The recent 'Hesteria' has been revealing. The Tories, majority funded by the City, went on about 'fairness' and bankers' bonuses but failed to challenge RBS boss Stephen Hester's £1 million bung.
The huge anger about Hester's bonus was reflected in the over 80,000 signatures collected in 48 hours demanding its non-payment. In the end Hester rescued a flailing Cameron by saying he wouldn't take the cash. Undoubtedly, securing his less well-advertised £3.3 million payment figured in his calculations.
The reality is that Hester is not unique in being offered a multi-million bonus. Barclay's Bob 'no more remorse' Diamond is in line for £10 million! And obscene pay does not just exist in banking - average FTSE executive pay is £4.2 million.
Would-be pension thief and Unilever chief exec Paul Polman receives £3.5 million a year, including £300,000 into his own pension. Last year, the man who earns 285 times more than his workers, said: "What I want is a sustainable and equitable capitalism."
"Pious baloney!" Although this is reactionary US Republican Newt Gingrich's phrase, it does sums up the politicians' current fashion for fulminating on inequality while, in reality, carrying through the impoverishment of millions.
Why this fixation? While planning no deviation from staggeringly savage austerity, the bosses and politicians fear our rage. The tip of the enormous iceberg of this rage made itself known in 2011 in the ever-expanding Occupy movement but especially in massive general strikes.
They fear these movements will pose a threat to their profit system and hope that showing some concern will stave off the oncoming challenges. But they're wrong.
Labour leader Ed Miliband's talk of 'good' and 'bad' capitalism is baloney - capitalism is a system based on exploitation and profiteering. The TUC has revealed that workers have lost an unbelievable £1.3 trillion in wages over the last 30 years as the bosses grab an ever greater share of the wealth in profits.
We need to build a mass movement to fight for genuine socialist nationalisation of the entire banking system and the big corporations, putting the levers of the economy in our hands - not those of the super-rich. That has to be part of a democratic plan, coordinated with workers internationally.
If you agree, join us.
Last Saturday over 50 prospective candidates and campaign organisers from around the country met to plan the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition's (TUSC) challenge in May's local and London Assembly (GLA) elections.
Following the statements by Eds Milband and Balls, the leaders of the Labour Party, saying that they support the government coalition's cuts and that a Labour government would not reverse them, the question of building an anti-cuts working class political alternative is an idea that millions will be more open to than ever before.
This was reflected in the prominent trade unionists in attendance and the proposed slate for the GLA elections announced at the meeting (see press release below).
Across England there will be dozens of candidates challenging the idea that cuts are in any way necessary.
The conference endorsed a five point minimum programme that all candidates wishing to stand for TUSC would have to agree with:
A new alliance, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), made up of trade union members and socialists, is to stand candidates in the Greater London Election on 3 May to challenge the all-party support for the government's austerity cuts and pay freeze.
The coalition expects to win support from trade unionists and other voters who are angered by the recent statements of Labour leader Ed Miliband and the Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls, in which they stated that they will not reverse the Government's cuts and that they support its pay freeze.
A list of candidates will challenge in the 'top up' section of the election and if it wins at least 5% of the vote across the whole of London it could win at least one place on the 25-seat Greater London Assembly.
The coalition has already selected prominent London trade union leaders such as Alex Gordon, the national president of the RMT rail and maritime union and Steve Hedley the RMT's London Transport regional organiser, Ian Leahair, the Fire Brigades Union executive committee member for the capital, Joe Simpson, assistant secretary of the Prison Officers' Association and Martin Powell-Davies, who is the London representative on the national committee of the NUT teachers union.
The Labour Party will be concerned that many public sector workers who participated in the 30 November pensions' strike may be moved to vote for this coalition because of the failure of Labour leaders to support the walk-out.
Labour leaders will also be worried that rank and file union members of Labour affiliated unions could press for their funds to go to TUSC candidates instead of to Labour.
Steve Hedley, whose RMT union was expelled from the Labour Party in 2004 for backing the Scottish Socialist Party, said, "We need candidates who support the ordinary man and woman.
"TUSC is the only organisation that opposes all cuts, defends pensions and benefits for all working people.
"Labour just wants a compliant, silent union movement to hand over its money. TUSC will be a voice for all workers and will support trade unions in struggle."
TUSC national committee member Nick Wrack, who is also a candidate, said, "London is a city of stark contrasts.
"There is a huge amount of poverty amidst the plenty. Corporate bosses and bankers still get their million pound pay and pension packages while one in six London workers is paid less than the Mayor's £8.30 per hour living wage.
"Millions are suffering from the cuts to services and benefits yet last year the city paid out over £4 billion in bonuses.
"It's extremely hard even for those on better wages to make ends meet. We believe that there is an opportunity for a party that will speak up for working-class London to make a real break-through and that would begin to change the nature of political debate in Britain today."
TUSC believes it can get a candidate elected if it wins at least 150,000 votes across London.
April Ashley, UNISON Executive Council
Alex Gordon, RMT President
Steve Hedley, RMT London regional organiser
Ian Leahair, FBU National Executive Committee
Martin Powell-Davies, NUT national executive
Joe Simpson, POA assistant secretary
Jenny Sutton, UCU Chair, London Regional Committee (FE)
Nick Wrack, TUSC national committee member (former chair of Socialist Alliance and Respect)
There will also be candidates from the CWU postal union and the PCS public service workers union.
The final list is not yet decided. Other candidates are still being considered.
The FBU has 5,500 members in London.
The RMT has over 12,000 members in London Underground alone.
This version of this article was first posted on the Socialist Party website on 30 January 2012 and may vary slightly from the version subsequently printed in The Socialist.
Recently, one acerbic political TV commentator, noting the lack-lustre response of the Labour leadership to the current crisis, asked: "What is the point of Labour?" To that cutting remark we might add more specifically, "And what is the point of Labour MPs?"
On 28 January I attended a lively local protest about the sacking of 24 library workers and the consequent cutbacks to the service - all part of £65 million worth of cuts passed on from the coalition government via the local Labour majority councillors.
On my way home I came across the local Labour MP, Stella Creasy. I engaged her in conversation.
She had a stall and a table with some tins of food, called a food bank. The MP was inviting mostly poor people in this poor area to part with some of their meagre shopping, so that it could be donated to the even poorer!
What is this if not Victorian-style do-gooding? Don't address why people are poor and confront the system that makes them poor, just collect food and feel better.
This same MP was also highlighting pernicious loan sharks - the scourge of the working poor. Fair enough. But her advice was to go to a credit union instead. And of course, while pursuing the relatively little fish in the money business, the truly greedy inner workings of speculators, bond traders and bankers are left unexposed and unchallenged by Labour.
She declared herself even unwilling to contemplate putting up any kind of fight against government cuts, saying if we did that, we would get Eric Pickles, the Tory minister, running council services - and did we want that?
Well, is there a difference to those 24 sacked workers that Labour is wielding the axe rather than Tories?
No, the problem is that this MP and all 37 local Labour councillors have Eric Pickles in their head. They have internalised defeat. They are doing exactly what Mr Pickles wants them to do.
There is no point to Labour MPs. Now is time to develop a mass electoral alternative whose representatives can both articulate workers' anger and lead a fight to stop even greater jobs slaughter.
So-called world leaders are meeting in Davos this week, and it finally seems that youth unemployment is top of the agenda.
We know the plight of being out of work, we don't need super-rich politicians to lecture us about it. In Britain youth unemployment is a daily nightmare, and it's even worse in Greece and Spain. Today more young Spaniards are out of work (51.4%), than in a job.
