Video: An emergency demo against the Israeli state killings on aid flotilla on Saturday 5 June 2010 which took place in London, called for an end to the siege of Gaza. It was called by Stop the War, CND, BMI and Viva Palestina.
ISRAELI COMMANDOS used lethal force when they intercepted an aid convoy in international waters heading for the Gaza strip, where over one million Palestinians are trapped behind an Israeli government blockade.
The killing of nine aid volunteers by the commandos has provoked angry demonstrations in Turkey, where the flotilla of ships set out from, and around the world.
The misnamed United Nations security council bowed to the US administration and refused to pass a resolution condemning the Israeli government and instead just called for an 'impartial investigation' into the loss of lives.
Socialist Party members condemned the Israeli government outrage and participated in a 2,000 strong spontaneous protest in London against it, which marched from Whitehall to the Israeli embassy.
A large demonstration of several thousand protesters also marched through central Manchester.
Coventry Socialist Party councillor Dave Nellist immediately wrote to the Foreign Secretary demanding the release and safe passage of the flotilla to Gaza. He pointed out that the 700 people on board the boats "have all undertaken this mission out of concern for the people of Gaza, who are now entering their fourth year under siege, without access to basic necessities."
Dave continued: "They posed no threat to Israel, and were completely unarmed. The aid they were attempting to deliver included construction materials which would have helped the people of Gaza rebuild some of the homes destroyed by Israel in 2009.
"As a socialist I believe we need an immediate end to the siege and blockade that is taking place against Gaza by the Israeli government, and support for the common interests of ordinary people on both sides of the divide as the basis for an end to the conflict forever."
Socialist Party (Ireland) MEP Joe Higgins in a statement said: "An IDF [Israeli Defence Force] officer is reported in this morning's Jerusalem Post describing how IDF paratroopers landing by helicopter on the ships in international waters were 'ambushed' by aid workers 'armed' with whatever was at hand!
"I am already aware that language has lost all meaning to the Israeli authorities having received some e-mails myself from the Israeli Embassy in Dublin late last week defending their position when I was making representations to them in anticipation of the attacks on the aid flotilla.
"The Israeli government and the IDF commanders order these atrocities safe in the knowledge that their allies in the West will leave them unchallenged. Indeed, by welcoming Israel into the OECD [Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development] last week, the Israeli political establishment can now label itself as part of the 'advanced' West.
"I condemn this attack and demand that MV Rachael Corrie, which left Dundalk harbour this weekend carrying aid for Gaza, be allowed to make its journey without harassment."
In Israel, where the flotilla of ships has been forcibly taken to, left wing activists including members of Tnua't Maavak Sozialisti (Socialist Struggle Movement, the Israeli counterpart of the Socialist Party) demonstrated against the armed attack on the aid convoy and also against the continuing government siege of Gaza and the occupation of the Palestinian territories on the West Bank.
Tnua't Maavak Sozialisti issued the following statement: "The Israeli government cynically shakes off responsibility. But there's no need for a 'state commission of inquiry' to understand that responsibility for the killing lies on the shoulders of the ministers and top officers.
"We're being presented with a simplistic picture, according to which the IDF soldiers were attacked on one of the boats with different objects. The IDF soldiers should not have been there to begin with!
"We reject emphatically the use - common in Israel - of the military and 'security' to trample on the right of protest.
"The ministers, generals, and their kept journalists, attempt to divert attention from the aggressive, destructive and oppressive policy that the Netanyahu-Barak-Lieberman government executes, including the siege and occupation of Gaza, and the racist incitement against the Arab-Palestinian public in Israel. The Israeli government, which oppresses the Palestinians, is also harming the long term interests of the residents of Israel."
The only way to end such disasters and other horrors of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict is through the independent struggle of Israeli and Palestinian workers, building and coordinating mass action against the instigators of 'divide and rule', the siege and occupation, and all oppression and discrimination.
A movement that demands democratic national rights for all, and for the overthrow of the corrupt capitalist elites in the region.
Demonstration against the latest Israeli government outrage, end the siege of Gaza. Saturday 5 June, 1.30pm. Assemble at Downing Street, Whitehall, London, SW1.
As the first week of the British Airways (BA) cabin crew strike drew to a close, I spoke to Penny White, a retired cabin crew member who now works for Bassa, the trade union branch within Unite representing the cabin crew.
The mood is good on the picket lines: "There are masses and masses of people there. We are still having people calling in saying they're going on strike for the first time". BA crew are distributed all over the world, so many workers are joining the strike as soon as they return to British soil. "There are more joiners every day. People are losing hundreds of pounds I'm afraid, but people are determined they're not going to let their colleagues down."
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It's not just the strikers but "Everyone who's been off sick has been told their staff travel concessions have been taken away. A few people have managed to get it back but it's people with things like diabetes, illnesses that were on record." The motivation for these tactics is that the strike is: "not going the way the management thought it was going to go".
Difficulties in connecting BA workers across the different sections within the airline has led to some problems for the union. "The pilots who aren't involved in being scab crew, some of them are supporting us. The engineers aren't particularly pro-us... everyone's in sections, each group's trying to do their own thing."
Unite's negotiators are still trying to get a deal for the strikers. "The deal that we've offered BA gives them New Fleet, which is the thing they were after. We have accepted change, we've offered as much as we can to try and help BA in its supposed time of falling revenue. It's all been turned down so [BA boss] Walsh can spend £84 million (to date) on breaking the union."
What, then, can ordinary people and activists do to show support for the BA strikers? "Everybody is welcome to join the picket lines. People are sending in donations. It's costing a lot of money for the crew to keep going.
"Donations can be sent to: Unite House, 99 New Road, Harlington, Middlesex UB3 5BQ".
"Walsh is interested not in the deal so much as the demise of the union. If the union is gone, then he will be able to do as he sees fit and who knows what that will entail down the line. He destroyed Aer Lingus, he's destroying British Airways now."
Cabin crew have shown their determination to stand up to Willie Walsh. Hopefully a deal acceptable to crew can be reached either during or by the end of the strike period. If, however, management remain intransigent, then follow up strike dates should be announced straight away in order to keep the pressure on management.
The new conditions demanded by management should also be a warning to other workers at BA. If these changes are imposed on cabin crew it is only a matter of time before management comes calling to impose those changes on them as well.
In particular BA's demands for a renegotiation of the 1948 Redeployment Agreement and trade union facility time are a fundamental attack on the terms and conditions of all workers at the company.
The leadership of cabin crew branches should consider inviting all union reps at the company to a meeting to discuss how best to defend trade union rights from the onslaught of management. A clear statement from such a meeting calling on the company to cease its drive to break the union and get back to the negotiating table or face a 24 hour warning strike of all BA sections would send a powerful message to BA management.
The last thing Willie Walsh wants to see is this dispute spreading to other parts of the company.
THE OIL spill in the Gulf of Mexico following the fatal explosion on the BP leased Deepwater Horizon oil rig has exceeded the Exxon Valdez catastrophe of 1989, when eleven million gallons of crude oil devastated the pristine Alaskan coastline.
A White House energy official described the Gulf of Mexico spill as the worst environmental disaster ever to affect the USA. So far, all of BP's efforts to plug the leaking well - located 5,000 feet below the surface of the sea - have failed.
President Barack Obama, under pressure of mass outrage, has said he 'won't lift the boot off BP's throat' until the situation is rectified. But Obama is all too aware that he can do little to halt this unfolding disaster. The lack of any contingency planning to deal with this type of disaster underlines the weakness of the US administration.
The political reality is that Big Oil and US governments have always colluded, with the profits from selling fossil fuels satisfying their respective interests.
Only one month before the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded killing eleven workers, Obama announced the expansion of drilling licences operating off the US's Atlantic and Alaskan coastlines.
Offshore deepwater drilling contracts - with oil rigs operating at the limits of existing technology - are managed by the US federal regulatory agency, Minerals Management Services (MMS). However, MMS is hopelessly compromised by its remit to both oversee safety in the oil industry and to collect tax revenues from the industry, which amounts to $13 billion annually.
Media reports refer to lax safety standards at the MMS, with oil companies routinely filling in their own safety forms. And, according to The Guardian newspaper, staff at MMS "accepted tickets to sporting events, lunches and hunting trips from oil and gas firms" (29/5/10).
The exposure of clean-up workers to the oil and to the chemical dispersants being used on the oil slick is causing health problems.
So far five oil rigs in the Gulf have been shut down following the spill after workers became ill. And seven clean-up workers on a boat had to be take to hospital after complaining of nausea, headaches, burning eyes and chest pains. Incredibly, US government officials told reporters that sunstroke could have caused the workers' sickness!
Alarmingly, BP has threatened to sack any oil clean-up worker who turns up to work wearing a respirator, according to Clint Guidry of the Louisiana Shrimp Association.
