The head of the International Monetary Fund told a recent meeting of G20 finance ministers that the economic crisis has shifted from finance to a "third phase" of high unemployment. For young people, who are one in five of the population but two in five of the unemployed, this is not news. While some politicians talk about recovery, reality continues to fly in the face of their proclamations of false hope.
Alistair Darling, the chancellor, is one of those who have spoken of a recovery. For some, maybe. Bankers have been celebrating. Meanwhile, this month will see youth unemployment figures surge towards the one million mark. Recent figures show that the employment rate of 16 and 17 year-olds dropped to 29% in April-June from 34% a year earlier, while the rate for people aged 18 to 24 dropped to 60% from 64%.
The government's response to the situation has been far from adequate. Instead of massive investment in a programme of socially useful jobs, this generation has been abandoned to the whims of the bosses.
But young people have been among those fighting back. For example, young workers participated in the occupation of the Vestas wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight, demanding nationalisation to save their jobs and the environment.
However, the politicians fail to respond. Speaking to the BBC, shadow chancellor George Osborne feigned sympathy for young people, but called for drastic cuts in public services, demonstrating how the Tories are as politically bankrupt as New Labour.
He said: "if we don't get on top of the debt... it is not just you and I that will pay for this with higher taxes... it is future generations that will be burdened with this debt." Osborne laments for future generations in order to join his New Labour counterparts in sentencing this present generation of young people to a grim future without promise.
But it won't be the likes of expenses-grabbing Tory and Labour MPs nor the big business fat cats they represent who will bear the burden.
Future generations of workers and youth should not have to bear any burden as a result of the crisis of capitalism. But neither should the present generation. There is an urgent need to organise a mass movement to fight for the jobs we need, against the university fees that shackle us and for the future we are being denied.
See www.youthfightforjobs.com for more information.
Protest at 11am on Wednesday 16 September at the Churchill statue in Parliament Square when the next unemployment figures are announced.
National demonstration in London on Saturday 28 November. Book your transport now.
See www.youthfightforjobs.com for more information.
On WednesDAY 16 September, Youth Fight for Jobs activists will be holding a protest at parliament at 11am to coincide with the latest unemployment figures. We will be making use of a 'model CV' for the almost 1 million youth who will be looking for jobs and in serious danger of being left on the scrapheap.
Linking up with us is the left Labour MP John McDonnell, who will be putting forward an 'early day motion' in the House of Commons demanding that young people are guaranteed a future.
This means a radical transformation of the government's 'Backing Young Britain' and 'Future Jobs Fund' schemes. It also means making it clear that young people's opportunities to get education are not cut across, and that the planned cuts in funding in colleges and universities are halted.
Socialist councillors in Coventry, Lewisham and Kirklees will be asking questions about the Future Jobs Fund placements that are being implemented by those councils. YFJ and trade unions in those areas will be campaigning and protesting for those jobs to become permanent, on a decent wage, and to ensure that we aren't used to undercut the existing workers' conditions.
Last week, Gordon Brown announced that the government will be paying Royal Mail to take on young people for six month placements, as part of the Future Jobs Fund scheme. This will be an issue which we will be taking down to striking CWU Royal Mail workers' picket lines, to ensure that these young workers do not end up doing the jobs of existing workers!
In all areas where Future Jobs Fund placements are created, the unions should make it a priority to recruit these workers and make sure that they have the same conditions as any other worker, and help them organise for permanent jobs.
Through this campaigning, YFJ will be posing the question, is the government serious about combating youth unemployment, or about massaging the figures? We'll be preparing to make our voice heard, and building for our national demonstration on 28 November.
"I JUST don't want anyone else to feel as bad as I feel" said the girlfriend of a soldier killed just five weeks ago as she signed our petition to bring the troops home.
Hundreds of people across Wales have been supporting the Socialist Party's campaign to bring the troops home from the futile and unjust war in Afghanistan. People have crowded around our stalls to sign our petition.
US general Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, has admitted that the military intervention in Afghanistan has been a failure. "The situation in Afghanistan is serious," he said, and plans to send even more troops in. As more troops are poured in it is becoming clear that Afghan civilians and working-class western soldiers are being sacrificed in an unwinnable war, dubbed by one observer as "Obama's Vietnam".
Also, people here are asking why the Brown government is sacrificing troops to prop up a corrupt regime of warlords in Afghanistan.
The response to our Socialist Party anti-war stalls has been overwhelming positive, with just a handful of individuals supporting the continuation of the war. 'We shouldn't have been out there in the first place' is a common refrain. The comments of soldiers, parents, relatives and friends signing our petitions have expressed anger over the war and frustration. Some have been very moving.
In Newport, a girlfriend of a serving soldier in Afghanistan asked to join the Socialist Party because she said "something must be done to bring them home safe".
Most people say we are doing a great job and 'keep it up'. Others want to help us, like a young woman whose partner has just come back injured from Afghanistan. Hundreds of wounded soldiers have returned home - 94 were wounded in August alone - some with horrific injuries.
A grandfather told us that since he learned his grandson was due to go out to Afghanistan: "I've been so worried I haven't slept all week! It's our youngsters being killed not the politicians, bring them home now".
With one million young people facing unemployment, for some there seems to be little alternative except the armed forces. Working-class areas like South Wales have a higher number of young people in the armed forces due to the lack of jobs and a decent future. These economic conscripts don't want to be out in Afghanistan, which is the reason why so many soldiers and their friends are supporting our campaign.
Someone signing at our stall correctly said that "most of those young lads joined up to learn a trade, earn some cash and get out of a dead end - not to be blown up in Afghanistan!"
The majority of people do not believe Gordon Brown when he says the troops are fighting the Taliban to stop terrorism in Britain, and also wonder at the sheer hypocrisy of the West that funded and helped build the Taliban when they were fighting the Russians in the 1980s. As one young student put it: "It's about capitalism".
The mood against this war is growing rapidly and the message is getting louder - End the Afghan war and Bring the troops home now!
This year's TUC conference takes place in Liverpool. There could not be a greater contrast between the city's working class, with their tremendous history of struggle and the TUC leaders, who lack any ability to lead a struggle today, yesterday or tomorrow.
In the 1980s, the Liverpool Labour council, under the leadership of Militant, the Socialist Party's predecessor, became a byword for opposition to the Thatcher-led Tory government. It became the only working class led council to inflict a defeat upon the hated Thatcher government.
The majority of the union leaders who sit on the general council of the TUC do not have the slightest idea of how to lead their members against the biggest onslaught on jobs and living standards facing working people for the last 50 years. They hang on to the shirt tails of a government who they hope against hope will listen to their pleas for some protection against the coming storm. They will wait forever because it is the Labour government who are at the forefront of these attacks, especially in the public sector.
But despite the lack of any real lead from the TUC, there have been signs that the working class is willing to fight. This year has seen tremendous battles in defence of jobs and basic trade union rights in Lindsey oil refinery, Visteon, Linamar and Vestas. What marks out all these disputes is that they were led from below. The workers took action without waiting to see if it was within the law first. That is the one of the main lessons from these disputes but for the leadership of the TUC it is a book sealed with seven seals.
The issues before this week's TUC conference are the same as last year but with the extra twist that the recession was just beginning in September 2008, now it is here with a vengeance.
How will the unions respond to the attacks on their members' jobs? Over 40,000 jobs are being lost every month. How can we fight back in spite of the vicious anti-union laws?
An indication of that will come when the resolution on the EU posted workers directive is discussed. It was this directive that allowed the Lindsey oil refinery bosses to bring in labour from abroad. Under the EU rules this labour did not have to be part of any national trade union agreement covering wages and conditions. The Lindsey workers ignored the anti-union laws and took action that brought victory twice in the first four months of this year.
