London ambulance service recently announced 890 job cuts over five years. This is staggering, especially considering the big year-on-year increase in emergency calls to the service.
Trying to sell these cuts to ambulance workers and the general public, the truth is veiled in management-speak. NHS chief executive Sir David Nicolson claims that the NHS "uses efficiency savings to make real improvements in the quality of care for patients".
Improvements? Nonsense! These cuts attack the very principle of the NHS and the welfare state. Alongside the cuts, Con-Dem 'reforms' will mean privatisation. In future any private firm, whose first priority is profit for its shareholders, will be able to apply to run any service within the NHS.
That includes the ambulance service. You can foresee a future service where admin, training, and call-taking are outsourced, and private ambulance services compete for contracts to provide emergency cover - ultimately at the cost of worse terms and conditions for staff and worse services for the general public.
Big businesses will be the only ones to gain long term if we don't fight the sell-off of the NHS and public services. Britain is a rich country but that wealth, generated by working people, is concentrated in the hands of a few greedy individuals and corporations who will do anything to avoid paying tax.
Pharmaceutical companies still overcharge the NHS for medicines. Banks, bailed out in their billions by us, still pay obscene bonuses to the executives on their boards.
But there is an alternative. And what better time than now to step up the fight for the NHS? Politicians wobbling on NHS reforms mean we must hit hard at the coalition.
Workers must keep up the pressure on the trade union leaderships by supporting industrial action across all sectors, starting with the strike action on 30 June. We need to build links with community groups fighting the cuts.
We also need a broad-based socialist alternative to confront this rotten capitalist system, to challenge the spivs in Westminster who protect the interests of big business. This would give working class people a genuine say in how we build a better, fairer society for all.
The 2011 NSSN conference will be held on 11 June at the South Camden Community School, London NW1 1RG.
See also www.stopcuts.net and www.shopstewards.net
All delegates are focused on the national executive committee's (NEC) emergency motion, debated at branch mandating meetings, which sets out a strategy capable of defeating the cuts.
PCS will step up its campaign to defend jobs, pensions, pay, conditions and services on all fronts, including legal, publicity, parliamentary, anti-cuts alliance building. We will be arguing for the PCS Alternative based on tax justice, job creation and investment.
All this is vital work but the brutal reality is that if we are to defeat the cuts programme, defend the public sector and members' interests then we must build for widespread, coordinated industrial action. That is the view of the NEC and is likely to be overwhelmingly endorsed by delegates.
PCS has argued that the TUC should coordinate joint action against the cuts but we cannot hold on until other unions decide to ballot; to do so would mean leaving cuts in jobs, conditions and services that are happening now unchallenged. The proposed strike with education unions on 30 June is not intended to be a one-off; protest action alone will not stop the cuts. Thursday 30 June must be the start of an unfolding campaign that will see other unions joining the battle as their members demand industrial action to defend their own jobs and conditions.
As part of building unity in action Len McCluskey, the recently elected general secretary of Unite will address the conference. PCS is also trying hard to build unity with Unison, whose members face the same problems as PCS members.
Almost a million public sector workers could be on strike on 30 June. The day will involve rallies and demonstrations; PCS is asking the TUC to coordinate such events in every town and city, and other activity, linking the strike to the wider battle in our communities against the cuts.
But first we have to win the debate at conference and then go on to campaign as never before to win the biggest possible majority for action.
This government is attempting to finish the work Thatcher and New Labour started but they are weak and increasingly divided. By autumn the cuts will be biting even more deeply. PCS will continue to work to ensure that by then many millions of workers will be involved in the type of action capable of stopping the coalition in its tracks.
In the Public and Commercial Services union ( PCS), the left-led Democracy Alliance national executive committee has been re-elected with an increased majority.
This demonstrates, for those willing to take notice, that when workers are offered a campaigning alternative to the attacks of pro-big business Labour and coalition governments they will be prepared to fight to defend their jobs, services and conditions.
This is a solid endorsement of a campaigning, left leadership that over the past decade has transformed PCS into a union that has become a beacon for workers desperate to challenge the calculated destruction of the public sector and the race to the bottom.
Members have again rejected the do-nothing collaborationist "4themembers" group, a cynical re-branding of the despised "Moderates", who failed in an attempted coup to remove Mark Serwotka as general secretary ten years ago.
Members and activists have been fully involved in the development of the union's campaign strategies. While PCS members face unprecedented challenges, they can have confidence in a leadership that always starts from a simple principle - the union must defend jobs, conditions and services using all campaign methods and never being afraid to use industrial action.
On 6 May, a mass meeting of the Redhall engineering construction workers, 400 of whom have been locked out for eight weeks from working on the bio-ethanol plant at BP Saltend near Hull, voted again to reject an increased financial settlement in order to continue the fight for their jobs.
At the meeting, Socialist Party member Keith Gibson, on behalf of the lockout committee, described the COT3 collective bargaining agreement as an "employers' charter" which if signed up to by the trade unions would have prevented any worker from taking any legal action, employment tribunal or further protest against BP/Vivergo.
The meeting also agreed to call on the industry national shop stewards' forum to support a rolling programme of weekly national strikes in support of the locked-out workers.
Redhall workers lobbied the national stewards' meeting in Leeds on 9 May. The previous emergency meeting held two weeks earlier had unanimously agreed to call a national day of action if the dispute had not been settled by this scheduled next meeting.
Unfortunately, the stewards voted 27 to 10 against taking any industrial action in support of the locked-out workers. This was due to the pressure of the trade union bureaucracy who don't support unofficial and illegal strike action.
There is also a fear of job losses, and a refusal to acknowledge the industry-wide implications of this employers' attack on the trade unions, the TUPE transfer agreement and the NAECI national agreement. Whilst the stewards did pledge financial support, this will not win the dispute.
The Redhall workers have struggled heroically for over two months against financial hardship, company lies and a media black-out, heavy-handed policing and use of Section 14 of the Public Order Act. The workers will be discussing how to proceed with this dispute at report back meetings this week, in the light of the national stewards' refusal to give meaningful support.
In a ballot for strike action to defend two transport union RMT reps, the result was overwhelmingly in support. A turnout of 46% (higher than the mayoral election turnout of 44% Boris!) voted 66% in favour to defend Arwyn Thomas and Eamon Lynch, sacked by London Underground (LUL) for being effective trade unionists.
Our train members have already taken four days of strike action (seven on the Northern and Bakerloo lines). They are not irresponsible militants as portrayed in the press, they are good trade unionists who are prepared to take whatever action is necessary to get their two brothers back at work.
We call on our brothers and sisters in Aslef, to respect our picket lines, if they pick off our reps they will come for your reps next.
A recent article in the Evening Standard shows the splits in the Con-Dem government. There is pressure on London Mayor Boris Johnson to meet with RMT and settle the dispute. Are LUL willing to flout the Employment Tribunals which found in Eamon and Arwyn's favour? We demand their reinstatement.
Six days of strike action are planned, starting on 16 May. We will encourage large pickets at every depot and we call on every member to rally to defend our members and our unions.
A Labour Research Department publication has stated that the TUC welcomed the government's confirmation that the National Minimum Wage (NMW) for workers aged 21 and over will go up by 2.5%. This really is the TUC clutching at straws because this percentage increase amounts to a 15p increase in the hourly rate from October taking the NMW to £6.08.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said that the increases showed that the government "understands the NMW must remain an important part of working life". He apparently went on to point out that there was evidence that workers on the NMW spent all their pay rises where they work and live.
Someone should point out to Brendan Barber that on the current level of the NMW and the pay rise workers could not afford to travel far to spend it. The closest Brendan Barber comes to criticising what amounts to a drop in the living standards for those on the NMW, given price rises, is when he called the proposed rises "modest".
Barber of course does not criticise the current level of the NMW because it was his New Labour friends in government that maintained it at a poverty level. I don't recall generous increases when they were in power during a so-called boom.
If this so-called increase for 21 year-olds and over is not a disgrace enough, the rate for young workers, - 18 to 20 year olds and 16 to 17 year olds will only rise by 1.2% and 1.1% respectively. For many all capitalism can offer is legalised poverty, where young workers are valued less and exploited more than older workers.
If Barber and most of the other trade union leaders won't lead the fightback against the Con-Dems or any other government that seeks to place the burden of the crisis of capitalism on our shoulders, then they should stand aside for those who will.
The library service I work for has been told to cut over £1 million. Immediately this has led to the cutting of overtime for staff and the effective scrapping of a casual pool of labour which we have come to rely on because of increased opening hours and the changing nature of the work.
My job is interesting and worthwhile but without enough staff it becomes more like an information factory.
We supply books to the elderly and disabled who are housebound. The reduction in casual workers has meant that we now have to deliver this service whilst serving people on the front counter. This means discharging, putting away, choosing and issuing books to over 80 people (all of whom want between five and 20 books each) and are waiting alone at home for this service.
Every day hundreds of people come to the library so we are now expected to serve those people and deliver the housebound service as well. It is common to have five groups of schools coming through the doors, that means five groups of 30 children bringing books back and taking books out.
