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.