The RMT in an amendment reminds the congress that the European court of justice added to the bosses' ability to ignore trade union rights. It declared in effect that national agreements covering wages and conditions were "a restraint on trade". The Lisbon treaty only adds to the power of the bosses against the unions.
A resolution from Unite on the jobs crisis has been strengthened by an amendment from the TSSA that points out that occupations are now part of the struggle against unemployment. This is a timely reminder to the union leaders that the battle for jobs cannot be hamstrung by the anti-union laws. While pressure must be put on the union leaders to ballot their members for action when necessary, and to lead the action in a determined way, direct action by workers is sometimes needed, in the face of opposition by the union leadership.
The shop workers' union Usdaw, in reference to the closure of Woolworths last Christmas, says that in future the administrator should be made to "consult unions before they make any decisions". Where was the Usdaw leadership at the time of the closure? Where was their clarion call to their members in Woolworths to fight for their jobs? We had a deafening silence from the union leadership.
The Prison Officers Association (POA) says that it is time the TUC took on the anti union laws. They call for the TUC to "organise a series of street demonstrations... on selective days on which the trade unions will break the anti-union laws by taking a general strike".
It is clear that after nearly three decades of these laws that something has to be done. However it would have been better if the POA resolution had included examples like Lindsey, where these laws have been ignored by workers moving into action and the bosses were unable to use the laws to stop them. Instead the TUC will oppose the resolution on the grounds that "it is against the law" because it baldly calls for general strike action.
A similar resolution from the POA was defeated last year. Nevertheless the POA has a proven record of defying the anti-union laws. It organised a national walk out of prison officers in August 2007 and it doesn't need any lectures from the TUC leadership over illegal action.
Other important resolutions will deal with the threat of the BNP and what the unions should do about it. The PCS calls on the general council to organise a national demonstration to highlight the threat from the BNP and also calls for members of the BNP to be banned from jobs in the public sector. The POA were successful in not only kicking the BNP out from POA membership but they also got the Prison Service to ban them from jobs as well. It is the only part of the public sector to do so up to now.
The PCS have a very important resolution on the agenda to defend the public sector. In an amendment on pensions, PCS reminds congress that it was the united front against the attacks on the public sector pensions in 2005 that led to the government retreating. Then, unions organised co-ordinated national ballots for strike action. This kept intact the pension rights for three million public sector workers.
There is no doubt that the government is coming back for more and the PCS will make the same calls for unity across the public sector unions in defence of decent pensions.
The NUT is also calling for a TUC organised national demonstration against the effects of the crisis not only concerning education but "unemployment, no cuts in pay, pensions or public services".
One of the final resolutions on the agenda is from the CWU about the crisis of political representation. It calls on the "General Council to convene, at the earliest opportunity, a conference of all affiliated unions to consider how to achieve effective political representation for our members."
This is the first time that a resolution of this nature has found its way onto the agenda. It remains to be seen if it gets heard and genuinely debated at the TUC. But it is clear that, despite all the attempts by the right wing to keep it off the agenda, the call for the unions to break the link with the capitalist Labour Party is receiving more and more support.
Tuesday 15 September, 7:30 pm
The Liverpool bar, 14 James Street
(near James street station)
Anti-Lisbon Treaty campaigners in the Irish Republic's forthcoming referendum are angry that two big corporations - Ryanair and Intel - are spending as much as 1 million euros on promoting a 'yes' vote.
Dublin Socialist Party MEP Joe Higgins said: "The fact that both companies, which are anti-trade union, would be supporting Lisbon is indeed a comment on what Lisbon means, that it endorses the corporate agenda and not the agenda in the interests of working people."
Irish voters upset the plans of Europe's bosses by rejecting the Treaty in 2008 but a new referendum on Lisbon will be held on 2 October.
The demo is supported by the National Shop Stewards Network, the PCS National Young Members network, the Merseyside trades councils and the north-west stewards network together with many others.
Speakers will include: Bob Crow, RMT general secretary, a Vestas worker, Keith Gibson from Lindsey Oil Refinery, Len McCluskey, Unite assistant general secretary, Glenn Kelly, Unison NEC member (personal capacity), Tracy Edwards, PCS National Young Members organiser, Yunus Bakhsh, victimised Unison steward, and Ian Allinson, Unite convenor at Fujitsu.
THE TORIES' scare tactic, exposing New Labour's threatened 137,000 NHS job cuts to save £20 billion, is sheer hypocrisy. Whichever political party wins the next general election the scenario facing healthworkers will be the same. All the three main establishment parties are offering up a diet of cutbacks, closures, further privatisation, redundancies and pay cuts.
The NHS trade unions have a duty to seriously organise an effective campaign of co-ordinated industrial action in defence of jobs, pay and conditions.
Even before the predicted massive NHS funding cuts some NHS Trusts are already facing financial difficulties are attempting to make the workers pay for these crises. (By coincidence, the proposed £20 billion 'savings' is the same as the cost of the various privatisation schemes in the NHS).
Recently, in Wakefield and Pontefract Hospitals as a result of the new PFI (Private Finance Initiative) hospitals development, management attempted to inflict new jobs on the workforce at lower grades ie less pay.
This was met with determined resistance by the local Unison and Unite branch memberships. A massive 95% of union members voted to support strike action in a consultative ballot.
Despite management's claims that the job changes were contractually set in stone, the ballot result forced them to withdraw all the proposed downgradings.
Unison membership increased significantly during the ballot and the idea of taking collective action has been significantly heightened amongst healthworkers.
Our dispute shows that with a determined union leadership and a determined rank and file, management attempts to attack healthworkers' conditions can be defeated.
Having poured billions of tax-payers' money into bailing out the banks, the government is preparing to step up its ongoing war on the public sector. New proposals for "reform" of the Civil Service Compensation Scheme (CSCS) are intended to make it cheaper to cut jobs, privatise services and close offices.
Labour's pro-market policies are based on the lie that the public sector is wasteful and inefficient and only the private sector can deliver. This has provided the ideological basis for their relentless assault on the public sector and particularly the civil service.
One hundred thousand jobs have gone since 2004, there have been remorseless attacks on workers' terms and conditions. Hundreds of offices have been closed, stripping many vulnerable communities of important services and there has been more privatisation than under the Thatcher/Major governments.
Labour has learned nothing from the recession. Its response has been to step up its cuts and privatisation programme, and these attacks will be greatly accelerated whoever wins the general election.
For the bankers it is business as usual - raking in huge bonuses and profits while working people are expected to pick up the bill. It is simply incredible that the terms of the "debate" taking place amongst the political elite and the media is about the "un-affordability" of public sector spending and the necessity to slash vital services.
It should be around the greed, corruption and lack of effective regulation in the banking sector, including the need for public ownership and a type of economic planning aimed at improving the lives of the many rather than the profits of the few.
The left-led PCS national executive committee (NEC) has responded to these unprecedented attacks by working with and involving members and activists in building effective campaigns. These have resulted in concessions that have gone some way to protect members' interests. Effective campaigning, underpinned by a willingness to take industrial action if necessary, has secured significant settlements on job security and pensions.
Now the government has announced plans to tear up the longstanding agreement on the Civil Service Compensation Scheme (CSCS). This is the redundancy and early retirement scheme for the civil service and other public bodies which is based on accrued entitlements.
The current terms were negotiated during Thatcher's government. It is regarded as a fair scheme and it is ironic that a Labour government is attempting to rip up an acceptable agreement underwritten by the Tories and replace it with what will be the worst scheme in the public sector.