The Gulf of Mexico oil spill was a disaster waiting to happen. Big Oil is increasingly drilling in deep water conditions because 'peak oil' is rapidly approaching, ie the point in time when the maximum rate of global oil extraction is reached.
But instead of governments taking over the profit hungry energy giants and switching energy sources away from fossil fuels to sustainable and renewable energy supplies, they remain beholden to Big Oil.
Clearly, only workers' governments with socialist energy policies could protect the environment.
THE NEW government has put the whole future of comprehensive state education under threat.
Education secretary Michael Gove is rushing an Academies Bill through parliament at such a rapid speed that hundreds more schools could become privatised academies by September. And that could just be the start of a complete break-up of democratically controlled local authority schooling.
New Labour introduced academies as state-funded schools that are run outside local authority control. About 200 have been set up, handed over to religious and business sponsors who wanted to exert influence on education - and expand their commercial empires too.
Their supporters argue that creating a 'market' of competing schools will 'raise standards'. There is no real evidence that academies have improved education but clear signs that they have started to undermine comprehensive provision through being given control over their admissions and exclusions policies.
As a 'Whitehall source' told the Guardian soon after the coalition was formed, these plans are "about getting local authorities out of the picture".
They are intended to turn the creeping part-privatisation of education under Labour into a full-blown dismantling of a planned state education system. Education will be stolen from local control and handed to education profiteers to run as chains of privatised schools.
Despite all the attempts over the years to privatise and divide through 'local management of schools', 'academies' and 'trusts' and so on, most areas still retain a locally co-ordinated system of community schools, accountable to an elected council that can plan admissions and provide central support to try and meet the needs of all pupils.
Gove's plans would create a chaotic system of competing schools. Of course that market would create 'winners and losers' - and it would be predominantly working-class and black pupils that are likely to lose out. It would become a privatised, selective system against a background of spending cuts.
Academies would seek to select the students that can produce the highest results for the cheapest input - leaving cash-starved local authorities to support those with the greatest needs.
Gove's decision to immediately invite all schools deemed 'outstanding' by Ofsted to take a fast-track to academy status shows what the government has in mind. They want to create a 'two-tier' system where local authorities are left with the schools teaching the youth who are written off by the government as having little prospect beyond low pay and unemployment.
In case encouragement was needed, Gove has said that academies' budgets will be boosted by 10% or so compared to community schools. This will be money previously paid to local authorities to provide shared services. Of course, this is no real gain for an academy if those services are still to be provided - although it might boost the profits of a private provider.
These privatisation plans are also designed to permanently remove the threat of the national trade union action that could seriously challenge a government intent on driving through massive cuts. By dividing schools into a series of different academy employers, all able to set their own contracts, then national pay and conditions arrangements will be torn apart.
The new legislation would even outlaw the sham 'consultations' set up by New Labour that at least allowed local campaigns some limited time to oppose academy plans.
The Academies Bill proposes that school governors can just take a simple vote without any consultation with parents, staff or the community. The Department for Education website sets down a timetable that would allow schools to move from 'registering an interest,' to becoming an academy in just three months!
Teaching unions have to move quickly to make clear that we aren't going to accept these attacks. It is welcome that the general secretaries of the teaching unions NUT, Nasuwt and ATL, together with Unison, have written jointly to schools, opposing Gove's plans. But wider action drawing on the combined strength of all these unions is also vital.
The exposure of millionaire treasury minister David Laws as an expenses cheat is steeped in even deeper hypocrisy than is at first apparent. The now ex-minister thought nothing of fraudulently claiming for housing expenses while supporting his government's plans to slash help with housing costs for the poor. But if a housing benefit claimant's relative is also the landlord, housing benefit may not be paid as the tenancy may be seen as 'contrived' in order to secure benefits.
Proposals to cut housing benefits are just one aspect of an initial £2 billion cuts package to benefits, which is likely to grow to over £12 billion. Thatcher's Tory government deregulated the private rented sector, allowing landlords to charge exorbitant rents. The restrictions on housing benefit were supposed to be a check on such abuse.
Incredibly, the government argued that landlords would act 'responsibly', and not charge high rents to poor tenants. The reality has been that poorer tenants have to find the extra money to pay rent by making sacrifices elsewhere or by being restricted to inferior housing. Now there are plans for further restrictions, increasing the danger of poorer families being housed in sub-standard, low rental ghettoes.
Many disabled people rely heavily on disability living allowance (DLA), which helps to cover the costs associated with disability. Unlike many other benefits, DLA is not counted as income when means-tested benefits are assessed. But now the government is considering making DLA itself dependant on other income and savings. This will inevitably mean that many on low incomes will no longer receive this benefit.
In addition, the government wants to make DLA taxable, potentially making those who are currently on nil tax liable to begin paying tax. This would seem to contradict the principle behind the coalition's proposal to set the income tax threshold at £10,000, supposedly aimed at allowing an individual to keep more of their salary as net income.
The Liberal Democrats have claimed that this threshold proposal will mean a tax cut of £700 for most people. But for those in low-paid jobs, who receive housing or council tax benefit, one effect of the proposal will be less benefit. The individual's slightly higher net income will be taken into account when assessing benefits, meaning that they have to pay more rent and council tax.
A number of initiatives will be taken to remove people from benefits altogether. All claimants on employment support allowance, formerly known as 'incapacity benefit' will be medically reassessed. If regarded as fit they will be moved on to jobseeker's allowance.
Jobseeker's allowance will be cut for anyone who refuses to take up 'reasonable' job offers, in some cases for up to three years. This will be used as a stick with which to push the unemployed, regardless of skills and training, into low-paid, low-skilled, insecure jobs.
Many parents, both single and those in a couple, would agree that the introduction of tax credits was one of the few positive reforms of the New Labour government. Presently the small family element of child tax credits does not start to be withdrawn until family income reaches £50,000 a year. The Tories had planned to impose a cut which would mean families earning more than £40,000 would lose some of their money and those on over £48,000 would no longer be eligible.
In a clear illustration of how the Lib Dems are not the 'soft' side of the coalition, they are proposing that one child families who earn £35,000 are excluded altogether and that £25,000 is set as the rate at which reductions take place in the rate of the benefit.
There is also the prospect of means testing and taxing child benefit and carers' allowances. On top of all these attacks, the likely increases in VAT will hit poorer families particularly hard. So much for supporting families!
Nor will the elderly be spared. It is a disgrace that in one of the richest countries in the world, there are 30,000 deaths, mainly of pensioners, each winter due to fuel poverty. Meanwhile the utility companies continue to make large profits. Cold weather payments and winter fuel payments are inadequate and should be raised linked to an immediate 50% increase in the state retirement pension, alongside nationalisation of the privatised utilities.
Instead, the coalition proposes to speed up the timetable for raising the state retirement age and to make it 'easier' for people to continue to work into old age. The coalition's answer to the scandal of pensioner poverty is that we are worked into the grave. The reality for many, unfortunately, is that this is the case already.
The social fund is a system of grants and loans which replaced the system of 'single payments' in 1986, which in turn had replaced the system of 'exceptional needs payments'. Grants from this system assist people leaving care, prevent people being taken into care and help families under exceptional pressure.
Consultation has begun to reform the fund by proposing to give claimants the items they claim for rather than a grant, taking away much of the element of choice. Claimants will not be able to appeal against the item they have been awarded. It is proposed that the government no longer provides the grants, but that instead they are provided by 'third party providers'.
There is a large element of discretion in social fund decisions which causes enough problems when the fund is administered by the Department of Work and Pensions. Transferring this discretion to charities and possibly religious groups or indeed any decentralisation to numerous other bodies will lead to inconsistency and the possibility of groups and organisations applying their own values to decisions. A real danger is that the social fund is 'budget-limited' and decisions are, in reality, influenced by how much money is in the budget rather than whether or not an entitlement exists.
Many of the new coalition government's proposed cuts have their origins in consultation exercises, proposals and pilots begun by the previous Labour government. Anti-cuts alliances of socialists, trade unionists and community campaigners in every area will need to be at the forefront of, not only defending jobs, pay and public services, but also the welfare state itself.
CHIEF TREASURY secretary David Laws, described as "a genius" by colleagues, inflicted £6.2 billion of cuts in public spending which will hit millions of people. However, after only two weeks in post the Lib Dem MP resigned from the Cabinet, following the revelation that he had claimed over £40,000 in MPs' expenses to rent rooms in homes owned by his partner.
Laws is on the right of the Lib Dems, more a Conservative neo-liberal than a social-liberal. He is co-author of the Lib Dems' 'Orange Book' - full of vicious anti-working class dogma - and was a high-flying City banker before becoming an MP. Laws was a key member of the Lib Dems' team that negotiated the current coalition with the Tories.
