The Tory press is stoutly defending the 'principled' Labour right-wingers who resigned in protest from Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet. Kevan Jones, Jonathan Reynolds and Stephen Doughty left their positions over the sacking of Pat McFadden and the moving of Maria Eagle from Defence to be replaced by anti-Trident Emily Thornberry. The Financial Times even calls for so-called 'moderates' to "withdraw their labour."
Shadow Attorney General Catherine McKinnell later resigned citing 'concerns over the direction and internal conflict' under Corbyn. Others have raised threats to resign if Corbyn is successful in changing the party's policy on Trident.
The general secretary of the party has spoken out against Corbyn's plans to involve the Labour membership in decision making over the issue. He said that any change in how decisions are made must first be passed through the Autumn conference - too late to impact the position taken at the vote expected in Spring on whether to replace Trident nuclear submarines.
While many on the left will welcome the removal or resignation of right wingers, there will also be frustration that the re-shuffle didn't go much further in striking against the right.
Correctly, after the treachery of the right wing around the Syria vote there was a groundswell in favour of getting rid of the Blairites from the shadow cabinet. This was linked with a mood to fight for mandatory reselection to take them out of Parliament altogether and replace them with Labour candidates who agree with the anti-austerity anti-war agenda that saw Corbyn thrust into the leadership.
In particular, there will be anger that Hilary Benn wasn't removed. It seems that this change was well trailed by members of Jeremy's team but ultimately it appears that they balked at this step under yet another threat from ten or eleven right-wing shadow cabinet members that there would be a 'walkout' if they had pressed ahead.
Allegedly, a deal was done with Benn that he wouldn't publically criticise the leadership's policy positions but he was quick to pronounce that he wouldn't be muzzled!
The right wing have denounced Jeremy Corbyn as a hypocrite for expecting shadow ministers to vote with him, pointing to his voting record from the backbenches. But this isn't an issue about 'loyalty to the leader' or individual 'dissent' but loyalty to the interests of the working class and ever-growing sections of the middle class too.
Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and the small number of principled lefts rightly opposed the pro-market policies of Blair, Brown and Miliband over the last two decades. In contrast, the Blairite rebels have openly collaborated with the Tory class enemies. Benn will never be forgiven after his Syria speech was applauded and cheered by the Tory benches.
Stephen Doughty resigned live on the BBC's Daily Politics conveniently just minutes before Prime Minister's Question Time, where Cameron ridiculed the reshuffle.
Yet once again there is a refusal to take decisive action against the right wing. It is becoming a trend that the new leadership sets out on a decision but prevaricates and doesn't fully follow through.
The result is that they antagonise and then embolden the Labour right and their big business backers but frustrate their own supporters. At root it is an unwillingness to face the reality of the situation and draw the necessary conclusions politically and organisationally.
As we have stated in previous articles and is now increasingly being accepted within much of the press, there are two parties fighting within Labour. But while the right wing seems to be doing the fighting, much of Corbyn's team are reluctant to accept the reality. On Newsnight, Dianne Abbott denied that there was a "left-right dichotomy" in the party.
While the major differences at this stage have been on foreign policy, the underlying cleavage is over austerity. That is why Corbyn and McDonnell should lead the charge over opposition to the cuts as a means to mobilise their support to defeat the Labour right and transform Labour into an anti-austerity force.
A clear position of calling on Labour councils to refuse to pass on any more Tory cuts (particularly as Osborne's new £20 billion wave of local authority austerity is cranked up) would mark a real line in the sand. It would be possible to build a mass movement with local communities and council workforces being devastated by the cuts. It would also give a boost to any Labour councillors who are considering voting against the cuts.
This is what is necessary to break the deadlock in Labour. The right have the overwhelming majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party and will never be reconciled to a Corbyn and McDonnell-led Labour Party. But their policies are at odds with the outlook of growing sections of the working and middle classes.
Some historical pillars of Tory rule in the past, such as the legal and medical professions, are being eroded by the economic crisis and austerity. Even in the recent past, the idea of unofficial stoppages by solicitors and even barristers and strikes by doctors would have seemed impossible.
These are groups that can and are being won over to the labour and trade union movement and are some of the basis for the anti-austerity mood behind the Corbyn surge.
Desperately, some of the Blairite MPs in seats outside London and the South East are trying to contrast themselves with the 'North London elite' of Corbyn. Yet their pro-austerity ideology has nothing in common with the catastrophe facing working-class people north, south, east or west and can deliver only further misery!
Only by fully adopting a clear anti-cuts programme as the basis for a mass anti-austerity movement can Jeremy Corbyn put clear red water between his leadership and the Labour right.
Who's the bigger threat to the NHS: junior doctors or Jeremy Hunt?
While four days of strike action may inconvenience some people, Hunt and the Tories are responsible for a massive crisis in the health service that will get worse in the years to come - if they get their way.
Many hospitals have been put on "high alert" during the now annual winter crisis in the NHS. Drastic cutbacks mean that hospitals struggling with patient demand are now the rule rather than the exception. And still the government demands a further £22 billion worth of 'savings' by 2020.
But, according to Jeremy Hunt, it is the doctors we should blame. It's even been revealed that Hunt's officials were involved in the public letter from the NHS chief executive questioning whether doctors would still strike in the event of a terrorist attack - such is the desperation to smear workers in the health service.
It's not working though. 95% of people in a Guardian poll support the strike. And a letter in the same paper on 9 January from a patient detailed the hard work of junior doctors and nurses even - shock horror! - on a Sunday night. It pointed out the problem is the lack of beds and other resources.
Yet Jeremy Hunt, backed up by the big business press, has the audacity to say that doctors' union the British Medical Association (BMA) is making this a "political opportunity". Doctors have made it clear that this is not just about defending working conditions but a battle to save our NHS.
Last year, the Department of Health spent £1.2 billion bailing out debt-ridden trusts struggling to pay Private Finance Initiative (PFI) bills. PFI debt should be cancelled and the money used to provide essential jobs and services.
The BMA is taking an important step, now the other health unions need to join them in coordinated strike action. We need a movement that fights for a truly national health service - free at the point of use, fully funded, publicly owned and democratically controlled.
You can hardly get past a tube or train station in London today without bumping into some junior doctors handing out leaflets and talking to the public. Their 'Meet the Doctors' idea is a brilliant one - as well as staffing big lively pickets everywhere, doctors are out and about explaining to people what their strike is all about.
