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Poverty Grows Under New Labour

Brown's Breadline Britain

NEW LABOUR faces a political crisis over foot-and-mouth. They can see the global turmoil in share prices. They obviously hope to hold an election soon, before things get even worse.

But what record will they defend at the ballot box? Since New Labour came to power in 1997, they've put overall taxation up from 35.3% to 37.7%. Yet they've reduced the share of national resources for public spending from 41% to 38%!

This government's policies of "prudence" have made the poor even poorer. A new survey shows that by Labour's third year of office, over five million people in Britain were living in absolute poverty, which affected people's health, education, housing, even whether they'd enough food to eat.

In September 1999, 9% of people had a weekly income way below what they needed to afford the absolute necessities of life.

The greatest concentration of poverty was amongst lone parents and pensioners. More than half of Britain's lone parents with two children or more had incomes below £227 a week - which the report says is their absolute poverty level.

A quarter of single pensioners' incomes fell below the £106 a week threshold needed to escape from the breadline.

The survey showed that countries such as Britain which followed Thatcherite policies most closely had the greatest and most permanent poverty.

New Labour say this survey was done before the national minimum wage and working families' tax credit (WFTC) had had time to work their way through.

True, the minimum wage helped some low-paid workers - unscrupulous employers paid so little that many workers would have been better off with any minimum wage, even one with Labour's appallingly low level.

Brown's so-called "family budget" put all its attention on getting people back to work. Some benefits such as WFTC only take effect when you get a job.

But poverty will reach even higher levels when Britain's "joyless" boom disappears and takes even more jobs with it.

After last week's budget, benefits are lagging even further behind wages and prices. Many workers wonder what happened to all the money they've paid in taxes and National Insurance? Why are they now offered a miserable level of benefit if unemployment hits them?

Capitalism has already put millions on the breadline - a new recession could submerge even more. Fight for a socialist alternative.

 

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New Rail Safety Crisis

Renationalise now! Stop the tube sell-off

ANOTHER WEEK, another train crash. Fortunately, this time a crash in south London avoided fatalities through prompt action by drivers.

Ken Smith

But the accident could and would have been avoided altogether if the ATP (Automatic Train Protection) warning system had been installed throughout Britain's railways.

So decrepit is Britain's privatised railway system that Railtrack have virtually admitted they're not up to the job of financing and running a railway. Huge government subsidies of £1 billion - that were not due to be paid until 2006 - were promised to be paid to Railtrack later this year. Now Railtrack says it could run out of cash by September and has gone to the government saying it wants the money earlier with an extra £500 million thrown in upfront for good measure.

This is the reality of Britain's privatised rail system - a crisis-ridden, money-grabbing, inefficient operation to make big bucks for shareholders. Working-class people who end up paying for this legalised robbery through taxes and cuts in other public services also suffer the consequences of having such a rotten system!

A railworker from Bristol told The Socialist: "The railways have never been more fragmented and there is a complete lack of unity and communication. The only link between all these different companies is National Rail Enquiries, who frankly haven't got a clue. People are frustrated, confused and angry at the state of our railways... I am completely in favour of public transport. But what we have is 'private transport' and it just hasn't worked."

But incredibly, this is what New Labour still want to do to London Underground - fragment it and hand it over to City bloodsuckers who don't care about an unsafe and inefficient tube system, all they want is an efficient money-making machine.

Even before the tube has been tossed over to these sharks, the Health and Safety Executive has warned that the Underground is currently very unsafe and needs much work done to it. Private owners won't put the cash in to carry out these works if it cuts down on their profits.

While there are signs that some speculators are getting cold feet and withdrawing from tube privatisation and other government privatisation schemes, our lives are too precious to be left to the whims of greedy capitalists.

That's why we should support the London Underground workers who are striking in defence of safety on 29 March. But we need to mobilise a massive campaign of working-class action to stop tube privatisation and to bring rail back into public ownership.

 

Renationalise rail under democratic working-class control and management. No compensation to the fat cats; compensation to small shareholders on the basis of proven need. Support the tube workers; stop privatisation of the Underground. For a fully funded, environmentally friendly, easily accessible and publicly owned transport system.

 

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Mexico - when Zapatista resistance came to town

LIKE A touring rock band the Zapatista motorised cavalcade arrived in Mexico city last weekend, having set out from their base in the southern state of Chiapas.

Led by sub-commandante Marcos and escorted by the Mexican police the deputation of guerrilla fighters, unlike their 1914 peasant revolutionary namesake Emiliano Zapata, have not come to take power but to demand 'justice' from the national congress for the country's poor and especially the oppressed native American population.