The resignation is a huge embarrassment for PM David Cameron, who has constantly banged on about 'good governance' and his coalition making a 'clean break' from the previous Labour government's sleaze scandals.
Laws said his motivation in this expenses scandal was not personal gain but to keep the relationship with a man private and not to reveal his own sexuality. But surely, if the millionaire "genius" MP wanted to keep his personal affairs private then he shouldn't have had his hand in the till, claiming dodgy expenses that drew attention to his partner. Rottenness and corruption is not solely the preserve of the two main parties it seems. They really are all the same.
In contrast to these scoundrels, "a workers' MP on a worker's wage" was the campaigning slogan of our Socialist Party candidates who stood as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition in the general election.
Lady Scotland, former attorney general, was fined £5,000 earlier this year for failing to keep proper records of her employment of a housekeeper. Loloahi Tapui had outstayed her student visa and was not entitled to work in the UK.
But instead of the Baroness being left to bear responsibility for this transgression, Loloahi has been sent to jail for eight months! Not only that, she was being paid a mere £6 an hour yet she has been ordered to pay £1,600 in prosecution costs and the defence costs are still being calculated.
Somehow the Baroness is claiming to be the victim in all this, yet she's only been fined what is a paltry amount to anyone who has had a sniff of the Westminster gravy train these days. Whilst the massively exploited worker is in prison.
300 workers at Telegen, a call-centre in Brighton, were made redundant with no notice on Friday 21 May. Two sacked Telegen workers spoke to Brighton Socialist Party about their experience and their plans to fight for their unpaid wages.
"On Friday morning I checked my bank account and I hadn't been paid. I called a friend and they hadn't been paid either. We went into work and 200 to 300 members of staff were outside, not being allowed into the building. Creditors distributed leaflets explaining that Telegen had ceased trading. Some people were crying. Others looked stunned. In the creditors' meeting we were told officially that we had been made redundant. Friday was the first day for some people, just recruited in the weeks before!
"We are owed two weeks' pay, as well as holiday, overtime and pay instead of the week's notice of redundancy. We are paid £220 a week basic rate, as well as commission and bonuses. I worked 20 hours overtime in the last week for which I have not been paid.
"We live week by week, with food, bills and rent to pay. One friend lost his house because he cannot afford to repay the mortgage. Some people literally used their last £2 to get the bus into work expecting to be paid!
"We are all relying on crisis loans from the jobcentre as it takes a month to get housing benefit and jobseeker's allowance. Many of us have moved in with our parents and don't qualify for the full benefits. Around 25% of us have new jobs to go to.
"On Thursday we were told to attend work in smart dress to impress a client that was being shown around the office. It turns out these 'clients' were the creditors being shown Telegen's assets! We are angry that we were lied to. Our payslips were not given to us on the Thursday due to a 'problem with the printers', another lie.
"Why was Telegen recruiting when they knew they would close? Why didn't they tell us this might happen so that we could at least plan ahead? Why didn't they put aside some funds for our pay at least, if not a bridging fund?
"We now face a horrendous battle filling in forms and waiting for the outcome of the creditors' meeting to find out whether we are getting our pay or not! That money is ours, we worked for it!
"We want our wages and we want them soon! We want compensation for the worry and difficulties we have been through, especially the people who have lost their homes. We want the books to be opened and we want to see where all the money went. And we want to know why they lied to us, and why the directors couldn't face us themselves.
"In my next job I will definitely join the trade union and make sure it is organised in my workplace. We will be helping Youth Fight for Jobs (YFJ) and the PCS union to organise other call centres to make sure they are not treated like we were.
"We will be organising a picket with YFJ outside the creditors' meeting on Thursday 10 June to make our demands clear."
"My Dad is from Greece. I pray Britain doesn't go down that road, but when people are pushed so far they can't help but fight back. This crisis is not the fault of the ordinary people.
"I marched during the youth movement in late 2008. Young people are brainwashed at school to think they will get jobs and a good future if they work hard. When they grow up they realise that isn't true."
Both the UCU lecturers' union and Unite, Britain's biggest trade union, unanimously agreed to back the Youth Fight for Jobs (YFJ) campaign at their annual conferences.
Tens of thousands of young people will be excluded from university because of cuts in the increase in the number of student places made by New Labour and continued by the Con-Dem coalition. Thousands of departments, courses, resources and jobs across the country are under threat.
The higher education funding review will undoubtedly call for higher fees. YFJ aims to use the links with UCU and Unite, which also has members in the education sector, to build campaigns against attacks on young people's future.
Unite commended YFJ for its march through Barking, which demanded jobs, homes and services, not the racism of the British National Party.
The on-going struggle of BA cabin crew in Unite provides an example of the determination that will be needed, a struggle that YFJ fully backs.
The CWU, PCS, Bectu and RMT unions also back YFJ.
This Conference notes the high leveis of youth unemployment in the present recession with over 1 million unemployed young people aged 16-24.
There is a real danger that this generation could become a lost generation with poor access to skills and training or even a recruiting ground for far right and anti-trade union parties and groups.
This Conference commends the 'Youth Fight for Jobs' campaign for seeking to organise amongst youth on a socialist and trade union platform including by organising a march through Barking, East London, on the slogan 'Jobs and Homes, Not Racism.'
This Conference therefore calls for Unite branches, Area Activist Committees, Regional Industrial Sector Committees and Regional Committees to support Youth Fight for Jobs where they can and support their work of steering working class youth towards a positive campaign for a better future.
This conference supports the aims and objectives of Youth Fight for Jobs, which are:
This conference notes that:
This conference believes
Anti-racist campaigners from all over Cardiff are mobilising on 5 June against the English/Welsh Defence League (E/WDL). Our message to them is very simple - We will not allow you to divide our communities with your racist poison.
The EDL have called their protest in the city centre against alleged Islamic fundamentalism and the building of a halal slaughterhouse around 40 miles away in Neath. The proposed development would in fact create some 300 jobs, the vast majority of those will be available to workers of any ethnic or religious group.
Socialist Party members have been working as a part of Cardiff Communities Against Racism (CCAR) to build a counter-demonstration with other anti-racist organisations against the EDL. Cardiff is a city proud of its multicultural traditions, and people of all backgrounds are determined not to allow the EDL to bring their divisive message here.
Socialist Party members and others in CCAR have been holding events such as street stalls, and leafleting of workplaces and music venues, to advertise the counter-protest. Shops and cafés in many districts of the city are displaying posters advertising the event.
The response has been excellent. Locals are genuinely angry about the presence of the EDL, and there is a mood to stand up to them and prevent them demonstrating in the city.
The EDL intend to hold their protest outside the National Museum. In CCAR, our original intention was to hold our demo in the city centre, in order to make it difficult for the EDL to march from the train station to their meeting point. We still believe that this would be the most effective means of combating the EDL.
However, Unite Against Fascism (UAF) has called a march starting in Cardiff Bay and finishing at the museum, and in the interests of unity of the anti-fascist movement, we are organising and building for this demonstration.
But Socialist Party members are also explaining the need to undercut the causes of racism. When jobs, public housing and public services are being cut back, it is necessary to provide an alternative, to cut across racist organisations like the EDL and the BNP.
This was something that even Margaret Hodge, the New Labour MP for Barking dimly understood when she explained some of the reasons for the rise of the BNP in her area in a recent article: "The traditional employer, Ford, has cut back from 40,000 workers to 4,000. The sale of council houses created a lack of decent affordable homes."
However, Margaret Hodge and New Labour helped to create the problems of unemployment and lack of housing in the first place. They have no solution to these problems. A real answer has to be provided with effective campaigning on these issues. That's why Youth Fight For Jobs will be coming on the demo.
Neither the violent racism of the EDL nor the empty phrases of New Labour can provide any answer for working class people, young and old.
For years the residents of the Seven Stars Estate in Wrekenton, Gateshead, have been promised by councillors and housing management that their homes would be updated by 2010 with new kitchens, bathrooms, fires and combi-boilers, alongside having houses re-painted and rewired. But none of this has materialised.
Elaine Reid described the appalling state of repairs: "My windows are rotten, mould forms on the windows. The curtains and blinds actually blow in the wind."
Elaine went on to tell me that the pointing on her house is like sand. She had requested a repair, but: "In January three years ago I came home from shopping to see the gable end moving. At first I couldn't believe my eyes. I called the fire brigade, within 15 to 20 minutes my house was cordoned off by the police and fire brigade. There were also officials from the council - I've never seen so many in my life. None of this would have happened if they'd done the repair in the first place."
Following this disaster Elaine got in touch with a local councillor who lives on the same estate to seek compensation from the council for damage to her house and garden. Elaine said: "She did nothing - no help at all. It actually made me wonder why she is a councillor if she didn't bother to help when I got in touch." In the end Elaine was offered £50. The cost to re-decorate and put her garden back was far in excess of this.