At the Royal London hospital in Whitechapel a big picket at the main entrance included placards and banners, speeches and chanting. They ran a picket at the back entrance too. Impressively, strikers also gathered in a big display at the tube station to leaflet and talk to the public, and also went up and down the High Street with leaflets. It all made for a really great morning.
The doctors were getting huge support. It was really easy to give out leaflets. All the Tories' attempts to attack the strikers have fallen on deaf ears - as one passer-by said: "People want a safe health service with doctors who are awake!" Donated donuts and cups of coffee kept everyone going in the cold.
No one wants to have to strike again at the end of the month, but fully aware of the intransigence of the government, pickets were planning what they could do to improve next time - maybe a stall and some petitions, a few more signs calling on drivers to 'toot' their support...
I spoke in solidarity from the Tower Hamlets TUSC group and invited strikers along to the People's Budget meeting TUSC is holding on Thursday 14th January along with the Tower Hamlets Independent Group of councillors.
Junior doctors picketed the Lister hospital in Stevenage for the first time ever. There was a mood of determination to fight for justice against the government. Besides getting lots of support from the public, many consultants bibbed their support as they drove to work.
Also supporting were people from the Socialist Party, Stevenage TUC, the People's NHS, Stevenage Momentum and 38 Degrees. They all received a warm welcome from the doctors.
Later today a meeting between the People's NHS, RCN and Unison along with the Stevenage TUC will take place to organise more public support for the NHS over the next few weeks in Stevenage.
At Royal Liverpool Infirmary dozens of junior doctors are being supported by other NHS workers, campaigners and the public. Nusiba Taufik, a first year trainee doctor, told Hugh Caffrey from the Socialist Party why she's on the picket:
"I'm out here today in support of all the junior doctors around the country, and in support of anyone who is trying to make sure the NHS actually has a future. Last week many junior doctors were out in support of the nurses, whose bursaries are being cut, and today there have been a lot of people from different jobs and different walks of life because we all want to see the NHS actually have a future.
"The government cuts have been ridiculous, we were already finding it incredibly difficult to hold onto the services that we have. I'm a new doctor, I've been qualified for six months, and already I'm seeing how bad it is with the cuts, and so that's why I'm out here today."
There was a fantastic turnout from BMA junior doctors and great support from other unions across the city. Manchester Socialist Party members and Manchester Socialist Students also were warmly welcomed by the doctors on the picket lines.
One striking junior doctor told us: "It's great to see such a high level of support from the trade unions, I think we should affiliate to the TUC; we need to work together."
When you're on a picket line and offered a gingerbread man depicting a heart, bowel or bones, you know you're with junior doctors. The mood outside Gateshead's Queen Elizabeth hospital was buoyant. It was clear that the junior doctors have loads of support from other NHS workers.
A consultant waded through mud to give them a wave, a GP turned up with a box of doughnuts and nurses finishing their shifts came out with boxes of sweets for them. Also, passing cars and vans tooted to show their support. All the junior doctors were very clear that this strike wasn't just about their pay and conditions - it is also about the health of the NHS.
Southampton General Hospital saw a large, noisy and determined picket of junior doctors and medical students angry at the government's attempts to worsen working conditions and patient care in the NHS.
The local BMA rep explained: "The issue for us is unsafe working hours. The proposed changes will remove the current protection. What is needed is investment in more doctors and nurses to improve the current five-day service. The government wants to spread the same money for five days to cover seven days. The service is already overstretched. We already run a seven-day service through A&E, people will always be seen and operations carried out. A&E is overstretched, increasing weekend working without extra resources will make things worse."
Many explained that improving the five-day elective surgery was a more important step to improving patient care.
Another junior doctor who had recently worked an 80-hour week said: "Long working hours are unsafe for doctors and unsafe for patients, the government needs to withdraw its proposals.
Three doctors became six, then eight, with more on the way, outside Lambeth hospital in south London. They were happy, welcoming and clearly enjoying their first time on a picket line. Some had been on the previous Saturday's march to defend student nurses' bursaries. The psychiatric facility's BMA rep remarked that the Tory government is "destabilising the NHS" and bought a copy of the Socialist.
Outside London's Kings College and Maudsley hospitals, smiling, cheering masses of junior doctors, 50 at least, faced each other. Strikers with handmade placards invoking Aneurin Bevan were joined by nurses and other clinical and support staff.
Whole convoys of buses, trucks and ambulances hooted support. The nurses brought out coffee. The dentists brought bags of chocolate - presumably trying to keep themselves in work! Even the chief executive expressed his support for the strike and offered to bring out tea.
The overwhelming public support for the doctors' strike was shown by the near endless honking of car horns outside Salford Royal hospital. The pickets were enthusiastic and serious about their action, prepared to take more if the government doesn't back down.
Doctors have concerns not just about working longer for less money and patient safety but also about less doctors going into further training and research because they are so uncertain about their futures. They need to know that we all support what they are doing!
Brilliant support for junior doctors in Coventry this morning on their picket line. The 'beepometer' was at maximum! Keep up the pressure and let's make sure they win this battle for all our sakes. Save the NHS!
Around 12 doctors were on a very lively picket at Chelsea and Westminster hospital. Lots of people were signing their petitions and there was a very good response from passing motorists.
Despite torrential rain junior doctors and supporters started to appear from 8am onwards this morning outside the main entrance to Royal Stoke University hospital. Within 10 minutes there was a picket of around 20 which grew to over 50 by 10am and there was another 25 to 30 at the Harplands entrance as well.
Union members from Unite, CWU, GMB, North Staffs TUC and NSSN Staffordshire were there to support their BMA brothers and sisters. There was constant honking of horns from motorists on the A34 to show their support.
A number of pickets were on duty at Heartlands hospital in Birmingham from 8am. The general feeling was of strong support for the dispute from the general public with many indications of support from passing traffic (particularly from local authority workers as a refuse truck passed by!)
While only a handful of pickets were present they did indicate that all sites across the area were covered and that Walsgrave in Coventry had a particularly strong presence.
Those present appreciated the Socialist Party's support in what unfortunately could turn into a long and protracted dispute.
Junior doctor Catherine with her 11-week-old Great Dane puppy Sully on their first picket line: "I'm striking because hospitals are unsafe anyway so the longer hours that juniors are expected to work will make them even more unsafe. The morale is already low and junior doctors are already wanting to leave the profession."
Paul Cooney, a Unite rep and retired NHS worker, said: "Any attack on any hospital department is an attack on the whole of the NHS and it's clear that this government wants to destroy it. All unions who represent NHS workers should stand together to save this wonderful institution."