Nonetheless, tens of thousands of Mexico city's workersand poor greeted the Zapatistas, putting pressure on the 100-day-old presidency of Vincente Fox to make a peace deal to end the guerrilla insurgency.

The Zapatista movement (EZLN) burst upon the world on 1 January 1994, the very day when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) - which opened up further the Mexican economy to US capitalist interests - came into being.

The Zapatista uprising in Chiapas was later brutally suppressed by Mexican government troops.

The guerrillas criticise the vast inequalities of wealth in the country and have become a symbol internationally for the anti-capitalist globalisation movement.

However, their demands are limited and their strategy remains unclear.

One Zapatista told Channel 4 news that they stood for "justice for all, including the rich as well as the poor".

Mexico's rural masses and the urban working class are both exploited by Mexican and US capitalism.

To build a political movement allying the urban workers and rural poor the EZLN must advance a clear socialist programme to abolish capitalism.

Only this would truly bring 'justice' to the exploited.

 

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Hayes and Harlington

Great start to Socialist campaign

THE SOCIALIST Party's first general election meeting in Hayes and Harlington constituency attracted nearly 100 people to hear our candidate, Wally Kennedy.

Roddy Keenan, UNISON senior steward (personal capacity)

At the meeting were pupils from the local Harlington Community school who've been involved in a campaign since the school's meals service was privatised last year.

When Chartwell's, the company involved, tried to push up prices, the pupils fought for cheaper meals with a student boycott of the canteen.

While the school governing body drags its feet, pupils are still falling victim to this legalised corporate theft.

But they're also still prepared to fight and received a standing ovation at the meeting for their stand.

Tommy Sheridan's bill in the Scottish parliament to give every child in a state school a nutritious meal, free of charge, encouraged the students.

If successful, pressure can be put on the London government to follow suit.

We must build on these students' courageous stance and mobilise parents, pupils and others who support the demand for free school meals.

Many people expressed an interest in joining the Socialist Party and helping our election campaign. £160 was raised for the fighting fund.

More on the general election campaign follows. Also see our website Election campaign pages

 

Profiles of Socialist Party candidates

 

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Coventry needs socialist MPs

"THINGS CAN only get better," was the New Labour message four years ago. But things only got worse here.

Stephen Spreadborough

I’ve lived in Wood End in the Coventry North-East constituency since the late 1970s. I was married there 15 years ago and have four children. I’ve been a voluntary community worker locally and was a Labour Party member until I was thrown out for my beliefs.

New Labour said they’d improve services to deal with education, unemployment, health and crime but they haven’t done so. Where I live the estate has got worse. There were four parks in the area for children to play in, now there’s only one for three areas.

Look at education. There are five primary schools at the moment but our New Labour council wants to knock one down and downsize the others. Though they are having ‘consultation talks’, they aren’t listening to us. Yes we need new schools, but we want the same number of schools!

They talk of ‘surplus places’ in schools (a Tory figment of the imagination) but the real problem is the surplus places in our community.

Our area has 600 empty properties. When Labour came in we had 300. During the last election two Labour MPs and 16 councillors said they were disgusted and would do something about it.

Our pensioners haven’t had it any better. Two residential homes have been closed for rebuild. We argued build first and rehouse second, but they didn’t listen.

The 75p pension rise was an insult. While the free TV licence for the over-75s is good you become a pensioner at 60 or 65!

Then look at health. Reducing a city the size of Coventry to just one hospital - and a smaller hospital - is ridiculous. It could cause loss of life for people on the other side of the city.

A taxi takes at least 15 minutes from Wood End to the city centre - imagine how long it would take an ambulance to get to the other side of Coventry.

Nobody condones crime, but one reason why crime amongst our young people is at an all-time high was the Tories stopping benefits for 16- to 18-year olds. You need money to survive.

Unemployment is high here, maybe three generations in one family. What chance do our young people have of getting work?

A voice for workers

YOU CAN see why I won’t support New Labour. They’re no better than the Tories, because they’ve forgotten their roots. They came from a working- class background, through the unions. But they have forgotten which side of the picket line to stand.

I’ve now joined the Socialist Party because they’re the working-class party of today. The other parties have put out propaganda to scare people about Dave Nellist.

I have fought for this community, and it’s worth fighting for. At public meetings New Labour say: ‘you voted us in, you can vote us out.’ But we haven’t because there’s been nobody else to vote for.

