The Socialist Issue 247

NEW LABOUR were elected promising education would be their top priority. Five years later, schools are in crisis. Poor pay and conditions are driving teachers out of the classroom.

Linda Taaffe, National Union of Teachers (NUT) national executive, personal capacity

The Department of Education and Skills' own figures show that teacher vacancies have doubled in the last year. It's not that there aren't enough qualified teachers, they just don't want to be in the classroom. Official figures show 85,000 teachers have never gone on to teach after qualifying!

The only solution is to tackle teachers' excessive workload, inadequate pay and the stress caused by working with disaffected pupils and insufficient resources. But that requires money and chancellor Gordon Brown is talking tough on public spending.

Shortages are sharpest in the schools at the bottom of the government's league tables. Yet, Blair's education policies allow more selection, widening the gap between those that can succeed in Labour's education marketplace and those that cannot.

Labour has turned its back on the idea of comprehensive education, of meeting the needs of every child. Now right-wing maverick Labour MP Frank Field is even proposing letting children leave school at 14!

Schools minister Estelle Morris blames parents for not supporting their children. But doesn't she think the record levels of child poverty that her government presides over might explain the problems facing so many working-class families? And her imposed curriculum - where pupils in England are the most over-tested in the world - is destroying the self-esteem of too many youngsters.

She even blamed London's teachers for 'undermining progress' when thousands took strike action to oppose teacher shortages and demand decent pay. But it's only action that can make this government listen.

For too long, unions have held back. The one-day strike in London boosted the confidence of teachers and made sure the problems facing schools hit the headlines. This needs to be the start of a campaign to defend education for the sake of pupils, parents and school staff.

Socialist Party NUT conference meeting

Monday 1 April 8pm, Speakers:

Steve Score, Socialist Party national committee,

Linda Taaffe, NUT national executive.

Whitehall Hotel, Exeter Park Road, Bournemouth.

Say No To War

BUSH SAYS "inaction is not an option". Even with war continuing in Afghanistan, he is preparing for military action against Iraq - with Blair trotting loyally behind.

Christine Thomas

But Blair doesn't have support for attacking Iraq. 51% of people in Britain are opposed to military action. Even his own MPs are rebelling.

After 11 September, Bush and Blair argued that war against Afghanistan was necessary to defeat terrorism. Some people believed them and went along with the war, even though it was really about restoring the US's prestige and power internationally.

However, this time the mood is different. 3,000 to 8,000 ordinary Afghans have been slaughtered in Afghanistan but it has not brought peace. More soldiers are being sent because of the violence and ongoing fighting and no-one knows how long they will be there.

War is raging in Israel/Palestine and India and Pakistan, both nuclear powers, came to the brink of war over Kashmir.

Military action against the Iraqi people would be like throwing petrol on to the flames of injustice already burning among so many Arab and Muslim people internationally.

It would clearly be seen as a war to assert and reinforce US imperialism's economic and military dominance around the world and in the oil-rich Middle East in particular.

Bush talks about weapons of mass destruction, while sitting on the world's biggest nuclear arsenal with plans to deploy them even against countries without a nuclear capability.

Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator, but one that was armed and backed by the western powers when it suited them. After the 1991 Gulf War, they sat back while Saddam brutally crushed an uprising by Kurds and Shi'a Muslims.

They were afraid that if Saddam was overthrown, the instability that would follow would threaten their interests in the region.

A 'regime change' orchestrated by US military action, would result in the deaths of thousands of ordinary Iraqis, in addition to the hundreds of thousands who have already died because of bombings and sanctions.

It would do nothing to solve the problems of the Iraqi workers and poor. It is for them to overthrow Saddam as part of an international struggle to change society.

We need to build a broad, mass movement in opposition to the warmongering aims of Bush and Blair. Join us to help build that movement. But don't leave it there. Join us to fight for socialism as the only lasting solution to the poverty, exploitation and war which this system creates.

Rising Anger At New Labour

ACCORDING TO a Sunday Times poll, New Labour are now just 7% ahead of the Tories - the closest gap since the general election. 54% of people polled thought that Blair had been a disappointment, 20% thought he should step down now.

Even New Labour MPs are having to voice some of the anger that working class and many middle-class people feel. And unrest is spreading much further than the 'usual suspects' who've made a habit of rebelling, to previously loyal MPs. Things are so bad that there are even rumours of a 'stalking horse' candidate being put up against Blair for the leadership.

Privatisation of public services is high up the list of issues fuelling discontent. A Guardian/ICM poll found 86% of voters disagreed that services had got better and 37% thought that they had actually got worse.