There was a very confident mood from the 30-40 BMA members on the picket line at Bretton Gate this morning, with BMA and homemade placards and very many toots from passing vehicles.
The large local trades council banner was supported on a rota basis in the stiff breeze. BMA members had come well prepared with lots of food, drinks and a brazier, and the general mood was that if the government wants to return the country to the 1980s - bring the fight on!
This is also in the local context of open discussion amongst senior NHS managers about the possible down-grading or closure of a neighbouring hospital, which is of course opposed by the whole population, but which if implemented would threaten the ability to deliver adequate and timely services at Peterborough hospital.
Socialist Party members were welcomed by young, determined junior doctors on their picket line at the Royal Free hospital in north London. They are prepared to come out on the other planned strike days if it is necessary. The determination of the junior doctors was reinforced by doctors who had come straight off night shift to stand on the picket line. Other health staff and members of the public came out to show their support for the doctors. They clearly saw this as a much wider dispute about the future of the NHS.
One of the striking doctors told us that he had seen several of his colleagues go to Australia but he couldn't do this as he is very loyal to the NHS and doesn't want to see a health service run by Richard Branson and Virgin.
Talking to the junior doctors it is clear what is at stake. One doctor who is specialising in renal care wants to do a PhD for three years to give himself a better chance of becoming a consultant. The new contract would mean that this would dramatically affect his pay because while he's doing his PhD he wouldn't be on the same pay progressions scale. The new contract would also detrimentally affect women junior doctors wanting to take time off to have children.
While we were on the picket line we had a real example of the extra unpaid hours that junior doctors already work, with one doctor leaving the hospital after 9.30am when he was due to finish at 8.30am. He, like other junior doctors is forced to do an hour of unpaid study time after his shift.
Another example of the conditions that junior doctors face is that we were told that registrars who are on call over the weekend and have to be at the hospital within 20 minutes of being called are sleeping in sleeping bags on floors of the hospital over the weekend because they live too far away and the hospital has got rid of all doctors' on-site accommodation. Many doctors can't afford to live anywhere near the hospital and some have to travel in from Oxford, 70-80 miles away.
This dispute is making more doctors 'political'. One junior doctor we spoke to said that he was not interested in politics at all when he was younger but seeing all the lies in the press and from politicians about this dispute has made him take more of an interest in politics. He supports Jeremy Corbyn being leader of the Labour Party.
One junior doctor at a lively Newham University hospital picket line told the Socialist:
"The strike is not something we ever wanted to do, but the government have left us no choice by imposing a very unsafe, unfair contract that is demeaning to hardworking junior doctors but also dangerous to patients. But we're also very enthusiastic because of the great support from the public and people from other unions and because a 90% vote for action gives us a clear mandate."
Rather than have picket lines on the gates like usual strikes, doctors at Newham had arranged to have a stall and their picket line next to the hospital entrance. They weren't cowed by how things are 'usually done' and it meant they could ask everyone walking into the hospital to take a sticker and sign the petition for which there was huge support.
The junior doctors' picket at Whipps Cross hospital in the east London borough of Waltham Forest was excellent. It was young, enthusiastic, energetic and well-organised. A rota was established with groups of strikers being dispatched to run stalls at the canteen and at a nearby transport hub so that support could be built among both fellow NHS workers and the wider public.
If support levels can be gleaned from the amount of horn honking, cake delivery and well-wishing by passers-by and hospital workers, the junior doctors have already made a good start. And the doctors themselves were clear on the need for solidarity.
Those I discussed with all mentioned the nurses' bursaries as an issue to fight on, as well as the attacks on midwifery, ambulances and other services. All would prefer to be on the wards doing what they trained to do, but given the Tory attacks they had no choice but to strike.
Joe Piper, who works in paediatrics, currently on the neonatal unit, spoke to me about why he was on strike. For Joe it is "mainly about patient care and patient safety in the future." He explained:
"We already run a 24/7 NHS for acute services and the NHS is the most efficient way of providing national health care for everyone. That's being chipped away under this guise. Jeremy Hunt is moving this towards trying to provide 24/7 non-urgent care with no extra cash.
"This is basically about privatising the NHS and running down existing services. A lot of my friends are threatening to go to New Zealand, Canada, Scotland - anywhere where this contract is not being imposed. I'm here trying to get the government to back down and to put a wider message too, against the loss of efficiency that comes when you try to bring in private services which are about profit and not about best patient care.
"Generally everyone has been very supportive. I work a lot with midwives and nurses and they've all been really supportive. They're also threatened. Replacing the nurses' bursaries with a loan will have a catastrophic effect on recruitment right when we're short of nurses. Everyone is scared about the future. If we get rid of the safeguards for longer hours then we're all going to be tired. I know that at the end of a 12-hour shift I'm not as good as at the start.
"I hope that this strike will bring the government to the negotiating table in good heart - once Jeremy Hunt realises the strength of opposition to these absurd changes. I really hope that they back down. Our senior doctors are behind us 100% too. Their contract is under threat so the joke is that they might well also be out in March. I didn't see this day coming but I think this might well be the start of many more strikes and action to follow."
Over 50 junior doctors gathered with their placards and supporters outside Poole General hospital this morning. The show of solidarity has been amazing with honks of support from every passing ambulance, bus driver and members of the public. Hundreds of members of staff and the public have signed a petition in support of junior doctors and the NHS.
A local gardener visited the picket to "pledge her support for a publicly funded and accountable NHS". A senior health care support worker visiting the picket on her break declared that she "may be in work today but inside I'm 100% with the doctors. It's time they started listening to those of us on the frontline."
A junior doctor told the Socialist about the effect of the new contract on a colleague: "When she heard about it she just broke down into tears". There is simply not enough staff to cope with full seven-day working.
Junior doctor Jamie said: "When it comes to bankers bonuses we're told that they're needed to keep the best in this country. Why not the same for junior doctors? Many medical staff are going abroad because of the working conditions here. I've heard that the rules on fining health trusts if staff work excessive hours will be softened. There's a lack of trust."
Jess, BMA rep, said: "There's about 500 junior doctors here [at Nottingham Queens Medical Centre]. We've got overwhelming support from the public, colleagues and patients today. If this contract comes in we will be doing nothing but anti-social shifts."
Every entrance of the Royal Hallamshire hospital was teaming with striking junior doctors this morning at 8am. BMA rep Will Sapwell told the Socialist: "Every junior doctor here who is entitled to strike is on strike. The response from the public has been fantastic."
