A NEW secret report warns that climate change could kill millions of people worldwide through violent storms, searing heat, flooding, famine and drought.
It could also increase the risk of warfare - including nuclear war - over dwindling reserves of food, water and energy sources.
Embarrassingly for President Bush, this message of catastrophe came from the US Pentagon. George W boycotted the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, a half-hearted attempt to tackle global warming. Bush sees no problem, although the USA accounts for a quarter of all greenhouse gases that cause climate change!
The Pentagon report, obtained by The Observer newspaper, says climate change and the possible 'climate wars' are a bigger threat to world security than terrorism.
People might hope that Pentagon predictions such as a Siberian-type climate in Britain within 20 years are as unreliable as the US defence establishment's intelligence briefings about WMDs in Iraq. Unfortunately their forecasts echo the warnings of many people in the scientific world.
The poorest people on earth will suffer most. The main problem is the unplanned and unfettered burning of fossil fuels, which causes global warming by building up "greenhouse gases" in the earth's atmosphere.
And who's most responsible for that? A tiny minority - the rich owners and top shareholders of the world's biggest capitalist companies!
Research programmes to develop alternative sources of energy - such as wind, water and solar power - should be a top priority. But the world's most powerful corporations make massive profits out of fossil fuel, especially oil.
Capitalist leaders, especially Bush, give their priority to increasing the big corporations' profits before everything else. Bush and Blair made war on Iraq to defend these interests. The rule of profit already gives us war and widespread poverty - don't let capitalism destroy the environment as well.
This disaster is avoidable. The Socialist Party is fighting for an international socialist solution where planning could tackle the threat of global warming. A socialist society would put people's needs and interests, immediate and long-term, before profit.
A socialist plan could carry out the measures needed to cut down and then get rid of greenhouse gases - for example through investment in renewable energy sources, such as wind, wave and solar power and new technologies.
COUNCIL LEASEHOLDERS (home owners) on the Sector J area of Honor Oak estate in Lewisham feel angry and conned by the Labour-controlled council.
They were sold asbestos-ridden council flats, without any warnings and now face council refurbishment charges of up to £20,000 that includes the disposal of asbestos. Many of those affected are elderly and have no access to anything like that kind of money.
The council have threatened legal action, including the threat of repossession against those who don't pay. But people from the estate are fighting back, setting up the 'Sector J Action Group.'
Maria Symes is a key part of the campaign - she sums up the mood. "The council just don't get it or don't care, that people on this estate can't find 20 grand at the drop of a hat. We are determined to carry on our fight and protect our homes from repossession."
The council estate refurbishment programme was won a few years ago by a campaign supported by Socialist Party councillor Ian Page. But leaseholders have been shocked by the threat of huge bills being imposed on them. The council claim they have only just discovered the asbestos.
Most flats were sold in the late 1980s and 90s. But a chartered survey in 1984 clearly identified widespread asbestos. This report also recommended that the maintenance, currently being carried out, should have been completed by 1991.
Leaseholders feel they've been deliberately kept in the dark. Not only have they been exposed to severe health risks but now they face what should have been largely council costs.
Recently elected Socialist Party councillor Chris Flood has now joined Ian in supporting this struggle. A public meeting has been organised and campaigners lobbied the Labour council and MP. They formally asked the council when they would be billed and for how much.
The council, arrogantly, won't give a definitive figure until the work has been completed. But if payment is not in full within ten months, interest will be charged.
The action group want an end to asbestos and other unreasonable charges. In fact, having sold the properties in such an underhand way, exposing people to asbestos, the council should be offering money in compensation rather than demanding it.
THE NEW Labour government says it will be 'regulating' the number of migrant workers who are allowed to come to Britain from the ten countries, mainly in Eastern Europe, which will be joining the European Union on 1 May.
Home Secretary David Blunkett has announced that all migrant workers from the East European accession states will have to register with the government and will not be entitled to claim unemployment benefits until they have worked continuously for a year in the UK.
This new 'tough' talk is a knee-jerk reaction because of a fear of the electoral consequences, in a situation where the right-wing press has hysterically warned of 'swarms' of East Europeans 'flooding' into the UK as 'benefit tourists'. Against a background of New Labour's constant cuts in the welfare state, this has inevitably created fears amongst wide sections of the population.
The government is threatening to deport migrants who fail to find work to prevent them claiming benefits, despite criticism from immigration experts. Keith Best, the chief executive of the immigration advisory service, has pointed out that new migrants from Eastern Europe will already be excluded from benefits under the existing rules. The government says it only expects that 12,000 to 13,000 people will come to the UK each year but will restrict numbers if more come in.
DESPITE MAKING it harder for East European workers to claim benefits, Blair and Blunkett want to encourage migrant workers as cheap labour for the bosses.
Already many thousands of workers from Eastern Europe are living and working in the UK. They are often doing jobs that local people won't. For example, around 30,000 people came last year under a special scheme to provide seasonal work for agriculture. Up to 10% of the 100,000 building workers in the UK are also thought to come from Eastern Europe.
While allowing migrant workers in through legal channels, where they have some rights, is much better than abandoning them to people-traffickers (as the Morecombe cockle-pickers were) they will still be expected to do the lowest paid most back-breaking work.
THE GOVERNMENT'S insistence that migrants from the accession states must not claim benefits has gained an echo among many people in the UK, painfully aware of how difficult it is now for people to claim the miserable amount of benefits they are entitled to.
However, the problems in the benefits system are not due to pressure from the number of people claiming unemployment benefits, which (at under 900,000) is at its lowest level since 1975. For the last 25 years the bosses and their representatives in government (the Tories and now New Labour) have carried out ruthless attacks against the working class. Their aim is to maximise their profits by making us work harder and longer for less, and destroying the 'expensive' welfare state.
New Labour's attempts to deny benefits to migrant workers are aimed at creating a section of the workforce who will be forced to take any job, at any wage, because they have no other option. If New Labour and the bosses can get away with it, they will use this most exploited section of workers to drive down wages and conditions for everyone else.
