The
Socialist 14 July |
We're Sick of the Greedy Bosses
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WHAT HAS sickened you most in recent
weeks? We believe one that deserves special prominence is the £10.6 million bonus that
Granada chief Gerry Robinson got for his company's merger with Compass Hospitality. |
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IN THE first three years of being in
government New Labour has privatised more council homes than the Tories managed in ten
years. By Paul Wilcox, Carlisle Socialist Party. |
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WORKERS AT Peugeot, Coventry have voted
overwhelmingly for strike action after the company imposed new working conditions. |
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Parades crisis needs working-class
solution to wider sectarian conflict: WHATEVER
THE immediate outcome over Garvaghy Road and other disputed parade routes the conflict
over parades will not be resolved this summer. Unresolved it has the potential to re-erupt
in future years. The Alternative to the annual
battleground: ON MONDAY afternoon Northern
Ireland ground to a halt as the Orange Order blocked roads in protest over Drumcree.
Shops, offices, and workplaces closed early as people tried to get home before the
barriers went up. By Peter Hadden |
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The
establishment claims Britain has had a strong democracy for over 100 years. But as JANE
JAMES explains, things are not as democratic as they seem.
Many democratic rights are being eroded by Blair and New Labour. Turnouts in
elections are at a new low and young people in particular are looking for alternatives to
traditional "politics". |
|
On 4 July Ayodele
Akele, leader of over 40,000 striking Lagos State workers and a leading
Democratic Socialist Movement member, was seized by men claiming to be from the State
Security Service (SSS). Nigeria:
United workers action brings victory: THE BEGINNING of July saw dramatic
developments in the struggle for a higher minimum wage in Nigeria. |
We're Sick of the Greedy Bosses
* Fight for a minimum wage of £5 an hour as a first step to £7 an hour - the European decency threshold.
* End the power and privilege of the wealthy, for a socialist society and economy run to meet the needs of all.
WHAT HAS sickened you most in recent weeks? We believe one that deserves special prominence is the £10.6 million bonus that Granada chief Gerry Robinson got for his company's merger with Compass Hospitality.
Last week New Labour, faced with a growing outcry, pledged to scrap the youth rate for the minimum wage and to ensure that the minimum wage is uprated annually.
But a young person receiving even the full minimum wage would take 1,377 years to earn what Robinson earned in a day. Even with recent advances in DNA science it's not going to happen is it?
Even someone on average earnings would have to work 485 years to get Robinson's reward.
But is somebody like Robinson the exception rather than the rule? Chris Gent, head of Vodafone Air Touch is lining himself up a similar £10 million bonus - on top of his £6.5 million salary and bonuses package - for merging the company with Mannesman.
The National Association of Pension Funds has advised its members to vote it down. But even if they succeed in this case it won't stop the fat cats trying to fill their bowl again and again.
Blair's government is creating a society of unparalleled wealth and greed amidst terrible poverty. 26% of people in Britain live below the poverty line.
In London the rate of reported cases of TB - a disease directly linked to poverty - has doubled since 1987. Last year there were 2,500 cases, with new cases and two deaths reported every week in the capital.
Another report showed how people in 'rip-off' Britain are between 15%-37% poorer, with 23% less cash to spend than those in the rest of Europe, because we are lower paid and have a higher cost of living.
These 'raw' figures about Blair's Britain show why Labour's 'popularity' is sliding. It's not about spin or Euan Blair having a 'few too many', it's because Labour is delivering a 'few too little' to change the lives of working-class people.
If you want a decent wage and fundamental change then become a socialist and join the Socialist Party.
Defend Council housing
IN THE first three years of being in government New Labour has privatised more council homes than the Tories managed in ten years.
Paul Wilcox, Carlisle Socialist Party
Now New Labour plans a big bang, the abolition of council housing. The recent government Green Paper says the government plans to sell off all Britain's remaining 3.2 million council homes at the rate of 200,000 a year, to housing associations and private housing companies.
Campaigns to defend council housing have mushroomed around the country and a national lobby of Parliament is taking place on 19 July in protest.
