TONY BLAIR'S government is in trouble. His attempts to implement a hurried and botched 'constitutional reform' and hide it behind a government reshuffle without even consulting his own Cabinet have been widely criticised.
Even New Labour politicians fear that Blair's government is more 'presidential' than ever (possibly modelling himself on his hero Bush)! As with the controversy about the Prime Minister lying about weapons of mass destruction, Blair has trodden on the toes of the establishment as well as those of the working class.
He criticises the House of Lords, not for its domination by the rich and powerful but for "old-fashioned time-consuming practices". In other words they've read - and temporarily defeated - hundreds of pieces of New Labour legislation.
He's abolished the Lord Chancellor's role and announced sweeping changes to the judicial and legal systems and to the machinery of devolution.
Blair is trying to cover this fuss with a speech about 'reforming' public services. His 'reforms' such as Foundation hospitals, Private Finance Initiative (another £9 billion worth of PFI deals are due in health, education and housing alone by 2005) are all supposed to prove that the private sector can solve the problems of the public sector.
Blair could hardly have chosen a worse day to try to prove his crass viewpoint than just after the Strategic Rail Authority report on Britain's privatised rail system.
The rail services are getting worse. Nearly a quarter of rail companies are technically insolvent and most of them are getting huge subsidies. Even when privatised firms such as engineering contractor Jarvis (still under police investigation over last year's Potters Bar rail crash) make record profits, they still can't run a service.
One in five trains are late, so services will be reduced to "make them more reliable"! The government claim that to get higher investment, passengers will have to pay 4% higher fares. Where's the money gone from their subsidies and profits?
All this capitalist nonsense is causing people to move away from New Labour.
Opinion polls show a revival even amongst the desperate Tories. Blair says if people don't stop attacking Blairite politics, the Tories will come back. But what has New Labour brought us but Tory policies squared?
Don't just replace Blair with another capitalist liar. Join us in our fight for a new mass workers' party and in our battle for that party to put forward a socialist alternative.
THE NEWS that Wedgwood has decided to close two factories is a body blow for the workers of Stoke-on-Trent.
Wedgwood announced on 5 June that the work for both the Alexandra and Eagle Potteries would be transferred to the Far East.
Just like Royal Doulton before them, Wedgwood bosses tried to dress up the move as an attempt to 'safeguard' the rest of production in Stoke. But workers know only too well that this is another step to move ceramic production completely out of the UK and into countries with poor labour rights and cheaper running costs.
The leaders of the Ceramic and Allied Trades Union (CATU) made the obligatory murmurs about how outsourcing is destroying the industry and that the consumers do not want goods made abroad.
But, as with every other closure over the past five years, the union leaders haven't even dared to directly criticise the company in public, let alone stand up against the closures.
Wedgwood workers know that any battle to try to save jobs would be bloody and bitter. But not even to give the workers the option of fighting the closures is a disgrace.
CATU is not all bad. It runs some innovative projects using European money to retrain and upskill unemployed workers. It even has a successful not-for-profit employment service for redundant workers.
But merely mopping up the mess left by the bosses is not good enough. Most ceramics workers now see the union as little more than a third party employment service. The top-down nature of the union structure has ensured that any true grass-roots activism has been quickly stifled. Average members do not even feel part of the organisation supposed to represent their interests.
The union is attempting to diversify, they have recently taken on some TUC specialists to organise the unorganised at the many minimum-wage distribution depots. How these people can convince workers to join the same union which has let down and abandoned workers in the area so many times before is unclear.
LAST NOVEMBER the Welsh Assembly, through its education minister Jane Davidson, intervened in the long-running dispute over Further Education (FE) college lecturers' pay. They promised the injection of £9 million, paving the way for parity of pay between FE lecturers and schoolteachers in April 2004.
For NATFHE, the main trade union organising teaching staff in FE colleges, acceptance of these proposals meant a switch from national (England and Wales) pay bargaining to Wales-level bargaining.
Wales also withdrew from national industrial action, notably the one-day strike called jointly with UNISON on 5 November 2002.
Acceptance of the proposals meant a tacit recognition that the only way the union could achieve justice on pay was through a partnership with the employers and New Labour in the Welsh Assembly.
For this reason, prominent left-wingers in the union in Wales like myself and Craig Lewis, the chair of the FE sector committee, opposed the Davidson proposals.
We pointed out the college employers' poor record on pay and conditions since the incorporation (privatisation) of FE Colleges by the Tories in 1993.
NATFHE members in Wales voted narrowly to accept the Davidson proposals. From then, every left-wing activist in the union in Wales strove to achieve the best possible deal in line with member's wishes.
Initially negotiations with the Welsh employers organisation Fforwm went relatively smoothly, with agreement being reached on the allocation of the £9 million from the Assembly, giving most to the lowest-paid workers - the support staff and the hourly paid teaching staff and least to the management grades.
However, talks on parity with schoolteachers quickly floundered. Currently schoolteachers are employed on a six-point scale, following which a teacher may progress through a five-point upper scale after successful completion of development reviews.
Given the clear similarity between the job of a schoolteacher and a FE college lecturer, NATFHE argues that all main-grade college lecturers should have the same opportunities as schoolteachers to progress.
This position was opposed by the employers, who proposed a new grade - Advanced Practitioners, meaning that only a small minority of main-grade lecturers would progress to parity with schoolteachers.
NATFHE made a number of concessions to achieve agreement but the employers refused to compromise. They didn't use the funding argument, stating that not all of us deserve pay parity with schoolteachers.