Migration to Britain is going to continue. The restoration of capitalism in Eastern Europe has meant massively increased poverty. While the vast majority of Eastern Europeans have no interest in coming to Britain - in a situation when unemployment is now 36% in parts of Poland and there have been food riots in Slovakia - it is inevitable that some will want to try and improve their lot by working abroad. Only a trade union movement prepared to unite migrants and existing workers and organising to fight for the rights of both can prevent the bosses getting their way.
End The Occupation Of Iraq - Troops Out Now! |
Liar Blair Must Go!
DemonstrateMarch 20th, Assemble at 12 Noon Hyde Park, Central London National Demonstration Called By Stop The War Coalition |
FOUR BRITISH men imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay are to be 'transferred' to Britain. Home Secretary David Blunkett said: "I think you'll find that no one who is returned... will actually be a threat to the security of the British people".
So why have they been held without charge, trial or access to lawyers or their families for over two years ? For much of that time they were caged in cells 8ft by 6ft, in conditions which the Red Cross described as "not quite torture, but as close as you can get".
Human rights lawyer, Clive Stafford-Smith, says that the timing of the decision to deport them is no accident. The US Supreme Court was about to hear a case brought by two of the men which could have found Bush and the US government guilty of acting illegally over the detentions at Guantanamo Bay.
Two of the four British men who remain incarcerated face a kangaroo court - a military tribunal where secret evidence can be heard and where there is no right of appeal to civilian courts. The only right of appeal is to George Bush who has already branded them "bad people". Even some of the US military officers chosen to represent the prisoners have refused to do so, because of the unjust nature of the trials.
THE SEPTEMBER 11 attacks have led to an increase in state repression internationally in the name of 'war on terrorism". Draconian laws have been passed which will not prevent terrorism. The Socialist Party opposes repressive legislation which denies democratic rights and could be used in the future against those who take collective action, such as workers on strike or anti-war protesters.
Already the Prevention of Terrorism Act, passed after September 11, has been used to prevent protesters peacefully demonstrating outside an international arms fair in London.
The British state has its own mini-Guantanamo Bay in Belmarsh prison, where 14 foreign nationals have been held indefinitely without trial for almost as long as those in Guantanamo Bay itself. Now Blunkett wants to introduce even more draconian anti-terrorist laws which would allow for 'pre-emptive trials' for crimes which haven't actually been committed and allow lower standards of proof than in normal criminal courts.
These proposals will not stop terrorist attacks and are a threat to all working-class people by further eroding democratic rights. They should be opposed.
By actions such as attacking and occupying Iraq, US and British imperialism have fuelled anger that will unfortunately lead to an increase in the very terrorism which they hypocritically claim to be fighting.
The Socialist Party opposes terrorism, but the only way of effectively defeating it is to tackle its root causes - poverty, inequality, exploitation and the oppression of religious, national and human rights on a global scale - all of which are products of the capitalist profit system.
Collective action by workers is needed to defend hard-won rights against government attacks and to fight for a socialist system as an alternative to capitalist repression.
ONE OF the four detainees still held by the US military in Camp Delta, Cuba is MOAZZAM BEGG, a 36-year-old from Birmingham. He won't be released to the British authorities because he's deemed 'high risk'.
Moazzam's wife and four children have not seen him since February 2002. His father AZMAT BEGG has been campaigning for his release. He spoke to the socialist.
"THE US authorities should have respected his human rights and straight away brought him to court and charged him if there was any charge to answer. This is the normal procedure but they didn't do that.
"In what way is he a terrorist? Has any court determined that? The US authorities have come forward with no evidence whatsoever. He hasn't done anything wrong.
"For the last two years he has been tortured, kept in isolation. I can't talk to him, lawyers can't talk to him. Letters have been stopped.
"He was doing humanitarian work in Afghanistan. They captured him not from Afghanistan but from Pakistan. They sent him to Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, they tortured him a lot. And then they transferred him to Guantanamo Bay.
"The British government is definitely involved in it. If the government wanted to get him released they could have done so. They have said nothing. They should publicly demand my son's release."
THE BRUTALITY of Bush and Blair's military occupation of Iraq was highlighted by an unexpected source last week.
The crudely pro-war Sun newspaper reported a British soldier's account of the execution of an Iraqi and the severe beatings meted out to other Iraqi prisoners by members of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, last September.
Nine Iraqis were detained following a roadside bomb which killed a regimental captain.
Over a period of 48 hours the Iraqis - all innocent - were systematically bound and tortured. One of the nine (whose father is a senior Iraqi policeman), was murdered during the frenzied attacks, having sustained 50 injuries to his body. Yet the report suggested that the soldier responsible would only be charged with manslaughter.
During this time no officer intervened to stop these atrocities.
Moreover, the whistleblower claims that other Iraqis were arrested and tortured. "They were being treated worse than animals," he said.
There will be a demonstration against the occupation of Iraq coinciding with the Labour Party Spring Conference in Manchester.
Saturday 13 March, 12 noon, All Saints Park, Oxford Road, Manchester.
CARDIFF UNIVERSITY was effectively closed on 22 February. AUT general secretary Sally Hunt told the lunchtime rally; "Since the mid-1990s, universities have awarded vice-chancellors pay rises twice as high as those for the very staff who keep the institutions going day-to-day.
"Academic and related pay has fallen by 40% compared to the test of me workforce during the last two decades, hard-working staff simply won't accept that lying down."
On the picket fines, angry striking staff agreed. One physics lecturer said: "Seven years' training and ten years' working, yet I could work shorter hours and earn more as a lorry driver. The new pay scale does nothing to change this."
For some the biggest grievance is the lack of job security for researchers and others on short-term contacts. "It's impossible to plan for the future, as there's a threat of redundancy every few years when the research grant ends."
University workers are determined to halt the decline in pay and conditions and prevent me downgrading of those jobs currently classed as academic related.
We must follow this successful action with more national strike? if necessary and carry through the boycott of student assessments, call-out cover, job evaluation and staff appraisal schemes to force the employers to concede.
University management countrywide aimed to undermine our struggle by trying to divide the workforce. Unfortunately the leadership of UNISON, TGWU, Amicus, GMB and NATFHE have signed up for the employers' offer. We need to approach these unions at local level to build united action.
LECTURES AND staff picketed Bristol University's main buildings on 23-24 February.