EU leaders have said they might use €22 billion to tackle the crisis of rising youth unemployment. What are we going to get for our money? Tory chancellor George Osborne has called on other world leaders to create jobs to tackle youth unemployment. Osborne should look a little closer to home. When Chris Grayling, Tory 'unemployment' minister, wrote to Youth Fight for Jobs following the 330 mile Jarrow March to defend his government's failed policies, he couldn't point to one job his government had created.
These out of touch capitalist politicians are quite happy to cry crocodile tears about youth unemployment from the comfort of conference centres in Davos, but it is their failed cuts agenda that is slamming the door on our futures.
If Christine Lagarde, managing director for the International Monetary Fund (IMF), wants to kick-start growth to create jobs, why is the IMF demanding vicious programme after vicious programme of swingeing privatisation in Greece, plunging the country deeper and deeper into recession?
Young people are not lazy, we want to work. But we can't wait for self-proclaimed big business elites; we have to fight to defend our futures now! It has been young working class people leading the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, the mass movements in Spain and Greece and occupying Wall Street and elsewhere in the USA and across the world.
Davos leaders have no solutions to the crisis of youth unemployment, because they are tied to the capitalist system. Capitalism protects the profits of the 1%, but its time is up. Youth Fight for Jobs stands for the wealth of society being used to create jobs and meet the needs of all.
The United States of America - home to Wall Street, Hollywood and Disneyland; where dreams come true; capitalism at its best. Or not. Rapidly rising unemployment combined with wage freezes means that the average 25-64 year old American male earns about a quarter less than his 1969 equivalent. But, of course, we're in an economic crisis - when it's over and businesses have more money again, wages will surely go up...
And yet there doesn't seem to be much evidence of a crisis for big business - corporate profits in the US are higher (as a proportion of GDP) than at any time since the 1950s. And there is $1.7 trillion sitting in the bank accounts of US companies rather than being invested - that would make a start on those wages, surely!
This will come as a bit of a shock to teachers - Michael Gove is the most popular government minister. He has received more donations into his private office since the 2010 general election than any other cabinet minister including the Prime Minister and the Chancellor - £35,500 for his private office and £61,279 at constituency level.
His constituency has received a staggering £284,416.40 since he became an MP. We don't know who gave him the 40p. We do know that former Lehman Brothers' banker Jeremy Isaacs donated £3,000 to Gove's office.
Around three quarters of his private office donations since 2009 have come from individuals with business interests in the City. The biggest single donation to Gove's private office was £150,000 from Martin Calderbank of private equity firm Stirling Capital Partners.
So obviously Gove has friends in high places. You can't call this perfectly legal activity 'corruption'. That would be like saying the whole capitalist system is corrupt. And we wouldn't want anybody to think that.
Apple is now the most valuable company in the world at £400 billion. If that was split between all of Apple's employees (ie the people who actually do the work that makes the money) it would mean almost $7 million for each. Probably best for them not to factor that into their budgeting though. How much do you keep in the bank at a time? Apple has $97.7 billion in cash reserves - that's enough to write off the debt of eight EU countries! Again, we won't hold our breaths.
A report by Aviva Family Finances shows that the average family in the UK owes nearly £8,000 in unsecured borrowing (things like overdrafts and credit cards) - that's up 48% on this time last year. So, are we all just getting greedier?
Well, a report by the TUC suggests some other answers. Workers are taking home £60 billion a year less in real terms than 30 years ago. That's despite being more productive than ever. And funnily enough, the only group who don't seem to be following the same trend are top executives whose pay is still going up. In fact, the ratio of executives' pay to workers' pay has gone from 47:1 in 2000 to 102:1 last year. Workers are being paid less for more work and having to get ourselves into debt to maintain any decent standard of living. And to make it all worse, the poorer we get, the richer the bosses get!
The racist and hooligan English Defence League (EDL) claims its demonstration through the heart of Leicester on Saturday 4 February, is in opposition to "discrimination in the justice system". But this is not about there being 'one law for the rich and another for everyone else' - it is about what they ludicrously claim is discrimination in the British legal system in favour of Muslims!
The EDL is a racist organisation which is based on a travelling circus of thugs going from town to town in an attempt to stir up division amongst working class people. They scapegoat Muslims, basing themselves on the fear of terrorism that was exacerbated by the 'war on terror' - initiated by the British and US governments to justify the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq.
In the process they divert attention away from those causing the real problems people face - such as unemployment, cuts in services, low pay, and lack of housing. They hamper the fightback against governments and big business by attempting to divide working class people.
The EDL claims: "We have marched through many cities and towns across the country with zero disruption to communities and that is our full and only intention for 4 February." This is a lie. In October 2010 they came to Leicester and attacked people and shops they saw as 'not English'. YouTube footage of their attack on innocent men, women and kids in 'Big John's', a Halaal fast food restaurant, is available for all to see.
Hundreds of EDLers attempted to attack the Highfields area, where there is a large Muslim population. Only a massive mobilisation of local people stopped them. The huge police operation was ineffective, indicating that communities and workers have to defend themselves.
On that day the Unite Against Fascism protest was kettled by police at the same time as some of the EDL were allowed to roam free. We need to avoid this happening again.
This time the EDL are being allowed to march through the centre of Leicester.
On 4 February there will be a big counter-demonstration supported by the Socialist Party in Leicester City Centre to oppose the EDL: we aim to stop them by force of numbers!
But, alongside this demonstration there will be community self-defence organised in areas that feel under threat. We fully support this, and believe that trade unionists and anti-racists should stand shoulder to shoulder with local communities. There needs to be coordination between us all to be as effective as possible on the day.
And to undercut any support EDL might get in the wider community, we need to make it clear: We don't just oppose the EDL, we are also fighting for jobs, homes and services for all.
The Welfare Reform Bill (WRB) returns to parliament on Wednesday 1 February. The Saturday before, 28 January, as Frank Fields proposed yet more vicious attacks, up to 200 protesters occupied Regent Street for nearly two hours, causing a huge tailback of traffic.
Wheelchair users chained themselves in between traffic lights, stopping the police from forcing the protest onto the pavement.
When the police attempted to make announcements, they were shouted down by requests for a sign interpreter.
The protest had such an impact that the Department for Work and Pensions was forced to apologise 'to anyone delayed by disabled protesters in London today'!
There was huge support from the passing public, especially as individuals explained how they would be affected by the removal of allowances, new assessment regimes and the cap on benefits.
But the acclaim was not universal. Basildon Tory councillor Luke Mackenzie caused huge outrage by stating on Twitter: "I hear there are a bunch of unwashed people at Oxford and Regent Street, if you don't like capitalism move to North Korea".
This disgusting remark said a lot about the Conservatives' attitude to protesters and the disabled. Mackenzie is not only a councillor, he works for Basildon MP Stephen Metcalfe, is assistant to the council leader and is on the Essex County Council NHS overview and scrutiny committee.
His dislike of protests can be judged by his record; he voted to evict the travellers at Dale Farm at an estimated cost of £18 million.
This money would go a long way towards reducing the impact of some of the cuts, especially in London and the South East where they will hit hardest and Mackenzie is a councillor.
One of Saturday's protesters replied: "I washed today, but when PIP replaces DLA [under the WRB] it will not acknowledge needing help to wash below the waist.
"What then?" The fact that Mackenzie is not aware of the impact of the bill, or of what his words could mean, shows the kind of people put into power by the Conservatives, especially over local NHS provision!
But it's not only the Conservatives who are backing the WRB. The Liberal Democrats do too, and Miliband 'in principle' supports the £26,000 benefits cap per household, only quibbling over minor details.
