Issue 144
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Contents February 4th 2000 |
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A FOUR-day occupation by students at the School of Oriental and African Studies was brought to an end in the early hours of Saturday morning. |
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| DRIVERS FOR for Connex South-East railways have won a stunning victory. The drivers forced the employers to concede most of their demands after just one day’s strike action. | ||
What's the problem? Why do
refugees leave their country? Economies need immigration. Spotlight on Dover. Does immigration cause unemployment? What’s the solution? |
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THE WORLD Economic Forum in Davos has been punctuated by the shrill pronouncements of the crusaders of capitalist triumphalism, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton. Both argued in their key-note speeches that it was the Anglo-Saxon economic model that was powering the world economy, adding that all other economic models should prostrate themselves before its ‘success’. |
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Sweden’s YRE - Youth Against Racism in Europe - mobilised thousands of school students in three demonstrations around the country. (Picture Above) |
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Student Protest Grows
A FOUR-day occupation by students at the School of Oriental and African Studies was brought to an end in the early hours of Saturday morning.Kieran Roberts, Save Free Education (SFE)
Bailiffs backed by 30 police stormed SOAS, part of the university of London, to evict the students who had been protesting against threats to expel fees non-payers.
Approximately 200 students had been involved in the occupation to defend
about 40 known non-payers from expulsion.
SOAS students are not letting the eviction stop them building a campaign to force the management to withdraw the threats to expel non-payers. A meeting took place at Monday lunchtime to plan their next step in their campaign.
Moreover the SOAS
occupation has inspired students at Goldsmiths College, UCL and Sussex University to build
for occupations to defend students from similar threats to expel non-payers.
In fact, in universities all over the country, letters have been sent out threatening
expulsion or suspension. Save Free Education members will respond to these threats
wherever we hear about them.
We will organise mass action such as demonstrations, occupations or walkouts to force
universities to allow non-payers to stay on their courses.
With tuition fees looking weaker than ever after the abolition of up-front fees in
Scotland, the government could be forced to scrap them in the rest of Britain if even a
handful of colleges are forced to refuse to collect the fees.
Such a movement would also be well placed to win back a decent grant that students can
live on.
In the coming weeks, SFE intend to make sure that this message gets out to the many
thousands of students who have not paid their fees this year; Don’t pay up! Organise
mass action in your university. We can win.
We demand:
· An amnesty for all those who are not paying their fees.
· No sanctions, exemptions or exclusions of any student who is not paying.
· The complete abolition of fees.
· For a fully funded, non-means tested grant which students can live on.
DRIVERS FOR for Connex South-East railways have won a stunning victory. The drivers, members of rail union ASLEF, forced the employers to concede most of their demands after just one day’s strike action.
Bill Mullins, Socialist Party Industrial Organiser
The union demanded a 35-hour week, but the bosses attempted to drag out negotiations. Now
the working week will be cut to 36 hours from October and 35 hours from the autumn of
2001, with 80 new drivers.
Since privatisation, the rail bosses have used voluntary redundancies to get rid of the
old safety-conscious British Rail workers. Their plan was to bring in younger drivers who
would only have loyalty to the company and its profits.
This backfired. 100% of the drivers took strike action and the bosses’ plans to use
scabs failed.
Many passengers supported the strike, understanding that drivers are working excessive
hours just to keep the trains running.
Connex was notorious for its hard-nosed anti-union attitude. Now other bosses worry if
Connex could be forced to concede then who else will stand up to the union?
George Muir, director general of the Association of Train Operators complained to the
Observer that ASLEF is stronger now than it was under British Rail. “It’s a very
centralised unified union, stronger now than before privatisation”.
What he means is that with over 20 operating companies and dozens of others now involved,
it is very difficult for the bosses to show a united front to the unions.
Behind the scenes New Labour spokesmen are mumbling about changing the law to lift
immunity from the rail unions to allow the bosses to claim full commercial costs from the
unions when they call strikes. This would take the unions back to before 1906 when the
courts were used to try and break them.
But the press has been very quiet about the outcome of the strike, afraid that it would
encourage other workers to take action. The drivers’ victory is a portent of what
could happen in many other industries and services.
· In 1995 there were 17,500 drivers on the rail system, by the end of 1998 this had fallen to 14,000, at the same time passenger traffic increased by 8% per year.
· ASLEF reckons at least another 600 drivers are needed to reduce overtime.
· Renationalise the railways under democratic workers’ control and management, with an investment programme to improve track and rolling stock and train new drivers.