There were rallies each day, over 200 attended the one on 24 February.
Action short of a strike will commence on 1 March if the employers won't return to the table.
Despite this week's national linking of action by the AUT and NUS, Bristol students union, which recently voted to dissafiliate from the NUS, has encouraged students not to take part in the pickets.
Socialist Students supports the joint action.
We believe students and lecturers are a more powerful force to fight attacks on Higher Education when united and call for Bristol to remain part of the NUS and work towards a more effective union capable of fighting government attacks.
MANY COMMENTATORS have welcomed the Tomlinson proposals to review the curriculum for 14-19 year olds. These will lead to a final report later in the year. Tomlinson advocates replacing GCSE and 'A' levels with a system of four diplomas - entry, foundation, intermediate and advanced - although not all pupils will have to take the first two.
Pupils will progress according to how they succeed, with the result that there will be many more mixed-age classes in secondary schools. The new arrangements are to be introduced over a 10-year period.
Critics from the union side have tended to focus on the upheaval that will be incurred, and the need for retraining of teachers, without addressing the underlying assumptions behind these very regressive reforms.
An editorial in the right-wing Daily Telegraph welcomes Tomlinson's "very good suggestions" and he himself has said that his proposals are in part a response to what employers want. We should not be surprised that a former deputy of Chris Woodhead in the schools inspection body OFSTED has come out with a thoroughly reactionary set of ideas.
The underlying motivations are to cut numbers (and thus costs) of students staying on at school, and of producing a workforce with the required low-level skills and flexibility for the low-wage economy for which they are to be prepared.
Tomlinson, hypocritically, cites pupil disaffection with the test-driven curriculum as a reason for introducing these changes. It is true that the exam-factory culture that has developed within schools over the past decade is an important reason for pupil disaffection.
Of course, OFSTED, under Tomlinson and Woodhead, has more responsibility than most for the promotion of this culture. The solution is to get rid of the tests - especially SATs, not to turn the clock back to the 1950s and before.
IT IS envisaged that pupils from the age of 14 will directed into a 'vocational route' outside the classroom for two days a week to learn a trade. One further day will be spent at college and the remaining two at school.
In a Daily Telegraph interview (21.2.04) Tomlinson said: "Junior apprenticeships could easily happen at 14". The hope is that the workplaces where they have been 'apprenticed' will take them on permanently at age 16.
This, and the fact that these pupils will, in effect, be barred from pursuing the higher-level diplomas, means that they will have their futures determined by age 14. It is, by stealth, a reduction of the school-leaving age to 14.
In addition, because schools will find it very difficult logistically and financially to offer the full range of diplomas, there will be a return - under a guise of specialisation - to the old pre-comprehensive tri-partite system of grammar, technical and secondary modern schools.
One net effect of the proposals will be a massive funding shift out of schools, with an attendant loss of staffing. This will be further accentuated by the admission from Tomlinson that thousands of pupils will now not reach the standards necessary to meet the qualifications needed to continue education to the higher-level diploma. The numbers continuing to the higher-level diploma (in effect the replacement for 'A' levels) will be drastically reduced.
Tomlinson echoes the right-wing educationalists who want to deny access to the rooms at the top for the increasing numbers of students who seek their place there.
Education unions, parents and students must campaign against the implementation of the Tomlinson proposals. In its place socialists will campaign for a broad balanced curriculum, where pupils can follow a full range of subjects; technical, artistic and academic, free from the treadmill of never ending tests.
But to make it interesting and relevant means having schools properly resourced, with reduced class size, additional support staffing, books, computers, access to playing space and sports fields. Finally, and importantly, we continue to campaign against the poverty and inequality which forces millions of working class pupils to fail to fulfil their potential in the current educational system.
THE GOVERNMENT are continuingly making cuts to our education. The Tomlinson report is clearly linked to making more money out of education by allowing big business to 'invest' in it. These proposals and others, such as top-up fees, have very little to do with providing a decent education and future for people.
New Labour and their big business friends are only interested in offering young people low-skilled, low-paid work and think they can take us back to the days when working-class young people were forced to leave school at 14 to work.
International Socialist Resistance (ISR) is campaigning against this and the commercialisation and privatisation of our education. We need more teachers, smaller class sizes and the right to learn throughout our lives, for the benefit of society - not for big business.
We demand:
FOR NEARLY 40 weeks, electricians (members of EPIU-TGWU) in Manchester, illegally sacked by cowboy construction company DAF Electrical, have been on strike demanding reinstatement. The picket began at Piccadilly No 1 site and moved to the new county court site after the Piccadilly job finished.
Over 35,000 people have signed the sparks' petition and Manchester Socialist Party has consistently supported the strikers.
After fellow building workers on a TGWU picket in Liverpool were threatened by BNP supporters, I was invited to address the EPIU branch, on anti-fascism and building a new alternative.
The Liverpool dispute by joiners was bitterly opposed by the employer, which used brickies from Oldham who belonged to the BNP, to intimidate the pickets. The workers won, though the BNP supporters were kept on after the contract finished - while the joiners were laid off.
What a clear illustration of how the bosses use neo-Nazi thugs against the working class! And what an indictment of the so-called "post-fascist" BNP! Awareness needs raising among union members to expose the real character of the BNP. We have raised the demand for the unions to organise an educational event in Manchester.
The root of BNP growth is the betrayals of Labour and the lack of a mass alternative. There is a burning need for workers' election candidates, as a step towards a new workers' party.
At every stage, the DAF sparks have faced obstacles and incompetence from the union bureaucracy. Such officials must be replaced with those willing and able to do the job. Meanwhile the employers are importing workers on poverty pay and whipping up racist divisions.
As the workers say, a unionisation campaign amongst migrant workers is needed to demand the same pay and conditions as other workers on a fighting programme.
When I spoke at the union meeting, I sold seven copies of the socialist and we were warmly invited to the next branch meeting.
CLEANING STAFF in 20 Kirklees schools in west Yorkshire were transferred to private contractor Jarvis when their schools went into a Private Finance Initiative scheme.
