The leadership of Britain's labour movement should be ashamed of itself. It has turned its back on the future generation of trade unionists - the school students who have struck against the war - by refusing to sanction a single meaningful protest action against the bloodbath.

It has turned its back on the rank and file trade unionists who organised strike action on the day the war started by calling on every trade unionist to line up dutifully behind the slaughter of Iraqi civilians, the illegal invasion of Iraq and the imperial quest for plunder that lies at the heart of this war. When the war started the TUC issued a statement regretting the war but insisting: "British armed forces and their families, and other staff involved in the military action, including those involved in civilian roles, will expect and must receive the support of the British people."

Must receive? Is this a threat to the trade unionists and children who went on strike? A threat to the anti-war movement? Who does the jumped-up office boy, the new TUC leader Brendan Barber, think he is?

But the statement does show that the People's Assembly's call on the TUC to organise action is only useful as a means of exposing their cowardice. It is not a means of organising action.

That is why we need to pile the pressure onto the anti-war union leaders, like Paul Mackney of Natfhe and Bob Crow of the RMT and Mick Rix of Aslef, to make a clear and unambiguous call to strike against the war. These men have called for strikes. But they have also insisted that their unions cannot call them. The TUC, said Mackney, on 22 March, should be organising strike action. But it isn't - and at this stage it won't.

That is why it is vital for the anti-war union leaders to act like leaders. It is excellent that Bob Crow has refused to suspend the class struggle at home and has pulled strikes of guards that have already crippled the rail network for two days. But these are not strikes against the war.

Left leaders like Crow, who have been outspoken in their opposition to the war drive, must now say: our unions will support strikes against the war and agitate for them. And they need to call on other unions to strike too.

Their excuse for not doing this is that the anti-union laws will be used against them. This is a sad response from people who are supposed to be the awkward squad. For a start the war is illegal - but it hasn't stopped Blair launching it. That alone justifies our side breaking an anti-working class set of laws. More importantly, the anti-union laws can only be used if we bow down before them.

If the PCS, Natfhe, the RMT, the CWU, the NUJ, Aslef and the FBU all agreed to strike together, even just for one day, against the war it would throw the government and bosses into complete panic. Sections of the other unions, like Unison, which has many anti-war branches, would soon join the fray. If Blair tried to use the anti-union laws to hammer these unions, and these unions stuck together, the laws wouldn't last a week. The government would be fighting, and losing, two wars on two fronts.

The only way we can get the lefts to take such a course of action is by organising the rank and file into a powerful movement that can force their hands, as in Italy where pressure from below forced the leadership of the CGIL federation to back a two-hour, general strike at the start of the war.

The strikes led by rank and file activists in the schools and colleges and in the PCS (with the backing of its leader Mark Serwotka), were successes. So far not one striker has been charged under the anti-union laws. But getting such action in the future, and extending it, needs official backing. Such backing - with a huge anti-war and pro-strike action propaganda campaign preceding it in every workplace - can win over many waverers, strengthen the hand of the militants and deliver the goods.

And those "goods" - strikes, blacking, protests in the workplace - are the most effective means of paralysing both the government's and the bosses' functioning and their political will.

The time for rhetoric by the union leaders has passed. The rank and file must organise to demand and organise action now.