schemes on “aesthetic” grounds will also oppose fracking rigs in their constituencies. Cameron's silence on climate is one way of placating an increasingly climate sceptic Tory MPs to his right.

The government’s new “growth” agenda threatens to undo every progressive gain made by environmental movements and campaigns over the last thirty years. For instance, it was one of the gains of the direct action anti-road movement of the 90s to make the government accept that it could not solve the country's transport problems by building more roads. It is clear the Osborne would like to tear up the Climate Act as he seeks to undermine it with major gas expansion. Insufficient as it is, the Climate Act is still a major gain, which would not have got into the statute book without the mobilisation of the climate campaigns of the last decade.

This assault on the environment is being resisted. The mass direct action movement unleashed by groups such as Reclaims the Streets in the 90s was an essential element which blocked the Major government’s road building plans. Likewise, Climate Camp and Plane Stupid derailed the last government’s expansion plans for new coal at Kingsnorth and forced the then opposition to oppose new runways in the South East - at least for this term. Sadly until there is fundamental change our political and economic system these victories will always be partial and limited.

If 2012 marked the year of the U-turn. In 2013 we should renew our commitment to rebuild a movement focussed on social and environmental justice. The emergence of the global Occupy movement following the movements in Spain and Greece and the revolts in the Middle East  gives us an opportunity to build a deeper, broader and more interconnected movement. We need to point there are alternatives to the neoliberal lunacy being imposed in this country and throughout Europe.

George Osborne's dash for gas will not only undermine the Climate Act but lock the UK either into expensive gas imports, or highly polluting fracked gas, or most likely, both. It will mean less renewable energy. As the Committee on Climate Change has noted, relying on gas could add £600 onto domestic energy bills. At a time the number of households in the UK in fuel poverty is rising, we need to point out that there are alternatives. And it is building more roads and while announcing rail fare rises at twice the rate of inflation. We can afford to heat our homes, protect the climate and create sustainable jobs which cut carbon emissions. In the summer of 2012 the One Million Climate Jobs Now! campaign launched a caravan tour which brought this message up and down the country. Groups such as Fuel Poverty Action are pointing out that rising energy prices are not caused by renewable energy but the rising price of gas. On October 20th, the Climate Block was formed linking the issue of climate justice and austerity on the TUC March in London. And on 29th October, No Dash for Gas occupied a new build gas plant at West Burton for over a week.


These are all small and laudable initiatives. In 2013 we need to continue to build these links, but also launch a new mass movement which embraces mass direct action. The potential is there to build something on a greater scale than before, which is better rooted in our society, with links to workers, the unemployed, students and pensioners. What we now need is courage, imagination, and above all determination to build this movement.

Climate camp reloaded

At a press conference in May 2010, Cameron flanked by his then minister for climate change, Chris Huhne, announced to great media fanfare that the incoming coalition would be the “greenest government ever”. The adoption of a green agenda had been one of the ways Cameron would detoxify the Conservative “brand” in the run up to the 2010 election. This involved a number of media stunts, including being photographed with husky dogs in the Arctic, and cycling to work in parliament (never mind the fact that a motorised escort following closely behind). The stunts aside, the government had committed to opposing airport expansion in the south east. In particular, they had promised to oppose the outgoing  Labour government’s support for a third runway at Heathrow.  The coalition had also committed Whitehall to participating in the 10:10 campaign aiming a 10% reduction in carbon emissions from participating businesses. Cameron also stated that the coalition would be committed to a new green economy in the UK.

Yet only two years later Cameron would commit one of the most abrupt political U-turns. 2012 marks the year when government policy on the environment in general, and climate change in particular, changed radically.  Following the reshuffle key ministers opposing airport expansion at the Department for Transport were replaced; John Hayes a vocal critic of wind farms was made energy minister; Owen Patterson, an opponent of wind farms and supporter of fracking is made an environment minister; and the former Thatcherite minister and climate denialist, Peter Lilley, was appointed to the parliamentary select committee on energy and climate change.  In November it is revealed that Osbourne’s “dash for gas” will quadruple the amount of “unabated” gas generating capacity, a commitment copper-fastened with tax subsidies, as well as major tax concessions to fracking industry. Also in November, it  is revealed that Cameron takes the highly unusual step of blocking the appointment of a key civil servant at DECC (Department of Energy and Climate Change) who is seen as being too committed to tackling climate change. And again in November the government announces a commission headed by the disgraced former director of the LSE, Howard Davies, a one time  policy advisor to ex Chancellor, Nigel Lawson (who now runs the climate denialist lobby group the Global Warming Policy foundation). Although the recommendation will not be delivered until after the next election, there can be little doubt  it will favour continued airport expansion at Heathrow. Then to top it all, the government gives the green light to over fourty “zombie” road schemes, which had been  successfully resisted by the direct action movement of the nineties and by local campaigns, such as the Combe Valley, Hasting bypass.