We now have three Socialist Party councillors in Coventry and another local candidate Martha Young stood in the local elections against Labour and Tory for the Socialist Alliance and won 18% of the vote. So now we see we can have a voice for the community at long last.

If you want the community to change for our children, our mums, dads and grandparents, make a stand now. Think back to what’s been done in the area since the 1970s - by the Tories and New Labour.

Getting a socialist elected won’t change things overnight but at least we’ll have a voice.

 

Profiles of Socialist Party candidates

 

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GORDON BROWN’S budget was framed to guarantee a New Labour victory without scaring the big business horses says KEVIN PARSLOW.

After the drought, a few drops of rain

"THIS WAS not a budget to win an election, but a budget for an election that is already won. Its handouts were slight, its promises distant, its perspectives closer to five years than five weeks", said Guardian political commentator Hugo Young.

This budget, despite the fanfares, did little for ordinary people and was designed to totally satisfy New Labour’s big business friends.

The chancellor has given away only £4 billion in ‘goodies’, the largest portion going to drivers to prevent further fuel protests like those last September which rocked the government.

There’s an extra £1 billion promised to health and education, but spread over three years! There is a small change to the 10% tax rate, which will slightly benefit all workers, but business gets goodies such as the reduction to long-term capital gains tax and VAT.

Polluters of industrial land and landlords of run-down properties get grants to ‘help’ inner cities, thus rewarding their neglect of the environment.

The supposed winners in this budget were children and families. This year ‘prudence’ got just two mentions, well behind ‘stability’s 13 but both were left standing by the 93 mentions in the budget speech of ‘children’ or ‘family’.

The payment of £10 per week tax credit for children, the rise of working families’ tax credit by £5 per week, the rises and eventual extension of maternity pay and the introduction of paternity leave and pay were all trumpeted.

Meanwhile, pensioners receive their expected rise of £5 per week for a single person or £8 for a married couple.

But Brown could and should have done so much more. From the Treasury’s huge surplus he chose to repay £34 billion of the national debt.

Compare this to even some relatively small sums which Brown refused to grant: more than 600,000 extra children could have been lifted out of income poverty had the £2.4 billion spent on cutting the basic rate of income tax from April last year been used to increase benefits for the poorest children [CPAG audit of deprivation].

And immediately following the budget, it was reported that, last year, five million people were living in conditions of absolute poverty in Britain, including pensioners and others lacking the absolute necessities to maintain decent living standards.

Dogmatic restraint

THIS HAS been the most pro-business Labour government ever. The Financial Times commented: "An economist from Mars examining the public finances under Tony Blair’s Labour government might conclude that it came to power early in 1999. His first glance at the figures would suggest that in 1997 and 1998 Britain’s public finances were being managed by someone who out-Thatchered Margaret Thatcher for restraint."

Even the government’s media friends admit the truth: "This has been a deeply conservative government, dogmatically attached to private finance and privatisation". [Polly Toynbee and David Walker, The Guardian]

New Labour came to power in 1997 because of a vast anti-Tory mood, capitalising upon general distrust of Tory economic policies following Black Wednesday’s financial disaster.

Huge expectations were raised which had no chance of being met as New Labour committed itself to the Tories’ budget policies for the first two years of its government.

The City of London and big business were reassured nothing would fundamentally change. In fact, it was New Labour that had changed, with its acceptance of the free market and its commitment to work with big business.

So the institutional investments such as pension funds, with £1.5 trillion tied up in them, were offered bribes in the form of tax relief and credits for them to invest in research and development.

‘Lucky’ Brown

WHILE THIS government has been good for big business, Brown has been ‘lucky’; to have presided over an economy without major or protracted crises; whilst the world economy has sailed along, thanks to the engine of the boom in the US economy.

But New Labour’s hope was that they could eliminate the business cycle of booms and slumps. The ‘new economy’ of technology, computerisation, science and telecommunications, linked to Gordon Brown’s prudence, would iron all the problems out.

Unfortunately, the gurus of the ‘new paradigm’, particularly in the USA, are eating their words. Yahoo’s! collapse in profits shows that new technology companies are just as vulnerable to economic downturn as the ‘old economy’ of manufacturing.

New Labour’s second hope, therefore, is that if US recession is on the way, then maybe Europe, and particularly Britain, can avoid it. But the CBI has already noticed the problems of the world economy hitting Britain, through a downturn in orders for exporters.