There are 18 computers (which often break) and which people need assistance with. There's a book club that we have to read and prepare for, often in our own time.
We have seen a jump in unemployed people all wanting help to write their CVs and who have been directed to us by a cut and struggling job centre and careers service.
There's an increase of people with mental health problems in the library.
Council house bidding magazines are issued at libraries and now we are being expected to assist access to the bidding procedure. This can be stressful and time consuming, as essentially this process is a scramble for diminishing housing stock.
Last week a young African woman with two small children clutching at her skirt beckoned me over. She seemed embarrassed and said she wanted to talk to me privately.
She told me that she needed help in accessing charities that administered help such as children's clothing and food for herself and her girls.
I thought she might be a victim of domestic violence and was destitute so I took my time to help, all the time the queue building up on the other side of the counter.
With cuts to benefits we will be expected to direct people to the myriad of religious and philanthropic institutions to help them get food and clothing.
Before this cut to hours my library usually had four members of staff but it is common now for us to be left with three and sometimes only two. With two members of staff it's too dangerous to leave one person alone so we take our tea breaks on the counter, which often means we don't get a break.
After cutting all the casual staff the managers realised they couldn't keep libraries open over lunch times. So they arbitrarily decided to rip up a negotiated lunch time agreement.
This is because the chief executive said he was fed up driving past libraries and seeing them closed over lunch.
This hatchet man, who receives around £200,000, gets angry when he drives past workplaces where workers are taking a lunch break!
I am running a straw poll at the moment in our campaign to get a ballot from our union to sanction action that would allow us to defend our lunch break.
Even I'm surprised at the response. Over 75% of members said that if a ballot was called they would vote for action to close libraries over lunch times if we don't have enough staff to have our lunch break in the agreed time.
Union leaders say that people are too scared to take action but if workers are angry enough they will respond. There is seething anger on the frontline.
I'm angry all the time. This mood, if channelled would probably deliver a general strike now.
Without leadership this fight will be sectional, fractional and less effective. As well as fighting in our immediate workplaces and regions we can't let up on the pressure for a national generalised movement, much like the campaign for 26 March, only this time for action, strike action.
Strike action could bring down the government of millionaires and their lackeys in the town halls and hospitals.
Connexions staff, members of Unison employed by Birmingham city council, staged a half day strike on 4 May. This was in protest at the cuts proposed by the council's ruling Con-Dem coalition which place a question mark over the future viability of the service.
A lively protest was staged outside the city centre office at lunchtime attended by about 100 workers whose spirits were kept up by socialist musicians singing on the picket line. The protest was followed by a short march and rally.
I spoke to Simone, one of the workers who agreed that there was no party worth voting for in the elections because all the major parties supported swingeing cuts to public services and that working people needed a political party of their own. She also agreed that the TUC should have used the 26 March demonstration as a springboard for a more concerted campaign and that a one-day public sector strike was needed.
Britain already has draconian regulations to prevent workers from striking. Tory backbencher Dominic Raab, however, sponsored a private members' bill making it harder still - strike ballots would need to have at least 50% participation of a union's membership before being legally accepted.
The move was defeated. However, a noisy group of Tories (including London mayor Boris Johnson and the Daily Telegraph) want prime minister Cameron to adopt the orphaned bill and push it through with government support.
Of course, Cameron asking for a 50% turnout is ironic. During the AV debate, he was adamant in supporting a voting system that regularly elects governments, councils and MPs on far lower participation. The trade unions should fight for their members' democratic rights by campaigning to scrap the anti-union laws.
On Saturday 14 May at 10am transport union RMT members and supporters will be leafleting the Original Tour bus company at Piccadilly circus station. This is over the sacking of RMT member Zara Senkan. Zara has suffered from sexist discrimination for years. She got practically no overtime and terrible shifts whilst her male colleagues got regular overtime and decent shifts over a period of two years.
When she finally complained and entered a grievance she was swiftly dismissed on the pretence that she was disrespectful to managers. The RMT are taking her case to tribunal for sex discrimination and unfair dismissal. We will be organising more leafleting soon.
On 4 May 30 students began an occupation of London Metropolitan University in defence of courses and services there. Lecturers and other staff also entered the occupation bringing solidarity and offering their support to the students.
The cuts that management wish to make at London Met will devastate the university. 70% reductions are planned to course budgets and many students face the looming threat of having to be transferred to other universities to complete courses that are to be discontinued.
Rather than defending its students the management of London Met has chosen to do the bidding of the Con-Dem coalition, passing on their brutal package of cuts and fee rises. But the demands of those students occupying the graduate centre at the university were very clear: not one cut at London Met!
The occupiers were, in the main, students who are themselves facing course cuts. Many were students studying for a performing arts degree. Disgracefully, the university is planning to sell the studios used by these students to private companies. It's rumoured that students studying this course will then be asked to transfer to other institutions, potentially some distance away.
Edmund Schluessel spoke to the London Met occupiers. They were evicted just before midnight on 9 May. John Hughes, a second year student in sociology and international development, one of the courses at risk, described the entry of the police into the occupation, which took place around 11.40pm Monday night:
"They came straight in the door. There was no warning. We were served the injunction on the spot by two county court sheriffs, four police officers, ten bailiffs and one member of London Met security. We were given ten minutes to read it and take our stuff."
Around 2.30am the previous morning, occupiers say private security staff kicked open the doors and entered an area where people were sleeping. John also said that private security have been sexually harassing and verbally intimidating the occupiers.
"One of the members of the security team said to one woman through the doors, 'you should put up a picture of yourself, something that's more sexy' and 'I'm quite a big bloke and if I wanted to come into the occupation I would. Two young ladies are not going to stop me.'"
The fightback that has begun at London Met can act as an inspiration to students and workers in higher education all over the country. As university managements attempt to pass on cuts and fee rises, students and workers should demand that they refuse to do the Con-Dems' dirty work and instead pass needs budgets, based on what the university population requires to run effectively, without raising fees.
As well as student protests, industrial action by education workers will be necessary in order to take the campaign forward. On 30 June, if workers (including teachers and lecturers) take strike action to defend jobs and services, students must join their picket lines and demonstrations in solidarity to help fight all cuts.
This October Youth Fight for Jobs will be marching from Jarrow to London to protest against rising unemployment, fees and cuts and to demand the right to a future for young people. The march will start in Jarrow, south Tyneside on 1 October and arrive in London on 5 November with protests as the march goes through towns along the route. It commemorates the 75th anniversary of 200 unemployed men from Jarrow marching the same route.
See www.jarrow2london2011.wordpress.com and
www.youthfightforjobs.com for more information or if you are able to march, raise money or organise a protest.
Tory education minister David Willetts' latest crackpot idea to make more money out of young people's education is to allow universities to charge rich students more for extra places. The suggestion is that the best universities could open up more places and charge some British students as much as international students, who sometimes pay five or six times as much. They wouldn't be eligible for any student loan, meaning it would only be an option for the richest few. Willetts, trying to pass this off as something that will help poorer students, has said that this will leave spaces free for others. In reality this is just a way for the rich to buy their way around the shortfall of university places and yet again puts those with money at a huge advantage for continuing to higher education.
Aaron Kiely, who was recently elected to the National Executive Committee of the National Union of Students, has now also been elected as a Labour councillor in Ockendon ward in Thurrock. Despite calls by Socialist Students and others, Aaron did not commit to a programme of voting against cuts if elected councillor.
The government is slashing public services and many votes for Labour express an opposition to the cuts programme. But unfortunately the record of Labour councillors is far from convincing on this score. So far, no Labour councillor on a Labour-led council has voted against cuts.
Students, just like everyone else, need political representatives to stand up for their interests and support their struggles. Student representatives must oppose all cuts, not just those in education. Only by taking this principled stand can a movement be built which can defeat attacks on education.
On 29 March the trustees and staff at Mullion Youth and Community Centre (MYCC) were informed that the charity running it was going into administration and that the centre would be closed at the end of the day three days later!
At a public meeting about MYCC on 16 March, local Conservative councillor Carolyn Rule, who is close to the longest standing trustee at the centre, insisted that the centre just needed some assistance to keep it going - all it would take was a disco and table-top sale here and there. A 'friends of' group was established and people signed up to 'do their bit'.
The councillor also told the 50-strong audience that the centre, which houses the only nursery in Mullion, the largest village in Cornwall, and the only provision outside schools for youth on the peninsula, would not get any assistance from Cornwall council. Apparently, "if the community wouldn't run it, the community wouldn't have it".
What we think
The general election of May 2010 seems a lifetime ago. For the thousand richest people in Britain, whose wealth has increased by 18%, the year that followed has been a resounding success.
The number of billionaires increased from 53 to 73. For the rest us the year has brought pain, with the biggest fall in family income since 1977 and cuts and privatisation of public services on an unprecedented scale.
The misery inflicted by the Coalition has not been taken lying down. We have seen the biggest student movement in twenty five years, and the biggest trade union demonstration in Britain's history.
At the end of June coordinated strike action against the cuts will begin. Last Thursday however, was the first opportunity for voters to pass judgement on the Coalition at the ballot box.