Students on their way to the library and workers heading to their jobs stopped to talk or beeped horns from passing cars, lorries and buses. Some even brought tea and coffee and homemade cakes for the strikers.
Doctors were hopeful that the strike would lead to a resolution, and Will told us that they could not accept Saturday being treated as a normal working day, or the removal of safeguards to stop doctors working long, unsafe hours. If the government is not willing to move on these issues, every doctor was clear that they intended to strike again.
"There's been a great feeling of nationwide support, in spite of the media - Murdoch and co! Our support is strong from all levels of the profession.The strike makes the issues at stake more clear. The Tories have just a small majority, but it is unsettling that they see this giving them a mandate to undermine public services.
"I'm a senior psychiatric registrar at 35 and will be a 'junior' until I'm 38! A neurosurgeon could be junior until he or she is 40. Some juniors on the new contract would be on less than the London living wage. It's not about big money. It's about protecting the safeguards we have which were established because of the horrors of the '80s - to keep doctors from burning out.
"One of the most senior consultants within my Trust told me that when he was a junior on 100+ hour weeks, two colleagues killed themselves within their first year because of over-work. The attitude of the government seems to be: 'Underfund, undermine, then flog it'. 'Break it, then say it's broken and sell it off'.
"Cuts in every other sphere of public service affect people's mental health and we are seeing the impact on mental health services."
Well over 100 doctors picketed the two main hospitals in Leeds, St James's and the Leeds General Infirmary. Pickets were angry, especially over the insinuation that they're lazy which the media was stirring over the past few days.
One doctor told me he was often staying late and starting early to make sure patients were looked after. Another commented that she and other staff had had to challenge management before now about how short-staffed their department was.
Although doctors see that the dispute is about more than pay, that issue is not insignificant. One doctor recounted to me all the fees they have to pay to professional associations that are legal requirements, plus having to fund their own future training and exams if they wish to develop their capabilities further and progress their careers.
The support from the public came across loud and clear, deafeningly so at times with the numbers of drivers passing the hospital tooting in support. Coffees, chocolate and other picketing supplies were donated by consultants, whilst numerous patients stopped to talk to pickets and express their support, with perhaps the clearest indication of the mood being one woman who simply said: "I support you - Hunt must go!"
The need to coordinate action in defence of the NHS with other sections of workers as well as students was seen as key by many of the pickets, especially linking up with student nurses whose bursaries are under threat. Indeed, many of the doctors expressed a feeling that nurses are getting it worse than them. As one picket commented: "We have a responsibility - if Jeremy Hunt forces through what he's doing to us, then it will be other groups of workers in the NHS who are next!"
Striking doctors in Bristol were out in force today, fighting for fair contracts and to protect the NHS. In addition to pickets at the two hospitals, they spread across the city, handing out hundreds of stickers and leaflets at 'Meet the Doctors' events.
They were warmly greeted by the public with countless honks of car horns and a continuous supply of hot drinks and snacks being offered by supporters. Most passers-by went away wearing BMA stickers to show their solidarity with the action.
People instinctively trust the doctors and not the Tories to put patient safety first. They can see through the lies and half truths of Jeremy Hunt and most people understood that the proposed changes to junior doctors' contracts are part of the Tories' barrage of attacks on the NHS.
Other members of staff who passed the picket lines on the way to work were enthusiastic in their support, knowing that if the attacks on anti-social hours pay are successfully inflicted on junior doctors, they would be pushed out to all NHS workers. There was a lot of support for the idea that NHS staff should be striking together to build the strongest possible force to defend the service and their jobs and conditions.
Attempts to smear doctors as greedy 'Moet medics' who are only concerned about their own pay did not appear to have been successful. Far from living the globetrotting, champagne-swilling high life, our junior doctors are working up to 100 hours a week, saving lives on the front line of the most treasured institution in the country, the NHS.
For this vital work, following years of study they start on a salary of less than £23k a year. They also have to pay for their own professional development; one doctor we spoke to estimated he had spent a whopping £10,000 on courses and exams in the three and a half years since he had qualified.
Harrogate Socialist Party members joined junior doctors on their picket line at Harrogate District hospital. We had a warm welcome from the strikers. People contacted us saying they had seen us join the picket line on television when a doctor from Harrogate was interviewed on the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire show! We were pleased to see that other trade unionists, including the FBU who have been fighting their own battles against dangerous cutbacks, came along to support the strike.
The government's attack on junior doctors is just one part of their onslaught on the NHS, with student nurse bursaries being cut and the ongoing drive for so-called 'efficiency savings' in each Trust. By uniting these struggles together and as part of a fightback against the disastrous policies of austerity we will be able to defend our NHS and defeat the drive to privatise it.
All who approached and passed by the picket line offered words of support and were happy to take BMA leaflets, stickers and badges.
One junior doctor spoke about the mean-spiritedness of the right-wing press and how they attack any group who wants to help the poor. This was especially apparent in the sickening coverage from the Daily Mail, who attacked junior doctors for 'living it up' on 'luxury holidays'. Thankfully the Socialist provides positive reflections on our hard-working junior doctors.
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This version of this article was first posted on the Socialist Party website on 12 January 2016 and may vary slightly from the version subsequently printed in The Socialist.
Like a tower tottering on the edge of land washed away by the floods, the NHS in England is staring at a massive, growing funding gap. By 2020 this will be £22 billion a year. That's £387 for each of us, £890 for the average sized household.
This could mean higher tax, new charges for health care, cuts in health workers' pay, cuts in the current service equivalent to 18%, or a combination of all of these.
Alternatively, we need a life-and-death struggle to oust this government and replace it with one committed to maintaining a national service free to all at the point of use.
The NHS deficit is rapidly worsening. More trusts are falling into debt. Debts are getting bigger.
According to the National Audit Office, 25 trusts were in deficit in 2012/13 but in September 2015 181 trusts reported deficits - 57% more than six months earlier.
Health workers are suffering under the strain. Staff shortages in hospitals, GP surgeries, ambulance and community services mean more work falling on their shoulders.
Working through breaks and after the shift ends, lifting patients without enough support as there's no time to wait, noticing a patient in bed needing a urine bottle but getting several other urgent jobs on the way and arriving too late - these are daily experiences.
A 2012 NHS staff survey found only 30% felt there were enough staff for them to do their jobs properly.
It's not surprising sickness among NHS workers is high. The £2.4 billion cost of sick leave is equivalent to about 2.5% of the total NHS budget. Back pain and mental illness are the two biggest causes of sickness absence.