The proposals, which were announced by a leak in the Daily Mail, could see members losing tens of thousands of pounds of their present entitlement in the event of voluntary or compulsory redundancy. This is an undisguised attempt to make it cheaper to cut jobs and privatise services.
The Cabinet Office sees the recession as a tremendous opportunity to extend their cuts and privatisation agenda and to clear the path for the anticipated election of a Tory government and the inevitable post general election assault.
The fact that Labour ministers are comfortable with these developments shows they share the same anti-public sector ideology as the Tories. But it is also reflective of their own political weakness that, notwithstanding Gordon Brown's public intervention during negotiations to urge a hard line, they allowed the "mandarins" to make the running.
The Cabinet Office and the departmental permanent secretaries are behaving in a despicable and dishonourable fashion, showing they just don't give a damn about their staff. Instead of publishing their best offer, they tried to coerce the unions into agreeing unacceptable proposals by threatening to publish "worse" ones if the unions did not agree.
PCS refused to submit to this blackmail and the Cabinet Office published the "worse" terms. In reality, while a minority of staff may have been a bit better off under the so-called "better" proposals neither set of proposals were acceptable.
These tactics reveal a detestation of PCS in government and Cabinet Office circles. The union is seen as the biggest obstacle to their pro-market agenda. If these proposals are driven through, the ill-health retirement element of the scheme will come under attack. This will mean, as was witnessed in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in recent years, staff suffering ill-health being driven out to meet job cut targets, rather than being given the support needed to get them back to work.
While Labour has said the pensions deal agreed in 2005 is secure, it is inevitable that on the basis of the CSCS proposals going through, this will be reviewed. As far as the Tories are concerned, a further assault is almost certainly guaranteed.
This assault is being accompanied by the usual media lies and distortions. Civil servants are portrayed as enjoying feather-bedded agreements while private sector workers are bearing the brunt of the recession.
This effort to drive divisions between private and public sector workers is designed to draw attention away from the real division in society, between the haves and have-nots. But it is also to head off the development of effective solidarity in action amongst working people who all have a vested interest in good public services.
The PCS NEC unanimously rejected these proposals and has launched a major campaign to defeat them. The aim is to get back to the negotiating table in order to secure a just settlement that honours contracts with existing staff and negotiates a fair scheme for new entrants.
In 2005 many said such a settlement was simply unachievable including a few other civil service union "leaders". But hard negotiating, based on principled demands was supported by members. This was underpinned by the determination to take industrial action as a last resort. This secured a settlement without the need to strike at all.
The campaign will involve workplace meetings, legal action, media and parliamentary lobbying and, if required, industrial action. PCS will take the issue to the upcoming Trade Union Congress. We will argue for the widest possible solidarity amongst public and private sector workers to unite in defence of the public sector and for an alternative to policies that put profit before people.
Next year, Unite members will elect a general secretary designate who will eventually take over from retiring joint general secretaries Tony Woodley and Derek Simpson.
United Left (UL), the union's broad left, held its hustings on 5 September. Three candidates presented themselves for nomination: Len McCluskey, an assistant general secretary of the union, Jerry Hicks, the victimised former convenor from Rolls Royce and Socialist Party member Rob Williams, reinstated convenor at Linamar, Swansea.
The run-up to the hustings was marred by controversy. UL has no formal membership structure, just regional lists of 'participants', and there was confusion over whether union activists would be let in. A direction a week before from the chair and secretary of UL added to the uncertainty.
Some regions operated a list cut-off date of 18 July (the last national coordinating committee meeting) for eligibility. This meant London and Eastern UL excluded the convenors from Visteon in Enfield and Basildon, for example.
This caused controversy in the meeting and Jerry Hicks and his supporters walked out.
Some members were anxious to avoid a split and to hear all the candidates. Socialist Party councillor Dave Nellist moved that all outside should be admitted, which was passed by 109-107.
Most of those present assumed all those originally excluded would now have a vote but under pressure the chair ruled, without discussion, that they would only be observers! With this ruling, Jerry Hicks and his supporters walked out again and did not participate in the hustings.
Len McCluskey gave a left-sounding speech but continued to support the union's backing of New Labour. He argued we should convince workers to join the Labour Party to transform it. This line seemed hollow even a few years ago. Now it's totally out of touch.
Before Rob Williams spoke, he said he could not guarantee to support the eventual UL nominee, given the exclusions and he would review the position later. He showed through his own experiences that workers need a confident, clear leadership. He posed the question of disaffiliation from New Labour - funding Labour to the tune of £13 million was a millstone round the union's neck.
McCluskey won the vote 170-49. This was a creditable vote for Rob, who stood clearly as a Socialist Party member. If Jerry Hicks and his supporters had not walked out McCluskey may not have achieved the two-thirds majority needed to secure UL endorsement.
If McCluskey sticks to his programme, even given his position on New Labour, he could be well placed to defeat right-wing candidates. But he must not make concessions to the right to secure election, otherwise he will lose confidence amongst Unite activists.
This hustings process shows that to help consolidate the left in the union, the members need a fighting, inclusive, democratic broad left with a proper membership structure. It should be a rank and file body, allowing unelected officials to attend and speak, but not to vote as they can at present.
AFTER 28 months of stress and eleven days of hearings costing over £50,000 - for having the temerity to challenge the decisions of Unison's standing orders committee - Hackney Unison chair, Brian Debus, was banned from holding office in the union for five years.
Brian is one of the four Socialist Party members who have been the subject of a lengthy witch-hunt by the Unison leadership. He received the longest ban.
The disciplinary action was started on trumped-up charges of giving "racist offence to members", after a leaflet (endorsed by four Unison branches) critical of the standing orders committee decisions was circulated at Unison's 2007 conference.
In February 2007 Hackney local government Unison branch passed two motions, one called for the election of heads of service groups regionally and nationally, every five years. The second called for the procedure for industrial action ballots to be speeded up.
These motions were passed by the branch because members were disappointed at the national leadership's conduct of the battle over pay and pensions. They were also frustrated at the six month delay in holding a ballot of library workers in Hackney.
The membership was angry when the motions were ruled out of order by the conference standing orders committee, so the production of the above leaflet for the conference was agreed by the branch.
This leaflet, using the "three wise monkeys" image, formed the pretext for the launch of the witch-hunt. Hackney branch secretary Matthew Waterfall is not a member of the Socialist Party and was never charged but four Socialist Party members from different Unison branches were.
Now, disgracefully, Brian Debus, in a further hearing, has been declared guilty of an extra charge of "misappropriation of Unison branch funds". No extra penalty was imposed on top of the five-year ban, but this extra charge against Brian alone is a further attempt to denigrate his good standing in the labour movement.
The four are waiting for a Unison appeal to be heard and an Employment Tribunal to reconvene in December.
Hundreds of protests have already been sent to Unison general secretary Dave Prentis, but please continue to send them to: Unison HQ, 1 Mabledon Place, London WC1H 9AJ.
Telephone: 0845 355 0845. email: [email protected] Please send copies to: Defend the Four Campaign, PO Box 858 London E11 1YG or email [email protected]
For further updates check out: www.stopthewitchhunt.org.uk
On 7 September, about 150 construction workers from South Wales and as far away as Drax and the Isle of Grain, supported by members of RMT, PCS, and Unite as well as Youth Fight for Jobs, blockaded the construction site at Uskmouth power station. They were protesting at the failure of contractor Siemens to adhere to an agreement to employ local workers on the site.