Jarvis in turn sub-contracted the work to Trident. They have been an appalling employer and failed to deliver a decent service to the schools. Cleaners left the company in droves, due to the worse holidays, sick leave and pay that was on offer. In the end, Jarvis was forced to take on the contract themselves, after constant failures and criticism.
The unions, GMB and UNISON, opened up negotiations with Jarvis to improve these conditions. They offered to improve holidays and sick leave but insisted that cleaners transferring from Trident should stay on 48-week contracts. This means they are not paid for four weeks a year. The workers can't sign on, so were being driven even further into poverty.
We objected to Jarvis' high handedness with some of the lowest-paid workers in our schools. After all, Jarvis made profits last year of over £70 million and it would cost them only £38,000 to put everyone on 52-week contracts.
Jarvis called special meetings for the cleaners to introduce themselves as their new employer. Both the unions attended these meetings and proposed industrial action if Jarvis failed to improve on their offer. The cleaners were very angry. Each one had tales to tell of managerial incompetence and being left understaffed on both morning and evening shifts. The vote for action was overwhelming.
Jarvis called further talks but refused to budge on 52-week contracts. We started visiting the schools with ballot papers and blitzing the press with stories of Jarvis' scrooge mentality.
The press interviews and stories and the threat of industrial action sent Jarvis into a panic. On the day school visits were due to start, we were asked to an urgent meeting with the head of human resources from London. He kicked the local manager out of the meeting. But no matter what pressure he tried to apply, we stood firm - 52-week contracts or face a strike.
He claimed they did not have the time to work it all out. We left the meeting without resolution but a few hours later they phoned to say they could meet our demands after all! They asked if we could put out a joint press release to undo all the bad publicity they had been getting. That didn't happen either.
We visited the schools anyway to thank the cleaners for their support and signed up a few more to the union.
Jarvis might be a giant multinational raking in massive profits but they can still be humbled by determined and united trade union action.
LECTURERS AT Leicester college started their fourth week of strike action with a mass picket and rally to mark the end of the half-term holiday. The strikers are protesting at the imposition of new contracts which will dramatically worsen their conditions of service.
So far the management are refusing to negotiate until the strike is called off but this has hardened the resolve of the striking NATFHE members. Lecturers from Leicester University joined the picket - AUT members who will be on strike themselves this week. NATFHE members from other local colleges, like De Montfort University also came to show their support. There were union banners from Amicus, amongst others, and Leicester University Socialist Students.
The college management are claiming that 90% of lessons are covered, but as Siobhan Logan from the strike committee told me: "They'll be claiming 120% by next week."
Apparently lessons are being covered but not necessarily by people who are qualified to teach that subject.
I was told about an aromatherapist sent in to teach 'A' level biology and a hairdressing manager sent to an 'A' level psychology class.
The person sent to teach English to a class of predominantly Iraqi Kurds was amazingly revealed as not knowing where Iraq was or who the Kurdish people were.
Please send donations and messages of support to: NATFHE Leicester College Strike Fund, NATFHE Birmingham Office, 2nd Floor, Alpha Tower, Suffolk Street, Queensway, Birmingham, B1 1TT [email protected] Also see the strike website at: www.natfhebranches.org.uk/leicester_coll/
STOP PRESS Management have been forced to negotiate, whilst the strike remains firm.
WHEN HEATH came to power in 1970, he promptly set about the task of restoring British capitalism's profitability just as the post-war economic upswing was running out of steam.
This meant confronting the power of the trade unions (with over 11 million members - nearly 50% of the labour force) and especially the shop stewards' organisations. Heath even said he was prepared to "face up" to a general strike if necessary.
His "no lame ducks" policy, where ailing or unprofitable firms were allowed to go bust, led to unemployment rising sharply to over a million for the first time since the 1930s. Wage controls were brought in to keep pay rises down and the Industrial Relations Act was framed to shackle the unions.
Workers' resistance to these policies grew and three great struggles forced the Tory government to make a 'U-turn'.
In 1971 the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders work-in caught the imagination of millions and sparked a wave of factory occupations against redundancies and closures. Then in 1972, the first all-out miners' strike since 1926 broke the government's wage controls, winning a 22% pay rise - way over the 8% norm.
This historic victory was achieved through mass picketing of steelworks, major ports, power stations and coal depots. The strike's turning point came at the 'Battle of Saltley Gates'. Picketing miners (led by Arthur Scargill then Yorkshire NUM president) were joined by 10,000 striking Birmingham trade unionists who forced the police to close the Gas Board coal depot.
Afterwards Tory Home Secretary Reginald Maudling wrote: "some colleagues asked why I had not sent in troops to support our police. I remember asking them a simple question. If they had been sent should they have gone with rifles loaded or unloaded?"
In July 1972, the Industrial Relations Act was effectively defeated when unofficial mass strike action forced the immediate release of five dockers' shop stewards imprisoned in Pentonville jail for picketing in defiance of the anti-union laws.
Such was the spontaneous movement from below that the Trades Union Congress (TUC) was forced to threaten a one-day general strike, but only when it was clear that the dockers were about to be released.
These battles were not isolated. Railworkers won a 13% pay rise. Building workers held a long strike where shop steward Ricky Tomlinson (later of Royle Family fame) was arrested and imprisoned as one of the Shrewsbury Two.
TWENTY FOUR million working days were lost in 1972, a rise in militancy unprecedented for over 50 years.
This radicalisation was reflected inside the Labour Party by a big shift to the Left. Indeed the 1972 conference passed a Militant (forerunner of the Socialist Party) motion calling for nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy.
Whilst not going that far, Labour's 1973 Programme was its most radical since 1945 including a commitment for public ownership of shipbuilding, the aircraft industry, pharmaceuticals, and North Sea gas and oil. The 1974 election manifesto talked of carrying out a "fundamental and irreversible shift in power and wealth" and being proud of its socialist aims.
However, the Labour government that followed, once the pressure of workers' struggles had abated, did not "squeeze the rich until the pips squeaked" as Chancellor Denis Healey promised, in fact they began 'free market' monetarist policies even before Thatcher!
Nevertheless, this period shows how the workers' movement could affect, influence and bring change in the Labour Party, unlike today when New Labour has become an openly capitalist party.
