A moment to savour and to learn

The Greek Solidarity Committee and the British Trades Union Congress held a victory meeting in London on Monday July 6. It was a moment to savour! There were fine speeches and contributions from many. There were also, inevitably, some passages of rhetoric that did not rise to the quality of the occasion (Dianne Abbot used the opportunity to insist on her credentials to be Labour's London Mayoral candidate for example.) In spectacular contrast, two cracking speeches from Syriza representative Marina brought the many hundreds present to their feet -  twice.

Greetings and support were sent from Caroline Lucas, the sole MP for the Greens despite their 1.2 million votes, from Sinn Fein and from Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the President of Argentina! £900 was raised in a collection for the Solidarity (not charity!) Movement in Greece. People cried with joy and then they laughed with the great feeling that for once, hopefully a 'once' that will be followed by a 'twice' and more, much more as Spain and then Ireland and then Portugal move to change their government, a great feeling that the people, the ordinary working class people of Greece had roared 'NO' to the 13 European billionaires, defended by their EU institutions, who between them could, if they wanted, pay off Greece's entire 340 billion euro debt from their collective personal wealth - as John Reece from the Peoples Assembly told the meeting.

Some of the speeches will be put up on the GSC website. They are all worth a read. But there was one speech in particular that offered a novel perspective on British politics in the light of the Greek experience. Mark Serwotka outlined his view, that the British working class now needed their own Syriza. Those in the audience who might have experienced a warm glow at the final recognition of their efforts to create their own little Syrizas were to be disappointed. Serwotka made it clear that he was not proposing that combining all the little British left political sects would produce a spectacularly greater sum of their parts. Serwotka had a different perspective entirely. His point was that Britain now had the political makings of its own anti-austerity party.

Serwotka named the left in the Labour Party - identified as those supporting the only Labour leadership candidate who opposes austerity - Jeremy Corbyn (Jeremy happily did not talk about his leadership campaign in his own speech.) Serwotka then allied this group with the SNP, the Greens and Plaid Cymry in a proposed alliance which both inside and then helping to develop the movement outside Parliament, might spearhead the battle against austerity in Britain. At once British politics would begin to solve the problem of the lack of political representation of the whole working class and, at the same time, massively increase Britain's contribution to the anti-austerity wave now rolling across Southern and Western Europe.

Major movements in the history of class struggles always have the effect of breaking up apparent barriers and logjams in the thinking and the action of those in crisis. The British labour and trade union movement is in such a crisis, faced with new and potentially deadly assaults by the Tory government and by the hollowing out of traditional social democracy. Mark Serwotka has put his finger on one key political lesson from Greece. In politics, those who politically oppose austerity should fight together.

British people are also learning another lesson - in practise - from Greece. The politics of opposition to austerity needs a base among the people. The Peoples' Assembly marches against austerity, involving hundreds of thousands, a few weeks after the apparent Tory victory in the UK General Election, are an astonishing recognition of the fact that the engine room of a political change and the possibility of a mainstream political regroupment in favour of a fightback has to be predicated on a mass movement of millions, who turn out in the public squares, who grow in strength from each other and who call those who would lead to account.