"Any managers of a public service who are not planning now on the basis that they will have substantially less money to spend in two year's time are living in cloud cuckoo land." These are the chilling words of the chief executive of the Audit Commission. They preface Kirklees council's briefing paper on the rationale behind their announcement to slash public services by anywhere between £250 million and £400 million in the next five years.
What is happening in our authority is being planned everywhere else. But trying to dress up the cuts as something else, the council has set up its own '1984'-type unit - the 'Innovation and Efficiency Programme'. The first thing this unit has done is to bring in an external consultant and appoint some new managers.
The council is now drawing up proposals which will be put to councillors, staff and trade unions by the end of the year for implementation next April. This will coincide with the next general election and will inevitably be the talking point for all local politicians and voters.
This is a minority Labour administration advocating the cuts. But other councillors have added their pennyworth. The Lib Dems have endorsed the cuts programme, described by the Labour leader as 'changes'. The Tories have called for more redundancies.
The Greens have argued that every council worker should cut their working hours - meaning their pay! The one BNP councillor left on the council said: "The good thing is that a lot of the silly posts can disappear. I've always advocated that you get rid of 25% of council staff and no-one would notice. We won't be able to guarantee early retirement and gold-plated pensions."
These words will come back to haunt the BNP and will be rammed down the throat of every BNP activist and publicised widely during the anti-cuts campaign.
The largest public sector union, Unison, has secured a 'no compulsory redundancy' commitment. But this must be adhered to, and should not be used as an excuse to be lulled into a false sense of security.
Many workers are incensed by the plans, citing bankers' bail-outs, bosses' bonuses, and managers' pay as examples of the government's hypocrisy on public services. One worker told us that they had already sent in their ideas for cuts, starting with their own managers!
Our local campaign is already underway. A public rally is planned and petitions are already circulating. Building for the local Youth Fight for Jobs demo planned on 21 October to coincide with the next council meeting now takes on more urgency. Local unions and community groups will be encouraged to participate.
These attacks will not be taken lying down. In Kirklees we have a proud track record of fighting cuts and closures.
This will be a long hot Autumn, in Kirklees and everywhere else fighting these savage cuts to our jobs and services.
Socialism 2009 should prove to be a stimulating experience encouraging you to learn more, develop your understanding and to meet more likeminded people, however much you know already.
Last year, I attended the annual Socialism weekend for the first time, having been a member of the Socialist Party for around six months. It was a fantastic event, with engaging political discussions helping to develop my own political understanding further. Aside from the sessions, just meeting and socialising with other members, or supporters interested in socialist ideas, can answer questions you have, or develop your own handling of questions.
Socialism 2009 will offer similar opportunities, including for people who want to find out more about socialism. But the mix of sessions ensures that there is something for everyone, from those who have only just discovered socialist ideas, to those with in-depth theoretical knowledge.
There will be a course on 'Introducing Socialism', starting with the session 'What is Socialism?' which will be used to explain the problems and flaws of capitalism, but also what the socialist alternative is. The reasons for not simply tweaking capitalism, but fundamentally changing the system as a whole, will be explained, as well as how this change can be carried out.
Sometimes it can be hard to visualise what life would be like under a different system, and this session hopes to make the concepts of socialism more lucid, giving you the confidence and understanding to fight for a better society.
Some people claim that there is no working class in Britain anymore. The second session in the 'Introducing Socialism' course will discuss the questions 'Does the working class still exist? Does it have the power to change the world?'
The third session of the 'Introducing Socialism' course will be 'Why the Soviet Union wasn't socialist and how democracy would work under socialism'. For people who have reservations about socialist ideas because of the history of the Soviet Union, or who struggle to explain their ideas to people who cite the Soviet Union as an argument against socialism, then this is the session for you.
Both outgoing government parties lost votes. Given the drop in the turnout to 70.8%, from 77.7% in 2005, neither the new coalition, nor a continuation of the grand coalition, would have the support of a majority of the population.
This election result is something of a paradox; the grand coalition government was kicked out of office for right-wing, anti-worker policies which will be continued and intensified by the new government.
The SPD, which ruled Germany together with the Greens for seven years before the grand coalition came into office in 2005, suffered massive losses. The SPD 'first' (constituency) vote crashed from 18.13 million to 12.08 million, while its 'second' (party list) vote, which is decisive in determining the make-up of parliament, fell by a similar number, leaving it with 23%. This is over 11% lower than four years ago and the SPD's worst result since the end of the second world war.
Since 1998, the SPD's party list vote has fallen by over half, from 20.18 million (40.9%) in 1998, to 9.99 million (23%) now. This is a disaster for the SPD, a former mass workers' party which became the motor force of neoliberal reforms in Germany.
Angela Merkel's CDU, the SPD's partner in government, did not do much better. The CDU's 'first' vote fell from 15.39 million to 13.85 million, while its 'second' vote fell from 13.14 million to 11.82 million. Large numbers of its first voters gave their second vote to the 'liberal' FDP. Likewise, the votes for the CSU also fell. The combined CDU/CSU 'first' vote fell from 19.28 million to 17.04 million and their second vote from 16.63 million to 14.65 million.
The reason the SPD lost more heavily than the CDU and CSU lies in the fact that it had been in government for longer. Both parties are seen as responsible for the same bad policies but given that it is 'social democratic' on paper, the SPD has provoked bigger popular dissatisfaction.
The main winner of this election is the FDP, which made a leap from 9.8% to 14.6%, mainly winning votes from the CDU. Nearly half the FDP's party list vote came from voters who gave their constituency vote to the CDU/CSU. The FDP's gains seem absurd, as their ultra free-market policies would clearly deepen the present economic crisis, but in the election they heavily emphasised the need to cut taxes. Even the Financial Times Deutschland (FTD) would not call for a vote for the FDP, as the party does not support enough regulation of the financial markets, as the FTD put it.
A key reason for this result however, is that a pact was made between the employers and the government to try to limit the impact of the economic crisis until the voting was over. In return for an extension of the government-backed short-time working scheme, the bosses promised to postpone mass sackings until after the elections.
This led to a situation where the real social effects of the world economic crisis were cushioned and consequently, sharp social polarisation and class struggles which would have affected the political arena have not yet developed.
The second biggest winner was the Left Party, which will now be the fourth biggest party in parliament. Compared with 2005, when it was still an alliance between the PDS (former ruling party in Stalinist East Germany) and the WASG (Alliance for Work and Social Justice), the Left Party's party list vote rose from 4.12 million to 5.15 million, 11.9%, up by 3.2%.
This is surely an important success, but falls short of the full potential which exists for the party. In some opinion polls before the election, the Left Party stood at 14%. In the simultaneous election for the federal state parliament in the East German state of Brandenburg, the Left Party's share of the vote did not even go up.
While in the general election the Left Party gained about 780,000 votes from former SPD voters, millions more could have been won from the former SPD voters who did not participate at all in this election. In comparison with the 2005 elections, around 1.6 million former SPD voters abstained this time.
This can partially be explained by the fact that in an opinion poll on the credibility of the parties, the Left Party only stood at third place, behind the liberals and the Greens. This is partly because of the experience of the Left Party carrying out social cuts and privatisations after they joined regional governments in Berlin and Mecklenburg.