Unbelievably, shadow work and pensions minister Liam Byrne wrote to Nick Clegg to propose that, for most, the cap should be lower! Currently 54% of those households who will lose out are in London because of the high rents there.
Inspired by Frank Field, the Labour Party is arguing for a benefits cap which is lower in other areas because the cost of living is lower.
Feckless Frank goes even further however, arguing that households with one person or a childless couple should have an even lower cap.
For all the main parties, the cap on benefits is an attempt to demonise the poorest in society. Eric Pickles' permanent secretary wrote a letter that was leaked, which stated that in itself the cap is likely to lead to an increase in government spending, as any savings will be outweighed by the costs of families pushed into homelessness.
Labour thinks the benefits cap is popular and is attacking the coalition from the right in an attempt to steal the limelight. But this posturing, if successful, will devastate even more lives.
Saturday's demonstration showed the anger that exists amongst those who understand the impact the WRB is going to have.
As more people realise what it means for them, their friends and their communities this vicious attack will be further exposed.
But the battle isn't over yet. Disabled People Against Cuts, who organised the protest together with UKUncut and others, calls for the complete scrapping of the Welfare Reform Bill.
Even if it passes through parliament, the pressure must be kept on. A national demonstration showing outright opposition would help to further publicise the impact of the WRB and add confidence to all those who will be affected.
The Socialist Party leaflet raising this demand went down well on Saturday and we will be campaigning for it to happen within the movement.
This version of this article was first posted on the Socialist Party website on 30 January 2012 and may vary slightly from the version subsequently printed in The Socialist.
On Saturday 28 January, up to 1,000 people in north London marched from Downhills primary school, Tottenham, to Haringey Civic Centre, Wood Green.
Downhills is one of four primary schools in the borough faced with forced 'academisation' - being taken out of local authority control to be run by unelected businesses and organisations - by education secretary Michael Gove.
The marchers included staff, parents and pupils from the schools, joined by local residents and trade unionists from across North London. They were there to give an answer to Tory lies that schools like Downhills are failing their children and that putting the running of such schools into the hands of private companies is somehow a solution to the challenges that inner city schools face.
The demonstration made it very clear that people in Haringey are proud of their community schools - and that Gove and the Tories have no idea or any real concern for these challenges. But they are ideologically committed to academies and putting them in the hands of their friends in big business, such as Tory golden-boy and Carpetright millionaire Lord Harris.
The private company due to take over Downhills has no experience in running a primary school with the kind of social make-up of the schools in Haringey.
Academies, first introduced by the previous New Labour government, have no better a record than local authority run schools. It is proper funding, not privatisation-by-another-name that schools like Downhill need.
It was no accident that the march ended with a rally on the steps of the council offices - the marchers were clear that what they wanted was a community school run by elected representatives of the community - and not for profit.
In the 3 May local elections Coventry Socialist Party councillor Dave Nellist will be seeking re-election.
Few people have won as much support and respect among working class people in Coventry than Dave and the Socialist Party. This respect arises from the decades of work and struggle both have conducted throughout the city; work and struggle that has intensified over the last 12 months as the temperature of class struggle has increased.
Dave is the sole voice on Coventry council for the ordinary people of Coventry and the only vote of opposition to the Con-Dem government and Labour council's draconian attacks on jobs and services.
At the 30 November pensions 3,000-strong Coventry strike rally, there were huge cheers for Dave's speech of support and solidarity but heckles from hundreds of council workers as the Labour council leader attempted to convince workers he was on their side.
This year Dave has already forced the council back on a whole range of issues: forcing the council to drop and refund the doubled bill it had dumped on some town centre residents for their parking scheme, and forcing the council to host a meeting of city trade union youth, campaigns, and students to discuss a strategy to campaign against the tripling of students fees, axing of EMA and to fight for jobs for the city's young people.
The battle to get Dave re-elected has started, with multiple weekly canvassing sessions taking place. There are mass canvasses of St Michael's ward organised on Sunday 19 February, 18 March, 1 April, 15 April, 29 April.
Contact lennyshailduffy@gmail.com if you would like to help.
This week there's been another set of statistics showing working and middle class people are finding the prospect of £50,000 worth of debt enough to make them rethink plans to embark on a university education. Official UCAS statistics, have confirmed what Socialist Students has said all along. There's been an 8.7% drop in applications for the first year of students facing the government's enormous hike in tuition fees.
Last week the Socialist reported that the National Union of Students (NUS) had called a 'week of action' and a walkout of students against the government's plans for cuts and privatisation set to devastate our universities. Socialist Students welcomes the announcement, but says that the NUS leadership must 'put their money where their mouth is' and start building for mass action.
We call on NUS to immediately name the day for this student strike which should include university, college and school students across the country.
As some unions are trying to coordinate another strike over attacks on pensions, we argue that NUS should co-ordinate the student walkout with strike action taken by workers. Free education and the reinstatement of EMA must also be central demands; these are inextricably linked to all of the government's attacks on education.
The 2010 student movement showed that the right-wing, New Labour affiliated bureaucracy in the leadership of NUS cannot be trusted with the fight to defend our future. While students walked out of colleges, schools and universities in their thousands, NUS saw fit to condemn student protesters and organise a candle lit vigil - in reality a funeral for education - on the day parliament voted on tripling fees.
This latest announcement of action marks a shift in NUS brought about by that movement and by the big youth and student actions taken since then, such as the Youth Fight for Jobs Jarrow March.
Socialist Students members and other activists across the country need to be organising to put pressure on NUS not to sell us out again. The fact that the leadership have felt forced to announce action is evidence of the huge anger bubbling under the surface. We need to mobilise on our campuses to force our local students unions and, in turn, the national leadership to prepare for a massive strike.
On the afternoon of Monday 30 January over 100 people held a rally and march in Chesterfield before the first consultation meeting into the future of youth services in Derbyshire. Young people from Eckington youth club had collected petition signatures to defend the services.
Derbyshire county council is proposing the closure of 29 youth centres and the sacking of 157 youth workers. The Tory-controlled council justifies this attack on the basis that, according to their figures, only 28% of 13-19 year olds use them regularly.
The leader of the council, Andrew Lewer, says that the youth service is therefore too expensive to run. What is really behind these proposals is the desire to have these vital services run by volunteers as opposed to full-time paid staff.
Gregory Roberts, one of the young people that helped organise the rally, said: "I don't think they see behind the scenes what the youth workers do for us. They don't see it as a valuable thing that they are doing. I think there are other ways of making money other than cutting these services.
"They've obviously held this meeting at a time when people are at work to stop them from coming to it. But it's still clear the support that we've got."
After the march, over 200 people attempted to get into the consultation meeting but were refused entry at first, being told that they should have registered beforehand. Eventually, the meeting was moved into a bigger room to accommodate everyone.
The council's 'consultation' is in reality forcing ordinary people who are desperately trying to save the services they rely on to tell the council what other service should be cut instead.
Young people and their supporters in Derbyshire are determined to carry on fighting to defend youth services and jobs in the county, but the only way to secure victory is to unite service users and workers to say no to all cuts.
Jaime Davies points out in 'Con-Demned to unemployment' (Issue 702) that there are only 463,000 job vacancies advertised with Jobcentre Plus for 2.5 million unemployed people.
463,000 is the figure Chris Grayling, the Tory minister, uses to beat the unemployed with. In fact only about one in six of these vacancies is a real job.
In my office 150 adverts were placed in our catchment area in one week. Only 25 of these were placed on a statistical return to our district office. When district queried this difference, staff explained that those were the real job vacancies. The other 125 were duplicates, agencies, commission only or catalogue and leaflet distribution.