Hundreds of construction workers are unemployed for the first time and it's not because there is a lack of work. Siemens has preferred to bring in labour from Eastern Europe rather than employing unionised local labour at nationally agreed rates.
They occupied the road leading into the plant for three hours, preventing anyone getting into the plant. The police were powerless to do anything to move the workers until the workers marched to the plant and allowed the traffic to move.
A number of cars and minibuses carrying workers to work turned back. Some workers who did go in phoned the union to offer to come back out.
But as Phil Willis from the Isle of Grain pointed out, the key issue is organising inside the site to force Siemens to adhere to the agreement. On the Isle of Grain they have succeeded in forcing the employer to work to union agreements by hard work from the stewards on the site. "It's the only way to do it" he said.
Attending the protest were apprentices Aaron Rowson and his mate Scott. Aaron is frustrated that he cannot finish his apprenticeship because he cannot find work: "I just want to be fully qualified". The support of Youth Fight for Jobs, who had a prominent contingent on the protest, was appreciated by many of the workers.
New protests and meetings are planned, with Lindsey Oil Refinery workers pledging to come to the next one.
On 5 September, following a hectic year of work so far, 70 Socialist Party trade union activists met in central London. We were discussing the industrial battles we have been involved in and the work of the Socialist Party within them.
In the morning session, Socialist Party general secretary Peter Taaffe introduced an interesting discussion on the stage we are at in the world economic crisis and recession and how this could affect the development of industrial struggles.
The afternoon session was introduced by PCS assistant general secretary Chris Baugh and concentrated on the looming cuts in the public sector, how working people can prepare to fight back against these attacks and the central role that organised socialists can play in building the sort of democratic, fighting trade unions that working people need to do this.
In the discussion, people recounted their experiences of organising in their particular unions, with important contributions from activists in PCS, Unison, RMT and NUT amongst others. Questions about how trade union leaderships can be forced to act, and how trade union struggle can be linked to community campaigning against service cuts and other important issues were also raised.
The meeting was an important opportunity for Socialist Party members to get together with other activists in their union and discuss the specific tasks that Socialist Party members will face over the coming months.
If you're a Socialist Party member who wasn't able to get along to the meeting, get in touch with your union's Socialist Party group convenor for a report. Or arrange to have a report back at your Socialist Party branch.
Postal workers in the CWU will soon be balloting for a national strike against cuts, job losses and attacks on the union.
This follows hundreds of strikes in postal workplaces across the country where workers have taken action to defend jobs, pay, conditions, and their union reps from attacks by Royal Mail management.
Many workplaces have requested strike ballots which have not been processed.
Postal workers in Stoke are on indefinite strike in their battle to stop the closure of Leek Road mail centre.
Following the strikes in 2007, the union agreed to negotiate a national deal with management on 'modernisation.' But since then management have unilaterally imposed cuts and attacks on postal workers and their union.
These attacks escalated after the failure of New Labour to part-privatise Royal Mail as the recession forced bidders to back off. Privatisation would have resulted in huge cuts, extra workloads and a worse service.
Now Royal Mail bosses Crozier and Brydon, with the backing of New Labour, are pushing through these very same cuts.
30% of jobs in Royal Mail, totalling 40,000 jobs, have already been cut. As Royal Mail declared improved profits of £321 million this year and rewarded managers with fat bonuses, postal workers got a pay freeze and a pension deficit.
The CWU leadership offered a three month moratorium (ie a no strike deal) if management agreed to negotiate modernisation with the union. But the bosses have ignored the union and continued with the cuts.
In reality the union leadership should have called a national ballot earlier when it was obvious that management were ignoring the union and going ahead with these attacks.
The anger of members was demonstrated in their demands for local ballots but it soon became obvious that these attacks affected the whole postal industry and therefore needed a national response from the union.
Now that members are to be balloted for national action CWU activists will be campaigning hard for a 'yes' vote, whilst making sure that existing local disputes are still supported.
Postal workers have a proud tradition of trade union organisation and defending their jobs and conditions with strike action, sometimes unofficial where necessary.
Unions have carried out successful strike action and won concessions while complying with the anti-trade union laws. But in some circumstances defying the anti-union laws may be the only way to defend attacks on workers.
The anti-trade union laws were brought in by Thatcher and the Tories to weaken the unions but New Labour have been in power for 12 years and have not withdrawn them. Yet many unions, including the CWU, continue to fund New Labour.
The CWU have submitted a resolution to the TUC calling for a conference about political representation (see page 2).
On the basis of Labour's attempt to part-privatise Royal Mail and now oversee massive cuts, the outcome of such a meeting should be for the CWU and all unions affiliated to Labour to break the link, stop funding New Labour and start to build a new party committed to the interests of workers, not the bosses.
On 4 September, postal workers from the CWU held a demonstration outside the Unite union headquarters and a rally in the Friends Meeting House, London.
Postal workers are angry about the scabbing and bullying by Royal Mail management, who are organised in the union Unite through the Communication Managers' Association. Postal workers from as far away as Scotland attended the rally.
Managers are being moved around the country for strikebreaking. In one small delivery office 110 managers replaced less than 50 strikers.
Management, supported by the government, are determined to break the CWU. National agreements are being ignored in favour of "executive action". This includes altering duties, changing times of attendance, moving people from mail centres into delivery miles away, and making full time jobs part time.
The rally, organised by the London divisional committee, was also addressed by speakers from two other regions and Billy Hayes, CWU general secretary.
Everyone agreed that the dispute was a national one, but reps asked why there was months of delay between the London strike ballot and the national one.
The link with the Labour Party was another topic of discussion. Billy Hayes said that the CWU was giving no money to the party, except the affiliation fee and money for sponsored MPs!
Against this, the London divisional committee are organising a consultative ballot for disaffiliation.
My CWU branch secretary was among those who pointed out that members are already opting out of the political levy and would continue to do so.
The consultative ballot is a welcome step forward. However, the question of a new political party was not discussed.
The CWU has got support from some sponsored MPs and some non-sponsored MPs on such issues as privatisation. However, so far Labour MPs have only been willing to stand against the party when they had already been deselected.
A political alternative cannot be built that way, one by one. Trade unions and socialist organisations have to take the initiative.
On 29 August, in an unprecedented act for an individual Isle of Wight Royal Mail delivery office, staff at the Newport (IOW) delivery office held a one-day stoppage. As a result of this official stoppage, mail deliveries in the Newport, Cowes, East Cowes and Yarmouth areas of the island did not take place that day.
In the past the Newport office has only taken part in national disputes, but at a recent CWU postal workers' union area meeting the members present asked for the office to be balloted over local and national issues. When the ballot took place the CWU members in the office voted to take industrial action.
In the past the IOW has not been classed as a militant area and as a result has been regularly targeted by Royal Mail as an easy area to bring in unagreed changes and large budgetary savings.
The CWU members at the Newport delivery office, who number almost 90 staff, made the decision to take industrial action due to Royal Mail managers using executive action to force through a 're-sign' of duties. The re-sign will then pave the way to bring in a new set of unagreed duties which will reduce substantially the number of full-time jobs in the office.
Also the members were angered by the way the managers regularly refuse to discuss and negotiate seriously with the elected office CWU representative over important issues that affect the office and their working conditions.
Over 30 staff attended the picket line outside the Newport delivery office. Support came from about 20 people from various organisations including Unison, the FBU and RMT unions and also sacked workers from the Vestas campaign.
Vectis bus workers in Newport and Ryde (IOW) took strike action on 3 September over pay. Their picket was well supported with Vestas RMT members joining in in solidarity. RMT branch secretary Keith Murphy spoke to The Socialist: "We were expecting a meeting with management back in March to discuss pay. Talks were not started for a couple of months. At the first meeting the union asked for an increase, but not the 15% claimed in the local press!