Home Secretary Jack Straw’s response to the rise in asylum seekers in Britain has been to clamp down on so-called ‘fake immigrants.’ He suggests that “access to social security cash benefits in Britain acts as an incentive for many seeking a better life.”NAOMI BYRON unravels some immigration myths and offers a socialist solution.
ALMOST A quarter of the world’s population – 1.3 billion – live on $1 a day, while the world’s 200 richest people have doubled their wealth in the last four years to more than $1,000 billion.
The richest fifth of the world’s population consume 86% of the world’s wealth, while the bottom fifth account for only 1%.
THE NUMBER of refugees applying for asylum in Britain increased by 55% from 1998 (46,015) to 1999 (71,160) according to the latest government figures. This was mainly because of people fleeing the Kosova war.
The press and politicians say Britain can’t afford to open the door to increasing numbers of refugees. In Dover the government, the Labour council and the local paper caused tension between asylum-seekers and local residents by blaming “bogus” refugees for housing shortages and cuts in local services.
But refugees are not to blame for these cuts. When the government cuts money going to support refugees, it is never put into other public services. Rather, these cuts are used to open the way for cutbacks in government spending for the rest of us.
When the Tories were planning to introduce the Job Seekers’ Allowance (JSA) to slash benefits spending and force the unemployed into low-paid jobs, they cut benefits for asylum-seekers first. When they got away with that, in came the JSA.
Britain has plenty of wealth which could improve living standards and provide quality local services like health, education and housing. The New Labour government have given away over £14 billion a year in tax cuts to big business, while the number of people living in poverty in Britain has increased over the last three years.
Talk of ‘bogus’ refugees who think Britain is a ‘soft touch’ by politicians and the newspapers is calculated to provide a scapegoat for the failure of the government to tackle poverty and inequality.
The truth is that most refugees who flee to Britain haven’t got a clue about the asylum regime that exists here - they’re just desperate to find somewhere safe to stay. The number of applications for asylum goes up or down according to the level of conflict and crisis in the world. (see box)
The instability and crisis that grips much of the world is being made worse by the imperialist policies of the British government and others. They enforce big business interests against the majority of the world’s population – including most of Britain’s.
During 1994-95, while 10,165 refugees fled to Britain from the military dictatorship in Nigeria, British businesses had a trade surplus of £333 million with Nigeria. Profits in Nigeria for multinational companies like Shell increased by 75%. Britain’s government continued to sell arms to the Nigerian government (despite an international arms embargo) and Shell continued to finance almost half the military dictatorship’s expenditure - both put profits above human rights.
Why do refugees leave
their country?
REFUGEES ARE forced out of their homes by war, persecution, repression and environmental disasters. Most want to return home eventually but often this is too dangerous.
· 80% of the
world’s refugees are women and children.
· More than one
in four asylum-seekers in Britain are under 24.
The
government is trying to restrict the number of refugees allowed to settle in Britain,
claiming that they are a burden the country cannot afford. Yet the British government is
supporting the same repressive regimes and disastrous policies around the world that
creates refugees.
In
1999, 25 million refugees were forced to flee environmental disasters - drought, floods,
deforestation and degraded land. For the first time ever environmental refugees
outnumbered those from war zones. This is a measure of how much destruction capitalist
multinationals and governments are causing our planet.
Many
refugees are highly educated and skilled, yet because of racist immigration laws thousands
of them are not allowed to contribute their skills to Britain. Despite a shortage of
doctors in the health service, many refugees who trained as doctors abroad are forced to
live on benefits if they cannot afford the £415 exam to check whether their
qualifications are compatible with Britain’s.
Economies need Immigration
IRONICALLY
SOME commentators are pointing with concern to ageing populations and low birthrates in
many European countries. The United Nations estimates that to prevent the workforce
becoming “severely restricted”, Britain needs to attract more than 100,000
immigrant workers per year for the next 50 years.
Immigrant
workers do tend to be younger than the existing population and play an important role in
the economy.
Mass
migrations were essential to develop all the major economic powers. In 1845 Frederick
Engels wrote “the rapid expansion of English industry could not have taken place if
England had not had in the large and poor population of Ireland a reserve army [of labour]
of which to avail itself”. In 1851 there were 700,000 Irish migrant workers in
England.
The
USA became the most powerful capitalist country in the world for most of the 20th century
as a result of immigrant labour. Millions of West African slaves were taken to America by
force. Between 1820 and 1914, 25.5 million Europeans emigrated to the USA.