The austerity unleashed by the Coalition has failed to restore growth rates as numerous critical economic commentators had argued. Robert Skidelsky has pointed out that the 2010 forecast of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) was projected at 2.6% growth in 2011 and at 2.8% growth in 2012; in fact, the UK economy grew by 0.9% in 2011 and flat-lined in 2012. The  abrupt U-turn on the environment, far from representing a break from austerity, represents an intensification of plan A, that is, continuing with more austerity; it is a response mediated by the Coalition’s neoliberal ideology, which subordinates all other concerns to the economic interests of the 1%.  It needs to be understood in the context of the failure of Osborne's austerity policies to restore growth rates in the UK economy. This has left the government scrambling around for short-term fixes to restore growth. One of the quickest, cheapest, and needless to say, dirtiest, ways of doing this is by “externalising”, as economists put it,  more of the costs of production. Industry achieves this by loading the cost of economic growth on the environment and society, such as reducing workers’ health and safety, or relaxing pollution regulations, creating for example, an increased workload for the NHS. So the government's new planning laws will make it easier for business to concrete over swathes the countryside; and Vince Cable's “bonfire of red tape” will worsen working conditions by removing strict liability on employers who breach health and safety regulations. Whether these policies will actually restore growth rates, or is even desirable is a moot point. David Harvey has pointed out that while neoliberalism has failed to restore growth rates it has created new forms of dispossession and has always increased inequality

There is also the question of the political power of the fossil fuel industry to consider. There is a huge amount of capital tied up in the existing fossil fuel economy whether it be gas pipelines, power stations or oil refineries. And as Bill McKibben has noted, the stock valuations of oil and gas companies is tied to the exploitable reserves of fossil fuel in their asset portfolios. This concentration of fossil fuel capital creates its own centre of political power. This power is manifested in many different ways, in the media via public public relations, through the “revolving door” between Whitehall and the industry and directly in Parliament itself through lobbying. Other branches of industry have their own centres of power and their own political lobbies to represent their interests, whether it be the  airline industry lobbying for airport expansion, or the food industry lobbying to water down food labeling laws. George Osborne is one of the most influential defenders of the fossil fuel lobby in government. And other branches of industry have their own centres of power and their own political lobby’s to represent their interests. The renewable energy industry, because it is newer and smaller, does not enjoy the same political influence as the fossil fuel lobby. So for instance, the hostility of many backbench Tory MPs to wind farms should not be understood as concerns due to their aesthetic impact on the English countryside but the playing out of the interest of the fossil fuel lobby. Their concerns for the English countryside seem to evaporate when the question is new roads schemes in their constituency. It will be interesting to observe how many of those MPs opposing wind schemes on “aesthetic” grounds will also oppose fracking rigs in their constituencies.

The government’s new “growth” agenda threatens to undo every progressive gain made by environmental movements and campaigns over the last thirty years. For instance, it was one of the gains of the direct action anti-road movement of the 90s to make the government accept that it could not solve the country's transport problems by building more roads. It is clear the Osborne would like to tear up the Climate Act as he seeks to undermine it with major gas expansion. Insufficient as it is, the Climate Act is still a major gain, which would not have got into the statute book without the mobilisation of the climate campaigns of the last decade.

This assault on the environment can and must be resisted. The mass direct action movement unleashed by groups such as Reclaims the Streets in the 90s was an essential element which blocked the Major government’s road building plans. Likewise, Climate Camp and Plane Stupid derailed the last government’s expansion plans for new coal at Kingsnorth and forced the then opposition to oppose new runways in the South East - at least for this term. Sadly until we fundamentally change our political and economic system these victories will always be partial and limited.

But that does not mean we should give up. In 2013 we should renew our commitment to rebuild a movement focussed on social and environmental justice. The emergence of the global Occupy movement following the movements in Spain and Greece and the revolts in the Middle East  gives us an opportunity to build a deeper, broader and more interconnected movement. We need to point there are alternatives to the neoliberal lunacy being imposed in this country and throughout Europe.

