“The trade union movement & the TUC have a key role to play in shifting Labour off the petard on which it has hung itself.”
By Alex Gordon, RMT President
The racist riots that scarred towns and cities in England and Northern Ireland last month following the murders of three young girls at a dance class in Southport, are a reminder that a Labour government inherits a divided society reeling from 14 years of Tory austerity, falling real wages, a housing crisis and rampant price-gouging by private monopolies in energy, railways and utilities.
Racist and Islamophobic mobs targeted mosques and hotels hosting people seeking asylum and rioters destroyed public property in numerous locations. Far-right networks coordinated mob violence and right-wing politicians encouraged intimidation by talking of “legitimate concerns”.
It is not absolving any of the guilty parties to say that social problems including racist and sexist violence have been nurtured by the anti-social policies of 14 years of Tory misrule, which cut public spending and gave a free hand to spivs and speculators from the boardrooms of the City of London to the parasitical, rack-rent, slum landlords that pollute towns and cities across Britain.
For all the welcome acts and intentions of the newly elected Labour government including scrapping the ludicrous, ruinous and racist Rwanda deportation scheme (which has been exposed and held up by PCS union members for years), the pledge to repeal the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act 2023 and introduce the New Deal for Working People and the repeal of the Tory rail privatisation laws, Labour’s economic strategy bears an uncanny resemblance to the that of its defeated and demoralised Tory predecessors.
While Labour’s general election slogan may have been “Change”, the pronouncements from Labour Chancellor, Rachel Reeves that she would stick by Tory tax and spending policies for the first two years of a Labour government, mean that the reality is likely to be more of the same but worse, as society and the economy continue to deteriorate from the accumulated impact of austerity.
Labour’s manifesto commitment that “there will be no return to austerity” is incompatible with Rachel Reeves’ commitment to the so-called Fiscal Rule.
Labour inherits the results of sustained austerity. Our public services, local authorities and public transport networks have been starved of necessary funding for a decade and a half. This is a time for emergency measures, not more of the same.
While long term problems such as the decline in affordable housing stock cannot be resolved overnight, public services and local authorities can’t wait for an austerity strategy that puts off addressing the social emergency we face until future economic growth has been achieved, or on leveraging private investment, which appear to be Labour’s current economic approach.
There is an urgent need for Labour to deliver a significant real-terms increase in public spending and investment, both as an immediate necessity and as part of a longer-term economic strategy for sustainable growth.
The trade union movement and the TUC have a key role to play in shifting Labour off the petard on which it has hung itself. Our movement must launch a high-profile and constructive public campaign to make the case loudly and proudly for a more radical, progressive and credible economic strategy for economic and social renewal.
RMT is calling on the TUC to make the case for:
1. reforms to unnecessarily restrictive and arbitrary fiscal rules
2. reforms to taxation, introduction of wealth taxes, and redistribution of wealth
3. a proactive industrial strategy, including public ownership and investment and planning to help deliver strategic investment as the basis of sustainable economic growth
4. extension of sectoral collective bargaining across the economy to raise productivity and living standards.
Our movement has the ability and the duty to influence the next and forthcoming budgets by political lobbying and publicly demanding no return to austerity in our towns and cities.
The future is ours, but only if we campaign and fight for it.
- Follow the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) to find out more about their campaigns. You can follow the RMT on Facebook, twitter and Instagram.
- Alex Gordon is President of the RMT.
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