Alongside many other residents on the Seven Stars Estate Elaine is now angry about the state of kitchens and the other improvements promised. Residents were shown photos and a CD of the new kitchens they were to be getting. Elaine, who works in a shop on the estate, said: "Everyone on the estate was talking about about how good everything was going to be."
Elaine added that when the surveyor came out he didn't even have a pencil or paper with him: "I tried to explain the problems, the kitchen doors and drawers were hanging off and the bench tops were loose, but he wasn't interested. All he did was take a photo of the best part of the kitchen, then left.
"Since then I've been told all I'm getting are new doors and a lintel - that's all. All the promises of new kitchens, bathrooms etc have not materialised. Everyone feels let down and angry. We feel we have been penalised for looking after our properties."
At a recent residents association meeting councillors and management from Gateshead Housing Company (an arms length management organisation) came to explain what was going on. Elaine said: "There was standing room only at the meeting." However, still nothing is being done.
Recently the residents had a protest on the estate. Elaine said: "It was really lively. One of the women made a banner for her car, 'No Decent Homes - No Votes!' We were under the impression that our local councillors would step in and help - but they have been no help whatsoever."
On Saturday 29 May, Socialist Party activists from across the West Midlands region campaigned at Birmingham's annual LGBT Pride event. Thousands of LGBT people and allies from across the Midlands attended the Pride weekend.
We argued for unity between all workers in response to the growing threat of public service cuts, and the threat of the far right. We put across the message that homophobia and transphobia are tools used to divide the working class.
We also argued for a socialist alternative to the growing commercialisation of LGBT politics. The enthusiastic response to our material demonstrated that there is a layer of working class LGBT people frustrated with the politics of organisations like Stonewall. Such organisations seem more concerned with promoting 'LGBT friendly' big businesses and attempting to buy gay liberation via the 'pink pound', and do not put forward radical change and genuine equality.
Socialist Party members handed out around 1,000 leaflets putting forward a socialist path to LGBT liberation and workers' unity, sold 40 copies of The Socialist and raised £80 fighting fund. Four people were interested in joining the Socialist Party.
She stood in Downing Street after her first election victory in May 1979 and spoke the soothing words of St. Francis of Assisi: "Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. Where there is despair, may we bring hope."
Nine years later, after a ferocious assault upon the living standards and democratic rights of the working class, the mask of healer had slipped revealing the real face of Margaret Thatcher. Once again she sought religious guidance, but this time the words came from St Paul: "If a man will not work he shall not eat."
Thatcher's reign was a nightmare for workers. Even before she became leader of the Tory Party in 1975 she earned the title 'milk snatcher' for withdrawing free school milk from school students when she was minister for education.
To those women who thought a female prime minister might be a step forward in the battle for equality, her anti-working class actions quickly shattered their illusions. Over half of Britain's working women were denied the right to maternity benefits, paid maternity leave and shorter working hours. Publicly funded childcare fell to the lowest level in western Europe.
Thatcher's legacy was industrial devastation and increased poverty. Between 1979 and 1981 manufacturing output fell by a staggering 15%. The country was convulsed by rioting in 1980 and 1981, triggered by poverty, police repression and a widespread feeling that the government was hostile to ordinary people. Thatcher's comment after the Liverpool Toxteth riot was confined to "oh those poor shopkeepers".
Unemployment rose from 1.09 million in May 1979 to 2.13 million two years later and peaked at 3.13 million in 1986. Welfare rights and benefits were slashed, while the real scale of joblessness was hidden, with 28 changes in the way unemployment was calculated during the Thatcher years.
"Victorian values were the values when our country became great" she thundered in 1982 and in order to demonstrate her commitment to the social policies of the regressive 19th century, she presided over a bulging prison population, which by 1988 was the highest in the EU both relatively and absolutely.
The first Thatcher-led government was elected in May 1979. Britain had the lowest growth of productivity of any major industrial economy, falling profits, and an eight-fold increase of strikes compared to the 1930s.
With the Tory Heath government of 1970-1974 having been bloodied and eventually brought down by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and other trade union struggles, Thatcher's coterie decided that they needed to launch a major offensive against the working class and its organisations.
The Labour government of 1974-1979 had faced both economic and political crises, being forced to call in the International Monetary Fund for financial help in 1976 and then embarking upon the first sustained cutbacks to public expenditure witnessed since 1945. Forcing a rigid incomes policy upon the unions had resulted in growing industrial unrest, culminating in a series of public sector stoppages in 1978-1979.
As early as 1977 the seeds of what became known as Thatcherism were sprouting. In a pamphlet called The Right Approach to the Economy, controlling money supply was emphasised, alongside lowering taxes, loosening pay differentials and removing 'unnecessary' restrictions on business expansion.
Monetarism, or supply-side economics, argues that inflation results when the government pumps money into the economy at a rate higher than the nation's economic growth rate. Thus, government should keep a tight rein on the money supply and cut public expenditure. Supply-side economists maintain that this permits the economy as a whole to grow with business prosperity allowing a 'trickle down' effect throughout society.
Resorting very selectively to her bible, again she justified this stance in 1980 with her infamous comment that: "No one would have remembered the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions. He had money as well".
Thatcher's government intended to abandon the post-war consensus of commitment to full employment, stating this was the responsibility of employers and employees. The government would no longer be a universal provider of services. This would be done by the market, the voluntary sector and self-help.
The Tories' 1979 victory was a day of jubilation for the rich. On polling day the stock exchange enjoyed a record day as £1,000 million was added to the share index.
Alongside her Tory colleague Sir Keith Joseph who was a convert to the monetarist, pro-free market ideology of Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, Thatcher identified her mission as weaning Conservatives away from the corporate state and Keynesian panaceas, which she believed had helped bring about Heath's downfall.
Hayek argued that liberty under a minimalist state was the ideal and that trade unions were the enemy of the free market. Thatcher echoed this prejudice in 1984 when she commented to the Financial Times: "I don't believe that people who go on strike in this country have legitimate cause". Neutering the unions became an obsession for the Tories. She was later to smear the heroic miners as 'the enemy within'.
The crude application of monetarism was a disaster for the British economy. Manufacturing output fell sharply in 1980 and unemployment rose by more than any year since the 1930s. By 1981 output had fallen by 5.5% in two years. Crazily Thatcher forced through a budget that decreased taxes further while reducing public spending, precipitating an even deeper slowdown.
Most world leaders today have studied this period closely over the last two years and have learned that applying voodoo supply-side policies in a slump massively exacerbates its depth and longevity.
Entire areas of British manufacturing went to the wall in this period. The steelworkers fought a valiant battle to secure better wages and conditions but were betrayed by their leaders in 1980, only to see a massive closure programme unleashed upon their industry in preparation for privatisation.
Reiterating her mantra that 'the way to recovery is through profits' the British economy ground virtually to a halt, with imports of manufactured goods exceeding exports for the first time since the industrial revolution in Britain, the former 'workshop of the world'.
According to Thatcher, the combination of Britain's North Sea oil receipts and the expertise of the service sector, led by the banks and the City, was the answer to the discredited theory of needing a manufacturing base.
The sale of council houses, combined with the privatisation of profitable sections of state industry gave a big boost to the stock exchange. The City was freed from its 'fetters' in the 'Big Bang' of 1986, allowing an orgy of financialisation and profiteering to follow.
Big battles broke out between the classes as Thatcher sought to rip up the post-war consensus. By the end of 1981 her government was the most unpopular ever and her personal approval rating slumped to just 23%.
It was an accidental factor of history that saved the Tories' bacon. Always a crude jingoist, whose conference speeches to the Tory faithful conjured up the image of an imperial Britain, Thatcher, in an interview with the Times, had talked of her belief in "freedom of choice and the British Empire, which took freedom and the rule of law to countries which would never have known it otherwise."
In 1982 the Argentinean military junta invaded the British-owned Falkland Islands/Malvinas. This was a desperate diversion in order to quell a growing radical social movement across Argentina which could overthrow the right-wing dictatorship.
The invasion gave Thatcher, already delighting in the title of Iron Lady given to her ironically by a Soviet army newspaper, an opportunity to clothe herself in the armour of Boudicea. A vicious two month war left 255 British and 650 Argentineans dead, but her approval rating leapt to 51% as she unashamedly played the patriotic card, infamously justifying the sinking of the Argentinean ship Belgrano with great loss of life even as it was retreating from the battle zone.
US support was crucial in assisting the Tories in defeating the junta in Buenos Aires. In her years as premier Thatcher was always at pains to talk up the Anglo-US relationship.
Right-wing US Republican President Reagan and Thatcher were drawn together by a shared belief in the moral superiority of societies founded on free enterprise and the imperative which followed from that - confronting internationally the menace of Soviet 'communism'.