Ward and department leaders are given impossible targets to achieve on their budgets by senior management. They are under huge pressure to make staff work harder and cut sickness absence.
This increases stress levels and can lead to a culture of bullying, sanctioned at director level. A quarter of staff reported to the NHS 2012 Staff Survey they had experienced bullying, harassment or abuse from their line manager or other colleagues. That proportion is now almost certainly higher.
Much is written about the cost of absenteeism to the NHS. Sickness absence policies increasingly crack down hard on health workers unfortunate enough to be ill or injured - even when this is the result of their work. This increases stress and anxiety.
The cost of 'presenteeism' though is less researched and publicised. Two thirds of NHS staff admitted to coming to work when unwell in 2012. The cost of staff dragging themselves into work even when they are unwell increases absenteeism and decreases patient satisfaction. Research in 2015 showed the cost of presenteeism to the whole economy is twice that of absenteeism.
Simon Stevens, NHS chief executive, has a plan to improve health workers' health. He told NHS trusts to provide health checks, yoga and Zumba classes while at work, as well as physiotherapy and talking therapy sessions and healthier food.
Many trusts already offer physiotherapy and talking therapy sessions but these are being hit by budget cuts. Yoga and Zumba sessions are pointless if staff have no time for proper breaks to attend. How many will stay after working 12 or 13 hour shifts?
Better food would be welcome, but privatised catering services often shut cafes outside peak hours leaving sandwiches, ready-made meals and a microwave for night and weekend shifts.
Tory Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt may think junior doctors should work to 10pm and weekends for standard pay but private hospital caterers like Compass and Serco don't provide a full service at these times.
More staff would improve workers' health. This requires more to be trained, but the training budget is being cut. Abolishing student nurse bursaries is one aspect of this.
One reason why the Tories want seven-day working of non-emergency services is that it would mean more work could be carried out with fewer hospital facilities.
Stevens also wants to shift more health care out of hospitals into the community. This would prepare for more hospital closures with profit-making companies taking over more community care, paying staff minimum wages.
Being ill at home rather than in hospital would be many people's preference - if there was adequate community care. But community care has been hit hard after years of cuts with an 8% real terms fall in gross spending by councils on adult social services from 2009-10 to 2014-15 during which the need for care has increased.
Cancelling all NHS Private Finance Initiative (PFI) payments would save £2 billion a year.
Nationalising the pharmaceutical industry could save £3 billion a year of profits, and enable research to be done to meet patients' - not shareholders' - needs. Add sums spent on medical devices - from artificial joints to syringes - and the NHS probably pays out another £2 billion a year in profits.
NHS England expenditure on medicines in 2014-15 was £15.5 billion, up 7.8% from 2013-14 and up 19.4% from 2010-11.
Then there are privatised services rapidly taking over contracts, the cost of administering the market between trusts and clinical commissioning groups, staff agencies and many other profiteers leeching off the NHS.
Democratic socialist planning of a publically owned and run NHS with the full funding needed would end the real threat it now faces to its existence.
'GPs are underworked and overpaid' the tabloid headlines would have us believe. So why has doctors' union the British Medical Association (BMA) felt it necessary to call a special conference later this month - specifically to discuss the crisis in general practice?
The fact is that funding for general practice has dropped dramatically.
GPs undertake 90% of patient contact that takes place in the NHS. We are constantly told more services have to be, and are, provided in the community. Yet funding has fallen from 11% of the NHS budget to a historic low of 8.39%.
As well as more work being piled on general practice, there are fewer GPs to do it.
The Royal College of General Practitioners has estimated an extra 9,540 GPs are needed nationally to cope with the demands of a growing and ageing population with more complex health needs. Yet burnout means a third of GPs say they want to retire in the next five years according to a BMA survey.
And they aren't being replaced. Until 2013 almost all GP trainee vacancies were filled, but in 2104 over one in ten was left empty. Growing numbers of practices are failing to recruit new GPs.
GPs want to provide safe, high-quality care for patients. The stress of feeling unable to give patients what they need - while fending off a barrage of increased paperwork and tasks not directly related to patient care - has forced 100 practices to apply to NHS England to close their surgeries to any new patients. They feel unable to cope with the existing workload.
Despite this, patients' satisfaction with their GPs remains high in surveys. The quality of care given has not been shown to have fallen - yet. But the situation is unsustainable.
A call for GPs to do what the junior doctors have done, and take industrial action to demand the government increase funding and resources, has to be a central part of the BMA's conference. This is only way we can maintain the standard of care as it is, or ever hope to improve it.
It's 5am and my alarms are blaring telling me it's time to get up for another shift. Early starts with late finishes might be the norm as a student nurse but they don't get any easier.
I get up and quickly have a bath before putting on my uniform. Despite the public attacks on the NHS and all the bad press there's always a sense of pride when I clip on my NHS name badge.
Because of poor public transport links I have to leave my flat at half five to get to the hospital for my 7am start. I walk half an hour and catch two buses leaving just about enough time to drop my bag off and have a quick cuppa before shift starts.
I'm currently on placement in accident and emergency.
Just as handover is about to begin the red phone rings which indicates from an ambulance crew that someone who is suffering with potentially life threatening injuries is being brought in. I assist in getting the resuscitation area ready to allow the crew straight in, and just after seven they arrive.
Unfortunately the patient has been receiving CPR for nearly an hour and a half and the doctor, in agreement with everyone else, calls for a stop to the CPR and announces the patient's death. My first job of the day is to prepare the patient for the mortuary. It's just gone 8am.
Me and my mentor are working in the ambulance triage area. This involves taking a handover from the ambulance crew and performing an initial assessment before a patient can be seen by the doctor. This is very fast paced - because of targets and staffing levels it's pretty much in-out.
Over the course of the next couple of hours there are a couple of elderly patients who are confused as to why they're in hospital. It breaks my heart to see them left on a stretcher in the corridor waiting for a cubicle to be seen by a doctor but there are only so many rooms and only so many doctors to see everyone.
Its 11am and I get a 15 minute break to quickly chuck some toast and a drink down my neck before going back out.
As a student I observe and assist the nurses and care assistants. It still amazes me at how efficient they are as a team, as the afternoon progresses this is put to the test.
There are only two triage rooms and the screen indicates six ambulance crews incoming. We try and see everyone as quickly as possible but some are waiting for over half an hour. Luckily they are very understanding but it must be difficult for patients, knowing they're coming into hospital and not being seen quickly. We all wish we could do more but we're only human.
