by CWU, RMT and Aslef wrong to postpone their strikes!
TUC should hold their conference!
LLA statement – join our public meeting on September 10 by clicking here
We do not believe the RMT, CWU and ASLEF unions are right to call off (or postpone) their strikes. And we despair at the TUC’s decision to call off their conference. Yes, many working class people ‘liked’ the queen, because they have been fed the lie, over and over again, that the monarchy is as British as fish and chips – an unshakable part of the natural order of things. That is the role of ideology. Just like Liz Truss said a little while ago: “We do not believe people are born to rule!”
Indeed, there is nothing ‘natural’ about a system of hereditary monarchy rule – just as there is nothing ‘natural’ about capitalism and imperialism. Both have been established with much blood spilt and millions of people sacrificed, throughout the world.
The ruling class will of course not follow the RMT, CWU and TUC and suspend the class struggle. Quite the opposite: They will go ahead with their new anti-union laws and fuel the flames of patriotism and chauvinism over the weeks and months to come.
This shows how weak the left is. Instead of downing tools, declaring that “the RMT joins the whole nation in paying its respects to Queen Elizabeth” (Mick Lynch) and postponing strikes “out of respect for her service to the country and her family” (CWU), this is exactly the time for the left to stand up and boldly call for a democratic republic! And not with an alternative ‘head of state’, as the lame campaign ‘Republic’ calls for. No, socialists fight against all those checks and balances on the will of the people.
And as for Charles III and his impending coronation, the words of James Connolly, written in 1911 on the occasion of a state visit by George V still apply:
“Let the capitalist and landlord class flock to exalt him; he is theirs; in him they see embodied the idea of caste and class; they glorify him that they might familiarise the public mind with the conception of political inequality knowing well that a people mentally poisoned by the adulation of royalty can never attain to that spirit of self-reliant democracy necessary for the attainment of social freedom.”
We campaign to:
- Abolish the monarchy, the Crown and the House of Lords
- For a single-chamber parliament with a democratic electoral system based on proportional representation
- Disband MI5, MI6, special branch and the entire secret state apparatus.