The Falklands victory was the platform for the Tories' victory in 1983, even though their vote fell 2% compared to 1979.
It was time to tackle the unions. Already the Tories had bared their teeth in encouraging Eddie Shah, the anti-union owner of the Stockport Messenger, who sought to break the National Graphical Association (NGA). This dispute presaged a national print workers' struggle when Rupert Murdoch set out to smash union membership and agreed practices by moving his presses to Wapping. Fines were levied against the unions and the police used brutal force to attack picket lines in scenes that would become commonplace in the great miners' strike of 1984-1985.
The trade union leaderships retreated in the face of these attacks and the strike was defeated. Thatcher became emboldened, egged on by siren voices from the Neanderthal parliamentary back benches, with Ronald Bell MP shrieking that "strike-breaking must become the most honourable profession of all."
Extreme Thatcherite Norman Tebbit became employment secretary and started to put the boot into the unions. Eleven separate anti-union measures were unveiled in a decade. First union officials had their immunity removed from legal action by an employer not party to a dispute and secondary picketing was made unlawful.
Later the immunity of the national union was withdrawn too. Secret ballots were introduced for union elections and the minimum period of work after in which an employee could claim unfair dismissal was extended from one to two years.
Next came the removal of statutory support for the closed shop and protection was introduced against dismissal of non-union members. Wages acts were passed which abolished minimum wages for under-21s and added restrictions were placed on the use of union funds.
The big showdown came in 1984 when the announcement of the pit closure programme led to strikes across the British coalfield. The Tories had learned from the 1972 and 1974 miners' strikes and had drawn up contingency plans to defeat the strike. This involved the building up of maximum coal stocks at power stations and contingency plans to import coal. Non-union lorry drivers were to be used to help move coal and dual coal/oil firing in all power stations was to be rushed forward.
Thatcher had stepped back from confrontation with the NUM in 1981, but by 1984 felt ready. At a cost of £500,000 a day, 20,000 police were employed across the coalfields to break the strike, organised through a central police coordination authority.
Thatcher hoped for an industrial Falklands, a short, sharp victory. In fact the strike lasted for over a year, opening up a chasm between the classes. It also revealed once again the cowardice at the top of the trade union movement as leader after leader squandered opportunities to assist the miners with industrial action, or like the shameful right-wing leadership of the electricians' union, openly aided the Tories.
Nevertheless, Thatcher's government came perilously close to being defeated as dockers, rail workers and other battalions stepped into the breach to defend their comrades. At the end, the strike had cost the economy £2 billion, a figure that Thatcher's chancellor argued was "even in narrow terms a worthwhile investment for the nation".
Privatisations were now stepped up with gas, electricity, water and BT being sold. Despite the claim that this was creating a share-owning democracy, only 300,000 people ended up owning a portfolio of over ten shares.
Council homes were sold off too. Between 1979 and 1988 home ownership increased by three million with Thatcher explaining: "I want a capital-earning democracy. Every man a capitalist. Housing is the start."
Liverpool City Council became a big thorn in her side in this period, because it actually built 5,000 council houses, leisure centres, etc, but mainly because the councillors under the political leadership of the Socialist Party's predecessor Militant, refused to carry through cuts. They stayed loyal to the socialist convictions upon which they had been elected. "These people have no respect for my office", she spat in parliament, for once speaking the truth.
Despite claims by historians that it was policy divisions over Britain's further integration into the EU that were responsible for her removal in 1990, it was the mighty anti-poll tax rebellion that reduced the Iron Lady to iron filings. 18 million men and women, marshalled in the Anti-Poll Tax Unions with Militant supporters playing the key role, refused to pay the tax and defied all the venom that she threw at us.
In taking on everyone at once she had made a decisive error. Tory back benchers went into panic as the shires revolted and the cities became no-go areas. The Sunday Times' Robert Harris thundered in 1991 that the Poll Tax fiasco was "a fatheaded, boneheaded, dunderheaded, blunderheaded, muttonheaded, knuckleheaded, chuckleheaded, puddingheaded, jobbernowled wash-out of a cock up..."
Thatcher famously once said: "the lady's not for turning" but we turned her out. She left in tears, stabbed like Caesar by her panic-stricken Tory friends. But in truth destroyed by the fury of non-paying working class people.
She had closed 286 NHS hospitals and allowed poverty levels to rise to over 9.5 million. Under her watch the richest 1% had grabbed over one fifth of the total marketable wealth of the country.
On one level she was just another provincial Tory, narrow-minded, racist and xenophobic, a barely disguised bigot who once praised a chief police officer for linking the AIDS virus with God's retribution upon gays.
Every era, however, calls for personalities required by concrete circumstances. If they do not exist in a rounded-out form, it invents them. Thatcher was required by capitalism to put the hatchet into the post-war welfare state and in her the bosses found an eminently suitable candidate. However, she polarised society and the Tory party itself, damaging it for a decade.
Completely blind to the workings of their system the economic experts were almost euphoric throughout the 1990s. Now the revenge of recession has devastated Thatcher's legacy. The Anglo-American model of free markets has failed, as have all capitalist economic models.
The myth that minimally managed markets are more dynamic than those subject to extensive government has been crushed. In Greece and elsewhere workers and young people are taking action to fight back against the implications of the failure of the market system.
As Thatcher nears the end of her life, the ideology she saw as her worst enemy - socialism - is being looked to with increasing interest by workers and young people moving into struggle to defend their living standards.
Thatcher was to be eventually removed in a Tory coup in 1990, following the poll tax debacle, yet her policies of curbing the trade unions, privatising state resources and deregulating the City of London, intimidated and then entranced the emerging New Labour leadership around Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
In 2001 Labour's Peter Mandelson tellingly said: "we are all Thatcherites now", before enthusing that he was "intensely relaxed about people becoming filthy rich".
Essentially New Labour represented a complete capitulation to the worst excesses of the capitalist market. Not for nothing did Thatcher praise Blair during his disastrous premiership, while Brown invited her to Downing Street for tea, praising her as a 'conviction politician' like himself. He even considered a £3 million state funeral for her, though millions would be happy to bury her for free - anytime.
The formation of the so-called "liberal - conservative" coalition will open up a period of instability and class conflict not seen in Britain for decades. In Scotland there is genuine anger that the Lib Dems have opened the gates to the "toxic Tories" - who again were driven to the margins of politics in Scotland.
The Lib Dems will pay a huge price for this in Scotland and in many parts of England and Wales as well. Their membership will leave in their thousands as the character of this government becomes clear. Already there have been reports of resignations of party activists in protest.
A full coalition binding the Lib Dems closely to government responsibility was the next best alternative from the capitalists' point of view to a majority Tory administration. More than one-third of Liberal MPs have been given ministerial positions.
This is deliberately designed to make it more difficult for the Lib Dems to break from the coalition - and their ministerial perks and privileges. But they are likely to suffer the same fate as other capitalist coalition partners have in other parts of Europe, such as the Progressive Democrats and the Greens in Ireland and the Greens in Germany. All of whom have seen their support diminished, if not completely broken, as a result of taking part in governments that savagely attacked the working class.
The outcome of this election will lead, at a certain stage, to increased national tensions and will provoke a rise in demands for far-reaching constitutional change in Scotland - including increased demands for independence and a referendum.
In workplaces and communities across Scotland there is anger and resentment, much of that aimed at the Lib Dems, that the people of Scotland are saddled with a Tory government who could only secure one Tory MP out of the 59 elected in Scotland on 6 May. 85% of people voting in Scotland voted for "anyone but the Tories".
The widespread fear of a Tory government actually caused an increase in Labour's vote in Scotland as the mood of "lesser evilism" dominated the election. Labour won over one million votes which was 42% of the poll - an increase of over 2.5% compared to 2005, winning 41 MPs. This share of the vote compared to Labour's 29 % across the UK as a whole and 25% share of the poll in England.
The Scottish National Party (SNP) also suffered in this election. They had set a target of winning 20 MPs but in the end secured only six, losing Glasgow East to Labour, a seat they won in a byelection victory in 2008. Their 20% of the poll was a small increase of 2% and put the nationalists in second place ahead of the Lib Dems who won eleven seats with 16.5% of the vote.
The Westminster "coalition of cuts" only has 12 representatives in Scotland and 32% of the vote. While they hope that the eleven Lib Dem MPs will 'legitimise" their government in Scotland, in reality they will not be accepted as being representative. That feeling will increase dramatically over the next weeks and months as the savage cuts they plan begin to bite.
Cameron and Clegg have moved quickly to offer to carry out the conclusions of the Calman commission, which proposed to increase the powers of the Scottish parliament. They may well be forced to offer a Calman plus deal, involving more substantial fiscal measures in an attempt to placate the mood in Scotland. Tory Chancellor, George Osborne, has also offered to allow the SNP Scottish government to postpone until 2011 the £330 million in cuts planned for the Scottish budget for 2010-11.