But the main reason was that despite it having a better election campaign than previous ones, focussing much more on economic and welfare issues, the Left Party has not developed a consistently strong and clear profile since the outbreak of the world economic crisis.
Now, with the Social Democrats, Greens and Left Party in opposition, there is the danger that the Left Party leadership will try to move closer to a now 'oppositionist' SPD to prepare a government coalition for the future.
On the contrary, what is needed is a combative, socialist mass workers' party, which concentrates on struggles taking place outside parliament and on propagating the idea of socialist change in society. With more participation of the Left Party in government in some federal states probable, it is possible that the leadership will throw overboard some essential aspects of its programme.
Already in the last weeks, the party leaders have adopted a new tone in regard to the party's demand for the immediate withdrawal of German troops from Afghanistan. Now it has been said that this is not meant literally and that a withdrawal would have to be discussed with Germany's 'partners' in Afghanistan - the other imperialist armies and the corrupt and undemocratic Karzai government - and could take some time. This is an 'exit strategy' position which the SPD can agree to.
The new government will sooner or later launch an avalanche of attacks on the working class, unemployed, pensioners and young people. Therefore, the decisive task for the trade unions, the Left Party and social movements is to prepare for a mass fight back.
Given this background, it is scandalous that the DGB trade union federation's chair, Michael Sommer, said in an interview on election night that the unions are prepared to work with the new government, instead of calling on his members to prepare for fighting battles.
These battles will come, probably sooner rather than later. They will take place both on the industrial level - against sackings and factory closures - and on the political arena, against further social cuts, a possible increase in VAT and similar measures.
This election opens up a more unstable period in German society. The new right-wing government does not reflect a decisive rightward shift in society. The election results show growing dissatisfaction, volatility and, to some extent, a political polarisation. The consequences of this, and new interest in socialist ideas, will be revealed when the new government attempts to make the working class, and sections of the middle class, pay for the crisis.
ON 22 September, unknown thugs attacked Ainur Kurmanov, a leading member of the organisation Socialist Resistance (CWI in Kazakhstan) outside his home in Kazakhstan's main commercial city, Almaty. Ainur is in hospital with concussion, head wounds, severe bruising and a broken finger.
In Kazakhstan, such an assault cannot be called a 'random' act - this assault was 'made to order'. As a high profile campaigner for working people and the poor, Ainur has long been a target, with repeated arrests and imprisonments on trumped up charges, including 15 days jailing in July.
Recently, Ainur campaigned to defend workers at Almatinskii Wagon Factory and at the Almatinskii Heavy Engineering Plant (AZTM). With Ainur's active assistance, workers there went on strike and held protest meetings and other acts of 'civil disobedience'. Hundreds of workers' jobs were saved at the wagon factory and the plant rescued from bankruptcy and collapse.
The factory bosses now want to stop this being repeated at AZTM. The owners and shareholders obtained these large plants for small sums during the privatisation process and aim to force through bankruptcy proceedings in preparation for asset stripping.
Whoever was behind the cowardly attack on Ainur aimed to frighten off all those who struggle alongside him. But Ainur will not be scared off. The struggle for the rights of workers and other oppressed people in Kazakhstan will be stepped up.
Socialist Resistance members call for supporters internationally, trade unionists etc, to protest at this attempt to terrorise opposition in Kazakhstan and to demand the immediate arrest of those guilty of this cowardly attack.
Send protest letters to the Almaty city government's official site and to the city's prosecutor at the following addresses:
http://www.almaty.kz/page.php?page_id=416&lang=2
http://www.prokuroralm.kz/page.php?page_id=17&lang=1
THE BBC has announced that Nick Griffin, leader of the far-right racist BNP, will be invited to take part in Question Time, taking place in London on 22 October. The BBC's justification is the need for "due impartiality". This is laughable. As National Union of Journalists representatives at the BBC pointed out, the laws being invoked actually only apply in the period immediately before elections.
And in reality, the BBC has repeatedly shown that it is not impartial. In the run-up to the European elections, for example, Question Time refused point blank to let Bob Crow, general secretary of the trasnport workers' union, the RMT, appear on behalf of No2EU - the trade union based European election challenge. But while militant trade unionists are not given a voice on Question Time, the BNP are to be allowed to spread their poison.
The BNP has gained votes by falsely posing as a party that defends the interests of the white working class. The reality is very different. This viciously racist party attempts to divide working-class people, therefore weakening workers' struggles to defend pay and conditions.
And when actually faced with a battle to defend workers' interests, the BNP have repeatedly been on the wrong side. Most recently a BNP councillor in Huddersfield welcomed the Labour council's proposals to slash public spending, leaving it to the trade unions and socialists to fight in defence of services [see page 1].
The BNP's new constitution reveals that, despite its new veneer of respectability, it remains as racist as ever. Its "statement of principles" reads, "The British National Party stands for the preservation of the national and ethnic character of the British people and is wholly opposed to any form of racial integration between British and non-European peoples.
"It is therefore committed to stemming and reversing the tide of non-white immigration and to restoring, by legal changes, negotiation and consent, the overwhelmingly white make-up of the British population that existed prior to 1948." To achieve this would mean forcibly deporting more than five million people from Britain.
Increased electoral support for the BNP - however skin-deep - inevitably gives racists more confidence and leads to an increase in racist attacks and harassment. Nick Griffin has a long history of support for neo-fascist ideas, and the core of the BNP undoubtedly still holds these views. If they were able to implement their neo-fascist agenda it would mean a destruction of all democratic rights - including the right to vote, to join a trade union and to demonstrate.
That is why the trade union movement should mobilise to stop the BNP gaining a platform for its anti-democratic ideas. Where the BNP has already managed to establish a platform, it is necessary to be prepared to take them on directly in political debate in order to undermine them.
However, this is not yet the case on Question Time. We need to step up the campaign to demand that the BNP is not allowed on the programme. If, despite this, the BBC goes ahead, we will need the biggest possible demonstration outside - organised around clear class slogans like 'jobs, homes and services not racism'.
An overwhelming 98% of postal workers in London have voted to withdraw their union's (CWU) funding from the Labour Party. While this was only a consultative ballot it reflects the alienation and anger most postal workers feel towards the Labour Party.
Postal workers in London have been on one-day strikes regularly since mid-June against management attempts to slash jobs and casualise the workforce.
After the first day of strike action, the CWU London divisional committee declared that: "We in London will give them till the end of this month to force Royal Mail to agree a national agreement or we will start to ballot London members on whether they fund the Labour Party... We are not going to stand by and fund the Labour Party whilst they allow Royal Mail to attack the workforce in the most hostile manner we have ever seen."
New Labour and their goal of privatising Royal Mail are behind all the attacks Royal Mail management have launched on the workforce. They want to destroy it as a public service and sell it off to be asset stripped by the same kind of 'investors' that destroyed Rover, making a £40 million profit for themselves into the bargain.
But with Royal Mail the profits from asset stripping the entire national infrastructure needed for deliveries (including massive depots in city centres) would dwarf those made by the Phoenix Four.
The biggest obstacle to privatisation has always been the postal workers' union. This dispute is not about modernisation or combating so-called "Spanish practices", it's about Royal Mail and the government trying to smash the CWU to create a casualised workforce that any private buyer can use as they please. They want most postal workers to have no regular duties, and to turn up to work to do whatever management pick for them.
