TUC National Demonstration
Assemble 11.00am, Victoria Embankment, Central London,
for march and rally at Hyde Park
No cuts... No fees... No sackings... Make the bankers pay!
February 2011 www.counterfire.org
Why we must all march
The TUC demonstration on 26 March must unite workers, students, and anti-cuts campaigners in a
monster show of defiance, as Elly Badcock explains.
On 26 March, hundreds of thousands of ordinary people
will march through the streets of London to proclaim an
alternative to the cuts. We will demand investment, job
creation, a green transition, and a society that caters for
the needs of the many, not the profit of the few.
The student revolt at the end of last year has inspired
resistance. But a fight limited to fee increases – or any oth-
er single issue – is likely to fail. The Con-Dem Coalition is
attacking everyone, and it wants ordinary people bicker-
ing over who gets cut.
The 26 March demonstration has to unite the largest
possible number of people in defence of the welfare state
and in rejection of the millionaire mantra ‘there is no al-
ternative’. It must bring together people from all sections
of society – unionised and non-unionised workers; the
unemployed and the disabled; racial and religious minori-
ties; school, FE, and university students; climate activists
and anti-cuts campaigners; anyone and everyone who
opposes the Con-Dem plan to ‘transform’ Britain in the
interests of the rich.
Building a mass movement
The trade unions still have the potential to organise the
biggest and the broadest demonstrations, mobilising large
sections of society. They have the resources and the net-
works to reach millions of people in a way that activists
working alone cannot.
The biggest single student protest at the end of 2010
was that called by the National Union of Students. In re-
cent times, the NUS has consistently stood to the right
of other mainstream unions, last year declaring that ‘stu-
dents need industrial action like they need a hole in the
head’. If a call by leaders who say things like that can pro-
duce a militant demonstration of 50,000, imagine the po-
tential in a call by the TUC. For all its failings, it represents
virtually every unionised worker in the country, and this
26 MARCH
means a monster demonstration on 26 March is possible.
But no demonstration builds itself. The bigger it is,
the greater the surge of confidence and hope it transmits
across working-class Britain. The bigger it is, the greater
the chance it will prove the launch-pad for a wave of pro-
tests, occupations, and strikes powerful enough to defeat
the regime. That means every activist – in the unions,
among students, and in the campaigns – has to go all out
over the next month to build for 26 March.
To win, the resistance
must be organised,
national, and united
The Arab world is offering a dramatic illustration of the
kind of popular power we need in Britain. Mass demon-
strations and strikes have brought down Ben Ali in Tu-
nisia and threaten Mubarak in Egypt. The shock waves
are being felt across the region. The relationship between
street protests and the confidence of workers to take strike
action could not be clearer.
Demonstrations matter
Radical change will require mass strikes and workplace
occupations. The working class is the majority of society,
and, because it is concentrated in the workplaces and cre-
ates the wealth of society, it has the potential to paralyse
the economy, take over the running of society, and bring
down a right-wing government.
But to take this kind of action, workers must feel them-
selves part of a mass movement. They will have the con-
fidence to strike when they sense they have clear backing
from large sections of society. Mass demonstrations with
broad and diverse support provide this backing. That is
Dougal Wallace
one reason demonstrations matter. Another is that they
can give a firm push to vacillating and half-hearted union
leaders. Only mass pressure from below will stop them
backing down.
A third reason for building 26 March is that the cuts
are a national issue. They are being imposed on millions
of people by central government. Numerous and disparate
local protests are necessary to build the movement and
resist specific cuts, but they cannot stop the government-
driven ‘austerity’ programme as a whole. To win, the
resistance must be organised, national, and united. It is
crucial that, as the anti-cuts movement gathers momen-
tum, it concentrates all its forces in one place, at one time,
to challenge head-on the entire cuts programme.
The Coalition of Resistance
To help make it happen, we need a national, co-
ordinated campaign to oppose all government spending
cuts. That is what the Coalition of Resistance aims to be.
Launched in November last year at a 1300-strong found-
ing conference with the aim of uniting local anti-cuts
groups in a national framework, CoR’s Week of Resist-
ance from 14 to 19 February is designed as a stepping-
stone towards the 26 March demonstration. The planned
culmination is a day of street stalls and other activity on
Saturday 19 February.
The Con-Dem Coalition of millionaires has all of us in
its sights. It is aiming at nothing less than the destruction
of the welfare state and the eventual complete privatisa-
tion of all our public services. None of us can beat them
on our own. We have to build a mass movement of resist-
ance from below. We are going to need a wave of strikes,
occupations, and direct action to make Con-Dem Britain
ungovernable. The TUC demonstration on 26 March is
the next key stage in the struggle to bring down Cameron
and Clegg.
 Library campaign throws

