The hundreds of thousands who have struck today are showing their anger at a pathetically low increase on already low wage levels.

The Trade Unions, alongside the bosses, have agreed low pay year after year. Now they wheel us out for one day’s strike like the chorus in a musical.

But the low pay of many Council Workers is only one part of the problems which affect all the working class.

Working people - united in increasing suffering

All the working class, whether in paid work or not, has the potential to unite against the whole range of problems which afflict us all - appalling health provision, continuing attacks on welfare benefits, constant ratchetting of racism and attacking the status of immigrants, the increasing casualisation of work, pauperisation of our elders etc. etc... and of course, low pay.

The multitude of problems which are afflicting workers worldwide are not a coincidence. They are a deliberate result of the bosses’ attempts to maintain profit levels which have been constantly under threat for some thirty years.

The bosses’ war drive - they profit - we die

Alongside the day-to-day attacks on our living conditions the British ruling-class is involved in global competition with its national rivals to exercise control over markets, resources and the lives of our class sisters and brothers world-wide.

The last decade has seen barbaric wars exploding across the globe. The competition between the interests of the big powers has armed and fuelled divisions between their clients in Africa. The war in ex-Yugoslavia was stirred by conflicting interests of the various European powers and the US and brought savagery to the heart of Europe.

The appalling actions of September 11th were the actions of a clique, whose religious ideology is a cover for their struggle to take a place amongst the other capitalist robbers and cut-throats. The war in Afghanistan produced nothing but further suffering for the Afghan poor and a new government primed to be more compliant to the US’s need to control the flow of oil.

Against pauperisation! Against bosses’ wars!

Today the Unions have told one group of workers that their particular low pay is an isolated example - “a special case”. This is a divisive lie!!!

Workers across the globe are suffering the same attacks. The intensity and form may differ but the root cause - a rotten and outmoded capitalist system dragging the world towards barbarism and destruction - is identical.