It gets to 4pm in no time, with us hardly having had a chance to breathe, and I take my dinner break. I didn't have time to prepare food so I rush to the canteen to get some chips and a drink before going back on shift.
The final two and a half hours are similar to the rest of the day, busy. I continue to take notes and at about 6.30pm I get the chance to question my mentor about a few terms and ailments.
I clock off at 7.15pm to catch my bus, I'm shattered but proud. I feel like I've made a positive difference today and that feeling pushes any sense of tiredness to the back of your head.
I get home just after eight and run a bath, grab some food and try and unwind. I fall asleep at about ten on the sofa and have to force myself to bed, knowing I've got to be up at 5am to do it all again.
Over 1,000 student nurses, NHS workers and members of the public marched through central London to protest the government's plans to cut student nurses' bursaries.
With chants of "bursary or bust" and "1,2,3,4 we won't be the working poor" the protest was a lively show of just how vital the bursary is to students and nurses to train the next generation. In speeches the student organisers made calls to fight back against the Tories' plans to destroy the NHS in its current form.
This fight needs to be united and positive steps were made linking the student nurses' struggle to the junior doctors who are engaging in ongoing strike action. The call was made for student nurses to walk out in solidarity with the junior doctors whenever they strike. Speakers included Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, RCN general secretary Janet Davies and the BMA junior doctors organiser.
The following is an extract of a statement sent to the demonstration by Unison NEC members Jacqui Berry, a nurse, and Hugo Pierre, a local government worker, who could not attend.
"We offer our full support to student nurses and other health professionals for your justified fight to defend your student bursary from abolition by this government that knows only one value. The value of the pound.
"It's clear they don't value nurses - students or qualified nurses. But when our hospitals have to pay the price for nursing shortages by recruiting and employing agency staff at way over the odds, they don't have to pay.
"Your bursaries are the pay that you get for working to gain the experience that will save lives.
"As socialists on the Unison NEC, we will do all we can to support you in this battle to defend your bursaries. You can count on our support for any action you want our union to take to help you beat this government and join your struggle with the struggles of other health workers to defend their pay and conditions."
By the first Tuesday of 2016, chief executives at the UK's top 'FTSE 100' firms were sitting happily on earnings it will take the average full-time worker a year to make.
So-called Fat Cat Tuesday is anything but cute. In fact, it highlights the enormous pay gap between the rich and the rest of us.
£27,645 by late afternoon on 5 January. That is a lot of cream for very few. It's an insult to those of us who work as hard as we do and for as long as we do for such little pay in return.
The bosses and their politicians constantly tell us that if we work passionately enough, and with enough commitment and stamina, we will be rewarded with a lifestyle of comfort and security. Fat Cat Tuesday comes as a grim reminder that this just isn't so.
We are creeping back to a kind of Dickensian horror show. The nation's pay gap increases year by year. The bosses' economic system is fuelling inequality and poverty - behind a façade of partnership, "we're all in it together", that no one seriously believes anymore.
The pay gap gets to the very core of what it means and feels like to be working class. Workers and young people are excluded from lifestyles dangled in front of us in adverts and the press.
But there is a solution. Bosses like the FTSE fat cats don't make their money out of thin air. They rely on workers to make the goods and run the services, and then declare themselves and their shareholders the beneficiaries.
Taking these firms into public ownership, and taking the obscene wealth off the fat cat 1%, could mean a decent life for us all.
An editor for the BBC's Daily Politics admitted in a shocking blog post that the resignation of shadow foreign minister Stephen Doughty had been prearranged for television. This cheap act of political theatre aimed to use the state broadcaster to undermine left-wing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Doughty, the right-wing Labour MP for Cardiff South and Penarth, resigned live on air. This was in response to a timid reshuffling of Jeremy Corbyn's shadow cabinet.
Doughty claimed on the programme that shadow Europe minister Pat McFadden was "singled out" for sacking - and the only "honourable thing" for Doughty to do was to tender his resignation.
But a now-deleted blog post by Daily Politics output editor Andrew Alexander revealed that the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg (pictured), along with presenter Andrew Neil, had arranged for Doughty to announce his resignation live.
Alexander wrote: "When the producers arrived they began putting out texts and calls to Labour MPs we thought were likely to react strongly to the sacking of several shadow ministers for 'disloyalty'."
"I wonder, mused our presenter Andrew Neil, if they would consider doing it live on the show?
"The question was put to Laura, who thought it was a great idea... Within the hour we heard that Laura had sealed the deal: the shadow foreign minister Stephen Doughty would resign live in the studio."
He went on to write: "We knew his resignation just before PMQs [prime minister's questions] would be a dramatic moment with big political impact."
Impartiality is supposedly the core value of the corporation, whose rules state its news output must be politically 'unbiased'.
Labour filed an official complaint to the BBC, accusing it of arranging and exploiting Doughty's resignation for political impact. The BBC responded by saying it was simply breaking the news.
The national press has relentlessly attacked Jeremy Corbyn from the outset of his election as leader. Whether right-wing or nominally 'left-wing', the mainstream media has been hostile to Corbyn and his grassroots support.
The 1% and their cronies at the head of the mass media and BBC want to defend their privileged lifestyles. They have no answer to the anti-austerity anger which propelled Jeremy Corbyn to head of Labour. So they resort to sensationalism and distraction.
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A UK power plant is under European Union (EU) investigation - for daring to partially switch to a potentially lower-carbon fuel.
Drax in North Yorkshire received state subsidy to burn biomass as well as coal. The EU is concerned this gives it an 'unfair advantage' over competing power stations!
The jury's still out as to whether biomass is a genuinely eco-friendly alternative to fossil fuels. See 'Can biomass energy be part of a socialist plan of production?' at socialistparty.org.uk for more.
But if even this half-hearted measure is an unacceptable threat to the supreme rule of the free market, what chance have we got?
The Socialist says: nationalise all the energy firms under democratic workers' control. For a mass programme of investment into green technology and infrastructure.
Oxfam reports that between the 2010 Copenhagen and 2015 Paris climate conferences, the number of billionaires with interests in fossil fuel rose from 54 to 88. Their combined personal wealth has grown by about half in that time, from over $200 billion to more than $300 billion.
New wave quintet Squeeze put the - er - squeeze on David Cameron on the Andrew Marr show on 10 January.