NATFHE in Wales has already adopted an action programme, should pay talks break down, involving a three-day strike in September to be escalated if necessary to indefinite strike action. The strategy was endorsed by the union's national conference, which also voted overwhelmingly despite opposition from the right-wing, to support members on strike at £50 per day from day one.
A victory for NATFHE members in Wales would pave the way for a similar victory in England, a victory for all trade unionists.
LOW-PAID health workers at Whipps Cross hospital in east London are striking for three days from 18 June, in their battle for a living wage. The workers are employed by ISS Mediclean, part of the multinational ISS group, which operates in 38 countries with its headquarters in Denmark.
The workers initially launched a joint pay claim with three other east London hospitals, demanding parity with workers on NHS terms and conditions. Staff at the other hospitals, Homerton, Mile End and St Clements have reached a settlement which gives them a pay rise and some improvements, like a sick pay scheme but the Whipps Cross workers are fighting on.
Many of the workers have two or three jobs to get enough money to survive and they have overcome much, including fear and language difficulties, to get organised and fight this company which makes its profits from privatisation of the health service.
ISS Mediclean talks about 'partnership' and 'people serving people' but the reality is the ISS chief on over £600,000 a year, plus stock options and a free car, whilst some of the Whipps Cross workers are on £4.42 an hour.
The picket lines have been staffed from the early hours of the morning and other hospital workers, from all departments and grades have been giving the workers their full support.
Please send donations and messages of support to Len Hockey, UNISON office, Whipps Cross Hospital, Leytonstone, London E11 1NR. 020 8535 6496 or [email protected]
TRADE UNION organisers say 1.5 million workers struck in France against government attacks on state pensions on 10 June, when the plans were presented to the National Assembly (parliament). The privatisation issue has also fuelled workers' anger.
EDF electricity workers responded to government attacks by cutting power to a meeting of the ruling UMP addressed by prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin!
Along with transport workers, public-sector workers and some private-sector workers, France's 800,000 teachers closed schools for the eleventh time this year to go on strike. This was despite the government making concessions over the education decentralisation bill.
However, the movement appears to have peaked although strike action in cities like Marseille remains firmer. Workers understand that the unions' national days of action are insufficient to defeat the government.
The leadership of CGT and the smaller FO trade union federations have not met the workers' demands to escalate the action into a general strike, even though the FO leadership has paid lip service to such a demand.
And despite some sympathy action with public sector workers, the increasing insecurity of private sector workers (whose union leaders have not organised a fightback) also acted as a brake on generalised action.
But the strike movement could easily resume as the French government vigorously pursues a 'neo-liberal' agenda of cutting social spending and privatising state industries in order to benefit big business.
ON 12 June 260,000 workers marched through Marseille - Bernard Thibault (CGT) and Marc Blondel (FO) addressed the rally. MANNY THAIN reports.
CGT GENERAL secretary Thibault's main criticism of the government was that it refused to negotiate with the unions. But instead of outlining the way forward given this intransigence, he side-stepped the issue by stressing the justice of the unions' case. Throughout his speech the audience demanded a general strike.
Marc Blondel was greeted with calls for a general strike. "OK, OK, at least give me a chance to speak", he spluttered.
He said the FO national executive "recommends a general strike" but added the caveat that "we also need to maintain a united front" i.e. hide behind the other trade unions' inaction.
A young postal worker from the Sud union told me that workers were simply waiting for a general strike. "If it had been called after the first big mobilisation we would have won by now," he said.
ON A recent trip to Toulouse, on a strike day, traffic was at a crawl. Workers had blocked all three lanes with highway maintenance vehicles the previous night. TERRY ADAMS reports from France.
Police made no attempt to move the blockade. It was a dramatic expression of workers power. Red flags were everywhere as workers' leafleted the crawling traffic, to a largely receptive audience.
In the Tarn region, south west France, the union movement announced a period of activity, including a demonstration on 15 June in Albi, the principal town of the Tarn.
Several thousand attended from the four unions involved. I was invited to address the demonstration and deliver a message of support from the PCS civil service workers' union.
The message from Janice Godrich, PCS president and Mark Serwotka, PCS general secretary, referred to the common cause uniting public sector workers in France and Britain. This message was enthusiastically received, despite my poor French.
Workers on the demo recognised the critical stage that the battle had reached. A repetition of one-day strikes will start to lose support. A major escalation is required, that seems the general view.
The customs section of the CGT has unanimously adopted a demand for a national general strike and occupations to stop production. Similar demands have been voiced by the other unions and other sections.
Clearly only a major escalation into generalised indefinite action, linking the public and private sector workers, will force a government retreat.
WHEN I started working for the Post Office 12 years ago, they were making £ millions in profit, most of which went to the government. Very little went into reinvesting in equipment or technology to make the postie's life easier or give us decent pay rises.
Now managers are trying to force us to get more work done in our 40 hours a week. Although they come up with joint agreements with the CWU about harassment and bullying, their versions of harassment are different to ours.
They stand over us like the Gestapo. Obviously they don't trust us to work under our own steam. They think we work harder because they're watching us, propping themselves up against a safety railing, pretending that they're working.
Now they've come up with a good one - get rid of second deliveries. That will save £ millions. Most of the time second deliveries don't go out now, because we're overloaded on first deliveries. They've guaranteed us a five-day week instead of six and an extra £20 a week if we reach the targets.
We've all been promised a "share of the success", which is in effect money taken from a workmate's pocket. The person who loses his or her job will be paying our bonus.
What it all boils down to is losing jobs, putting people in the dole queue so the fat pussies at the top can take the cream. Will Adam Crozier's [chief executive of the Royal Mail] share be the same as mine? If we could make a profit all those years ago, why not now and why not without losing staff?