George Osborne's dash for gas will not only undermine the Climate Act but lock the UK either into expensive gas imports, or highly polluting fracked gas, or most likely, both. It will mean less renewable energy. As the Committee on Climate Change has noted, relying on gas could add £600 onto domestic energy bills. At a time the number of households in the UK in fuel poverty is rising, we need to point out that there are alternatives. And it is building more roads and while announcing rail fare rises at twice the rate of inflation. We can afford to heat our homes, protect the climate and create sustainable jobs which cut carbon emissions. In the summer of 2012 the One Million Climate Jobs Now! campaign launched a caravan tour which brought this message up and down the country. Groups such as Fuel Poverty Action are pointing out that rising energy prices are not caused by renewable energy but the rising price of gas. On October 20th, the Climate Block was formed linking the issue of climate justice and austerity on the TUC March in London. And on 29th October, No Dash for Gas occupied a new build gas plant at West Burton for over a week.


These are all small and laudable initiatives. In 2013 we need to continue to build these links, but also launch a new mass movement which embraces mass direct action. The potential is there to build something on a greater scale than before, which is better rooted in our society, with links to workers, the unemployed, students and pensioners. What we now need is courage, imagination, and above all determination to build this movement.

Occupy: one year after

Our immediate inspiration came from the Indignados and Occupy Wall street, above all, the tents of Tahrir Square to organise to Occupy the London Stock Exchange, or at least the public square in front of it on a sunny Saturday afternoon on October 15th. Of course, we arrived to discover Paternoster Square already occupied. Immediately we discover one thing about our city. Like inspector Borlu, in the novel, The City and The City, we arrive at a crime scene and discover a corpse. And like in the novel, all is not what it seems. Our “public” space is not so public after all. The neoliberal city had made a corpse of our commonwealth. The global elite and the 99.99% exist in two different cities occupying the same space. These parallel worlds must never be allowed to cross: the world as imagined by the tiny elite who control the fate of millions in their glass fronted offices and the lived reality of the rest of us.  It is the breach caused by this movement, puncturing this partition, designed by the global elites to isolate themselves from the consequences of their actions. A separation which the corporate and government controlled media find increasingly difficult to maintain, which has been one of the principal subjects occupying the news headlines around the world this year.

If the struggle of man and woman against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting then it is important to remember what came before us. The elites would say to us,”You  partook in this binge, and now the bar is closing it’s time to pay the tab”. We must remind them there were movements that came before us to challenge the dogmas of neoliberalism. In January 1994, in protest against the introduction of North America Free Trade Agreement, the Zapatistas occupied the capital of Chiapas state in Mexico and issued their famous declaration from the Lacandon Jungle. Like ours it inspired a global movement. And like our movements it used the internet to coordinate global days of action. Of course, this was in the days before Twitter and Facebook. But it was, arguably, better organised and far more intellectually coherent than our own. It organised global days of action, such as J18, which shut down major financial centres, such as the City of London, involving 40,000 people. It was instrumental in organising the protests, which shut down the WTO in Seattle in 1999, which in turn inspired the great counter-summit protests, the largest and most dramatic of which was Genoa in 2001. Our great advantage over these precedents is one of timing. That we are part of a global movement with antecedents was something that was at times easy to forget in the daily struggle to remain warm, dry, and deal with  the other distractions we faced at St Pauls Churchyard.

One year on we are both excited about the protest movements Kicking Off Everywhere, but also angry about the human misery caused by austerity. And frightened, as in the case of Golden Dawn in Greece, of some of the sinister forces being unleashed by this chaos.

We have made it one our tasks  to fill history with the presence of the now. In putting together the New Putney debates we, as Walter Benjamin might have put it,  blast out of the continuum of history  inspirational moments, filling them with contemporary relevance.

So surveying the scene one year on what do we find? We have seen, and indeed are continuing to see, a year of protest and resistance. Across Europe we have seen a year of occupations, mass demonstrations and general strikes. And across the Atlantic, on opposing sides of the hemisphere the Chilean and  Quebec student protests show that it is possible to resist both the privatisation of, and the privatised, higher education system. And in the case of Quebec to bring down a government as well.  But  we must admit there is a certain asymmetry to the situation. The scale of the attack is nowhere equalled by the scale of the resistance to it. I think this is certainly true in Europe - even in Greece. I am writing this piece from Madrid where only yesterday there were marches in fifty cities in Spain with a clear message to the government that it has no mandate for its assault on the welfare system and the unions are promising a general strike if this assault is continues without the assent of the people. But if anything, the pace of the attack is accelerating as austerity bites into the economy. In Portugal, the government’s assault on social security has been halted for now, but nowhere has this assault been rolled back. And most of the time, the elites are able to use the coercive power of the state to impose their will and frustrate us. While our lack organisational maturity means we are not able to concentrate our energies and forces in a strategic way to overcome this.

