No apology. No concern. No regret. Sitting comfortably and calmly in his Newsnight chair Michael Gove, education minister, had no qualms about claiming that cuts to frontline services are "unavoidable".
Questioned about a council's predictions that the number of young people who do not receive any qualifications at all will increase, Gove merely blamed the previous government and reiterated that these cuts are "unavoidable".
So now we have a situation where young people, leaving university with tens of thousands of pounds of debt, cannot get a decent job.
A recent report shows that there are almost 70 applicants for every one graduate vacancy. And yet this government plans to punish the unemployed by cutting their housing benefit by 10% after a year on the dole.
This Con-Dem government has no reservations when it comes to wielding the axe. Their vision seems to be one where everyone is left to fend for themselves. Young people's right to a decent future? Slashed. Decent working conditions? In ribbons. Support for the vulnerable, the elderly, the ill? Hacked to bits. The right to a home, to health, to education? Destroyed. But Gove and his government are wrong. This is a crisis of capitalism. We did not cause it and we will not pay for it. This situation is not 'unavoidable'. Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT transport union issued a call to arms at his union's recent conference.
He called for a "sustained campaign of generalised strikes across both the public and private sectors and community direct action to defend public services."
The government is preparing to force through a tough new cap on civil service redundancy payments to make sackings cheap.
Before the general election the PCS civil servants' union organised national strike action to defeat a similar measure under Labour and eventually won in the courts.
That fight must be revived. Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the PCS, has called for "joint union action and campaigning in communities" to stop the cuts.
Bob Crow continued: "The trade unions can only fight these attacks from the front foot. We have a government of millionaire public school boys who are determined to rule by fear - fear of losing your job, fear of losing your home and fear of losing your benefits and the public services that you rely on.
"RMT says don't fear them, fight them. Our trade union has a slogan: 'never on our knees' and we want those words to ring out on the Millionaires' Row of Clegg and Cameron. They started this fight with the working class and we are up for it."
The Socialist Party urges all trade unionists to take up this rallying call. In particular, we support the call by the PCS and others for the TUC to organise, as soon as possible, a mass national demonstration against the attacks of the Con-Dem government as an urgent first step.
Properly built for, such a demonstration would express the opposition of hundreds of thousands of people to the attacks we face.
It could also build confidence in struggle and prepare the way for a 24-hour public sector strike. Working class people must prepare ourselves for the fight of our lives.
Government departments to prepare for cuts of 40%... civil servants' redundancy terms to be ripped up...housing benefit to be cut... plans to build new schools and hospitals to be scrapped... and so the list goes on.
Every day this millionaires' government announces another way it is going to heap misery on the population as it sets out to destroy our public services.
Cuts on this scale have not been seen since the 1920s.
The axe-men of the coalition government claim to believe that decimating the public sector will give the private sector 'room to breathe'.
This is blatant nonsense and they know it. Much as the government denies it, the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which they set up just weeks ago, told them before Chancellor Osborne's bloody budget that it would lead to 1.3 million job losses, including 700,000 private sector jobs that are directly or indirectly dependent on the public sector.
Across Europe governments are pursuing the same policy of savage cuts. All claim that it will make their private sectors more competitive, when in reality the world's sick and crisis-ridden private sectors have, for the last period, been propped up by the public sector.
There is no capitalist solution to the crisis of this sick system, but the strategy of the axe men is guaranteed to dramatically worsen the situation.
Recognising that domestic demand will be weak because workers will lack the money to buy goods, every government is pursuing the dream that exports are the way forward.
As Larry Elliot put it: "The Germans, the Greeks, the Irish and the Spanish - not to mention Japan, the US and the fast growing emerging nations of China - all see their economic future in the same way.
Just how every country in the world can enjoy export-led growth has not yet been explained." (The Guardian 28 June 2010) It could be added that it has never been explained how Britain - with its enfeebled manufacturing sector - expects to compete successfully against Germany or China in a shrunken world market.
The Keynesian economist Paul Krugman has declared in horror that the axe-men are tipping the world into a Great Depression the price for which would be paid by "tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some will never work again." (The Guardian 29 June 2010).
Permanent unemployment is the future - along with homelessness and hunger - that many workers in Britain will face if the government gets its way.
However, just as Thatcher did when she introduced the poll tax in the late 1980s, this government is making an enormous mistake if it imagines it will be able to implement its programme without mass opposition.
The Socialist Party (then called the Militant) led a mass movement against the poll tax (a flat rate tax where everyone paid the same - from a duke to a dustman).
Eighteen million people refused to pay the tax, and were organised in two thousand anti-poll tax unions coordinated nationally via the Anti-Poll Tax Federation.
That movement was successful, defeating the tax and bringing down Thatcher. We can do the same today. There are differences between the movement against the poll tax and what is needed today. The iniquitous poll tax affected all workers in pretty much the same way. The cuts we face today will lead to greater hardship than the poll tax and will also affect every sector of the population, but will not be as uniform in their effects.
This leaves room for the government to try and divide workers - public sector against private sector, old against young, employed and unemployed.
Socialists have a crucial role to play in preventing those divisions. We have to argue for the movement to stand clearly against all cuts in public services - this was not our crisis and we will not pay for it.
We refuse to fall for the con-trick of a 'Dutch auction' to decide which service gets the axe. At the same time we have to build a united movement against the cuts - the anti-poll tax movement has many positive lessons on how this could be done.
In many areas of the country local anti-cuts committees have already been founded. This needs to happen in every city, town and village. As with the poll tax, we need 'unions', this time anti-cuts unions, to be initiated involving representation from local trade union branches, community campaigns, Youth Fight for Jobs, tenants associations - from all those organisations involved in the struggle against the cuts.
We can then link up the anti-cuts unions nationwide.
Some have raised that Labour councillors need to be involved in the anti-cuts campaigns. We want the broadest possible campaign of those that are opposed to cuts, not just in words but in deeds.
Where this includes Labour councillors we welcome their involvement. However, New Labour have made it clear that, had they won the general election, they would also have slashed public spending and in many areas Labour councils are wielding the axe at local level just as brutally as the Con-Dem government is at national level.
Look at the Labour council in Neath (see page 3) which is threatening to sack 7,000 workers and then to re-employ them on dramatically worsened pay and conditions.
Alongside building local anti-cuts unions, we need national action. The last time public sector cuts were carried out on this scale - the infamous Geddes Report - it led to the 1926 general strike.
As then, the working class today has enormous potential strength. It could ultimately decide, through collective action, what is done, made, and moved in society. If the trade union movement was to lead a determined struggle against the cuts it would gain huge support - from the seven million workers currently organised in the trade unions and many millions more who would be inspired by such a stance.
We support the call by Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT for "the trade unions to form alliances with community groups, campaigns and pensioners' organisations in the biggest show of united resistance since the success of the anti-poll tax movement."
The first step needs to be for the trade union movement to call a national demonstration against the cuts.
There would need to be a huge campaign to make sure that every worker heard about the demonstration.
Such a demo - hundreds of thousands strong - would raise confidence and then act as a building block for a 24 hour public sector strike.
The Con-Dem government is a weak government attempting to carry out the most brutal attacks on the working class for eighty years.
They will face an avalanche of opposition which, if organised, can stop them in their tracks.
As has been explained in previous issues of The Socialist, this economic crisis was not caused by working class people and they should not pay for it.
To stop the debilitating and even murderous effects of this budget requires a powerful movement in defence of jobs, homes and services.
A first step must be a massive national trade union-led demonstration and the building of local anti-cuts unions to organise solidarity and action to stop cuts.
See 'Build united action to stop the cuts'.
"Yes it is tough; but it is also fair". This was how Tory chancellor George Osborne described his emergency budget on 22 June 2010. In fact the plans of this government of millionaires represent an enormous threat to the living standards of millions.
Cabinet ministers have since been ordered to plan for cuts of 40% in their departmental budgets. While the Tories and Liberals have tried to argue that the pain will fall evenly, all evidence is to the contrary.
The Institute for Fiscal Policy has found that the poorest 10% will be hit five times harder than the richest by 2015.
Seumas Milne from the Guardian has exposed the "bare-faced deceit" of their lies and explained that "those on benefits will take the greatest hit of all".
