The Socialist Issue 212

SOCIALIST PARTY member Glenn Kelly successfully moved a resolution at UNISON's national conference last week, committing the union to a review of its political links with New Labour. This represents an important development in the fight against privatisation as Glenn explains:

"THE CONFERENCE agreed that the union is not using its political fund properly. That we are handing over money to a party intent on attacking our jobs, wages and conditions, as well as privatising services. The union is feeding the hand that bites us.

It's criminal to think that in places like Glasgow, Labour councillors are flogging off council housing but no UNISON money can be used to support Scottish Socialists who oppose this privatisation.

In Coventry, where workers' conditions have been attacked under the 'single status' deal, only Socialist Party councillors like Dave Nellist are speaking up on behalf of workers; yet the union branch can't support him.

I argued that a rule change would mean not a single penny going to MPs or councillors who vote to attack our jobs and conditions or vote to privatise our services.

Some delegates argued against the resolution by saying we should use our influence within New Labour. I replied that we've had four years of Labour government and just look at what an 'influence within' has meant:

Four years on there are more members earning less than £5 an hour than when Labour took power. Four years on we have PFI privatisation, expanding faster than it ever did under the Tories. Four years on we have Labour councils like Hackney issuing sacking notices to all its workers who refused to take pay cuts. That's what 'influence within' has got us!

Even some Labour Party members who spoke in the debate argued, despairingly, that Labour has 12 months to change or else. Labour's response has been to threaten to disaffiliate any union supporting non-Labour candidates!

This victory has just not happened today, it's has been the culmination of years of work by Socialist Party members inside the union and the union Left and, recently, the 'Free the Funds' campaign.

It's not an accident that it was also a Socialist Party member who successfully moved a similar resolution at the firefighters' conference, a Socialist Party member who moved one at the communications workers' conference and now a Socialist Party member at UNISON conference.

Through the union's United Left, the branches and the regions, members will be organising conferences to discuss model rule changes. We have twelve months to campaign and ensure that the union's executive opens up our political funds."

Unity To Drive Out Fascists!

LAST WEEKEND, there were successive nights of serious fighting in Burnley, Lancashire, apparently triggered by an argument over noise at a party.

After Asian neighbours complained, white party-goers responded with threats, and a van suspected of belonging to a British National Party (BNP) supporter arrived.

Violence followed. An Asian taxi driver had his car stoned, and his cheek broken with a hammer. Vehicles, pubs and shops were attacked and burned.

Afterwards, the establishment "condemned" the violence and appealed for calm - easy to say!

Equally quickly they claim that 'this is not another Oldham'. Yet there are similarities in the events, and in the tasks facing anti-racists and socialists.

In Burnley the BNP polled 4,151 votes in the general election; in nearby Pendle they polled 1,976. The BNP are clearly targeting Burnley and this must be resisted.

As in Oldham, the Nazis use violence to peddle racist lies about 'rights for whites' - an excuse to encourage racist attacks on non-whites.

This will mean more Oldham-style riots and/or attacks, in which rage, frustration, racial attacks and fascist provocations will combine in explosions.

Our response must be based on labour movement and community residents' united action and self-organisation. Burnley's Labour MP Peter Pike refuses extra resources for Burnley on the incredible pretext that this would encourage violence!

Worse still, in a racist move, Oldham council has diverted resources from Asian areas to white areas. We won't fight each other over scraps but will unite to demand our full and rightful share.

The public-sector union UNISON's recent conference resolved to organise a demonstration in the North West against racism and fascism. Socialist Party and YRE members are building locally and nationally in the unions for this.

Support exists - it must be mobilised. A united campaign should demand a halt to cuts and sell-offs - as is happening with Oldham council housing; for decent homes and public services; for full employment on living wages; for free and fully funded education.

Action in Oldham must be linked to action in Burnley, and in Tameside where the BNP got 1,600 votes.

