Ireland: Wednesday's demonstration of the 24/7 Frontline Alliance was a lot smaller than the big rain soaked demonstrations on Friday, but no less important in some ways. It’s seldom a good idea to take on all of your enemies at the same time. It’s a sign of the times when the Gards, their Sergeants, and the Prison Officers start agitating. But this is a crisis of the bosses making, there are savage cuts in payments and huge pressures on the rank and file Gardai. The crisis is eroding the support for the entire system.

5,000 people including Gardai marching in baseball caps demonstrated in Dublin today. Gardai are constitutionally banned from striking, but the 24/7 Frontline Alliance also includes Fire fighters and Nurses, if the Fianna Fáil can’t manage to win the support of even the Garda Sergeants for their programme of cuts, then how are they going to manage in the teeth of a mass movement of the working class?

The truth of the matter is that the trade union leaders can defeat the attempt of the government to slash wages and cut jobs and services. But they can’t do this by relying on appealing to “Social Partnership”.  The enormous power of the working class means that the government would be absolutely suspended in mid air if the trade union leaders genuinely mobilised the workers for a public sector general strike on November 24^th. But there is a big risk, it is of Peter McLoone, David Begg and others snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Recently a commentator made the point that the trade union leaders were desperate for the government to come and talk to them. Talk is one thing, but to say as David Begg did recently that they would look for any compromise on wages is foolish in the extreme. That means settling for less than enough.

The temperature is rising; the bosses are screaming for the government to stand firm against the unions. They are after dividing the workers in the private sector from the public, all the easier to attack both sections of the working class. We need maximum unity of the working class and that requires a clear and patient refutation of the bosses’ and the media’s lies. The demonstration today gives a flavour of just how wide ranging and just how much opposition there is to these € billions of cuts, the march today was extremely significant.

The trade union leaders mustn’t underestimate the potential that they have to defeat Cowen and Leninhan, but they also have to lead the movement and not just use it as window dressing. You can’t turn the workers movement on and off like a tap, mobilising the entire public sector workforce and settling for nothing but a few morsels from the bosses table will not satisfy the workers and it will embolden the bosses. The Ten point plan is a vague and woolly document that doesn’t represent a fighting programme for the workers movement. The argument has to be for no wage cuts and no job losses or cuts in services. ICTU needs to be crystal clear; Make the bosses pay!