As was widely predicted beforehand, the Liberal Democrats bore the brunt of the population's anger, losing 700 councillors in England and 12 members of the Scottish Parliament.
As Jonathon Freedland put in the Guardian: "The party was not just given a bloody nose by the electorate: it was slapped, punched, kicked and finally knifed before being left for dead."
The overwhelming defeat in the AV referendum was also a reflection of the population's fury with its main advocates, the Liberal Democrats. Some media commentators have attacked the electorate for voting in the referendum on 'trivial' grounds.
But given a rotten choice between two bad systems, why not vote in order to punish the Liberal Democrats? As even Nick Clegg admitted before the election, AV was a 'dirty little compromise' which would have been no fairer or more proportional than the existing system.
The Tories, by contrast, are breathing a sigh of relief that they have, for now, escaped the electoral consequences of their brutal policies. There are several reasons for this.
In the working class cities of the North the Tories are still hated for the crimes of Thatcher. As a result they had no councillors to lose.
The same is true in parts of London, where there were no elections this year. In most of England, however, Tory councils still dominate, despite some gains for Labour including in Gravesham and Ipswich.
The Tories were even able to marginally increase their numbers of councillors, largely by making gains from the Liberal Democrats.
This is no surprise - after all why vote for the monkey if you can have the organ grinder?
However, it would be a major error to assume the Tories will escape in future elections. A year into the Coalition government, there is still a section of society who believe the Tory propaganda that it was New Labour's policies in government that were responsible for the misery that is now being inflicted.
However, the Tories have only escaped punishment because the cuts, brutal as they are, are only just beginning to bite at local level. As local services close around voters' ears, anger at the government will increase, including in the seemingly safe Tory shires.
The Tories are aware of the electoral dangers they face, as was demonstrated by their hasty retreat from Suffolk County Council's plans to become an 'Easy' council and privatise virtually all of its services.
Nationally Labour gained over 800 seats despite, not because of, its policies. Millions of people in working class areas voted Labour to punish the government, and in the hope that Labour councils would cut less brutally than those led by the Tories or Liberal Democrats.
One consequence of this was that the BNP suffering an electoral meltdown. This does not preclude that the BNP, or other far right forces, could make an electoral comeback in the future against a background of economic crisis and rising unemployment if a mass anti-racist workers' party has not developed.
Workers who voted Labour did so without real enthusiasm. In Scotland, the SNP beat Labour decisively.
A major factor in this was Liberal Democrat voters switching to the SNP. However, the SNP also won in some working class inner city seats which were traditional Labour strongholds.
This reflected a feeling that the SNP would be far more likely than Labour to fight in the interests of the working class in Scotland. In reality, the SNP will attack, not defend, workers' living standards.
However, the rejection of Labour for a seemingly more combative alternative is an illustration of workers' distrust of Labour, not just in Scotland but across Britain.
Similarly, in Brighton, where the Green Party has its stronghold, it became the largest party on the council. Even in Wales, where Labour made gains, it was left one seat short of a majority.
Fundamentally, Labour's woeful failure to provide a combative and coherent opposition to the government flows from its support for the essence of the government's policies.
When in power Labour acted in the interests of big business, and in particular of finance capital. More privatisation of public services took place when New Labour was in office than under any previous government.
The deregulation of the City which began under the last Tory government continued apace under New Labour. When the economic crisis began, New Labour bailed out the banks and demanded that working class people paid the price.
Just like the Tories and Lib Dems, Labour support huge cuts in public services, just at a marginally slower rate.
In the last election New Labour said it would carry out cuts equal to 4/5ths of those being carried out by the current government. It is no surprise that, at local level, Labour councils are implementing government cuts without hesitation.
Such is the weakness of the Labour leadership they do not even seem to seriously aspire to a majority Labour government. On the contrary, Ed Miliband has again appealed to the hated Lib Dems, obviously trying to prepare the ground for a future Labour/Liberal coalition.
Labour was founded a century ago because the working class was no longer prepared to back the capitalist Liberal party. The development of Labour as - at base - a mass party of the working class, albeit with a capitalist leadership, marginalised the Liberals for an historical era.
It is ironic that today Labour is chasing after the Liberal Democrats just as the Liberal Democrats face electoral annihilation. It confirms again that Labour today is not a mass party of the working class but is one more capitalist party.
These elections demonstrate the worthlessness of the unspoken strategy of most national trade union leaders - to defeat the cuts by voting Labour. The election results will have bought home the need for coordinated strike action against the cuts to many trade unionists.
The weakness of the Coalition government has also been graphically highlighted by the election campaign. The cracks in the Coalition have become fissures.
This does not mean that it is about to collapse, although the pressure of different events - in particular of a mass movement of the working class - could break the government apart within a short period of time.
However, as the attempts since the election of Cameron and Clegg to declare peace show, neither party has any interest in breaking up the Coalition. For the cash-strapped and profoundly unpopular Liberal Democrats, triggering an early general election would be committing Hara-Kiri.
Some on the right wing of the Tory party are bleating that Cameron should take advantage of the election results and break up the coalition in the vain hope that the collapse of the Liberal Democrats would deliver a Tory majority.
The leadership of the Tory party know better and, given their complete dominance of the Coalition, have no pressing reason to bring it to an end. However, as Philip Stevens commented in the Financial Times, "coalitions rot from the bottom up".
At the top, the Coalition parties are clinging to each other and to power. For the Lib Dem activists who are watching their party being destroyed, however, it is a different story.
The ousted Lib Dem leader of Nottingham City Council has called for Clegg to resign immediately. In response to the pressure of the party rank and file, Clegg has promised to be more "independent" of the Tories and for "a louder Lib Dem voice in government".
Objectively, the Lib Dem voice in government is now weaker than ever, but the pressure of Clegg and co. to stand up to the Tories over the destruction of the NHS and the scale of the cuts is enormous.
To fail to do so will also be to commit Hara-Kiri, albeit more slowly. Therefore the removal of Clegg, splits in the Lib Dems, and even their withdrawal from the government are all possibilities.
The Lib Dems might then back an unstable Tory minority government from outside on a 'grace and favour' basis, or perhaps trigger a general election.
There are a number of fault lines for the government, including the difficulties that could be created at a later stage by a referendum in Scotland on independence.
But however it is manifested, the root of the government's weakness is the continuing profound crisis of capitalism in general and British capitalism in particular.
Far from being over, the economic crisis in Britain is ongoing. According to the National Institute of Economic and Social Research Britain's output will not reach the levels of 2008 until 2013. And even this may be optimistic.
The latest figures show that manufacturing, previously the part of the economy that had stuttered into growth, now has the second lowest level of new orders since the recovery began in 2009.
The fall in orders is a reflection of very weak demand in Britain, rather than reflecting the weakness of Britain's puny exports. No wonder.
On average, workers are taking home £1,088 less a year than two years ago. Their real pay has fallen by 5% since the beginning of 2009, which was half way through the recession.
As the Bank of England governor Mervyn King admitted, workers are already suffering the most sustained fall in wages since the 1920s. Bad as they are, the government's cuts have only just begun to bite, and will dramatically further depress demand.
It is a pipe dream to imagine that British capitalism will be able to compensate with increased exports against a background of a profound crisis of Europe and world capitalism.
British capitalism has no way out other than to attempt to offload the crisis on the working class. However, they are already facing mass resistance to their attempts to do so.
The working class flexed its muscles on 26 March - when over half a million people marched in opposition to the cuts. At the end of June the PCS and NUT, perhaps along with others, will strike together against the cuts and in defence of public sector pensions.
In the other public sector unions the call for coordinated strike action is growing. A 24-hour public sector general strike is on the agenda for 2011.
This would terrify the government. The working class in Britain now needs its own political voice more urgently than ever.
The Trade Unionists and Socialists Against Cuts candidates in the local elections, who received 25,000 votes, were a step in that direction. Over the next year the anti-cuts movement can draw the conclusion that it is necessary to stand far more widely to offer an electoral alternative to the axe men and women.
Most importantly, faced with the barbarity of twenty first century capitalism, a growing number of workers and young people are searching for socialist ideas.
Our most important task in the immediate period is to reach them with a clear socialist programme.
Coventry Socialist Party stood in all 18 of the council seats up for election on 5 May.
With two out of the three establishment parties in government, the Labour Party saw an increase in its vote, winning five more seats on the council.
Our main campaign was in St Michael's ward, where we fought hard to try to get former Socialist Party councillor Rob Windsor back on the council.
Despite Rob receiving 1,263 votes, which in the past would have been enough to win, Labour had an increased margin of victory with its 2,419 votes. The Tories came third with 434 votes.
Our vote in some parts of the ward was as high as 70%, with people seeing us as the only principled fighters and campaigners on issues such as the battle to save Charterhouse Fields parkland from being taken over by a local academy school.
Our task was made harder because of the national situation, but also complicating local factors. For instance Mia Ali, the Tory candidate from 2010, had made a seamless transition to Labour, which undoubtedly increased the vote for Jim O'Boyle, the Labour councillor opposing Rob, as some of her support base would have gone with her.