The Nazis have no real roots; they whip up trouble but have no serious answers to our problems.

The Lancashire labour movement is potentially very powerful; organising thousands of workers of all races alongside community groups can drive the fascists back into the sewer.

On an anti-fascist programme of social demands we can beat the BNP, cut across racism, and win real advances for the workers, youth and poor of the Lancashire region.

Deeds Not Words Needed To Stop Privatisation

IN RECENT weeks, union conferences - the communication workers and UNISON - learned 'think tanks' and statistics galore have piled up a crushing case against privatisation. The Cullen Report graphically revealed Railtrack's negligence which led one angry survivor to say that Gerald Corbett, former Chief Executive, had "blood on his hands and should face criminal charges".

The Mirror, usually slavish in supporting New Labour, hinted that the government should take the industry back into state hands commenting: "Privatising the railways was always going to put profits first - that is how private industry works".

72% supported railway renationalisation before the Cullen Report. That figure will have leapt upwards following its revelations. 42% even support BT's renationalisation. In every sector there is massive and growing opposition to the government's privatisation policies.

UNISON conference, to wide publicity, as other reports show, passed a resolution moved by a Socialist Party member, to review the political links with New Labour, the party of mass privatisation.

Even Roy Hattersley, once the guru of Labour's extreme right, is now demanding a "counter-coup" against Blair's programme. Hattersley, however, bears a heavy responsibility for the present state of New Labour.

He collaborated with Kinnock in expelling Militant (now the Socialist Party) supporters in the 1980s, which we predicted would end up with Labour breaking with socialism and following the path of the US Democrats.

Nevertheless, Hattersley's opposition as well as that from TUC general secretary John Monks, at least in words, and other union leaders indicates the growing anger from below. Unlike Blair and the New Labour tops, the trade union leadership is compelled to reflect, or partially reflect, the pressure of the trade unions' working class base.

Conditions undermined

HOWEVER, IT would be fatal for workers and trade unionists to place unqualified trust in UNISON leader Dave Prentis, or Bill Morris of the TGWU or John Edmonds of the GMB, who do not match words with action.

Indeed, seeking to reassure the bosses, Edmonds wrote in the Financial Times: "Already health service unions have been asked whether we are prepared to take industrial action. The question is old-fashioned and inappropriate. This is primarily a political row and not an industrial dispute".

Clearly, the union leaders envisage a mere propaganda campaign with very little action. The government is already throwing them a few bones hoping they will satisfy workers threatened with privatisation.

When they are 'TUPEd' (Transfer of Undertakings and Protection of Employment) then it is suggested the rights they enjoy in the NHS or with local education authorities would still exist.

However, such agreements, in the long term, are not worth the paper they are written on. Inevitably workers will see their rights and conditions systematically undermined.

By pacifying, with the help of the trade union leaders, these workers in industries with paper concessions, the government hopes to dissipate the anger.

It's true that services will not be privatised wholesale. But, as has already happened, big business will cherrypick the most profitable parts leaving the state to bail out the rest.

Moreover, urged on by journals like The Independent, a counteroffensive justifying PFI and other privatisation schemes is being prepared.

This newspaper concedes: "The results of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) have been disappointing to date"; then unbelievably concludes: "This could be because it has not gone far enough"!

This is like a surgeon who diagnoses cancer but then thinks it hasn't gone far enough before concluding it is a danger to the patient.

Ask the people of Wyre Forest, who voted solidly to turn out a New Labour creature and elect a retired doctor in his place. Ask the people of Cumbria, about their infirmary in Carlisle, opened by Blair which within a week was collapsing.

PFI is also a massive financial imposition on future generations, paid for by us, the taxpayers, so the vultures in private health can grow even fatter. In Cumbria, its already defective hospital will cost £500 million over 30 years: "For a ramshackle building which would have cost £67 million if Blair and Brown had kept it in the public sector" [Nick Cohen, Observer, 10 June].

