The austerity programme of the Coalition government is not just failing: it is prolonging and deepening the recession. Cuts in investment in public services and in jobs, wages, pensions and benefits are creating mass unemployment and mounting hardship.

Austerity is creating a spiral of economic decline as cuts produce high levels of unemployment which in turn reduces tax income and prompts another round of cuts and job losses.

The Government’s austerity measures are also unfair as the only people the Government seems intent on protecting from the recession are the rich.

There is an alternative to austerity

There is no lack of wealth and resources in our country that we can draw upon to tackle this recession. The problem is that this wealth and these resources are held in the hands of too few people and are not being used productively to create the growth and jobs we need.

If we can release these resources, we can overcome the current recession and start to build a prosperous future for our country, linking with others across Europe and the US to overcome this global economic gridlock.

Releasing the resources within our own country is not difficult
It simply requires the introduction of a limited range of redistributive measures which will raise the funds we need from those most able to pay and who have profited most out of the boom years.

This redistribution can be achieved through:

• a wealth tax on the richest 10%,
• a Robin Hood tax on financial transactions,
• a Land Value tax,
• the restoration of progressive income tax of 60% on incomes above £100,000;
• and a clamp down on the tax evasion and avoidance that is costing us £95 billion a year.

Investing the resources released can halt the spiral of decline

With unemployment rising month by month we urgently need to get people back to work and earning a decent living.

We can do this by investing the resources we can release through taxation in modernising our economy, its infrastructure and our public services to meet the needs of our community.

Instead of cutting and privatising our health, education and local services, this means:

• investing in a mass public housing building and renovation programme, in universal chidcare, in the modernisation of our public services, in our transport infrastructure and in the extension of broadband;
• investing in alternative energy, combined heat and power and insulation to both tackle climate change and create one million climate change jobs;
• establishing a national investment bank with the resources levied from the banks so that there is no shortage of funds to lend for manufacturing growth and research and development.

To be successful the recovery programme has to be fair

We shall need the support of a significant majority of our people if we are to drive through this type of radical regeneration and redistribution programme.

To gain this level of support means the Radical Alternative must be seen to be fair. This means addressing many of the inequalities of our current system.

For those at the top it means ending the bonuses and limiting high salaries to no more than 20 times the lowest paid in any company or organisation.

For all others it means replacing the minimum wage with a living wage and a living pension and living welfare benefits, reducing the working week to 35 hours, closing the gender pay gap, controlling rents and energy prices, and restoring rights at work.
For young people it means a guaranteed job, apprenticeship, training or college place for every young person with the burden of fees abolished.

There is no shortage of resources to implement this programme of reform

The problem is the distribution of these resources.The Radical Alternative simply releases the resources that we have to regain control of our economy and to invest in our future. Never again can we let them say that there is no alternative.

• John McDonnell is MP for Hayes & Harlington and Chair of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs and the Labour Representation Committee.

In 2009 a symposium was held at Birkbeck College which surprised its organisers by bringing together a large gathering of political philosophers to discuss “The Idea of Communism.” Verso subsequently published a book of papers from the event under the same title.

Over the previous decade or two, convening an event under this title would have been left either to political historians or to the very small group of activists likely to attend. The reason for the large attendance of some of our most significant and many young political philosophers drawn from across Europe and further afield was set out in the introduction to the papers for the symposium:
“The long night of the left is drawing to a close. The defeat, denunciations and despair of the 1980s and 1990s, the triumphalist ‘end of history’, the unipolar world of American hegemony – all are fast becoming old news.”

The philosophers were engaging in their own way in the same regeneration of the left which was energising a mass of activists, the trade union rank and file and the new social movements.

The first wave of the regeneration of left activism came with the students and lecturers’ Milbank demonstration in November 2010, through to the ground breaking Hardest Hit marches for people with disabilities, the student occupations, the TUC’s March for the Alternative and UK Uncut direct action, on to the St Paul’s Occupation and up to the national pensions strike in November 2011.

Many came out of that first wave period reassured that not only was it possible to mobilise large numbers in concerted action, in strikes and direct action, but also that a new generation had entered the field.

The first wave ended with the all too typical betrayal of the national pensions campaign by the same old trade union bureaucracies, with the TUC and Unison leaderships putting on a display of grovelling, abject self-interested cowardice not witnessed on this scale since the TUC sold out the miners in the 1926 General Strike.

The TUC and union bureaucracies were hoping for a “peace in our time” type settlement with the Government that would enable them to hold back grassroots resistance. They just wanted a quiet life and to continue to enjoy the lifestyle the fruits of their general secretary salaries afforded them. They hoped that in killing off the co-ordinated national industrial action, life could return to normal with the acquiescent acceptance of their members and the wider community of the Coalition’s pay and pension cuts, job and service cuts and privatisations. Unfortunately for them, two elements have conspired to disrupt this.