These industrial defeats forced Heath into a U-turn; he sought to embroil a compliant TUC leadership into tripartite talks with government and employers, from which emerged a new wage freeze followed by further pay restraint.
Temporarily this collaboration cut across the strike movement ("only" seven million days were lost in 1973, compared with one million days last year).
The BBC documentary True Spies revealed that National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) president Joe Gormley was a paid informer for the secret services throughout the 1970s. In July 1973 he met Heath privately in Downing Street to try to avert another strike. A Special Branch officer said: "He was very worried about the growth of militancy in his own union."
This militancy pushed other union leaders to the Left, such as Jack Jones of the transport workers and Hugh Scanlon of the engineering union. They were the 70s equivalent of the "awkward squad", but with the big difference of having powerful shop stewards' organisations and a combative membership behind them.
Even so, their limitations as Left but reformist leaders were exposed when trade union power raised the question of who runs the country? As Scanlon later admitted: "We looked over the precipice and didn't like what we saw." Later, Jones and Scanlon would be the architects of the Social Contract negotiated with the Labour government which led to voluntary wage restraint policed by the union leaders.
HOWEVER, THE British economy was in a dire state.
The speculative property boom collapsed. The pound floated downwards by 20%. The balance of payments headed for a record deficit. Inflation was running out of control.
Then the Yom Kippur War in the Middle-East and the subsequent quadrupling of oil prices by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), tipped the world economy into its first simultaneous post-war recession.
So when the miners began an overtime ban in November 1973 the ruling class were determined that Heath should not back down again.
The ruling-class press raised the question of an "authoritarian solution" to try to avoid repeating the humiliations of 1972, although more thoughtful employers realised that you couldn't send 300,000 miners to jail.
Heath refused the TUC offer to treat the miners as a special case and gambled on trying to isolate and defeat the NUM. With electrical power engineers working to rule as well, the government declared a state of emergency and introduced petrol rationing, power cuts and 13% interest rates.
Then, ostensibly to save energy and conserve coal stocks, a three-day working week (in effect a two-day lock-out) was introduced to try to divide other workers from supporting the miners. However this backfired as other workers, even those made redundant by the crisis, backed the miners.
The Evening Standard reported the views from a London employment exchange, "To a man - and woman - they were behind the miners."
By now the ruling class were in a panic. Tory Industry minister John Davies told his family, "We must enjoy this Christmas for it may be our last one."
Sir William Armstrong, chief civil servant and head of Heath's think-tank, suffered a total mental and physical collapse, "being quite mad at the end" according to Whitehall inside sources.
AT THE beginning of February 1974, the NUM national ballot revealed a 81% yes vote for all-out strike action.
Amidst growing power cuts and blackouts, Heath risked all by calling an emergency general election for the end of that month: "Who runs the country?"
The 1974 miners' strike was not as confrontational as in 1972 - the NUM leaders restrained picketing so as not to harm Labour's electoral chances. Yet the movement of coal was still halted because other trade unionists were right behind the miners and respected even token picket lines.
ASLEF members refused to drive a coal train under one bridge with an NUM lodge banner draped over it but no pickets in sight! Such was the feeling of solidarity and confidence, such was the anti-Tory mood among workers.
This was enough to finish Heath off at the polls, but Harold Wilson's low-key campaign, which emphasised sound management rather than Labour's radical policies, failed to enthuse voters. So Labour, with only 37% of the vote, scraped in forming a minority government on 4 March. Within a week most of the miners' demands were met, they returned to work and the three-day week ended.
This period showed who had the power in the land and that workers really could run the country. However, for that to be realised requires not just struggle and solidarity, but also a conscious socialist leadership which can overthrow the capitalist system not just one of their governments.
SIR PETER Gershon, the head honcho of 'government commerce' and Britain's most highly paid civil servant, has come up with a cunning plan. He wants to sack tens of thousands of public-sector workers, particularly civil servants.
These will be replaced by an army of 'specialists' who like superman or superwoman can be sent to any part of the public sector - hospitals, schools, police stations or JobCentres - and deliver 'expert' front-line services to the general public.
Gershon has already shown his financial and management expertise in the private sector. He was managing Director of Marconi from 1994 to 1999, when he oversaw the company's collapse, with £5 billion losses and the sacking of 6,000 workers.
In a pre-Christmas present for Blair and Brown, Gershon held a teach-in for them in Downing Street. His interim plans include merging the 1,800 central government high street offices like JobCentres and benefit offices with the 3,000-plus local government high street offices dealing with housing, council tax and other council matters.
If he gets his way, this will mean tens of thousand of public sector jobs will be for the chop. But this would only be the beginning. He wants to spend the 'savings' he estimates at up to £15 billion a year on creating and training 'specialist' workers who would be sent to take over the classroom from teachers, replace nurses in the NHS and to do police casework in their spare time.
The Financial Times calls this: "as big a change in the way the government does business as the privatisations of the 1980s and 1990s".
Gershon estimates that the £8 billion spent by the government on policy making, regulation and inspection is a waste of money. He also calls for a cut in the £7 billion spent ensuring that private contractors doing government work have to comply with basic minimum standards, such as on health and safety.
This he says is a waste of money, including the 5,000 civil servants involved in checking that the regulations are being observed.
Gershon thinks that these compliance regulations are an obstacle to big business getting its hands on some of the £120 billion a year spent by the government to provide services to its citizens. They, apparently, are a great burden on the private sector - read big-business' profits.
Compliance regulations such as on safety, the TUPE regulations on the transfer of staff to private companies and the minimum wage regulations costs big business, according to The Financial Times, much more than the £8 billion spent by the government.
Gershon's remit is so wide that he is also proposing wholesale changes to every public sector department. He wants private insurance companies to take over the running of vehicle tax collection.
Higher level teaching assistants would replace teachers. "Para-professionals" (whatever they are) would be drafted in to become case managers for the police and medical and nursing support staff.
The Financial Times summarises another aspect of Gershon's proposals: "The new JobCentre Plus offices should be transformed into a one-stop 'high street retail network' for people of working age. This would handle tax-credit queries and benefit claims, answer queries on housing benefit and council tax, and administer grants for free school meals and uniforms. A single means test would replace the myriad existing ones."
