BC Premier Gordon Campbell will stop at nothing to impose his agenda. We have to face up to the consequences of Campbell’s ruthlessness. We have no hope of defeating the cuts, the privatization, the racism and the coming repression unless we adopt the same clarity of vision. Nothing short of a general strike will stop them, but a successful one is not possible now. We have to prepare a general strike, and to do that we need to begin to develop a detailed, well-thought-out campaign of escalating confrontation.

The May 25 demonstration called by the BC Federation of Labour in Vancouver will be very large. The numbers are not the problem.

Just like 1983’s Solidarity movement in BC, the masses are now a material factor in BC politics. People are being pushed into the streets by the thousands by a vicious Liberal attack that far outstrips anything Bill Bennett’s Socreds tried to implement in 1983:

• Small towns like Kimberly, Cranbrook and Grand Forks have seen demonstrations of thousands, involving sometimes a third to a half of the local population.
• A BC Teachers Federation rally in Vancouver in January led to a spontaneous march of nearly 10,000 teachers, enraged by the provincial government’s imposition of funding cuts and a forced settlement.
• The BC Fed’s February 23 rally in Victoria drew over 40,000 people, mostly from Vancouver Island.
• A March 23 demo in Vancouver drew from 10,000 to 12,000 organized by the Lower Mainland Coalition for Social Justice, a coalition of community organizations and unions.
• Over a hundred demonstrations and rallies have taken place across the province over the last six weeks, nearly all of them censored out of public existence by the corporate media.

But the mass support for serious resistance to Campbell is not stable. It will grow, or it will eventually shrink if people see no perspective of defeating Campbell’s cuts.

Repeating Solidarity

Opposition to Campbell’s programme of cuts, privatization and repression is showing stunning similarities to the weaknesses that led to the defeat of Solidarity in 1983.

• The leadership of the BC Fed refuses to map out any comprehensive strategy to defeat Campbell. Some leaders, like Fed president Jim Sinclair, give lip service to the “possible” need for a general strike, without openly calling for it or giving any idea how to begin preparing for it. Others, like IWA president Dave Haggard, openly oppose the very idea of a general strike. The only strategy clearly put forward by the Fed – supporting a reorganized NDP in 2005 – is guaranteed to be a recipe for defeat.
• Fed affiliates continue to push the slogan, “The Cuts Are Too Deep.” Just like the Fed’s 1983 slogan, “Restraint Is No Excuse For Repression,” the slogan holds open the possibility of negotiating side deals, which was exactly what happened with the Kelowna sellout.
• A large divide has sprung up between public sector unions, whose members stand to lose their jobs by the tens of thousands, and most of the private-sector and industrial unions.
• Not least, there has been no opportunity for militants interested in organizing effective resistance to Campbell to begin debating and elaborating the political framework of such a resistance. Developing a broad unanimity on our collective goals, demands, strategy and tactics is an absolute precondition to winning.

These are not small flaws. They are serious weaknesses that we need to address and begin to correct in the weeks to come. Otherwise there’s probably another Kelowna in our future.

Getting A Second Wind

The Solidarity movement of ’83 exploded with a suddenness that took everybody by surprise. Mobilizations quickly attained a large size. However, this will not be automatically repeated. The deep mistrust created by the Kelowna betrayal continues to divide the union movement from community groups and the private sector from public sector unions. Nor should the weight of successive defeats and reversals (Free trade, NAFTA, etc.) be discounted, or the increasing weight of the ideological right.

This does not mean that we are doomed or that defeat is inevitable. But there will be no short-term explosion that blows Campbell out of office, even when the full impact of his cuts begin to make themselves felt. We need to plan for a longer struggle than that.

Targeting The Corporations

There is an increasing understanding among movement activists that the time has come to begin shifting the tactical focus from the Campbell government (and the Liberal MLAs) to the real driving force for the current offensive, Campbell’s corporate backers. The list would have to include the big corporate donors to the Liberal’s campaign fund, and the big corporate members of the BC Progress Board.

All sorts of tactics need to be considered here. They can include monkey-wrenching, cat-and-mouse tactics, phone jamming, disruptions, occupations and blockades. They can include neighbourhood organizing, slowdowns, workplace organizing, study sessions and the like. Nothing should be ruled out if it can help disrupt business as usual, as long as it does not isolate the movement from the mass support and participation we need in order to win.

Even a consumer boycott could focus the struggle against Campbell’s privatization agenda. A number of companies could be considered, but one example illustrates some of the possibilities. The Campbell government reorganized the province’s regional health authorities last fall, appointing six new chairs to implement the service cuts and job cuts slated for this year. All are corporate executives. All will personally profit, netting around $300,000 to $400,000 a year with a 10 per cent bonus if they meet their quota of cuts.

Wynn Powell is the chair of the Provincial Health Authority. He’s also chair of London Drugs, one of the largest retail drugstores in the province. A concerted boycott campaign could target London Drugs in virtually every community in the province. A coordinated boycott could serve as a campaign to give everyone dedicated to defending medicare a concrete struggle that could be organized store by store, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, city by city.

Building Strong Coalitions

Campaigns like this can help address one of the most urgent priorities now facing the movement against Campbell. Many small coalitions have sprung up across BC in opposition to Campbell’s agenda. In some cases, like the Lower Mainland Coalition for Social Justice, they are large and broadly representative of large sectors of the community.

Any winning strategy completely depends on degree to which these coalitions can be strengthened over the months to come. They provide the starting point for building a unified organizational framework in each town and city that can bring together everyone seriously interested in winning the fight against Campbell. They can provide the place to have the debates and discussion so vitally needed to figure out the way forward. They can also provide the means to unite in action against Campbell.

To strengthen these coalitions, we need to do a number of things:

• We need to begin discussing long-term strategy, and setting long-term goals.
• We need to develop a number of priority campaigns that can be taken into each community to build the numbers actively fighting against Campbell.
• We need to discuss and agree on a common programme and common demands that unify our movement.
• And we need to begin creating information channels and links between the coalitions in each community to create a network and over time transform it into an organization.
• The Liberals lied their way into power. They are now moving to loot the public treasury (health care, Hydro, education, auto insurance) in a vast theft of public goods. They have absolutely no mandate to do that. We have an enormous responsibility on our shoulders to stop it in its tracks, a responsibility to our class, to our communities, and to our children.

Neither the BC Federation of Labour or the NDP are prepared to undertake such a campaign. If we are to undertake a serious fight, and if we are to act as if winning this fight actually matters to us, we will need to construct a coalition in every community that is capable of grouping together every union, every community group and every individual who is ready to fight.

Above all, we need to act. We need to begin to raise the perspective and organize supporters of a general strike, including in the large mobilization that will occur on May 25.

Will Offley is a member of NSG Vancouver.