The first is that, in the Government’s own estimation, only 15% of the first tranche of its cuts have been implemented so far. Another 300,000 to 400,000 of the first round of job cuts have yet to be driven through.

George Osborne gave a taste of the further scale of cuts to come in his budget speech. The economy is scraping along the bottom of economic activity. Aggregated demand continues to be reduced by job, pay, pensions and social security cuts. As a result tax income is declining and the deficit is increasing, not falling. The Government’s only response is to demand more public expenditure cuts.

In his budget speech Osborne announced a further £10 billion of cuts from the welfare budget. This is an early taste of the next round of public expenditure cuts to be expected in the November budget statement – unless the worsening economic climate forces the Government into an earlier announcement.

The second element is that the willingness and determination of people and communities to resist government policies, and the underlying and growing sense of injustice and anger have not gone away. Far from it!

Wherever a free ballot has been conducted in trade unions without the interference of the suited bureaucrats, there have been increased majorities for strike action. The next co-ordinated industrial action will be on 10th May, across a number of unions still campaigning on pensions. The NUT has a rolling regional programme of industrial action, with national action possible in late June.

Unite’s fuel drivers are refusing to roll over and the rail unions are resorting to strike action to protect jobs and working conditions across the industry, especially in the run up to the Olympics. Even the Police Federation is organising a national demonstration in London to coincide with action on 10th May and is balloting its members on the right to strike.

Despite the draconian use of the courts to deter protesters, wave after wave of lobbies, demonstrations and direct action are taking place, largely unreported, on almost a daily basis. These include DPAC blocking Trafalgar Square, pensioners picketing government offices, Right to Work campaigners destroying Tesco’s use of workfare, squatters sleeping outside ministers’ houses and RMT taxi drivers in convoy causing the whole of central London to seize up.

This anger and willingness to resist is also being evidenced electorally across Europe from the Bradford West by-election and the dramatic increase in support for Mélenchon in France, to the likely election of Hollande and the lift of Labour to a 13 point lead in the polls. All are signs of the potential for radical resistance. The message is clear for the left: seize the moment!
lJohn McDonnell is MP for Hayes & Harlington and Chair of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs and the Labour Representation Committee.

As I write this, I have just got back from a picket line outside Reuters, where the cleaners employed by Rentokil Initial are campaigning for the London Living Wage. It was a typical new style picket line, with drums and music alongside the traditional flags and union banners. The picket was organised by the London Region of the International Workers of the World (IWW), a new union set up in the tradition of the original IWW or “Wobblies” as they became known.

This new resurgence of the IWW was established by activists Chris Ford and Albert Durango to organise the cleaners and other vulnerable workers in sectors where other unions have not risen to the challenge. The IWW has followed the example of the way RMT has organised the cleaners on the London Underground and the intensive work of RMT representatives like the famed and heroic RMT steward known to everyone by her first name, Clara.

Most of these workers originate from Latin America or former Eastern bloc countries. Many have insecure nationality status, limited language skills and little experience of the labour market and working conditions in this country. This makes them wide open to exploitation.

Despite this vulnerability, these determined members of the IWW and RMT are showing what real trade unionism means and how effective unions can be. Their campaigns have involved being able to speak the language and understand the culture of the workers they seek to represent. Recruitment has been achieved by demonstrating that once a person has joined the union they gain the solid protection of the union.

The members of these unions know that the union is on their side. There are no cosy behind the scenes relationships between the union and management and no sweetheart deals. Through persistent pressure on employers – which includes a willingness to negotiate sensibly but strike and demonstrate whenever necessary – the IWW is forcing the pace of companies coming to realise they have to pay the London Living Wage, and the RMT is ensuring that cleaners are increasingly gaining the recognition and pay that other rail workers have achieved.

What does all this say about the potential unions have now and in the future?

It’s fairly obvious. Trade union membership has fallen in this country over the last three decades from 13 million to just above six million. In unions like RMT and PCS, where there is an active rank and file movement, the members have elected a leadership that represents the members and is directly accountable to them. It is these unions that are growing. They are relevant and effective.

In sectors where the traditional unions are not willing to fight for their members and there is no effective rank and file campaigning organisation to enforce accountability on the bureaucracy, the unions are increasingly irrelevant to workers in their workplaces and are in decline. No amount of amalgamations can hide this descent into irrelevance, and blaming anti-trade unions laws is just a fig leaf of an excuse. The IWW has also demonstrated that even the most vulnerable workers are willing to stand up and fight where there is a union that is willing to show strength and leadership.

In the coming period union after union will be asked the question: are you willing to fight or are you going to allow this Government to walk all over your members, cut your wages, pensions, conditions and jobs?

