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As Jeremy Corbyns support grows...

MOBILISE AGAINST AUSTERITY

RESIST RACIST SCAPEGOATING
T

he odds are narrowing in

Jeremy Corbyns bid to become
Labour leader. As Corbyns
popularity grows, the right wing press
and politicians have been desperate
to smear him.
One theory is that the ranks of the
Labour party have been swelled by leftwing entryist militants!
But you dont need a conspiracy theory
to understand why Corbyn has made so
much groundit is a further expression
of a revolt against austerity.
This fact was not even missed by
former World Bank economist Joseph
Stiglitz. Commenting on the Corbyn
phenomenon, he said, I am not surprised
at all that there is a demand for a
strong anti-austerity movement around
increased concern about inequality. The
promises of New Labour in the UK and
of the Clintonites in the US have been a
disappointment
There is revulsion at the idea of a
Labour Party in the hands again of Tony
Blair and his ilk.

Reclaim

Many of the young people who have felt

moved to sign up as Labour supporters
in order to vote for Corbyn, joined the
20 June demonstration of over 250,000
people against austerity.
Of course the recent Tory budget
which included 46.5 billion worth of
budget cuts, will have further fuelled
peoples anger. So it is no mystery that
Corbyn is successful.
It is part of the same Europe-wide
phenomenon that saw 56 SNP MPs
elected, Syriza sweep to power in Greece
and Podemos grow in Spain. They are
different expressions of the same mood
against austerity government.
But even if Corbyn wins the leadership
he will face a huge battle inside of
Labour.
And stronger movements than this
have failed to reclaim the Labour
Party from the rightlike the one that
campaigned for Tony Benn for example
in the late 1970s and early 80s.
While we should wish Jeremy Corbyn
wellhes a politician who has more
principle in his little finger than all

250,000 marched against austerity on 20 June

those Labour MPs who abstained on the

Welfare Reform Billwe urgently need
a socialist alternative to Labour.
Building that alternative means
engaging in the wider fight against
austerity, not just the fight inside the
Labour party!
It means mobilising in large numbers
people to attend the demonstration at the
Tory Party conference in Manchester on
4 October.
And it means organising a big, militant
demonstration, also called by the TUC,
in the streets of Westminster on 2
November for the third reading of the
anti-trade union legislation in Parliament.

Defy

The Tories want to further curtail our

ability to fight back, with very harsh new
picketing and strike breaking laws.
We have to fight back against the bill,
but we also have to be prepared to defy
the new laws if they are implemented,
as union leaders like Unites Len
McCluskey is calling for.

But we also need our union leaders to

coordinate strikes against the Tories and
austerity.
Next week, on 5/6 August four London
Underground unionsRMT, ASLEF,
TSSA and Unite are set to strike again
following their solid and successful strike
on 8/9 July.

Leaders

They are fighting back against attacks on

their jobs due to the introduction of the
night tube service in London.
They are showing how to fight back,
we need to push our union leaders to call
more strikes like these.
Strikes are a unified response to the
Tories divisive austerity policies and the
vile gutter-politics of immigrant bashing
that we are seeing.
They are trying to tell us that its
immigrants that are to blamepeople
whose only crime is wanting a better life.
We have to build a movement with the
strength to resist austerity and stand up to
this disgusting racism.

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