The SNP have grabbed this offer with both hands; given there is an election for the Scottish parliament in May 2011. With Alex Salmond and the SNP being increasingly exposed as a government of cuts, they have put up no resistance, other than hot air, to the draconian austerity measures that are planned. Instead they have offered a "constructive working relationship" with the Tories and the Lib Dem coalition rather than preparing a campaign to resist the attacks that have already begun.
In an act of extreme irony, Labour in Scotland are already positioning themselves as a 'clean hands' alternative to the governments of cuts. Reduced to opposition at Westminster and at Holyrood, Labour's tactics will be to attack the SNP and the Tories/Lib Dem coalition and hope to win the Scottish election in May next year. And yet New Labour were the gatekeepers for the return of a Tory government.
After all it was Labour's own chancellor, Alistair Darling, who promised that if elected Labour's cuts would be "worse than those of Margaret Thatcher".
Some trade union leaders will still cling to Labour at all costs. Others like Unite general secretary candidate, Len McCluskey, has said Unite members will join the Labour Party to reclaim it. This is not likely to happen, or, if it does, it won't succeed in changing the direction of the capitalist Labour Party.
Under the conditions that prevailed in Scotland, the votes for the Scottish Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (STUSC) were understandably modest. The overwhelming mood in working class areas was to stop the Tories at all costs. This made it difficult to convince people to vote for us, although there was widespread sympathy for our message that workers should not have to pay for a crisis we did not create.
The campaign spoke to over half a million people in Scotland in the ten seats that STUSC contested, warning of what was to come, whoever won the election. The turnouts at the public meetings were good and many new people looking to organise a fightback can be won to the socialist movement as a result.
Tommy Sheridan in Glasgow South West received the highest socialist vote in Scotland in winning 931 votes and 3% of the vote. Ray Gunnion, a member of the International Socialists and the Lanarkshire Socialist Alliance, won 609 votes in Motherwell and Wishaw, and polled the second highest socialist vote. Other members of the International Socialists who stood were Jim McFarlane in Dundee West (357 and 1%) and Brian Smith in Glasgow South (351 and 1%) and Gary Clark in East Edinburgh (274, 0.7%)
The International Socialists believe that these modest votes, and the votes won by TUSC in England and Wales are a step forward and should be built on. We support the idea that a TUSC type of coalition should be continued and used to help prepare a united left and trade union based challenge for the Scottish elections next May.
Alongside this however we need to build a coalition of resistance to the savagery that is being perpetrated by this vicious cuts government. As a first step the 22 June emergency Tory/Lib Dem budget should be met by trade union and community organised rallies in cities and towns across Scotland in protest against cuts and in defence of jobs and services. Members of the International Socialists in Scotland are helping to initiate these protests in union branches across the country.
A mass demonstration led by the trade unions and involving local communities needs to be organised. It's time that the TUC and the Scottish TUC called such a demonstration as part of a united campaign across the public sector. If they are not prepared to do so those unions that do want to organise a fight to stop the cuts should name the day for mass demonstrations.
Industrial action across the public sector unions, including preparing a 24 hour general strike will also be on the agenda at a certain stage.
It is vital that as part of this campaign a clear alternative to the logic of the cuts is put forward. Democratic public ownership of the banking system and the rest of the major companies that dominate the economy, taxing the rich and big business, cancellation of spending on nuclear weapons, can all form part of a socialist alternative to capitalism and the parties of cuts who defend that system.
The capitalists and their new Tory/Lib Dem government have declared war on working class people. We need to organise to fight these attacks and lay the basis for the building of a mass workers' party armed with socialist ideas that will challenge the logic of capitalism that says we should pay the price for their economic crisis.
The Scottish section of the Committee for a Workers' International - the International Socialists - is changing its name to Socialist Party Scotland.
The new organisation will be launched at a rally in Glasgow on Thursday 10 June. Speaking at the rally will be Joe Higgins, the Socialist Party Ireland MEP and Hannah Sell of the Socialist Party in England and Wales, Brian Smith the secretary of Glasgow Unison and Graeme McCiver the national secretary of Solidarity, among others.
We have chosen this new name because we believe that it allows us to have a clearer banner that will help attract new young people and workers to the ranks of the CWI. It also has the distinct advantage of making a direct link with our sister parties in England, Wales and Ireland who are also known as Socialist Party.
We will continue to work to build Solidarity - Scotland's Socialist Movement, alongside Tommy Sheridan and help to develop TUSC as a step to the building of a new mass workers' party.
LOCAL GOVERNMENT jobs and services are under attack. Local councils will have £2 billion less in grants from central government after the first £6 billion Con-Dem government cutbacks. The threat is angering workers and service users.
In Kirklees in Yorkshire, cuts announced months ago are already biting. Long before the Tories took office nationally, this Labour council, in coalition with the Lib Dems, voted through a £400 million cuts budget, potentially resulting in the loss of 2,000 jobs.
The council's attempts to encourage staff to leave through early retirement or voluntary redundancy failed to reach their 'target' so last week they served the unions with notice of compulsory redundancies, initially suggesting 140 jobs to go. They also want more volunteers to reach their target of 1,100 job losses within two years. Workers understand that more compulsory redundancies will follow.
The council has declared war on its own workforce. They are also about to impose pay cuts on around 1,200 staff through the single status deal. These are staff whose pay went down after a regrading exercise, but were reassured their pay would be protected. The council then withdrew that commitment last year and only offered a year's protection, which runs out this month.
Hit with a double whammy, council workers voted in favour of taking strike action and demanded that Unison organises a formal ballot. However, feelings hardened in recent weeks and a mass meeting of stewards endorsed a programme of strikes in the event of a 'yes' vote, starting with a five day strike, followed by all out action to push the council back.
Sensing war is in the air, the first post-election meeting of our local Save Our Services (SOS) group was packed out. Leading stewards and branch officials from Unite, NUT and Unison painted a grim picture of cuts already imposed but the need for a determined fightback dominated the meeting.
A day of action was organised for 11 June, then a mass public rally on 21 June coinciding with the government's budget week. This should galvanise public support for united strike action over the summer.
Our only choice now is to fight. At a strike meeting, one Unison member said she hated striking, but it had to be done, and argued for an extension of strike days to hit the council hard. "It's better to lose a lot of pay and win than lose a bit of pay and lose. If we have to, we have to stay on strike for as long as it takes."
A strike committee is being formed. This will have to ensure that clear and determined battle lines are drawn up to defeat these cuts.
The Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) conference on 19-21 May was the first trade union conference since the election of the new Tory/Liberal coalition. The mood was serious and businesslike. Delegates were buoyed by the recent court victory on the Civil Service Compensation Scheme that saw the government proposals to rip up contracts and reduce redundancy payments, in order to drive through cuts and privatisation, declared illegal.
But this was tempered by the knowledge that Cameron and Clegg are determined to do the bidding of the markets - which, having worsened a recession due to their excessive greed and lack of regulation, now want massive public sector cuts. This is under the pretext of "tackling" the public spending deficit, which was actually caused in large part by the taxpayer bailing out the banks.
In her opening address to conference, union president Janice Godrich analysed the attacks that are being planned on the public sector. She stated that, unless challenged, they could mean the loss of between 500,000 and 750,000 jobs.
In praising the determination of PCS members to defend their jobs, conditions and services in recent years she went on to call for public sector unity in the face of these attacks.
Assistant general secretary Chris Baugh moved the main motion from the national executive committee (NEC) setting out the union's campaign response. The scale of the cuts will potentially be worse than under Thatcher and that needs a united response from the trade union movement.
This is reflected in the debate and the policy passed, which included a new national campaign in defence of civil and public services to link different elements of the campaign under one banner; pressing the TUC for closer coordination; formal approaches to other public sector unions to explore joint campaigning at local, regional and national level, including demonstrations, establishing town committees, bolstering trades councils and calling regional conferences of activists.
Fran Heathcote, moving a linked emergency motion, called for a TUC national demonstration in London in response to the 22 June budget, in order to build solidarity and unity but also to give a warning to the coalition government that workers will fight these cuts.
She said the demand of "No Cuts or Privatisation" must mean precisely that. We cannot allow the idea of "deserving and undeserving" public services to gain any credence. If we don't fight together we'll be beaten separately.
Since conference, the government has announced the first £6 billion of cuts in public services and a recruitment freeze in much of the civil service. This is intended to signal to the markets that Cameron is prepared to carry through their demands for swingeing attacks on the public sector generally.
There is a vagueness about the announcement in relation to the civil service and in fact a "reheated" nature to some of the targets like travel and advertising. Civil servants will actually welcome the savings on consultants.