Thousands, if not millions, of pounds have been wasted buying up useless companies abroad, changing Royal Mail into Consignia and back again. What a waste of money.
And now the part of the business that makes a profit is being trimmed down again. Jobs must go, deliveries will be later in the day for residential areas but businesses will get theirs for 9am. But you'll still have your Saturday delivery of junk mail that is so important to the regulator.
So many good, hardworking people are walking away from this job because of the constant pressure. It has never been a great-paying job but the dinner time finish was a big attraction to many people. Now even that is under threat. Some CWU leaders seems to be watching all this happen whilst they enjoy the financial benefits of being in the leadership.
How can someone who receives a far superior salary to someone they are supposed to represent understand the needs of the grass roots postmen and post women? If they were to receive the same wages as us, then perhaps we'd have a better basic pay now!
Most of the 125 staff at Northwich delivery office are fed up of constant job cuts, persistent harassment by the managers, job insecurity and lack of decent pay. We need a union to stand up and say: "Enough is enough, don't blame us for the management's bunglings".
We also need a union to stand up to Tony Blair and his New Labour cronies, who bow down to big business and the fat cats who control them. Pathetic legislation stopping the bosses getting pay-offs is not enough. Pull our political subscriptions out of the Labour Party and put them in a party that cares about the working class. Become a socialist, the world doesn't need greedy fat cats.
Carers, Friends (including Tony Booth!) and users of Gorse Hall day centre, Stalybridge, demonstrated at the Tameside town hall on 11 June against proposed cuts at their centre.
The council wants Gorse Hall to become a luncheon club, offering no help with personal care, such as going to the toilet and having a shower. At other day centres, such as Loxley House, the older disabled users have to pay extra for help with the shower as agency workers provide the personal care.
At Gorse Hall, there's no charge and all the workers are fully trained. Tameside council want the day centre to run three days a week, staffed by volunteers from Age Concern but their manager can't find enough volunteers to staff it!
People were queuing up to sign our petition - one woman said: "If it's against the council, I'll sign it!" A care worker said: "There aren't enough care centres in Tameside, I can't believe they're doing this." People were saying how frustrated they are that there's no one else to vote for at election time.
Tamesiders I met on the day hadn't a good word to say about the council and its leader, Roy Oldham - many regard him as a fat cat along with his wife who's also on the cabinet.
A civil rights lawyer will represent ten of the users but we need to ensure that the campaign keeps putting the pressure on the council and another demo is planned.
LESBIAN, GAY, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people have long been campaigning for equal treatment at work. A key obstacle has been that courts found lesbian and gay people do not fall within existing anti-discrimination laws.
As a result workers took cases to Europe. When Lisa Grant sued South West Trains the Labour government sided with the company, saying anti-discrimination legislation would be a 'burden' for employers. In parliament, back-benchers tried to table such laws only to see the government block them for 'undermining the family'.
Then in 1999 the European Union introduced the Employment Framework Directive. Under this, states have to introduce legislation by the end of 2003 prohibiting discrimination against lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) workers (earlier a European legal victory by a transgender (TG) worker forced Britain to introduce basic measures against workplace discrimination of TG employees).
Last month after a consultation process, the government published the draft Employment Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations. LGBT trade unionists and rights campaigners will welcome the fact that in future employers will not be able to dismiss a worker because they are lesbian gay or bisexual or refuse to employ a person on grounds of sexuality.
Similarly, under the draft regulations, promotion cannot be withheld from an employee for being lesbian, gay or bisexual and bosses can no longer refuse to take action to prevent anti-gay bullying or harassment of LGB staff.
Employment benefits available to heterosexual workers must be extended to LGB employees. However, regulation 29 gives a blanket exception to employers for benefits linked to marital status such as survivors' benefits under occupational pension schemes. As benefits related to marital status make up a large part of remuneration packages in many jobs, the current draft regulations mean LGB workers would continue to receive second-class treatment because we cannot marry same-sex partners.
Campaigners have identified other difficulties with the regulations. People whose jobs involve work outside the UK, eg the oil and drilling industries, will not be covered. The situation where a worker who is assumed to be lesbian, gay or bisexual experiences anti-gay discrimination is mentioned in guidance notes but not in the main regulations, which will carry legal weight. A 'reasonableness' test is proposed for harassment cases. This will be discriminatory if it leads to Employment Tribunals without LGB members making arbitrary judgements from their own life experiences.
However, the biggest problem is the sweeping exemption given to religious employers in regulation 7. The EU Directive provided for a limited exception known as a 'Genuine Occupational Requirement' (GOR), which was a 'genuine determining and proportionate reason for requiring an employee to be of a particular sexual orientation'. If the government had actually drafted the regulations to implement the Directive, this exception might have covered a vicar but not the church caretaker.
But during the consultation process, the Archbishops' Council of the Church of England demanded an almost complete exemption from the regulations. They are now worded so broadly that religious employers will be able to sack or refuse to employ anyone who doesn't reflect their religious 'ethos', defined in the regulations as: "any religion, religious belief or similar philosophical belief".
An employment lawyer told the Daily Telegraph "The law is already confused about what constitutes a 'belief', and that is before the perplexing new provisions have even come in".
The lesbian and gay employment rights campaign LAGER commented: "Regulation 7, which appears to be in direct contravention of the European Framework Directive was not included in consultation drafts. This leaves LAGER... feeling that we have been deceived and that the whole consultation process was a complete sham".