3arabawy

the book at Con-Dem cuts
Dan Poulton reports on one of the front-line services facing
cuts and fighting back.
The Con-Dem attacks on education and
on libraries are of a kind. They do not
want ordinary people to think about
the world around them and to try and
change it. They do not need workers
who think critically. So libraries are
expendable.
Hundreds of libraries across the country
are threatened with closure. New Labour
floated planned library closures; the
ConDems have picked up the baton and are
running with it.
Doncaster, a working class area still
reeling from Thatcherism and pit closures,
is one of the places where the cuts will hit
deepest: there are plans to shut down over
half its libraries. Severe library cuts are also
tabled for Brent, Cornwall, Gloucestershire,
Leeds, Lewisham, Oxfordshire, and many
other places; nowhere, it seems, will
altogether escape the Con-Dem hatchet.
The government whines that library
use is falling anyway, and claims that eager
volunteers are available to staff any that are
really needed. But in the Age of Austerity
only a small minority will have the time
and money to work for free.
Dougal Wallace
working class communities. They despise us
and know that they are adding cultural to
economic deprivation.’
He reports that people have been
queueing up in the street to sign
petitions, and read-ins have been
staged to illustrate that education
belongs to ordinary people – not
just the rich. A major national
campaign against library cuts
is a serious possibility. Just weeks after
writer and campaigner Alan Gibbons put
out a call for a day of action in defence
of libraries on 5 February 2011, at least
80 events were organised up and down
the country. Protests have already taken
place in Newport, Milton Keynes,
Taunton, Oxford, and elsewhere.
On the day of action, hundreds of
people demonstrated, held read-ins, and
occupied libraries to resist the Con-
Dem cuts. Billy Bragg made the link
between civil liberties and public access
to information and learning. Acclaimed
author Phillip Pullman criticised what he
described as the ‘market fundamentalism’ to
which the Con-Dems subscribe, and New