The case against privatisation is contained within literally thousands of pages in research papers and documents piling up in public-sector unions' headquarters. But, it's time to proceed beyond words to deeds. From below, already there is a struggle against privatisation, with little or no support from national trade union leaders.

Mass action

ONE problem that workers come up against is the vicious Thatcherite anti-trade union legislation which Blair has preserved virtually intact.

Even a strike against privatisation 'legally' and formally is against the law because it is 'political'. That's why railworkers are compelled to use the device of strikes on the grounds of 'health and safety'.

It is time to stop prevaricating. The trade union leaders must be forced by mass pressure to come off the fence. The full resources and power of the unions must be used to prevent privatisation through industrial action if necessary.

This must be accompanied by a massive propaganda programme to reinforce the case opposing privatisation amongst the public.

Mass demonstrations, propaganda campaigns, pamphlets and leaflets all have their place. But this government will only be stopped by action as the railway guards and postal workers have shown in action, with at least partial success recently.

A poll from the Rowntree Reform Trust showed that 81% said the British people had the right to resort to protests and blockades "if governments do not listen".

It is true, as Monks indicated, that some in the government, probably led by Blair, are looking to "take on" a public-sector trade union and defeat them in the same way as Thatcher did the miners.

Obscenely, he has been supported by a 'trade union leader', the AEEU's Ken Jackson, who called for the outlawing of strikes in the public sector. However, such threats will come to nothing if the power of the unions through action is unleashed.

This government is in a minority on privatisation. The unions and the working class have the majority with them. It is necessary to prepare action to prevent this backward, reactionary government turning back the clock and subjecting the working class to the conditions of the past.

Rebuild Pride's Fighting Traditions

IN FOUR years Labour has only delivered two major reforms on gay rights - an equal age of consent, and lifting the ban on gay people in the military.

In this situation, Pride, which takes place this weekend on 30 June is as important as ever; as a celebration of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) visibility and an out-and-proud demonstration for equality and against the reactionary right.

Pride arose from our community's struggles against oppression. The first march was organised in New York to commemorate the historic Stonewall Riots of 1969.

In Britain the march grew slowly and steadily until 1988, when the Tory government introduced Section 28.

From then on attendance at Pride leapt by tens of thousands and not long after a Pride Festival attracted over 300,000.

If these numbers could be mobilised regularly it would send a message that lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and transgender people are a force to be reckoned with.

Sadly, Pride's fighting traditions are now being undermined by commercialism. Both parts of the event are now controlled by the Mardi Gras business group (MG).

Pressure from activists has prevented MG from dropping the name 'Pride', and forced it to keep a political theme on the renamed 'March and Parade' (this year it is Partnership Rights).

Faced with a £15 minimum gate charge, over-priced drinks etc, thousands have deserted the 'Mardi Gras Festival'.

The dominance of Festival advertising, ambiguous 'March and Parade' tag and an emphasis on floats have all affected the character of the event.

The Socialist Party LGB group calls on activists to save Pride, in the first instance by supporting the march with placards and banners.

There are now at least two campaigns with the stated aim of taking Pride back into non-profit community control. The latest is called "Pride not Profit".

Meanwhile, last month an LGBT contingent took part in the May Day protests in Oxford Street.

So long as discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people continues, the political traditions behind Pride will survive and continue.

The Socialist Party calls for:

The Immediate Repeal Of Section 28

Scrap discriminatory sex education guidelines - give young people full, inclusive and neutral sex, health and relationship information.

Workplace Protection For LGBT People

Legislation now to fulfil Britain's obligation under the EU Amsterdam Treaty to prohibit workplace discrimination against lesbians, gay men and bisexuals. No waivers for backdoor discrimination by religious employers.

Equal Rights For Unmarried Partners

Enable unmarried couples of any sexuality to register their partnerships and receive full legal recognition and rights.

