James O’Leary reports

And what are we for?

On Saturday 5th March members of Communist Students joined the march against cuts in Manchester that had been called by Manchester Coalition Against Cuts to protests against this years spending cuts and more specifically the £110 million pounds worth of cuts to services that manchester City Council are set to vote through on Wednesday 9 March, which coincidentally considering the slash and burn nature of these cut falls on the same day as the Christian festival of Ash Wednesday.

The march from All Saints Park to Albert Square outside the town hall was attended by roughly 1000 people and was a diverse crowd with many parents bringing along their children for the day, some of whom were wearing t-shirts bearing the truism that, “You cut, we bleed.” The march was the biggest against the cuts in Manchester since the student protests of the Autumn last year and the difference in it’s nature was noticeable. Whereas the police had come out in full force for the marches last year in anticipation of scuffles the police presence yesterday was somewhat more subdued and the crowd’s mood reflected this. There were no attempts to storm the town hall, or closure of roads, or veering off proscribed routes as there had been last year rather the crowd seemed content to march and chant and unwilling to raise the level of militancy. One would like to put this more subdued mood down to the presence of many children on the march -who it would have been highly irresponsible to involve in potentially violent affairs- but one could not help suspect that even without the presence of children the assembled mass would have been willing to venture outside the realm of legality to fight against the cuts. If this was the case and the feeling is reciprocated all over the nation then it doesn’t bode well for the chances of people power preventing the current assault on working class living standards.

In between waving the red flag of revolution amongst all the placards decrying the Tories and the Bankers and Top Shop CS members distributed 300 copies our latest leaflet entitled ‘We have a World to Win’. The leaflet was produced as a way of explaining to the people on the march, many of whom were protesting over single issues such as the closure of their local library or sure start centre, that the closures of public services in Manchester were but part of something much bigger. The cuts are in fact part of the attack by the ruling capitalist class globally on the working class world wide. That the cuts are not simply the result of greedy bankers of nasty Tories (although they are belligerent) but of the inevitable result of the way in which the capitalist economic system that we toil under functions and that to truly defeat the cuts agenda we have to defeat capitalism itself and work for the communist revolution.

Generally everybody we spoke to seemed quite receptive to ideas of marx and many who weren’t at first became so when we explained that the struggles of the working class in Britain are being shared by the working class of the middle east, of Greece, of Ireland, Spain, France, Italy, America, and every nation in between. The images on the news of the struggles in the middle east it seems have made many more people receptive to internationalism than before.

The one aspect of the day that could have been marked out as a potentially crippling weakness for the fight against the cuts was the sheer variety of literature being distributed to the crowd. Organizations out in force that day included the SWP, the Green Party, and Respect. In addition there were members of Socialist Resistance, the Campaign against Climate Change, Fight Racism Fight Imperialism, Revo, the Anarchist Federation, Coalition of Resistance and numerous local cuts campaigns all vying for the attention of the same protestors. There still seems to be a lack of unity in the campaign that drains resources that if pooled would be able to offer more effective opposition to the austerity agenda than it is at present. Our enemies in all their offensives against our class pool all their resources, all their information, all the skills and minds available to them to be able to counter any challenge posed to their interests and our class in this fight must do likewise if we are to have any chance of protecting the gains we have fought for and won over the last 200 years.