18 years of Tory rule saw war declared on local councils in the form of massive cuts in cash for council services like housing.
In 1979 Britain spent £18 billion on council housing, now it's down to £5 billion. Tory right to buy rules generated £33 billion, yet no council was allowed to spend any of this money to build new homes to replace those sold to tenants.
Now, the state of many council houses and flats is a source of anger amongst tenants. Council housing has fallen into intolerable disrepair. Yet privatisation of council housing is not the answer.
Privatisation means the transfer of control and running of that service from an accountable public sector to the private sector where unelected boardrooms of businesses and banks make decisions about our housing.
The only basis under which financial lenders will get involved with housing transfer is if they are freed from public accountability in order to maximise profit. The 'Council of Mortgage Lenders' say they would oppose any transfer options "if they are in reality controlled by local authorities" (Housing Today Magazine).
Despite its huge majority, New Labour won't challenge this "institutionalised robbery" by the finance companies. Neither the government nor any New Labour council were elected with a mandate to privatise council housing. But, with a general election next year the government are susceptible to increased pressure and a mass campaign could stop this housing sale of the century.
The money is there to provide high-quality, low-cost council housing. The national housing repairs bill is estimated at £19 billion.
The government is prepared to set aside £12 billion to write off council housing debts to facilitate transfer. So why can't the government hand over this money to council and tenant control?
Better still, why not nationalise the banks and finance companies under democratic workers' control and management and stop them draining councils of funds through interest payments. The banks' and finance companies' massive profits can then be used to fund an extensive programme of investment to provide decent, affordable public housing for all who need it.
Ryton Car workers set to strike
WORKERS AT Peugeot, Coventry have voted overwhelmingly for strike action after the company imposed new working conditions.
A Ryton worker
Ryton workers previously rejected the deal by 86%. Now we’ve voted 58.4% to 41.6% for strike action, going against company threats and official union support for the deal.
In my 12 years at Ryton, the workforce have endured six different shift patterns. The latest proposals are supposed to reduce working hours from 39 to 36.75, but workers will be forced to work up to 46 hours a week when management demands it.
Breaks and lunchtimes are being cut and overtime earnings will be sharply reduced as hours currently covered by overtime rates are absorbed into the new shift pattern. For years the workforce accepted, sometimes very angrily, every efficiency measure and change in working practices that the company threw at us.
But now the company are taking us for fools. We’re sick of family and social lives being messed about to suit this company’s greed.
At union gang meetings the mood was determined. We have no official overtime ban, but most areas are operating a voluntary boycott of overtime. This is important in the run-up to a strike. It shows the company that we’re united and prepared to fight.
As one operator pointed out: "It's important that we all pull together as a body. When you go to fight an army you need an army." All shifts are staging a one-day strike on 27 July - their last shift before the summer shutdown.
The company intend to impose the new arrangement when we return from holidays. If there's no significant improvement when we return we'll be on all-out strike after mid-August.
Union officials got egg on their face recommending a deal rejected by 86% of us. This hardly encouraged management to make concessions. But following this ballot result, the unions have been forced to back the workforce. We’ll need that if we’re to gain back any control of our lives from this company.
COVENTRY SOCIALIST councillor Dave Nellist attacked Peugeot management on local radio. Management said that the 77% turnout wasn’t enough for them to take workers' claims seriously. Dave said that the bosses were always for democracy until it didn't give them the result they want!
Northern Ireland
Parades crisis needs working-class solution to wider sectarian conflict
WHATEVER THE immediate outcome over Garvaghy Road and other disputed parade routes the conflict over parades will not be resolved this summer. Unresolved it has the potential to re-erupt in future years.
This is a struggle over two conflicting rights. The Orange Order is a sectarian and reactionary organisation but the view that it should have no right to march is completely unreal in the concrete circumstances of Northern Ireland. But so too is the opposite view that it should be allowed to march anywhere and in any manner it chooses.
Residents also have a right to object to parades they find insulting and offensive. The only way these two rights can be reconciled is through direct negotiation between parade organisers and residents.