"The company said they could not afford it even though they made a £2 million profit in the first quarter of this year. No offer was made and an RMT meeting agreed to ballot for industrial action. No talks with management took place and the decision was taken to strike. Management continue to refuse talks but have sent out texts and three letters to staff calling on them to come to work. We will be meeting again this week and have action planned again for this Friday and Saturday."
Vectis enjoy a monopoly on the island and take every advantage, fleecing passengers and holding down workers' pay. There will be two more strike days on 11 and 12 September.
Vestas workers are continuing their fight for nationalisation and jobs on the Isle of Wight (IOW), building for a national day of action on Thursday 17 September. The eleven sacked Vestas workers who occupied the Newport Vestas plant have still not been paid their redundancy money. The company are preparing to move wind turbine blades from the factory and the campaign is mobilising support to stop them being moved!
The campaign is appealing for support from the trade unions on the IOW to take part in the mass protest. Vestas workers have shown their solidarity with striking postal workers and bus workers on the island.
Make sure you take resolutions to your trade union meeting supporting the workers' demands for jobs and nationalisation.
Vestas workers Mark Smith and Mark Flowers visited and spoke at the recent Socialist Party summer camp. They outlined the campaign and the work they are doing to build support, which will include visiting the TUC as part of the RMT union delegation. Mark thanked the Socialist Party for its continuing support and gave support to the Youth Fight for Jobs march in November.
Wessex RMT are organising a protest at the Southampton Vestas factory and a rally as part of the national day of action. Support Vestas fight for jobs, 5pm, Vestas, Hazel Road, Woolston, rally 7pm at the Dockers Club, Brunswick Square, Southampton.
A few weeks ago some of the 600 Vestas workers who were made redundant from their jobs manufacturing wind turbine blades, decided to take militant action and occupy the factory. While the Vestas factory itself constituted the main hub of activity, an environmentalist and supporters' campsite mushroomed on the so-called 'Magic Roundabout'.
Now, however the 'magic roundabout' is less magic, more ghost (tent) town. As Climate Camp loomed, interest from the environmental activists waned. But the workers and other key campaigners remain.
Thursday 17 September will be a national day of action in support of Vestas, with people coming out on to the streets to show solidarity with the redundant workers and against the loss of 600 green jobs.
The South London Vestas Support Group, established by Battersea and Wandsworth trades council is organising a lunchtime lobby of the Department for Energy and Climate Change at 12.30pm followed by an evening demo from 5.30pm. Come and show your support - remember the theme is green - so wear something green! For more info: [email protected] or 07946 172 461.
London Underground (LU) has retreated in the face of RMT's strike campaign. They have guaranteed that no RMT members will face compulsory redundancy as a result of the underground's current cost review and organisational change programme.
Earlier in 2009, 3,000 workers received 90 day redundancy notices, warning them that their jobs were in danger of disappearing. LU stated publicly that around 1,000 redundancies would be required to cut costs after LU bailed out the failed privatisation (PPP) of Metronet, the private company created to run LU's engineering and infrastructure operations.
The dispute hinged on LU's refusal to recognise an agreement made with the unions in 2001. That agreement clearly stated that no employee of either LU or Metronet could be forced into redundancy. The agreement had been demanded by RMT (and Aslef - although that union has not been prepared to defend the agreement) because tube workers knew that PPP would lead to job losses and cost cutting. With no justification whatsoever LU has argued that the agreement is not applicable to the current situation.
While LU will not accept that redundancies are impossible under the 2001 agreement, they have now agreed that no RMT member will be forced into redundancy under existing proposals. This represents an important victory for all tube workers and should encourage the wider trade union movement.
Many high profile struggles during 2009 have necessarily been limited to winning redundancy payments for workers who've been made redundant through bankruptcy or plant closures.
The RMT, on LU, has achieved an impressive result by preventing compulsory redundancies in the current situation.
In spite of this, some activists have been calling for RMT to strike again until the employer concedes that redundancies cannot take place 'in principle'. Members of left groups including the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and Alliance for Workers Liberty (AWL) have been arguing that if one tube employee faces redundancy then RMT has a duty to strike - even if that employee is not an RMT member. The SWP now appear to have pulled back in response to the agreement reached but reality has not been allowed to divert the AWL from its stand.
The argument of these lefts is rooted in a mistaken assessment of the impact of the current economic downturn. The downturn has undoubtedly set back the ideology of capitalism but this does not automatically give confidence to workers to strike over pay and conditions.
RMT members on the tube were prepared to fight to prevent compulsory redundancies but once it was clear that RMT members' jobs were safe a further strike would not have been as successful as the action in June, which shut down 80% of services.
In the future, if the other tube unions make an appeal to the RMT for support against attacks on their members, then the RMT should give them that support.
Also it is inevitable that LU will come back at some point with new proposals to cut jobs and RMT will have to face up to this and be prepared to strike again. But trying to have that battle now, when the immediate proposal is for no compulsory redundancy of an RMT member, would be naive in the extreme and potentially lead RMT into a defeat.
It is important that tube workers see management's failure to establish compulsory redundancies in practice as the victory for the workforce that it is.
RMT members should be proud of the action taken and members of other tube unions should ask their own leaders why RMT was left to fight the redundancies alone. After this result confidence should be boosted, not chipped away by misconceived talk of defeat.
The issue of pay and management abuse of disciplinary procedures remain areas of dispute. None of the unions that represent members on the tube have agreed the wholly inadequate offer of 1.5% this year and RPI plus 0.5% the next.
RMT is now discussing with the other unions and further talks at ACAS (the conciliation service) are planned between LU and all the unions.
Capitalist historians and politicians, in seeking to explain the causes of the war, identify this or that diplomatic or military 'error', whether it be of Chamberlain, Hitler, Stalin or Roosevelt, the main actors on the stage of history at that time. In reality the roots of the Second World War, as in the First World War, fundamentally lay in the clash between different imperialist powers.
The First World War signified that capitalism had outgrown the straitjacket of private ownership of industry and the narrow limits of the nation state. German imperialism had attempted to supplant the old colonial powers, but ultimately this could only be settled through the mightiest armed clash in history.
16 million perished in that war; at least five million were either killed or injured in Russia alone. Its main outcome was, however, a revolutionary wave in Russia, Germany and other countries, which threatened the very existence of the system that had caused the carnage.
The Russian revolution effectively ended the First World War. It only became violent after the dispossessed landlords and capitalists, with the support of 21 armies of imperialism, attempted to overthrow it. Compared to the costs of the war, and weighed on the scales of humanity and history, the Russian revolution was the least violent means of advancing a society stuck in the blind alley of capitalism.
In contrast, what is the balance sheet of the two capitalist world wars? 16 million killed in the First World War and 60 million in the second. Could this have been avoided? Yes, particularly the Second World War if the revolutionary explosions of the working class, in Germany in 1918 to 1923, in China from 1925 to 1927 etc, had been successful.
The inevitability of a new world war was rooted in the Versailles Treaty that followed the First World War. This helped to stoke up German nationalism and led to the rise of the Nazis and fascism, which the leaders of the German workers' organisations allowed to come to power "without a pane of glass being broken". They failed to mobilise the masses in a united front that could have barred the way to Hitler.
British capitalism armed and financed Hitler, partly because of the threat of revolution in Germany and also in the hope and expectation that German imperialism could be unleashed against Russia. A different, more progressive social system to capitalism existed there, a planned economy, albeit dominated by a bureaucratic elite personified by Stalin.