We slightly increased our share of the vote across the city, to obtain 3.5% from 3,081 votes.
As we start to see the effects of Coventry's Labour council implementing cuts, there will be more pressure for it to resist and more anger if it carries on doing the Con-Dem government's bidding.
In a sign of things to come, the council's Unison branch passed a motion just before the election expressing its disappointment that the council had voted for £38 million of cuts and calling for a 'needs' based budget and a mass campaign to resist the Tories.
In Huddersfield former councillor Jackie Grunsell, who was elected on a Save Our NHS ticket in 2006, stood again for the third time and got an excellent 866 votes for TUSC, coming third in the poll.
Jackie was very open about her socialist credentials. We have now extended that support to three other wards where our candidates got creditable votes even though our campaigning concentrated on Jackie's ward.
Jackie's ward used to have a Lib Dem councillor, but their candidate this year came fourth.
Typical of the many responses we received on the doorsteps was a text sent to Jackie immediately after we leafleted one street: "Just to let you know your leaflet makes a lot of sense and I will be voting for you... I don't believe the cuts will achieve anything but make the poorest worse off, good luck!"
Before the last council elections four years ago the Lib Dems controlled Leicester with Tory support. The Lib Dems and Tories are now reduced to one seat each compared to Labour's 52, and the sole Lib Dem councillor was a Tory a few weeks ago!
However, the Labour council will push ahead with cuts such as closing old people's homes, shutting day care centres for the disabled and destroying many other services.
Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) candidates alongside others in 'Vote Against Cuts in Leicester' put forward an alternative to just accepting the government's cuts.
In this slate there were 13 council candidates, including nine Socialist Party members and four from Unity For Peace and Socialism (UPS), plus the mayoral candidate.
We got 5.3% for TUSC in Braunstone ward, and 4.5% and 4.3% for UPS in Evington and Coleman respectively. Mohinder Farma, for UPS, got 1,944 votes for mayor.
George Tapp, electrician and Unite union and Socialist Party member, stood for TUSC in Salford's Ordsall ward, and won 381 votes and 16%, coming second only to Labour.
We beat the Tory candidate by 42 votes. The Lib Dem candidate's highly memorable name - Kate Middleton - didn't save her from finishing 101 votes behind us!
When canvassing we found some of the hidden cuts made by the Labour council: cleaners' and care workers' hours cut to below survival levels, and a 50% reduction in security guard cover in tower blocks. We are now determined to take up these issues through Salford Against Cuts.
Before the election the Ordsall library was due to be shoe-horned into a leisure centre. With a community protest and an anti-cuts candidate standing, Labour withdrew its proposal in the middle of the campaign and claimed to have 'saved' the library! Who from, themselves?
In Gateshead 559 people voted for three anti-cuts candidates: TUSC in Deckham (189) and High Fell (165), and an independent, who is close to TUSC, in Low Fell (205). In High Fell the 7.5% TUSC vote beat the Lib Dems by 60.
In its election address Gateshead Labour criticised the Lib Dems for not fighting 'unfair cuts'. However, this is shear hypocrisy as Labour is implementing in excess of £30 million cuts in Gateshead this year alone.
At the count a local Labour MP expressed the view that the cuts are terrible. He commented: 'But what can we do?' He didn't reply when we commented that a starting point would be to build a mass campaign against the cuts!
We say that none of the cuts are fair or necessary and intend to use the TUSC election campaign to launch Gateshead Against All Cuts.
Thirteen TUSC candidates stood in the local council elections in Southampton. They were trade union activists, students, disaffected ex-Labour councillors as well as members of Southampton Socialist Party.
Across the city TUSC candidates held stalls, delivered leaflets and took part in hustings and public meetings, one of which Alex Gordon, RMT president, spoke at.
Pete Wyatt, TUSC candidate for the Redbridge ward in Southampton, delivered a campaign leaflet to nearly every one of the 13,000 homes in that ward. For his efforts he received a 6.1% share of the vote.
In the months running up to the local election TUSC candidates had been involved in a successful campaign to save a local walk-in health centre from closure.
The six TUSC candidates in Stoke-on-Trent achieved an average vote of 3.9%.
Smaller parties were squeezed as voters punished the Con-Dems by supporting Labour. The local media completely ignored our campaign.
In the 2010 general election 133 people voted TUSC out of the 32,470 who voted across the Stoke Central constituency. In the six wards in which we have stood in these local elections, from 12,656 who voted, 486 voted for TUSC.
New Labour increased its grip on the city council. The Lib Dems were removed completely and the Tories lost six seats, leaving them just two. Community Voice lost all their seats along with other independents.
Very welcome was the complete removal from the council of the far-right, racist BNP. But we should not be complacent as they polled an average of 10%, whilst another far-right organisation, England First, averaged 12.5%.
Mick Griffiths, standing for TUSC, received 355 votes. Standing as a Socialist Alternative candidate in Wakefield east ward since 1996, this represented Mick's best result.
Whilst canvassing, Socialist Party members got a sympathetic response which translated into an increase in window display posters showing support for TUSC. At 9% of the votes cast, the TUSC vote also pushed the Liberal Democrat candidate into fourth position on 7.4%.
The Socialist Party stood two candidates in Leeds as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), Ian Pattison in Headingley and Andrew Smith in Horsforth. Whilst gaining a modest 88 (2.3%) and 164 (2.1%) votes respectively, the campaign has allowed us to reach out to wider layers of the community to help build up anti-cuts campaigns in both areas.
Altogether there were eight TUSC and Alliance for Green Socialism (AGS) candidates, opposed to all public sector cuts and vowing to vote against them in the council chamber, with AGS getting 7.8% in Chapel Allerton ward.
TUSC Walton Court & Hawkslade ward candidate Roger Priest received 7.2% (183) of the overall votes (3,215) in Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.
Our campaign included extensive leafleting, canvassing a third of the ward and holding a public meeting.
The Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Ukip candidates' election campaigns involved no canvassing, half-hearted attempts to leaflet and no public meetings.
During Roger's campaign, one resident requested support with their own campaign to fight cuts in local learning disability services and provisions. We also met people who want to be involved in future anti-cuts work in the ward.
The two TUSC candidates in North Devon for the town and district council elections, Paul Dyer and Doug Lowe, both received votes far higher than we expected, including Paul's 285 votes for the town council. Standing in wards in Barnstaple we worked hard to get our message across about the cuts and how they can be opposed. We also took the opportunity to listen to what people were telling us, deepening our belief that the shortage of quality affordable housing in North Devon is an absolute scandal.
Welsh Labour has won the Welsh Assembly elections, although it has been unable to secure an overall majority, winning just 30 of the 60 seats in the Senedd. Welsh Liberals tried to present themselves as different to the Clegg Liberals in Westminster and kept their loss down to 4% of the vote. The biggest loser is Plaid Cymru that lost 3% of the vote and four seats.
Labour is trying to form an Assembly government on its own. It is unlikely it will be able to have a working majority on its own for the entire five year term of the Assembly but it will probably try to muddle through on each issue in the short run.
A coalition with the Liberals or even Plaid Cymru remains a possibility in the long run. The reality is there is very little to choose between the policies of the three parties on all the key issues of public services.
Clearly, as in the English council elections, working class voters voted Labour as the best way to oppose the Con-Dem government in Westminster and to punish the Liberals for their perceived betrayal.
This was played on by Welsh Labour. Peter Hain, Labour Shadow Secretary for Wales and MP for Neath, said during the election: "What I'm finding on the doorstep is a lot of concern about the actions of the Tory-led UK government.
"Whenever someone tells me they're not sure that they'll vote, I start talking about student tuition fees, the need to defend the health service and the public spending cuts.
"It's like a political lightning conductor".
But this is a cynical line by New Labour, that introduced tuition fees and trebled them, is cutting the health service in Wales by £1 billion and would implement enormous public spending cuts if in power in Westminster.
The next Assembly government will attempt to blame the effects of deep cutbacks on the Westminster government. But health cuts in particular will be a big issue in Wales over the next five years.
The outgoing coalition led by Welsh Labour agreed to cut spending on health by 7.6% despite the NHS struggling to keep up with the intense demands in Wales.
The lacklustre nature of the Assembly campaign was reflected in the turnout of just 42%. The Assembly election failed to capture the interest of working people across Wales.
Those who did vote were polarised. In middle class areas the Tory vote strengthened, as the Lib Dems have carried the blame for the cutbacks, while working class voters have returned towards Labour in reaction to the Tory cuts from Westminster.
However the Labour vote is quite weak. Labour won 42% in the constituencies but just 37% in the regional lists.
A substantial socialist alternative to the cuts could have won a lot of those votes.
Socialist Party Wales stood as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) for two regional seats: South Wales Central and South Wales West.
TUSC laboured under the big disadvantage of a low profile at this stage without the resources to reach its potential supporters and with no media coverage.
TUSC gained 1,639 votes (0.5%) in the two regions. With the Socialist Labour Party and Communist Party also standing in the lists the left vote was split three ways.