There are different circumstances to every parade and agreements would have to be worked out locally. However, there are underlying similarities and the general outlines of a deal are not difficult to trace.
Where marches take place through entirely residential areas, residents must have the right to say no, bearing in mind that minority viewpoints in an area need to be respected.
Most disputed parades do not fall into this category. They are mainly along arterial routes or through town and village centres. Here their needs to be dialogue with neither side holding a veto.
The Parades Commission is not an answer and should be scrapped. This government quango's very existence works against any possibility of local negotiations as both sides tend to wait on its ruling, supporting it if it goes their way or condemning it if it doesn't.
Face to face negotiations could decide the route of parades, how often they take place, who marches and the general conduct of marchers. There could be agreement on stewarding with each side stewarding their own supporters. There should be no RUC involvement, no curfewing, no restriction of people's movements.
There has not been a resolution along these lines because the row is about far more than parades. For the hardline unionists and loyalists it is about wrecking the Good Friday Agreement and striking a blow at David Trimble.
For UFF leader Johnny Adair it is about forging an alliance with the LVF, trying to outpace the UVF, and become the predominant loyalist paramilitary organisation.
Among nationalists there has also been a hardening of attitudes. Their more aggressive, more confident - and more sectarian - form of nationalism is based on an expanding Catholic population and sensing that the firm ground on which Protestants once stood is being eroded.
Publicly the position of the residents' groups is for dialogue about parades. But privately the real position of the most hardline is that the only answer is no parade.
Gerard Rice of the Lower Ormeau Residents Committee as much as said so when he wrote in the Irish News: "Parades, not the absence of dialogue, are the problem."
The growth of the Catholic population means that without a solution there will be more and more disputed routes.
The Troubles may be over in the form they took for three decades. But they now continue in a different form; in a drawn-out war of attrition over territory. A 'victory' by either side merely adjusts the delicate sectarian equilibrium in one direction or another.
The Orange Order is likely to suffer a defeat this year. But because of the way in which this has been achieved the overall effect will be to increase polarisation and reinforce sectarian division. If the ongoing battle over territory continues the end result will be Bosnian-style civil war.
There is another right that now needs to be asserted - the right of working- class people not to be dragged along this road by sectarians of any hue.
This year there has not been the tension over Drumcree of 1996 or 1997 and there is now an opportunity to build a united working-class movement to force a resolution, not only over parades, but of the wider sectarian conflict as well.
The Alternative to the annual battleground
ON MONDAY afternoon Northern Ireland ground to a halt as the Orange Order blocked roads in protest over Drumcree. Shops, offices, and workplaces closed early as people tried to get home before the barriers went up.
Peter Hadden
Belfast city centre after 4pm was like a ghost towns in old westerns. The wind whistled through empty streets. All that was missing was the tumbleweed!
The protest was effective, but not because most of the Protestant population were involved. Most people just went home to avoid the rush.
Among Protestants there is support for Orangemen's right to march but most people feel they should talk to local residents and be prepared to give a bit. Likewise Catholics overwhelmingly sympathise with the residents but also feel there should be talks and a solution.
Drumcree grabbed the headlines, but reports of the disruption were exaggerated. There is tension but not to the extent of a few years ago when civil war seemed a possible outcome.
In fact the biggest mobilisation was nothing to do with Drumcree. On the previous Friday, 50,000 people - more than were ever involved at Drumcree - turned out in Ballymoney for the funeral of motor cycling legend Joey Dunlop.
Catholics and Protestants from the north as well as hundreds from the south turned out. The Drumcree organisers were forced to acknowledge the event and called off the protests and roadblocks for much of the day.
The same day, the entire workforce of Shorts, a factory which has staged loyalist walkouts in the past, went on strike. This was nothing to do with Drumcree but the first in a series of one-day strikes over a new three year pay deal.
THIS IS not to underestimate what's happened - or the potential for worse violence. The cutting edge of the Drumcree protests has been widespread sectarian attacks.