This means not only smashing the union but destroying the Royal Mail as a public service. In East London, Royal Mail are suspending collections before 4pm from most post offices and post boxes, and some people haven't had any post for days. This isn't due to the strike action but because management are trying to force workers to deliver up to twice their normal workload!
For example pickets from the Docklands delivery office explain: "They're getting rid of ten delivery walks and giving those duties to people on top of their existing work. In one case they took what took another man six hours to do, and said to another 'do it all on top of your own duty'. Even with help he only left the office at 12:30pm to start deliveries, and that was after management told him to stop sorting mail and take out what he'd done already. So far he's bringing work back every day. On top of that he's got about 1,000 residential addresses due to open because of a huge new complex."
The reason Peter Mandelson's attempt to privatise Royal Mail failed last July is the fighting spirit that postal workers in London and across the country have shown against these attacks, and the temporary drying up of bids from big business due to the economic crisis.
This temporary postponement of privatisation is nothing to do with the money the CWU has given to Labour - over £6 million since 2001! Most CWU members are disgusted that their union continues to fund the party which is trying to destroy them.
The London ballot asked members if they agreed with the CWU London Postal Division that the CWU should stop funding the Labour Party. The result is a resounding blow against those within the CWU, and the wider trade union movement, who argue that the unions should continue to fund New Labour. It will enormously increase the pressure on the CWU national leadership to implement conference policy by holding a national ballot on whether or not to keep the Labour link.
The CWU conference in June 2009 voted to ballot members on withdrawing funds from the Labour Party if they continued to privatise Royal Mail. While Mandelson was forced to delay the privatisation temporarily, New Labour is still clearly committed to continue the process as soon as big business bidders are available. The government is also backing Royal Mail's current attacks on the workforce as part of the drive for cost cutting and privatisation.
CWU members need to put pressure on their union leadership to implement a national ballot on the Labour levy. But the debate cannot be confined to just stopping funding to the Labour Party.
The issues now are achieving a 'yes' vote in the present ballot for national industrial action, and how to successfully develop that national action. Also the need for the CWU to develop a political voice to add to their industrial muscle.
Whichever party wins the next election, they will try to force through savage cuts to public services including the privatisation of Royal Mail. The most effective way to build opposition to this is to link the industrial struggle CWU members are involved in to establishing a political voice.
We need a new workers' party.
"Where is the sense in government giving hundreds of millions in grants, subsidies and tax concessions to foreign owned companies to safeguard UK jobs and yet the profitable Royal Mail Group it owns can slash 60,000 full time jobs and convert the rest to part-time jobs in the name of modernisation? It's time the working classes stood up and said 'enough is enough'. Our low wages and long hours are funding ever more lavish lifestyles for the plutocracy. It is time for change..."
"Don't tell me we're not used to change and flexibility. It's not the union that closed post offices up and down the country. It's not the union that got rid of two deliveries a day, or the post buses in some parts of Scotland. It's not the union that stops us going out to make deliveries till 10.30-11am. Earlier in the morning it's nice and cool to walk around. Now it's only mad dogs and postmen that go out in the midday sun."
"Seniority doesn't mean that the people who've been here longest always get to pick the best duties, it means they can pick the job that best suits their capabilities. You could be as strong as an ox, good at shifting sacks of mail off a van. They could get another person to do the same job and his back might not take it, but he might be able to run up and down more stairs than you.
"It's not so much that management will always change you to a duty you can't do, it's that they are always holding the threat of that over you."
London postal workers
"This is a battle we must win; to reclaim the union for our members, to ensure we have a democratic and fighting trade union," said Glenn Kelly at a 100-strong meeting on 23 September called by the Defend the Four campaign. The 'four' are all Socialist Party members in the union Unison who have been declared guilty by a union disciplinary panel on trumped up charges. They have all been suspended from holding union office for a period of time.
Glenn, one of the four, spelt out why this politically motivated attack was launched: "Because we call for the election of union officials; for those officials to live on a workers' wage; for the union's members to decide when they take strike action rather than the officials."
"Some officials make Acas look revolutionary!" he remarked. In particular, he explained that the four were victimised because they had argued for the right of Unison conference delegates to debate important issues - such as the union's funding of the Labour Party.
"We hand dues to the Labour Party on Monday only to be given cuts and redundancies on Friday," he pointed out. As an accusation of racism was one of the fabricated charges against the four, Glenn said that the Unison leadership would do something about racist BNP members in the union if it really wanted to combat racism.
The four were also declared guilty of breaking union rules. Onay Kasab, another of the four, told the meeting that in fact it is the union leadership that is breaking rules, such as the rule to 'promote a member-led union' or 'to promote trade unionism'.
The four were joined on the platform by John McDonnell MP, who strongly defended the four's campaign, saying he would raise it in parliament. Unison's top bureaucracy is "a beast lashing out to protect its influence" he said. He went on to condemn the record of the Unison leaders: "Wage deals have been concocted at national level that have undermined the living standards of Unison members".
Speakers from the floor included members of London Unison branches who called for a resolution in favour of union democracy to be voted on at the next Unison regional council meeting.
The four will have appeal hearings against the guilty verdict during the autumn, and will have 'part two' of an employment tribunal related to their case. The campaign will be publicising these further events and is continuing to request that protest messages are sent to the Unison witch-hunters.
This year's university freshers fairs take place against a background of proposals that would make education even more expensive for students and even less of a right for all. Despite the urgent need for a fightback, most student unions appear to be not only deserting the scene of struggle themselves, but making it increasingly difficult for students to set up societies, some insisting on up to £10 per student to join. Nonetheless, Socialist Students has held very successful stalls and meetings across the country as students realise the need to defend their rights and to fight to change the world. Here we report on some of the fairs that have taken place. Further reports next week.
We focused on the issue of tuition fees and unemployment. The majority of people showed an interest and were keen to go on the YFJ demonstration on 28 November.
All the students seemed very angry at having to pay for university. One student said: "Education should be free for everyone, it has been for so many years. Why should our generation have to pay?" Everyone was incredibly worried about the huge amount of debt that follows, and the threat of increasing fees and insufficient loans. Another student said: "I'm the first person in my family to go to university, but by the way they're talking, I'll also be the last!" We needed ten students to set up an official society, and we got 24 signed up - clearly a great success.
Days after the Liberal Democrats announced they would no longer call for the abolition of tuition fees, and with other attacks on students from the bosses' CBI, it was clear education funding would be central to freshers fair activity.
Homemade banners and people leafleting at the entrance maximised the impact of Socialist Students. Meanwhile those on the Labour Students stall admitted that most of the students who had signed up just felt sorry for them.
An extensive debate took place at our 25-strong meeting on how to fight the BNP, the possibility of reclaiming the Labour Party, the character of the Liberal Democrats, university investments in the arms industry, funding for higher education, the ideas of Marx, and the need for a socialist programme for change.
Students showed concern about student debt, and being unable to find a job after they graduate, whilst those describing themselves as socialists commented on issues such as Afghanistan, and the state of the economy. There was a good response from students, with few showing disagreement with our material. Some of those who were unable to stop and talk took a leaflet and came back later in the day to sign our petition and join our society.
Not being deemed 'acceptable' enough to be granted a stall at the freshers fair did not deter Socialist Students.