When Blair becomes best mates with right-wing European leaders like Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi, it's quite clear what he means by talk of about 'reform' of public services; more privatisation and more attacks on jobs like the 40,000 about to be decimated by Consignia (formerly the Post Office).

It's a sign of how far New Labour has moved to the right that Gwyneth Dunwoody, a virulent enemy and witch-hunter of the Militant (forerunner of the Socialist Party) is now considered to be on the 'left' of the party. "I think I've stood still and the Labour Party has revolved round me like a top" she told the Guardian (25 March).

New Labour backbenchers are especially concerned about the prospect of war with Iraq. Once again they are reflecting public opinion, with 51% of people opposing military action. Yet defence minister Geoff Hoon says that Britain would be "perfectly entitled" to use force against the Iraqi regime.

If Blair backs Bush in a war with Iraq, it would result in a huge anti-war movement which could easily dwarf the movement against war in Afghanistan. And this time, protests against the war could come together with growing unrest in the workplaces and trade unions to form mass opposition to Blair and New Labour. It's no wonder that some MPs are getting worried.

Labour MPs whinge about Blair's 'presidential' style and 'autocratic' manner. Glasgow Pollok MP Ian Davidson says backbenchers are treated like mushrooms, kept in the dark with "things flung on top of us and we're expected loyally to respond".

But most MPs sat back quietly as Blair transformed New Labour into a big business party and blocked off all democratic channels through which working-class discontent could have a genuine influence on party policies and decision-making.

It's possible, under pressure from rising anger amongst working-class people, that MPs could resign from the Cabinet. Some might even leave the party or risk expulsion. But it would be wrong to assume that rebel MPs will lead some kind of mass campaign to reclaim the Labour Party for working-class people.

The party is almost empty of working-class members. The rebels are weak and disorganised with no common ideology. More importantly, opposition from within the trade unions is moving in the opposite direction - towards breaking the link with New Labour and backing alternative candidates in elections who support union policies.

If Left MPs want to play an effective role in combating Blairism, they should split from Labour and campaign for a new workers' party.

The Tories say they want to represent the poor and dispossessed 'abandoned' by New Labour, while proposing a privatisation plan for public services equally as vicious as New Labour's. And the Liberal Democrats also advocate free market pro-big business policies.

We have to step up the campaign now in the trade unions for disaffiliation from New Labour and for the building of an new, independent, mass party which can provide an alternative to the three established big business parties and genuinely represent the interests of working-class people.

Fight The Bosses' Jobs Massacre

THE POST Office bosses' mass redundancy programme must be resisted. 40,000 workers, one-fifth of the total, face the sack because New Labour is letting greedy privateers carve up the postal delivery market and undermine the monopoly held by the Post Office since 1660.

50 Parcelforce depots are to be chopped, losing 6,700 jobs. The transport fleet will be cut by 2,500 vehicles and four mail delivery centres shut. 3,000 urban Post Offices will close, reducing even more local community facilities in some of the most deprived areas.

Patricia Hewitt, Trade and Industry secretary, welcomed the mass slaughter of jobs, saying the government has given the Post Office "commercial freedom". But even the Post Office's Chief Executive Officer John Roberts said: "This liberalisation will cost the Post Office £750 million".

Private sector companies are queuing to pick up the pieces. TNT, DHL, UPS, with a record of total hostility to unions, will be the first to move into the market from next month. The postal regulator is opening up the market for bulk delivery of business letters as a prelude to the whole letter market being privatised.

The Post Office has made £2.5 billion in profits over 20 years and the privateers will get rich pickings from this. Of course they won't want to bring mail to your door for a 27p first class stamp - they'll demand "the market rate".

In all countries where postal services were privatised, there's been a huge increase in costs to ordinary working people. In New Zealand, 400 offices were shut and the price of stamps for outlying areas doubled.

Mass Action To Stop Privatisation

THE UNIONS must fight the bosses' plans. Unfortunately, at this stage, CWU general secretary Billy Hayes only says that they will strike if there's a threat of compulsory redundancies.

In an earlier interview with the Financial Times, he ruled out strike action against privatisation saying: "It didn't take strike action to convince the Conservative government to drop privatisation, it took political argument".

This self-limitation over the use of industrial action could be a big mistake unless the rank and file put mass pressure on the union leaders.

Firstly, by limiting strike action to compulsory redundancies, it allows the Post Office maximum room for manoeuvre against the workers.

If members see that their union isn't serious about defending every job, then they will be open to all the pressures that the bosses put on them.

The Post Office has £2 billion in reserves and they are already setting aside £400 million "for generous severance packages".

Where will future generations of workers get jobs if there's no fight to protect the ones we have today? By ruling out mass industrial action now, it will be much harder to mobilise to defend jobs in a recession.