UNISON said "It seems the government believes that equality stops at the church gates".
The LGBT Trades Union Congress and trade unionists generally must call on the trade union movement nationally to protest over the draft LGB employment regulations and demand that the concessions Labour has made to the religious right are scrapped before the regulations enter law.
"THE CLERICAL regime is nearing its end. Vigilantes commit crimes, the leader supports them," chanted defiant student protesters at Tehran university, Iran.
Over the past week students have protested. The action was sparked by a student gathering against privatisation of the universities. But after clashes with religious vigilantes, backed by anti-riot cops, the protests became increasingly anti-regime.
Around 3,000 students protested on 11 June and some fought back against police and vigilantes after they were attacked. They chanted "death to Khomenei" (an offence punishable by jail), while others denounced President Mohammed Khatami's current 'reformist' leadership and demanded the release of political prisoners and a secular society.
In 1999 student opposition to media censorship by the ruling clerics led to a violent clampdown on protests by vigilantes and security forces. At least one student was killed and many injured. Menacingly, Iran's reactionary supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, warns today's protesters: "If the Iranian nation decides to deal with the rioters, it will do so in the way it dealt with it on 14 July 1999."
However, fearful that the movement could escalate the Ayatollah then went on TV to urge the vigilantes to show restraint, while blaming the US for fomenting the unrest.
Clearly, the US would like to see regime change in Iran. They want to curb Tehran's political ambitions in Iraq, which shares a large Shia Muslim population. The US accuses Iran's clerical rulers of sending revolutionary guards to agitate amongst Iraq's Shias.
The US would also like to see the regime's demise because it supports Hizbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. In the propaganda war between the two states George Bush denounced Iran as part of an "axis of evil", sponsoring terrorism.
Six years ago Iranians overwhelmingly voted in a reforming platform of Khatami and his parliamentary allies. But the young population now feels betrayed by the reformists' failure to challenge the ruling clerics.
As well as suffocating social laws and media censorship, the capitalist theocracy has presided over mass unemployment and widespread poverty despite buoyant revenues from oil production.
THE ROAD map to 'peace' in the Middle East is becoming soaked in blood. Since the Israeli army attempted to assassinate the deputy leader of the Islamic Palestinian organisation, Hamas, on 10 June, the number of deaths has again escalated. The toll includes 17 Israelis killed in a suicide bombing in Jerusalem and 18 Palestinians gunned down by Israeli forces in Gaza on two consecutive days.
The road map was never a map with any real routes. It left the major issues of contention unresolved, such as the right of return of Palestinian refugees. Rather it was a desperate response by the US administration, linked to promises they made when trying to win support for war on Iraq, to solve the Israeli/Palestinian conflict after the war.
At first, Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, would not sign up to the map, fearful of being pushed towards concessions beyond his right-wing agenda, such as the removal of Jewish settlements from the West Bank. But under intense pressure from the US regime, with its bargaining power of massive funding of the Israeli state, Sharon was forced to pay lip service to it. This was not without substantive qualifications though, such as refusing to use the word 'independent' regarding a future Palestinian state.
Sharon is bound by a right-wing coalition government that strongly supports Jewish settlements in the occupied territories and will not contemplate a genuine Palestinian state. These are views he shares, as do most representatives of the Israeli ruling class on the issue of a genuine Palestinian state.
But there are domestic factors pushing Sharon towards negotiations, particularly the present deep economic crisis in Israel. Recent increases in share values and of the Israeli Shekel against the US dollar have been attributed to the road map negotiations, reflecting the toll the national conflict has taken on the defence budget and the tourist industry. It is also the case that, according to a poll, 62% of Israelis want occupation of the territories ended.
So Sharon manoeuvres between international pressure, domestic opinion and a dire financial situation on the one hand, and the Israeli right-wing and backing for forceful 'security' measures amongst a section of Israeli Jews on the other.
The Palestinian leaders, on their part, have little room for manoeuvre. As long as the Israeli government continues its brutal occupation of the Palestinian territories, along with house demolitions, assassinations and many civilian deaths, they are helpless in the face of demands to rein in the armed activists and suicide bombers of organisations such as Hamas. In any case, their security apparatus has been too weakened by the Israeli onslaught to even attempt it. Understanding this situation, Palestinian Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas, has stated he must negotiate with Hamas rather than trying to disarm them.
Whether the road map folds quickly or has a longer death agony, it is a further graphic example of the inability of the imperialist powers to offer any solution. With next year's US election campaign looming, US President George Bush is more concerned with keeping in with the US Christian right and Jewish lobby who staunchly support the Israeli ruling class than with international pressure favouring Palestinian rights.
However, even governments worldwide who argue more forcefully for a Palestinian state, including the Palestinian Authority itself, do not have the interests of ordinary Palestinian people at heart, nor can their pressure lead to a genuine Palestinian state.
The national conflict and satisfying the aspirations of both Israeli Jewish workers and Palestinian workers cannot be resolved on the basis of the capitalist system that all these governments represent.
Only by building a socialist Israel and a socialist Palestine in a socialist confederation of the Middle East will a real map be laid towards a decent future for all the people of the region.
"THE FIREFIGHTERS' decision yesterday to call off their long-running dispute marks a signal victory for ministers. The government has secured the guts of what it wanted: changes in working practices tied to a one-off bumper pay increase" (Financial Times 13/6/03)
Delegates to the third special FBU conference this year voted by three to one to end the ten month-long dispute and accept the latest offer of 16% over the next two and half years.
This was primarily a result of a certain amount of weariness by some firefighters and a feeling that the dispute had to come to an end sooner or later.