These parasitic private sector companies have made rich pickings from the civil service, plundering billions in profit for no discernable return, other than demanding cuts and privatisation.
If all the detail is not there, it is nevertheless clear that cuts on this scale will impact on services. The government's plans appear to be allowing permanent secretaries to cut where they can.
In the huge Department for Work and Pensions, initial cuts of £535 million have been announced. This not only sends a message to staff but to those on benefits that times are going to get very hard indeed and the most vulnerable in society can expected harsher regimes, including cuts in benefit levels.
Conference gave a standing ovation and its full support to Jane Brooke, Land Registry branch secretary from Weymouth who was victimised and sacked following being off sick with Repetitive Strain Injury. Management had employed a detective agency to put her and others under video surveillance for six months!
Land Registry Chair Michael Kavanagh and NEC member Emily Kelly restated the union's absolute determination to win this case, give Jane all the support she needs and challenge this disgraceful act of harassment.
The conference debates were inspiring but, more importantly, focused on developing the strategies and policies capable of facing up to the attacks being planned by the coalition government.
Last year a motion was passed that called for a consultation with branches on whether to support or stand candidates in elections. This stemmed, as it has in the rest of the labour and trade union movement, from the fact that all the main political parties are inextricably tied to a pro-market consensus that is the ideological underpinning for the cuts and privatisation agenda.
It has become increasingly clear that in order to defend jobs, conditions and services the union has to extend its campaign work into the political arena. This of course was already being done but the experience of activists, confirmed by hustings organised by branches around the Make Your Vote Count campaign, showed that we need to directly challenge the politicians who are attacking us.
In moving the NEC motion, I [vice-president John McInally] explained that the consultation produced clear support amongst the 135 branches that responded but that it was equally clear that a great many questions had arisen in the course of the consultation. For example, how would candidates be chosen, what democratic checks and balances would be required, how would we work with other unions and what review mechanisms would be required to monitor the process?
The NEC called for a further process of consultation, including group, regional and branch briefings and workshops on the question of detailed proposals with a report back to Conference 2011. And, if the decision is taken to support or stand candidates, then a full membership ballot.
Some activists will be understandably disappointed that standing candidates cannot be done now but if this initiative does not build the support of members and activists it will not succeed. The whole process was based on two important points, firstly, that this initiative was about the need to develop our political campaign work in order to protect jobs, conditions and services and that the whole process was, and had to be, underpinned by membership endorsement.
THE PEOPLE of Coventry saw this week what the Con-Dem coalition government's 'new politics' looks like, with the announcement of around 1,000 job losses in the city.
The £6 billion worth of cuts that the government will be making includes 330 jobs going at Becta, the schools IT agency, and 500 at the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency (QCDA). Linked to these cuts are further job losses at the Skills Funding Agency (formerly the Learning and Skills Council).
The offices that QCDA operate from are virtually brand new, with many staff having relocated recently from London. Coventry's manufacturing base has been destroyed during past Tory and Labour governments, and the public sector employs thousands of people in the area.
This is just the start - before further budgetary announcements locally and nationally. Coventry city council is going to make cuts of at least £72 million over the next three years. City College has announced 50 job cuts. The city's two universities will be under pressure, as will the NHS, Royal Mail and countless other workplaces, for example Ericsson said recently they will be leaving the city, causing 700 job losses.
If that wasn't enough, there are press reports that Foleshill sports centre could close due to lack of funds - with job losses and the disappearance of a key community facility. The Socialist Party says that nothing about this is inevitable. Ordinary people in Coventry did not cause this crisis, just as workers in Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain or anywhere else did not cause it - but we are all being asked to pay the price for it.
The Socialist Party was campaigning in Coventry city centre on Saturday 29 May, arguing that these attacks need to be met with a huge response. The trade unions must link up with the wider community to resist this massacre of jobs.
We need a movement as big as the one that brought down Thatcher's poll tax. Ordinary people did it then, we can do it again.
ACROSS EAST London, including Waltham Forest, millions of workers voted Labour, believing this might protect them from the Tory-led public sector massacre now set to take place.
Throughout the election the Socialist Party campaigned on a 'no cuts' platform, explaining that these cuts were being demanded by unelected hedge fund managers and city wolf packs, with politicians repeating ad nauseam that ordinary people should pay for bank bailouts.
In reality Waltham Forest has experienced in-efficiency cut after in-efficiency cut. Failed privatisation experiments such as Ascham Homes and EduAction, abound. We have the dirty contract of Kier [a poorly paying waste and cleaning company which took over many services locally - Eds]. On top of this, the swansong of the previous Lib/Lab pact was to vote through £10 million of budget cuts.
The Socialist Party stands in the tradition of the fighting Liverpool city council, which stood up to Thatcher between 1984 and 1986; which built houses and schools and created jobs in the teeth of a vicious Tory government.
Militant, the forerunner of the Socialist Party, led the magnificent battle against the poll tax that saw 18 million people refuse to pay, defeated the tax and, ultimately, saw the back of Thatcher herself.
Council leader Chris Robbins said we face "exciting but difficult times". Well, this Labour council has a choice - will they slavishly do the bidding of the government, as they did under New Labour, or will they refuse to implement the cuts?
If they choose defiiance, like the socialists in Liverpool, they should set a budget based on real needs in the borough in terms of services, and build a campaign amongst council workers, college lecturers, teachers, school and college students etc, linking up with other boroughs to force the government to increase funding.
The Socialist Party is ready to be part of that campaign. Is the council?
Higher Education delegates to University and College Union (UCU) annual congress have voted overwhelmingly to ballot for industrial action to save jobs, with action expected to take place in the last week of September 2010.
Delegates also drew a hard line on pensions, rejecting management plans to cut corners in payments to retired lecturers.
Delegates say that university management negotiating group UCEA's intransigence in refusing to save jobs, even in exchange for concessions on pay, have made action necessary. UCEA is currently offering a below-inflation 0.4% pay rise, while thousands of higher education jobs are under threat nationally. The first UCEA offer of 0.25% had been earlier rejected by UCU negotiators.
Further Education delegates also voted to prepare to ballot over the issue of pay. FE teachers have been offered a 0.2% pay rise.
I spoke in support of balloting. I am a postgraduate student with teaching duties and I argued that, unlike some right-wing student union leaderships, students do support their lecturers' actions to defend the quality of education.
A consultative ballot of members also soundly rejected management proposals for a two-tier pension scheme and changes which would have discriminated against new staff and those who have re-entered the sector after working in the private sector. Delegates resolved to take action, including industrial action, in defence of pensions.
Speaking from the podium, UCU treasurer Jim Carr warned employers: "Mess with our pensions and you will face the greatest dispute that has ever taken place in higher education...we can deliver a resounding industrial response and we can give them a resounding defeat. We're on our way to a tremendous victory on this".
The mood at the congress was militant and enthusiastic for action. Delegates voted unanimously to affiliate UCU to the Youth Fight for Jobs campaign, trade union group TUCG, and the People's Charter and the national executive will make the possibilities of UCU intervention into electoral and parliamentary politics a priority.
UCU Left activist Jenny Sutton stood as a TUSC candidate in Tottenham in the 2010 general election, gaining over 1,000 votes.
A controversial amendment to affiliate UCU to the Right to Work Campaign was passed narrowly, with many speakers criticising RtWC's intervention into the BA negotiations on 22 May.
The University and College Union's first Young Members' Conference was held on 15 May. Around 30 delegates attended, from both further and higher education institutions and those practising in industrial settings.
The event provided a good opportunity for delegates to experience - possibly for the first time - the operation of the union at a national level, as well as providing a chance to network with other young activists.
But the conference lacked clear objectives, and the range of broad discussions failed to deliver on substantial plans of action. Socialist Party members proposed concrete steps to tackle the challenges facing further and higher education - including a national demonstration on the day of the emergency budget and efforts to build alliances with the student community and the broader trade union movement.
An informal network of young activists was established with responsibility for co-ordinating the recruitment of young members, as well as for pushing for a democratic discussion over the structure of a young members' committee.
The UCU faces a number of challenges in recruiting young workers. They are vulnerable because they're usually at the start of their careers and therefore are more likely to be pressurised by their bosses, compared to their senior colleagues. Furthermore, young workers, especially if they're on casualised contracts, may fear victimisation if they either join or get active with the union.
Therefore, a national Young Members' Committee is essential to ensure that the issues young workers in academia and education face are addressed, and to build the next generation of union activists.
On 27 May UAL (University of the Arts London) took strike action across six colleges and up to 100 lecturers and students rallied outside Central St Martin's Art College in protest at job cuts. This is the fifteenth UCU branch in London to take strike action since March.
68% of the UCU members at UAL voted in favour of strike action to save the jobs threatened through course closures and 'restructuring'. At the rally staff were joined by students and campaigners against the closure of the college's nursery.