Interview with David Shayler

DAVID SHAYLER is a former MI5 agent who left its pay in 1997 saying that MI5 and MI6 had been involved in an attempted assassination of Libyan leader Colonel Gadaffi in 1996.

After blowing the whistle, he endured involuntary exile in France for two years following a British government warrant for his arrest. At one stage he was imprisoned in France but later released. He returned to Britain in 1999 where he was again arrested then released on bail.

Recently, he spoke to Ken Smith and Molly Cooper about his battle against the British government's secret state.

Shayler's stand

AS WE left the bar where we interviewed David Shayler a young man shouts out: "Mr Shayler, let me shake your hand" and promptly gives a warm handshake saying he admires Shayler's courageous stand.

Amongst many people there is undoubtedly support for David Shayler's whistleblowing on MI5's sinister activities.

Yet, for some on the Left coming to terms with David Shayler has been quite a struggle precisely because he was an MI5 agent. Something he shyly complains about.

From a working-class background he was temporarily involved in left-wing politics during the 1980s and a member of the Labour Party for a time. He hates what Thatcher did to Britain and feels that Blair has gone further in many respects, at one stage calling Blair a "dictator".

His experience since 1997 has hardened his views, especially about MI5, which he now believes should be abolished. He seems determined to continue his expose of MI5 and outlines how his legal team hope to get Tony Blair and former MI5 head Stella Rimington to appear in court when his full trial starts, which is likely to be in November.

Introducing ourselves, we said that he probably knew more about us than we knew about him, which he found amusing.

He commented that he had seen Dave Nellist the previous night on Newsnight and said he would vote for him if he had lived in the area where Dave stood. A few weeks later, just before election day, he sent an email wishing the socialists and Socialist Alliance good luck.

Why join MI5?

DAVID SHAYLER admits he was involved in the Labour Party and flirted with left-wing groups while a student. Why then did he go into MI5 when he would have been aware of its notoriously shady and right-wing set-up?

"Some people say I was naive but people have a very skewed impression of MI5. A lot of the stuff you read in the papers is not true.

"I joined principally to work against terrorism. I felt that being inside an organisation like that you can actually see what they're doing and hope to reform it from within.

"After the miners' strike I became disillusioned about left-wing politics. I wanted to improve myself, I was editing my student union newspaper.

"And the reason I became an MI5 officer was because I was an unemployed journalist at the time.

"When I was recruited they told me they didn't do [investigate] subversives anymore. When I got there I found myself in the counter-subversion section.

"I can put my hand on my heart and say that I never investigated subversives. Indeed, I did the opposite and closed down the study of the Communist Party of Britain and Class War. Most of the work I did was against terrorism."

The future of MI5

HOW THEN does he think that MI5, MI6 and the other wings of Britain's secret services should be dealt with?

"The reason I've done this is to point out the way that so-called accountability systems don't work. That it's all too easy for people in MI5 to lie, either by omission or by telling outright lies.

"The government cannot and does not know the truth of what goes on in MI5. It takes everything on trust. If MI5 had any real ability to balance the public's right to know and its right to maintain certain secrets it would have volunteered to give up documents dating from 1909 a long time ago.

"The first MI5 file ever made was in 1909 on Lenin. You could not say that a file on Lenin then cannot be divulged now, or damage 'national security'. Yet, MI5 say it will reveal their operational techniques.

"I think MI5 and the Official Secrets Act should be abolished. I think they should take the brighter people in MI5, Special Branch and the National Criminal Intelligence Service and put them in an organisation that is properly accountable."

Blair's police state

ALTHOUGH HE is not active in any political party David Shayler puts across views that are liberal or left-leaning. He is scathing of both Thatcher and Blair: "I think Margaret Thatcher ruined this country and we are now paying for that through under-investment, through our lack of basic rights, through our cocked-up parliamentary system, through too much power in the office of prime minister and so on.