Interface areas, where Catholic and Protestant working-class people live cheek by jowl have seen almost nightly sectarian violence. There has been intimidation in some workplaces. Loyalist paramilitaries visited a building site in Belfast where a Socialist Party member works, to threaten the 'fenians' working there. The site was forced to close for a week.
As in previous years there were petrol bombings and shootings. Schools and Chapels have been attacked. This sectarianism has not all been one sided, Orange Halls and Protestant property has also been attacked. And the so-called 'real' IRA planted a bomb in Stewartstown, timed to go off at the height of the Drumcree protest.
The vast majority of working-class people don't support any of this. Yet most people feel quite powerless and retreat to their homes waiting for it all to pass over.
The trade unions and community organisations, who could more accurately reflect working-class people's feelings than the sectarians who are heard loudest just now, are largely silent. After a while Drumcree will most likely wind down for another year. The token protest will remain on the hill. Nothing will have been solved.
Instead of the end of one marching season starting the countdown to the next, this time it should start the building of a united working class movement capable of putting forward a socialist alternative and finding a way out of this annual sectarian mayhem.
Is Democracy Dying Out?
The establishment claims Britain has had a strong democracy for over 100 years. But as JANE JAMES explains, things are not as democratic as they seem. Many democratic rights are being eroded by Blair and New Labour. Turnouts in elections are at a new low and young people in particular are looking for alternatives to traditional "politics". How do socialists view democracy?
What Makes democracy?
SOCIALISTS FIGHT to defend and extend democratic rights that have been won by past struggles. Having the right to vote, to form trade unions and political parties, to hold meetings and demonstrate, which is banned in many countries, is a major advantage for our class. It allows workers to organise openly to improve conditions and struggle for a socialist society. Socialists and workers' organisations can gain influence by taking part in elections.
When foreign ministers and others met in Poland recently for a “World Forum on Democracy”, it was estimated that 120 out of the 190 states in the world have “democracies”, showing an increase in the past decade. But in the oldest democracies the turnout in elections is decreasing.
Democracy usually refers to the right to vote, a free press and free speech, among other rights. Many countries on their 'democratic' list are stretching the definition.
Russia, whose government elections suffer from ballot rigging and fraud, are included and countries like Turkey are breezily described as being "military-influenced". Nigeria is apparently defined as a presidential parliamentary democracy (transitional).
Corruption and undemocratic methods are rampant in all governments of the West.
For example, in Ireland, former Taoiseach, Charles Haughey faces allegations of accepting back-handers from businessmen.
This has been a factor in the Socialist Party gaining further support and an independent Left candidate recently winning a seat in Tipperary.
CAPITALIST DEMOCRACY has limitations. We may be allowed a vote every four or five years to have a say in which party is elected. But once elected, it is very difficult to bring governments to account.
Many voted for New Labour but few agree with policies such as privatising air traffic control or introducing tuition fees. There is no democracy in how the economy is run, what our wages should be, how many jobs are created or what is produced. These decisions are made by the bosses who only give concessions to head off struggles.
What little 'democracy' we have is being eroded. Blair and New Labour are 'reforming' many democratic institutions which means we will have less rights than before. Devolution is supposed to bring democracy closer to people yet the new assemblies and Scottish Parliament have very limited powers.
You don’t even have to be elected to be to be part of the government. Unelected lawyers and individuals such as Lord Simon of BP and Lord Levy, the famous tax avoider, have been brought into the government. The Lord Chancellor, an unelected medieval relic, appoints judges in secret and is cutting legal aid.
35% of those appointed to government advisory task forces are business people and only 2% are trade unionists.
Local councils too have been left with fewer powers and that power will soon be wielded by fewer people. Many areas are now looking at directly elected mayors who will have powers above those of councillors. Cardiff County Council recently awarded its mayor £58,000 a year, abolished council committees and replaced them with a small 'cabinet'.
Home Secretary, Jack Straw is planning to take away the right to be tried by jury. Magistrates' courts will now decide if someone can have a jury or not.
Because New Labour has now been transformed into an openly capitalist party, there is no mass party that represents working-class interests. This has led to the situation where the right to vote, won by generations before us, is not being used.