Colleges and universities across the country are facing massive cuts. With the announcement of further cuts of £200 million from university spending and £340 million in cuts in further education it is clear that national action uniting workers and students around an anti-cuts programme is needed to fight these attacks.
Make sure you book a place at this important meeting for all trade unionists - now with an international rally.
Speakers in the main conference, in a personal capacity, will include a BA striker, Janice Godrich, president of the PCS, Matt Wrack, general secretary of the FBU and Steve Hedley, London RMT regional secretary.
There will be ten workshops on many issues, including fighting the cuts and redundancies in the public and private sectors, organising against racism and fascism, building the trade unions amongst young people, and climate change.
The international solidarity rally in the afternoon will have speakers including Pedro Rodriguez from the Workers' Commissions in Madrid, Terry Kelleher from the CPSU in Ireland and a Greek health worker.
Saturday 26 June, 11am-4.30pm. South Camden Community School, Charrington Street, London NW1 1RG (near Kings Cross/St Pancras).
To register send £5 to NSSN, PO Box 58262, London N1P 1ET, with your details, including workplace and trade union.
TIVOLI GARDENS in Kingston, Jamaica's first public housing estate, resembled a war zone after armed police, backed by the army, fought their way into the neighbourhood to arrest alleged drug boss Christopher "Dudus" Coke and to suppress the "Shower Posse" - his loyal armed supporters who had erected street barricades as an act of defiance to the authorities. At the time of writing, Dudus continues to elude the police manhunt.
The house-to-house military operation, which began last weekend, has left scores of people dead and injured. Hundreds have been arrested, and a 30-day state of emergency has been declared in two parishes.
Desperate residents, trapped in their homes, called the local radio station describing scenes of utter mayhem, with dead bodies left uncollected on the streets and of having to lie on the floor of their homes to avoid the ricocheting bullets.
Ordinary people were caught in the crossfire between armed gang members and an unrestrained police force, which is notoriously corrupt and brutal. Even the minister of education admitted on the BBC World Service that "we are concerned that there might be human rights violations."
The area under assault is represented in parliament by prime minister Bruce Golding of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). This right wing party has nothing in common with workers' organisations but instead has a history of carrying out neo-liberal economic policies on behalf of US imperialism.
Media sources say Golding is clearly linked to Coke and the Shower Posse. And according to the New York Times, Coke has a consulting company in Jamaica that has earned millions of dollars in government contracts.
Many commentators believe that Golding's seeming reluctance to act on a longstanding US Justice Department request to extradite Coke to America to stand trial on drug trafficking in the US and other criminal charges, is because Coke was on the payroll of the prime minister. Coke's lawyer, until the extradition order, was Tom Tavares-Finson, who is also a JLP senator.
Since the 1970s, both the JLP and the rival People's National Party (PNP) have benefitted from the criminal gangs that control different neighbourhoods of the capital Kingston and who can be relied on to mobilise each party's vote.
The US authorities actively sought to destabilise the left-leaning PNP government in the 1970s, which at that time had widespread support from Jamaica's workers and poor.
Led by Michael Manley the PNP won the 1972 election. Manley nationalised a number of industries and introduced popular reforms in health and education provision. He also introduced price controls on a number of key products and provided consumer subsidies for others. Internationally, he established friendly relations with Cuba, which alarmed the US government.
But similar to the experience of Salvador Allende's 1970-73 reformist government in Chile, the PNP's failure to take bold and decisive measures to overturn capitalism and transform society to socialism eventually led to economic crisis and chronic instability. It demonstrated that there can be no 'half-way house' to socialism.
Hit by a world recession and a massive hike in oil prices, unemployment increased (reaching an estimated 40% in some parts of Jamaica). Capitalist financial speculation, rampant inflation and a chronic shortage of foreign exchange and investment meant that living standards declined.
The 1976 election was also marked by widespread violence when JLP gangs, believed to be armed with guns supplied by the US CIA spy agency, murdered hundreds of PNP supporters including Roy McGann, a PNP MP.
Despite the intimidation and economic crisis Manley's party won the election. However, the PNP leadership turned to the capitalist International Monetary Fund (IMF) for financial assistance. The IMF demanded cuts in government spending and inevitably the pressures of capitalism to reverse the social reforms led to widespread disillusion with the PNP.
These conditions led to the sweeping victory of the Edward Seaga-led JLP in the 1980 general election, winning 59% of the vote and 51 seats compared to 41% and only nine seats for the PNP. As many as 800 people died in violence during this election.
The JLP proceeded to carry out IMF dictates and swingeing austerity measures were introduced. Seaga responded to US pressure and severed diplomatic ties with Cuba. In 1983, Jamaican forces participated in the US invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada which overthrew the left wing government there.
Having been re-elected in 1989, Manley retired in 1992. The PNP was now under the leadership of Percival Patterson who shifted the party much further to the political right to embrace market-oriented policies.
The economy today continues to be in a weak state, dependent on earnings from tourism, bauxite mining and from remittances from Jamaicans abroad, the latter accounting for 20% of GDP.
Between 1995 and 2005 the Jamaican economy grew by only 0.7% (sixth lowest in the world) and actually contracted by 4% in 2009. The economy remains heavily indebted. Last year, once again, the government was forced to go cap in hand to the IMF for assistance.
Unemployment remains high and poverty and social inequality is widespread. These chronic social problems have fuelled the drug trade and associated gang culture.
The armed party militias established in the 1970s have evolved into criminal gangs dealing in drugs and are involved in violent feuding for territorial control. Jamaica today has the unenviable record of being one of the most dangerous places on the planet with 1,500 people murdered each year out of a population of three million.
Even charities fear to venture into desperately poor areas like Tivoli Gardens which have been abandoned by the state agencies and are ruled over by the likes of Dudus Coke, who dispenses his largesse to the poor like a feudal lord.
Underlying the present conflict is a distorted class struggle. According to the author Ian Thompson: "Politics in Jamaica is often about resources: if the JLP lose an election, Tivoli Gardens stands to lose the housing schemes, public contracts, firearms and other favours politicians have promised in return for votes" (The Guardian, 25 May).
Decades of poverty and despair amongst the majority of the population, while the Jamaican elite and foreign capitalists extract wealth and profits from the workers and poor, amply illustrates the failure of capitalism to provide an optimistic future.
Only through the workers' organisations absorbing the lessons of the history and experiences of working class struggles throughout the Americas, can the basis be laid for a successful new workers' political party to develop. Such a party, equipped with a political programme for the socialist transformation of society and linked to an international perspective of struggle against imperialism, could rapidly challenge the Jamaican ruling elite and its rotten system.
TWELVE WORKERS have committed suicide so far this year at the factory that makes Apple iPads. Four others survived, gravely injured, and 20 were stopped from killing themselves by the company. All the dead were between 18 and 24 years old.
Foxconn - the city-sized factory in the Shenzhen free trade zone, southern China - employs 400,000 mainly migrant workers. They work 70 hours a week for 30p an hour under a military-style administration and harsh working conditions.
Foxconn also supply Dell, Hewlett Packard and Sony and is one of the largest producers of computers and consumer electronics in the world.
One worker said: "We are extremely tired, with tremendous pressure. We finish one step in every seven seconds, which requires us to concentrate and keep working and working. We work faster even than the machines.
"Every shift (ten hours), we finish 4,000 Dell computers, all the while standing up. We can accomplish these assignments through collect-ive effort, but many of us feel worn out."
A week ago an undercover team infiltrated the plant. They told the Daily Telegraph: "Hundreds of people work in the workshops but they are not allowed to talk to each other. If you talk you get a black mark in your record and you get shouted at by your manager. You can also be fined."
The company are constructing nets around the seven storey dormitories from which workers have been jumping. They have also hired 70 psychologists and brought in Buddhist monks.
Terry Gou, the Taiwanese billionaire chairman of Foxconn's parent company Hon Hai, had toured the plant with journalists only hours before the latest death. "This is not a sweatshop", he told them.
Apple's sales were £30 billion last year. The company's audit of its own "supplier responsibility codes" shows that 102 facilities flouted the "rigorous rules" on working hours, 39% broke rules on workplace injury prevention and 30% broke guidelines on toxic waste disposal. There were also violations on child labour and falsified records. Will Apple cancel these contracts? I wouldn't hold your breath.
The modern, high tech, trendy image of Apple has proved to be a veil behind which hundreds of thousands of workers are brutally exploited in barbaric conditions.
Chinese workers need independent, democratic, campaigning trade unions to fight for decent pay and conditions and for an end to the tyranny of these workplace prisons.
Peter Taaffe looks at the struggles to come under the not-so new politics of the Con-Dems
Robert Bechert writes on a developing continental crisis
To hear an audio version of this document click here.
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.
To hear an audio version of this document click here.
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/9749