Anybody who has used the new council-run one stop shops will tell you it's difficult enough now getting the overworked and underpaid staff to deal with anything more than typing in your name and address.
Every over-worked civil servant and local council front-line worker, as revealed almost every week in the pages of this paper, will tell you they can hardly cope with the huge amount of enquiries already. And they do this for appallingly low pay.
Gershon's plans would reduce the provision of public services to Victorian levels for the mass of the population. But this doesn't matter as long as his pals in big business can rake in maximum profits.
Every public-sector trade union has to take this threat to the jobs and working conditions of hundreds of thousands of their members extremely seriously. Never before has the need for co-ordinated action across the whole of the public sector been more urgent.
Gershon's proposals are completely in line with New Labour's mantra of "private - good, public - bad". Lying behind this thinking is the idea that the private sector is able to deliver services to the public more efficiently than the public sector.
But privatisation over the last twenty years or more has been a complete disaster. The coffers of big business are bulging at the expense of the mass of ordinary people.
In the NHS, in the education services and in local government and above all the national rail system, it has been a catalogue of crisis and catastrophe for the workers in those industries and the working class in general.
New Labour continue to rush headlong towards the next stage of privatisation. The public sector unions must get their act together and co-ordinate a massive campaign of opposition to the Gershon proposals.
The first thing they must do is explain to their members, in a skilful and accessible way, what is at stake. At the same time they must make it clear to the New Labour government that they will oppose these vicious anti-working class proposals all the way.
The unions should give Brown and Blair a proper teach-in - not in the language of top civil servants but in mass trade-union action. This should include a united campaign of demonstrations and industrial action if necessary.
And a campaign to defend the public sector, to bring back all those parts that have been sold off and looted by big business into the public sector.
In modern society, a properly funded and democratically accountable public sector is the difference between a civilised existence for millions of working people and the hell of an unrestrained capitalist market - a market that seeks to maximise the profits of big business and let the needs of the masses go to hell.
EUROZONE LEADERS attending the recent G7 summit of finance ministers from the richest capitalist nations let out a howl of impotent anguish. The statement issued after their meeting (7/8 February) at Boca Raton, Florida, deplored the "excessive volatility and disorderly movements" in exchange rates.
Once again, they called for 'flexibility' in the exchange rates of some East Asian countries. US leaders agreed to this language, but in reality they are quite happy to see the decline of the dollar, hoping that it will begin to cut the US balance of payments budget and boost the US home economy.
The Bush gang (as one commentator puts it) couldn't give an "expletive deleted" about the euro. European leaders, on the other hand, fear that the rise of the euro and the pound (propelled by the fall of the dollar) is killing Europe's export trade.
In dollar terms, Europe's goods are now becoming much more expensive to US consumers. In an effort to keep their share of the vital US market, some European exporters are holding down their dollar prices - which means their profit margins are being squeezed.
The major economies of the eurozone, notably Germany, France and Italy, have already suffered from several years of negative or very low growth. This has been aggravated by the restraints on government spending imposed by the eurozone stability pact, and also by the refusal of the European Central Bank (ECB) to follow the US Federal Reserve's example in reducing interest rates to very low levels.
Now, just when the first signs of recovery are appearing, the strong euro threatens to cut across any export-led growth.
The call for 'flexibility' (also made at the Doha G7 last September) is aimed at Japan and especially China. The fall of the dollar has meant the rise of the yen, as volatile speculative capital, 'hot money', has flowed from the dollar to the yen and the euro.
In contrast to the ECB, which has not intervened on foreign exchange markets, the Bank of Japan (BoJ) has been frantically buying US dollars (to purchase US Treasury bonds) to slow the fall of the dollar and the rise of the yen. The BoJ has spent an unprecedented Y27,000 billion ($256 billion) since the beginning of 2003 on its effort to stem yen appreciation.
The Japanese government is desperately trying to protect Japanese exports from a further rise in the yen's exchange rate. "Sony, the Japanese electronics giant, reckons each Y1 fall in the dollar's value against the yen cuts the net value of its sales by Y30 billion and its net profits by Y5 billion." (Financial Times, 7 February)
For some time, moreover, the Japanese capitalists have been following a conscious policy of supporting the US economy by buying US financial assets, especially treasury bonds.
Unless it receives a sufficient inflow of foreign capital to cover its huge trade deficit (currently about $500 billion a year), the US economy could suffer a major contraction. Without the highly profitable US market, however, Japanese capitalism would also suffer a serious contraction. Tokyo therefore has a vested interest in sustaining the US current account deficit.
The European leaders' complaint about 'inflexible currency policies' are especially directed at China. The Chinese currency, the renminbi (RMB) also known as the yuan, has for some time been pegged to the dollar at a fixed exchange rate of 8.27.
So if the dollar falls, the RMB automatically falls with it. This means that China's relatively cheap export goods do not become more expensive as a result of the decline in the dollar. So unlike Europe, China's exports to the US market have not been adversely affected by the exchange rate.
Under intense pressure from Europe and the Bush administration (which desperately wants to cut China's massive $124 billion trade surplus with the US), the Chinese government has recently hinted that it may be considering revaluing the RMB by between 5% and 10% in coming months.
This would make Chinese exports to the US more expensive in dollar terms, and could slow the growth of the Chinese economy.
Massive intervention by the Japanese government has probably slowed the decline of the dollar and the rise of the yen. But the history of currency crises shows that such intervention can only have a limited, temporary effect. Sooner or later the underlying forces propelling a realignment of exchange rates will prevail.
This is probably the main reason why the ECB has not intervened to try to halt the rise of the euro. They could spend billions of euros, but ultimately have no real effect. All they can do is deplore 'volatility' and plead for 'flexible' policies - in other words, for Japan and China to allow their currencies to rise, sharing the pain of dollar devaluation with Europe.
Anarchic market forces are also stirred up by the big international speculators, who play a very active part in the process. These are led by a handful of so-called hedge funds, between them controlling trillions of dollars worth of currency reserves.
Originally, hedge funds claimed to provide insurance for multi-national corporations against sudden, adverse changes in exchange rates. They use a whole array of complex financial instruments, such as options, futures, derivatives, etc. In reality, however, they have become a major source of additional volatility.
