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Archive article from The Socialist Issue 266
Public Services Not Private Greed |
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| Next issue: 6 September, then back to weekly issues. | |
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Privatisation is a con, it's official. Parliament's public accounts committee recently warned that it was impossible to tell whether the returns for industry from privatisation matched the quality of service and the risks that the contractors ran. |
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Opposition to Bush and Blair's warmongering plans for Iraq is mounting. In Blair's own Sedgefield constituency 64 per cent of people are against military action to bring about a "regime change". |
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WORLD ‘LEADERS’ are preparing a global publicity stunt - the World Summit on Environment and Development. |
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| Lewisham 1977: Where the Fascists Met their Match |
Twenty Five years ago – on 13 August 1977 – some 800 members of the fascist National Front (NF) provocatively tried to march through Lewisham, a working-class area with a big black and Asian population. |
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The Socialist 23 August 2002 | Top | Home | News | The Socialist Join the Socialist Party | Donate | Subscribe
Public Services Not Private GreedPrivatisation is a con, it's official. Parliament's public accounts committee recently warned that it was impossible to tell whether the returns for industry from privatisation matched the quality of service and the risks that the contractors ran. Twelve companies have seen their share prices rise since the Government's comprehensive spending review in July. This is no coincidence as these are the biggest companies with their snouts in the trough of the Private Finance Initiative (PPP) or the Public Private Partnership (PPP) as new Labour's prefers to call it. Balfour Beatty, involved in London Underground and with £4.3 billion in orders, saw its share price rise by seven per cent. This is a reflection of the massive profits to be made out of PPP. Independent analysts KPMG estimate their returns for investors in the Tube could be more than 20 per cent and possibly as high as 25 to 30 per cent. In general, the average return is between 13 per cent and 17 per cent. The Government's main justification for these projects is that the private sector provides extra investments and takes on the risk. This is Balfour Beatty's explanation for the high returns on the London Underground. However one look at the Government's part privatisation of the National Air Traffic Services (Nats) shows how economical with the truth this is. There has been no extra investment from the private sector - the building of a new control centre at Prestwick has been suspended while the computers at the Swanwick centre have crashed and been dogged with problems. The government has had to make an emergency loan of £30 million and guarantee a further £50 million earlier this year when bankers threatened to put the service into administration. Privatisation is simply a way of ensuring a risk-free profits for New Labour's big-business backers and shows that they have a become an out and out capitalist party. Working-class people need a new party that will represent our interests and not those of the privatisers. The Socialist party is campaigning in the trade unions and in community campaigns to set up such a party. Join us.
The Socialist 23 August 2002 | Top | Home | News | The Socialist Join the Socialist Party | Donate | Subscribe No To War In IraqOpposition to Bush and Blair's warmongering plans for Iraq is mounting. In Blair's own Sedgefield constituency 64 per cent of people are against military action to bring about a "regime change". In every opinion poll carried out so far, a majority are opposed to war against Iraq. Former army chiefs, union leaders, Labour Party MPs and Church representatives have all spoken out against war. Even in the US, 57 per cent say they would not support a war against Iraq if it involved ground troops. The former national security adviser to Bush Senior has cooled for George W Bush to halt his plans and warned of an "Armageddon in the Middle East". General Sir Michael Rose, commander of UN troops in Bosnia, has said the war in Iraq could be another Vietnam - where tens of thousands of Vietnamese civilians and US soldiers were killed. Even now, 200 Iraqi children are dying every day because of sanctions imposed by the Western imperialist countries. A full-scale war would mean thousands more innocent civilian casualties. Saddam Hussein is a vicious dictator who was brutally repressed the Iraqi people. But it's clear that this has nothing to do with why Bush is preparing to wage war. US imperialism backed Saddam, even when he was using chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds, because he was seen to be defending Imperialism's interests in the Middle East. Now that he is no longer "onside" they would quite happily replace him with another dictator - so long as it is "their" dictator, prepared to do their bidding and posing no threat to US economic and strategic interests in the region. It's the task of the working-class and poor in Iraq to organise to overthrow Saddam, with support from workers internationally, as part of a united struggle against the capitalist profit system which is the root cause of war, poverty and environmental destruction. On 28 September a national anti-war demonstration is being held at London. This will be an opportunity to bring together, in a show of strength, the hundreds of thousands of people who are against Bush's war plans. And on the eve of Labour Party conference, it will send a message to Tony Blair that the anti-war movement is growing and will keep up the pressure to stop the war. The Socialist Party's helping to organise for the demonstration and party branches will be going to the workplaces, schools, colleges and onto the streets to build for a massive turnout. At the same time, we will be arguing that socialism offers the only real alternative to capitalism and war.