In South Wales Central, for example, the combined left vote was 4.1% of the vote and a united campaign would have overtaken UKIP. Nevertheless the canvassing and street campaigning that was done by TUSC got an excellent response from working people.
In Cardiff Central, Swansea West, Pontypridd and Cynon Valley a lot of posters went up in windows indicating the support that we received on the doorstep.
Plaid Cymru has been thrown into crisis by its worst result in an Assembly election. The fault lines between its southern regions, which rely on working class support, and its northern regions which are based more on small business and farming interests, are being exposed.
Leader Leuan Wyn Jones from Ynys Mon is coming under intense criticism for refusing to rule out a deal with the Tories during the election campaign which undermined Plaid in the south Wales valleys.
The Scottish National Party (SNP) has won the elections to the Scottish parliament by securing an unprecedented 69 MSPs, an increase of 23 on 2007, gaining an overall majority.
This is the first time any party has been able to hold more than half the 129 seats in the Scottish parliament since its establishment in 1999. The SNP's share of the vote was 45.4% (+12.5%) in the constituencies and 44.1% (+13%) in the regional lists.
This is the biggest vote ever for the nationalists and was achieved largely due to the collapse of the votes of the Con-Dem parties in Scotland. Between them the Tories (-3%) and LibDems (-8%) lost 11% of their constituency vote, almost all of this went to the SNP.
The Lib Dems in particular were mauled, losing 11 MSPs and ending-up with just 5.
The swing to the SNP meant that although the Labour vote did not collapse, the SNP won scores of seats in former safe Labour areas. For the first time ever the SNP have won a majority of seats in Glasgow, Lanarkshire and across the central belt of Scotland.
Every seat in north east Scotland, including those in Dundee and Aberdeen were won by the SNP. Five of the six Edinburgh seats as well.
While in the past, the nationalists were restricted to wining first-past-the-post seats in the more rural parts of Scotland. They now hold 53 of the 73 local constituencies - a huge gain of 32 seats from the 21 they won in 2007.
They also picked up 16 seats on the PR based regional lists.
The SNP's historic victory was a result of a number of factors. Alex Salmond's minority government postponed the bulk of the spending cuts until after the election to try to avoid being fully exposed as a government of cuts.
The £600 million cuts to the Scottish budget as a result of the June 2010 emergency Con-Dem were put-off and wrapped up in the £1.3 billion cuts for 2011-12 voted through by the SNP, the Lib Dems and the Tories in February.
This meant that a majority of these cuts have still to be fully felt. The SNP will now, however, attempt to use their parliamentary majority to attempt to carry through the deepest and most savage spending cuts in decades.
Their plan is to pass on the Con-Dem austerity and axe £3.3 billion from jobs and public services in Scotland over the next four years.
Ironically, with a Con-Dem government in power in Westminster, many people will have voted SNP as a protection from the cuts that are looming like a tsunami over the jobs, benefits and wages of millions of people in Scotland.
In reality this new SNP government will arouse mass opposition if they attempt to implement the Tory cuts on the working class communities across Scotland.
The SNP rebuilt a significant electoral base in Scotland from the late 80s on, as a radical nationalist party positioned to the left of Labour. While they moved to the right and in a more neoliberal economic direction during the nineties and the noughties, they have still maintained the veneer of radicalism.
To an extent the support for the SNP in this election was based on the carrying through of some relatively progressive policies from 2007 - 2011, including the freezing of council tax, the ending of prescription charges, the abolition of the back-loaded tuition fees and the reversal of plans to close A&E services at hospitals.
For a layer of people, the SNP are still seen as a more radical alternative to Labour. This reflects the potential for the development of a new mass workers' party, especially as the SNP will now be exposed in a way that did not happen in their first four-year term.
If the election was a triumph for the SNP, it was a catastrophe for Labour. Bad enough was the overall loss of 7 seats, but worse, and more significant, was the loss of 20 first-past-the-post seats, leaving Labour with only 15 MSPs from a possible 73 available constituency seats.
It was only the top-up section of the regional vote that allowed Labour to retain a total of 37 MSPs overall.
It's an open question as to whether they can ever recover from their worst result in Scotland in 80 years. Added to a pitiful campaign, which began by stealing the SNP policies on the freezing of the council tax, opposition to any form of graduate tax or tuition fees and prescription charges, Labour were undermined again and again by the weakness of their leader, Iain Gray, compared to the populist oratory and debating skills of the SNP leader Alex Salmond.
With virtually no policy differences, except on independence and a referendum, the outcome of the election came down for many between a choice between Gray and Salmond as First Minister.
A contest that could have only one winner. This was reinforced by Labour's incapability of exposing the SNP over their spinelessness over the cuts - because Labour support austerity and are making deep cuts as well.
In the run-up to the 2010 Westminster elections Labour promised to make cuts even deeper than Thatcher's.
Iain Gray has indicated he will resign as Labour leader after the summer. Who replaces him is unclear.
Labour have also lost many of their 'leading' MSPs. The new crop of Labour MSPs are widely seen as the 'third eleven' - totally inexperienced and devoid of any real connection with the trade unions and the working class.
As such they will also reinforce Labour's long term decline as a political force in Scotland. The outcome of the election underlines the analysis of the Socialist Party Scotland and the CWI that Labour is no longer seen as a party of the working class by big sections, especially of younger people; although it can still maintain an electoral base as a 'lesser evil' as we saw in the Westminster elections in 2010.
Following the election Alex Salmond said, "We are now the national party of Scotland - acting in the interests of all of Scotland." But in reality Salmond and the new SNP government will be a party acting in the interests of big business and carrying out savage cuts.
It was no accident that a series of leading business figures backed and bankrolled their campaign. This included Brian Souter, head of Stagecoach who donated £500,000 to the SNP's election funds, Tom Farmer, millionaire founder of Kwik-Fit and a long-term donor, George Mathewson, former Chair of the Royal Bank of Scotland and many others.
The SNP have proved again and again that they are prepared to defend the priorities of capitalism - which is to unload the costs of the economic crisis onto the backs of the working class.
The widespread support for the SNP by the billionaire owned press, including Murdoch's Sun, the News of the World as well as the Scotsman, the Herald and Express groups and others, is also a clear signpost to the political direction of the new SNP government.
One of the most important consequences of the outcome of the election is the inevitability of a referendum on independence. At this stage, the SNP have only said that the referendum will be held "at some time over the next five years." Moreover, in the last parliament the SNP advocated a bill for a multi-option referendum, including a vote for more powers as well as full independence.
They are likely to want to adopt a similar approach towards a new referendum bill.
It is also likely that in the first instance the SNP will use their election victory to wrestle concessions on the Scotland bill that is currently being debated at Westminster.
This bill proposes extending, in a limited way, the powers available to the Scottish parliament. But this election outcome will apply extra pressure on the ruling class and the Con-Dem government to concede further powers, possibly over borrowing and even control over corporation tax.
The SNP have been very careful not to 'antagonise' the interests of the majority of the capitalists who are opposed to independence at this stage. Opinion polls indicate a minority of people back full independence, with a big majority for stronger powers.
For the SNP a multi-option referendum would still be their preferable course of action - which, even if the independence option was defeated, would deliver extra economic levers to the Scottish government.
As one of their MSPs, Kenny Gibson, commented, "more powers are an important staging post on the journey towards independence."
While no socialist/anti-cuts candidates were elected, the highest left vote on the regional lists was achieved by the George Galloway - Coalition Against Cuts list in Glasgow, which also involved Solidarity, Socialist Party Scotland and the Socialist Workers Party.
This campaign, which stood on a platform of opposing all cuts, supporting the setting of needs budgets and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with trade unionists and communities fighting the cuts, polled a very respectable 6,972 (3.3%) of the vote.
This was 5,600 votes short of seeing George Galloway elected, although it did defeat the Lib Dem's list and came fifth out of 15 parties.
Alongside the Coalition Against Cuts, Solidarity also stood on its own in the other seven Scottish regions. As expected, Solidarity's votes were very low and averaged around 0.2% - a total of 2,837 votes in the seven regions.
The jailing of the Solidarity leader, Tommy Sheridan, earlier this year after being found "guilty" of perjury was a major factor. Many people, even those who supported Tommy, felt that it was a wasted vote to back Solidarity with Tommy in jail and unable to take part in the election.
There is also no doubt that the public standing of Solidarity has been affected by the unrelenting campaign by the Murdoch press, the police and the legal establishment against Tommy Sheridan and other members of Solidarity.
Also, without a presence in the parliament, the profile of Solidarity has dipped considerably since its high point in 2007. Nevertheless, the Solidarity vote added to the Coalition Against Cuts list in Glasgow (which also involved Solidarity) polled more than 9,000 votes for a clear and principled anti-cuts platform.
The votes for the Scottish Socialist Party, who had six MSPs as recently as 2006, fell even further compared to their 2007 result when they lost 90% of their vote and all their MSPs.
The SSP polled 0.4% of the national vote with 8,200 votes. Nevertheless, these votes also reflected support for a fighting anti-cuts platform.