On Day One we distributed flyers, posters and petitions, but our lack of a stall meant our effect was limited. On Day Two our fortunes changed. Wandering through the various stalls I stumbled across an unused stall. I draped it in Socialist Students material and for the next two days this was 'our' stall.
While I could have sworn I'd seen Dominoes Pizza taking down people's addresses, university policy banned us from taking personal details. Nonetheless 40 people 'secretly' signed up to get involved. The Turkish Society put one of our 'Troops out of Afghanistan' posters up on their stall. Many said Socialist Students was 'just what they were looking for'.
A record 65 people signed up to join Socialist Students. Students were enthusiastic about the march on 28 November to scrap fees and for the right to work with a living wage, and were interested in discussing socialist ideas.
As we said, the best way to find out about socialist ideas is to talk to a socialist!
We are now organising meetings on subjects suggested by our new members, including one on how best to stop the far-right, racist BNP. This could be a very concrete issue, as the politics society told us they are considering inviting BNP leader Nick Griffin to speak at QM.
This year's freshers fair was like a breath of fresh air. Last year there was very little interest in campaigning against tuition fees, but now that the capitalist crisis has deepened, this has changed noticeably. Because more young people are now unemployed, and along with the recent surge in Afghanistan, more and more want to fight back.
"All my friends and me have grown up thinking of ourselves as socialists. I feel the time has come for me to get active in changing this society. I'm studying to be a carer, but bad pay and work conditions are putting people off going into caring. Under socialism I think that things would be totally different and people would see themselves as playing a role in bettering the lives of others instead of greedily filling their own pockets."
These comments from Kate at Anglia Ruskin reflected the way a number of students felt. She and others are very keen to get active in Socialist Students and the Socialist Party.
Nursing students, medical students and physios were pleased to see Socialist Students campaigning against NHS job and funding cuts, and opposing privatisation initiatives. We linked the problems these schemes cause with capitalism and the current crisis it has caused.
A lot of students were interested in our ideas, especially when they heard about the size of the funding and job cuts that are planned in the Cardiff area, that most were unaware of. We were able to explain the socialist solution to these problems, and hope to build an active campaigning society in the coming year.
We began freshers fortnight with a victory! Over 200 people signed the Socialist Students petition against a sexist advertisement for a student union club night and the ad was withdrawn.
Socialist Students also campaigned on issues such as the war in Afghanistan and combating the racist BNP. 50 people attended our public meeting on the crisis of capitalism and the socialist alternative.
Our well-placed table, decorated with Socialist Students and Youth Fight for Jobs posters, made it clear who we are. We had petitions on ending the war in Afghanistan, free education and youth unemployment. The front of Socialism Today, on how to fight the far-right, racist BNP attracted a lot of interest and our second meeting of the semester will be on this issue.
At our excellent meeting there was a lot of enthusiasm for putting ideas into practise and getting active on issues such as anti-racism and Youth Fight for Jobs. The meeting agreed to start collecting signatures on a petition against cuts to the opening hours of the law and art libraries. The day after the meeting 140 signatures were collected in just one hour of campaigning!
Students from all over the world showed interested in the Socialist Students society. They were well impressed by what Socialist Students had achieved locally, such as helping to lead the fight which defeated the far-right, racist BNP on campus and organising protests and gaining elected positions in the students union. The Youth Fight for Jobs campaign was welcomed by many. One student came up and said: "I'm so sick of just shouting at the telly and being angry. It's time for me to get organised" and signed up to join Socialist Students on the spot.
At the end of a tiring but very productive few days we managed to get well over 30 people signed up to the society who were eager to start fighting back against fees, cuts and privatisation.
Bureaucratic measures, such as having to ask students to pay extortionate amounts to join, having to already exist as a society before you can book a stall and other obstacles makes getting a stall quite difficult. Aren't university campuses supposed to be 'bastions of free speech, debate and learning'?
Once it was clear at BCU that exposure to our ideas failed to cause catastrophe, we appeared to be overlooked by university officials. Many students had not come across socialist ideas or groups before, but there was a great deal of informed anger at the BNP and at big business on campus.
At Birmingham University, entrance was more difficult. But, with a meeting held later on in a local café, it looks like an official Birmingham University Socialist Students may be set up in future.
At Manchester University a PhD student joined Socialist Students and the Socialist Party after watching us for some time and seeing that we are the most serious left force in student politics. Manchester Socialist Students has its first meeting on 'how can we bring the troops home?' This week, after signing up over 50 students to the society, we are building for the protest against the racist English Defence League's planned visit to Manchester on 10 October and for the YFJ demo on Saturday 28 November.
Having missed an unpublicised deadline, Socialist Students members at Winchester were unable to book an official stall. The result of this was that within five minutes of setting up we had bouncers threatening to call the police if we didn't get off campus, with no NUS sabbatical officers on site to talk to.
However, we set up the stall just across the road and still managed to talk to students, as well as leafleting nearby halls, where the security was more reasonable. Having an official society at Southampton University we were allowed to put up posters and hand out leaflets to students arriving with their parents that afternoon.
Our determination meant intimidation couldn't stop us!
No sooner had we set up our stall at Plymouth University freshers fair when someone came up to join Socialist Students. We continued to get a good response throughout the day. There was a lot of anger among students about tuition fees. Our demand for free education went down well.
It showed how wrong the right-wing leadership of the National Union of Students are, who say that nothing can be done about fees. Plymouth didn't have a Socialist Student society last year but we collected enough names so that this year it will!
The YFJ demonstration on 28 November is attracting support from the best student activists. Sussex students union has agreed to finance a coach. Salford Left Forum, a broad coalition of young people in Salford who have a record of combating the BNP in their community and fighting cuts at the university, is helping Salford Socialist Students to mobilise for the YFJ protest. On this basis 45 students signed up to join Socialist Students at Salford.
Socialist Students will also have a new society at UCLAN in Preston after a lot of interest at the freshers fair.
With no official stall we split up into two groups. One group distributed material inside the fair. The others spoke to students waiting in a bus queue. In this way we managed to get 14 contacts. There was a strong military presence at the fair, so many students welcomed our campaign against the war in Afghanistan.
Our first meeting was informal about what Socialist Students does and getting to know what students are interested in. The second was on 'what is socialism?' Socialist Students intend to build campaigns such as anti racism and the BNP, anti war, free education and YFJ throughout the year.
The questions on many students' lips were 'is the recession over?' and 'what would a Tory government mean for young people?'
There was interest in both our upcoming London meeting which will tackle the issue of the current economic crisis and the YFJ march for real jobs and for free education.
IT IS an especially nervous Communist Party (CCP) regime that presides over the 60th anniversary celebrations of the founding of the People's Republic of China on 1 October. The regime is increasingly dependent on Olympic-style pageantry to shore up its support, and despite decades of record-breaking economic growth now faces mounting discontent from workers, farmers and youth (see box).
Vincent Kolo, of chinaworker.info, looks here at the nature of the 1949 Chinese revolution. A future article in The Socialist will focus on the situation in China today.
Mao Zedong, who led the CCP to power 60 years ago, is hailed as founder of the nation, but today's official view is that his policies were 'ultra left' and needed to be corrected by the pro-market turn of his successor Deng Xiaoping in 1978. To learn China's true revolutionary history we must look elsewhere.