Of course the Post Office may well demand compulsory redundancies, for example in Parcelforce. They say that workers in the depots earmarked for closure will be offered alternative jobs.

But in the last round of closures in Parcelforce there was much anger and opposition to the alternative jobs that workers were being offered. Now this will be much worse as ten times as many places are closing.

Contrary to what Billy Hayes believes, political pressure on the New Labour government will not be sufficient.

In 1993/4 the Tory government toyed with the idea of Post Office privatisation by selling it wholesale to the private sector not just, as this government proposes, by letting the private sector move into the market.

The threat to rural Post Offices put the fear of god into Tory MPs who faced losing their majorities. That caused a U-turn by John Major's government.

Also the threat by the National Association of Sub Post Masters to oppose the closure stopped the Tory government. Now the same organisation has welcomed the deregulation of the market by the Postal regulator.

The postal unions, led by the CWU, should organise a mass demonstration against the whole programme of closures, job losses and privatisation, thus ensuring that the full strength of the unions is turned to this task.

Billy Hayes should send out an appeal for the whole trade union movement to get behind them in defence of the public sector. This demo should be a prelude to organising strike action in defence of jobs. Now is the time to act.

The 15-Minute Strike

POSTAL WORKERS were supposed to be on one-day strike over pay on 27 March but the CWU Postal Executive decided to make it a 15-minute strike, only in Mail Centres.

Now, in a strike dubbed Monty Python's flying picket, only Area Reps will go on strike for 15 minutes on 27 March. Union reps commented: "What do they expect me to do? Stand outside with a flag?"

CWU negotiators say they aren't accepting management's offer, because, even after consolidation of bonuses, we wouldn't achieve £300 a week pensionable pay in October 2003.

Echoing Consignia management, they cite Postcom's attack on the monopoly as a reason for not going on strike, but our inaction won't save the monopoly and universal service.

The CWU leaders say the "industrial action" is to "validate the ballot" under the anti-trade-union laws, and that Consignia management have agreed to recognise this, but might management not change their minds?

The socialist calls for:

Council Housing Under Attack

UNTIL 8 April, Birmingham city council are balloting all their 88,000 council tenant households on whether to transfer the housing stock to new private landlords. Glasgow has been balloting on the same issue. New Labour see these votes, in Britain's largest council landlords, as critical. CLIVE WALDER from Birmingham and ERIC STEVENSON from Glasgow City UNISON report on the fight against privatisation.

Birmingham: Vote "No" to housing transfers

IN BIRMINGHAM, the city council seem to be so scared of losing their ballot that they are resorting to crude threats to try to intimidate tenants into voting for transfer.

The government appointed Lord Falconer (famous for making a pig's ear of running the Millennium Dome) as their trouble-shooter. According to the Birmingham Evening Mail, tenants are effectively told to "hand over your homes or kiss goodbye to the money needed for quality repairs".

Falconer rules out using the council's existing housing debt for repair and renovation because the council "have a history of poor performance and would take some time to get to the standards required" and are unfit to receive extra government funding.

He blatantly says that if tenants reject stock transfer there's no extra government money for housing so tenants' only hope is transfer.

The government know how unpopular privatisation is, so they deny that stock transfer is privatisation, saying that the new landlords are Housing Associations, regulated by the Housing Corporation.

Yet the Housing Corporation has failed to take action in any case where landlords of ex-council housing break their rent-fixing formulas. And while the new landlords are 'not-for-profit' organisations, the banks that lend them the money certainly aren't.

They also claim that tenants will have more control over policy and service delivery because they have more than a third of places on the management board. With maths like that, no wonder Falconer failed so spectacularly at the dome!

Tenants' reps on the new boards undertake to make decisions consistent with the landlord's interests. In other words they don't represent tenants at all. That's why reps have already resigned from the shadow housing boards set up prior to stock transfer.

Falconer says that rents should reflect a property's location and condition. So new and city-centre properties will probably attract higher rents for possible conversion to yuppie accommodation in future. Nothing is said anywhere about tenants' ability to pay.

Accountability

THE COUNCIL say that stock transfer will raise £1.25 billion for repair and renovation. Yet the council admit that between £2 billion and £4 billion is needed to bring all the city's housing stock up to acceptable standards.

Clearly not all the repairs will be done. Meanwhile tenants lose any accountability they had and rents will gradually go up to suit their fat-cat financiers.

In 1998, five estates in Birmingham's city centre were privatised. Within weeks, tenants were clamouring to return to council control. Some of those tenants pay up to £20 a week in service charges and on privatised Castle Vale, rents went up £16 a week last year.