The Arab revolution

The revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt are the biggest popular movements in the Arab world in decades. They
could change the face of the Middle East, argues Peter Stäuber, and they can be a model of resistance
for the rest of the world.
The spirit of revolution sweeps through
the Arab world. What we have been wit-
nessing in Tunisia and Egypt are not
military coups, but popular uprisings
against dictatorial regimes. Events are
still unfolding, but it is already clear that
this series of mass demonstrations rep-
resents the biggest upheaval in the Arab
world in decades.
In Tunisia, the protesters succeeded
in forcing President Ben Ali from power.
After a month of peaceful demonstration,
starting in December, they finally over-
threw a 23-year-old dictatorship. But the
gains so far are limited. The interim gov-
ernment formed in mid-January still in-
cludes several members of the ruling party,
and protesters continue to demand a full
break with the old regime. The revolution
is not over.
was alerted last year, when the website
Wikileaks published thousands of secret
US diplomatic cables.
The way the pro-Mubarak forces have
responded to the protests – with savage vi-
olence – has further alienated the Egyptian
people from the regime. As one protester
said, ‘The psychological barrier between us
and our president has been broken by tear-
gas. The government created this uprising,
and now they will face the consequences.’
Power and wealth are
linked. Egypt needs both
democracy and social
transformation.
Revolution and counter-revolution
Mubarak tried to ease the pressure on him
corporations, and Zionist Israel.
Until now, the US has been a staunch
ally of Mubarak. While banging on about
‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’, it is the
US that has funded and armed the Egyp-
tian regime’s half-million-strong military.
The fall of Mubarak would be the greatest
setback for Washington since the toppling
of the Shah of Iran in 1979. No wonder
they are scaremongering about an ‘Islamic’
takeover. But in fact, something far more
radical, and certainly far more desirable, is
possible.
Democratic and social revolution
The way this revolution unfolds in
the immediate future is likely to
be crucial. In order to achieve
full and lasting democracy, not
only must power be taken from
Doncaster-based Counterfire activist
John Westmoreland has described the
projected library cuts as a ‘declaration
of war’, saying, ‘It’s the most sickening
thought to see Cameron and Clegg,
millionaire public schoolboys and Oxford
graduates with plenty of access to books
and computers, cutting off opportunities to
spread. The wider it goes, the harder it gets
for the US, the Zionists, and the Arab dic-
Can we bring down the Con-Dem Coalition?
tators to reverse the tide. Already, there are
mass demonstrations in Yemen and Jordan
against their pro-Western governments.
Most Arab regimes are like those in Tu-
With the biggest cuts since the
nisia and Egypt – authoritarian, corrupt, 1920s now unrolling, the very
undemocratic, and presiding over socie-
ties afflicted with high unemployment, not survival of the postwar welfare
least among graduates, high living costs, state is at stake. Just how weak
and a ‘social wage’ eroded by decades of
neoliberalism and IMF-backed cuts. is the government, and what
will it take to stop them? Neil
Faulkner analyses the balance of
forces in Britain today.
Just before Christmas, deep splits were seen inside the
Con-Dem Coalition government. Business Secretary
Nasser Nouri
Cross library was occupied into the night.
Students did not hesitate to occupy
their universities in response to crippling
fee hikes. Nor should we hesitate to
organise read-ins, protests, petitions, and
direct action in defence of our libraries,
the communities they serve, and the
workers whose livelihoods are at stake.
But the case of Lib-Dem voters is far more extreme:
their votes were cast for a left-of-centre programme of
moderate reform. Participation in the Con-Dem Coa-
lition has involved the wholesale abandonment of Lib-
Dem commitments, including, of course, the flagship
pledge to oppose tuition-fee rises and to work for their
eventual abolition.
It is for this reason that the parliamentary fault-line
runs through the middle of the Lib-Dem Party. How-
ever eager the party’s millionaire politicians may be to
get their legs under the cabinet table, they need to re-
tain their parliamentary seats. Since they garner votes
by appearing to be other than what they are, they risk
electoral meltdown when exposed in office as liars and
careerists. Once recent poll showed a drop from 21% at
the time of the general election to 8% today.
strength, but weakness. It is the policy of a political and
business elite threatened by financial meltdown and cut-
throat competition.
Otherwise, it is impossible to explain their decision
to launch a full-scale frontal assault on the entire post-
war welfare settlement. Thatcher in the 1980s, in a much
stronger economic, political, and ideological position,
chose a drip-drip-drip approach, pushing through one
privatisation at a time, taking on one group of workers
at a time, avoiding advancing on several fronts at once
and triggering generalised resistance.
When she became overconfident and abandoned this
policy, she was brought down. The poll tax was an at-
tempt to shift the burden of local taxation from the top
20% (the rich and the middle class) to the bottom 80%
(the working class broadly defined). It provoked mass