Employers are now able to input vacancies directly to the jobs database. It is extremely difficult to get 'rogue' employers banned from advertising with Jobcentre Plus, although we have managed this with a couple of double-glazing firms, including one that pays commission only and paid a worker £1 for obtaining £40,000 worth of sales!
There were ten or eleven vacancies a couple of months ago, each for an interpreter in a different African language and for the London area - hardly a series of jobs appropriate for a large number of applicants.
People who come in to use the job points in my Jobcentre are always complaining that they do a local search and it comes up with London, Glasgow, Southampton or somewhere else hundreds of miles away. This is because, if there is nothing local, the system provides 'near matches'.
So, not only are there only a sixth of the vacancies, there may be none in your area.
I am 23 and have been unemployed for four months. Prior to this, I was working in an unskilled job as a temporary worker for a higher education institution.
Recruitment agencies employing temporary workers have increasingly become a fact of life. It is estimated that only around 5% of current vacancies are for full-time permanent positions.
Agencies are used to undercut the terms, conditions and wages of permanent staff. It can provoke a 'divide and rule' tension among workers, as temps start to resent the permanent staff, who are usually better paid and may be in more responsible positions.
Some unions seem reluctant to represent agency workers. When I talked to colleagues about being involved in a union, most did not believe that the union could do anything, and some did not even think they were allowed to join.
Agencies are often appallingly run. For people who chose to work bank holidays, they would receive only the usual rate. At my workplace, a fourth shift was added, for a derisory extra 50p an hour, despite the fact that those working it would be doing, in some cases, a 60-hour week. I could barely manage a 45-hour week because I had a one and a half hour commute, as I could find no jobs in my local area!
Nonetheless it was not uncommon for the agency to ring me up and ask me to come in for a shift which was due to start in half an hour. Yet people who could not attend a shift could face dismissal if they did not inform them the previous day!
Wages of £6 or £7 an hour are barely enough to get by on, especially when shifts are so erratic, making it difficult to plan the week. Many of my colleagues had families which made an already impossible situation even worse.
On 15 January South East Wales Socialist Party held a youth campaign meeting. The aim of the meeting was to get all of the young Socialist Party members in the area, including students, workers and unemployed young people, together to discuss issues and upcoming tasks.
We discussed the Occupy movement, the Socialist Party national youth meeting, Marxist discussion groups and social media.
We also discussed Youth Fight for Jobs at some length and one of the ideas that came out of that discussion was to have an event for the campaign in the biggest city in the region, Cardiff.
As the capitalist politicians arrived in Brussels for the 30 January EU summit they were met with a clear and determined message from the Belgian working class - a magnificent 24 hour general strike - the first in the country for nearly 20 years - in defiance of the summit's austerity agenda.
German chancellor Angela Merkel wrote the cuts agenda of the summit in letters a mile high, when she arrogantly declared that "the debt brakes will be binding and valid forever" as she agreed the fiscal pact that is supposed to solve the Euro crisis. This is not a fiscal pact, but an austerity-max pact; an agreement to inflict untold misery on the working classes of Europe, in order to try and satisfy the vultures of the finance markets.
The capitalist classes of Europe are all adopting the same policy of attempting to make the working class pay for the capitalist economic crisis. In Britain, Cameron stood aside from the pact in order to pacify the right of the Tory party, but is implementing virtually identical policies.
The pact's 'debt brakes' are supposed to be written into the constitution of every participating country - making it illegal to run a deficit, with countries facing fines of up to 0.25% of GDP if they do so. This could never be fully implemented. Estonia is currently the only country in the EU that has a budget surplus; all others, even Germany, have a deficit. What is more, the drive for austerity will do nothing to solve the Euro crisis, but will only fan its flames.
The eurozone as a whole is back in recession with unemployment reaching 10%, the highest level since the Euro was created. In Spain one quarter of the population is now unemployed. Young people are being written off as a 'lost generation' across the continent. In Italy youth unemployment is 28%, in Greece 43%, in Spain an appalling 51%.
In a continent of growing misery, the population of Greece face the most acute hell. Over the last two years 91% of the population have suffered a fall in income, of an average of one third. The nightmare the Greek population is suffering is summed up by the human tragedy of hundreds of families giving up their children because they can no longer afford to feed them.
Yet the conditions for the Greek bailout currently under negotiation are to inflict yet more cuts on the living standards of the Greek population, inevitably accelerating the deflationary spiral in which the country is trapped. The Euro summit largely avoided discussing Greece, the 'elephant in the room'.
However, in the days before the summit a leaked memo from the German government declared that Greece's "disappointing compliance so far" meant that the Greek government should be forced to hand over control of all tax and spending decisions to a eurozone 'commissioner'. This would have literally meant colonial rule of Greece, no different to the 'governors' who ruled the colonies of the British Empire. The memo has been retreated from, but the reality remains little different, with the German capitalist class, as the strongest economic power in Europe, using the EU institutions to dictate terms to the countries of the periphery.
This offers no solution for the eurozone. On the contrary, as the Socialist has long argued, the eurozone's attempt to unify Europe on a capitalist basis will inevitably turn into its opposite. As the crisis has intensified so has the attempt to tighten the bonds of the eurozone.
As anger at 'austerity Europe' increases there will be growing demands for referenda to allow the people to vote on whether to accept the austerity pact. In Ireland our sister section is leading a campaign for a referendum to take place and for a 'no' vote. It is possible, as a result of a massive campaign to frighten the Irish working class about the consequences of being 'out in the cold', the 'yes' vote will be able to win a majority in a referendum. Incredibly it is being suggested that even if Ireland and other countries reject the treaty, it will only take nine of the 17 for it to go ahead.
The attempt to tighten the bonds of Europe will inevitably result in an increase in the centrifugal forces - of nationalism and splits - which will pull the eurozone apart. Greece will be forced out of the eurozone, possibly very quickly.
The bond yields of Portugal have now reached 16%, as the financial vultures circle on their next prey, which they calculate will be forced to follow Greece. Spain and Italy, far bigger economies, also remain in clear danger. Meanwhile funds available to rescue countries remain highly inadequate, nowhere near what is needed to bail out Spain or Italy.
The capitalist classes of Europe will continue to scramble to save the eurozone, recognising the catastrophic economic consequences of it fracturing, or even worse a disorderly collapse.
The European Central Bank (ECB) has provided almost €500 billion to the banks at the end of December, in an attempt to counter the credit crunch. However, it is expected that banks will demand two or three times as much when the next auction takes place at the end of February. The possibility is still posed of one or more banks collapsing, triggering a dramatic acceleration of the crisis.
The working classes of Europe have already shown their determination to resist austerity. General strikes and mass demonstrations have swept the continent. This movement needs to grow in the coming months. Determined resistance needs to be linked to a vision for a better future.
A socialist alternative needs to be put forward in every country of Europe - beginning with demands like: cancel the debt and nationalise the banks under democratic, popular control, and going on to explain the possibility of building a democratic socialist society capable of meeting the needs of all.
Without this there is the danger that right-wing, populist nationalists will seek to take advantage of the crisis by blaming foreign 'enemies' and migrants. It is high time for the workers' movement in Europe to plan concerted action to rally opposition and go onto the offensive against capitalism.
Revolution is a process, not a single act. This process is still continuing, which can be seen by the new wave of protests which has taken place in Tunisia, especially since the beginning of the year.
Every day, new protests against the authorities, new strikes for better social conditions, sit-ins by people expressing their grievances are occurring all over the country.