Outrageously Osborne attempted to soften up public opinion for cuts in benefits by portraying vulnerable people as 'greedy, fraudulent scroungers', sucking the wealth out of the economy.
"Total welfare spending has increased from £132 billion ten years ago to £192 billion today... It's one reason why there is no money left."
In fact it is the capitalist economic crisis and the bailout of the banks that are responsible for the increase in the government deficit.
Hundreds of thousands have already lost their jobs as a result of this crisis.The government's cuts would mean many more thrown on the scrapheap - forced to survive on ever more paltry benefits.
Yet the government continues to blame claimants. Further misleading statements can be found on the website for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
While cutbacks and privatisation in care services over decades have left people struggling to meet the additional costs of living with a disability, the DWP asserts: "While we are absolutely committed to supporting vulnerable disabled people, over the last decade the system [DLA] has become open to abuse and the numbers claiming have steadily increased."
Meanwhile private profiteering contract companies are salivating at the prospect of being handed public services to run - and destroy.
The boss of one such company, Carillion, is said to be "excited" by the prospect of spending cuts.
Here we draw out what some of these measures will really mean for ordinary people, if they are carried through.
"It's class war, isn't it?" This was the view of a woman asked by the BBC what she thought of George Osborne's emergency budget, the day after it was announced.
In his emergency budget speech George Osborne described the cuts he was delivering as "ensuring everyone, across the income scale makes a contribution to helping our country reduce its debts".
It would seem that the Royal Family is not exempt from 'sharing the pain'. Taxpayers' funding of the queen will be frozen at just £39.9 million for this financial year. Let's hope she and her children don't suffer too much as a result. Meanwhile, back in the real world, Britain's poorest families face freezes with quite different implications.
Child benefit, a vital component of low income and unemployed families' subsistence budgets, has been frozen for three years.
This means it has effectively been cut in relation to inflation, VAT rises and the soaring cost of living.
It will therefore hit, as with the entire austerity package, the poorest hardest.
Pre-election talk of ending this universal benefit and making it means-tested, leading to complex application forms and income assessment processes, often meaning that those most in need fail to claim, was not implemented.
But, instead of raising income from high income families through taxation, it is we who pay the price.
This budget has cut £5 billion from benefit support for struggling families. It will guarantee that New Labour's yawning chasm between rich and poor widens and that the figures for children growing up in poverty in Britain continue to rise.
From April 2011 pregnant women will no longer get the Health in Pregnancy payment of £190 and the Sure Start maternity grant of £500 will only be for your first child, not any subsequent children.
The 'baby element' of child tax credits, which was an additional payment worth about £10 a week for a whole year has also been abolished.
Plans to extend free school meals to working families on low incomes have been dropped.
The Lib Dems, desperate to show that there is something 'progressive' about the budget, point to an increase in the child element of tax credits of £150 from April 2011 as a measure to protect poorer families.
However, Gingerbread, the lone parent organisation, called this at best a 'neutral' measure. It will simply offset rises in VAT and the effect of increasing the 'taper' which means that tax credits will reduce more sharply as income increases.
The government has reduced the maximum income at which a household can get some tax credits from £50,000 a year before tax to £40,000 from April 2011 and down to £30,000 by 2012.
In reality this cap will affect many ordinary couples, working full time and earning average wages, who often have to pay huge nursery costs.
Gingerbread also points out that increasing the tax threshold by £1,000 will not necessarily benefit lower earners if they are claiming housing benefit or council tax benefit as any increase they see in their net wage will mean a reduction in benefit.
Tax credits for Britain's ever-swelling ranks of 'working poor' will now, under new rules, respond quickly with payments dropping when income rises, but take much longer to increase as and when a family's income falls.
Benefits and tax credits will no longer be up-rated to the retail price index but instead to the consumer price index, shaving about 1% a year from payments and netting the government coffers almost £6 billion a year.
Parents will be forced off benefits once their children are five years old in the assumption that they can and must find work.
New Labour MPs are raising their hands in horror at the cuts. But in reality it was their government that forced lone parents off income support once their youngest child is seven, and rushed through their latest Welfare Reform Act just before the election.
This Act allows for further benefit sanctions and 'work for your benefit' schemes and makes it harder to qualify for contribution based Jobseeker's Allowance, as well as effectively abolishing Income Support for new claimants and extending privatisation of Jobcentre services.
This budget is a thoroughgoing attack on every aspect of working class families' battle to survive. But it is only the first shot in the class war, with massive public sector cuts to be outlined in the autumn.
Cuts in social care, classroom support, Sure Start programmes and other 'soft targets' will make the Tories' talk of 'equality of opportunity' for all children into even more of a sick joke.
The budget changes to housing benefit will make the mass of working and middle class people far more insecure in their homes.
The idea that 'an Englishman's home is his castle' clearly doesn't impress George Osborne!
Housing benefit will now be capped at a maximum payment of £340 a week for a three-bed house and £400 a week for a four-bed house.
Changes in the calculation of Local Housing Allowances (LHA) will add a further squeeze. Much publicity has been given to certain cases where high levels of payments have been made under the current system.
Grant Shapps, the housing minister, has been forced to admit that these cases are rare.
Of course high rents mean that it's the landlords who benefit massively. The housing charity, Shelter, shows the real picture, pointing out that "nearly half of LHA claimants are already making up a shortfall of almost £100 a month to make up their rent.
If this support is ripped out suddenly from under their feet it will push many households over the edge, triggering a spiral of debt, eviction and homelessness".
Shelter also explains that, as a result of Osborne's budget, some people will lose as much as 40% of their total rent.
The reality of the budget proposals is an intensification of 'social cleansing' in which the poor are pushed out of 'desirable' or expensive areas like central London.
Sue Witherspoon, head of housing at Havering council, points out that several London authorities have no private rents below the cap.
As she says: "the implication for a [cheaper outer London] borough like Havering is that we will have a flood of people moving in because of the lower costs.
It will lead to a ghettoisation of benefit claimants" (Inside Housing). For all the misery they will cause, the caps will only 'save' £70 million. The biggest saving (£490 million according to the 2010 Budget Red Book Policy Costings p41) will come from restricting working age entitlements in the 'social sector' (council housing and housing associations).
People occupying a property the government thinks is too big will have to make up the difference or move.
During the election campaign the Tories denied that they would attack security of tenure in social housing, knowing that this would provoke a furious response, but this change threatens to turf many long-term tenants out of their homes.
From April 2013 people on Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) for over 12 months will get a 10% reduction in their housing benefit payments.
This will hit the 200,000 single, childless claimants hardest. Presumably they will have to find the difference out of their weekly JSA payments of £65.45 for over 22-year olds, which are also being squeezed!
Shapps has told the BBC that the changes target people "choosing not to work as a lifestyle choice".
But unemployment isn't going up as a new 'lifestyle choice'. Nationally there are five JSA claimants for every one job available. Shapps and his government's cuts will make this worse, if they get away with it.
Unemployed homeowners will be hit too. The rate at which support for mortgage interest is paid will fall from the current level of 6.08% to the Bank of England's measure of an average mortgage rate from October this year.
It is true that interest levels are currently low but the people most likely to be experiencing difficulty, people with subprime mortgages, tend to be paying well over the average rate.
A record 4.5 million people are on housing waiting lists, according to the National Housing Federation (NHF), and 2.6 million are living in overcrowded homes including a million children.
The NHF estimates that if, as the Institute of Fiscal Studies suggest, the housing budget is cut by a third, 142,000 planned affordable homes will not be built in the period leading up to 2020.
That would add 354,000 people to housing waiting lists. It would also result in 212,000 jobs going in construction and related fields.
In the short time since the Tory/Liberal budget, the full realisation of what these vicious cuts will mean is dawning on disabled and older people and family carers.
This includes the fact that David Cameron and Nick Clegg are prepared to go much further in dismantling the welfare state than Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown ever dared.
Plans to save £11 billion from the welfare budget will include: driving more than a million disabled or sick adults claiming incapacity benefits on to Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) in the next three years; forcing most disabled and sick people remaining on Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) to look for work or do vocational training with the loss of benefits hanging over them if they don't; and cutting Disability Living Allowance (DLA) by £1.4 billion in the next four years.