However, for the SSP leadership, who were instrumental in the state's prosecution and jailing of Tommy Sheridan, and who believed they would gain electorally from having "told the truth," this result was a damning public verdict on their criminal role and actions.
An indication of their deluded belief that they would gain significantly in this election was the SSP's boast that they would "push the Lib Dems into 6th place in Scotland." In addition the Socialist Labour Party achieved a vote of 16,847 (0.8%).
The results for the socialist left were undeniably poor, with the exception of the George Galloway - Coalition Against Cuts list in Glasgow. The primary responsibility for having thrown away an important electoral position for socialists with parliamentary representation from 1999 until 2007 lies with the political mistakes and actions of the leadership of the SSP.
It is a vital task now to work to rebuild a viable socialist and anti-cuts movement in Scotland.
With the election of an SNP government prepared to make huge cuts to jobs and public spending this task is urgent. Alex Salmond and his new government are demanding public sector workers accept year-on-year wage freezes - pay cuts in reality - as well as attacks on their terms and conditions.
Tens of thousands of jobs in the public sector will be lost if these cuts go through. Services that communities rely on will be butchered unless a struggle is built to oppose them.
The trade unions must organise national and coordinated strike action and quickly against the cuts, rather than accept the cuts. Working class communities need to be organised in the local anti-cuts campaigns and through the Scottish Anti-Cuts Alliance to oppose all cuts and fight for a return of the money stolen from us to pay for the bail-outs of the bankers and capitalism.
As part of this anti-cuts struggle, that can spread like wildfire in the months ahead, a political alternative to cuts and capitalism must be built. Socialist Party Scotland will be advocating that the anti-cuts movement, socialists, trade unionists and communities work to build a fighting coalition against cuts that will stand in the council elections next year.
To elect councillors who will refuse to make cuts and will stand up to the Con-Dem government in London, the SNP in Edinburgh and the councils who are wielding the axe across Scotland.
This can be an important platform to help build a powerful socialist alternative to the parties of cuts in the year ahead.
In April, Elaine McDonald, a former prima ballerina with the Scottish Ballet, took her fight to maintain her dignity and stop cuts to her care package to the Supreme Court.
Her local council, the Tory-controlled London borough of Kensington and Chelsea, had reassessed Elaine following a failed application to the Independent Living Fund (ILF) in 2007.
Instead of continuing to fund a personal assistant to stay with Elaine during the night to assist her with the toilet - help needed following three hospital admissions after separate falls at home - the council wanted her to use an incontinence pad or sheet although she is not incontinent.
Following a Court of Appeal decision last year to refuse Elaine a judicial review of this decision (see the Socialist, issue 646), the overnight element of her care package was finally withdrawn.
Legal arguments in support of Elaine's human rights and the discriminatory nature of the council's decision have so far failed.
While there is a statutory duty, under section 2 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970, on local authorities to provide or arrange services where someone has an assessed need, legal judgments in the 1990s weakened it considerably and it is now to be replaced with even weaker 'legal principles'.
Many of us who rely on personal assistance are following Elaine's case with a sense of dread. We fear a return to the days when funding for personal assistance was not available and the choice was residential care, reliance on family or volunteers or an unforgiving existence on one's own.
Few people remember that before the ILF (which supports 21,000 people) was set-up in 1988, funding of large care packages only existed for a small number. Sometimes people had a few hours of homecare support or access to a day centre, but it was insufficient to lead a full social, working or family life.
With the ILF's imminent closure, it is naÏve to believe that in the 'age of austerity' local authorities will maintain current levels of funding for our care packages.
Elaine's case has arisen precisely because her council is applying a financial 'cap'. This practice is unfortunately common, and is applied mostly to older disabled people when they are shunted into residential care rather than being supported in their own home.
Many disabled activists place faith in the human rights act and anti-discrimination legislation to protect their rights. The High Court decision in April, that it is unlawful for Birmingham council to raise its eligibility criteria from substantial to critical because it had failed during its decision-making process to consider properly the impact on service users, may reinforce this view.
This decision will offer short respite for 4,100 Birmingham residents who were set to lose all their social services.
To support Elaine's and others' dignity and rights permanently, a Supreme Court decision will have to be prepared to make a ruling that reverses the current neoliberal dismantling of social care and local services.
But rather than rely on judges who defend the interests of the rich, the disabled people's movement needs to mobilise and coordinate with the trade unions and anti-cuts campaigns now to publicly support Elaine McDonald, defend our right to live in the community with full support, stop the closure of the ILF, and demand the extra billions needed by councils to meet the needs of all disabled people and family carers.
Do your remember Section 44? Labour's draconian stop and search power that the European Court of Human Rights ruled against. Well it's back and has a new name.
In March the coalition government laid down a written ministerial statement to both houses of Parliament. The Orwellian sounding emergency measure: "Prevention And Suppression Of Terrorism - The Terrorism Act 2000 (Remedial) Order 2011" brought back stop and search powers under the Terrorism Act 2000.
The bottom line is that the police asked for the powers and the Conservatives, with support from the 'civil liberties' loving Liberal Democrats, gleefully gave it to them.
Home Secretary Theresa May said that, "given the current threat environment" she had "concluded that the police do need the powers more quickly" and that "the most appropriate way of meeting the legal and operational requirements concerning the counter-terrorism stop and search powers exercisable without reasonable suspicion is to make a remedial order" in the "interests of national security".
The remedial order replaced Sections 44 to 47 of the Terrorism Act 2000 with the new Section 47A.
Under Section 47A a "constable in uniform" will have the power "to stop a pedestrian" in the specified area and to search them and "anything carried by them".
The timing should not go unnoticed, indiscriminate stop and search powers on the ground are a useful tool for the state. Especially when the state is confronted by strikes, protests and demonstrations against the enforced transfer of billions of pounds from the public sector to the private sector and with cuts in jobs and services, all in the name of cutting the deficit.
My trade union, the National Union of Journalists (NUJ), condemned the new emergency powers. Photographers have been at the sharp end of stop and search powers. The union has campaigned against the threats from the state and harassment of NUJ members whose only 'crime' has been to document the social and political fall-out created by government policies.
For the economic elite the view is a simple one, any photographer or journalist that gives the oxygen of publicity to those that fight cuts in jobs and services is fair game.
For socialists, anti-cuts campaigners and trade unionists defending hard-earned democratic rights - the right to freedom of assembly and association, freedom of expression and press freedom - should go hand in hand with the wider fight to defend jobs and services, the right to have a home and food on the table.
The vicious regime in Bahrain has arrested and detained doctors and medical staff for treating injured protesters during recent clashes with security forces. 47 are to be tried in military courts.
The ruling Sunni royal family imposed martial law and thousands of troops from neighbouring Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were brought in to crush the protests last month.
Dozens of opposition activists have been killed. Hundreds have been detained, four sentenced to death. Four have died in police custody.
Tory Foreign Secretary, William Hague, commenting on the situation in Bahrain, said: "The arrests of opposition figures, the reports of deaths in custody, allegations of torture and the denial of medical treatment, are extremely troubling."
Troubling indeed but not for the reasons he puts forward. Bahrain is regarded by the West as a key ally in the region and a "counterweight to aggressive Iranian designs" (Wall St Journal). The US navy's 5th fleet is based there.
The Wall St Journal spits out the truth when it goes on to explain that the US Obama administration needs to "distinguish between its friends and enemies in the region, urging reforms on the former and encouraging regime change with the latter. Bahrain falls into the camp of friends... The West has no interest in seeing an autocratic but friendly Bahrain replaced by a pro-Iranian, Islamist 'democracy'".
For Libya, regime change but for Bahrain, reform. And urging a monarchy to introduce it to boot!
The Western imperialist governments have little interest in whether Bahrain will "meet all its human rights obligations and uphold political freedoms, equal access to justice and the rule of law" (Hague). Their interests are overwhelmingly concerned with oil, arms sales and political influence, etc, ie the profits of big business.
For that they need governments that are "friends". The interests of workers and poor, and even the middle classes of Bahrain are a long way down the list of priorities.
An article in the Guardian on 5 May proclaimed that "a Tory local council has halted controversial 'virtual council' plans to outsource all its services, after public opposition to spending cuts and a collapse in staff morale triggered a political revolt by backbenchers."
The article later refers to Suffolk as the "first big Tory rank-and-file mutiny over unpopular spending cuts in local government". However, a closer examination of the facts seriously questions such statements.
Without a doubt, public opposition to Suffolk county council's (SCC) New Strategic Direction (NSD), as the cuts programme was grandly titled, has been consistent since last summer.
There has been a weekly collection of signatures on petitions against the cuts in Ipswich, regular public meetings, local media attention, pickets of council meetings and in November, a march of 1,000 people. The government's attacks on young people and then SCC's announcement of the closure of 29 of its 44 public libraries made instant headlines.
With support from the civil servants' union, PCS, the teachers' union, NUT, public sector union, Unison and particularly from Unite, eight coaches took campaigners from Ipswich and the surrounding area to the massive TUC demo on 26 March.