The anniversary of the revolution has provided a momentum for what seems to be the biggest wave of mobilisations since one year ago, which has taken in some areas an almost 'insurrectional' character. In the mining areas around Gafsa, the situation is explosive, with regular strikes and demonstrations, and entire localities being self-run by inhabitants.
A regional general strike has also taken place and lasted five days in the governorate (region) of Siliana, in the south, between 13 and 18 January, to protest against poverty and the social marginalisation of the region.
Revolution in Arabic means a complete, fundamental break from the past, but this has not happened. All these protests show that people have still got much to fight for, that conditions for the majority have not fundamentally changed.
The objective conditions in society that caused the revolutionary upheaval are still present. In many respects daily life for the majority has actually got worse. Unemployment has literarily exploded, while this issue was at the heart of people's demands in the first place.
Since 14 January of last year, there have been 107 cases of new self-immolations in the country, with at least six during the first week of this year. Most of them are unemployed people, desperate and ready to do anything to get a job.
There has been no fundamental break from the past system; consequently it is entirely predictable that the mass of people continue to struggle. So it is clear that the revolution - people looking for real change in society, and erupting en masse onto the scene to impose it - is still alive.
The first thing to note is that the capitalist class was relying on the old regime of President Ben Ali to defend its interests. When Ben Ali was overthrown, the capitalists were initially destabilised. Faced with a revolution that threatened their social existence, they had to concede important demands especially in the political sphere, in an attempt to restore a certain control.
Under the pressure of the mobilisations, a lot of leading figures in the state machine were removed, the ex-ruling party, Ben Ali's RCD, was dissolved, etc. The movement was so powerful that even the commentators in the capitalist-controlled media were forced to admit that this was a revolution.
However, since the initial revolutionary upsurge, there has been a conscious attempt by the capitalists to concentrate attention solely on questions of political democracy and political representation, but not to concede on the fundamental social foundations of capitalism.
All the elements linked to the capitalist class have deployed efforts to derail the revolutionary process towards the safe channels of 'legality', towards the old existing constitution and institutions. But it was the revolutionary youth and workers who imposed the election for a new Constituent Assembly, after the second mass occupation of the Kasbah Square.
The majority have no clear objectives in which direction to take society, the political consciousness is quite mixed. The mass of the people are trying to navigate themselves through the daily poverty and corrupt state bureaucracy bearing down on them.
However, there is a realisation among many that simply by removing the figurehead of the old regime, their lives have not and will not improve fundamentally.
People are angry and frustrated by the lack of progress. Many lost friends and relatives in the revolution, but see that their sacrifices have been hijacked by the ruling class. Even the martyrs' families have seen their cases denied real justice. A lot of the killers are still running free, including some whose identity is known.
And the people injured by the state's repression in the beginning of the year have been denied proper medical assistance. 90% of the people who were shot still have the bullet in their bodies, because of the lack of serious medical treatment! A lot have lost their jobs, or even their lives, since. In some cases the police have even been sent against them when they were protesting.
The 'moderate' religious party Ennahda was the main winner of December's parliamentary elections. It made gains at the expense of the other parties because it exploited the pressing social issues - poverty and unemployment, etc - of the majority.
Ennahda was also able to convince many voters that the other 'secular' parties were 'anti-religious' and wanted to attack Islam. This was made possible because most secular parties encouraged the political debate to be polarised in such a way that the burning social issues were not really addressed.
Ennahda also bought votes with money from the Qatar regime and elsewhere. Ennahda members promised voters gifts of all sorts, such as sacrificial sheep for the feast of 'Aid al-Adha'. When these didn't materialise there were protests.
It is not so much that Ennahda is a strong force in society; rather it is the case that the other opposition parties are very weak. And Ennahda was then able to fill the vacuum.
However, Ennahda will lose support as it fails to deliver in terms of improving the social conditions of the poor. This cannot fail to happen, as Ennahda's policy is nothing but a new version of the old regime's policies. And many people are drawing such a conclusion.
In January Ennahda attempted to impose figures associated with the old regime at the head of the public media. This provoked such an outcry that they had to step back.
Already Ennahda has experienced a fall in support in the opinion polls, from 41% to 28%. And a certain part of Ennahda's electoral support is on the streets to protest against the party they voted for in October. That does not mean an automatic drop in support for right-wing political Islam in general - as more fundamentalist wings are also trying to step in - but it shows that a significant layer of Ennahda's votes is not based on firm ground.
In December 2011, a new national bureau of the UGTT [Union Générale Tunisienne du Travail, the Tunisian TUC] was elected. This is significant, as this new leadership is currently in a 'cold war' with the government. Among the 13 members of the new bureau, there are nine who purport to be from a 'Marxist' tradition.
The UGTT is potentially more powerful than any political party in the country, and to an extent the new leadership understands this. The UGTT leaders are not revolutionary. Despite coming from a Marxist background, they are not relating their day-to-day activities and propaganda to the socialist transformation of society.
Nonetheless they are much more to the left than the previous leadership and not directly associated with Ben Ali's dictatorial regime as the previous ones were.
A number of them come from a militant background, they know that the crisis of capitalism is worsening the attacks on the working class and are more attuned to the mood of the rank-and-file workers. They are therefore pressurised to speak the 'language of the class struggle' and adopt a more radical stand in relation to the new government.
There are workers' struggles breaking out everywhere in Tunisia at the present time, including some key sectors of the working class, for example in the gas industry where a blockade of the port of Gabès has taken place. The oil sector has also been hit by strike actions. Workers and poor have also been involved in blocking the railways and roads.
Figures have been released stating there are on average four road blockades taking place every day. There have been sit-ins and in some cases hunger strikes, to improve working conditions and to demand more jobs.
These strikes have not only addressed social and economic demands, but have also been political in character - demanding the removal of corrupt officials and managers associated with the old regime, and targeting the new government's impotence in the face of their grievances.
The main challenge is for the UGTT to turn itself into a democratic and fighting body, working to strengthen the organisation of the working class, including orientating towards the massive amount of angry unemployed, and to embrace a positive programme which can challenge the rule of capitalism.
Of course we are not utopian. Without a mass party for working people that can be a lever for achieving a socialist revolution, all sorts of prospects could open up. That's why building such a party is now the most important task for revolutionaries.
The imperialist powers want to showcase Tunisia as a democratic 'model' of a capitalist-controlled transition. Imperialism would be panicked if there is a workers' movement going in the direction of controlling the economy. That is something they want to avoid at all costs because of the consequences for the entire region. This is the reason why there is such an aggressive ideological campaign in the media to attack workers on strike, a campaign aimed at scaring people, saying that strikes and sit-ins are "pushing away investors and destroying jobs", etc.
But this campaign seems to have little effect on the working class. The capitalists expected that with a new elected government, it would have sufficient authority to bring social stability. The demand from the new President of the Republic, arguing for a "social truce of six months" has reflected this. But it does not work. The continuous pressure put on the government because of the struggles and strikes could result in imperialist countries providing the Tunisian government with more financial support to calm the situation. But their margin of manoeuvre is limited, given the general economic conjuncture.
The left has historically played a central role in many important working class struggles and social gains, including on women's rights and to provide a public healthcare system.
There are now many organisations on the left. However, the litmus test in Tunisia today is the application of a socialist programme to take the workers' struggles forward.
The country could experience a Greek-style period of protracted struggle, because of the lack of a mass workers' party with a socialist programme to carry the movement towards challenging the capitalist system.
There can be no permanent solution for society's problems within capitalism. Those forces on the left who argue that a first, 'democratic capitalist' stage needs to be fulfilled before talking of socialism are misleading the working class. But capitalism is only interested in exploiting workers, not in putting in place a real democracy.