DLA provides financial support to 1.8 million disabled children and adults under 65 who rely on this benefit to meet the extra daily living and transport costs associated with disability.
A feature of the Tory/Liberal attacks will be the use of functional tests to reduce or remove eligibility for DLA.
A similar method is being used in the Work Capability Assessments undertaken by ESA claimants. This is a much stricter assessment than the one for incapacity benefits. 69% taking it are found to be fit for work. Citizens Advice Bureau found that: "People with serious illnesses and disabilities who could not reasonably be expected to work are being found fit for work".
This is particularly true for those with serious mental health issues. This same method is to be introduced into social care by the odious Personal Care At Home Act, introduced in the last weeks of Brown's administration.
To be eligible for free personal care those with critical needs will be assessed to see what they can do for themselves.
The budget was, however, silent on the future of Attendance Allowance, a tax-free benefit for people aged 65 or over who need someone to help look after them because they are physically or learning disabled.
New Labour had proposed to abolish this, with the intention of using the billions stolen from older people to plug some of the huge underfunding of social care and primary care services. So there may be more to come in the autumn spending review.
Whilst there are claims that the 'most vulnerable in society' will be protected, the budget did nothing to address the social issues affecting this layer.
The underfunding of local authorities by central government means eligibility for social care services has contracted to the point where many councils are now, in practice, only providing support to those with critical needs, ie those that would die without support being provided.
This means family carers, many of whom are in their 70s and 80s, are forced to fill the gaps.
There are also no plans in place to provide the resources needed to address the scandal of child labour.
More than 200,000 children under 16 provide physical support and emotional assistance to parents and siblings who are disabled (20,000 of whom care for more than 50 hours a week) - help that should be provided in many cases by adult social care workers or family carers of working age who are paid a living wage.
Cuts of 15-20% to the Supporting People programme will also remove housing related support for tens of thousands over the next two years.
And the continued underfunding of housing adaptations means thousands experience delays of months, and sometimes years, before the changes they need to their homes are made.
A draconian means-test also results in those severely disabled people 'lucky' enough to be in work sometimes having to find tens of thousands of pounds to fund their own adaptations or do without.
Whilst New Labour politicians are condemning these Tory/Liberal welfare budget cuts, the foundation stone for these attacks is the welfare reform agenda developed by Blair and Brown and their cronies such as James Purnell.
Their policy was set to reduce the numbers on incapacity benefits by one million in this Parliament.
Disabled and older people and family carers and their organisations need to be encouraged to be an active part of the anti-cuts campaigns being developed to resist the attacks on the public sector and service users.
LABOUR CONTROLLED Neath/Port Talbot council is threatening to sack its 7,000 strong workforce and re-employ them on worse terms and conditions in a brutal attempt to close a £24 million gap in its budget by 2014.
The changes would mean cuts in rates for overtime, unsociable hours and shift allowance payments. The council also wants to stop the use of council vehicles for 'home to work' travel, change car allowance mileage rates and stop some meal expenses.
The council's head of human resources said this was a situation faced by every local authority in Wales but Neath/Port Talbot was ahead of most in trying to tackle it.
It's a disgrace that a Labour-controlled council is the first in Wales to go on a vicious offensive against low-paid workers.
The message is clear to all council workers in Wales that if Neath/Port Talbot council get away with these cuts then other councils will follow them.
Unison, the trade union which represents 3,000 of the council staff, said the authority was 'negotiating with a gun to its head'.
Unfortunately, the council are pushing ahead with around 750 voluntary redundancies and have implemented chrages for council staff parking but as expected these are not enough for a Labour council determined to implement further cuts. Understandably some members are hopeful that if they give some concessions their jobs could be saved and most of their terms and conditions retained. As this threat of mass sackings have shown - No Chance!
Unison has called emergency meetings of its members this week to respond to the council's declaration of war.
If the wages, terms and conditions of council workers are to be retained there has to be an immediate strike ballot organised by the council unions in response to this provocation.
Neath/Port Talbot council workers must not be left isolated to fight a battle that will be coming to every local authority in Wales in the near future.
Local authority unions across Wales should convene an emergency conference of shop stewards and union reps to discuss a common, united strategy to defeat these attacks.
As a call of solidarity, Unison should organise an all-Wales public sector march and rally on to the Civic Centre in Port Talbot in early September.
As well as preparing for industrial action, local authority trade unions should start linking up with community campaigners, private sector unions and the general public, who will all be affected by these council cuts.
Calls must be made on the Labour/Plaid Welsh Assembly government to refuse to implement the Con-Dem cuts and stand alongside the trade unions and anti-cuts campaigners in defending the public sector in Wales.
Like the Militant-led Liverpool Labour council in the 1980s, that stood up against Thatcher's cuts, councils in Wales, along with the Welsh Assembly government, should determine what cash is needed to effectively run our services and take on the new Tory-led government to fight for it!
The only other alternative is to make council workers and those who rely on their services, the most vulnerable in society, pay the price for the bankers' crisis.
AROUND 100 trade unionists gathered in Hull city centre on Saturday 3 July to protest at the shocking cuts coming to the public sector following the Con-Dem budget.
Banners from a range of unions including the NUT, PCS, GMB, NASUWT, Unison and Ucatt showed how the spending cuts will affect all workers across both the public and private sector.
There was a range of speakers, each talking about the problems in their particular workplace, with reports of agency workers being used to undercut full time workers and plans for redundancies in most workplaces.
Two of Hull's Labour MPs, Karl Turner and Diana Johnson, tried to use the protest to whip up support for Labour, having previously promised deep cuts to the economy.
Their speeches, however, were received with polite applause only.
In contrast, the best-received speeches of the day were ones that put forward a united union fightback against the cuts and that laid out clear socialist policies.
Matt Whale, speaking for Youth Fight for Jobs, highlighted the situation facing young people in the city and demanded free education, jobs for all and a higher minimum wage.
Mike Whale, secretary of Hull National Union of Teachers, was greeted by cheers when he called for the nationalisation of the banks and a programme of public works to tackle the need for more houses in Hull, as well as creating more jobs in the city.
The loudest applause came when Mike called for a new left party prepared to fight for working people in the way the current government is fighting for the rich.
The protest was a brilliant success and laid important foundations for the struggles that will undoubtedly be coming our way.
Already plans are in hand to lobby the Liberal-led city council with a petition calling for no redundancies.
Dear Sir,
Aneurin Bevan was not "the Militant Godfather". However, he did share with us an admiration of Leon Trotsky, a stubborn defence of socialism and the rights and conditions of working class people.
He would have scorned his alleged "heirs" like the multi-millionaire Lord Neil Kinnock, as he did Ramsay McDonald for betraying the hopes of working class people.
Alive today, he would have forcefully opposed Kinnock's friends in the Neath/Port Talbot New Labour council - "Yes, a Labour council" - preparing to hand out redundancy notices to its 7,000-strong workforce in the last week.
Despite the lies peddled 25 years ago Liverpool council, under the influence of Militant, never sacked a single worker.
In fact, 2,000 new jobs were created, as were nurseries, new parks and 5,000 council houses built. Bevan, who achieved great things through the NHS, would have applauded this, while ferociously condemning New Labour today for passing on vicious Con-Dem cuts - as Neath/Port Talbot indicates is likely to be the case.
Sincerely,
Peter Taaffe
On 29 June, the National Union of Students (NUS) held a hastily organised conference to discuss the massive cuts looming in higher education.
The event was controversial from the start as many who registered had their places cancelled.
This was apparently due to 'over-subscription' but the fact that it was largely anti-cuts activists who were told not to attend shows that the leadership was nervous about being forced to commit to real action against the cuts.
The conference looked at details of the upcoming cuts and some delegates argued for a campaign against them, for example by building for a national demonstration on the issue.
The date for this demonstration was delayed to be discussed further at the upcoming national executive committee meeting this week.
Student activists will need to keep pressure on NUS to ensure that they set a date and do not backtrack on the plan.
Disappointingly, there was also a session on how to 'cope' with the cuts which reflected a wider defeatism about stopping them.
Aaron Porter, NUS president, has even said that limiting cuts was the 'best' that students could hope for.
Porter is on record blaming universities for the need for cuts. "I recognise the pressures on university and college funding but they have had a decade of almost exponential investment and very few of them had the foresight to realise there might be a few years of difficulties." This line was parroted by various sabbatical officers from around the country during the conference.