Frustrations with how the dispute has been conducted by the leadership of the union, particularly Andy Gilchrist the general secretary, was also reflected in the shouts of "sell out" by some delegates.
The 1977 dispute, which ran for 13 weeks of an all-out strike, ended with fisticuffs on the beach at Bridlington, the home of the FBU national conference.
That it did not happen this time does not mean that there is not massive anger against the leadership of the union by many of the rank and file. At the conference, no delegate spoke in favour of the deal from the floor and some have called for Gilchrist's resignation.
The Financial Times and other papers have commented that the FBU would have found it difficult to win in the face of ministers determination to face down their demands.
Andy Gilchrist at the conference said that that those who wanted to overcome the state with periodic strikes lived on a different planet and those who wanted an indefinite strike lived in a different universe. He then recommended the deal saying it was "the best settlement won by any group of public sector workers in this pay round"
Yet, within a few hours of the conference ending, John Prescott's office announced that that they will still be pressing ahead with the Fire Service bill that will give him powers to impose changes and conditions on firefighters and fire stations. They need these powers "if local negotiations break down," said one spokesman.
What this means is that despite all the rhetoric of Gilchrist, the deal in reality means that the buck has been passed down to local level when the employers begin their programme of wholesale jobs cuts, closure of fire stations and cut backs in the crewing of fire engines.
Some areas, such as London and Merseyside, have voted heavily against the deal whilst other areas think that they can live with it and fight back locally against the imposition of any cuts.
The nature of the deal that has been agreed means that the focus of strikes and other action, which will almost inevitably take place, will now be at a local rather than a national level.
Whilst it is true that the national union has a good record on coming to the aid of the local strikes, with national mobilisations and demonstrations backing firefighters engaged in local struggles such as Merseyside a few years ago, the whole idea of a national union is to achieve national action. This will be much more difficult as a result of this settlement.
The main danger now is that the government will pick off the less well-organised areas, and then turn on the stronger areas.
WITH AN 87% vote to take strike action the firefighters were in a strong position from the start. 'Public opinion' was with them (though this can be a two-edged sword as the union leadership seemed more interested at times in keeping 'public opinion' on their side by retreating in the face of hostile press publicity).
The dispute, quite correctly, was seen as the beginning of a widespread offensive by public-sector workers to claw back some of the losses they had suffered for years under various governments. That is why New Labour were so determined to face down the firefighters.
Offensive action soon became a defensive struggle to defend the gains of the past by firefighters, particularly the level of control they had through their union over issues such as overtime, staffing levels and the siting of fire stations themselves.
No other group of workers, except perhaps train drivers, had the confidence in themselves that the firefighters did, but it became clear that confidence would not be enough. The firefighters needed the active support of other groups of workers if they were to win considerable concessions.
The socialist explained that solidarity from other sections of workers was key to winning the dispute, and that would mean union leaders defying the anti-union laws. We raised the possibility early on in the dispute of uniting the public-sector strikes that were happening at the same time, involving local government workers and teachers, into a one-day public-sector pay strike.
When the government threatened to remove the right to strike altogether from the firefighters, then we again raised the demand of a one-day general strike of the whole trade union movement in defence of the democratic rights of the firefighters and of all workers.
However, the issue of solidarity action was never effectively raised. The London tube workers during the first two-day strike refused to work in their hundreds because of the safety issue. When they were threatened with disciplinary action if they did the same thing again, the RMT were too slow to back their members up.
The cancellation of so many of the planned strike days (29 in all compared to the actual 15 days the firefighters were on strike) served to undermine the confidence of other layers in the public sector that the FBU was serious about the action.
The firefighters' strike was a major test of the new left union leaders and unfortunately they were found wanting. On the basis of their experiences during the dispute, many firefighters will now see the need for a democratic broad left organisation within the union that can fight for the kind of effective leadership that will be vital in the battles ahead.
FBU GENERAL secretary claimed that the settlement is: "The best settlement won by any group of public sector workers this pay round, with fewer strings." But the strings are tightly knotted round firefighters' pay and conditions:
The pay deal is advertised as 16% but everything beyond the 4% rise from November 2002 is dependent on cuts and changes in working conditions, verified by the Audit Commission.
The second rise, averaging 7%, is based on a new pay structure which has not yet been agreed.
After the pay rises in the settlement, from 2005 there will be a new pay formula which has yet to be agreed. The inclusion of firefighters in the 'professional and technical' classification will only be 'an important consideration.' There is no long-term pay formula, ie after 2006.
The arrangements for long service pay and how the pay structure will affect senior grades is still not clear.
Integrated Risk Management Plans (IRMP), which are part of the settlement, will mean fire authorities being able to cut crewing levels unilaterally, removing the union's existing negotiating rights. See issue 303 of the socialist.
Cuts to the shift system can now be made and pre-arranged, overtime can now be used to cover for these cuts.
The disputes and negotiating procedures and the 'Grey Book', pay and conditions agreement, will be replaced in October 2003 but nobody knows any of the details of what will replace them.
FBU MEMBERS in Cheshire gave a mixed response to the deal. They recognised that as a shire brigade they would not feel as many changes as the big metropolitan brigades. The most important thing for them was that the union had survived to fight another day, with many of its rights intact.
They said that the pay part of the dispute had been settled months ago but the critical thing was the removal of many of the strings in the Bain proposals. They hoped that the safeguards in place would enable then to protect members' conditions in the future but they had seen the real face of the New Labour government, demonising and attacking firefighters in collusion with the press.