"People no longer have access to a decent education to improve themselves. This was all a part of Britain moving towards becoming more like a police state, which has continued with Tony Blair.

"When I first went on the record, [about what MI5 and MI6 were up to] Blair was trying to push through Parliament, the new 'anti-terrorism' Act. If there was a freedom of information act in Britain then nobody would accept the Terrorism Act and other things Blair and Straw have pushed through.

"If the Gadaffi plot had occurred under Labour's new 'anti-terrorism' act then Blair would have been privy to information about a terrorist act and would be liable to prosecution. It is an offence under the Act not to report terrorism."

So how does David Shayler see this leaving the state of democracy in Britain today: "I was in central London on May Day and it was incredible how bad the police's behaviour was. There was rows and rows of police vans, horses everywhere, a helicopter over head. It was like being in a police state, all because a few businesses might have their shopfronts done in. It was a massive over-reaction.

"If you fail to investigate and oppose crimes committed by the state then that's the start of totalitarianism. I think that a lot of the restrictive laws that are in place now are not just there to be used against terrorism but against the trade unions also, anti-capitalist protesters and the Left in general.

Monitoring the Left

ONE OF of the main things we wanted to ask was what exactly did MI5 get up to when monitoring the Left: "The surveillance of the Left was absolutely enormous", he says.

"If you think that 'subversives' are trying to undermine the security of the country then it all makes sense. But I never accepted that initial proviso. With the exception of the Angry Brigade, so-called subversives in Britain were never people who took up arms. The Left were using democracy as it was intended, they had meetings, went on demonstrations, stood in elections, tried to recruit people using argument. Now these are all things that should be protected.

"When I arrived in MI5 and was sent to the counter-subversion section in 1992 they were still bugging Militant [the Socialist Party's forerunner] and Socialist Workers' Party HQs.

"Eventually the reason that they didn't continue large-scale telephone tapping [which he claims eventually stopped in 1996] is because it's too resource intensive. There's no lack of room to do it. MI5's automatic reaction is often to tap somebody's phone. We saw this in the case of Victoria Brittain, the Guardian journalist. They tapped her phone for a year in an operation that cost three-quarters of a million pounds to do absolutely nothing, where they didn't even follow procedure.

"As MI5 took over more Irish work [after the end of the Cold War] they had fewer and fewer English language transcribers to do the 'subversive' stuff. So they had this backlog of tapes and they destroyed them.

"So on the one hand they'd applied for a warrant saying these people are a threat to national security, then they have all this stuff about them and just destroy it. The arguments don't work one way or the other.

"The desk officer for Militant said once they had ceased being to be 'entryist' [ie, working in the Labour Party] there's no reason for surveying these people any more. Although their declared aims are to try and create a different form of democracy, they're not doing that by any form of underhand means. Therefore we should stop intercepting these phones.

"This went all the way up through management as everything does in MI5 and everybody agreed up until the Branch Director. Now, Branch Directors in MI5 are like feudal lords protecting their own little fiefdoms and he just said no. He said what I want you to do is take information bump it up and put up a case to government.

"Which she was forced to, because in MI5 you don't have a trade union to stand with you, management will always stand together.

"Telephone tapping is not as expensive as physical surveillance but it's very expensive nevertheless. So you have all this expense because the Branch Director wants to keep his own little fiefdom.

"In the 1980s, MI5 was obsessed with surveillance. Militant were a big part of that. Degsy [Derek] Hatton has got one of the biggest files in MI5.

"And during the miners' strike, agents were reporting on Scargill throughout the entire strike. This was to ensure the government always knew what the miners were doing. And if you knew what they were doing then that puts you in a position of power."

Uprising In Algeria

ALGERIA'S SHADOWY regime - le pouvoir - has been rocked by the largest mass protests for over a decade.

On 18 April, school student, Massinissa Guermah, died at Beni Doula police station, near the city of Tizi Ouzou, capital of Kabylie, a Berber-speaking region east of the capital, Algiers.