The only way out of the impasse is for the working class to achieve socialism. Concretely, a socialist programme must address the questions of a full jobs programme based on sharing the work and on massive investment in public infrastructure, a decent welfare for all, workers' control of industry and banks... But unfortunately the left does not put forward a clear programme on these issues.
The CWI in Tunisia demands the non-payment of the country's 'debt' from the old regime, the nationalisation of the banks and of the entire wealth of the ex-ruling clans under democratic control of the working class and the population, and a government based on the workers and on the people who have made the revolution, in order to fulfil these measures. At the moment we argue for the organisation of a general strike as a first step to unite in one powerful show of strength all the people who are struggling in different parts of the country.
After the revolution the media opened up a bit in Tunisia. So instead of the usual football matches on TV, we were also able to see workers' struggles in Europe, such as in Greece. Greece is to Europe what Tunisia was to the Maghreb and the region, in the sense that these workers' struggles have been hugely inspiring.
In Britain there has recently been a regeneration of the trade unions and workers' strikes after a relatively long period of quiescence. This is very significant, as it also shows the limitations of the rulers' propaganda, and how the situation can be transformed if working people organise and take their fate into their hands.
The Committee for a Workers' International (CWI) is the socialist international organisation to which the Socialist Party is affiliated.
The CWI is organised in 45 countries and works to unite the working class and oppressed peoples against global capitalism and to fight for a socialist world.
At January's TUC Public Service Liaison Group (PSLG) meeting the leadership of Unison and the GMB confirmed their decision to sign up to the government's heads of agreement on pensions. The government had offered no real concessions on their previous position: that workers should work longer, pay more for their pensions and get less.
Given that unions who refused to sign have remained in the negotiations, it appears signing gained nothing. Even PCS, whose forthright rejection of the proposed outline agreement saw them excluded, have now been re-admitted to the talks on the civil service pension scheme.
In reality, the urgency of the leaderships of Unison and the GMB and others in signing was to send a signal to both the government and to their members that the dispute was suspended and there was no prospect of building on the incredible two million-strong public sector general strike on 30 November (N30).
Chancellor George Osborne's autumn statement threatened over 700,000 public sector job losses, widespread privatisation of public services, crucially including the NHS, and a full frontal assault on workers' employment rights, including facility time for union reps.
So now is the time to fight. The cuts are being felt and their threat recognised. The RCN and BMA health workers' organisations are preparing to ballot. The National Union of Students has said it will call a walkout against the cuts and privatisation in education.
Workers in the private sector in Unilever, construction electricians and the Wincanton oil tanker drivers, to name but a few, are pushing ahead with strike action against attacks on pensions and pay and conditions. RMT members in the privately-owned Docklands Light Railway have forced a favourable bonus arrangement from the employer for work during the Olympics.
A defeat on public sector pensions would be a setback for the whole organised working class. But the struggle is far from over.
At the PSLG Mark Serwotka, PCS general secretary, invited the 'rejectionist' unions to meet together to discuss the possibility of coordinating further action. On Wednesday 25 January PCS, NUT, Unite, Nipsa, UCU, POA and others met.
The Socialist Party supports the idea raised by at least PCS, NUT and UCU of a further one-day strike in March before the increased pension contributions are imposed on 1 April as a minimum. This should involve as many unions as possible including Unite, with members in health, local government and the civil service.
The strike of 750,000 workers on 30 June (J30) put huge pressure on the right-wing union leaders and made it virtually impossible for them to resist being involved on N30. Further action, even if smaller than N30, could act as a lever on Unison and the GMB, who could be balloting their members in health and local government on the government's offer at the same time.
A campaign to mobilise members for the next stage of this battle could counter doubts about the breaking up of the N30 coalition. But members of all unions should be encouraged to continue the struggle for coordinated action in March.
What have the workers won?
Well what they've got is a £900 bonus paid at £100 a week and then they've got overtime paid at 'time and three quarters' for any overtime worked during the games. And if they want to they can get guaranteed five hours overtime a week.
If they choose to do that then the least that they're going to come out with is £2,500 and the middle to higher earners will be taking home something in the region of £3,500.
How was this achieved in a time of austerity?
Well, basically by good trade union organisation. In the Docklands we're the only trade union there. We have over 90% membership and we've got a very determined and combative workforce.
We're going to make sure that they've a recompense for productivity during the games - the fact that they'll have to be more flexible and the fact that they'll have to work harder. They were determined that they weren't going to be cheated out of that.
There seems to be an escalation of attacks on rail workers' wages, such as in the Evening Standard and elsewhere.
Well this reached its zenith on the BBC London news on Thursday 26 January. They made up a quote from the Fire Brigades Union attacking the RMT.
The FBU have now refuted that absolutely and put in a demand for an apology from the BBC London news.
They also had a representative from the police federation who condemned our Dockland workers' deal. Well I have to say I've never seen that man on the TV before fighting for the terms and conditions of rank and file police officers.
I've never seen him on there complaining about the billions of pounds that the rich are avoiding in paying in tax by putting them in offshore havens, money that could fund the police force, not just during the Olympic Games but for years into the future.
Of course the RMT would support any workers demanding that they get paid bonuses during the Olympics including rank and file police officers.
It's a pity that someone who purports to represent workers pleaded that we shouldn't be paid when it's got absolutely no bearing on what his members will receive from the government.
I'd also make the point that Docklands is a private company. It's not publicly funded anyway.
This version of this article was first posted on the Socialist Party website on 30 January 2012 and may vary slightly from the version subsequently printed in The Socialist.
Since 10 January Unison's right-wing lay leadership, and the bureaucracy at whose bidding they act, have been attempting to sell their position on the local government pension scheme (LGPS) around the regions. Their hypocrisy in this endeavour is at times breathtaking, having abandoned the campaign of strike action, leaving the militant unions to fight alone, they nonetheless pretend that if necessary they will go back to strike action!
This is done on the basis that the motion carried by all the affected Service Group Executive committees refers to an on-going dispute with the government, and the ballot results being "live". But few Unison members can expect further strike action following the break with those unions prepared to fight for a decent deal on pensions.
What is most likely to happen is that a few minor concessions will be negotiated, still leaving members in a 'pay more, work longer, get less' situation. A shabby deal will be recommended to members in a ballot, accompanied by a campaign of glossy literature and computerised presentations, misrepresenting the deal as something good.
But the hypocrisy does not stop there, they are also attempting to pretend that they have not agreed to the government's 'heads of agreement', the principles that are the prerequisite for continuing talks. The motion referred to above contains the line: "To reserve our position on the detail of the LGPS principles and timetable until firm proposals emerge from the negotiations".
The nonsensical nature of this piece of sophistry can best be illustrated by the fact that the principles include the commitment that the age that members can draw their full pension will be linked to the increasing age that they can draw the old age pension. What "detail" can possibly make any difference to that?
In reality Unison's position has been shown to be pathetic by the fact that both PCS and Unite have been allowed into the talks without agreeing to these principles. Further action by the fighting unions will put pressure on Unison's leadership, as Unison members refuse to cross picket lines, and question why their union is sitting on the sidelines.
Unison branches should pass motions demanding that Unison join with those unions who are prepared to take further action to defend members' pensions.
The forthcoming elections for the Service Group Executive committees will give Unison members the chance to have their say on the mishandling of the pensions dispute, by electing fighting leaderships in each Service Group.
The first strike in Chesterfield Remploy's 60-year history was rock solid after a 93% vote in favour. Many workers joined the picket line for the one-day strike on 26 January.