The CCP did not come to power at the head of a working class movement. With its Stalinist outlook and methods it initially stood for a relatively limited agenda to establish a 'new democracy', while keeping a capitalist economy. But almost despite itself, the CCP was thrown forward by one of the mightiest revolutionary waves in world history.
It was this mass revolutionary fervour, within the international framework that emerged following the Second World War, that pushed Mao's regime to introduce changes that fundamentally transformed China.
China had long been known as the 'sick man of Asia' - it was poor even by the standards of Asia at that time. With its huge population (475 million in 1949) China was the world's biggest 'failed state' for almost half a century.
From 1911 to 1949 it was torn between rival warlords, with a corrupt central government, and bullied by foreign powers. Ending the humiliating foreign customs houses and the stationing of imperialist armies on Chinese soil was just one of the many practical gains of the revolution. Mao's regime also introduced one of the most far-reaching land reforms in world history - not as big as Russia's but encompassing a rural population four times as large.
This agrarian revolution, as the historian Maurice Meisner points out, "destroyed China's gentry-landlords as a social class, thus finally eliminating the longest-lived ruling class in world history and one that long had stood as a major impediment to China's resurrection and modernisation".
In 1950, Mao's government enacted a Marriage Law that prohibited arranged marriages, concubinage and bigamy, and made divorce easier for both sexes. This was one of the most dramatic governmental shake-ups in the field of marital and family relationships ever attempted.
When the CCP took power four-fifths of the population were illiterate. This was reduced to less than 10% by 1976, when Mao died. Reflecting its crushing backwardness, there were only 83 public libraries in the whole of China before 1949 and just 80,000 hospital beds. By 1975 there were 1,250 libraries and 1.6 million hospital beds.
Average life expectancy, just 35 years in 1949, was raised to 65 years in the same time-span. Innovations in public healthcare and education, reform (simplification) of the written alphabet, and later the network of 'barefoot doctors' that covered most villages, transformed conditions for the rural poor. These achievements, at a time when China was much poorer than today, are an indictment of the present day crisis in healthcare and education, the result of marketisation and privatisation.
The abolition of feudalism was a crucial precondition for launching China on the path of modern industrial development. At first, Mao's regime hoped for an alliance with sections of the capitalists, and left significant sections of the economy in private hands. By the mid-1950s though, it had been forced to go all the way, expropriating even the 'patriotic capitalists' and incorporating their businesses into a state plan modelled on the bureaucratic system of planning in the Soviet Union.
Compared to a regime of genuine workers' democracy, the Maoist-Stalinist plan was a rather blunt instrument, but it was an instrument all the same, incomparably more vital than enfeebled and corrupt Chinese capitalism.
Given the low base of China's economy at the start of this process, the industrialisation achieved during its planned economy phase was truly astonishing. From 1952 to 1978, industry's share of GDP rose from 10% to 35% (OECD Observer 1999). This is one of the most rapid rates of industrialisation ever achieved, greater than Britain in 1801-41 or Japan in 1882-1927. In this period China created aircraft, nuclear, marine, automotive and heavy machinery industries. GDP measured in purchasing power parities increased 200%, while per capita income rose by 80%.
THE TWO great revolutions of the last century, the Russian (1917) and Chinese (1949), did more to shape the world we live in than any other events in human history. Both were the result of the complete inability of capitalism and imperialism to solve the fundamental problems of humankind. Both were also mass movements on an epic scale, not military coups as many capitalist politicians and historians claim. Having said this, there were fundamental, decisive differences between these revolutions.
The social system established by Mao was one of Stalinism rather than socialism. The isolation of the Russian Revolution following the defeat of revolutionary movements in Europe and elsewhere in the 1920s and 30s, led to the rise of a conservative bureaucracy under Stalin, which rested upon the state-owned economy from which it drew its power and privileges.
All elements of workers' democracy - management and control by elected representatives and the abolition of privileges - were crushed.
Yet, as Leon Trotsky explained, a planned economy needs workers' democratic control like a human body needs oxygen. Without this, under a regime of bureaucratic dictatorship, the potential of a planned economy can be thrown away and ultimately, as was proved two decades ago, the entire edifice is threatened with destruction.
Yet it was this Stalinist model that the CCP adopted when it took power in 1949. While this was a far cry from genuine socialism, the existence of an alternative economic system to capitalism, and the visible gains this entailed for the mass of the population, exercised a powerful radicalising effect on world politics.
China and Russia, by virtue of their state-owned economies, played a role in forcing capitalism and imperialism to make concessions, particularly in Europe and Asia.
The Chinese revolution increased the pressure on the European imperialists to exit their colonies in the southern hemisphere. It also caused US imperialism to sponsor rapid industrialisation in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea and use these states as buffers against the spread of revolution, which it feared following China's example.
While both the Russian and Chinese revolutions were led by mass communist parties, there were fundamental differences between them in terms of programme, methods, and above all their class base. The 1917 Russian Revolution was proletarian in character - a factor of decisive importance.
This invested it with the political independence and historical audacity to launch upon a never-before tried road. The leaders of that revolution, above all Lenin and Trotsky, were internationalists and saw the revolution as the overture to a world socialist revolution.
By contrast, most CCP leaders were in reality nationalists with just a thin laminate of internationalism around this. This corresponded to the peasant base of the Chinese revolution. Lenin commented that the peasantry is the least international of all classes. Its scattered and isolated conditions of life imbue it with a parochial outlook, not even aspiring to a national perspective in many cases.
Rather than a mass workers' movement and elected workers' councils - the motor forces of the Russian revolution - and the existence of a democratic Marxist workers' party, the Bolsheviks, in China it was the peasant-based People's Liberation Army (PLA) that took power. The working class played no role, and even received orders not to strike or demonstrate but to await the arrival of the PLA into the cities.
While the peasantry is capable of great revolutionary heroism, as the history of the Red Army/PLA's struggle against Japan and the dictatorial Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) regime showed, it is incapable of playing an independent role. Just as the villages take their cue from the cities, politically the peasantry supports one or other of the urban classes - the working class or the capitalists.
In China, rather than the cities moving the countryside, the CCP came to power by building a mass following among the peasantry and then occupying the largely passive, war-weary cities. The class base of the revolution meant that it could emulate an existing societal model but not create a new one.
The CCP's peasant orientation developed out of the terrible defeat of the 1925-27 revolution, caused by the 'stages theory' of the Communist International under Stalin's leadership. This held that because China was only at the stage of bourgeois revolution, the communists must be prepared to support and serve Jiang Jieshi's bourgeois Nationalist Party (Guomindang). The CCP's young and impressive working class base was brutally smashed.
But while a significant Trotskyist minority formed shortly after this defeat, drawing correct conclusions that the working class and not the capitalists must lead the Chinese revolution, the majority of CCP leaders held to the Stalinist stages concept, although ironically they broke with it in practice after taking power in 1949.
In the late 1920s therefore, the main group of CCP cadres, drawn mostly from the intelligentsia, went with these mistaken pseudo-Marxist ideas to wage guerrilla struggle in the countryside. Chen Duxiu, the CCP's founder and later a co-thinker and supporter of Trotsky, warned that the CCP risked degenerating into "peasant consciousness" - a prophetic judgement. By 1930, only 1.6% of the party membership were workers compared to 58% in 1927.