Stalin himself pursued a policy of manoeuvring between the capitalist 'democracies' and Nazi Germany. This was done, not in order to gain time and space for the deformed workers' state Russia, as the Putin government has recently stated, but to protect the power, privileges and incomes of the bureaucratic officialdom that Stalin represented.
Stalin's purges of the late 1930s and the massacre of the military general staff enormously weakened Russia. This was at a time when it was clear that Hitler, having dealt with Anglo-French imperialism, would inevitably turn on Russia, as proved to be the case in 1941 when Hitler unleashed his 'Operation Barbarossa'.
The tactics employed by Marxists during the Second World War were determined by the specific features of this war. On the one side, it was a continuation of the First World War. It was a struggle between Anglo-French imperialism on one side, supported by the new giant of US imperialism, and the Axis powers led by Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy and Japan for the redivision of the world in their own interests.
At the same time, however, the fact that a Nazi regime threatened dictatorial occupation - and did so in the cases of France, Belgium, most of eastern Europe and parts of Russia - meant that the consciousness of the working class was different once the war had begun. There was none of the enthusiasm for the war which had existed in some countries at the onset of the First World War. Then, with brass bands playing and banners unfurled, workers marched to war. Having no experience of what world war would be like, many workers and youth went enthusiastically. It appeared to represent a change from their humdrum existence.
But the experience of the horror of actual war meant that this mood did not exist in 1939. Yet fear of occupation by the Nazis and what this would mean in terms of the democratic rights and the living standards of the working class meant that there was support for armed resistance to a Hitler-led invasion of Britain.
Once the war commenced, the masses were prepared to be drawn into the military. This, in turn, determined the tactics of the genuine Marxists, the Trotskyists, to go into the armed forces with their class and their generation. This did not mean a change in policy or support for the capitalist governments conducting the war or their military elites, but a determination to resist fascism. It meant a continuation of the class struggle through the adoption of skilful tactics.
The starting point was that what should be 'defended' were the interests of the masses, pointing out at the same time that the ruling class was incapable of doing this, as the experience of the defeat of France demonstrated. The French ruling class capitulated to the Nazis rather than arm the working class.
In industry, while the communist parties of Britain and elsewhere accepted an industrial 'truce', the Trotskyists continued the struggle in favour of the working class. They led a significant number of strikes in Britain of apprentices, electricians, etc, in the teeth of opposition from the bosses and the government, as well as threats of imprisonment and actual jailings.
In the army, Trotskyists in Britain and Europe counterposed to the top brass the feelings of the troops, sick of the carnage and the suffering of the war, and determined not to go back to the poverty, unemployment and class-ridden capitalism of the 1930s. They therefore gained significant support.
The Trotskyists were successful in the soldiers' parliaments set up during the war - in Cairo, for instance, among the Eighth Army. Churchill was "disgusted" when he was informed that most of the troops in the Far East intended to vote Labour in the post-war election. Soldiers and sailors were also in the majority in the crowd that booed Churchill, the so-called 'victor' of the war, in Walthamstow Greyhound Stadium during the 1945 general election campaign.
Like the First World War, the Second World War was supposed to be a 'war to end all wars'. A brighter and better future was promised. However, the masses, as Trotsky had predicted, did not take the promises of capitalist politicians at face value. Even before the war had finished, the Italian masses rose against the fascists in 1943 and established workers' committees in parts of northern Italy.
In Britain, the Tories were booted out and the first majority Labour government was elected, which under the pressure of the working class, carried through 'a quarter of a revolution' in the nationalisation of a number of industries. There was mass pressure on them to go a lot further in order to guarantee jobs, housing and increased living standards in a devastated and wrecked Britain.
The same radical revolutionary wave swept through France with the emergence of mass communist and socialist parties, while even the middle-class Gaullists adopted socialist rhetoric.
In the mid-1940s the opportunity was presented to carry through a socialist overturn and the establishment of a democratic united socialist states of Europe. But once more, as in the aftermath of the First World War, the social democratic leaders but also the communist parties this time - which had also degenerated into agencies of capitalism - saved capitalism.
The two strongest powers emerging from the Second World War were US imperialism on the one side, now a military, economic and industrial colossus, and Russian Stalinism strengthened through the extension of the planned economy in eastern Europe and also by the victory of the Chinese revolution.
This meant that no sooner had the Second World War ended than a new antagonism arose, which dominated world relations for the next forty or more years. The Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic explosions were nothing to do with defeating Japan but were meant as a warning to Russia of what to expect if it did not bow to the power of American imperialism. Japan, which had suffered a minimum of three million dead by these events, was already suing for peace.
Despite the promise to 'end all wars', there has not been one day of real peace throughout the world since the end of the Second World War. True, there has not been an outright conflict between major powers in a 'new world war'. Wars largely took the form of conflicts in the neo-colonial world, some of them proxy wars between the US and Russia.
In fact, since 1945, it is estimated that over 40 million people have been killed, largely in the neocolonial world. This was the result of imperialism's attempt to hold the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America in chains. Direct control of colonies has been replaced by indirect control, which means an even greater economic stranglehold, as well as an enhanced military presence, particularly by US imperialism. An 'imperialism of bases' with over 700 US military establishments deployed throughout the world, has replaced direct military intervention.
This has been accompanied by the 'privatisation of war' with companies like Blackwater receiving $1 billion to carry out military tasks, including assassinations, for the US government. Obama, for the time being, has resorted to a more hands-off approach, less of a unilateralist and more of a 'multilateralist' policy, drawing other imperialist allies of US imperialism into any action seen as necessary, such as Afghanistan.
The lesson of the Second World War is that war is endemic to capitalism and will be a threat as long as it exists. A new generalised world war is not posed today because this would inevitably mean a nuclear holocaust. The capitalists would not favour this. It would mean the destruction of the working class - which is the source of economic power for the capitalists - the goose that lays the golden eggs of profits. Also, a nuclear conflagration would destroy the ruling classes as well.
A nuclear 'accident' cannot be ruled out and even a nuclear 'exchange' in the Middle East or in South Asia. But if there was an attempt to move towards a nuclear conflict, this would be opposed by majorities in the peoples of the world and in particular by the organised working class through their organisations such as trade unions. This is the most powerful factor which seeks to stay the hand of the capitalists in their drive towards, even 'local' wars like the devastating Iraq war and Afghanistan.
War has not been abolished but has assumed a different form today as these seemingly endless conflicts indicate. The only way ultimately to avoid war is to overthrow the ruling classes, who worldwide are based upon a market whose raison d'être is profit and profit alone. To safeguard this they will take the most drastic and inhuman measures. There can be local wars, not just for oil as Iraq demonstrated, but for other precious resources such as water and food in the future.
The anniversary of the Second World War therefore is the occasion to affirm that the only way to carry through real disarmament is to disarm the ruling classes and establish a socialist world.
The heroic Russian masses - with the memory and the lessons of the October revolution, and its gains in the form of nationalised property relations still present - saved the day and not the military 'genius' of Stalin or his generals.
The masses turned back the Nazi war machine, then moved onto the offensive which drove back the German army to the gates of Berlin. This was at a terrible cost with at least 27 million Russians killed.
The number of victims could have been considerably lower but for the tactics employed by Stalin and his generals. There was no attempt to fraternise with the ordinary German soldiers while at the same time showing no mercy to the SS scum.
In the Russian civil war, the Bolsheviks made a revolutionary appeal to and won over the troops of even the Whites - the armies of the dispossessed landlords and capitalists - and the imperialist armies. It was this and the support of the international working class which managed to defeat the counter-revolution.