In fact, it was clear from the discussion that the majority of student union officers are not interested in organising a serious fightback.
Most agreed with the idea that cuts are inevitable and that 'damage limitation' is the only option. They naively put forward the argument that this can be achieved through polite negotiations and 'partnerships' with university managements.
While student activists who are serious about fighting the cuts should keep pushing for effective action by their local student unions and by NUS nationally, it is also essential to organise independently of these structures to build mass campaigns that will take action to really stop the cuts.
If NUS fails to name a date for a national demonstration, Youth Fight for Jobs calls on all activists to organise a demo to coincide with the announcement of the next round of public sector cuts on 20 October (see www.youthfightforjobs.com to pledge support for this).
They must also build alliances with trade unionists on campus, and link their campaigns into the wider struggle to defend the public sector against the attacks of the Con-Dem coalition.
Welsh university mergers threaten education and jobs
Leighton Andrews, education minister in the Welsh Assembly announced on 29 June that Wales' newest universities, Swansea Metropolitan, Glyndwr and University of Wales, Trinity St David would be merged into pre-1992 universities.
Andrews, a Labour Assembly Member (AM), claimed that merging the universities would raise education standards.
Staff and students have been quick to disagree. The University and College Union (UCU) has noted that mergers mean job losses and worse conditions for students.
Jack Parker, a student at Cardiff University said: "This is yet another example of efficiency being deemed more important than young people's opportunities.
"What I don't understand is how our economy is expected to prosper in the decades to come when my generation continuously pays the price for mistakes that neither I nor my fellow students made."
Despite agreeing to jointly campaign with UCU against cuts, the NUS leadership has only said it "welcomed the commitment to protecting student numbers", which Andrews claims will be guaranteed.
This ignores the fact that fewer academic jobs, with the same number of students, will increase lecture sizes and have a devastating effect on education standards.
Thousands of young people get their A-Level results on the Tuesday 19 August. But the Con-Dem Government seems to be closing every avenue open to them - cuts to the increase in university places, education funding, job opportunities and benefits.
Youth Fight for Jobs will be protesting outside the Department for Business Innovation and Skills against the brutal attacks that young people face and to demand real jobs and free education.
THE RACIST British National Party (BNP) has been forced to call off its annual Red, White and Blue 'festival of hate' which usually takes place in Codnor, Derbyshire.
The cancellation of this vile event is due to the persistent campaigning by anti-racists and anti-fascists.
Two years ago Notts Stop the BNP produced 40,000 leaflets to mobilise people against the festival. We campaigned for Amber Valley council not to grant a live music and alcohol licence.
The pressure told with the police opposing the licence unless strict conditions were met. The BNP withdrew its application and then attempted to obtain a different licence which was refused.
NStBNP sought to draw in local people in as broad a campaign as possible to prevent the festival. We sought, with great difficulty, to work with Unite Against Fascism to make the event as united and effective as possible.
In the end 500 protestors marched close to the festival site. The festival did take place that year, but under police protection. The Public Order Act was used to confine the protesters and make any public assembly unlawful within five miles of the festival site.
But following the event, new local anti-racist and anti-fascist groups were established in Derby and Amber Valley.
In 2009 the protest returned and trebled in size to 1,500, mobilised by Notts Stop the BNP, UAF and local Derbyshire groups.
The effect was greater than 2008, with roads being blocked for a period of time.
The BNP is in disarray following the May elections; they lost council seats and their 'fuehrer' Nick Griffin failed to win the Barking MP's seat in the general election.
However, the BNP and the far right won't disappear despite the festival victory. Its support is based on the bankruptcy of the established parliamentary parties, which can only be cut across by workers' unity in struggle against attacks on living standards and for workers to have a mass political party of their own.
ON SATURDAY 26 June I travelled with two comrades from South Africa's Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM, the Socialist Party's counterpart in South Africa) to a mass meeting they had called in Rustenburg, about two hours north west of Johannesburg.
The city of Rustenburg is home to 400,000 people and is best known to Australians as the host of several World Cup games at the Royal Bafokeng Stadium.
However it is also a major mining centre and has the world's two largest platinum mines.
Since last August, 5,000 miners have been on strike at a platinum mine after being sacked during a wages dispute.
They received little support from their union, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), which is affiliated to the national union federation, Cosatu.
In turn, Cosatu is in an alliance with the Communist Party and the governing African National Congress (ANC).
The fact that Cosatu owns 15% of the shares in the same company the workers were sacked by may have something to do with the lack of support the miners received!
These miners left the NUM and joined the Metal and Electrical Workers Union of South Africa (Mewusa) which is affiliated to the rival Pan Africanist influenced trade union federation, the National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu).
Mewusa is a militant and democratic union that is under the political influence of the DSM.
We arrived at an informal settlement (shantytown) just outside Rustenburg and were met by about 500 striking miners standing around on a dusty patch of land waiting for the meeting to start.
The meeting was organised by Mewusa specifically for the DSM to discuss the 55th anniversary of the Freedom Charter (which called for a non-racial South Africa, full democratic rights, land reform and nationalisation).
Within minutes of arriving the workers started marching through the settlement singing revolutionary songs and pulling in more people to attend the mass meeting.
One song was called: "Why I am a communist". It went: "My father was a garden boy; my mother was a kitchen girl, that's why I am a communist."
After about 30 minutes of marching we returned to the field where the DSM leaders stood on an outcrop above the crowd to address the meeting.
I was introduced as a member of the international executive committee of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI), a Socialist Party councillor from Melbourne and an active trade unionist.
After several chants such as "Viva the CWI" and "Viva the Socialist Party in Australia", I began my speech.
I told them that many workers internationally had been following their struggle through the parties of the CWI.
More than a decade and a half since the fall of apartheid it was shocking to many workers that miners in South Africa still had to strike to achieve decent wages and conditions - all this in the teeth of opposition from the ANC government and the bosses.
I explained that in a real democratic and militant union, the members controlled their leadership. Even then, unions themselves were not enough as, at best, they only represent workers while at work.
To ensure their voice was heard on broader issues, workers needed a party. The ANC was not that party as its recent actions had shown.
A real workers' party should only allow their MPs to live on the average wage of workers and have the right of recall.
"If you want to make money, start a business or become a gangster - keep out of our movement", I told the workers.
Weizmann Hamilton, leader of the DSM explained that, whereas for the working class the nationalisation clauses in the Freedom Charter are meant to end their exploitation by the bosses, for the aspirant black capitalists whose interests the ANC represents, the nationalisation clauses in the Freedom Charter are not a call for socialism but instead are used as a means to enrich the black elite.
They want to be accommodated by the predominantly white capitalist class, not overthrow capitalism. Today this is called 'Black Economic Empowerment'.
This is what lies behind the nationalisation call by ANC Youth League president, Julius Malema. After 16 years of the ANC's capitalist rule the gap between rich and poor is now the widest in the world.
The meeting was translated into Sotho and was chaired by the most popular leader of the miners, Mametlwe Sebei, who is also a leading member of the DSM.
Through his flair and ideas Sebei has won the hearts of the workers. The Socialist Party in Australia looks forward to Sebei addressing our national conference in Melbourne in October.
The meeting continued in the warm winter sun for over three hours, but next to no workers left early, such was their thirst for the ideas of the union and the DSM.
When the meeting opened up for discussion, one older worker compared the leaving of the miners from the ineffectual NUM to Mewusa as akin to Jews leaving from Egypt to the Promised Land by Moses in the Old Testament!
Another worker said that only at this DSM meeting did he get an explanation and analysis of the events.
This had never occurred in the NUM. He asked for more political education for workers from the union and from the DSM.
When the meeting finally ended, workers grabbed me and the DSM leaders for some more informal political discussions.It was a battle to finally get back to our transport and home!
Mewusa is clearly democratic, militant and growing. If they win this strike and the miners get their jobs back, the union predicts a rapid growth for itself.
Many workers still at work are watching developments closely and if the striking workers win this battle we can be assured that many more will join.
The position that the DSM has carved out for itself with these workers is extremely impressive. The challenge ahead is to extend the influence of Mewusa and to build the DSM as a political alternative to the parties that have failed to take the struggle of South African workers forward.
