On Wednesday around 3 million public service workers went on strike – the biggest day of action since 1926. In Leicester around 5000 trade unionists marched in one of the biggest rallies in the city for decades. We need to turn this into a movement to defeat not just the Tory / Lib Dem cuts but also to put forward a socialist alternative.

What programme does the Socialist Party put forward to stop attacks on pay and conditions? How can we put pressure on the leadership of trade unions to escalate the action if the government do not back down? What alternative do we pose to the argument that the cuts are a necessary evil and how can we stop the cuts?

We say that cuts are not necessary and that there is the wealth in society to provide a decent pension and well-paid employment for all, if the wealth were controlled by the vast majority of the population. Ordinary people did not cause the economic crisis, so they should not have to pay for it. We need a mass campaign and a mass political party to put across the ideas of socialism, rather than put up with the lesser evilism of New Labour and the Tories. Milliband does not support the strikers, so why should we support Labour? We argue that we need build working-class political representation.

Come along to the meeting and join in the discussion.