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Earth SummitCapitalism is UnsustainableWORLD ‘LEADERS’ are preparing a global publicity stunt - the World Summit on Environment and Development. Manny ThainFrom 26 August to 4 September, 65,000 delegates from 174 countries will descend on Johannesburg, South Africa. Security will be provided by 27,000 police. While talking about 'sustainable development' they will ensure that multinational corporations tighten their grip on world markets, choking the life out of our planet's environment and further exploiting its people. Tony Blair will show up to smile smugly, shake hands and initial the final declaration. George W Bush will still be on holiday at his Texas ranch to the delight of his oil industry backers who want to rubbish the environmental lobby. The summit is supposed to assess progress towards 'sustainable development' since the Rio summit ten years ago. An objective assessment makes grim reading. Rio's Agenda 21 agreed to $125 billion of aid from the wealthy nations, committing them to spend 0.7% of gross national product (GNP) each year. By 2000, the money provided had actually fallen from $69 billion to $53 billion. Britain's contribution remained at 0.33%, with the US on 0.1%. The total debt burden of developing countries climbed by 34% to $2.5 trillion. Nearly three billion people do not have adequate sanitation and 30,000 people die every day from water-related diseases. The gap between rich and poor is widening. In the 1990s, the number of extremely poor in sub-Saharan Africa increased from 242 million to 300 million. Multinationals' ruleIN JOHANNESBURG, big business will call the shots. Blair's delegation includes his buddies from multinationals such as Thames Water and Rio Tinto Zinc (RTZ), both of which have been accused of polluting the environment, destroying wildlife habitats, and ignoring human rights abuses. RTZ, the largest mining conglomerate in the world, plans to mine uranium in Kakadu National Park, Australia. Clashes between protesters and police have led to more than 500 arrests. In the 1970s it backed the racist apartheid regime in South Africa. Thames Water has expanded its operations worldwide on the back of International Monetary Fund diktat that developing countries privatise water provision in return for 'aid'. This means making the poorest people on the planet pay for one of the essentials of life. Thames Water operated in Indonesia under president Suharto's brutally oppressive regime. The summit’s draft plan calls for the 'promotion of corporate responsibility'. But the multinationals, and the governments which back them, ruthlessly exploit the rest of the world. The World Trade Organisation imposes harsh penalties if poor nations do not open up their markets. But the biggest culprits are the US and European Union. In 2000 the rich nations spent $245 billion subsidising their own big business agriculture (and that’s before Bush's Farm Act this year). These subsidised crops are dumped on the global market forcing prices down. Wheat, for example, is sold by the US at 46% below production costs, and by the EU at 34 %. Small scale farmers from the developing world just can't compete. In the meantime, an ‘Asian brown cloud' two miles thick sits over Asia. It is made up of vehicle and industrial pollutants and minute particles of ash from forest and wood burning. A different world is possibleThe cloud is blocking up to 15% of solar energy reaching the Earth’s surface and UN scientists believe it is altering the monsoon rain pattern, causing droughts and catastrophic floods. The World Summit will provide no solutions. The capitalist system as a whole is responsible for the destruction of the World's delicate ecological balance. A small minority at the top enjoy obscene wealth while a massive majority exists in abject poverty and misery. But a different world is possible. It is, however, a race against time to implement a system which could provide everyone with a good quality of life in an environmentally sustainable way In a socialist society - where production is organised for need not profit - the vast majority of the world's workers and oppressed peoples could democratically plan and organise an environmentally sustainable system - but only if power is taken out of the hands of the parasitical ruling class. For more in-depth analysis, read the new pamphlet Planning Green Growth: A Socialist Contribution To The Debate On Environmental Sustainability by Pete Dickinson. (100k)
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Lewisham 1977Where the Fascists Met their MatchTwenty Five years ago – on 13 August 1977 – some 800 members of the fascist National Front (NF) provocatively tried to march through Lewisham, a working-class area with a big black and Asian population. Roger ShrivesThis was supposed to be the NF's big national mobilisation but the fascists took such a beating that NF leader John Tyndall was reduced to complaining bitterly that they hadn't had enough protection - there were 4,000 cops on the streets, armed with riot shields! When news had broken of the NF's plans, the influential local body, All-Lewisham Campaign against Racism and Fascism (ALCARAF), comprising Labour Party 'lefts', Communist Party and religious leaders, opposed confronting the fascists. They wanted a protest meeting at Ladywell Fields, hours before the NF demonstration and miles away from New Cross where the fascists planned to march. Party Young Socialist (LPYS) representative on ALCARAF was a supporter of Militant, The Socialist's predecessor, He argued that the march should carry on to New Cross. Militant supporters got a resolution passed through