Such a policy of revolutionary fraternisation was foreign to Stalin. Instead he invoked Russian nationalism and defence of the 'motherland' rather than the appeal of a military-revolutionary policy.
The communist parties also did not put forward a policy of revolutionary fraternisation, as the Trotskyists did. By differentiating between the SS gangsters and the ordinary German soldier, the Trotskyists, despite their small numbers, were able to have an effect by producing newspapers, for instance, in German for the ordinary German soldiers in some of the 'occupied' countries.
The US's atomic and nuclear programme, the Manhattan project, was conducted completely in secret, the money for this hidden in fake accounts of the War Department and never made public to the US Congress or people. The consequence of this was the cold war and the mad race to amass, in a new 'Dr Strangelove' world, huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons.
Even after the end of the cold war - and its replacement by a 'chilly war' in the recent period between Russia and the US - there are still enough stockpiles of nuclear weapons to annihilate the world, all civilisation and life in general from this planet many times over. In 2002 there were at least 20,000 active nuclear weapons in the world.
This madness has now spread to the neo-colonial world with India, Pakistan and the 'rogue state' of North Korea possessing nuclear weapons and, in the case of the latter, threatening to use them in the recent conflict with the US.
It is true that, unlike the unrestrained military regime of Bush and Cheney, Barack Obama declared even before he was elected that he intended to "work with Russia to take US and Russian ballistic missiles off hair-trigger alert [and] seek dramatic reductions in US and Russian stockpiles of nuclear weapons material". Yet unbelievably, it is Henry Kissinger, who on Obama's behalf, has been discussing with both the US and Russia to reduce nuclear inventories. This latter-day 'peacemonger' was the architect of the monstrous bombing of Cambodia, the butchery of the Chilean people in the US-supported coup against Salvador Allende in 1973 and the suppression of the Timorese people where 200,000 were killed, when he ratified Indonesia's crushing of the movement for self-determination.
There is today widespread support for the abolition of nuclear weapons. There can be reductions, but this will not completely eliminate the possibility of a future nuclear 'exchange'. The example of the rapid rearmament of Germany under Hitler demonstrated that even if nuclear weapons were significantly reduced or even eliminated by the major powers, this would not reduce the threat of nuclear war in the future.
Japanese capitalism, despite Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is considering a nuclear weapons programme because of fear of China. Israel now has the capacity to devastate Iran and other 'enemy states' in the Middle East. Where there is existing nuclear technique it is quite easy to improvise nuclear warheads; even from material provided by 'peaceful' nuclear power stations.
THE RELEASE from Greenock prison of Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, the man convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing which killed 270 people has provoked a storm of political protest.
US president Barak Obama called the decision a "mistake", the director of the FBI Robert Mueller accused Scotland's Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill (of the Scottish National Party - SNP) of giving "comfort to terrorists", and some Republican senators in the US have called for an economic boycott of Scotland in protest.
Given the horrors that the families of those killed have suffered there has been understandable widespread anger and opposition to the release of Megrahi among the US families of those who died.
The mood in Scotland generally, and amongst the UK relatives of those killed in the bombing is more mixed. Normally, the idea of releasing an individual who was responsible for the murder of 270 people, even if he was terminally ill with cancer, would be overwhelmingly opposed.
However, the fact that many of the UK relatives and others believe Megrahi was not responsible for planting the bomb and that the reality of what happened in 1988 has been deliberately covered up, has produced a much more muted opposition to Megrahi's release. Despite the storm of protest, especially from US families, a BBC poll in Scotland found that 32% of people believed it was correct to release Megrahi from prison.
Pan Am flight 103 left London Heathrow on 21 December 1988 for New York's JFK airport but blew up over Scotland, killing all 259 people on board. Eleven people in the town of Lockerbie also lost their lives. It remains the biggest terror attack ever carried out in the UK. It was also the biggest loss of US lives in a terrorist attack until the events of 9/11 - 2001.
Despite the eventual accusations made against Libya - that their intelligence agents were responsible for the bombing - the initial focus of the investigations was aimed at the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP - GC), who were funded by Iran and headquartered in Syria. (In 1986, the USS Vincennes had shot down a civilian Iranian airbus killing 290 people.)
For more than two years it was this line of enquiry that the FBI, the Scottish police and other agencies followed. Suspected PFLP-GC members had been arrested in Frankfurt two months before the Lockerbie bombing with Semtex explosive devices concealed in Toshiba radios.
It was the fragments of a similar radio device that was found to have contained the bomb that blew up Pan Am 103. German federal police provided financial records showing that on 23 December 1988, two days after the bombing, the Iranian government deposited £5.9 million into a Swiss bank account that belonged to the arrested members of the PFLP-GC.
However, in the run up to the first Gulf War following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 when the US were looking for support from Iran and Syria (Syria joined the US coalition) the PFLP-GC investigation was stopped. The economic and strategic interests of US imperialism in its intervention in the Middle East were almost certainly the key factor in the decision to abandon the pursuit of the PFLP-GC and the connection with the Iranian and Syrian regimes.
Attention shifted to the Libyan dictatorship of Colonel Gadaffi, who had been a thorn in the flesh of US imperialism and had given support and resources to terror organisations in the past. In 1999 after years of threats and economic sanctions, Libya agreed to allow two of its intelligence agents, one of whom was Megrahi to stand trial for the bombing of Pan Am 103 in Zeist, Netherlands, where a Scottish court would sit. In 2001 Megrahi was found guilty by three judges of the bombing. He was eventually sentenced to 27 years in jail in Scotland.
There was widespread questioning over the outcome of the trial in 2001. Robert Black QC - an emeritus professor of Scottish law at Edinburgh University and one of the legal architects of the original trial in Holland - commented: "No reasonable tribunal, on the evidence heard at the original trial, should or could have convicted him and it is an absolute disgrace and outrage what the Scottish court did.'
Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora died in the Lockerbie bombing, has long believed Megrahi was not responsible for the bombing and has campaigned for a public inquiry. He made a telling point about Margaret Thatcher who was prime minister at the time of the Lockerbie disaster. "She refused even to meet me, as a representative of the families, to hear our request for a public inquiry. And then, in 1993, in her memoirs, she writes that after she backed the US bombing of Tripoli in 1986, Libya never again mounted a serious attack on the West. How can she write that if she believed Libya was behind Lockerbie two years later? Unless she knows something she is not saying."
In the meantime the geo-political situation had changed markedly. Following the decision to allow Megrahi to stand trial in 1999 and the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York in 2001 the Libyan leadership let it be known they were prepared to engage with US imperialism.
Gadaffi agreed to abandon a nuclear weapons programme and following Tony Blair's visit to Libya in 2004 the last of the economic sanctions imposed on Libya by the UN and the EU were lifted.
Moreover, British and US imperialism were licking their lips at the prospect of the enormous profits to be made from contracts with Libya, including its large oil and gas reserves. BP, with its many links to New Labour, has signed a $900 million oil and gas exploration contract to build 17 wells in Libyan territory.
British companies are queuing up to cash in on the opening up of contracts in the financial, defence and energy sectors of Libya. Peter Mandelson and Gordon Brown have claimed there was no trade deal to allow Megrahi to be released but it is clear that the interests of big business played a key role in the unfolding of these cynical events. This includes the signing by Tony Blair of a UK/Libya prisoner transfer agreement in 2007, clearly aimed at Megrahi as he was the only Libyan prisoner in a UK jail at the time.