The 50 workers, all with a disability, make hand-fitted shoes for people with foot problems like arthritis and diabetes. Remploy is government-owned. Most shoes are supplied through the NHS. Any profit is ploughed back into the business.
But instead of supplying the NHS directly as Remploy used to, shoes are now sold to Webster Shoes very cheaply - which then sells them to the NHS with a huge mark-up. Now Simon Webster, chief executive of Webster Shoes, is trying to take over the factory. Workers suspect he wants to take over the order book, make a quick profit and then move on.
"This is privatisation through the backdoor", said Michael Hall, Remploy GMB Yorkshire President.
Already non-disabled workers are being taken on with worse pay and conditions - no final salary pension, less holidays and sick pay.
Many trainees have been through Remploy over the years, getting a proper training with trade union terms and conditions. A private owner is likely to use trainees as cheap labour.
The future of Remploy is in the balance. "This government is more or less continuing what the last Labour government started," said a GMB rep. Labour closed 30 factories and the remaining 54 factories are under threat of closure in 2013 when public funding runs out.
A lot of public money was used to set up Enterprise Businesses, but then Remploy didn't get the contracts from public organisations. How can it make sense for public bodies, like schools and hospitals, to buy from private companies and put disabled workers in the public sector out of work? Many will have difficulty finding another job in this dire economic situation.
Building action throughout Remploy and linking up with other workers fighting to defend jobs and pensions can knock the government back.
123 oil tanker drivers employed by road haulage firm Wincanton began a week-long strike on Tuesday 24 January. Employed on the ConocoPhillips contract, they deliver fuel to Jet petrol stations. After a 83% vote for action, these Unite members are striking for job security - they want ConocoPhillips to guarantee they will abide by TUPE (Transfer of Undertakings Protection of Employees) if they end or fragment the Wincanton contract.
In effect, the tanker drivers are being subcontracted to ConocoPhillips who want to cut costs by putting the Jet contact out to the lowest bidder. This would see the Wincanton drivers either lose their jobs or see their terms and conditions cut if they aren't protected by TUPE.
Three major fuel distribution depots are affected, in Kingsbury, Stockton-on-Tees and the biggest on Immingham docks, where nearly all the 86 drivers and fitters manned picket lines in and out of the refinery depot.
The strike is solid at all three depots with support flooding in from other Unite drivers' branches. The union has served notice of a further week long strike starting on Thursday 2 February. The only disappointment for the drivers is that due to the anti-union laws, they will have to go back to work for two days before continuing the strike.
To the sound of hoots of support from passing traffic, the delivery lorries normally supplying Walls Ice Cream were backing up, as drivers refused to cross the Unilever picket line in Gloucester on 25 January.
The lorries turned round next to a banner reading 'Unilever the greatest thieves since Robert Maxwell'.
The first national strike action to hit the world's third biggest consumer products company, started in December involving Unite, GMB and Usdaw.
This was after management broke previous promises when deciding to replace its final salary pension scheme with an inferior career average, affecting 5,000 workers.
Despite repeated union appeals and the offer of talks at the conciliation service Acas, Unilever has refused to meet and instead scrapped Christmas parties, gifts and bonuses.
So action has continued since 17 January for ten days, across all twelve British sites - from the Croespenmaen Pot Noodle factory in Wales and the Persil factory in Warrington, to the Colman's mustard factory in Norwich.
According to its profile: "No company touches so many people's lives in so many ways".
When the Unilever Crumlin plant in south Wales comes out on strike, every single one of the 180 workers does their shifts on the picket line.
It makes for a very strong dispute. In the latest strike from 26-28 January, this was shown very clearly.
Eight fitters were told they hadn't been included in the documentation to the company and they had to go in or their jobs were on the line.
Very tense scenes erupted, when they tried to go in to work. In the end, the pickets let them through, but only on the adamant instructions of the full time official.
But after a discussion with the manager, he admitted they couldn't be forced to cross a picket line, and they came back out again to support the strike!
As previously reported in the Socialist, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) is planning to close all 39 of its local offices and centralise operations at its Swansea headquarters.
This is part of a wider strategy to move away from face- to-face service to an electronic service. Not only will this move locally based facilities with experienced and knowledgeable staff away from the general public and the motor trade, but it will cut over 1,200 jobs.
PCS is strongly opposing these plans and a ballot on industrial action is to be held, not just at DVLA but across the entire Department for Transport group.
This reflects the fact that job losses and privatisation are a common theme throughout the department.
Lunchtime protests (12 noon - 2pm) are planned at all DVLA local offices on 9 February. Please visit the DVLA web site for locations of local offices and to respond to the consultation, which closes on 6 March.
+ For more on all these and other disputes see www.socialistparty.org.uk
Workers at Whipps Cross hospital in east London rallied in support of their Unison branch secretary Len Hockey.
Len is under attack from his employer Initial Rentokil. Shockingly he is also being attacked by his own trade union, in spite of Len's branch being given official awards by Unison for good trade union organisation!
The second high speed line (HS2) in Britain (the first being the channel tunnel link from London to Paris) would initially connect London to Birmingham by 2026 with a journey time of 49 minutes.
The line would later join Birmingham to Manchester and Leeds, reducing journey times to Manchester to one hour 20 minutes from London.
The route has already been modified, due to environmental concerns. The trains will be able to carry over 1,000 passengers at a time, making them more fuel efficient than car travel and short haul flights.
In France, for instance, some airline companies no longer offer flights from Paris to Lyon because the journey times are faster by train.
As many people use rail as in the 1950s, but with only half the network available because of decades of cuts and closures.
Some have argued that disused and existing lines could be utilised instead of building any new lines.
In fact, part of the proposed route for HS2 uses part of the "great central line", which was closed in 1966. This line was built to larger and more modern European standards 100 years ago, but did not have a direct route out of London, and eventually went towards the east midlands rather than Birmingham.
However, high speed trains will travel at 250 miles per hour requiring purpose built straight track alignment. Most of Britain's rail network was built over 150 years ago, and is unsuitable for high speed rail.
As socialists we are in favour of efficient, comfortable and affordable public transport systems. Anyone who has travelled by high speed rail, such as the Bullet train in China, will have experienced such benefits.
There are concerns over HS2's effect on the countryside, that investment will be cut on the rest of the railways and that high ticket costs will deter people from using it. This has been the experience where high speed lines have been built in countries such as France and Spain. Massive investment is required to modernise and expand the existing transport system, as well as spending on high speed rail.
Privatisation has resulted in increased fares and overcrowding, while private rail companies are receiving huge public subsidies.
Rather than opposing HS2, socialists should campaign for affordable fares as part of bringing the whole transport system into public ownership and democratic workers' control.
My involvement in campaigning against HS2 arose from supporting an anti-cuts 2011 election candidate in a local working class ward. The most common question on the door was about our attitude to HS2, as all the main parties supported it and the line would be 100 metres from many people's homes.
After much discussion, research and exploration, Walton Court and Hawkslade Stop HS2 was set up. We collected 2,000 signatures from the estate, showing the depth of opposition. We became one of over 70 groups opposed to this scheme.
In the press, opponents of HS2 have been portrayed as only Tory councils and well-to-do landowners wishing to protect their own interests. But it is clear the line will also affect many working class communities.
I was therefore disappointed to see leading trade unionists supporting the HS2 scheme. Many opposing HS2 believe that the £32 billion cost of HS2 would be better spent on expanding the current rail infrastructure.
The evidence to support the building of the scheme is open to question, especially job creation, usage and that it will ease the already crowded existing services.