Mervyn King, Bank of England deputy governor, has warned "no country is an island" and remarked that consumer and business confidence in the US had dropped much more quickly than expected.

The British economy’s weaknesses are being exposed. Britain, the former ‘workshop of the world’, had a trade deficit last year of £29 billion, the largest shortfall between exports and imports since records began.

The bulk of this is not with the EU, despite the pound’s high strength compared to the euro and the majority of British exports going to Europe; £27 billion of this deficit is with countries outside the EU.

If the economies of North America, Japan and the Far East slow down or remain in recession, this will reduce demand for British exports, causing redundancies and factory closures. Some capitalists thinks this doesn’t matter because it can sell its financial services and repatriate its profits.

Investment firm Smithers & Co believes that the British economy operates like a super global hedge fund, exploiting its superior knowledge of financial markets to make risky but rewarding bets on international share prices. However, these will also be subject to a global downturn.

If, against the odds, the world economy continues growing, then the trade deficit will rise and stay high, needing continuous high funding, and interest rates high enough to attract investors.

But British industry needs interest rates cuts for its own domestic needs. If it doesn’t get them, there will be a different route to unemployment, but it will be the same effect for the hundreds of thousands thrown on the dole, adding to the 300,000 manufacturing jobs already lost under New Labour.

Martin Temple, Engineering Employers’ Federation director general, has warned that the level of investment fell by almost 15% in 1999, and is forecast to have grown by only 2%-3% last year. UK spending on research and development had slipped from equal first among industrialised nations in 1981 to sixth in 1999.

Additionally, the economy relies heavily on foreign investment; it receives 39% of the total received by the EU. In a world downturn, inward investment will undoubtedly recede.

Downturn

BROWN MENTIONED none of this in his budget but the government’s policies could be wrecked by a downturn. The Financial Times pointed out the dangers: "If the economy slowed down, the public finances might deteriorate rapidly - as happened a decade ago. The swing then from surplus to deficit [of the government’s finances] was 10% of national income over five years. A similar deterioration now would represent a swing of £100 billion."

A downturn means a huge fall in tax revenues and a rise in the payment of benefits. In the Budget are the continuation of policies that will become more ruthless as a slowdown develops, such as the measures of compulsion for single parents and over-25s.

Big business, however, is currently making huge profits; three big oil companies, BP, Shell and Esso, made combined profits of $45 billion last year. Yet there was no mention in the budget of increased taxation, let alone nationalisation of such companies. Energy minister Peter Hain said oil companies were safe from a windfall tax on record profits as long as they continue to invest in the North Sea.

The more far-sighted ruling class commentators can see bad times coming. John Grieve Smith, Fellow of Robinson College, Cambridge, wrote in The Independent on 7 March: "It now seems clear that [Brown] has in fact embraced the neo-liberal or Thatcherite consensus, a lot more enthusiastically than his empirical Tory predecessor, Ken Clarke… [Brown] has played a key part in consolidating the Thatcherite revolution over a wide range of domestic policies… future historians will see Gordon Brown as the key figure in bringing New Labour to accept the neo-liberal revolution in economic policy associated with Mrs Thatcher… A return to the economic philosophy of the interwar period, which is what the neo-liberal consensus really amounts to, provides no answers to the problems of today’s unstable global economy, any more than it did in the 1920s and 1930s."

Recession or socialism?

PRO-CAPITALIST policies cannot prevent a recession nor will they protect workers during one. What is necessary are policies and a party to defend working-class people from capitalism’s ravages and attack the real causes of our problems: the capitalist system.

Only a democratic socialist economic plan which nationalises the major monopolies and industries, the banks and financial insititutions, can provide a decent standard of living for all and prevent the return of the catastrophic conditions that faced workers in the past.

 

Repaying the loan sharks THE HUGE repayment of the national debt goes overwhelmingly into the coffers of the bankers and financial institutions, when public services such as health, education and transport are begging for huge investments. Even then, a section of capitalism’s spokespersons aren’t happy. Brown will buy back Treasury gilts. These are government bonds, the payment of interest on which is virtually cast-iron guaranteed, so they are the backbone of pension funds. But repayment of the debt and a budget surplus means that there are less gilts about, forcing the pension funds to buy more risky investments. So, repayment of the debt is no guarantee of stability for those people privately saving because the state pension is inadequate to meet their needs.

 

 

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US Economy

Heading for intensive care

AN ECONOMIC storm is brewing over the USA that threatens to sweep across the Atlantic bringing mayhem and destruction in its wake. But Alan Greenspan, chairman of the US Federal Reserve (US central bank) is predicting a sunny future so long as investors are not distracted by a few showers.