Megrahi lost his first appeal but the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission found in 2007 that a second appeal should be allowed as there were six grounds to suspect that a miscarriage of justice had been carried out. These included evidence, not made available to the defence, which indicated that four days before Tony Gauci in Malta picked out Megrahi in an identification parade he saw a photograph of him in a magazine article linking him to the bombing, undermining the reliability of his testimony.
Other material that would have come out in court included the US intelligence documents that discounted Libyan involvement and blamed Iran as acting in response to the shooting down of the Iranian commercial airliner by the USS Vincennes. The US Defence Intelligence Agency papers suggested that Tehran sponsored the Syrian-backed Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), headed by Ahmed Jibril - a former Syrian army officer.
Megrahi dropped his right to a second appeal just days before he was released. Had Megrahi won his appeal, it would have been a disaster for the Scottish legal system, whose Crown Office prosecuted Megrahi. As Robert Black commented: "There was strong pressure from civil servants and Crown officials to bring the appeal to an end."
The SNP, Kenny MacAskill and the Scottish legal establishment have a common interest in protecting the standing of a so-called "Scottish institution". As a report in the Sunday Times revealed, "an anonymous email sent to a SNP MSP, purporting to come from a justice department official said that Megrahi's appeal was "an almighty headache" for the criminal justice system, concerned about flaws in the case against Megrahi and vulnerable to accusations that the Crown withheld crucial information from his defence team.
To make matters worse for those who want the truth - especially the relatives of those victims of the Lockerbie disaster - Foreign Secretary David Milliband has slapped a Public Interest Immunity Certificate to ensure that secret documents on the Lockerbie bombing cannot now be released.
The 270 victims of the Lockerbie bombing and their relatives have been and are being treated like pawns in the manoeuvres carried out by successive governments to protect big business interests, imperialist influence and to preserve the "integrity" of a biased and class based legal system in Scotland.
All documents and evidence related to the Lockerbie events and the legal process must be opened to public scrutiny by democratically elected representatives of the families, their representatives and wider society. This could mark a step towards a real accounting of who carried out the atrocity and into those who have sought to cover up, obscure or divert attention away from what really took place.
As Jim Swire, whose daughter died on 21 December 1988, has said: "The whole process was a political stitch-up from start to finish, which is something that needs to be gotten to the bottom of."
The Lockerbie disaster and the events surrounding it underline the need to build a mass socialist alternative to the horrors of war, terror attacks and imperialist domination of our world.
The International Socialists and the parties and groups that make up the Committee for a Workers International are fighting for a socialist world. One which would lay the basis for an end to imperialist conflict, terrorism, corrupt dictatorships and the exploitation of the world's peoples by big business interests.
SINN FEIN councillor Domhnall O Cobhthaigh has announced his resignation from the party at a press conference in order to join the Socialist Party to "build a cross-community opposition to the right-wing economic policies of the Assembly Executive".
Fermanagh councillor Domhnall O Cobhthaigh, who has served on the district council for the past two years, claimed he could no longer remain in Sinn Fein as it was now part of an Assembly Executive which is "implementing cuts, job losses and privatising public services".
Speaking in Belfast, Joe Higgins, Socialist Party MEP for Dublin, welcomed Domhnall's decision to join the Socialist Party: "The Socialist Party seeks to build a movement of working and unemployed people in Northern Ireland in Protestant and Catholic communities against the attacks on jobs, wages and services which are being pursued by big business and the parties in the Assembly.
"We warmly welcome Domhnall as a valuable member of the Socialist Party and look forward to building a genuine socialist alternative in Fermanagh for working people and youth."
Socialist Party member Jim Barbour of the Fire Brigades' Union, also welcomed Domhnall: "There is an urgent need to develop a cross-community, anti-sectarian political alternative for workers who are facing massive job losses and attacks on wages, terms and conditions. It is nothing short of a disgrace that while the banks are bailed out to the tune of billions, ordinary working people are paying the price for their crisis. Domhnall's decision today is a welcome development in building a socialist voice for workers.
"We are also working closely alongside our colleagues in Britain campaigning for a new mass party to represent working class people who have been long abandoned by New Labour."
Domhnall also stated that he has resigned his council seat. "Despite my happy experience in working with the communities of Erne West and Enniskillen in demanding improvements, I feel it would be indefensible to retain a council seat to which I have not been elected (I was co-opted to the seat in 2007). Therefore, I have decided to resign from my seat on Fermanagh District Council."
IN A desperate move to revive Labour's failing private academies scheme, education secretary Ed Balls has announced that the government is dropping the £2 million sponsorship criteria.
Previously, academy schools were expected to get their private sponsors, ie rich business figures, corporations, religious charities, even other private schools, to 'invest' £2 million to finance the building of a new school while the government stumped up another £25 million or so. In return, the sponsor can choose most of the school's governing body and also control its 'ethos' .
Academy schools seem to be 'failing' at as high or higher rate than ordinary secondary schools they are meant to replace.
Academy sponsorship is an even worse idea now during the recession. In June, the socialist reported that 60 of the 85 privately sponsored academy schools that were financed under the original academies deal had not received the funds expected from their private sponsors.
New Labour's privatisation schemes in education or other public services have been a disaster for workers and the public alike. We need a new workers' party that says no to academies and fights for a well-financed, publicly run and financed education system.
Review
THE FILM City of Life and Death depicts the Japanese Imperial army's infamous massacre of the Chinese city of Nanking in 1937. This remarkable and controversial movie leaves the viewer shocked and overwhelmed by its content.
In July 1937 imperialist Japan embarked on an all-out war against China. The ruling class of Japan wished to dominate its neighbour and seize its abundant natural resources. After Shanghai fell to the Japanese army that August, the Chinese army retreated to its capital, Nanking.
Filmed in black and white, giving it a documentary feel, City of Life and Death portrays the events from both the Chinese and Japanese point of view in the 'Rape of Nanking'. This angered many Chinese and resulted in death threats to director Lu Chuan which nearly resulted in the film's release in China being shelved.
To the Chinese, the destruction of the old capital of China and the cruel slaughter of 300,000 inhabitants burns deep in the national psyche. On the other side, some Japanese right-wingers deny such atrocities ever occurred, which is absurd and flies in the face of the evidence.
Director Lu Chuan tells the story from different points of view: that of a conquering Japanese soldier; a Chinese resistance fighter and his group of brave but outnumbered soldiers; the Nazi businessman John Rabe who, ironically, helped set up the 'Safety Zone' for refugees in the city and that of his Chinese secretary along with his family.
Character stereotypes, including of the Japanese are avoided and unlike western films on the Nanking massacre, the main focus is rightly on the Chinese and Japanese participants not of the few Europeans who played a role in these events.
The events depicted are harrowing, sometimes mundane, often brutal but not exploitative. A genuine attempt is made to realistically portray what happened in those weeks and its impacts on the lives of individuals involved: battle scenes are brutally realistic; Chinese POWs are slaughtered on an industrial scale; civilians are summarily executed; mass rape and enforced sexual enslavement of Chinese women is shown.
The images are shocking but in some respects restrained. For example, no coverage is made of the Japanese officers' 'sport' of beheading Chinese soldiers nor the use of chemical weapons by the invaders, though one scene does depict Japanese soldiers wearing gas masks.
City of Life and Death (released in China under the title Nanjing Nanjing) is a difficult film to watch, leaving the viewer emotionally drained. It depicts a terrible historical event that is little known in the West but which has affected the Chinese view of their fellow Asians in Japan to this day.
The brave approach by the director to depict the Japanese soldier as an ordinary human corrupted by events of war and his rulers' reactionary ideology may go some way to healing this rift.
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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/7705