This class composition remained almost unchanged up until the party won power in 1949, flowing automatically from the leadership's focus on the peasantry and rejection of the urban centres as the main arena of struggle.
In tandem with this was the increasing bureaucratisation of the party, the replacement of internal debate and democracy by a regime of commands and purges, and the cult of personality around Mao - all copied from Stalin's methods of rule.
A peasant milieu and a mainly military struggle are far more conducive to the growth of bureaucracy than a party immersed in mass workers' struggles. Therefore, whereas the the Russian Revolution degenerated under unfavourable historical conditions, the Chinese Revolution was bureaucratically disfigured from the outset. This explains the contradictory nature of Maoism, of important social gains alongside brutal repression and dictatorial rule.
When the Japanese war of occupation ended in 1945, US imperialism was unable to directly impose its own solution on China. The mood to 'bring the troops home' was too powerful. Therefore the US was left with no other option than to support Jiang Jieshi's corrupt and breathtakingly incompetent regime with massive amounts of aid and weaponry.
That Washington had little confidence in the Guomindang was shown by President Truman remarking some years later: "They're thieves, every damn one of them. They stole $750 million out of the billions we sent to Jiang".
For the masses, the Nationalist regime was unmitigated disaster. This is largely forgotten today and hence we have the grotesque phenomenon in China of the Guomindang regaining mass support especially among youth and the middle classes.
In the last years of Guomindang rule there were reports from several cities of "starving people lying untended and dying in the streets". Factories and workshops closed down due to lack of supplies or because workers were too weakened by hunger to operate them. Summary executions by government agents and rampant crime by triad gangs was the norm in big cities.
Alongside the land reform introduced in areas it liberated, the CCP's biggest asset was the hatred of the Guomindang. This also led to mass desertions of Jiang's troops to the side of the Red Army/PLA. From the autumn of 1948, with some few exceptions, in most cases Mao's armies advanced without serious opposition.
In city after city across the country, Guomindang forces either surrendered, deserted, or staged rebellions to join up with the PLA. In effect, Jiang's regime rotted from within, presenting the CCP with exceptionally favourable circumstances. Subsequent Maoist-guerrilla movements (Malaya, Philippines, Peru, Nepal) that have tried to reproduce Mao's success have not been as fortunate.
WITH A genuine Marxist policy, the overthrow of the Guomindang could almost certainly have been achieved more quickly and less painfully.
From September 1945, following Japan's military collapse, until late 1946, workers in all major cities staged a magnificent strike wave, with 200,000 on strike in Shanghai. Students too poured onto the streets in a nationwide mass movement that reflected the radicalisation of society's middle layers.
The students demanded democracy and opposed the Guomindang's military mobilisation for the civil war against the CCP. The workers demanded trade union rights and an end to wage freezes.
Rather than give a lead to this movement the CCP applied the brakes, urging the masses not to go to 'extremes' in their struggle. At this stage, Mao was still wedded to the perspective of a 'united front' with the 'national bourgeoisie' who should not become agitated by working class militancy.
The students were merely used as a bargaining chip by the CCP to exert pressure on Jiang to enter into peace talks. The CCP did its utmost to keep the students' and workers' struggles separate.
The inevitable laws of class struggle are such that this limitation of the movement produced defeat and demoralisation. Many student and worker activists were swept up in a wave of Guomindang repression that followed. Some were executed.
A historic opportunity was missed, prolonging the life of Jiang's dictatorship and leaving the urban masses largely passive for the remainder of the civil war.
IN KEEPING with the Stalinist stages theory, in 1940 Mao wrote: "The Chinese revolution in its present stage is not yet a socialist revolution for the overthrow of capitalism but a bourgeois-democratic revolution, its central task being mainly that of combating foreign imperialism and domestic feudalism" (Mao Zedong, On New Democracy, January 1940).
In order to achieve a bloc with the 'progressive' or 'patriotic' capitalists, Mao limited the land reform (as late as autumn 1950 this had been carried out in only one-third of China). Also, while the businesses of 'bureaucratic capitalists' - Guomindang officials - were nationalised immediately, private capitalists retained their control and in 1953 accounted for 37% of GDP.
A crucial test came with the Korean War that broke out in June 1950. This brought a massive escalation of US pressure, economic sanctions, and even the threat of a nuclear attack on China.
The war and sharply polarised world situation that accompanied it (the 'cold war' between the Soviet Union and US) meant Mao's regime, in order to stay in power, had no choice but to complete the social transformation, speeding up land reform and extending its control over the whole economy.
The Chinese revolution was therefore a paradoxical, unfinished revolution, that brought monumental social progress but also created a monstrous bureaucratic dictatorship whose power and privileges increasingly undermined the potential of the planned economy.
By the time of Mao's death, the regime was deeply split and in crisis, fearing mass upheavals that could sweep it from power.
WHEN CHINA'S present leaders view the huge military parade on 1 October, their thoughts may be on the growing problems they face as the global capitalist crisis bites. The government's top think-tank says 41 million jobs were lost in the last year in China as exports fell (down 23% this year). Labour struggles are up 30% this year.
The regime's jitters are shown by its decision to limit the participants in these National Day celebrations to 200,000 - a million took part 20 years ago. Beijing also banned provincial ceremonies and parades. The reason? It is terrified these events can be exploited or give rise to anti-government protests. It is not just in the Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang where the regime is increasingly running afoul of mass opposition (both Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese, for opposite reasons, have staged angry anti-government protests recently).
Students at two of Beijing's universities have boycotted the rigorous training schedule for the official 1 October ceremony and some have even burned their ceremonial outfits. A popular anti-government comment on internet sites reads: "It's your birthday, what's it to do with me?" Many youth have become hardened anti-communists, supporting global capitalism, believing this is somehow an alternative to the current regime. Others have turned to Mao's legacy, which they feel has been completely betrayed by the present regime. Within this rising social and political turbulence, genuine Marxists are trying, through the website chinaworker.info and other publications, to win support for worldwide democratic socialism as the only way forward.
AFTER THE deposed and exiled president Zelaya's return, large crowds of supporters, many from poor rural areas, welcomed him, surrounding the Brazilian embassy building where Zelaya addressed them. However, on 23 September, the coup regime unleashed rubber bullets and tear gas against the thousands of Zelaya supporters outside the embassy, causing scores of injuries and reportedly two deaths.
After Zelaya's return, Micheletti's regime declared a state of emergency, suspending the right of assembly. Civilian airports are under military control and the borders are sealed. Most of the country has been shut down, with schools and many businesses closed.
Reportedly the army cut off road traffic into Tegucigalpa, cut off the electricity supply to a TV station to stop it reporting Zelaya's return and arrested hundreds of Zelaya supporters. However, reports tell of the masses reacting bravely, erecting barricades in Tegucigalpa's working class areas and other towns.
Until recently, Zelaya was in neighbouring Nicaragua, which has been in ferment since the coup with continuous mass protests, meetings and strikes by working people, students and the poor.
Micheletti no doubt hoped his coup would end the 'Leftist' administration and intimidate the masses into accepting the rule of big landlords and oligarchs. But the 'whip of counter-revolution' spurred on the poor and workers, who have had enough of huge social inequalities, unemployment and poverty. Half of Honduras' population lives below the poverty line. Official unemployment of 28% forced over one million of the 7.8 million population to emigrate to the US to try to find work.