When the ex-London banker Tory leader of SCC as well as two other leading executive officials resigned in the middle of April, at the same time as the suspected suicide of a third, the new leader-elect, promoted as 'a good old Suffolk boy' spoke of the saving of "the school crossing patrols and a pause to... give an opportunity to review everything."
The local press then began a campaign calling for the NSD to be "dumped in the dustbin of history"!
Further announcements from top Tory councillors maintained they were listening to the public and changes were to be made - the NSD was in tatters, the press wrote!
On 5 May, the local free paper proclaimed: "Libraries are saved after another u-turn". However, further down the same article it said "the council is to set up a 'community interest company' to organise the running of the county libraries". That sounds like an 'arms-length company' to us, or privatisation by 'sleight of hand' as Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite told the Glasgow May Day rally.
Then we read the 'small print' and learnt that no actual decisions would be made until 26 May - a good three weeks after local election day. In other words, with plenty of time to plan for any eventuality!
If this is an example of how the Tory party and the media played its hand across the country leading up to polling day, then it's little surprise the Tories were being congratulated on a brilliant campaign as they retained their core councils in the South and left the Lib Dems to pay the price for Tory cuts elsewhere.
In Suffolk we expect the NSD to be renamed, the programme to be repackaged and Andrea Hill, the notorious top earning council chief executive, to be made the sacrificial lamb.
But the campaign against the cuts will continue - we've seen off one lot of Tory leaders, now it's time to take on the next. Our public sector workers will be leading the way this summer.
Members of the Socialist Party staged a protest outside the Kazakhstan embassy in central London on Friday 6 May in support of trade union and socialist activists who are suffering repeated attacks and harassment by the Nazarbayev regime. In particular, the London picket demanded justice for Ainur Kurmanov, a leading member of Socialist Resistance who was beaten by police at the recent official May Day parade. Ainur, who has served many weeks in prison on trumped up charges, is again facing spurious charges by the Kazakhstan authorities as is fellow activist Dmitry Tikhonov.
A letter of protest was handed in to embassy officials, who claimed to know nothing about Ainur and the treatment of other political oppositionists. They also tried to portray the ruling clique in Kazakhstan as an 'enlightened democracy' following Nazarbayev's 'Soviet-style' 96% vote in April's presidential election.
See www.socialistworld.net for background material
David Cameron's 'we're all in it together' slogan to justify savage spending cuts in jobs and services looks even more threadbare after the Sunday Times published its annual Rich List for 2011. The list showed that the richest 1,000 individuals in the UK had a combined wealth of £396 billion. In other words they could pay for chancellor George Osborne's £81 billion of cuts nearly five times over.
Moreover, the number of billionaires in the country has risen from 53 to 73, with nine people seeing their fortunes increase by more than £1 billion in the last year alone.
The directors of MG cars - the Phoenix Four - that went bust in 2005 with debts of £1.3 billion have voluntarily agreed to a three to six year ban as company directors. This is a trivial punishment after the asset strippers bought the company for £10 from BMW and then paid themselves £42 million in pay and pensions while 6,000 MG workers lost their livelihoods.
Public sector workers in Portugal and Italy staged walkouts and demonstrations on 6 May in protest at their respective governments' capitalist austerity measures.
Transport banks and public services were all affected by last Friday's strike called by the CGIL union in Italy. The strikes in Portugal were in response to the caretaker government of Jose Socrates agreeing to deeper spending cuts following an EU bailout.
A coroner's inquest jury recently ruled that bystander Ian Tomlinson had been "unlawfully killed" by a policeman while trying to walk home past a police cordon which had 'kettled' protesters at the G20 summit in London in April 2009.
Video footage of this assault had been widely shown. However, it transpires that other police had informed senior officers of the baton attack on Tomlinson some 48 hours later but that the City of London police did not report this to the coroner, the independent police complaints commission or Tomlinson's family.
A United Nations (UN) report published on 29 April on the final phase of Sri Lanka's civil war in 2009 reveals "credible allegations" of war crimes perpetrated by the ruling regime of president Mahinda Rajapaksa. The right wing Rajapaksa regime has used the defeat of the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) to consolidate its grip on the country. Senan, Tamil Solidarity international coordinator, explains why the report is a dead letter and what attitude the Tamil Diaspora should adopt in its struggle for democratic rights and Tamil self-determination.
The UN panel report, published after considerable delay, confirms what Tamil Solidarity and others have been saying about the slaughter of Tamils in Sri Lanka over the last two years. The panel was set up by the UN secretary general Ban-Ki Moon in June 2010 to advise him on Sri Lanka.
The report confirms our claims that the Sri Lankan military massacred more than 40,000 people in the final phase of the war that ended in May 2009. They constantly bombed hospitals, schools, temporary shelters and so-called 'no fire zones'. Every single one of 400,000 refugees was then taken, en masse, to 'detention camps' with no proper facilities. Deaths and gross humanitarian abuses took place during the transportation and in the camps.
However, there should not be any illusions that this report will bring about any change in the conditions of the victims in Sri Lanka. The day after its publication the Guardian newspaper reported that the UN secretary general "would only launch an international investigation if the Sri Lankan government agrees or an 'international forum' such as the United Nations security council calls for an inquiry".
Obviously, the Sri Lankan government will not allow any international investigations. In fact, the publication of the belated panel report was itself further delayed by the Sri Lankan government's protests. The Sri Lankan External Affairs minister, GL Peiris, called the report "preposterous" and "baseless".
Despite the report's own admission that "during the final stages of the war, the United Nations' political organs and bodies failed to take actions that might have prevented civilians' deaths" no apology has been made on the part of the UN so far. Instead it continues its inaction.
Numerous appeals for action to stop the war and prevent mass murder of Tamil-speaking people were made during the war in early 2009. On 31 January 2009 over 100,000 marched through London in opposition to the slaughter. Internationally, hundreds of thousands of Tamils and others took to the streets. After the war the demands for genuine humanitarian measures continued.
In the silence and inaction on the part of the UN and governments, untold horror and mass murder took place. And the human rights abuses and killings continue to this date.
The UN made no attempt whatsoever to stop the killings. Furthermore, it made no apology for passing a resolution, within just ten days of the major massacre, clearing the Sri Lankan government of wrong doing.
Even though the UN gives the illusion that it is an independent body, it would be naïve to imagine that the UN will go beyond the interests of its major components: the US, the UK, India, China and Russia.
Nor does the UN have a credible record of preventing mass murders taking place in other areas of the world. For example, the UN did not prevent the massacres in Congo. In Rwanda, the world's powers stood by and watched the genocide of up to a million people.
The UN Security Council currently includes government representatives from Russia, China and India, who not only funded the Sri Lankan government's military but who continue to protect it. After the report was published the Sri Lankan defence secretary, Gotabayah Rajapaksa, announced that Sri Lanka "will have to seek protection from countries like Russia and China".
These governments' actions are an extension of how they treat their own people. The brutal role of India in Kashmir and other parts of the country is well-known. Similarly, the role of the Russian government in Chechnya, and China's human rights abuses in Tibet and the rest of the country are recognised globally.
The Sri Lankan regime is cynically using anti-imperialist rhetoric among the masses. The former Sri Lankan UN Ambassador, Dayan Jayatilleka, attacked the western imperialist powers at the eleventh special session at UNHCR refugee agency in May 2009: "These are the same people who told the world Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. I wouldn't buy a used car from these people let alone allegations of war crimes," he declared.
Gotabhaya Rajapaksa went even further in his 'analysis' and announced: "They are jealous of us because they have not defeated terrorism as we have".
The regime is using the UN and imperialist hypocrisy to their advantage just like Gaddafi in Libya. While strongly opposing the human rights abuses and exploitation of imperialist powers, it's important to also expose the hypocrisy behind the anti-imperialist language of the Sri Lankan regime.
But despite the rhetoric, the Sri Lankan regime is ever so cooperative with both regional and western imperialist powers. The contradiction over 'human rights' is partly due to the competition between the regional powers like China and India and Western imperialism which seeks to establish favourable conditions to gain economic advantage.
Capitalist institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank sanctioned loans to the Sri Lankan government and promote Sri Lanka as an 'investment paradise'. The Sri Lankan government is now ruthlessly executing IMF-led policies such as privatisation, attacks on pensions and 'tax reforms'.
The Rajapaksa regime's alleged anti-imperialist stance and whipping up of Sinhala nationalism is also intended to divert the attention of the working and poor masses from Rajapaksa's brutal attacks on their living conditions and services.
Furthermore we will not see the IMF or World Bank withdraw their loans amid the 'credible war crime' allegations. Even after the UN panel report was leaked to the media, key members in the US congress were advocating a 'stronger US-Sri Lankan relationship'.
The newly named co-chair of the Sri Lankan Congressional caucus, Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat who defends Obama's cuts budget, is urging all his colleagues to support this call. In other words what, in reality, this report could achieve for the oppressed masses will be very minimal.
The UN report also blames the separatist LTTE (Tamil Tigers) for using civilians trapped in the war zone as human shields.