"It's dreadful, a bloody awful deal. We didn't set out on our strike action for this. It was a pay deal we were looking for. Instead this deal will lead to cuts in staffing levels, the closure of smaller fire stations and an increase in the area to be covered by each station.
We had a 16% pay offer in December last year, Gilchrist should never have gone on to discuss cuts.
Strathclyde region voted very narrowly for the deal but only by 51% to 49%. Seven out of the eight Scottish regions voted in favour. Only Central Scotland opposed the proposal.
It was clearly a tactical mistake to cancel the strikes. Typical union leadership tactic - marching the members to the top of the hill and then bringing them back down again. This led to a wearing down of the members' confidence in the leadership. That's why the deal went through.
There was a lot of criticism of Andy Gilchrist at the conference. A lot of the union leadership could find their re-election difficult"
The anger of the some firefighters was also indicated by Brian McFadyan, from Maryhill fire station in Glasgow, who said:
Gordon McQuade from the Central Scotland branch of the FBU said:
BRITAIN NOW has its biggest wealth gap between the richest and the poorest since the dying embers of Thatcher's rule back in 1990. The top companies aim to keep it that way.
HSBC bank is giving its top director William Aldinger a $58 million (£37 million) package, making him Britain's highest-paid executive. It includes $20 million compensation plus free dental and medical treatment for life if he gets the boot.
Office cleaner Abdul Durrant put this greed in context, when he stood up at HSBC's recent AGM and asked if cleaners at the bank's London headquarters could be paid more than £5 an hour, which was not enough to live on.
Pharmaceutical multinational GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) offered their chief executive Jean-Pierre Garnier a new pay deal where he'd get £22 million compensation if he loses his £5 million a year job.
Britain's 100 biggest companies paid their chief executives (CEOs) pay and pension deals averaging £1.73 million last year - a big increase even though the stock market, which they usually use to excuse their obscene wealth, fell by a quarter.
Rewards for fat cats come in many forms - the top people's biggest perks are huge pension 'pots'. Lord Browne of British Petroleum has a pension which is already worth £860,000 a year on top of his £3 million salary package. He retires in six years time when it could be nearer his £1.3 million basic salary.
Brian Moffat, former chair of Corus steel makers, who sacked more than 10,000 workers saying "we make money not steel", received £300,000 in pension contributions. Many workers lost their old final-salary pension schemes because the Moffats of the world thought it too expensive.
SUCH BLATANT capitalist greed infuriates workers, particularly those whose jobs are on the line through recession and those who are paid poverty wages.
This anger is forcing even the TUC to mount a campaign. Outgoing general secretary John Monks, exponent of the failed policy of "partnership" between unions and bosses, said: "You don't have to be a Marxist to see the internal contradiction [of the wealth gap]... Some people look at me pretty ironically when they see the behaviour of these greedy clots."
Monks' successor Brendan Barber suggests approaching HSBC's pension fund trustees and shareholders to ask them to vote against Aldinger's "platinum parachute".
Barber's musings tie in with his comments that almost half the shares in British companies are held by institutional investors - pension funds and insurance companies - so the unions should put pressure on them to use that investment power to influence capitalism.
But pension funds are just big shareholders, who invest in businesses for profit. Even if trustees listened to the unions and opposed fat-cat wages, they'd be hard pressed to get their views accepted by profit-hungry shareholders.
Even those 'revolting' shareholders at the GSK AGM weren't fighting for a better deal for working class people or the world's poor. Most shareholders' complaints are about high pay which disregards falling profits - people like BT's new chief executive Ben Verwaayen, who gets £3 million a year in pay and bonuses despite profits crumbling. They don't mind executives living high on the hog provided they're up there with them.
Trade and industry secretary Patricia Hewitt is starting 'consulting' big business on legislation to curb fat-cat pay, saying that a few rotten apples were "feeding prejudice against all business people."
Capitalists, however, talk about "putting their own house in order" with 'voluntary curbs' on high pay - these are big business's equivalents of verbal contracts. And as film mogul Sam Goldwyn once said: "Verbal contracts aren't worth the paper they're printed on."
Shareholder pressure has made some US giants such as General Electric, whose profits were dropping, phase out their most extreme top salary and pensions deals.
But how can workers leave it up to the bosses to 'play fair'? Calling on shareholders to restrain executive pay will get nowhere. However, if Brendan Barber were to call for strike action against the employers' behaviour on pay and pensions, he might have a lot more effect.
MANY PEOPLE want action, at least to make the super-rich pay for services which try to clean up the mess their system has caused. The tax system has become grossly unequal.
After years of regressive taxation, which hits the poorest hardest, the richest 20% of households pay a total tax bill of just 34.2% of their incomes while the lowest-income groups were paying out 41.7% in tax. New Labour's six years in office have reduced taxes on big business. Many rich individuals and companies pay little or no tax.
The demands people raise range from marginal tax rises to wealth taxes. But the problem with all attempts at imposing new taxation is that whole industries are devoted to avoiding it. There are hundreds of hidden methods.
US fuel giant and Bush's financial backer Enron, which collapsed last year, paid no federal income tax from 1996-1999 and only token amounts in other years. Big names in banking and accounting - Arthur Andersen, Deloitte and Touche, Chase Manhattan, Bankers Trust and Deutsche Bank - helped draw up $2 billion worth of tax avoidance schemes.
Enron set up many partnerships, nominally separate from Enron but controlled by them. Registered in off-shore tax-havens, Enron's bosses avoided Washington-imposed taxes and hid their huge debts.
BRITISH COMPANIES used similar methods in a recent scandal involving Britain's tax and duty collectors, Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise. In 2001, these tax gatherers sold more than 600 of their offices - to tax avoiders based in a tax haven!
