The government and the right-wing media would like it to be known that they are very disappointed with the lack of scruple, principle and resolve on the part of the capitalist class. In these difficult, austere times, it was incumbent on them to make very public, proud, ostentatious use of freebie labour, and to show class-wide unity in the offensive: not wilt under the slightest pressure from the Socialist Guardian BBC Bloody Trotskyspart General Strike Workers Party. 

The aforementioned parties have therefore decreed the following: 

1) it is a disgrace that a tiny party with no seats in parliament can make us look likely bloody idiots; 

2) of course, we don't look like idiots - they look like idiots, we look great, and we're winning (winning, winning, winning!); 

3) businesses have to stiffen their spines and stop pretending that they're embarrassed to be seen in public with us... yeah, well, does our face look bovvered?; 

4) you turn if you want to, Greggs, Tesco and the rest, but we're not for turning, unless you want us to. Do you want us to? Do you want some free money? We'll give you free money. Look, have Iain Duncan Smith's house, he doesn't need it, he sleeps in the fucking crypt.; 

5) it's not true that we're very unpopular. The SWP is very unpopular. We have written it in our columns, and said so on the television, and now everyone knows just how unpopular the SWP is.; 

6) the SWP is a tiny party, completely irrelevant, things would be perfectly okay if everyone would stop talking about the SWP.; 

7) the SWP has eaten our hamster.

This is a crock of shit. The sole named source for the story's central claim, that Irish terrorists are targetting the Conservative Party conference in October, is Patrick Mercer MP. Mercer has form for spreading paranoia and for credulously recycling bogus claims. This is what Mercer says:

"They want to kill by the end of August in order to get themselves poised for whatever operations they can mount in September leading up to the Tory party conference in early October. There are doubts over whether they have the capability, but the aspiration is certainly there and West Midlands police would be crazy not to take the threat seriously."

Sadly, the West Midlands police say they are unaware of any threat to target the Tory conference. This fact is buried rather deep down inside the article, beneath a number of reaction statements from Conservative spokespersons on Northern Ireland which tacitly demonstrate that they are unaware of any threat either. This is not the first time that there has been scaremongering, in content-free news articles, about Irish 'terrorists' coming to bomb 'the mainland'. For example, unnamed "sources" warn variously that "the terrorists are plotting to smuggle in a lorry bomb ... they may try to hit a high-profile target such as Canary Wharf or the Tory party conference ... the Continuity IRA are close to perfecting their bomb-making technology..." etc etc.

What we can gather from this, I suggest, is that elements in the state want people to believe that there is a threat from Irish Republicans resuming the armed struggle. There is a minority of the movement that is angry about the inadequacies of the peace settlement, but these are a hopeless fringe, probably penetrated by moles from top to bottom, and I doubt they could pull off a john in a bus shelter much less an attack on one of the most heavily secured annual political events. Secondly, we can gather that Patrick Mercer and possibly some allies in the security forces want us to believe that the Conservative Party conference is a target and that the West Midlands police must ratchet up security to terror alert levels, despite no demonstrable threat. Now, why might this be? I don't suppose it could have anything to do with the fact that one of the first major signs of resistance to the Tories' unprecedented attack on the welfare state will be a national demonstration outside the conference on 3rd October?

Treasury figures show that the spending cuts will cost 1.3m jobs, 600,000 of them in the public sector. HM Treasury estimates that this will be made up for with the creation of 2.5m new jobs. David Cameron now claims that 2 million new private sector jobs will be created in the next parliament, citing the 'independent' Office of Budgetary Responsibility. The private sector thinks not. The TUC seriously doubts it. And the think-tanks don't believe it. For good reason, as well. Anthony Painter points out that in the last decade the years of growth lasting from 1999 to 2007 saw the creation of only 1.52m private sector jobs, or 190,000 jobs a year. The Treasury is relying on the creation of 500,000 new jobs every year for the next five years, in a period of economic stagnation. There is no way in hell that is happening. Not only that, but most of the job growth in the last decade accomodated growth in the labour force. Now, the total labour force will grow by o.25% each year from 2011. That means the economy would have to add a net ≈100k jobs per year, just to avoid unemployment increasing. That it could feasibly manage. But half a million new jobs every year is an ornate fib with brass balls on.