Tamil Solidarity, while standing firmly against the Sri Lankan regime, consistently questioned the methods of the LTTE. We also criticised the LTTE with regard to the internal killings, attacks against the Muslim population, and the shooting of civilians in the final phase of the war. The majority of the active layer in the Diaspora will not deny these facts.
But while it is important for the Diaspora Tamils to distance themselves from the mistakes of the LTTE, it must not allow room for bodies such as the UN to attack Diaspora campaigns. Advising the Diaspora that their key role is to denounce the LTTE is aimed at paving the way towards Tamil cooperation with a future Sri Lankan government that the west will hope to do business with.
Internationally, young people in the Tamil Diaspora are drawing the conclusion that the attack against the oppressed Tamils is also a fight against all oppressed people.
Furthermore there is also an emerging insistence on democracy; the urge to work with trade unions, left organisations and other organisations that campaign for rights and against oppression.
It is understandable that the Tamils in Sri Lanka are hoping against hope that the UN report may mark a step towards support for their struggle for rights. We can understand the desperate heartbeat of poor Tamils in Sri Lanka that some 'outside force' may come to their aid. But there is no point in creating any illusions for the sake of giving temporary comfort.
Most importantly we should oppose the creation of free trade zones promised by the regime to Indian, Chinese and western governments. These zones will not be 'rehabilitation centres' but sweatshops where war victims and ex-LTTE (Tamil Tigers) members will be forced to work for as little as possible. We must rebuild strong trade unions to oppose these cruel working conditions being created at the same time as opposing the inhuman treatment of workers and low wages that already exist.
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell is a classic book, which every socialist should read. Although written in the early part of the last century its ideas and characters are fresh and interesting.
Its author was a worker who died 100 years ago in poverty but this article and review by ROY FARRAR, reprinted from 1977, shows how his legacy lives on.
On a bright June day in Liverpool in 1977 hundreds of trade unionists and socialists took part in a march to rally at the final resting place of Robert Noonan - known more popularly as Robert Tressell, author of "The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists".
In a rough, weed-choked field opposite Walton Jail we gathered to unveil a marble plaque to mark the grave. This wasteland held the bones of over 1,000 paupers, their bodies wrapped in canvas bags, stitched up by former inmates of the jail, and cast into mass graves.
Local activists had located the grave of Robert Noonan, plus the names of the 12 others interned with him, and all had been etched into the black stone.
Robert had died of tuberculosis in Liverpool Royal Infirmary at the age of 40 in 1911. Why this homage to Robert Noonan? He was a member of the Marxist Social Democratic Federation but as far as we know he did not lead any mass campaign or strike.
He wrote only one book, a novel about working class life prior to World War One. Shortly after joining the Labour Party Young Socialists in 1966 a worn copy of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists was pressed into my hand with the recommendation that I may find it a good read.
An understatement if ever there was one.
Turning the pages I was drawn into the tale of a year in the life of an Edwardian town in southern England. It revealed how the capitalist system rules and exploits workers - an accurate historical account of the lives of working people, and more, a condemnation of the horrors of capitalism, a comprehensive explanation of how the system works, and the necessity for a socialist alternative.
Robert Tressell speaks through the 'hero' Owen, a building worker, describing incidents and characters that any worker could relate to today. The "philanthropists" are the workers willing to work for the "good cause" of giving their unpaid labour to the "masters" - the bosses' profits.
Casualisation, bullying bosses, low pay, poor housing, debt, unemployment, and the regular humiliations endured by working people throughout their lives, are all graphically depicted by Robert.
The overwhelming impression is of a book written by, not just a well placed observer, but as Noonan puts it "the story of twelve months in Hell told by one of the damned".
Robert wrote his novel between 1905 and 1908 but despaired of having it printed as publisher after publisher rejected the manuscript. After Robert's death his daughter Kathleen managed to sell the manuscript, for £25, to its first publisher, Grant Richards, who described it thus: "the book was damnably subversive but it was extremely real".
Unfortunately in the first edition, in 1914, and in subsequent editions, the novel was much hacked about and shortened, and given a depressing ending with Owen contemplating the killing of his family and his own suicide! Fred C Ball, Robert Noonan's biographer, tracked down the original manuscript and eventually, in 1955, the first unabridged edition came off the presses and with Robert's uplifting final chapter restored.
Throughout the novel are various episodes where Owen explains the real workings of capitalism to his workmates and argues the need for socialism. These explanations are not 'forced'.
The writer's skills make these scenes feel natural and as parts of a seamless whole. The Money Trick, chapter 21, gives a lucid and as straightforward introduction to marxist economics as any and made memorable by its humorous treatment and realistic portrayal of the behaviour of the characters involved.
One charge sometimes laid against the book is of being biased to men and their workplaces, that the women receive a lesser treatment. But as early as chapter three Tressell shows Ruth Easton as being more able than her husband in managing the household budget - a greater insight of the economics of capitalism which enables them to survive.
In chapter six it is Nora Owen, in conversation with her young son, who from a socialist perspective describes capitalism and the problems to be overcome in changing it.
The Philanthropists lack feelings of class solidarity and the novel is hazy about how they may attain class consciousness to forward the struggle for socialism.
Occasionally the idea of the impoverished masses driven by their wretched conditions to overthrow the capitalists in a bloody uprising is proffered, at others an appeal to "reason", to vote for revolutionary socialists.
Owen's 'lectures' of course mirror the socialism of his day, a convincing analysis of capitalism coupled to the drawing of a wonderful vision of a socialist future, but somewhat vague as regards the transition between.
Only months after Robert Noonan's death, Liverpool was in the grip of a general strike. 80,000 workers fought police and soldiers in the August demonstration known as "Bloody Sunday".
The journalist Gibbs reported that the strike was "...as near to revolution as anything seen in England." Only those carts and goods could move freely that had permits from the strike committee.
Posters and leaflets declaiming "Socialism is the answer to Capitalism" went up in the city.
In the following local elections, Labour representation gained a successful foothold in a city where politics had been deeply marked by religious sectarianism.
But for Noonan's tragic and untimely death, and given his powers of observation and description, a worthy sequel to the Philanthropists may have been written - depicting working people awakened by great events, realising their capability to challenge the "masters" and to change society.
Socialist Books, PO Box 24697, London E11 1YD.
By talking to some of the people affected, the Panorama programme on 4 May gave a rare glimpse on prime time TV, of the human impact of the housing crisis.
Instead of men in suits, young people stuck in squalid and expensive privately rented housing showed the reporter round their damp, cold and unsafe accommodation.
The English Housing Survey published in February this year showed that one and a half million privately rented homes failed the decent homes standard.
And 971,000 of these homes failed the standard because they had serious 'Category 1' hazards under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System. So the conditions shown on the programme were not unusual.
As the programme noted, the private rented sector is growing, up 40% over the last five years and is now about as big as the "social" sector and with more young tenants.
The housing charity, Shelter, says there has been a 23% increase in the number of people seeking help due to problems with their landlord over the past year.
Do the capitalist politicians respond by raising the need for greater regulation of bad landlords, control of rent and protection from unfair eviction? No, the government blames tenants claiming high levels of housing benefit and proposes to cap benefits rather than rents.
Unfortunately, Labour was working up proposals to cap benefits before the last election and actually abstained on key votes in Parliament. They had no plans to reverse the 1988 housing act which got rid of security of tenure and rent control in the private rented sector.
The programme talked to a family living in a small council house in Sheffield with the sons sleeping on sofas in the living room/dining room.
A daughter spoke of the difficulty of doing homework in such crowded conditions - not a problem Cameron, Osborne and the public school educated cabinet of millionaires will have suffered!
As the programme explained, with five million people on the waiting list for council housing, families such as this can't have much hope of a transfer.
This shortage was traced to the Thatcher government's policy of selling off council houses and to the decline in building.
A professor stated that the government policy of reducing security in council housing and pushing tenants who are "under occupying" into moving was a "legitimate" argument given the shortage: they saw social housing in a residual emergency role.
That amounts to turning working class communities into glorified hostels.
Much time was spent exposing the role of various con men who attempt to exploit the shortage by illegal sub-letting and other scams. But while these characters who profiteer from the housing crisis will be hated by working class people, the housing shortage would remain even if all the scams were stopped.
The government has responded to the shortage by cutting spending on building new social housing by 63% and new "affordable" housing will have rents set at as much as 80% of the market level.
In high rent areas that would clearly be unaffordable to people such as those featured, and things will be worse as the new housing benefit levels feed through.
House building was declining under New Labour but these policies can only intensify the problem.
Mass council house building, rent control and protection from eviction in the private rented sector were achieved through struggles of the labour movement and the threat of mass struggle.
Trade unionists and socialists can gain an enormous echo by putting these ideas back on the agenda.
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What the Socialist Party stands for
The Socialist Party fights for socialism – a democratic society run for the needs of all and not the profits of a few. We also oppose every cut, fighting in our day-to-day campaigning for every possible improvement for working class people.
The organised working class has the potential power to stop the cuts and transform society.
As capitalism dominates the globe, the struggle for genuine socialism must be international.
The Socialist Party is part of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI), a socialist international that organises in many countries.
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http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/12011