This deal was set up under a Private Finance Initiative (PFI) arrangement with Mapely, a property firm with a penchant, encouraged by the government, for snapping up government buildings. Mapely moved ownership of 200 of these tax and duty-collecting properties 'offshore', into a Bermuda-based sister company, Mapely Steps. Steps stands for Strategic Transfer of the Estate to the Private Sector - the 'estate' was Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise.
As that sister company is registered outside the UK, it's not liable to capital gains tax if it sells any of these properties - Bermuda taxes neither profits nor capital gains. Mapely Steps undoubtedly made a lot of money out of this.
Mapely even avoided paying tax on rent received on these properties. It borrowed enough money to boost its tax-deductible interest expenses enough to reduce its taxable profits to nothing. This is easier for offshore companies than for British-based firms, which usually pay tax on some profits.
Different companies with similar names confused public scrutiny - Inland Revenue claimed that the purchasing company was British-based and subject to British taxation. Commons Treasury select committee chairman Michael Fallon called this "one of the worst examples of maladministration we have come across".
Despite all these perks Mapely hit financial trouble last year but an Inland Revenue director gave the company "letters of comfort", assuring twitchy investors that more government money was on its way from the taxpayer. This kept them solvent.
The original deal was struck to save Inland Revenue some £20 million in maintaining properties. But how many millions did they lose in revenue at the same time? Government ministers and top civil servants seem prepared to do anything to defend PFI deals even if they're with tax-dodging bankrupts.
UNDER CAPITALISM a democratic, egalitarian tax system is impossible. It's not just that the tops of the civil service are class allies, old school chums etc. of the owners of big business, landowners etc. Today when employers are desperate to ditch workers' previous gains, they share the same pro-'free market' pro-PFI, anti-taxation ideology as well.
Sir Nicholas Montagu, chair of Inland Revenue, was a career civil servant mainly responsible for privatising Railtrack. Customs and Excise chairman, Richard Broadbent, who recently announced his retirement, came from Schroders investment bank which made a packet out of the Tory privatisation binge in the 1980s.
Such people tend to favour the rich and their schemes. Many advisers move from private bank to government or from advising government on privatisation to private firms.
Enron's "advisers" Arthur Andersen and Deloitte and Touche, representing the Mapely 'empire' and the Inland Revenue respectively, made themselves even richer with advice on tax matters.
All these scams secured a deal which took public buildings permanently out of the public sphere. Then when the 'normal' workings of capitalism pushed the Mapely concerns near to bankruptcy, Inland Revenue falsified their accounts and gave their letters of comfort.
Civil service union PCS quite rightly demand that Inland Revenue and Customs' 'estate' is brought back into public ownership and that taxpayers don't have to bail out the firm.
Bermuda isn't the only 'offshore tax haven' - Switzerland runs the world's biggest 'offshore' operation, not bad for a totally landlocked country!
Some fear this scheme sponsors money-laundering and finances terrorists. Big business interests, though, oppose any moves that would make Switzerland amend its banking secrecy laws to give information about earnings and tax liabilities.
UNFORTUNATELY TAXING the rich and big business, without putting an end to capitalism, can't stop the fat cats' jamboree or end poverty and inequality permanently.
The capitalist class will resist paying higher taxes on their personal wealth or that of their businesses - they even threaten to remove funds from the economy in a 'strike of capital'.
The Socialist Party supports all calls for greater equality. We would back a trade union-led fight by low-paid workers to get a decent national minimum wage of at least £320 a week.
We support any measures which make the rich pay through more progressive taxation (where the rich pay more than the workers and middle class). We support increasing corporation tax on big business, putting up personal tax rates for the rich and we'd fight for a wealth tax. But we also fight to overthrow capitalism and to build a socialist society.
Even if we could overcome the rich non-payers' dirty tricks, taxation measures on their own can't lift millions of people out of poverty and leave enough for increased funding for decent public services and benefits.
We fight for a socialist plan of economic production that would begin by bringing into public ownership the huge multinationals that dominate the economy, under the democratic control and management of the working class.
Big business has accumulated vast wealth - a few years ago it was calculated that Britain's 1,000 wealthiest men and women had over £108 billion stashed away. About the same number control, through their directorships, companies worth £1 trillion (£1,000 billion).
Capitalism wastes most of this wealth. A socialist plan could use these riches to fund a massive programme of public investment to ensure that ordinary people in Britain can get jobs and decent living conditions, including a greatly increased minimum wage and decent benefits.
Fat-cat pay is a symptom of an unjust, wasteful capitalist system which also produces terrible poverty in the midst of wealth all round the world. We're fighting for a socialist alternative that will take society out of the hands of capitalists, financiers and landowners and run it to meet people's needs - join our fight.
ON 15 June 1953, about 60 building workers on the Friedrichshaim hospital building site in East Berlin stopped work to draw up a letter protesting at a 10% increase in the work norms imposed by East Germany's Stalin-ist government.
If they failed to achieve these norms, the workers were threatened with a wage cut of one-third. So they started a revolt that became an uprising.
Even stopping work was potentially dangerous. Ever since the end of the second world war, Germany had been divided into two antagonistic states. In the eastern area, the guns and tanks of Stalinist Russia had established a puppet regime on the model of 1945 Russia and the other Eastern European states.
East Germany had a nationalised economy and a system of planning production, the essentials of a socialist economy. But here the similarity stopped. A genuine socialist economy requires workers' democracy to control and manage the planning of production - in the same way as a healthy organism requires oxygen to function.
