Stand Up To Be Counted

Kevin Maguire writes:

Where have all the protesters gone when smug Tory ministers are cock-a-hoop at the muted backlash against relentless austerity in Britain? One prominent Conservative minister told me, a grin on his face, the ConDem Government is relieved there isn’t fighting on the streets. “We’ve had it easy,” he boasted, “an easy ride apart from a few bumps along the road”.

We watch on TV as brave men and women in Turkey and Brazil take to the streets against over-mighty rulers. In Istanbul the demonstrations were triggered by concreting over a city park. Bus fares were the spark in Sao Paulo. On Wednesday, when downgraded George Osborne unveils another three years of spending cuts, the Scyther of the Exchequer will be denounced. If the flatlining economy’s out of intensive care it’s been moved to a funeral parlour ahead of burial alongside his reputation.

Yet I’d be surprised on Thursday morning if Trafalgar Square was filled with tens of thousands of people demanding Osborne’s head be displayed on a pike at the Tower of London. Even that champion of austerity, Mervyn King, a Governor of the Bank of England heading for retirement on a golden £233,000 pension, was moved to wonder why the backlash against bankers isn’t greater. Labour’s Two Eds, Miliband and Balls, waving the white hankie of financial surrender by accepting Osborne’s misery, won’t inspire the masses.

It’s not all gloom and there have been counter-attacks over the past three years. The TUC organised a couple of ­demonstrations with hundreds of ­thousands of workers supporting an alternative to ConDem unfairness. Public service strikes won concessions on pensions, particularly in local ­government. The value of industrial action is proved once again by Brighton bin collectors forcing the Greens to renegotiate wage cuts. The imaginative UK Uncut movement pushed tax-dodging up the political agenda. And 80,000 booed George Osborne in the Olympic stadium.

But this is a walk in the park for the ConDems compared to the miners’ strike and Poll Tax riots against Maggie Thatcher. The gravest challenge to Cameron’s authority was the 2011 lawlessness ignited by police mishandling of a shooting in Tottenham. Students smashed windows in the Treasury and Tory HQ, not tuition fees. Occupying the grounds of St Paul’s rocked the Church of England rather than the City of London. Up to 4,000 gathered in Westminster at the weekend for a People’s Assembly of trade unionists and activists.

Yet talk of a General Strike will remain just that, talk, when union leaders know it would be illegal. People are angry, furious as living standards are slashed and public ­services dismantled. The draconian shackling of unions and Labour’s lack of nerve blunts opposition to a Right-wing Government adopting austerity as an ideology.

Until people stand up to be counted, individually and together, life-sapping austerity will persist. The grin needs to be wiped off the face of that cocky minister.