As we reported in the last issue of The Communist, the Reform-run Lancashire County Council threatened to close five care homes and five day centres for the elderly, forcing them into private care.
In response, ten Preston RCP comrades joined a UNISON-led rally on 17 January to oppose the cuts.
Around 500 attended – including trade unionists and left groups from across the North West. We saw plenty of anger in the crowd. But we also saw the shocking hypocrisy of two Labour councillors and a Labour MP being invited onto the podium to decry Reform’s cuts – as if Starmer’s party isn’t brutally attacking the working class across the country!
Before the demo, we prepared for this – expecting that Labour could be let off the hook, and that the fight back would be presented as simply ‘applying pressure’ on Reform next to ‘opposition voices’ (which, it turned out, could include Tories, Labour, Lib Dems, and anyone else!), without any real way forward.
Unfortunately, a lot of the speeches were unpolitical, and therefore uninspiring. Notably, however, the speech by UNISON’s new left-wing general secretary, Andrea Egan, stood out: she spoke more radically about workers leading the struggle, and the need for strike action. This gained the best reception.
To set ourselves apart with clear, independent, class-based politics, the Communist bloc led with chants including “Farage and Starmer, all the same: cuts and closures in their name!”, “No more cuts, no more losses: take the money from the bosses!”, and chants calling for revolution, which were all picked up enthusiastically by other demonstrators.
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Mobilising for this rally was a great educational experience for the Preston district. Discussions before and after helped concretise our perspectives and programme in the minds of comrades. On the back of this activity, two of our supporters agreed to become full members!
We also left with a clearer sense of the role of our party: to connect with current issues, and put forward revolutionary, Marxist ideas to a broader layer of workers and youth, in a clear and tangible way.
Along with pressure from the wider campaign, the march in Preston led to Reform backing down, and announcing that care homes will not be closed. This is a great victory, and shows the power of the workers’ movement when mobilised.
Day centres, however, remain under threat, and so the victory is only partial. The RCP in Preston has resolved to bring out larger blocs of students and young people to future demonstrations – to fight even more boldly and militantly for the overthrow of the entire decrepit capitalist system!