In the recent Tottenham by-election only 25% of those registered to vote did so and the Labour candidate, David Lammy won the seat with 13.6% of the electorate voting for him. Many commentators say that people no longer want to be involved in the political process, reflected by low turnouts, not registering to vote and taking no interest in political parties.
But this is primarily a protest by former Labour voters, angered by New Labour’s policies. When a Left alternative is offered, workers can be inspired to vote. In the recent local elections the Socialist Party gained a third councillor in Coventry and our candidate in Merseyside received 30% of the vote.
Some argue that a turn away from traditional politics is a positive process and that we need to look at new forms of protest and a new democracy with political parties being outdated.
Movements such as Reclaim the Streets have turned to direct action as a way of achieving things with an implicit hostility to politics and political parties. Alternative movements are referred to as DIY politics, bypassing the political process by building self-help groups and taking part in direct action. What could be more democratic than being able to freely exchange ideas on the internet ?
In a recent edition of Red Pepper, Colin Ward, a writer on anarchism, wrote of such groups: “None of them fits into the framework of conventional politics. They depend not on membership cards, votes and a special leadership and a herd of inactive followers but small functional groups which ebb and flow”.
But “small functional groups which ebb and flow” will never be able to challenge the rule of capitalism. Workers and oppressed have to be organised to build struggles and confront the highly organised forces of those who control society with the aim of achieving socialism. Many involved in these groups are concluding that global capitalism is the enemy and some are open to the idea of a socialist alternative.
A new mass party of the working class will have to be more democratic than the past experience of mass workers' organisations like the Labour Party and the trade unions. When the Labour Party swung to the left in the late 1970s and 1980s, reflecting working-class struggle, Militant supporters and others on the Left fought hard for democratic procedures. We cannot accept workers organisations being run in an undemocratic way and Socialist Party members are the strongest fighters for democratic change in the trade unions.
As well as arguing for democracy within the working-class organisations, we also have to be alert to the attacks on democracy from the ruling class. Our lives are dictated to by big business and the rich and they would attempt to dismantle democratic rights if these became an obstacle to their power.
To stand in elections requires money and publicity while the media is controlled by the rich. This does not mean that the working class cannot build support and win power. But to achieve socialism requires an independent working-class mass party, embracing Marxist ideas.
Only under a socialist society can there be true democracy. Where production and distribution are owned and controlled by all then people can genuinely participate in running society.
The struggle for workers rights in Britain
UNTIL THE Reform Act of 1867 only a wealthy minority of the population had the vote. If these owners of big business, the banks and land could have continued to exploit the masses who created their wealth, without allowing them any role in the political process, they would have done so.
The struggles of the working class forced the ruling class to make some democratic concessions but never enough to threaten their dominant position. Not until 1928 could all men and women over the age of 21 vote. This was won through the struggles of the Chartists, trade unionists, suffragists and suffragettes – directly through campaigning for the vote but also by the working class demonstrating their industrial strength.
These early campaigners fought for the right to vote as a means to change their appalling conditions. While the working class saw representative institutions such as parliament and local councils as a means to implement change, the ruling class attempted to use democracy as means to divert struggle into safe channels.
The implication is that there is no need for fundamental social and economic transformation – ie a revolution - when change can be implemented through the ballot box. Although many reforms including democratic rights have been implemented by Parliament, it has been struggles outside Parliament that has forced this change.
Once the masses had won the vote, the ruling class planned to make it as ineffective as possible. Their biggest fear was the working class building its own party. Walter Bagehot in his book “The English constitution” in 1872 said: “A political combination of the lower classes, as such and for their own objects is an evil of the first magnitude.”
Nigerian workers’ leader kidnapped
THE BEGINNING of July saw dramatic developments in the struggle for a higher minimum wage in Nigeria.(see below)
On 4 July Ayodele Akele, leader of over 40,000 striking Lagos State workers and a leading Democratic Socialist Movement member, was seized by men claiming to be from the State Security Service (SSS). However, the next day the state denied having arrested Akele, stating that his disappearance was an attempt to prolong the strike.