As
the working class organised against the bosses’ exploitation and technology increased
our ability to move around the world, governments introduced the first laws regulating
immigration.
Their
aim was to ensure they would always have a supply of cheap labour by restricting the
rights of immigrants, at the same time whipping up racist ideas to divide working-class
people.
Spotlight on Dover
“DOVER SUFFERED under the Tory government’s cuts in jobs. The pits were closed, small industrial and engineering companies were closed – there are loads of service industries in Dover but no real secure work.
As
a result there’s problems with housing, education – classes are overcrowded
– and into a situation like this you have refugees, fleeing from wars and persecution
in their countries. People complained about the extra children in the classes, they
complained that the refugees were getting houses which should go to local people and
getting more benefits, and that just wasn’t true.
There’s
over 300 people in Shepway who need houses but there are thousands of houses which remain
empty. Why aren’t they being used?
Now
that some of the refugees have gone [some back home and some moved to other areas by the
government] you still have these problems in education, housing, etc.
There
needs to be massive investment in Dover in jobs, in education and in houses. Those are the
sort of issues that Dover people should be fighting the government and the council
about.”
Robbie
Segal, a Dover Socialist Party member
Does
immigration cause unemployment?
THIS
IS a myth. Unemployment is caused by economic problems, not by immigration. Britain had
mass unemployment in the 1930s when there was virtually no immigration, yet there was
almost full employment in the 1950s-60s when immigration was much higher.
Unemployment
provides a pool of cheap labour for capitalism to exploit. It is also used as a weapon to
increase exploitation of those in work. The argument goes that ‘there’s plenty
of people on the dole who’d take this job if you don’t want it’, backed up
by government schemes to cut benefits and force the unemployed into low-paid, casual jobs.
Immigration
laws are used to reduce the rights of migrant workers, not to protect the rights of local
workers. This discrimination helps the bosses force down conditions for the rest of us, as
does mass unemployment.
WE
NEED to rebuild and strengthen the trade union movement and workers’ organisations,
opposing the exploitation and lies spread by the bosses.
Increased
opportunities for travelling, especially with growing instability worldwide, means
working-class people must link up their struggles from country to country as never before.
Battles for equal rights and conditions, no matter what country workers are based in, will
have to be fought.
Ultimately,
we need to change the way society is run. The mass migrations forced by wars,
environmental disasters and poverty are a symptom of the inability of capitalism to
provide the basic needs of most people in the world.
We
support the struggles of workers and all oppressed people to overthrow the regimes and
multinational corporations which uphold the current capitalist system. We argue for
society to be organised along socialist principles, where the needs of society can be
planned with democratic discussion and debate and exploitation no longer exists. This can
be achieved through working-class control and management of society’s resources.
A democratically controlled socialist plan of production would then free the resources to eradicate poverty and preventable diseases, enabling people to move around the world through choice, not because circumstances force them to.
Tobogganing
towards disaster
THE WORLD Economic Forum in Davos has been punctuated by the shrill
pronouncements of the crusaders of capitalist triumphalism, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton.
Both argued in their key-note speeches that it was the Anglo-Saxon economic model that was
powering the world economy, adding that all other economic models should prostrate
themselves before its ‘success’.
For good measure they added that this globalised capitalism had to try and fulfil certain environmental and social responsibilities. Clinton and Blair may be triumphalist but they are forced to acknowledge, as fierce protests hit the genteel Swiss resort, that there is a large, restless section of society disenfranchised by and disenchanted with globalisation.
But this plea to be ‘good’ capitalists appears consumed by the other side of the globalisers’ message. The Observer newspaper’s theorist-in-chief, Will Hutton, commented that, in his eleventh visit to the Davos forum, the ‘socially responsible’ seminars were poorly attended. In contrast, huge attendances occurred at all the seminars on the internet and e-commerce sessions..
Hutton felt obliged to remark: “The ‘hard’ conversations are about how to maximise shareholder value and how to be a winner in the new economy.”
But being a winner in this new economy means pursuing privatisation, deregulation and letting the market rip. The so-called new ‘knowledge’ economy based around e-commerce and internet stocks has created a further massive class divide in the world economy.
At the beginning of this new century some US internet entrepreneurs are enjoying obscene prosperity, as record-breaking stock market surges push internet shares - the so-called dot.com stocks - to many times the limit of what the companies could ever be worth. Yet, simultaneously over half the world’s six billion population subsist on $3 a day or less.