Through exploiting, hour by hour, fractional differences in currency rates across the world's foreign exchange markets, they make enormous profits. Given the huge funds at their disposal, their tactics can have a short-term effect on exchange rate movements. In other words, they are able to stack the odds in their favour.
Currently, the big speculative players believe the dollar is going to fall a lot further, and their market gambling is aimed at driving it down as fast as possible (which will inevitably mean a further rise of the euro, pound, yen, etc).
Does it matter? In the past, episodes of major dollar decline have always led to serious turmoil in the world economy. The current realignment of currencies is occurring in the aftermath of a worldwide slump, triggered by the puncturing of the US speculative bubble in 2000.
So far, the realignments have been relatively smooth, but the full consequences have yet to be felt. But the turmoil in world money markets could provoke a convulsion in the global financial system and the whole world economy.
Under capitalism, the economic wellbeing of working-class people is subject to the gyrations of anarchic, uncontrollable market forces.
THE DOLLAR is falling, its exchange rate sharply declining against other major currencies like the euro, yen, and the pound.
The Bush administration has never officially abandoned the 'strong dollar' policy, originally associated with the late 1990s' boom. But in reality, it is now following a policy of 'benign neglect', allowing market forces (helped by big-time currency speculators) to push down the dollar's value internationally.
Since its peak against the euro in October 2000, the dollar has fallen 35% against the euro. Against a 'basket' of currencies of the US's main trading partners, the dollar has fallen by about 25%. In October 2000, the euro was worth $0.82 - it is now (19 February) worth $1.26, and projected to rise to $1.45 by the end of this year.
The dollar recently fell to a three-year low against the Japanese yen, and is now around Y105 and likely to fall to Y95 within a few months. The pound is at an eleven-year high against the dollar, at $1.886.
Trade deficit
Why has Washington switched its policy on the dollar? Even the mighty US economy cannot indefinitely run a trade deficit (excess of imports over exports) of $500 billion a year or 4.5% of gross domestic product (GDP).
The flow of income (repatriated profits, investment income, etc) is also negative, bringing the overall current account (or balance of payments) deficit to 5.5% of GDP.
A recurring payments deficit requires a continuous inflow of capital from abroad to cover the gap. At the same time, it leads to an enormous accumulation of foreign debt. During the recent recession, however, the inflow of capital in the US slowed down, declining to a trickle in September and October 2003.
It picked up in December, but the leaders of US capitalism can no longer dismiss the payments deficit as a 'non-problem'. A recurring current account deficit of over 5.5% of GDP is unsustainable. The demand from foreigners for dollars, to invest in factories, property, shares, bonds, etc, declined, bringing a fall in the dollar's exchange rate against major currencies.
Without a number of Asian governments, notably those of China and Japan, buying huge quantities of US government bonds in order to stabilise the US economy and protect their own export market, the dollar would have fallen even further by now.
The depreciation of the dollar reversed the trend of the late 1990s. During the speculative boom of that period huge volumes of foreign capital poured into the US pushing up the value of the dollar. This made imported goods relatively cheap for US businesses and consumers.
At the same time, US exports became more expensive in overseas markets. The inevitable result of weak exports combined with a surge in imports was the massive trade and payment deficit.
Various economic commentators estimated that the dollar would have to decline by between 20-30% in order to correct the trade deficit. But a weak dollar (combined with the low interest rates that prevailed) would not have attracted the tidal flow of foreign capital which propelled the bubble economy.
The capital inflow kept US interest rates low, facilitating the cheap credit that encouraged the housing boom and massive consumer spending spree. A decline in the dollar would not only have led to a marked slowing of the US economy, but it would have cut off the other advanced capitalist countries and also semi-developed low-cost producers such as the Asian 'tigers' and China from the prime US consumer market.
The US trade deficit, in other words, was a vital ingredient in the world's growth of the late 1990s, even though it has left a mountain of debt.
BUSH HOPES that a weaker dollar will cut the deficit and boost exports, giving added stimulus to US growth at a time when consumer demand is weakening. According to the standard economic textbooks, this is what should happen. In reality, things are not so simple.
Imports from countries like China, for instance, whose currencies are pegged to the dollar, may not be cut. Exporters in countries with strengthening currencies, moreover, may strive to cut their costs to compensate for the rise in their dollar prices. They may even take a cut in their profit margins for the sake of maintaining their share of the lucrative US market.
A weaker dollar may initially boost US exports (though the trade deficit actually rose to a new peak in December 2003). Bush, of course, is desperate to stimulate growth in the period before November's presidential election. But over a slightly longer period, US export growth will be limited by the lack of growth in economies which previously depended on the US as their prime export market.
A weak dollar automatically means a stronger euro, yen, pound, etc. This is because the international capital (and especially the speculative hot money) flowing out of the dollar is flowing into other major currencies, especially into the euro, which is now the world's second biggest currency. This will cut across any revival of growth in Europe and Japan, and will also hit the British economy.
After the bursting of the US dotcom bubble early in 2000, the world capitalist economy entered into its worst slowdown since the end of the second world war.
With the exception of the growth spurt in the US at the end of last year (mainly stimulated by Bush's tax rebates and the continuing housing boom), there has only been a very feeble recovery in the world economy. This could now be derailed by the currency realignments that are underway.
The decline of the dollar is also hitting commodity producers whose commodities are priced in dollars. Oil is the crucial case. As the dollar falls, oil producers are effectively being paid less for oil and gas in terms of other currencies. This is fine for the US but spells economic disaster for the producers.
The Opec secretary general, Alvaro Silva, recently said: "We are speaking about negotiating for crude in euros. It is possible that the organisation will discuss this and take a decision at a given moment." (Daily Telegraph, 10 February) The Putin government, which is not in Opec, has also been considering such a move. Pricing oil and gas in euros would enormously increase the US's import bill.
A dollar decline will not provide an easy way out for US capitalism, enabling it rapidly to drag the world economy out of its present stagnation. Allowing a further substantial decline of the dollar's exchange rate - which appears to be the Bush regime's current stance - is an attempt to stimulate US recovery at the expense of the rest of the world. Such a policy will rebound on the US.