Deptford Labour Party calling for socialists and trade unionists to directly counter the NF. At a meeting before the ALCARAF demo Militant supporter Nick Bradley, the LPYS rep on Labour's National Executive stood out from the timid moralistic claptrap at this demo by saying that only united action by the working class on the lines of Cable Street could defeat the fascists. In Cable Street in London's East End in 1936, workers had come out onto the streets and physically stopped Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists from marching through an area of largely Jewish workers. Hitler himself had said: "Only one thing could have broken the [Nazi] movement - if the adversary had understood its principle and from the first day had smashed the nucleus of our new movement." The ‘principles’ of fascism are the smashing of the working class and the building of a huge mass movement of the middle layers of society, especially the small farmers and shop keepers. Although the strength of the working class had cut the power of the middle layers of society, the workers' leaders still need to give a lead and cut the ground from under the fascists. After ALCAIRAF's meeting: on the morning of 13 August, many protested ignored the organisers' advice and made their own way through the huge police cordon to New Cross. Effective ActionA LARGE contingent of LPYS members congregated around the Militant banner which also attracted support from others such as Deptford Labour Party and even the Young Liberals. The LPYS contingent was most disciplined section of the counter-demonstration, and showed how to organise effective action against the fascists. For the first time in Britain the police used riot shields, as deployed for years on the streets of Northern Ireland, in Lewisham. The police first of all smuggled small groups of fascists through the back streets. Then came the charge as three ranks of police on horse back trampled down protesters as they cleared the way for the NF just at the point where the LPYS contingent had formed. Even before a barrage of bottles, bricks and smoke bombs came down on them, many fascists looked scared at the size of the anti-Nazi response. They started cowering beneath their coats and banners for protection. As they strayed onto the pavements, with the police in disarray, the anti-fascists gave them a hammering. When a second contingent of fascists came through, led by Edinburgh NF, they were forced to retreat in panic. Protesters burned the fascist flag. At that sight, around a quarter of their 800 odd fascist refuse to March. The fascist faced bottles and an enraged population in New Cross and were humiliated - many of the older members were shaking. Angry Black, Asian and white youths confronted at the fascists in New Cross and later in the day, angry young Black's fought with the tooled-up police who had been seen to support the NF. After the event at some of the Tory press, who had previously given at least tacit support to the NF's propaganda claimed that anti-fascist marchers were trying to stop the fascist's "democratic right" to demonstrate where it wished. Militant pointed out that these papers "deliberately ignored the NF's real aim: the complete destruction of democracy. We stand that the right to strike, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. "We support the right of our pro-capitalist opponents, if they formally uphold democracy, to express their point of view. But we cannot allow the sworn, proven enemies of democracy a free hand to smash the Labour movement and stamp out every democratic right. "Those who deplore Saturday's violence also forget that the police chiefs, in undertaking to defend their NF March, fully expected massive resistance, and mobilised the Special Patrol Group, special riot squads and mounted police precisely to ensure that these abhorrent thugs could march streets." Socialist AlternativeThe NF aimed use middle-class and unorganised sections of society as a human battering ram to destroy the gains of the working class. One week before the NF march an unsuccessful attempt was made to burn down the offices of Militant. Physical attacks on Black and Asian people and on labour movement activists were increasing. But the strength of the opposition warned the ruling class that the NF and other fascist organisations had limited hopes of success. After Lewisham, the establishment's attitude towards the fascists evolved towards seeing them as auxiliaries who would use cowardly racist violence against Blacks and Asians and keep racism as a potent tool in the hands of the ruling class. In 1979 Thatcher's Tories used parts of NF divide and rule racist politics as a thread in their policies designed to transfer wealth and power to the already wealthy and powerful. Militant's editorial dated 19 August 1977, warned that you need to fight against racism and fascism on the basis of a socialist programme. "The fascists play on all the worst prejudices bred by imperialism and capitalism through generations of exploitation, social humiliation and indoctrination. They aim at the sections of society hit or threatened by the crisis of British capitalism, in many cases the most downtrodden, who have lost all confidence in the ability of the labour movement to improve their lot. "Ultimately the labour movement will be able to conquer racism and fascism only if it is to be seen to be fighting to change the rotten conditions on which it spawns, by fighting for jobs, decent wages, more and better houses, better education and health services and for a socialist planned economy that would make these things possible for all."
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