Blair and Clinton talk of the internet revolution liberating mankind. But the developed countries have just 16% of the world’s population but boast 90% of internet users.
In Ethiopia a personal computer costs 15 times the average annual income. One suburb of New York - Manhattan - has more telephone lines than all of sub-Saharan Africa.
The advanced capitalist countries invest over $30 billion more annually in telecoms than the developing world does. This means that the USA has 660 phone lines per 1,000 people, while in China there are 70; in Chad, Somalia and Afghanistan there is only one phone per 1,000 people.
But even within developed countries and within the underdeveloped countries there are massive wealth disparities. The gap is widening between countries and within all countries. In newly emerging capitalist China, Sohu.com has brought its owner, Charles Ziang, a fortune worth $4.5 million.
The internet has been successfully used by those organising protests against this rapacious global capitalism wherever it meets; Seattle or Switzerland. But access to the internet is also being used by capitalism as an increasingly sharp tool in its exploitation of working-class people at home and more savagely abroad in underdeveloped countries.
The success of the US bubble economy has been wildly exaggerated by its apostles Clinton and Blair. Inevitably it will burst and the over-inflated dot.com shares will come to earth with a greater bump than a novice skier in Davos.
That’s why they
fear the growing protests against globalisation. Currently these protests are loose,
internet-based constructions. But as the Seattle protests showed organised labour is
starting to flex its muscles against global capitalism.
The protests against capitalism are still inchoate, but they are not just
against environmental damage or social injustice - as important as those issues are - but
they also show widespread questioning of the capitalist sytem - whether it is the
Blair/Clinton model or the social capitalist model pursued in Europe. Workers’
struggles in France, Germany and Seattle show that just as capitalism is intent on
pursuing its agenda worldwide, workers are also beginning to resist and unite globally to
stop it.
Sweden’s YRE exposes racist hypocrisy
WHILE TWENTY heads
of government and politicians from more than 50 countries attended a conference
to discuss the Holocaust in Stockholm, Elevkampanjen, (Sweden’s YRE - Youth Against
Racism in Europe) mobilised thousands of school students in three demonstrations around
the country.
Laurence Coates, Socialist Justice Party, Sweden
Hosting the conference was Swedish Social Democratic prime minister Göran Persson.
Elevkampanjen and other anti-racist organisations were determined to spoil the party and
expose Persson’s hypocrisy.
The real record of his government and the other governments participating has been to step
up harassment of asylum seekers, speed up deportations and, in practice, carry out many of
the demands of the far right.
1,500 marched in Stockholm, despite police refusing permission, chanting: “No more
murders” and “Keep the fascists off our streets”.
Leading the demo were the banners of Elevkampanjen, the CWI banner (“Smash the EU -
For the Right of Asylum”) and the CWI’s Swedish section Rättvisepartiet
Socialisterna (RS - Socialist Justice Party). 93 copies of Offensiv (weekly paper of the
Socialist Justice Party) were sold and 33 new members recruited to Elevkampanjen.
In the northern town of Luleå two schools went on strike and the 1,000-strong demo was
the biggest youth march the town has ever seen. The Luleå demo was front-page news in the
local newspaper NSD, who quoted at length from the speeches of Elevkampanjen and RS
speakers. Metro in Stockholm also had Elevkampanjen on the front-page.
At the Stockholm demo, 16-year-old Caroline Evander spoke on behalf of RS. “The EU
and the politicians have put up a wall to stop refugees coming here. We can’t rely on
Göran Persson and the politicians”. To applause she added: “young people
aren’t just against racism, we’re against capitalism”, a sentiment that was
echoed by many of the speakers. The youngest speaker at the demo was 12-years old.
In Gothernburg, 200 took part in a demonstration later the same day. Göteborgs Posten
quoted Tommy Lindqvist from RS: “They (the government) have a conference on the
Holocaust and that sounds very promising but the immigration policy they’ve
introduced has clear similarities with what they did during the Second World War.”
In the 1930s Jews arriving in Sweden - having fled from Nazi Germany - were turned back.
The demonstrations once again confirm Elevkampanjen’s increasing support and the
growing left-wing mood in the schools.
TONY BLAIR, who attended the Stockholm conference, has designated 27 January
next year to be Holocaust Memorial Day. This is Blair’s commitment to oppose racism,
anti-Semitism and intolerance. But this fine declaration does not square with New
Labour’s racist and intolerant Asylum Bill which will place more obstacles in the
path of refugees feeing to Britain.