'Cuts are class war, not deficit fighting'

"The government's motivation is its intention to take away all the gains made by the working class since 1945."

Mr Greenshields said that government strategy equated to abolition of the public sector, but it was impeded by a number of considerations.

"Private companies want to take over the public sector, but they don't want high levels of pension entitlement, national pay bargaining, who-does-what regulations and limits on working time," he noted.

"That's why defending these national conditions is an essential part of the struggle against privatisation.

Mr Greenshields insisted that the struggle for the People's Charter was about "building a movement not just a campaign," insisting that the charter must not be "kept in a drawer or pinned to a notice board."

It had to be a unifying element underpinning the labour movement's ongoing battle to defeat the conservative coalition cuts agenda.

Wales TUC president Andy Richards, who chaired the Unite-sponsored Morning Star fringe, called it an "absolute outrage" that a "cabal of multimillionaires" should rule on behalf of the fat cats that caused the current crisis.

He warned that the Tory-led government was launching an all-out attack on what David Cameron called the "red tape" of health and safety legislation "to make it easier for bad bosses to promote unsafe workplaces and take us back hundreds of years.

Morning Star political editor John Haylett stressed that it was not enough to be against government cuts in the abstract or to restrict opposition to the "too fast, too deep" mantra.

"This mantra would still entail cuts in jobs, services, pay, pensions and benefits, which would mean the working class carrying the can for a crisis that no worker contributed to creating."

Mr Haylett supported Mr Richards's call for a Welsh labour movement anti-cuts conference, urging "joint action to mobilise the trade unions and communities to defeat or at least mitigate the effect of the cuts on our people."

john@peoples-press.com