Zelaya, a wealthy landowner, was elected president in 2005 for the centre-right Liberal Party. Once in power, however, under pressure from the masses, he carried out some reforms to alleviate the suffering of the poor, including a 60% increase in the minimum wage. In 2008, Zelaya brought Honduras into the ALBA regional alliance promoted by Chavez's Venezuela and reached an agreement with Venezuela over fuel importation, breaking the multinationals' monopoly.
Zelaya's policies angered the Honduran ruling class, long tied to US imperialist interests and the 1980s launch-pad for the US-backed right-wing Contras terrorists, who fought to defeat Nicaragua's revolution. Honduras' people have suffered many military coups, as the rich elite do everything to stop distribution of wealth to the masses.
Zelaya's attempts to change the constitution (drafted by a right wing military regime in the 1980s), along with his dismissal of the armed forces' commander, triggered June's coup. Zelaya said a referendum would be held alongside the 29 November elections. The Supreme Court, the right wing dominated Congress and the military, who organise elections in Honduras, all opposed the referendum.
When Zelaya refused to back down, these forces overthrew him. Even Zelaya's limited reforms threatened Honduras' ruling class, who feared that the idea of a Constituent Assembly could arouse the masses to mobilise for fundamental social change.
Most Latin American countries formally condemned the coup. Obama's administration made cautious criticisms, but fell short of any condemnation that would mean imposing sanctions against the coup regime. At least sections of the US military/intelligence complex, linked to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, may have had foreknowledge of Micheletti's coup.
Honduras' poor and exploited people courageously resisted the coup regime. The National Front of Resistance has organised regular mass actions and held assemblies of workers and the poor to chart a way forward.
The situation is reaching a critical point. Zelaya's return re-energised the masses. How will the coup regime react? Brazil's government has warned the regime not to try to storm its embassy, but attempts to arrest or even kill Zelaya are not ruled out. Coupled with a brutal nationwide military clampdown, the regime would hope to end the masses' revolt. Such a scenario, however, could lead to a mass insurrectionary movement. Even if the masses' revolt were crushed, it would only prepare the way for further upsurges of mass struggle.
The Micheletti regime, fearing that a radicalised mass opposition movement could arise, is under pressure from the US to cut a deal with Zelaya. Until now, Micheletti's conditions on Zelaya's return to Honduras were completely unacceptable (i.e. that Zelaya cannot be president, that he must accept the 29 November elections being organised by the coup regime and that he must face trial). But Micheletti's regime, or elements in it, may be prepared to compromise with Zelaya, to try to stop the spread of radical opposition from threatening the entire regime and ruling class.
Micheletti has said he is prepared to talk to Zelaya but that Zelaya must first accept that planned presidential elections would be held in November. The US has backed the 'San Jose Accord' where Zelaya would return to the presidential palace as nominal head of a 'unity and reconciliation' government also involving the coup plotters.
The coup leaders would be absolved of any crimes and Zelaya would have to vow not to try to change the constitution. This plan, backed by Hillary Clinton, would amount to a victory for the coup plotters.
For the masses, there can be no negotiations or compromise with an illegal, brutal regime that denies democratic, civil and human rights and will do everything to make sure big capital keeps ruling at the expense of working people and the poor.
The key task for working people, youth and the unemployed is to develop the mass resistance and independent working-class policies. No to 'unity' with the capitalist and landlord classes and imperialist interests, who diametrically oppose the Honduran masses' class interests.
The masses have shown courage in the fight for democratic rights, the right to organise and for independent trade unions. To overthrow the coup regime and bring about real, lasting democratic rights and social gains entails using the methods of mass class struggle, with the organised working class to the fore: the general strike, mass demonstrations and, ultimately, an insurrectionary movement to get rid of the coup regime and imperialist interference.
The local community-based committees and other structures set up by the Resistance Front need to be developed, locally, regionally and nationally, and run democratically. These mass representative structures, involving local communities, workers and trade unions, youth, students and the wider community, can become the real base of power in Honduras and form the basis of a national government of workers and the poor: for a revolutionary Constituent Assembly with majority representation for workers and the poor!
A national workers' government with socialist policies can fundamentally change the situation in Honduras, bringing the country's wealth under the working class' democratic control and management. This would be a powerful attraction to the masses of the Americas, hugely speeding up the process of radicalisation and revolution already starting on the continent.
NEPAL HAS been rocked by almost constant protests since May against the ousting of the Maoist former prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal (known as Prachanda, meaning 'fierce one'), the biggest being a huge rally in Kathmandu on 11 September.
Nepal became the world's youngest republic on 28 May 2008, after an eleven-year civil war between monarchist forces and the Nepalese People's Liberation Army, the armed wing of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). The civil war ended with a ceasefire and negotiations in November 2006, after a 'mass movement for democracy' forced the government to make concessions.
Nepal is bordered to the north by China and to the east, west and south by India. It is an economically underdeveloped country where per capita income is less than US $470. There is a severe lack of skilled labour while 50% of the adult population are unemployed. Agriculture accounts for 40% of the nation's GDP and employs 76% of the country's working population. Industry only makes up 22% of GDP and employs just 6% of the working population.
Prachanda and the CPN(M) follow the Stalinist 'two-stage theory' of revolution followed by the likes of Chairman Mao (see centre page feature on the 1949 Chinese revolution). The CPN(M) committed themselves to retaining Nepal's private sector and having a coalition government with the bosses' parties. This left them vulnerable to counter-attack from the forces of imperialism and the old feudal landowning class.
On 4 May 2009 Prachanda was forced to resign as prime minister. He fell out with the country's president Ram Baran Yadav after Prachanda tried to remove the country's military chief Rookmangud Katawal, following his refusal to allow the 19,000-strong PLA to be integrated with the army. This led to the formation of a new governing coalition without the Maoists.
What is missing in Nepal is a mass revolutionary party which represents the interests of the working class and poor peasants and rejects the discredited class collaborationist and other wrong or mistaken methods of the Maoists. Only a party based on the genuine ideas of Marxism as put forward by Lenin and Trotsky can finally begin the process of freeing Nepal from the grip of imperialism and economic backwardness and building a better future for ordinary Nepalese people.
On 22 September, dozens of police from Southampton and Portsmouth descended on the protest camp outside the Vestas factory on the Isle of Wight (IOW). They removed tents, personal and political material and served 'exclusion notices' to several Vestas workers who were told to stay away from the Vestas factory for the next three months.
This assault on the right to peaceful protest was to ensure Vestas were able to remove blades from the factory and secure future access to the plant.
The police presence also included two police launches and a rib, a helicopter and police plane!
Despite the heavy police presence workers were not intimidated and were able to protest at the company/police action and speak to the press about the ongoing campaign.
"Even some of the police spoke to us and gave their support to the fight for jobs and the environment," explained Mark Smith, a Vestas worker.
"The campaign will continue, we will continue to fight for our reinstatement and our redundancy money and for the nationalisation of Vestas. We will also challenge the council on its strategy to reduce the carbon footprint on the IOW and their rejection of wind turbine technology.
"There will be a permanent presence at the factory to highlight the campaign and for people to visit. We are also discussing the idea of standing an election candidate on the IOW to take up these issues.
