domingo, 21 de outubro de 2012

INGLATERRA - PANFLETO DO SOCIALIST FIGHT 20/10/2012

Victory to the South African Striking Miners!
Enough of the bogus “protecting frontline services”, and “cuts too far too fast”!
TU leaders must fight for needs budgets!TUC: Call an indefinite General Strike!

The striking miners of South Africa are the vanguard of the international proletariat. The brutal and pre-planned massacre of the 34 miners on 16th August is a sharp manifestation of the International crisis of capitalism. Every class conscious workers on the planet has a duty to support and work for the victory of these strikes because they are fighting not just for the future of the South African working class but for all our futures.
The world crisis of capitalism continue to deepen; the Greek and European sovereign debt crisis continues to worsen, several countries in the euro area cannot repay or re-finance their government debt without the assistance of the dreaded troika, the IMF, EU and ECB.
The debts of speculators and banks from property bub-bles were transferred to the national bank balance and so the crisis became a sovereign debt crisis which is now threatening the solvency of whole nations and the survival of the Euro and the European Union itself. This has global consequences, threatening inter-Imperialist rivalries the like of which we saw before WWI and WWII.
This has had dire consequences for the Greek working class and poor, food kitchens have sprung everywhere and real poverty and hunger has begun to reappeared in Europe for the first time since the end of WWII. Greece shows us all our futures under this rotten and crisis-ridden capitalist system.
It is already apparent that a severe housing crisis is developing in Britain, the NHS is being totally privatised and local councils are about to be reduced to being the paymasters of privatised and decimated local services. Tory Barnet council is pioneering US-style total privatisation of services. Chancellor Ed Balls told the Guardian, “The public want to know that we are going to be ruthless and disciplined in how we go about public spending”. And at the Labour Conference, “we cannot make any commitments now that the next Labour government will be able to reverse particular tax rises or spending cuts.”
Following the terrible Marikana Massacre on 16 August on Monday 15 October the crisis in South Africa’s mining sector worsened when talks between the Chamber of Mines and trade unions failed and the strike wave spread. “The situation is grave,” Willie Jacobsz, head of investor relations at Gold Fields told the Financial Times. “All of Gold Fields’ South African mines, with the excep-tion of the developing South Deep, are now engaged in illegal strike action, putting thousands of jobs at risk and increasing the likelihood of major restructuring.”

South Africa's schools are just as miserable as the health care system, and youth unemployment exceeds fifty percent. A large share of the black majority still lives in corrugated metal huts, the gap between rich and poor is now even wider than in the days of white rule, and among the world’s worst.

A great many of the ANC and NUM leaders have become multi-millionaires themselves by serving the interests of Imperialist finance capital. Former NUM leaders like Cyril Ramaphosa, Kgalema Motlanthe, Gwede Mantashe, and James Motlatsi have used their union positions to become capitalists themselves and betray the miners.

They personify the ANC’s shift from a radical petty-bourgeois nationalist liberation movement to a bourgeois nationalist ruling party that protects the interests of the black bourgeoisie, the white monopoly capitalists in South Africa and British-based and other foreign companies such as Lonmin, like Ireland’s Gerry Adams.

The official leadership of the working class internationally are bureaucratised functionaries, career politicians who are dependent on the capitalist system itself for their privileged lifestyles. So their greatest fear is the mass movement of the working class which will threaten that lifestyle. We need a new revolutionary leadership.

Their strangle-hold on the rank and file of the movement is stronger now than ever. They actively foster the two tier workforce to split and divide us. We saw this in Ellesmere Port, in the London buses and in countless other workplaces; new starters are second class TU members, with lower pay rates and far worse conditions. Almost all left groups do not fight this in any serious way, thus they do not prepare for this impending catastrophe.

The National Shop Stewards Network, Unite the Resistance and the Coalition of Resistance cosy up to bureaucrats, left and right, with Len McCluskey’s treachery alibied and excused by all. We desperately need a genuine rank and file movement which fights for the class independence of the working class not only in Britain but internationally. We need to reforge the only truly internationalist revolutionary current, the Fourth International.

To defend the working class locally we need to develop local campaigns like the Counihan Homelessness campaign in Brent to become national campaigns demanding needs budgets to provide decent social housing for all.

We need to defend the civil rights and demand the release of Irish Republican, Palestinian, Naxalite POWs in India and all other anti-Imperialist political prisoners internationally.

The TUC are to investigate the "practicalities" of holding a general strike. A one day would be only a protest to let off steam, as in Greece and Spain. We must fight for an indefinite General strike to pose the question of power to make any progress for the working class in this crisis.

Slogans for the International Fight
> Raise an International fund to support all the Striking South African Miners!
> Forward to nationalisation of the mines in South Africa under the control of workers and working class communities!
> Democratise the unions!
> Elections of all union officials!
> Officials to be paid no more than the average skilled worker’s wage!
> Defeat the anti-union laws!
> For a steeply progressive wealth tax!
> Public works at TU rates of pay to give work to the unemployed!
> No to British Jobs for British Workers!
> Forward to the International Solidarity of all the working class and oppressed!
> Build a National Housing Campaign to fight for decent social housing for all!
> Release all Irish, Palestinian, Naxalite and all other anti-Imperialist POWs!
> For an indefinite General Strike to bring down the Con-Dem government!
> Rebuild the Revolutionary International, reforge the Trotskyist Fourth International!

Socialist Fight