The whole region became a battle zone. Government buildings have been attacked and destroyed and attempts made to overrun police stations.

Le pouvoir reacted in typical fashion, attempting to quell the movement by force. Live ammunition was used resulting in between 60-80 deaths on the first demonstration.

This brutal reaction, however, added fuel to the fire, with protesters proclaiming an Algerian intifada - inspired by the struggle of the Palestinian people.

There have been days of action and demonstrations by women, lawyers, doctors and civil servants. A million people marched in Algiers on 14 June. Banners voiced the anger: "Pouvoir Assassin; Down with the government; No forgiveness".

This was attacked when it tried to march on the presidential palace, demanding the withdrawal of the gendarmerie from Kabylie, punishment of those responsible for firing on demonstrators, for an economic plan to revive the region's economy, and official status for the Berber language.

A further four people were killed and a staggering 110 people 'disappeared', meaning that they could not be found in prison or hospital. 30 have now been released but 80 remain, presumably, in police detention.

The movement has now spread throughout Algeria, with people taking up demands against police/military oppression, unemployment, a chronic lack of housing and water shortages.

The widespread anger and frustration is reinforced by the fact that Algeria is rich in oil and natural gas supplies, the wealth of society siphoned off by the ruling elite. Unemployment is officially 30%.

For those under 25-years old, it is around 80%. In Algiers, it is commonplace for families to sleep in three shifts such is the housing shortage.

President Abdelaziz Bouteflika has exposed his own impotence. He has called a commission of inquiry and has withdrawn some police units from Kabylie and reshuffled his cabinet. This has impressed no one.

"End of our tether"

In Annaba, the protesters' delegation told the mayor: "We are at the end of our tether. We have had enough of power cuts and we're not going to go through the summer filling jerrycans. Do something or it's war!" (Independent, 20 June)

Bouteflika came to power two years ago promising an end to the systemic corruption and the civil war between the regime and Islamist guerrillas which has seen around 100,000 die over the past nine years.

He introduced a controversial amnesty programme, whereby thousands of guerrillas have handed in their weapons and returned to the neighbourhoods they once terrorised. There are daily protests by women who have received less in compensation for the deaths of husbands and sons than the guerrillas have received for accepting the amnesty.

Bouteflika's inaction in Algeria is being contrasted to his role in brokering the ceasefire between Ethiopia and Eritrea and his extensive tour of the world's capitals. The latest joke is that Bouteflika is considering another official visit - to Algeria!

The Berbers, the original inhabitants of North Africa, have a long and proud history of struggle for social, economic and cultural rights.

Around 20% of Algerians speak the Berber language, Tamazight. There are two political parties based in Kabylie, the Rally for Culture and Democracy, which has withdrawn from the government, and the Socialist Forces Front.

Both of these parties are discredited to the extent that local party offices have also been attacked. The political vacuum is being filled by action on the streets.

Split society

An opposition MP, Abdessalam Ali Rachedi, told The Economist: "There is no-one with the necessary credibility to talk to the young rebels. The divorce between the regime and society is total." (5 May)

The demonstrations and deaths are continuing. Last week, three protesters were killed in Bejaia about 250 km (160 miles) east of Algiers. Two paramilitary gendarmes were killed in separate clashes.

Two protesters were shot dead in Chrea 600 km east of Algiers when a hotel owner opened fire on the crowd. The hotel was razed to the ground and the owner beaten unconscious.

Another demonstration is due to take place on 25 June to commemorate the second anniversary of the assassination of the Kabylie singer and activist, Lounes Matoub.

Ominously, the regime has now banned all demonstrations in the capital. This increases the chances of the army being mobilised to crush any opposition.

Clearly, le pouvoir is making contingency plans to prevent a potential generalised popular uprising. A national demonstration in defiance of the ban is planned for 5 July.

Stop Privatisation

Trade Unions Tell Labour...