"This is something we have raised more and more at our meetings across the country and was raised at the demonstration at Labour Party conference on Sunday.
"We can see how this will develop further, not just about Vestas, it's just one part of it. We are continuing to fight our tribunals with the support of our trade union, the RMT.
"There are other strikes taking place on the IOW and we are giving our support.
"We will be holding a meeting to discuss how this fight can help build wider support for the trade unions on the IOW and how our struggle can be built on."
Now in its fourth week, the striking bin workers in Leeds, with much support and donations from the public, are even more determined to win.
The bin men are set to lose up to £6,000 a year as a result of the failure of the council to re-evaluate their jobs under the single status agreement - an agreement partly to equalise women's pay with men which all local authorities have to implement.
Thousands of women have been awarded fairer pay through the courts. But, as a result of under-funding from national government, implementing the agreement in Leeds and other areas has meant the council attempting to level wages down, with both men and women often becoming worse off.
The council wants the bin men to accept 'modernisation' and pay cuts now or face privatisation. Four times the pay and grading panel refused to grade their job evaluation at a level that ensured the bin men didn't lose out.
At the eleventh hour to avert the strike, a panel met for a fifth time. This time a higher grade was awarded but the council refused to accept it.
It is two years since the unions accepted the single status agreement in Leeds.
They accepted that around 2,000 workers would lose out in the re-evaluation process on the basis that those workers would have pay protection for three years. This still has 18 months left to run.
We were also promised that during those three years the council would re-engineer job evaluations and ensure that no one loses out.
The Liberal leader of the council last week pledged to break the strike using private contractors.
He believes the savage pay cuts will lead to 'fair wages'. This is a man who last year pocketed a staggering £45,833 in allowances. In fact the council is spending just as much, if not more on breaking the strike as they would have spent in paying their bin men in full.
The private contactors will only run on a fortnightly basis. They only have half the effect of a fully operational council fleet cleaning up the city.
There are over 500 bin men on strike and the effect of the strike can be seen clearly.
The single status agreement is now in tatters and it is likely that we will see more action over pay and grading in the near future.
On the government's national pay offer of a measly 1% increase, Unison members in Leeds voted to accept on the basis that the national leadership has been useless in mounting any campaign to oppose it.
A month of all-out strike action has forced Michael Farley, the principal of Tower Hamlets College in the East End of London, to withdraw compulsory redundancy notices to 13 teachers. The threatened staff have either agreed to redeployment, won their appeals or have accepted improved voluntary redundancy terms.
The dispute began at the end of the summer-term when approximately 25 full-time equivalent jobs (about 40 part-time posts) were axed, mainly from the English as a Second Language (ESOL) area. 1,000 ESOL places were to be cut. Also, student places on a Skills for Life programme were to be halved.
UCU, the lecturers' union, backed an all-out indefinite strike in August to defend 13 staff who were resisting the compulsory redundancy notices served on them by the college. The UCU members on strike remained determined and solid throughout the dispute, which was the first indefinite all-out action in the further education sector since the 1990s.
Maintaining unity and forcing the principal to withdraw the redundancy notices was a great achievement in the circumstances, since the strikers had to overcome personal hardship as well as worrying about their students, whose future was potentially put at risk by the management provoked dispute.
As well as getting the compulsory notices withdrawn, the voluntary redundancy terms were doubled, 300 places on ESOL courses were saved and a mentoring scheme for 700 young people was saved.
As a by-product of the dispute Unison won a no-compulsory redundancy pledge, which Farley was forced to offer to head off a strike by admin staff.
Pressure must be kept up to make sure the principal honours the agreement and to make sure existing terms and conditions are maintained. This dispute will undoubtedly be the first of many as education is threatened with further cuts.
Future actions will need to be linked and generalised across the FE sector and beyond.
Around 2,000 fire-fighters from all around the UK marched in Barnsley on Monday 28 September in solidarity with their Fire Brigade Union (FBU) comrades in South Yorkshire who are on the verge of taking strike action.
South Yorkshire chief fire officer (CFO), Mark Smitherman, wants to impose shift changes under threat of mass dismissals and re-engagement on new contracts. Already taking industrial action short of a strike, South Yorkshire FBU members have now voted 83% in favour of a strike on a 79% turnout.
Firefighters chanted a loud message of defiance to the CFO and the Labour fire authority outside their meeting: "Smitherman Out!" and "£1,500 - Stuff it up your arse!" (referring to the one-off bribe just offered to buy the shift changes).
FBU general secretary Matt Wrack told the rally: "In 2007, South Yorkshire firefighters were praised for their heroism during the floods. Just two years later, Smitherman is calling you 'donkeys' and threatening to sack you all.
"Smitherman says that it's just a 'minor change' but they want 12-hour shifts now to attack night cover further down the line. The fire authority claim it's about 'efficiency savings', but we have just heard today that their package will be funded by 39 job losses! This is a cuts agenda."
If Smitherman thought that the FBU didn't have the stomach for a fight, then "try ignoring the FBU now" said Yorks and Humber FBU executive member Jerry Pagan.
Essex, London and Merseyside brigades are also taking action over cuts, so if the South Yorkshire strike goes ahead, it will be a battle for the whole union that it can't afford to lose.
Matt Wrack concluded by saying that the union has called an emergency national meeting of brigade officials on 8 October to support South Yorkshire and if necessary will recall the union national conference.
Well over 6,000 civil servants have replied to the government consultation on their ironically named "fairness for all" package. They have told them exactly what they think of the swingeing cuts it proposes to the Civil Service Compensation Scheme (CSCS).
With a few days left to reply, that number is likely to increase sharply as Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union branches have begun holding members' meetings outlining the changes and the threat they present.
The anticipated savings made by the proposed cuts - falsely being claimed by the government as being aimed at the highly paid - would lead to low-paid civil servants having the worst redundancy compensation payments in the public sector.
A cap on the amount which can be paid in redundancy would see some members lose tens of thousands of pounds, as well as a loss of some pension enhancements where early retirement was offered.
With all the major political parties already trying to out-do each other with the cuts they would make to public services, the civil service is yet again stuck in the role of political football, with Lib Dem Vince Cable announcing he would freeze pay (despite several years of below inflation pay deals for many) and the Tories planning budget cuts of 10% almost across the board.
PCS members can see that the real dangers of the proposed cuts to the CSCS lie, not just in the immediate devaluing of their payments, but in the longer term. The proposals are designed to make it much cheaper to lay staff off, and greatly increase the risk of compulsory redundancies across wide parts of the civil service as the budget cuts take their toll on departments, as well as making it easier to privatise services.
It's also widely anticipated that a further attack will be made on pensions in the next government, whoever gets into power.
The series of members' meetings now being held are to ensure PCS members fully understand the government offensive which this is just the start of, and to seek their views on how to withstand it. The meetings will also be used to judge the mood of the membership, and their willingness to take action to defend the CSCS if required.
With a government in turmoil and an election looming, a solid show of determination by PCS members including industrial action if required, is needed to resist these changes and get them thrown out as soon as possible.
The TUC must act on the motion on this issue passed at Congress. They should encourage a massive show of solidarity across the public sector in opposition to making public sector workers pay for the cheats, crooks and liars who both caused the financial crisis and have been the major recipients of government largesse in responding to it so far.
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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/8199