The inaugural meeting of the People’s Assembly (Scotland) took place in January 2014 and my own union RMT was among the original sponsors. Since then it has grown substantially. The majority of Scotland’s trade unions are now affiliated and we have the support of the General Council of the Scottish TUC.

Local Assembly groups have been set up in Fife, Dundee, Kilmarnock and Loudoun, Clydebank, Glasgow, Midlothian and Irvine. Seven trade union councils have joined along with many trade union branches.

The Morning Star Campaign Committee, Scottish Left Review, Glasgow Hope Not Hate, the Campaign for Socialism, the Communist Party, the SNP Trade Union Group, the Radical Independence Campaign and Scottish CND are also on board.

These organisations all now sit on the steering committee. I hope there will be — in the near future — a formal agreement for the inclusion of Left Unity, the Trade Union and Socialist Candidates (Tusc Scotland) and a new PA group in Edinburgh and the Lothians.

This Saturday the STUC and the People’s Assembly Scotland along with all its supporting organisations have joined forces to organise a mass rally to coincide with those taking place in London and Cardiff.

Our Scottish Rally will be in Glasgow’s George Square commencing at 12 noon and continuing into the afternoon.

Speakers will include Grahame Smith, general secretary of the STUC, along with representatives from the STUC’s Equalities Committees, Unite, Unison (Scotland), EIS, PCS, FBU, NUS, Hope not Hate (Glasgow), the Campaign for Socialism, Global Justice on (TTIP), SCND, Women for Independence, the SNP/Trade Union Group, Glasgow Disability Alliance, Radical Independence Campaign, Glasgow Anti-Deportation Campaign and the Communist Party.

The rally will hear statements from those directly fighting austerity cuts and those facing victimisation in employment.

There will be porters from Tayside NHS and the Glasgow Care Workers — on strike against cuts in services and conditions — and Robert O’Donnell, an unfairly dismissed and victimised safety representative and Unison member.

Entertainment will be provided, among others, by the Wakes, the Jack Law Band, Calum Baird and the performance poet Jim Monaghan.

Hopefully we shall have a direct video link with colleagues in London in order to share solidarity.

One special feature will be a marquee to offer advice on joining a trade union staffed by members of the STUC’s youth committee and their Better than Zero Campaign.

The message of the rally will be outright opposition to the government’s draconian austerity measures, the defence of our trade union rights and the repeal of the anti-union laws.

We want “Decent Work — Dignified Lives” and “No to Austerity in a Just Scotland.”

The Tories have embarked on an all-out attack on us all. But they have no popular mandate as only 24 per cent of the electorate voted for them. In Scotland it was fewer than one in 10. Also much of their current programme was not even included in their manifesto.

This programme will mean that the savage cuts of the last five years will continue for another five and include the slashing of £12 billion from welfare — 20 per cent of current spending — and will require unprecedented attacks on the unemployed, the infirm, the disabled and the vulnerable in our broken society.

We will see tougher benefit sanctions being applied, more — not less — zero-hours contracts, deeper cuts in local government, further pay freezes and the hated “bedroom tax” being applied more strictly.

There will be more privatisation and fragmentation of public services. Foodbanks and child poverty will become the norm.

All this is to be coupled with further restrictions on strike action in essential services, health, education, transport and fire and rescue services — on the ability of trade unionists collectively to defend the wider interests of society.
No doubt about it. We are in a class war.

But there is an alternative and this is what the speakers at Saturday’s rally will be hammering home.

We want more and better jobs rooted in the principle of common and social ownership — delivering a fairer and more prosperous economy for the benefit of us all and not just the elite of the City of London, the financiers and the capitalist class.

Such an economy could end the housing crisis, protect and improve our public services — NHS, local government — end privatisation and fragmentation of our railways and stop the unnecessary and costly franchising process of the ferry sector.

It would end involvement in foreign wars and stop the colossal waste of £100 billion on Trident replacement.

Saturday’s rally in Glasgow will demonstrate that “There is a Better Way.” Unity and solidarity are the key to our success — to unite around the People’s Assembly here in Scotland and the rest of Britain and for the trade union movement to lead the way.

The power of our class is formidable.

Let us mobilise together to achieve our aim.

Unity is strength.

We are the many; they are the few.

• Phil McGarry is RMT political adviser Scotland and chair of the People’s Assembly (Scotland)