But it is particularly the open and direct democracy of the Occupy and 15M movement, which the state finds the most threatening thing about us. Our global movement can only realise itself through the appropriation and re-appropriation of public space. For a real democracy can only emerge from the ground we occupy, from the space we need, both figuratively and literally, to create  and develop our form of direct democracy. That space is not just in the streets, but in every office, school or public building faced with closure.  The occupation at Barnet Library shows in a small, but important way, how our movement develops by giving an added relevance to occupation and purpose to the organising of public assemblies.

There is no clear way out of this crisis for those who rule over us. Mervyn King sees no end to a Euro crisis which could trigger a global depression. Years, if not decades, of stagnation and austerity lie before us if we allow it. For what we are living through is not so much an economic crisis but an environmental and a political crisis to which  the economic crisis is wholly subordinate. We have a political system which is constrained to appease the bond markets and impose the same austerity policies whoever is in power. And the economic crisis has served to distract us from the only true existential crisis facing humanity: climate change. Only by changing the current political system can we build an economic system that serves the interests of humanity and the environment.

If we see both triumph and disaster as impostors even if we celebrate our victories and cry over our setbacks it is because we expect to see plenty of both in the coming years. But in the in the end there is only one victory that counts: the one that brings an end to a system, which is sending humanity towards an environmental and social abyss.

A long term perspective is important. The crisis we are living through is going to be with us for years if not decades. And the scale of the resistance we will have the privilege of witnessing will dwarf in scale anything we have witnessed in our lives. Walter Benjamin wrote that each generation is imbued with a weak messianic power. We should feel like we are at the beginning of a epic journey and we have only just started to climb the first foothills of a mountain range. And we are entering massive mountain range. Our journey will have many ups and downs and we are prepared for both.

A strategy to defeat austerity

The last three months has seen a number of national conferences, networks, and initiatives setup to resist the cuts. With the goal of stopping the coalition’s austerity drive in mind, a key question many activists attending these events  may  be asking is what is the best strategy to defeat the government’s austerity plans? Should  we rely on splits within the coalition to defeat the austerity plans? This appears to be the strategy being pursued by the NUS, under the leadership of its self-confessedly “spineless” president, Aaron Porter, in their targeting of the Libdems, and Nick Clegg in particular, over their vault-face on tuition fees.  Notwithstanding Vincent Cable’s vain outburst to undercover hacks from the Telegraph last December, revealing tensions between some Liberals and the Conservatives, I do not think we can rely on splits between the Liberals and Tories to defeat the anti-austerity plan. The more the coalition is threatened by an anti-austerity movement the more Nick Clegg will stick , limpet like, to the Tories. An early election would spell doom for the Liberals. Effectively, what we are facing is not a coalition government, but a hard-line, neo-liberal Tory government. 

Waiting for Labour, which seemed to be the advice coming from some of those behind Netroots UK conference, is not a solution either. Lasting damage is being inflicted now. The Chancellor’s recent spending cuts will hit the poorest hardest, with the young, sick and disabled being hardest hit of all. Spending cuts lead to a widening gap between rich and poor. The Chancellor’s fiscal straightening represent a net transfer of wealth away from the poorest in our society according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies. We can’t afford to allow the Tories to inflict five years of damage to the fabric of our society with the hope of voting them out at the end of this. The damage inflicted to a generation will take years to put right - if it can be put right at all. And we shouldn’t forget Labour was, and still is, committed to its own form of austerity (whoever is the shadow Chancellor): the spending cuts currently causing turmoil in higher eduction were introduced by the last labour government.

