The November 3 National Workers All-out Rally

The November 3 National Workers All-out Rally / Grand March Against Constitutional Revision and War, called by the Solidarity Union of Japan Construction and Transport Workers Kansai Area Branch (Kan-Nama), Metal and Machinery Workers’ Union in Osaka (Minato-Godo) and National Railway Motive Power Union of Chiba (Doro-Chiba) was held at Hibiya Open-Air Concert Hall in Tokyo with 3,000 participants exceeding last year’s number. The rally marked the renewed starting point of a huge struggle to prevent the Japanese and US governments from waging an aggressive war against China and to revive the class-based labor movement.
The recent general election showed a deep-rooted anger toward the LDP-Komeito coalition, which is rushing into war and pushing people into hardship through tax hikes and soaring prices in order to concentrate all of the nation’s power on the war. The depth of the ruling class’s political crisis indicates the arrival of a golden opportunity for the working class to launch a general counterattack against war and neoliberalism. However, within the Diet, the Constitutional Democratic Party, the Democratic Party for the People, the Japan Innovation Party, and even the Japanese Communist Party are inciting xenophobia against China and falling into pro-war politics. This is what is supporting the survival of the Ishiba government. The biggest culprit behind this intolerable reality is the betrayal of the Rengo, which has abandoned all struggles and even accepted “wage increases by the wartime economy.”

The November 3 rally shared a firm determination to create a struggle against US-Japan Security Alliance and Okinawa struggle to prevent an aggressive war against China that would turn Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands into a hellish battlefield, to fight back against violent union busting against the three labor unions that called for the November rally, and to revive the class-struggle labor movement as a bastion against war.

The demonstration that followed the rally was carried out through downtown Tokyo despite obstruction from the police and right-wingers, sending voices calling for the prevention of an invasion of China.