In Coventry, the new landlords recently rewrote the tenancy agreement just a year after taking control of the council's housing. Any assurances from the council are worthless - they will no longer be the landlord and will have no influence over tenancy conditions.

Ironically, the New Labour government are changing public borrowing rules in 2004 so the council could borrow to fund large-scale building and modernisation.

Housing Associations borrow money at much higher rates of interest than councils and councils don't pay VAT on their building work. This will inevitably be reflected in rents. Social housing will be funded by private rather than public money if stock transfer goes ahead so housing policy, rent and repair levels will be decided by shareholders, not by public need.

If tenants vote 'No', the council would be unlikely to keep getting away with its current neglect of its housing as the public scandal would undermine the seats of many Labour councillors.

There is huge opposition to stock transfer. With a vigorous campaign which explains the facts, tenants can sink Blair's privatisation flagship without trace.

Glasgow - Keep Our Homes Public

GLASGOW CITY Council proposes to hand over all its council tenants to Glasgow Housing Association (GHA), in a huge stock transfer.

The Westminster government is writing off Glasgow's huge debt of £900 million (mostly from the post-war housing programme), while the Scottish Executive promises up to £800 million more in public finance.

These additional funds will partly fill the gaps in GHA's business plan, to satisfy the banks financing the project. So public money will help fill big business's coffers.

GHA have bombarded tenants with glossy material calling the stock transfer a "once in a lifetime offer" to improve Glasgow's housing and build new homes.

The publicity campaign, having already spent up to £5 million, is now in overdrive with adverts in newspapers and at bus stop shelters, leafleting tenants at home and council offices. How much more public money will be spent?

Write off the debts

Why can't the debt be written off with the houses remaining in public ownership? The council could then use the millions released from its rental income to modernise all its houses.

The extra money promised by the executive could also be used to build new homes. Communities could be transformed without needing the transfer. This should be the choice offered by the council.

Tenants could also have a greater say in running their homes and communities. The structures are already there - Tenants Associations and neighbourhood-based forums already exist.

Under the council we can at least remove our councillors at elections. Transfer to an unelected, unaccountable quango would cost millions from the public purse. Housing Associations (HAs) have done some good work over the years with grants made available to them, but the proposed privatisation is not acceptable.

Campaigners for a No vote have a vision of modernised publicly owned houses with affordable rents, within regenerated communities for future Glasgow residents.

The Glasgow Campaign for a 'No' Vote and the council's trade union campaign (supported by the STUC) are calling for tenants to vote 'No'.

If we succeed, this vote must be used to demand that the debt be written off and the democratically elected council along with its tenants be allowed to implement the vision which the tenants deserve.

The Socialist Says

Private Sector Failure

THE PRIVATE sector has failed to build affordable housing for those on lower or average incomes. In the last two decades, over two million council homes have been lost while only half a million housing association homes replaced them.

This has hit the availability of reasonably priced accommodation. In 1968, 414,000 new homes were built. Last year, in a post-war trough, even the capitalist builders themselves admit that only 162,000 were constructed.

Private homebuilders tend to concentrate on "executive estates" built on a speculative basis for those who can pay, rather than affordable housing for those in need.

The Socialist 29 March 2002	Teach Labour A Lesson
Teach Labour A Lesson	NEW LABOUR were elected promising education would be their top priority. Five years later, schools are in crisis. Poor pay and conditions are driving teachers out of the classroom. By Linda Taaffe, National Union of Teachers (NUT) national executive, personal capacity
Say No To War	BUSH SAYS "inaction is not an option". Even with war continuing in Afghanistan, he is preparing for military action against Iraq - with Blair trotting loyally behind. By Christine Thomas
Rising Anger At New Labour	ACCORDING TO a Sunday Times poll, New Labour are now just 7% ahead of the Tories - the closest gap since the general election. 54% of people polled thought that Blair had been a disappointment, 20% thought he should step down now.
Fight The Bosses' Jobs Massacre	THE POST Office bosses' mass redundancy programme must be resisted. 40,000 workers, one-fifth of the total, face the sack because New Labour is letting greedy privateers carve up the postal delivery market and undermine the monopoly held by the Post Office since 1660. Mass Action To Stop Privatisation The 15-Minute Strike The socialist calls for:
Council Housing Under Attack	UNTIL 8 April, Birmingham city council are balloting all their 88,000 council tenant households on whether to transfer the housing stock to new private landlords. Birmingham: Vote "No" to housing transfers Glasgow - Keep Our Homes Public The Socialist Says Private Sector Failure
The Socialist Continued	Biggest Demo In History Engulfs Rome Wars - The Horror Of Capitalism Public and Commercial Services union elections

Teach Labour A Lesson

Trade union action can...