If you fight you can win

Bosses and politicians are attacking millions of people with cuts and austerity all over the world. Sometimes it seems impossible to challenge them.

This week showed that we can. In Portugal a government set on draconian cuts and attacks on workers’ living standards wanted to snatch more national insurance deductions from workers’ wages. People took to the streets in their hundreds of thousands in revolt. And they won.

In South Africa, despite the murder of 34 strikers, miners took on their bosses and the government in a bitter struggle over poverty wages. And they won.

In the US teachers in Chicago received tremendous solidarity from parents and other workers when the struck in defence of education. And they won.

The lives of teachers in Chicago, workers in Portugal and miners in South Africa are very different. But they are all part of a collective force, the working class, that has the power to beat bosses and topple governments.

What we saw this week was a glimpse of what is possible when working class people unite in struggle.

So we don’t need to listen to the likes of David Cameron and George Osborne telling us there is no alternative to austerity. Instead we can learn the lesson that resistance works. If you fight you can win.