No stations are planned between the Heathrow and Birmingham airport interchanges. The service is proposed for business use and therefore will lead to tickets priced at a premium, meaning working people will continue to use the cheaper existing service. The Netherlands HS scheme is being bailed out by the government precisely because of this.
Environmental and social consequences will hit working people living close to the line the hardest, as they won't be able to afford to move, owing to the high cost of living in the south east.
Yes, we do need rail services that are fit for purpose and existing rail services do need a massive amount of investment. But this project will not solve this and is likely to be a white elephant once built.
This campaign is not going to go away. Campaigners are likely to stand as independent candidates against those supporting HS2, as well as local communities taking part in mass civil disobedience.
We are for jobs, services and investing in infrastructure, but not so that multinational corporations can profit at our expense.
For more than 20 years, the people of Val di Susa in the Piedmont region of Italy have fought tenaciously against a high speed rail line linking Turin to Lyons in France.
The latest protest against the line took place on 28 January, one day after 26 activists were arrested.
This beautiful, narrow valley has already got a main road, a motorway and a railway line that is only running at 30% capacity.
Why not upgrade the existing railway, ask protesters, at a cost much lower than the estimated €20 billion needed for the high speed link? They dismiss as hot air talk about 'creating local jobs' when governments from right and 'left' have presided over the destruction of thousands of jobs.
Tunneling into the mountain will release harmful uranium and asbestos, damaging the health of people in the area. Only the big construction companies, the bankers, the speculators and the mafia will benefit from this destructive project.
In June, 2,000 riot police armed with (illegal) CS gas were sent into the area. They attacked the peaceful Maddalena protester camp. Several protesters were injured and hospitalised.
The area is now effectively under occupation by Italian state forces with a razor wire fence policed by armed patrols. The trigger for the invasion was a deadline set for European Union funding. If work on the project didn't start, no money would be forthcoming.
The government has said protesters are all violent outside agitators. This couldn't be further from the truth.
Local people of all ages are actively involved in the campaign. Thousands have been mobilised, often at a moment's notice.
Solidarity from workers and young people beyond the valley is growing. FIOM, the metal workers union, organised a one day regional strike.
Former MEP Joe Higgins and current MEP Paul Murphy (Socialist Party Ireland) have visited the valley and raised the issue in the European parliament.
Sozialistische Alternative (SAV) members have been involved in the opposition to the 'Stuttgart 21' high speed rail line since 1995.
SAV members have spoken at demonstrations of over 100,000 people. We have helped to organise construction blockades, build the youth wing of the movement and intensify links with other campaigns like in Val di Susa, Italy.
People oppose the waste of tax money, the destruction of parts of the Schlossgarten (Castle Park) and the threat to the second biggest source of mineral water in Europe.
Stuttgart 21 would link Stuttgart airport to Ulm (between Stuttgart and Munich), and probably increase the use of the airport. Munich airport is getting a third runway, which also has massive opposition.
In Stuttgart, the current main railway station would be replaced by an underground station with less capacity. Property speculators want to get their hands on inner city land which is currently used for track installations.
Protests contributed to the election of the first "Green" state prime minister. But the new state government of Greens and Social Democrats (who support Stuttgart 21) has not changed much.
In January police have broken up blockades against the demolition of Stuttgart's old station.
Green leader Caroline Lucas MP and her party are attempting to build on the unions' rift with Labour to encourage trade union support and funding to break from the Labour Party and support them instead.
Due to the demise of Labour as a mass workers' party over recent decades it is easy to understand how the Greens may appeal to people disgusted by the lack of choice in the three main parties. This included me at one time! But, to decide whether the Greens are a real alternative we must look at how they act in power and decide if this represents a way forward or a dead end.
The Greens have little chance of becoming elected to government in Britain under the present electoral system. But in other countries (with different electoral systems) they have formed governments.
In Ireland the Greens, in coalition in government with the country's main capitalist party Fianna Fáil, passed through Ireland's biggest ever austerity package, including cutting the minimum wage. This led to their electoral wipe-out.
The Greens in Britain take no responsibility for their Irish counterparts - perhaps it is unfair to judge them on that? So let's look closer to home... to Green councillors elected to local authorities in Britain.
The leader of the Norfolk Greens, Phillip Hardy, defected to the Tories late last year. The Greens argue that this is one rogue councillor - perhaps it is unfair to judge them on one incident?
Liverpool city council's first budget after the 2010 election cut £91 million - including the axing of 2,000 council and charity jobs, which also hit the services they provide. The two Green councillors formed a coalition with Labour and other parties to draw up the £91million cuts budget. Councillor Sarah Jennings, leader of the Greens, said: "There will be major cuts, we are not just talking about trimming the fat." The Greens then abstained on their own budget!
Perhaps it's still unfair to judge them. Maybe if they controlled the council they would behave differently? The Greens control Brighton council - getting elected on a platform to fight against the cuts. The council is now committed to cutting the budget by £35 million over two years.
True, some of the Green talk is great and they have some decent members. But what do these deeds say about the Greens as a party in power? Socialists don't bring this up to score points. If we want to build a new mass workers' party then it has to be on a principled basis that would need to include, as an absolute minimum:
The Green Party, when it is in power, does not do this. The Labour Party, as we all know, does not do this either and I don't believe that attempts to reclaim it, however well intentioned, will meet with success.
The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) is the best available electoral vehicle for trade unions and anti-cuts groups who wish to give a political shape to their fight. Trade unions should follow through their criticism of Labour to its logical conclusion and break the link with Labour - where they haven't done so already.
They then should fund candidates who will represent their aims - this could be alongside funding the few individual anti-cuts Labour MPs or such Labour councillors as Kingsley Abrams (suspended for voting against cuts!). This May's elections would be a good place to start!
David Lammy, Labour MP for Tottenham, has called for the 'smacking ban' to be repealed. He claims his constituents back this, blaming lack of parental control as a factor in last summer's riots - a view also held by Tory London mayor Boris Johnson.
The Socialist Party opposes smacking or harming children in any way and believes that children have rights too. Many parents who hit their children do so when they're stressed, angry or have lost control. Parenting does not come naturally and many parents would welcome advice and classes in how best to bring up their children.
Caring for children can be difficult, so activities bringing parents, children and qualified staff together can help. The Sure Start projects, now cut, did that very well!
When Socialist Party members were campaigning in Tottenham after the riots some parents did say that more discipline was needed for young people. But people acknowledged the need for more help and support for families
Cuts, especially the closure of all Tottenham's youth clubs, played a significant role in the riots. Young people now had nowhere to go which was frustrating for them. So if David Lammy wants to do something positive for his constituents he should join the protest outside Haringey's civic centre on 20 February against huge cuts that will wipe out even more essential services.
Over four decades, from the 1970s until her recent death, Gwenda Beishon was a continuous subscriber to the Militant newspaper and then the Socialist.
Throughout this time she was a left-wing member of Brighton Labour Party, regularly condemning the right-wing leadership of the party. Her father - from a Russian-Jewish family - had emerged from World War One's front trenches to enthusiastically welcome the 1917 Russian revolution and adopt communist ideas, later recruiting her Polish-Jewish born mother to them too.
Gwenda met her future husband John in the communist society at Birmingham University, but along with many others they came to reject Stalinist ideology and join the Labour Party, which then included many left-wing and Marxist activists.
Gwenda twice served as a Labour councillor in Brighton, but the political activity that she liked most was her unrelenting local activism - leafleting, discussing with people on doorsteps and helping to sort out their problems. She was also an active trade unionist in the NUT teachers' union.
Gwenda will be remembered as a very avid reader and a lover of classical music, but also as an ardent socialist whose convictions ran very deep.
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/13666