The band changed the lyrics of its November 2015 single 'Cradle to the Grave' to protest against Tory housing policy. With true-blue Cameron turning red just feet away, frontman Glenn Tilbrook sang:
"I grew up in council houses
Part of what made Britain great
There are some here who are hell-bent
On the destruction of the welfare state"
Working 12 days straight - no time for food shopping so treated myself to a meal deal, so decadent #SmearTheDocs
Junior Doctor, 28, uses THREE bags for life for one week of shopping. Excessive.
GP reg splashes out on luxury £1,600 exam and spends Sunday revising next to my pants #MoetMedics #SmearTheDocs
Tea-swilling Shock Doc Wears Live Cat Fur for Breakfast #SmearTheDocs
A High Court judge has ruled against the Tories' benefits cap. The Hon Mr Justice Collins thought at least part of it unacceptable.
The judge found that failing to exempt carers from the cap unlawfully discriminated against disabled people, in breach of their human rights. Strangely enough, it seems the "strongly worded" judgment has not brought an end to Tory attacks on the most vulnerable.
What if one of us broke the law in relation to the pitiful state benefits we may receive? We could expect to receive the full force of the justice system, knuckle first, right in the kisser.
But if you happen to be a senior politician working to defend the wealth of the super-rich, things are different.
It's almost as though toff senior judges and establishment MPs have some common interest...
David Cameron finally seems to have acknowledged the dizzying abyss that free market housing policies have created. Workers are extorted, less and less secure - and squashed like sardines.
Cameron promises action on soggy, downtrodden council estates and the ever-receding bottom rung of the property ladder.
But will his 10,000 new homes really help Britain's 4.4 million private renters?
And will any of England's backlog of half a million planned new homes ever actually be built?
Writing in the Sunday Times on 10 January, Cameron claimed he will end gang culture, drug abuse and poverty - by demolishing sink estates and building new, 'affordable' houses.
Sound too good to be true? Well, that's because it is.
Cameron has announced plans to demolish around 100 decrepit tower block estates in some of the most deprived areas in the country. But he is not doing so to build publicly owned social housing available for rent. He is subsiding private developers to build homes to buy on public land - no doubt mostly luxury flats.
How on earth are people living on some of Britain's most deprived housing estates meant to afford that? Clearly this is just another attempt to push working class communities out of the areas in which they live, and sell off council housing and land to the private sector.
To add insult to injury, former Tory minister Michael Heseltine will oversee the scheme. Papers like the Times and the Metro claim he is the man for the job because he supposedly oversaw the regeneration of Liverpool in the 1980s!
It wasn't Heseltine or the Thatcher government that sorted out Liverpool's slums. It was Militant, forerunner of the Socialist Party, which led Liverpool council. We stood up to Thatcher's austerity, tore down run-down housing blocks and built 5,000 high-quality council houses.
That's how you defeat poverty - by fighting the cuts to provide publicly owned social housing which people can afford to rent. Not by selling off land to the private sector!
Gang culture, drug abuse and other social ills are not caused by concrete tower blocks, but by poverty. They are the sad but avoidable outcome for communities trapped between low-waged, insecure work and long-term unemployment.
Yes, we should knock down aging tower blocks where they can't be brought up to standard through renovation. But they need to be replaced by high-quality, publicly owned social housing available at genuinely affordable rents.
If Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party would commit to that, it would get a fantastic response from working class communities! It's crucial that we organise to stop the sell-off of council land - and fight for decent homes for all.
On Wednesday 6th January Sheffield City Council housing workers took strike action against changes to their terms and conditions of employment, including pay cuts of up to £4,000 a year for staff.
The strike came following a work-to-rule which has been in place since mid-December against an imposed restructure which has not been agreed with the workers' union, the GMB. To add insult to injury, some area managers are set to receive pay rises of as much as £9,000 a year as a result of the restructure!
Socialist Party members and TUSC supporters came to support the workers at a lunchtime protest outside Sheffield town hall. Around 100 people attended, including members of the public who stopped by to show support.
We got an enthusiastic response to our petition for Sheffield City Council to adopt a 'No Cuts' budget in 2016, as well as interest in our ideas about how the Labour council could fight the Tory cutbacks instead of meekly carrying them out and forcing workers out on strike to defend their conditions.
There was particular interest in the No Cuts Budget conference we are organising jointly with Sheffield Trades Council and other anti-austerity groups on Saturday 13th February.
GMB regional political organiser Pete Davies pointed out in his speech to the rally that while GMB is affiliated to the Labour Party, the Labour council in Sheffield has refused to negotiate with the union in this dispute, and that this was also the case in other council service sectors.
He warned that by February, if the council is not prepared to seriously negotiate with GMB members it could have strikes on its hands in at least three or four different departments, including recycling and waste management.
Housing workers pledged to continue with strikes if their concerns are not addressed.
This version of this article was first posted on the Socialist Party website on 8 January 2016 and may vary slightly from the version subsequently printed in The Socialist.
David Cameron has announced that his government will directly commission and possibly build 10,000 new homes. He has spun this massive u-turn as a "radical" plan and a "huge shift in government policy".
But even though this shows some acceptance of anger on housing, the policy is woefully inadequate. It will go nowhere near countering the problems facing most of the population.
Like most people who are living in rented accommodation, I have had to deal with a pervasive mould and damp problem, and completely uncaring landlords and estate agents. Any issue you have is dealt with only after three or more complaints, and then it is 'solved' cheaply and without lasting effect.
And most ridiculously of all, the prices we pay for this service are higher than ever. This leads to painful overcrowding in the homes that are available.
Two fifths of Cameron's promised homes are billed as having a discount of 20% for first-time buyers. But Britain's outlandish property market means this will still exclude the majority.
Even if you earn the average national wage of £26,500, 91% of housing in England and Wales would still be beyond your means. A one-fifth discount on a tiny number of new homes is a pitiful reaction to this massive issue.
Even under Thatcher, the state built on average 41,343 council houses - not discounted private houses - every year. Modern Tory policy aims to eradicate what social homes are left after decades of sell-offs. This is the thrust of their housing bill.
The Socialist Party calls for a massive building programme of publicly owned housing with democratically decided rents. We want quality homes that will be affordable for everyone, not investment opportunities for millionaires.
To add insult to injury, multimillionaire Cameron also said he is fearful for the future of his own children. He disingenuously claimed he worries they might not make it onto the housing ladder.
New research shows a record 475,647 homes in England have planning permission but are yet to be built. The Local Government Association (LGA), which represents councils to central government, released the figures on 7 January.
