Vote Yes, but strike against the cuts and austerity

The backdrop to the referendum on 18 September is one of unprecedented cuts and savage austerity.

In one year alone, from April 2012 to April 2013, the numbers living in poverty in Scotland rose by 110,000 to 820,000. The human cost of the savage cuts inflicted by the ConDem’s is horrific. But what makes these figures all the more stunning is the fact that more than half of adults living in poverty are in work.

What an indictment of capitalism and the so-called recovery that the number of workers suffering in-work poverty has rocketed. Meanwhile the richest 1,000 people in Britain was their wealth increase by 15% in the last year.

And it’s austerity for the majority for the long-term if the ConDem’s get their way. 70% of the welfare cuts are still to be implemented – this equates to £6 billion to be stolen from Scotland’s poorest families by 2016. Meanwhile public services are being decimated and the workers who deliver these services have seen their pay slashed in real terms by over £1,600 since 2010. Unbelievably, Ed’s Miliband and Balls say they will continue with the Tory cuts if they win the election in 2015. As columnist Polly Toynbee, a New Labour disciple, wrote in the Guardian recently; “So why vote Labour ?…Because Labour will cut more fairly.”

But it makes little difference to trade union members, the low paid or those surviving on benefits whether it’s a Labour or Tory politician making the cuts – none of them are “fair.”

It’s no wonder that currently around 1.5 million people, overwhelmingly working class, are saying they are voting Yes in September. It’s also no surprise that for many of them support for wealth redistribution, public ownership and tax rises for the rich and big business are overwhelmingly supported.

The SNP leaders are doing their best to lose the vote by offering nothing decisive in terms of radical change – and they are carrying out cuts themselves to “balance the books.” They want to continue with capitalism and the cuts that inevitable accompany this broken system.

That’s why Socialist Party Scotland has been putting forward the socialist case for a Yes vote in September. Pointing to how austerity can be ended and how a socialist Scotland could deliver for the majority.

A desire to escape from unending cuts is driving working class support for a Yes vote. And whatever the outcome of the referendum the need to build a mass movement to defeat the bosses and the political establishment’s attempts to make us pay for their crisis must be stepped up.

That means mass coordinated strike action by the trade union movement in Scotland and throughout Britain. And crucially, we need the trade unions to launch a new mass workers party to build a real alternative to the parties of cuts and austerity.

Socialist Party Scotland stands for:

• An end to austerity and reversal of the cuts

• Introduction of a living wage of £10 an hour and end zero-hour contracts. Proper jobs and trade union rights for all workers

• End the attacks on welfare – for a living income for all

• Building a new mass working class party based on the trade unions, socialists and anti-cuts campaigners

• Bringing into public ownership the banks, oil and the big corporations that dominate the economy under democratic working class control

• An independent socialist Scotland as a step to a socialist confederation with England, Wales and Ireland and a socialist Europe