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| Volume 52 Number 19, August 27, 2022 | ARCHIVE | HOME | JBCENTRE | SUBSCRIBE |
Striking rail workers at London Bridge Station - Photo:
Unjum Mirza
The strike struggles that have been developing in scope and momentum are a sign that working people have had enough of being treated as things and not as human beings with their rights and interests. This edition of Workers' Weekly carries reports on some of the struggles.
The intensification of the anti-social offensive and privatisation, with the cost-of-living crisis causing devastation for working people, with inflation soaring and energy prices spiralling upwards, has prompted the call that Enough is Enough! Resistance is growing, with rail workers setting the pace in the face of job losses and harsh real-terms pay cuts. Joining in the resistance through strike action have been call centre workers, lawyers, journalists, cleaners, transport workers and others. These workers have taken a stand against facing the fastest fall in real wages on record, while the oligarchs and monopolies who try to enforce the will of private vested interests have overseen the theft of the new value that workers produce on a national and international scale.
The working class and people are stating plainly that Enough is Enough! Working people are setting their sights on the goal of being in control of their own lives. The need of the times is for renewal, and the condition for this is the emancipation of the working class. This is an immediate requirement, a requirement to establish the power to counter being hamstrung by the dictates of the rich, and the treatment of the working class and people as things and not human beings, seeing them as costs on a balance sheet, a necessary evil to be minimised.
TUC march against the cost of living rise in June -
Photo: Vuk Valcic-Zuma Press Wire - Rex Shutterstock
When the call is being given that the working class is back, working people should also look at it from the point of view of emphasising that their role is to take social responsibility for the future of society. As the slogan of the Durham miners affirms, the future is in your hands, our hands, the requirement that the general interests of society are its responsibility, as well as the well-being of every working person and the interests of the working class as a whole, a class in itself and for itself. In other words, only the working class is the class which can provide solutions to the problems of society, because their interests are consonant with a society which is fit for human beings, whereas those who dehumanise the workers in pursuit of their private vested interests do not see beyond destroying society if they cannot control it. Narrow private interests are further taking over the functions of the state, privatising what should be public functions, such as responsibility for transport, health, education.
In the immediate sense, the political call is that society should be arranged to stop paying the rich, and that instead the wealth created by working people should be invested in the social well-being of all. To advance along this path, to turn things around so that the arrangements in society favour them, is the task of the working class at this juncture as things come to a head. The requirement for political power has become an immediate demand for the working class in order to put a stop to the anti-social offensive which is causing havoc for working people and society as a whole.
The time is now for working people to strengthen their organisation, stand firm and speak out in their own name, with their own outlook and programme as events unfold.