Egypt in revolt
Inspired by the success of the Tunisian
movement, Egyptians also took to the
streets at the end of January. Day after day,
thousands of people marched through the
streets of Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, and oth-
er cities. The ruling party headquarters was
burnt down and thousands defied curfews
to battle riot police and state security.
As in Tunisia, where the protest move-
ment is led by students and workers, the
uprising in Egypt is supported by large sec-
tions of society. For too long – 30 years –
the people have suffered under the regime
of President Hosni Mubarak, who has been
clinging on to power through sheer force
and terror.
The people’s grievances are similar in
both countries: unemployment is high,
corruption endemic, and freedom of
speech severely restricted. Especially in
Egypt, protesters are demanding an end to
police brutality, to which the wider world
by dismissing his government and appoint-
ing his intelligence chief as vice president.
This failed to satisfy the protesters. He
then announced he would not stand for re-
election in the autumn. This, too, was not
enough. So he then unleashed his thugs on
the demonstrators.
The regime’s supporters – the rich, the
powerful, and the corrupt – want a breath-
ing-space to engineer a fake ‘transition’
that changes nothing except a handful of
faces at the top. The Egyptian people need
thoroughgoing democracy and complete
social transformation. This is the vital issue
now at stake.
Because Egypt plays such an impor-
tant role in the region – with 85 million
inhabitants, it is the biggest country in
the Arab world – a successful revolution
could reshape the whole of the Middle
East. It could bring democracy to a region
which has suffered under dictatorship and
imperialism for too long. That would be a
massive blow to the power of the US, the oil
the regime, but wealth must be Vince Cable bragged to two undercover journalists that What brought the crisis to the surface just before resistance from below, with up to seven million refusing
taken from the rich and the cor- he could bring down the government if he chose. Hot Christmas was the student revolt. This acted as a prism to pay, and hundreds of thousands on the streets.
porations that dominate Egyp- on the heels of this revelation came a series of other re- of the democratic deficit. Everyone has a vague sense
tian society. Power and wealth are ports of off-message outbursts by Lib-Dem ministers. that politicians are self-interested and hypocritical. But Demonstrations, strikes, and direct action
linked. Mubarak and his cronies, Perhaps the most forthright was that of Scottish Sec- the student revolt focused intense attention on one of During 1972, mass strikes smashed a Tory government’s
encouraged by their Western al- retary Michael Moore, who declared that raising stu- the biggest betrayals of recent times. programme of wage cuts and union busting. Two years
lies, have adopted neoliberal ‘free dent tuition-fees was ‘the biggest, ugliest, most horrific But if 50,000 on the streets and a few broken windows later, the Tories lost the general election. In 1989, mass
market’ policies wholesale. The thing in all this … a car crash, a train wreck’. can provoke a minor governmental crisis, what might direct action defeated the poll tax, and the following
gap between rich and poor has What brought on this rash of political angst? It cer- the impact be of 500,000 later this year? Just how vulner- year Thatcher was given the push by her own party. In
widened massively. Grotesque tainly was not pressure from the New Labour ‘opposi- able is the Con-Dem Coalition? April 2003, between a million and two million people
wealth at the top of society con- tion’. Ed Miliband – whose slogan seems to be ‘vote La- demonstrated against Blair’s war on Iraq. The decision
trasts with unemployment and bour for slightly slower cuts’ – is the proverbial dog that A weak and vicious government to go ahead in the face of such opposition was a narrow
poverty for tens of millions at does not bark. The vicious right-wing character of the regime should one, and Blair never recovered from the political infamy
the bottom. Something more fundamental lies behind the tension not be mistaken for strength. British capitalism is in he incurred as a warmonger.
Egypt needs both democracy inside the government than ‘opposition’ in a Parliament long-term decline, faces growing competitive pressure, The British working-class movement has a long his-
and social transformation, and whose democratic substance has been hollowed out by and is heavily distorted by reliance on finance, property, tory of resistance and a record of major victories over re-
the possibility exists that as work- A Tunisian identikit neoliberal politics. The fact is that the elector- and speculation. The worst global economic crisis since actionary governments. If we build an inclusive, united,
ers and students push forwards protester ate voted left-of-centre in May 2010, but got a hard- the 1930s confronts Britain’s rulers with greater chal- mass campaign against the cuts, and if we stoke a wave
calls for the right government. Even Tory voters did not endorse the lenges than most. of militant demonstrations, mass strikes, and wide-
the struggle for political free-
withdrawal
dom, their revolt will grow over biggest package of cuts since the 1920s. In contrast to The British ruling class has become so dependent on spread civil disobedience, we can defeat the Con-Dem
of the RCD,
into a wider struggle for popular Ben Ali’s old Thatcher, who famously declared that there is no such bank profits that it is prepared to take the political risks Coalition.
power, workers’ control, and radical party, from the thing as society, Cameron bangs on about ‘the big soci- inherent in selling off the welfare state in order to pro- The TUC demonstration on 26 March is the next key
social reform. transitional ety’; however vacuous, it is not hard-right rhetoric. vide the state finance to underwrite the City. This is not stage on that road.
The revolution also needs to government.