The Coalition is making its position explicit in this year’s budget and the legislative programme which will follow it, which will be outlined in the Queen’s Speech in May. Forcing through regional pay rates to cut the wages of over half the workforce is an “in your face” challenge to the unions. If the Government wants to play hard ball and to fight unions on a regional basis, we must demand an equally serious response from the unions. This means a call for a rolling programme of regional general strikes, co-ordinated across the country, building for national industrial action.

When cowardly trade union leaders argue that their members won’t respond to the call for strike action, don’t just point to the massive response on 30th November last year but point also to the courage and determination of the IWW cleaners. These are people with so little, but willing to risk the little they have to secure justice.

If certain trade union bureaucracies refuse to act to preserve the peaceful enjoyment of their salaries and benefits paid for by their members’ subscriptions, then we must make the call to reclaim our unions  from these sell outs. That will require the development of powerful rank and file movements in each union. It is that issue that we now need to address as a matter of urgency.

• John McDonnell is MP for Hayes & Harlington and Chair of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs and the Labour Representation Committee.

The evidence is now mounting that demonstrates the Government’s austerity programme is beginning to bite – and bite hard. Unemployment has surged to 2.67 million, with another two million forced into part-time work directly as a result of cuts in public sector jobs and the knock-on effect in the private sector of cuts in public expenditure. Studies of the impact of past recessions have clearly shown that both long term and youth unemployment usually leave the severest scars on individuals, their communities and their generation.

The social psychology of the reaction to poverty and inequality explains that it provokes a basic “flight or fight” response. The flight response pushes the individual to do whatever he or she can to escape from the terrible impact of the recession on themselves, their family and society. In the depression of the 1930s the escape route for some was alcohol, and for desperate people others it was mental breakdown and sometimes suicide. Putting your head in the gas oven was one working class method of escape. In the 1980s people suffered the same traumas – leading to mental illness, increased suicides, alcohol dependency and the new scourge of communities ravaged by drugs.

The alternative, the fight response, can take the form of an organised fight back by communities through their representative organisations in strikes and demonstrations or can be the more spontaneous reaction of individuals and groups in direct action or riots. Over the last 20 months we have already witnessed the fight response in all its main forms from the strikes, marches and demos to the August riots.

Last month Professor Peter Taylor-Gooby at Kent University published his analysis of the association between the introduction of austerity measures and social disorder in western European societies over the last two and a half decades. He compared the data from Harvard University researchers detailing social disorder in developed countries (riots, political demonstrations and political strikes) and the data from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development on public spending, privatisation, job security and poverty.

He concluded, “My study shows that over a 25 year period and covering 26 countries, greater poverty, welfare state privatisation, public spending cuts and job insecurity lead to more disorder.” Commenting on the Government’s austerity policies he went on to warn very clearly that “It is exactly this kind of rapid deterioration in living standards for the most vulnerable groups and headlong privatisation that is most likely to lead to public disorder.”

The Government and the whole establishment know this and are increasingly fearful of it. The argument that the unrest seen in Greece could not happen here becomes less convincing with every cut and privatisation policy driven through Parliament and with every worker laid off or having their wages or pension cut.

It is this fear that motivated the courts to impose such disproportionate sentences on the student protestors and those participating in the riots of last summer. They were willing to risk destroying the lives of young people like Zenon Mitchell-Kotsakis, Francis Fernie, Edward Wollard, Alfie Meadows and Jodie MacIntyre in order to warn other young people off from joining the fight back against the austerity programme.

An essential part of the fighting response to austerity therefore is the defence of these individuals who have been victimised and the defence of the right to protest.

The group Defend the Right to Protest has organised a number of meetings and demonstrations over the coming months to expose the pattern of attacks on individual protestors by the state and to support those in prison and coming before the courts. It has also played an important role in supporting the families of those protestors who have been arrested and prosecuted. This work is an important and practical display of solidarity.

The campaign is a natural target for the right wing media as it goes on one of its law and order rampages and it is therefore not an easy or obviously popular campaign to be associated with. Nevertheless it is the right thing to do. On every action and demonstration the names of those who have been victimised by the state for their protest must not be forgotten.

I urge Briefing readers to do all they can to support the Defend the Right to Protest campaign. Sign the petitions calling for the charges against Alfie Meadows to be dropped, join the demonstrations outside the courts and the prisons, twin with a prisoner – and pass resolutions in support at your union branch and CLP.

Remember the next prisoner in the dock could be you or me after our next demo or strike.

• visit www.defendtherighttoprotest.org for more information about Defend the Right to Protest.

• John McDonnell is MP for Hayes & Harlington and Chair of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs and the Labour Representation Committee.