Milne surveys the political situation ahead of next week’s TUC Congress. Current industrial skirmishes he claims are a phoney war but ‘when the government next month unveils the deepest cuts in public spending since the 1930s, and starts slashing jobs, pensions, benefits and services in the new year, the battle cannot but be in deadly earnest’.
In a superb analysis which chimes with UNISON Million Voices Campaign, Milne emphasises the importance of building both industrial and political coalitions:
‘With most of the Labour frontbench hobbled by its own support for deep cuts, the unions will be the hub of opposition, at least initially. Having softened up the public to the inevitability of savage retrenchment, the government will try to isolate public from private-sector workers, set public-service "producers" against "users", and pick off groups of public-sector employees at different times – starting with the least popular.
'For the unions, the key to success will be to turn those tactics on their head. Public-sector workers have little choice but to use their industrial strength to defend their jobs, pay and conditions. But action will be most effective if it is co-ordinated. It will also be more likely to succeed if the ground has been laid with both local and national campaigns, and alliances with service users and community organisations’.