www.counterfire.org www.counterfire.org
What is Counterfire
and what does it do?
Counterfire is an organisation
of revolutionary socialists.
We work in the trade unions,
student movement, and protest
campaigns to link together
different struggles, push them
forwards, and build resistance
to the system.
Counterfire members have
played a key role in the Coalition
of Resistance, Stop the War, and
the student revolt.
A world system in crisis
World capitalism today faces an
intractable crisis. The financial
crash is tipping Europe into
depression and the Third World
into starvation. The militarisation
of relations between states is
a clear and present danger to
world peace. Uncontrolled global
warming threatens climate
catastrophe.
These threats to the lives and
wellbeing of the great majority of
humanity are rooted in a system
geared to production for profit
and the enrichment of the few.
Instead of the chaos, exploitation,
and violence of competitive
capital accumulation, we need
a system based on democracy,
equality, planning, and human
need.
Change from below
Real change has to be fought for
through action from below. We
cannot rely on either politicians
or bureaucrats to change things
for us. We have to build broad,
democratic organisations of
mass resistance among workers,
students, and the poor. We have
to use the weapons of class
struggle – demonstrations,
strikes, occupations, and other
direct action – to make real gains.
The power of the banks, the
corporations, and the state are
ranged against us. To make
permanent gains and bring about
radical social transformation,
revolution will be necessary, in
which the repressive state, with
its police, prisons, and armed
forces, is replaced with a new
order based on mass democratic
assemblies.
United mass resistance
To prevent effective resistance,
our rulers and their media
Counterfire lectures
These will be held at the Marchmont Community
Centre, 62 Marchmont Street, London, WC1N 1AB
(nearest tube: Russell Square).
attempt to divide us. We must Everyone welcome. Plenty of time for questions,
stand together in solidarity. contributions, and discussion.
We must reject all forms of Lectures start at 6.30pm on Thursday as follows:
prejudice based on race, religion,
gender, age, disability, or sexual
orientation. We must unite 24 February
all working people in a single Climate crisis: capitalism and environmental
struggle against the rich and catastrophe
powerful. And we must build Speaker: Elaine Graham-Leigh
links between working people
here in Britain and those fighting
back around the world. 10 March
China rising: understanding the shifting global
A revolutionary organisation economy
To do these things effectively, Speaker: James Meadway
we need an organisation of
revolutionary socialist activists
committed to building and 24 March
shaping mass organisations of Gramsci and us: building socialist hegemony today
struggle like the trade unions, Speaker: Peter Thomas
the anti-war movement, and the
Coalition of Resistance.
7 April
Counterfire is such an
organisation. Our aim is to How history works: a Marxist approach to
build local groups rooted understanding the past
in workplaces, colleges, and Speaker: Neil Faulkner
communities across Britain.
The historical stakes have
20 April
never been higher. We have a
world to win. We have a world we Understanding the shape of modern revolutions
must win. Counterfire is at the Speaker: Feyzi Ismail
heart of the resistance. Join us.

Contacting us
To contact Counterfire, phone or text Sam on 07872 481769, or Jo on 07730 612105, or email either on sam@counterfire.org
or jo@counterfire.org
We have activists and local groups in many colleges and towns, including Belfast, Bristol, Doncaster, Kings Lynn, Liverpool,
London East, London North, London South, London West, Manchester, Milton Keynes, Newcastle, Norwich, Nottingham, Pontefract,
St Albans, Scunthorpe, and York.

Counterfire publications
Strategy and Capitalism and Class Eleven Reasons to
Tactics: how the Consciousness: the Resist the Con-Dem
left can organise to ideas of Georg Lukács Cuts
transform society By Chris Nineham By Neil Faulkner
By John Rees

These publications are available from www.counterfire.org

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