Can the local anti-cuts groups springing up and down the country do it on their own? Certainly, local anti-cuts groups will play an important role in resisting the cuts on the ground. But we need to be clear: part of Cameron’s strategy is to deflect anger from the government by localising power, so that it is local authorities and a devolved, and semi-privatised, welfare and health service that are deciding how the cuts are implemented. Furthermore, the government has skewed the cuts to favour rural areas (mainly Liberal and Conservative voting) over urban (mainly Labour). The danger for us is this  will lead to a fragmented and divided resistance as myriad local and sectoral groups fight against this or that particular cut, as the government plays one section of society against the other: town against country; disabled against the pensioners; pensioners against the students; and the unemployed against civil servants. The media and government have already tried this tactic: witness the furore last summer over the mythical families living in  Kensington town houses receiving tens of thousands of pound in housing benefit. 

Can we leave it to Len McKluskey, president of Unite, as many in the Coalition of Resistance seem to believe? Welcome though his support for the student movement has been - and it is welcome. His role in last year's dispute between BA and their cabin crew, and his dismissal of the idea of a general strike as coming from the “usual quarters” leads one to believe there are limits as to how far he is prepared to go in defeating austerity. 

The government has no plan B. Its political survival depends on it continuing with the austerity plan. Cameron is unlikely to perform a U-turn as would this cause a civil war within the Conservative Party (the right of his party already feel alienated by the Coalition) and cause a rift with his Chancellor.The only sure way to stop the cuts is by bringing the government down, and the only sure way of realising that objective is by making Britain ungovernable. Making Britain ungovernable would entail taking control of the workplace as much as taking control of the streets. How could this be achieved in practice? As I see it, there are three key elements to a strategy to stop the cuts. 

First, as an urgent priority, the rebuilding of work place rank-and-file organisation that is capable of working independently of, and, if needed, against the trade union bureaucracy. Such an industrial network, if nationally coordinated, could put  pressure on the trade union bureaucracy to call nationally coordinated strike action, and even a general strike. Such action would create a positive dynamic, developing the confidence of workers, which could further rank-and-file organisation, and in turn, increase the strength and militancy of work place resistance. 

The second element is to take control of the streets. The students have shown how it is possible to defy police tactics of kettling with a few thousand protesters. And the student occupations have shown what an effective tactic they are in spreading resistance. But we need to go beyond this and start occupying other other public buildings such as Town Halls. For that we need a street movement that can sustain this sort of action on a much larger scale. The student Day X’s should be seen as an example of how to build such a street based movement.

And third, we need anti-cuts groups that are able to raise national political demands. These must be capable of reaching out to the work place, building the links with local workplace organisation to coordinate anti-cuts resistance. These forms of resistance, based on the student movement, the work place movement and the anti-cuts community organised movement need to come together, and in doing so, reinforce each other. Local People’s Assemblies could act as act as the hubs where anti-cuts groups, local workplace organisation, student networks and those on the front-line of resistance come together to openly and democratically organise solidarity and resistance. Such bodies would not only be a forum a where alternatives are debated, but also be the spaces were decisions are taken and power is exercised.

Well it won't surprise you if I say the TUC is not going to follow the strategy I have outlined above.There are strict limits to how far the TUC is prepared to go in stopping austerity, and that should be clear to anyone who has studied its history, from the 1926 General Strike to the present. Its  response so far has been too do as little as it can get away with: announcing a national demonstration in March, way back last October. Further, the experience of the anti-war movement has shown that it takes more than one big demonstration, or many, in central London to sway a government that is determined to pursue a particular course. A strategy based on A to B marches followed by platitudes delivered from the stage is just as likely to demobilise people, as the Stop the War Coalition has found to its cost. But that does not mean we should be dismissive of it. Remember the 10th of November was just another student demo until the unexpected happened. As it begins to dawn on millions of people just what austerity will mean for them personally, that anger may want to express itself in ways the TUC are not prepared to articulate. This can lead to a convergence of interest between those that simply want to resist the cuts and those that want to take this movement further. And that common interest can be pursued through a strategy of making Britain ungovernable. Now pursuing ungovernability as a strategy may seem far fetched in the present circumstances, but part of what is holding back the growth of resistance, is the subjective factor: the “how do we resist?” question in peoples minds. It is the feeling of inevitability which leads to passivity. But passivity can turn to its opposite once people see concrete examples of resistance, as the event currently unfolding in Egypt and Tunisia demonstrate. 

Building a movement against austerity is about getting people to think the unthinkable, to imagine the unimaginable, like idea of a general strike or a People’s Assembly. The 26th March demo could be the bootstrap which gets millions of people out of passivity, and sets them on the path, for it is only when millions of people start thinking and debating these things that they become possible.