Guest post by Jules:

The backdrop to this Saturday's 'Right to Work' conference was an ongoing economic and political crisis that has seen unemployment rise steeply, public services slashed, a 'good war' become a running sore, and eye watering bonuses for a tiny minority for whom it is business as usual. Combined with the widespread anger and lucid understanding of what is coming, there is a real desire to resist.

Sometimes events simply expire while you are there and sometimes they are the beginning of something. The Right to Work conference in Manchester this Saturday which crammed 900 socialists, trade unionists, students and activists from campaigns of various stripes into the Methodist Central Hall, most definitely fell into the latter category. The purpose? To begin to cohere and pull together the different centres of resistance that have flared up in the last couple of years and start to build the wider ''networks of solidarity'' the working class will need if it is to beat off the intensification of the neo-liberal offensive over pay, pensions, working conditions, public services and education that looms after the general election.

So it was a good start. Those attending represented various labour movement bodies and campaigns, trade councils, union branches, national organisations like the National Shop Stewards Network, Labour Representaion Committee, STW, UAF, the Unemployed Workers Union, Sheffield Pensioners Action Group, various Green Party branches, revolutionary left groups to name but a few. The speakers on the platform in the opening and closing sessions and the lead speakers in the 11 workshop sessions demonstrated just how broad and serious the Right to Work campaign is intended to be in building on the major examples of struggle and resistance in the last year.

There was an optimistic, militant spirit, best represented by those speakers directly involved in the strikes, disputes and occupations of the last year such as the Leeds refuse workers dispute, the Tower Hamlets college strike, the Superdrug workers, Vestas, London Cleaners campaign and so on, but also ongoing struggles such as the national Fujitsu dispute. The Fujitsu dispute is crucial, and hopefully a harbinger of the future, as it has taken place in an industry hardly touched by trade unionism or militancy but which since it began has seen over 1,400 workers join the union. Fuelling the optimism expressed at the conference is the fact that many of these struggles have been successful, breaking the dismal trend of a generation of defeat. They have defied and seen off anti-trade union laws, and revived of forms of action that appeard to be redundant or anachronistic. And they have actually delivered for the workers involved. Michael Bradley (SWP, RTW committee member) summarised this mood when he observed ''something has changed'' - and people understood this referred as much to the possibilities as the recent past.

The workshops reflected this, for example, Jerry Hicks, militant candidate for the General Secretary of Unite led off a session on 'How Can We Stop The Jobs Massacre?' Other sessions dealt with fighting the anti-trade union laws, organising against anti-immigrant racism, ending the pensions swindle, organising the unemployed, fighting climate change after Copenhagen and more but crucially made the connection between these different aspects of the anti-capitalist struggle.

Your correspondent personally attended 'How Can Workers Get A Real Political Voice' led off by Michael Lavalette and a speaker from LRC. This was not the sparkiest session perhaps. While there is a recognition of the need for a left realignment and the existence of a sizeable electoral minority to the left of Labour - it got a little bogged down in the brouhaha about whether to vote New Labour where no credible left candidate was standing. The decay of Labourism / Social Democracy and its implications was missing from the debate. And among some, some humility or acknowledgement of how relatively marginal the left is in electoral terms, was missing too. But obviously in Britain left realignment still has some way to go.

The final rousing session - 'building solidarity' drew the different strands of the conference together. Next stop? To ensure the biggest presence possible in Redcar 13 February to oppose the Corus jobs massacre that would - if it were allowed - kill the town. And then... building the defend public services demo in London 10 April and ensuring the biggest presence outside the Tory's spring conference. There is much work to do and Saturday was a good beginning.