But in East Germany, as in the rest of the Eastern Bloc, a small bureaucracy, remote from the working class, arbitrary in its decisions and dictatorial in all respects, ran this plan to maintain their own privileges.
This contradiction between a socially-owned economy and a bureaucratic political elite would, within 40 years, lead to stagnation and the collapse of Stalinism.
HATRED OF these bureaucratic officials led workers building a police barracks next door to the Friedrichshaim site, and workers on the Stalinallee construction site, to follow their example. The next morning, building workers from Friedrichshaim and Stalinallee toured other sites in the city, calling out other workers.
Soon the protesters numbered 10,000. Their leaders carried a crudely painted banner saying: "Down with the 10% rise in the norms!" Factory workers, clerks, even minor officials on the lowest slopes of the bureaucracy, joined them, shouting in chorus: "We are workers and not slaves, end the extortionate norms. We want free elections, we are not slaves!"
People were shouting encouragement from windows of flats and offices. The demand: "To the government, to Leipziger Street," was raised.
The demonstration was taking on a political form. The Soviet Union's dictator, Joseph Stalin, had died just three months before. His death was a signal for some of the suppressed anger at the bureaucratic regimes of Eastern Europe to surface.
Earlier that month troops had been sent in to disperse a demonstration in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia. Now, less than a week later a workers' revolt was taking shape in East Berlin.
The secretary of the Communist Party (SED) in Berlin, Heinz Brandt, explained: "The building workers have thrown a spark into the mass. The spark has burst into flame. It was like Lenin's dream come true, only this mass action was directed against a totalitarian regime ruling in Lenin's name."
In reality, the regime was a night-marish distortion of the ideas of Lenin.
The workers demanded to talk to the government leaders, Pieck and Grotewohl. One worker called for a general strike if the government didn't show up in half an hour. They didn't; the workers marched away and started to spread the strike.
Government loudspeaker cars were sent to appeal to the workers but the crowd seized them and inarched along, broadcasting the call that all workers in Berlin should join a general strike the next day.
By 17 June the strike had spread to most of East Germany's industrial cities, involving 300,000 workers. Factory meetings were held in Berlin, leading to detailed discussions on the crimes of the SED regime. They elected workers' councils and called for demonstrations.
In Merseburg, 10,000 workers singing revolutionary songs, marched to the city centre where they met up with thousands more. They stormed the police station, ransacked SED party offices and broke into the jails to release prisoners.
In Halle 8,000 railworkers seized the SED HQ, the council offices and prisons. In Leipzig workers occupied the youth headquarters and destroyed all the portraits except those of Karl Marx. In Brandenburg the so-called 'people's judges' and public prosecutor were beaten up.
EAST GERMANY'S rulers had lost control but by then Russian tanks and troops - which had propelled the SED into power - were moving into Berlin. Martial law was proclaimed.
Despite the enormous heroism of the workers, the uprising was crushed. The SED made temporary economic concessions but these only lasted as long as the revolutionary crisis. Six of the uprising's leaders were executed, four were given life sentences and 1,300 more brought to trial. An estimated 260 died from Russian bullets.
Inevitably the Stalinist bureaucracy branded this uprising a "counter-revolution" - in reality at no time did the workers demand privatisation of industry or a return to capitalism. The fact that the SED leaders purged their own members - 71% of local party secretaries were fired for supporting the workers -confirms that. A third of those leading the protests had been members of the pre-war Communist Party. The "counter-revolution" was being carried out by the Stalinists!
The uprising showed the workers' instinctive striving for workers' democracy - their example was followed in later years by workers in
Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland and was an inspiration to East German workers in 1989 when the Stalinist dictatorship collapsed.
Since the collapse of Stalinism, and the consequent capitalist restoration, Russia and Eastern Europe have been ruined, though Eastern Germany less so. Now the demand for a social revolution will be heard again and East Germany 1953 will still be an inspiration.
"IF BRITAIN - its eccentricity, its big heartedness, its strength of character - has to be summed up in one person, it has to be Winston Churchill." So said Labour's Mo Mowlam, putting the case for Churchill in the BBC's Greatest Briton poll. Perhaps this "eccentricity" explains why Churchill supported the crushing by Stalin's immediate successors of the 1953 uprising.
Why did Churchill back the Stalinist regime against the workers? After all he was an inveterate class warrior, a champion for capitalism against 'communism'. In the 1920s he looked upon fascist leaders with admiration, describing Mussolini as "providing the necessary antidote to the Russian poison" and "protection against the cancerous growth of Bolshevism." Later, he was an arch-Cold War supporter -inventing the term "iron curtain".
Part of the reason was that Churchill, an imperialist politician, was worried by the strength of Germany, for years Britain's rival for dominance within Europe. World War Two stripped Germany of much of its power, but by 1953 the rearmament of Germany was on the cards as a Cold War bulwark Soviet Union. Churchill preferred a divided Germany
However, it is also likely that Churchill realised that the Stalinists were defending the staus quo against the force of a potentially revolutionary working class, and that he saw that a victory for workers in a so-called workers' state would have an impact in the capitalist West as well as within the Stalinist East.
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What the Socialist Party stands for
The Socialist Party fights for socialism – a democratic society run for the needs of all and not the profits of a few. We also oppose every cut, fighting in our day-to-day campaigning for every possible improvement for working class people.
The organised working class has the potential power to stop the cuts and transform society.
As capitalism dominates the globe, the struggle for genuine socialism must be international.
The Socialist Party is part of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI), a socialist international that organises in many countries.
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http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/13747