What a brilliant day!

Well done

Big Society ska punk band, that are based in Oxford support ALL that stood together yesterday!

An e-mail from our union, the UCU, this morning, says that "2,500 new members... joined UCU during November so they could take part in the strike"

We marched, we got the nice warm feeling you get when you are with a group of like minded individuals, we listened to some speeches and we all agreed we are in the right.

Trouble is nothing has changed, the ConLib government has already said that their plans are exactly as they were before so we must ask what was achieved ?

A one day strike, and lots of public support, was never going to see the government do a complete u turn (and definitely not publicly). That doesn't mean that nothing was achieved.

Here are some things I think were achieved:

1. The government has realised that unionised workers have power. So much that they (the govt.) are considering curtailing the right to strike.

2. It has been shown that the public sector contributes massively to both the economy and society - the stories about how much the strike would cost the economy and how working parents could cope without being able to drop their children off at school were just two much discussed examples.

3. There was evidence to the government that many of the general public (i.e. voters!) supported the strikers.

4. The visible display of solidarity meant that many public sector workers realised that they have support, and strikers and supporters build solidarity which makes future action against the government more likely.

Whilst I would like the day to have ended with public sector workers getting a fair deal, I think the above 4 points are pretty good and positive.

No-one on the ground organising yesterday believed for one second that a one day strike would break the government's offensive, but it would be a mistake to not see the advance made by millions of workers.

An incredible cross union unity in action was built leading to the biggest challenge to the Tories date. This was not easily won and their will be a battle to maintain it. The people who struck and marched in incredible numbers will return to work different people. The majority will be thinking of what needs to happen next and some will actively engage in pushing their union leaders.

Union membership has grown on the basis of the fight (4,000 people across just 2 unions in the South East), and new activist have come forward to build that fight at the bottom of the unions.

Nor should we underestimate the impact on the bosses and the government. bosses were rattled. Their best plans to "keep calm and carry on" failed abysmally - this lesson was not lost on the millions taking action for the first time. Cameron claiming it was a "damp squib" discredited him in the majority's eyes.

As much as I would like to agree with previous posters I'm sorry to say that I also fear we have achieved nothing. I was on a march in Bristol and at the end a Unison rep made a speech saying how this strike would see the government back down and abandon its plans to change pensions, people looked at each other then with clearly a number of us suddenly coming to the same conclusion. We've lost a day's pay and nothing will change.
I have no idea what we do next.

A one day strike on its own will not force the govt to back down; most people realise that (I hope!).

It could be the start of a process of workers gaining confidence and starting to take action more often, realising their strength, becoming bold enough to bypass the union bureacracies and genuinely becoming a threat.

Or it could be an opportunity to blow off steam, channelled safely into relatively obedient tactics, before a return to 'business as usual'.

Everything depends on whether those who struck on N30 now have the energy and courage to push for further action, and if necessary carry it out without the support of their union leaders.

I didn't see much on N30 to leave me feeling confident that this will happen; in Oxford the demo missed many an opportunity to escape the confines of obedient symbolism and ritual.

But I wouldn't dismiss it as having 'acheived nothing' either. It's not too late for it to lead to more militant action; it's up to us to make that happen.

"Let's see more strikes, longer strikes, unofficial strikes, spreading in waves across the public and private sector. Let's see roads blockaded, buildings occupied, evictions resisted, and poiticians afraid to go out in public. Let's see every demonstration have an enormous turnout that the police and stewards can't control. Let's see the rank-and-file of the working class break the leash of bureaucrats, officials and would-be vanguards and start a fucking rebellion. I'm striking on N30 because there is only one way to stop the cuts: as long as they're inevitable, make this country ungovernable."
 http://libcom.org/blog/im-striking-n30-because-19112011

There is a real danger the union leaders will sell the fight out. The answer to that is to focus the rank and file demands for more united action on to those union leaders most likely to sell out first - such as UNISON.

Petitions are circulating amongst the rank and file to focus this demands, and motions need to be passed in union branches to demand more united action ASAP. This engagement with the union bureaucracy is a necessary step - that is how we got the strikes in the first place - which has opened the door to more.

At the same time it would be fatal to limit activity to pressuring the union leadership as it is so unreliable. We need to seriously address how to build a rank and file movement that can act independently of the bureaucratic leadership.

This strike was the first step of mass working class action in decades. We have gone from the lowest level of struggle to the highest since the miners strike. We can't expect it to develop the level of militancy seen during the miners strike - which occurred within recent memory of the miners breaking the Tory government ten years earlier.

We should not underestimate the impact of the strike had because there were "missed opportunities" on the march or because Cameron calls it was a "damp squib".

It is nonsense to talk about stewards holding people back - these were last minute draftees not hardened union bureaucrats. The reality is that the majority of nurses, teachers and librarians don't see rioting or "radical" street action as a solution to their problems. These workers want to defend their pensions and public services - they believe this is a reasonable thing Their quiet strike was a million times more radical than a bank occupation, or window smashing affair.

The difference was summed up by one anarchist who altered a SWP "Turn Oxford into Cairo" placard by scribbling out Cairo and substituting "Tottenham". There is no equivalency between the mass uprising based on months of mass strikes in Egypt and the incoherent outpouring of rage in the Tottenham riots. The former is a serious struggle for power the second wasn't.