Apart from anything else, the continued realignment of major currencies (a plummeting dollar, soaring euro, yen and pound, etc) is not likely to be a smooth, orderly process. On the contrary, it spells a period of enormous turbulence in the world capitalist economy.
THE DUTCH parliament's lower house voted on 17 February to expel up to 26,000 "failed asylum seekers" over the next three years. This cruel and inhumane policy has shocked and angered Dutch working people and also many people across Europe.
The bill marks the most draconian asylum policy in Europe. Many EU countries have strengthened anti-immigrant policies, including introducing barriers to people seeking work from the ten eastern European states due to join the EU in a few weeks. But the proposals of Jan Pieter Balkenende's right wing coalition government are the first to mean the forcible ejection of refugees.
The bill to expel thousands of refugees, which has to be passed by the upper house of Parliament, refers to asylum seekers who came to the Netherlands before April 2001. Many of these fled the war torn areas of the world, like the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Chechnya.
To send families back to these countries means deporting them to poverty, joblessness, and conflict. Most of these states are without a "functioning government" and are blighted by violence.
Human Rights Watch said the measures are a "deportation law violating international standards".
Anti-immigrant feelings are whipped up by the right wing parties in the Netherlands. Yet, in 2001, only 219 asylum seekers were granted permanent residence in the Netherlands: the lowest figure in all European states
The right play on the fears and grievances of Dutch working people, who face worsening living conditions. The economy is nearly at a standstill, unemployment is growing, and there is an acute housing shortage in one of the most densely populated countries in Europe.
Despite the scapegoating of immigrants by the politicians and media, large sections of the population oppose the legislation.
As the bitter fruit of the new bill becomes clear - increased ethnic tensions, inhumane treatment of families - and the fact that it will not be a solution to the Netherlands' economic woes, many more Dutch workers will oppose the government's policies.
The acute social and economic problems are not the result of an increase in the number of immigrants and refugees. It is the right-wing coalition government which is carrying out the largest round of welfare cuts since 1945, leading to increased poverty.
THE BILL on refugees is a crude attempt by the unpopular government to disguise its anti-working class policies behind anti-immigrant populism.
Until recently the Dutch capitalists encouraged immigration, so as to fill the worst jobs when the economy grew and to push down wages. Now that the economy is slowing down, the ruling class wants to lay the blame on foreign workers. The government hopes this will divide the working class and weaken its efforts to resist cutbacks.
Ever since the rise of the racist, populist Pim Fortuyn List, which leapt to second place in the 2002 elections, the main parties have adopted many of the anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim policies and rhetoric of the ultra-right.
Smaller parties, such as the Dutch Socialist Party (in which Offensief, the Dutch section of the CWI, participates), Green Left, and human rights groups, have attacked the bill.
Offensief opposes the bill and all racist immigration policies. Local protest actions are developing and a national demo against the bill has been called for 10 April.
The CWI in the Netherlands calls for a mass campaign, uniting immigrants and workers, to oppose the government's bill and the social cuts.
Last year saw large scale protests against the cutbacks and also a huge movement against the US led war on Iraq, which the Dutch government supported and assisted. This shows that working people can be brought together to fight the right-wing policies of the government.
It is essential that a united struggle also fights for jobs for all, for a huge increase in funding to the welfare state, and for decent and affordable housing. The wealth exists in society to provide these aims, but it needs to be under the ownership of the working class - in a planned, democratically run economy, under a socialist society.
COMPARED TO five years ago, the railway colony of Lahore where all railway workers live and work has an air of demoralisation and fear. The military regime installed military officers in all workshops to spy on workers and take action if opposition developed. Despite these repressive conditions and with the threat of mass sackings, the Railway Workers' Union (workshops) organised militant struggles against the Musharraf regime.
Railway workers' main anger was directed against Musharraf's draconian Industrial Relations Ordinance 2002 which destroyed workers' rights.
Under IRO 2002 the railways' management ended piecework payments. This meant that on average railway workers lost 2,500 Rupees (£25) from a monthly wage of 4,500 Rupees (£45). This began a whole tidal wave of attacks: the ending of benefits for retired railway workers; the stopping of a monthly payment of 250 Rupees (£2.50) to help railway workers pay for utilities and, worst of all, the introduction of commercial rents for the shacks that most railway workers live in.
As a result of these attacks, the Railway Workers Union (workshops) began to organise a series of worktime protest actions - demonstrations, rallies. In effect, this amounted to unofficial and illegal strike action under a military dictatorship. Management was shocked by the tenacity of the movement and retreated. They promised to reintroduce piecework payments and gave a guarantee not to victimise any trade union activists.
However, the failure of the corrupt and right wing leaders of the big trade union federations to organise serious solidarity action for the railway workers and also against the IRO 2002, meant that management moved onto the attack once again.
DURING THE movement of the railway workers, trade union leaders like Faisal Wahid were imprisoned and even held in solitary confinement for two weeks. He faces treason charges for speeches made to protesting workers which attacked the generals.
Over 7,000 railway workers were sacked including 500 trade union activists. Using illegal measures, the railway management transferred all the leading trade unionists to different posts thousands of kilometres away from where their families lived and where they had worked for decades.
Faisal Wahid was reposted to Hyderabad and the Deputy General Secretary of the union was transferred from Hyderabad to Lahore, along with 120 other trade union activists. The majority of union leaders transferred refused to take up their new posts. As a result Faisal Wahid - and others - have not been paid for two years.
"Many railway workers are frightened now," explained Faisal Wahid. "However, it was better to fight the government than just sit back and allow them to stamp all over us. The most important thing is to build solidarity with other workers in Pakistan and with trade union activists internationally. That is why we have been involved in a campaign of protest and pressure to force management to accept the merging of our railway workers union with that of the Open Line union."
Determined united struggle can be successful - even against the military. Musharraf has attempted to privatise the extremely profitable Pakistan Telecommunications company on two occasions. One of the reasons this failed previously was a decision by the eleven unions in the company to form a joint campaign against privatisation to defeat the military's plans.
These attacks, which have become commonplace under Musharraf, will only be successful if the trade unions in Pakistan are transformed along democratic lines and their corrupt leaders are driven out by the membership.
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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/5660