Jared Wood

Greenspan would be more convincing had he not been forced into recent interest rate cuts that were widely and correctly seen as panic measures in the face of mounting evidence of a crisis.

Meanwhile political and economic leaders in Britain declare that the storm will blow itself out before it reaches our shores. Their optimism is as misplaced as Greenspan's, for not only does Britain catch a cold when the US sneezes, but if the condition of the US economy should deteriorate further Britain could require a spell of intensive care.

Trade between Britain and the US accounts for many of British business's most profitable export markets. Also many thousands of British jobs depend on US investment like Ford and Vauxhall.

Recently, a warning not to take Greenspan's optimism at face value was issued in an editorial by the Financial Times. It is still fashionable to dismiss Marx as a hopelessly outdated product of the 19th century, but the FT refreshingly prefers the economic analysis of Marxism to the more 'modern' approach of the Federal Reserve.

In particular the FT warns of four fundamental problems facing the US economy.

First, the share of national wealth taken by company profits cannot rise indefinitely.

In Britain the share of economic output taken by wages has fallen by 5% since 1979. Big business's share of wealth shows a corresponding rise.

But this transfer of wealth slowed down significantly after 1990 suggesting business is finding it harder to further reduce the worker's share of output.

Falling unemployment and the fear of resurgent trade union militancy are presenting problems that capitalism hoped it had eradicated. Marx explained that the capitalist system of production constitutes a struggle between bosses and workers for the surplus (sales income after costs) produced by firms.

The decrease in the share taken by wages is costing an average British worker £1,000 per year. Industrial and social conflict is unavoidable unless this process is reversed.

Boardroom and stock market sentiment now believes that profits are at a peak and cannot rise forever. This is the start of a downward spiral for investment, sales and asset values.

Secondly, the private sector cannot go on spending more than it earns.

Massive private-sector debt has been taken on by businesses. A huge proportion of this has gone into the technology sector in pursuit of utterly unrealistic profit rates.

Much of what remains has poured into the stock market inflating shares way above any rational valuation and depriving real value-creating industries of investment. US consumer credit has played a crucial role in extending the last period of economic growth, especially in the US but also in Britain. Workers who received a reduced share of national wealth in their wage packets have used credit to buy goods beyond their means.

Marx explained also that the payment of wages at a level insufficient to buy up all the goods produced, creates the basis for cyclical economic crisis. Already, at the first indication of leaner times, new consumer credit has fallen dramatically.

Thirdly, foreign investors will not be willing to go on funding the deficit forever.

In order to go on expanding credit in the US, investment has been sought and obtained from around the world, the high dollar and massive stock market returns ensuring this. As these conditions are undermined the US's cheap credit lines will be cut off.

Fourth: investment returns will diminish as the capital stock (eg. machines, technological equipment etc.) accumulates.

Marx identified this process as the tendency for the rate of profit to fall.

This tendency cannot be applied simplistically; however it does identify an inherent contradiction between technological development and the profit motive of capitalist production.

A falling rate of profit as a result of accumulated investment will shatter the dreams of a new 'paradigm' or golden age of capitalism, and will contribute instead to stagnation and crisis.

 

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Ukraine - caught between a rock and a hard place

THE UKRAINIAN capital Kiev has been rocked by the biggest protest movement since 1991, triggered by the murder of a journalist. But in the absence of a working-class political party capable of arming the movement with a clear programme and strategy, the protests have degenerated into a clash between clans and vested interests. The following report is from Rabotnichii Sprotiv - Committee for a Workers International, Ukraine.

GEORGII GONGADZE was a journalist investigating top-level corruption who disappeared last September. His beheaded body was discovered in a forest outside Kiev in December.

Alexander Moroz, leader of the Ukrainian Socialist Party (the USP is part of the former Communist Party which moved very quickly to the right. Moroz was for some time Parliamentary Speaker), released a tape of what he claimed was President Kuchma instructing the head of the secret service "to deal with" Gongadze.

The USP then formed a block with over 30 other parties most of which are right wing, some of which are openly fascist, in their "Ukraine without Kuchma" movement.

A tent city was set up in the centre of Kiev before the New Year, with protesters demanding the resignation of Kuchma, an investigation into Gongadze's death and the sacking of the so-called "forces ministers" - heads of the army, police etc.

Kuchma was forced to sack the head of the secret service. But on 1 March, 400 police dismantled the tents and arrested 40 demonstrators.