Hardly a day goes by in Kazakhstan without a protest, a court case, a press conference or a planning meeting involving the leaders of the resistance movement against the dictatorship of president Nazarbayev.
A worried regime resorts time and again to repression; the movement fights back on every issue. On 24 June four women were in court for leading an illegal protest. On 25 June journalists at the state news agency, denied pay for months on end, announced a strike. On 26 June, when a street demonstration in Almaty in support of miners was banned, a meeting was held and press statements made.
On all such occasions 'Kazakhstan 2012' issues a press release in support; sometimes it holds a press conference.
Its target is to remove from power the apparently all-powerful president, Nazarbayev, in or before the year the next election is due.
President Nursultan Nazarbayev boasts of tremendous progress being made in the Kazakh economy. In a (very expensive) six page advertising supplement of the International Herald Tribune on 2 June he wrote of a fast-growing GDP, low public debt levels and falling unemployment.
Tell that to the millions without any stable employment or income in Kazakhstan, facing mounting prices on essential goods and with massive housing debts resulting from the 'credit crunch' crisis!
In the early years of this century, workers and middle class people, including small, close-to-the-margin businesses and traders, were bombarded with offers of what amounted to sub-prime loans and mortgages.
Now, since the credit bubble burst, their dreams have turned to nightmares. They find themselves owing ten times more than they borrowed in the first place!
In mid-June we met men and women of the movement in the city of Shimkent. Angry women regaled us with tales of what they called their 'folly'. "But why should we be taken to court to pay up, or told to get out of our houses, some of which we have not even finished building, when the bankers have had massive hand-outs from the government?"
In a warm and lively meeting, events in Europe were touched on and the women identified immediately with the plight of the Greek workers.
They spoke of their fight for justice and a different life. "For a while, some of our women who could not cope were taking their own lives. There were said to be over 1,000 in one city suffering from a kind of depression known as 'mortgagee syndrome'.
Then we organised and began to get victories. Now we fight every case to the end and will not give up."
"The old system was better than today's 'market-place'. We had free schooling, free medicine and hospitals, low cost flats and controlled prices of basic goods.
Of course we had Stalin then. It would be better if we had all that without dictatorship!" So why not? One woman simply said, "Lenin got it right. We need revolution!"
A medical worker building an independent union pleaded with the visiting speakers, including Ainur and Esenbek from Kazakhstan 2012, to give an idea of how to take the struggle further than just the mass movement and new trade unions.
Igor from Moscow explained clearly the need for a mass workers' party and the struggle for socialism internationally.
In Almaty, too, there are fearless women involved in almost daily protests demanding the annulment of their debts and the right to keep their homes.
Women are less likely to get imprisoned than men, but they can be taken to court and fined.
On 9 June an unstoppable force of over 100 women stormed the headquarters of the ruling party, Nur Otan.
Identical protests were held in two other cities at the same time. They got press and TV coverage for their noisy and colourful demonstration. They promised to return if they got no satisfactory reply, and they did return!
The following week, on yet another demo, they dangled noodles from their fingers and ears in a traditional manner of pointing out and mocking liars.
Four of their number got arrested and charged with unlawful behaviour. When they were brought up in court, they made fun of the whole procedure, pretending to be unable to hear the charges against them and unable to speak in response! The officials shook with rage and handed down totally arbitrary fines.
The women make light of their struggle and seem actually to enjoy it, but every day they are risking their homes, their livelihoods, their liberty and their health.
They are proud of their achievements and have no intention of giving up the struggle. There is more on the CWI web-site about the struggle of the miners, the campaigns for independent unions, the government's repression and relentless harassment of activists.
The movement against the Nazarbayev regime and against capitalism in Kazakhstan is gathering momentum.
Kazakhstan 2012 has at least 10,000 of the 40,000 members needed to formalise a political party. They have a youth wing - 'Zhastar 2012' - and are reaching into every corner of the country with their political and trade union campaigns.
But they face a brutal enemy. When activists are physically attacked and jailed, as they have been on many occasions and will be again, messages and protests are of vital importance.
And they do have an effect. All the activists in the movement in Kazakhstan deeply appreciate the support and solidarity from abroad.
FACED WITH an ever-increasing number of deaths of UK soldiers and Afghan civilians, prime minister David Cameron says this is a price worth paying for 'good governance' in Afghanistan.
But to suggest that the Karzai regime in Kabul is anything but rotten and corrupt is pure fiction.
Apart from the cash Afghan government officials obtain from the opium trade, US investigators believe the same bureaucrats - who include the vice-president and the president's brother Mahmood Karzai - have diverted $3 billion in foreign aid to Afghanistan out of the country to financial safe havens.
This cash is literally stuffed into suitcases and flown out of Afghanistan under the noses of Nato officials, typically to Dubai.
This rip-off is said to have occurred between 2007 and this year. However, new estimates suggest that more money may have been taken overland across into Iran and Pakistan.
This new figure could amount to a staggering $3.65 billion a year - in a country where the annual gross domestic product last year only totalled $13.5 billion.
WITH THE likelihood of a £5 million cut in central government funding, Labour's executive mayor in the London borough of Newham, Sir Robin Wales, has hit on a novel fightback strategy for the hard-pressed local authority - increase his £80,000 annual salary by 4%!
In a lame attempt to justify Sir Robin's booty while at the same time imposing a two-year pay freeze on council workers, a Newham spokesman explained that the mayor's rise was forced upon him by an independent review panel. Oh the burden of leadership!
GOVERNMENT MINISTERS are planning to further restrict the ability of trade unions to take industrial action in defence of jobs, pay, conditions and services.
According to media reports the government is considering taking on board suggestions from the employers' organisation, the CBI, that a strike ballot would only be valid if over 40% of those entitled to vote do so, instead of the current simple majority of those who vote.
If applied to general elections, the present government would be illegal!
Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT transport union, slammed the proposals as a "declaration of war" on the trade union movement.
THE LATEST statistics from the national audit office confirms previous reports (see issue 612, The Socialist) that the health gap between the social classes is widening.
Life expectancy is on average 77.9 years for men and 82 years for women but in areas of low income the respective figures drop to 75.8 and 80.4 years.
The National Audit Office reckons that insufficient resources have been used to improve health care in poorer areas and that some of the extra money allocated by the previous Labour government was absorbed by higher hospital costs in these areas.
For their promoters, one of the selling points of the divisive and part-privatised academy schools programme is 'raised educational standards'.
The Department for Education, for example, claims that academies are over three times more likely to be rated outstanding than other state schools.
However, official figures for 2008-09 show that higher grade passes of GCSEs in 'academic' exams (including English and maths) amounted to 49% in academies compared to 73% for other schools.
In fact, academies have inflated their exam 'successes' by replacing academic subjects with vocational qualifications and through higher rates of exclusions and selection.
These facts further expose the fast track academies programme of 'Tory libertarian' education minister Mike Gove.
A Freedom of Information request has revealed that 1,500 headteachers have already registered interest and Gove's plans include some becoming academies by September!
Gove is also trying to change the law so that parents and the community have no right to be consulted. If a salesman wants to rush a decision, don't they usually have something to hide?
These academies will be taken outside the control of local authorities so parents, staff and the local community will have no say in what happens to the school.
Council funds and services for schools will be cut for local authority controlled schools, creating a two tier system.
Academies' governing bodies will be able to determine the school's curriculum, opening the door to undemocratic and unaccountable big business and charities deciding what is taught.
Even staff's pay and conditions will be under threat, as academies will not be covered by national agreements.
When we campaigned against the plans in Croydon where 14 schools have registered an interest in becoming an academy, lots of people agreed that it's a bad idea.
Some simply thought it was an unfair policy that attacks state education. Others knew people who work in an academy and don't like the way it's run. It was clear that for many people, the start of a shift from state to private education is a step too far.
Perhaps some head teachers and governors want to go along with the Con-Dems' privatisation plans - but what right do they have to hand over our schools? If your child's school is considering becoming an academy, you need to get organised fast.
Demand that decisions are not rushed through in secret. Call for a proper consultation where all views can be heard.
Set up an anti-academies group to organise a campaign involving parents, students and teachers. Only through united mass organisation can we defeat this attack on comprehensive education.