Eventually after 31 hours Akele was released on the outskirts of Lagos. He had been held in a house and told that he was being held to ensure that the strike would come to an end.
However the death of a striker, Adigun Popoola, the next day only reinforced the Lagos workers determination. Popoola, was killed during a mass protest outside the Lagos State Secretariat in Alausa.
Eyewitnesses and press reports described how the police attempted to stop him reaching hospital. Five workers arrested at the same time have been falsely charged with attempting to burn down the State Secretariat building.
Akele's abduction sets a dangerous precedent. This has been one of the first times in Nigeria that the seizure of an opponent of the ruling regime has not been admitted. Nigeria could now be joining the list of those countries where activists "disappear" or are dealt with by "death squads".
Since then the Lagos State Government went on a renewed offensive, singling out the Democratic Socialist Movement and its general secretary, Segun Sango, for attack.
The State government has waged a consistent propaganda campaign to try to isolate the strikers. The hypocrisy has been incredible.
The Commissioner for Information has claimed that the "union leaders are fighting for the elite" in demanding a 7,500 Naira (£47) monthly minimum, yet his monthly wage is 77,000 Naira (£482) plus allowances and expenses!
Clearly these officials are fighting to defend both themselves and the capitalist system they represent.
Significantly this propaganda campaign has not isolated the strikers. In fact these experiences are making more and more workers and youth attracted to the ideas of the DSM, especially its call for the creation of a working people's party and for a socialist alternative.
The text of all DSM statements, newspapers and leaflets can be obtained from the CWI at inter@dircon.co.uk
Nigeria: United workers action brings victory
FOLLOWING THE ending of military rule last year, the Nigerian Labour Congress (NLC) launched a campaign for the 3,000 Naira monthly minimum wage to be raised to N20,000 (£125). A demand which, since the end of 1997, the Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM - the Nigerian counterpart of the Socialist Party) has been campaigning for.
James Long
This demand was actually quite a modest amount. Last May the leader of SESCAN, the union representing senior staff in the private sector, estimated that, if UN guidelines were followed, it should be N24,000. Similarly the minimum wage of N125 set in 1981 was then worth $221, at today's Naira exchange rate $221 would mean N22,100 - an indication of how far Nigeria has been pushed back in the last 20 years.
Facing mounting pressure President Obasanjo announced, on 1 May, a rise in the minimum wage from N3,000 to N7,500 for Federal workers and N5,500 for all other workers. Despite their earlier position the NLC leaders welcomed this rise.
Notwithstanding its low level, workers in the federal states and private industry were aggrieved at not receiving N7,500. Agitation began to win parity.
On 2 June workers in Akwa Ibom began a strike to win N7,500.
This movement was overshadowed when, on 1 June, a 50% rise in fuel prices was announced, immediately provoking national protests. Within days the NLC called a general strike which lasted five days.
The national stoppage was absolutely solid. Faced with this situation the government retreated and cut back the rise to 10% for petrol and zero for kerosene, the fuel used for cooking. (The entire rise could have been rolled back but the national union leaders did not, in the words of NLC President Adams Oshiomhole, want to "humiliate" the government.)
This victory gained by united action provided a real contrast to the increasing ethnic and religious tensions and clashes which have recently characterised Nigeria. It showed in practice how the working class, despite its small size in this country of at least 120 million, could unite the mass of the population in common struggle.
The success of the fuel price strike encouraged workers to press their demands for parity with Federal employees. A key role in this was the decision of the Lagos State workforce to come out on strike on 22 June. By the beginning of July workers in 12 of Nigeria's 36 federal states were on strike.
The NLC, while giving verbal encouragement to the movement, has not been prepared to pull these struggles together nationally. Behind the scenes its leaders are anxious not to undermine President Obasanjo.
The Federal government on 4 July, then withdrew its 22 May circular which gave States the option of paying a N7,500 minimum.
Not only is co-ordinated national action necessary but also the NLC needs to act upon its long-standing policies of creating a workers' party and campaigning for its objective of socialism if it is to provide a way out of the crisis which grips Nigeria.