Scramble for wealth

THIS DISPUTE, however, is about more than the fate of one journalist: it's about who gets the right to own Ukraine's industrial wealth.

Kuchma before his election was the head of Ukraine's largest factory in the eastern city of Dnieperpetrovsk. As elsewhere in the former Soviet Union, the Ukraine has experienced some growth in the past year or two, mostly in the energy and metallurgy sectors.

The privatisation of these sectors, in particular the industrial giants in the (Russian speaking) East Ukraine, started in late 1996 and culminated last April in an auction of three of the biggest plants. In each of these three auctions, the Western bidders lost out to Russian interests.

The Ukrainian Aluminum Plant was sold to Siberian Aluminum (headed by a Russian 'businessman' currently sitting in a New York jail). The Energy Network was sold to a group of Ukrainian industrialists closely linked to the Social Democratic Party and the Russian energy monopoly Gazprom. The Zaporozke Metallurgy Plant also went to Russian capital.

These sales went ahead despite intense political pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. The Russian bids proved to be stronger because Russia can, and frequently does, cut off the Ukraine's energy supplies.

The only consolation for the West was that under the threat of stopping a further tranche of IMF money, they forced Kuchma to replace his Premier, Pustovoitenko, with the pro-Western Yushenko.

Protests

It is against this background that the protest events in Kiev took place.

The two main parties in the "Ukraine without Kuchma" bloc are the Socialist Party and the Batkivshina, Yushenko's Party. The movement has been well financed by former deputy premier Yulia Timishenko.

The other parties that have been involved have been either those that have not been included in the share out of profits by the Dneiperpetrovsk clan or are anti-Russian, pro-Western nationalists from the West Ukraine.

Nevertheless, the camp in the Centre of Kiev attracted all sorts, each with their own grudges against Kuchma. There were groups of miners and at one stage the Communist-led trade union organisation participated with 1,000 people.

Most who participated had illusions that somehow an IMF-nominated Yushenko was better than Kuchma.

Moroz's Socialist Party has clearly played a disgraceful role - in effect has been doing the dirty work of the West.

Moroz is hoping he can reap the benefit of this movement to emerge as the strongest opposition candidate. At the start of the protest he instructed the party to drop its flag and use the Ukrainian flag.

Those parties that maintain a Left position have been caught completely off guard by these events. The biggest, the Communist Party, is strong enough to have pushed this movement in a left direction but its leadership was completely indecisive. Siminyenko would ask to speak at the demos but would be pushed aside by the leadership who did not want to frighten off their Western backers.

The other left party - the Progressive Socialist Party - adopted a completely sectarian position. Their members were banned from even trying to sell their paper on the demos by the party leadership. Their only strategy was that everyone should join their party.

The Committee for a Workers' International (CWI) did put a clear position. It distributed leaflets against both Kuchma and Yushenko and raised the need for a workers' party.

After this leaflet was circulated to the CP Deputies, they adopted this position as their own (including the call for a workers' party!). But having long ago lost the chance to take the initiative they have only belatedly attempted to set up a "Ukraine without Kuchma and Yushenko" movement.

Fascist attacks

IN THE New Year, events took a very nasty turn. On the 6 February march in Kiev, there were big contingents from the Unso-Una fascist organisation armed with gas canisters and truncheons.

Communist Party leader Simenyenko heading a contingent of about 1,500 approached the Ukraine without Kuchma organisers and asked to speak. They refused and these self-appointed 'democrats' asked the fascist Unso-Una to block the CP contingent. This they did injuring many on the way. They then attacked anybody who was left-wing. One comrade of the CWI - (Vitalii Ploshkin) was badly beaten and spent a week in hospital.

The main bulk of the demonstration then turned its attention to the parliament and the fascist elements tried to storm the building.

About 200 protesters were left in the tent city. Suddenly about 70 truncheon-swinging youth dressed in black with black flags approached the camp and attacked the people there. They wore headbands with an anarchist name on them and handed out leaflets claiming to be anarchists.

These thugs turned out to have been recruited by Kuchma from the SBU academy - the SBU is the Ukrainian successor to the KGB.

In their struggle for control of Ukraine's wealth, these politicians have been prepared to use any means, including fascists. These events have seen the largest ever mobilisation of fascist thugs on the streets of Kiev. Until then, the fascists were only able to mobilise so openly in the smaller cities of West Ukraine.

The CWI in Kiev has approached the other Left parties to form a united front against the fascist attacks and is gaining some success.

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