British Airways cabin crew began voting on 6 July on a new 'final' offer from the company. Despite the rhetoric of BA management the new offer seems to be similar to the old offer put forward prior to the last round of strikes.
Although there are some guarantees on terms and conditions that were not in the last offer, the substantive issues that led to the strike have not been addressed.
The company's intention to set up a 'New Fleet' of new starters on inferior terms and conditions to current employees remains in place.
This new fleet could be used as a battering ram against conditions currently enjoyed by cabin crew. The issue of victimisations has also not been addressed, with staff travel still withdrawn from cabin crew who have participated in strike action and 60 union members are still suspended.
It is therefore incorrect for the national Unite leadership to make no recommendation on this offer.
In total the offer amounts to a serious attack on trade unionism at the company. For example, variable pay top ups "will only be made to those crew who do not participate in industrial action"! This threat alone is sufficient reason to oppose this offer as it discriminates against the right of workers to go on strike.
Quite clearly the aim of this 'offer' is to postpone the impending ballot on continued industrial action.
The refusal to put forward a recommendation is a failure of leadership by the national officers of Unite, particularly the joint general secretaries.
A failure to clearly reject this poor deal can only raise doubts in the minds of cabin crew that the national leadership is fully committed to getting a better deal.
It would have been far more constructive if Unite had recommended a rejection and pushed on to campaigning for a biggest possible 'Yes' vote for further industrial action in the upcoming ballot as quickly as possible.
This time could also be used to campaign within the rest of the BA workforce for greater practical support for this dispute, up to and including simultaneous strike action.
United action remains the key to defeating the generalised assault on terms and conditions and trade unionism at BA.
On 6 July Tory minister Francis Maude announced new legislation to attack civil service workers' redundancy pay.
A judicial review in May, following three days of PCS strike action against the previous New Labour government's attempts to attack redundancy rights, said that any changes to the Civil Service Compensation Scheme (CSCS) would have to be agreed with the union.
In order to circumvent the May ruling the Con-Dem government has announced primary legislation. Like the previous government they are looking to cut redundancy payments in order to drive through job cuts and privatisation on the cheap.
They now say that they want to talk but, with the new legislation, they clearly want to put a gun to the head of civil service trade unions.
The new arrangements would cap voluntary redundancy payments to 15 months salary and compulsory redundancy payments to only 12 months salary.
That indicates that the government wants to drive through tens of thousands of compulsory redundancies. This is on top of cuts of up to 40% in some civil service departments.
The new Public Service Pensions Commission will be rigged, as it is chaired by former New Labour cabinet member John Hutton.
Hutton's record as a cabinet minster shows that he hates public sector workers and trade unions.
It can be predicted that the commission will try to make public sector pensions far lower than those in the private sector.
The PCS will oppose these assaults on its members and will campaign to protect jobs, redundancy payments, pensions, terms and conditions, including industrial action where necessary.
Glenn, along with three other Socialist Party members, was witch-hunted and he has been banned from office for two years by the Unison leadership.
Glenn asks for all local government Unison branches to nominate Socialist Party member Hugo Pierre for this post.
If elected, Hugo would help fight to make the union take action to defend public sector jobs and services.
All Unison branches in the Northern region should also nominate Socialist Party member John Malcolm.
The nomination period will close on 6 August. The elections will take place from 27 September to 22 October.
Socialist Party members formed a large, colourful, youthful and lively contingent on the Shrewsbury 24 campaign 3 July march and rally in Shrewsbury.
For the second year running Telford and Shropshire trades council organised what is now a yearly event, until justice is achieved for the 24.
The Shrewsbury 24 building workers were victimised for organising solidarity action in the 1972 national construction strike.
Some were jailed. After a successful march up to the place of the original trials, the crowd of around 200 heard speeches from speakers including PCS president Janice Godrich, RMT general secretary Bob Crow and actor Ricky Tomlinson who was one of the jailed pickets.
It appears that a leaking pipe caught fire and exploded near to the recently installed distillation unit.
Black smoke could be seen as far away as Hull. The next day, workers walked out in respect of their fallen comrade as is the norm in the engineering construction industry.
But then asbestos was discovered by health and safety investigators in and around the area where the fire broke out so 250 workers were sent home until further notice.
LOR, owned by Total, is the third largest refinery in the UK, and was at the centre of unofficial strikes for jobs that swept the industry last year, in which fears about health and safety were a major concern.
The industry workers' website Bearfacts suggests that this incident shows that the lessons of other major disasters such as Flixborough in 1974, Piper Alpha in 1988 and Buncefield in 2005 appear to have been ignored again.
Trade unions have called for an independent inquiry into this explosion and re-investment in the LOR site, parts of which are now over 40 years old.
Such investment by Total is unlikely though as there is global overcapacity in oil refinery. Instead industry trade unions should campaign against the sub-contracting system, for workers' control over health and safety and nationalisation of the oil and construction industries.
The 2010 RMT transport workers' union conference totally rejected the Con-Dems' attacks on the working class.
Delegate after delegate warned of the cuts to come. Even MP John McDonnell, the convener of the RMT parliamentary group, called for extra-parliamentary action to force the Con-Dem government out of office.
The union also called for RMT members and others to organise to defeat the anti-trade union laws. The conference overwhelmingly supported the executive decision to support Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition candidates in elections and to continue to work for workers' political representation.
RMT members employed by Tubelines, a failed maintenance company that has now been taken back in-house by Transport for London, are taking strike action from the evening of 14 July until 16 July.
The action is taking place to oppose jobs cuts and attacks on working conditions. During the first strike on 23-25 June, many train drivers refused to work on health and safety grounds.
RMT members employed by London Underground are also being balloted for strike action, likely to take place in August, against 800 job cuts (see The Socialist issue 631 for more details).
Health workers in East Lancashire are fighting against threats to frontline jobs and working conditions at the special centre for people with learning disabilities in Whalley.
Calderstone NHS Trust, which runs the facility, is having £5 million cut from its budget over the next three years.
This could result in 200 job losses.
One hundred health workers and their supporters marched through Whalley village on 30 June to protest against the cuts as part of a union-organised day of action.
The Communication Workers Union (CWU) has called off the balloting of its members in BT over the company's 2010 pay offer, following legal advice that anti-union laws could be used to invalidate the ballot.
There will now be further negotiations between the CWU and BT while the union looks to re-ballot. More in a future issue of The Socialist.
The general secretary election in Unite will take place between 25 October and 19 November this year.
Nomination papers have now been sent to branch secretaries and shop stewards can order forms for workplace nominations, all of which have to be in by 6 September.
Socialist Party members in Unite are supporting Len McCluskey, the candidate of the left organisation, United Left.
Len is the assistant general secretary of the union, having previously been a national officer from the T&G section.
He is a long-time supporter of the left and of Liverpool city council in the 1980s which took on the Thatcher government to improve the lives of working people in that city.
He recently told the Guardian: "If workers have confidence, then my experience tells me that anything is possible.
Look at what happened with Thatcher and the poll tax. It was people power that brought down a person who seemed impregnable."
On the attacks of the Con-Dem government he said: "We need to create an alliance of resistance because our members don't want pay freezes, pay cuts and a tax on their services and communities. The unions have to be responsible for coordinating that action."
And on strike action against these attacks, he added: "They talk about public sector workers as if they're devils.
We're talking about people who teach our children, treat the sick, clean our streets, people who are responsible for building the fabric of the communities in which we live.
We need to tell our private sector workers that this is their fight too."
Unite members, up against the onslaught of the government, will welcome such statements, but whoever is elected general secretary will face a different economic and political climate than did their predecessors Tony Woodley and Derek Simpson.
If he or she does not lead a fight with the members, then members will have to initiate struggles from below against cuts and redundancies.
Len McCluskey is not the only candidate standing from the left; sacked convenor from Rolls Royce Bristol, Jerry Hicks, is also putting his name forward.
Jerry stood in the Amicus general secretary elections in 2009, coming a credible runner-up to Simpson.
Jerry was the only genuine left candidate in that field and received nearly 40,000 votes (24.8%). The Socialist Party supported Jerry in that election from the beginning, unlike some of his current supporters, who initially endorsed a right-wing candidate, covered in a left banner.
