[Militant No. 493, 7th March 1980, p. 1 and 2]
The 9 March national demonstration must be the starting point of an all-out, mass campaign to bring down the Tory government.
Thatcher’s government is the most viciously anti-working class in Britain since the period of crisis and depression before the second world war.
The new anti-trade union measures embodied in the ‘Employment’ Bill are designed to undermine the ability of the workers’ organisations to resist to resist further savage attacks on their living standards, their ‘social wage,’ and long-established democratic rights.
Writing recently to the ‘top peoples’ paper, the Old Etonian former Tory MP Victor Montagu [and formerly Earl of Sandwich until disclaiming his title in 1964] spelled out the vicious philosophy of Thatcherism.
“After 60 years of relative international decline,” he told ‘The Times’ [26 February], “some new governing ethic must be found to save our state. We need a touch of the whip to set us off at a spanking pace…”
But why has there been sixty years of decline? Not simply because of wrong ‘ethics’ or misguided economic policies.
The degeneration of British industry is the result of the short-sighted, selfish drive for profit by the capitalists, the 1% of the population who own 25% of the wealth. They are responsible!
Yet now they want to use the whip against the working class. The whip means over two million unemployed in the next twelve months. The whip means six million adult workers [34% of the labour force] earning a poverty wage of less than £60 a week.
The Tory press claims that the labour movement has ‘no mandate’ to bring down the Tory government. But even they have to admit [not prominently, of course] that a recent Gallup Poll showed that 65% of the voters now believe that the Tory economic policies are unfair.
Ten months of this government is enough. That is why the TUC, all the trade unions, and the Labour Party must come together to organise a mass campaign to bring down Thatcher’s government.
The next step must be the energetic organisation of a national 24-hour general strike on 14 May.
The campaign must be waged on the basis of bold socialist policies [see editorial, above]. To the forefront must be policies to solve the burning problems now facing millions of workers:
- 35-hour week without loss of pay!
- £80 minimum wage for all workers!
- Restore all spending cuts!
- Stop the Tories’ anti-union laws!
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