His programme appears more 'left' than Len McCluskey's. Jerry is in favour of the repeal of anti-union laws and confronting them when necessary.
He would like to see the election of all officials and the general secretary on an average member's wage.
He would prioritise public ownership and pensions, and puts forward the need for a public works programme.
Those are all policies we would support. But Jerry made a crucial mistake in walking out of the hustings of the United Left in autumn 2009 and that act has lost him a lot of support in the union.
He is seen as not wanting to explain his policies.
Socialists have influence inside the left by vocalising the pressure for action. This will be absolutely necessary in the next period. Excluding ourselves at this stage is a mistake. Labour
Also, Jerry Hicks' position on the Labour Party is not fundamentally different to McCluskey's.
Jerry believes disaffiliation "will also alienate the very best of Labour members, MPs and councillors"! Len calls for resources to be poured into the party; yet this can only be financial resources - Unite spent £4 million on Labour in the general election!
There is not the appetite among most Unite members to re-enter the party to reclaim it, particularly if Labour councils act as Cameron and Clegg's agents locally.
And John McDonnell, who the union's policy conference strongly wanted on the ballot paper, could not even get enough nominations for party leader.
Sooner or later Unite must decide to no longer back the pro-big business Labour Party
The danger of Jerry Hicks standing is that a split candidature of the left could let in a right-wing candidate, either Les Bayliss or Gail Cartmail, and this would set the union back.
The programme of Bayliss in particular does not gain an echo amongst Unite activists, even more from the Amicus tradition.
He will be relying on the more passive layers of the membership for support.
We cannot ignore these points or consider them irrelevant. If a right-wing candidate is elected in a first-past-the-post election, and the left vote is fatally split, then recriminations will break out in the union.
But we will not give Len McCluskey or any other left candidate in trade union elections carte blanche support.
Our support for McCluskey is qualified by demands for a socialist economic programme for the union, democratic election of officials, withdrawal from the Labour Party, an open election campaign, democratic procedures in United Left and so on.
These are the issues at stake in Unite in this election.
Ken Clarke has promised to reverse years of "banging up more and more people". Do you think this signals positive change for prisons?
A huge proportion of those currently in prison fall into three major categories. One is substance abusers. Secondly, people with diagnosed mental health problems who should not be in prison anyway. And thirdly, there are those with personality disorders, who, if prison officers were resourced appropriately, they could begin the process to change that personality disorder and help these people move away from criminal behaviour.
Ken Clarke's announcement is a very thin shellac over what they are going to do. The real cuts will mean we will see the prison budget slashed by a third, not a quarter, in applied terms.
The prison service will have a third less money to deal with the prisoners they have in their care. That will mean less prison officers, as that is the only way they can do it. This will mean less opportunity for prisoners to come out of their cells and to engage in constructive activity, let alone to engage in activity that will challenge their offending behaviour and their personality and mental illness problems.
So what he's actually doing is saying on one hand we're going to do more for them and at the same time we're going to give you less money to do it!
The prison budget has already been slashed year on year for the past ten, maybe 12 years. At the same time we've seen more and more people in prison. When Ken Clarke was home secretary in the 1990s there were almost 45,000 in prison and there are now 85,000 so it's going up all the time.
He has criticised Labour and said he would have balked at anyone projecting that there would have been this amount of prisoners 17 years down the road.
Well that's absolute nonsense because the projections then were for 60,000 in prison and they were well known.
I sat in front of him and discussed it. But he does tend to have a convenient memory!
What are your views on increasing the emphasis on 'non-custodial' sentances?
For those doing less than 12 months we do nothing with them other than keeping them imprisoned. By the time they've gone through the courts and so on there's too little time left to start any training before they're getting ready for release.
So there is some wisdom in this issue of not having people in for short terms. He has claimed that community sentencing will be cheaper and more effective. Non-custodial sentences need to carry the confidence of working men and women. They need to see that these people's offending behaviour is being put right through community sentences.
If they do not carry the confidence of working people they will very quickly fall into disrepute and the courts will again take it in their hands to lock people up for short sentences.
The rich can afford to have supreme burglar alarms and security devices. It's working class people who suffer from crime, who have living among them those who are susceptible to needing to support addictions and substance abuse.
So it's ordinary working class people who will suffer as a result of rising crime. There is no government body capable and able to take that amount of people tomorrow and usefully employ them, and to usefully administer community sentences.
So Mr Clarke and his colleagues will be looking for private companies and also the so-called third sector, charities, to do this work.
Charities will do it providing that they are earning money because they are not charities any more. They are big businesses with high-flying chief executives, roped in from all over the private sector.
They are funded in the main by private companies who will use any method to earn profits. Mr Clarke will hand some of the work directly to these companies. And he will seek to throw people out of work in the public sector. A lot of them will be POA members.
The POA as a trade union has made it absolutely categorically clear that if they attack prison officers' jobs then POA members will strike.
You're talking about an organisation that for many years has had the right to strike removed from it.
If they are attacked and their livelihoods, their safety and the safety of the general public is put at risk by Mr Clarke's attempts to shellac the cuts, they will walk out.
Do you think it is possible to reduce the prison population?
We all want to see less people in prison, and they could start with the young girls who have been physically and sexually abused, who have mental health and drug problems the like of which you can see in no establishment anywhere other than the female prisons.
They could start by putting them into psychiatric care, where they should be and where they can receive the proper treatment and care that they need to turn their lives round.
Their lives will not be turned round in prison, particularly in prisons where there is going to be a third of the budget cut.
These are 16 and 17 year old girls who have lived horrendous lives on the outside. The cuts will mean that more prisoners will die as a result of self harm, more prisoners will not be rehabilitated and subsequently there will be more crime committed by ex-offenders than there would have been had the cuts not taken place.
So Ken Clarke's comments are misleading?
For Ken Clarke to claim that he can make these cuts at the same time as improving rehabilitation is nonsense.
He is misleading the general public. The people he's not misleading are those who have the responsibility on behalf of society to work in our prisons.
They know exactly what these cuts will mean.
There are already fewer prison officers on duty than there has been in the past and more prisoners. He says he is going to cut the amount of prisons but I don't believe him. I think we will see cuts in the amount of prison staff on duty. They are already talking about major changes now that mean less trained staff on duty and using operational support more and more on tasks that support staff are not trained to do.
And using more and more of our civil service colleagues to do those tasks.
What is needed to reduce re-offending levels?
In the main we have a good relationship with prisoners and to be fair the POA does a lot of shouting on behalf of prisoners because they are why we are there.
If we have better resources they get a better time and we can actually encourage them and get them on the road of not re-offending.
The idea is to try wherever we can to release prisoners who are prepared to rehabilitate themselves into the authority of other agencies.
Prison is only part of the scheme. The individual is 90% of the scheme. They have to be prepared for getting their life together. The findings of the custody, care and justice document in 1991, which Mr Clarke never implemented, was all about doing those things.
What we can't do is know ultimately whether a prisoner is going to lead a law-abiding life. What we can do is prepare them and get them ready for it and structure their expectations where possible and get outside agencies to engage with them once they're released.
The bulk of the work is outside, back in society.
We've all got challenges, paying mortgages, putting bread on the table etc. Prisoners, especially those with big things in their way like drug abuse and mental health problems are very poor at doing that.
These things don't really affect them so much while they are in prison but on release they are the issues for which they need more support than the average man and woman needs.
Cuts in probation and other services will be devastating. The probation service can't manage now. If the job folds or the house they were meant to get doesn't happen that gives them every excuse to get back on the dope or back to burglary.
That is the reality of criminal behaviour. It's not led by criminals, it's led by drug barons, by the failures of the NHS to treat people for their mental health problems and personality disorders; it's failure by the education system that starts all this.
The custody, care and justice bill was produced as a result of Lord Wolfe's inquiry into the Strangeways and other riots by the home office when Ken Clarke was home secretary.
I went to see him. We were given half hour to read it. I believe he never read it and never implemented it because that would have meant spending money on prisons.
Had they spent the money then we wouldn't have the prison problems we have now.
PRIDE STARTED 40 years ago as a political demonstration for gay rights. London Pride 2010 on 3 July was a carnival, with politics only at the fringes. The gay establishment claim that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people have "arrived" after legal reforms, such as civil partnerships and equalisation of the age of consent, left nothing to fight for.
Welcome as law reforms are, they do not give LGBT people liberation. Laws against racial and sexual discrimination have been around for 40 years but racism and sexism have not disappeared.
Both anecdotal evidence and police figures show an upward trend in homophobic attacks, bullying in schools is still rife and in many communities being gay is still something that it's safer to keep quiet.
The Tories claim to be converted to supporting gay rights, yet they are in alliance with homophobic right wing nationalists in the European parliament.
The voting record of many cabinet ministers on gay rights issues has been abysmal and several Tory backbenchers share the US Christian right's vicious ideology.
Whenever cuts are introduced capitalist politicians go for services relied on by minority groups, perceiving them as easy targets.
The ruling class hope to avoid blame for such attacks by finding scapegoats and creating division in society.
The homophobic "section 28" law was used to cover up attacks on council services in the same act of parliament.
The Socialist Party LGBT Group was at London Pride campaigning against the Con-Dem cuts programme with a stall and petitions at the start of the parade.
While our warning was well received, and we sold many copies of the Socialist, the cuts' effects have not yet been widely felt.
Many people obviously hope against hope that the cuts won't have much impact.
Of course some few are looking forward to the cuts. One Tory councillor, out walking his dog, told us that workers are "stupid" and "obese", showing how the Tories see ordinary people.
And given his own ample girth, it shows they haven't given up on hypocrisy - or dinners.
We assured him that we will carry on fighting for LGBT liberation, which involves getting rid of his band of upper class wreckers from government and taking away their control over society.
I WENT to my first Socialist Party summer camp last year as a fairly new member. It was fantastic being in such a relaxed environment with everybody on the same political wavelength and with the same goals in mind.
There were brilliant discussion topics, including 'women in the recession', 'revolution in Latin America' and 'Darwin in the 21st century', as well as a Youth Fight for Jobs rally.
As a young person I was keen to contribute in the Youth Fight for Jobs discussion. Despite being new to the party I didn't feel nervous about contributing. Everyone was keen to listen and share thoughts and ideas. I was really impressed. The campsite had swings on the trees, climbing equipment and an archery course, good showers and proper toilets.
And everyone was really friendly. In between discussion sessions during the day, activities were available for a small price. After the discussions, a tasty dinner was cooked up which we could buy tokens for earlier in the day.
With the campfire came the sing-song. Anybody who wanted to entertain had the option - even my Britney Spears rendition got a good response! The quiz night was a really good laugh.
All in all the weekend was a very enjoyable experience.
The camp is a fantastic opportunity to learn and share knowledge, experiences and ideas and meet Socialist Party members and supporters from different areas.
I am looking forward to going again this year!
Costs: £40 for a waged adult, £25 unwaged or low-paid adult, £10 for one day, £12 for a child and £95 for a family.
There will be a charge for sporting activities like archery, quad bikes (new this year) and climbing, to cover the cost of instructors.
A crèche is available during all political discussions. To book, send a £10 deposit to Socialist Party, PO Box 24697, London E11 1YD.
For more information please phone 020 8988 8782. www.socialistparty.org.uk/summercamp
Make sure you come to this brilliant weekend of discussion and debate - put the dates in your diary now.
The discussions and rallies will take place in the University of London Union and Friends Meeting House in central London, both venues are close to Euston railway station.
CAPITALIST POLITICIANS want us to forget the origins of the latest economic crisis. They talk instead of the 'unavoidable' necessity of tax rises and swingeing public spending cuts. However, for socialists, an understanding of the origins of the crisis is vital. This book is not a socialist analysis but it explains in accessible terms what happened and why. Readers can clearly see Lanchester's anger at the crisis and its effects on people who had nothing to do with precipitating it.
The author groups events around four themes - climate, problem, mistake and failure. The "climate" means the new world political order, "neoliberalism", boosted by the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The Stalinist states of the USSR and its satellites were totalitarian regimes run by privileged bureaucracies but, in their planned economies, they held up an alternative to capitalism.
Lanchester says: "The population of the West benefited from [the soviet states'] existence... For decades there was... an ideological beauty contest between the capitalist west and communist east, both vying to look as if they offered their citizens a better, fairer way of life".
But after Stalinism's collapse, capitalist governments had no need to compete for hearts and minds and capitalism no longer had to 'behave itself'.
The "problem" for Lanchester was banking and finance's increasing domination of much of the "Anglo-Saxon" economies.
For 100 years, until the 1970s, the value of Britain's banking sector's assets, for example, hovered around 50% of its GDP.
By 2006, this had shot up to 550%! Banking and finance was, in capitalist terms, 'worth' more than five times the rest of the economy.
New forms of financial "wizardry" were developed, new ways for the major institutions and "high net worth individuals" to speculate and 'play the market'.
The value of this trade in these financial "derivatives", says Lanchester, "exceeds the total of value of all the world's economic output by ... perhaps tenfold"!
The "mistake" theme concerned "risk" and bankers' reliance on mathematical modelling systems for calculating it.
Complex risks were generated by such financial 'instruments' as the collateralised debt obligations (CDOs) comprising many thousands of "sub-prime" mortgages.
However, no capitalist forecast the possibility that house prices may fall! But fall they did. This helped precipitate the crash and the array of banking failures. In reality, the maths was a fig leaf hiding major investors' greed and relentless profit-taking. Andrew Haldane, 'director of financial stability' (!) at the Bank of England calculates that $25 trillion of global wealth was lost at the peak of the crisis (mainly the fall in the value of assets), about 45% of global GDP (the value of everything the world produces).
The "failure" theme meant political and governmental control. Lanchester pitches this as mainly the failure of government regulation, rather than any wider systemic failure of capitalism - although what he says points at this conclusion.
Since the days of Thatcher and Reagan, any formal regulation that had existed, had been radically stripped down.
Regulatory bodies were staffed with senior managers whose previous employment had been the industries they were supposed to supervise.
Net result? "Light touch", ie zero-effective governmental control. The book shows how the crisis still impacts millions of ordinary people's lives, in particular US house buyers and how mortgage lenders persuaded poorer families to take out loans they knew would be hard to repay.
Lenders selling these mortgages were not concerned whether the loans would be repaid, because they were immediately bundled together (into CDOs) and sold on.
This book is a humorous explanation of the crisis. There are limitations. The chapter on what might be done claims that "the Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism has failed." But this suggests that a return to an alternative form of 'social-democratic' capitalism is needed.
However this is the model that, Lanchester admits, collapsed alongside the Soviet Union and the rise of big money triumphalism!
The bulk of working and middle-class people face a future of austerity and uncertainty as governments worldwide seek to offload the cost of the capitalist bailout onto them.
For major shareholders of banks and financial institutions, however, things return to comfortable normality.
Goldman Sachs went from near disaster to record profits in July 2009. The bank, "which had to borrow $10 billion from the taxpayer, was, less than a year later, setting aside $16.8 billion in pay, bonuses and benefits...
That is obscene... The big club of potential nationalisation needs to be taken out and warningly brandished."
As socialists we do not merely "brandish" the threat of nationalisation. We aim to build a mass party committed to the democratic nationalisation of the economy's commanding heights and to start building a society where public need replaces the 'needs' of the capitalist market and of the rich.
If you define music as 'pro-fessionally' delivered crotch-grabbing and screeching, it was absent. The musicians did not pose in designer clothes of the latest haute couture; nor were there 50 underwear-clad dancers in the background to support.
Instead Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba even had to struggle through the audio system set-up, and still managed to land the sound naturally into the ears of the packed crowd.
But by 'natural' don't assume that this music was in any way a 'soft' sound. Rather it vibrated the whole stage and the audience.
It was impossible to believe that these sounds were emerging through such very subtle hand movements and through such a small piece of wood in the hand that looked more like a cricket bat.
The hands of the dancing drum-mer were tied to his instrument and never stopped vibrating. The female singer had to walk across to help wipe his sweat with a towel as he didn't have a chance.
In between her voice poured out into the hall, filling it. The show ended with the entire, previously restrained, audience jumping up and down with appreciation.
Ngoni is the Bambara name for an ancient traditional lute found throughout West Africa. This band comes from Mali and is worth listening to and definitely worth going to see.
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/9960