Also, according to the LGA, developers are taking longer to complete work on site. It now takes 32 months, on average, from receiving planning permission to building work being completed. This is 12 months longer than in 2007-08.
Meanwhile the construction industry's forecasted annual recruitment need is up 54% from 2013. But there are 10,000 fewer construction qualifications awarded by colleges, apprenticeships and universities.
Typically, developers and housebuilders blame local planning departments for failing to process quickly enough, and not approving enough applications. This is simply not true.
The number of applications granted permission in 2014-15 was 212,468. This is up from 187,605 in 2007-08, and higher than all previous years. In fact, local authorities approve 90% of all planning applications.
In council workplaces up and down the country, a target-driven culture is becoming the norm. Management applies huge pressure to staff to turn around planning applications more quickly than ever.
Such pressure means that increasingly demoralised and stressed workers become robots. We are focussed only on targets and numbers. We are not able to properly assess developments, to ensure they are well-designed and sustainable.
There are enough properties built on paper - in unimplemented planning permissions - to solve the housing crisis and provide decent homes for everyone. However, capitalism cannot deliver the houses we need, because building is the domain of big business. Bosses are fixated on short-term profit rather than the long-term needs of the majority.
Indeed, developers don't want to actually build the houses we need. If they did, Britain's astonishingly overinflated housing market would crash, and their profits would be hit. They would much rather speculate against the value of the land with planning permissions.
The profit motive has gutted efficiency and led to substandard design and corner-cutting. A socialist plan would nationalise these big construction companies and developers - under the democratic control of workers and the wider community.
Since 2010 local government spending has been slashed by 40%. Countless essential services have been cut to the bone.
Tory chancellor George Osborne, in his Autumn Statement, announced a new round of savagery in 2016 with a massive 8.8% (£2.6 billion) cut in the government grant to local councils.
Osborne can rely upon local councils, including those run by Labour, to implement these cuts. But as the following articles explain there is a clear and practical socialist alternative.
The coalition of City Independents and Tories now running Stoke-on-Trent city council plans to do what Labour refused to do during all the years they have previously been in control.
The coalition is using £15.5 million of reserves to stop further cuts in 2016/17 instead of carrying on with Labour's cuts which have totalled £150 million since 2011.
Labour leader Mohammed Pervez and numerous Labour councillors have told Stoke Socialist Party and Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition election candidates every year that it's not possible to use reserves to stave off cuts!
Tory deputy council leader Abi Brown said: "By using our reserves next year, it will give ourselves a bit of time to do things properly. The government has been quite clear in saying that councils can use their reserves as opposed to slashing services" (Sentinel 14/12/2015).
If Tories and the City Independents can use reserves then never again should Labour councillors be allowed to get away with saying 'we have to carry out cuts, we have no choice'. Council tax bills are also set to be frozen.
But, while using reserves to stop further cuts in 2016/17 is a step forward and will be welcomed by a majority of people across the city, on its own it will not stop the Tory government's remorseless drive to reduce year-on-year the amount of money it provides to local councils.
Neither should we mistake what is meant by the City Independent/Tory council statement that using reserves will "give ourselves a bit of time to do things properly". This effectively means 'balancing the books' by carrying out cuts at a later stage.
Using reserves to stave off immediate cuts is a policy which the Socialist Party has consistently campaigned for over many years and therefore we see it as a step forward in providing at least a temporary respite to the endless cuts suffered by working class people in the city.
But we have also consistently argued that any 'breathing space' provided by the use of reserves should be used to build a serious campaign to demand that the government provides sufficient funds to ensure that jobs and services can be maintained and improved. In other words, a 'people's budget' based on the needs of the 250,000 people who live in our city.
We do not expect that the present Tory/City Independent run council will do this but Labour councillors (still the largest single party) should put forward an alternative budget for 2016/17 which includes the use of reserves to ensure that no cuts are carried out. It should also include the launch of a campaign, involving the city's residents, to agree a people's budget based on our needs and financed by the government.
This version of this article was first posted on the Socialist Party website on 7 January 2016 and may vary slightly from the version subsequently printed in The Socialist.
Lord Porter, Tory chair of the Local Government Association, says that "even if councils stopped filling in potholes, maintaining parks, closed all children's centres, libraries, museums, leisure centres and turned off every street light, they will not have saved enough money to plug the financial black hole they face by 2020."
It's ironic that Tory councillors are starting to openly criticise cuts to local government as Labour administrations, like Tower Hamlets in east London, are keeping on cutting essential services.
Yet again it's the poorest and most vulnerable that will bear the brunt of these cuts if they go ahead. These cuts include: charging for social care, shutting libraries on Sundays, scrapping bursaries for undergraduates and new teachers, cuts to children's centres and early years services... the list goes on.
Cuts to school trips and school crossings are some of the most cowardly proposals.
Mayor John Biggs says that these services won't go as schools can fund them instead. But how many teachers or essential repairs would the schools have to cut in order to keep them?
To add insult to injury Biggs is proposing a 4% increase in council tax alongside the cuts. This is causing real anger.
The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) is campaigning for a no-cuts alternative 'people's budget'. We are working with the Tower Hamlets Independent Group of councillors, as well as local trade unionists and anti-cuts campaigners, to build resistance to the proposed cuts.
TUSC opposes all cuts. This chimes with council workers, local residents and anti-cuts campaigners. Just as Jeremy Corbyn is vilified in the media but has mass support for his pro-working-class, anti-austerity message, we believe it is possible to build a real mass movement against cuts, linking Tower Hamlets up with other cities drawing up alternative budgets.
The only way councillors can stop the huge Tory cuts is to mobilise a mass campaign of the council workforce, local residents and anti-cuts campaigners.
The best way to unite the maximum number of people against government cuts is to refuse to implement them. Those who say we should pick one cut over another as 'realistic' are being divisive.
Council housing, the welfare state and the NHS would never have existed without the courage of people like the Poplar councillors in east London in the 1920s declaring that they would do what is necessary, not what the media and other politicians told them was 'realistic'.
On Saturday 9 January Southampton TUSC (Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition) held a public meeting to support a council budget that meets the genuine needs of the people who live and work in the city.
Before the meeting residents chatted over tea and coffee and had photos taken of them holding signs with messages they had written telling the council what they would like them to do for the people.
Sue Atkins, TUSC, chaired the meeting and explained that throughout December we had been out on the streets asking local people what they would like from the Labour council and encouraging them to complete our budget consultation forms.
Sue then invited the audience to have their say on how they feel about local issues. Topics ranged from cuts to elderly social care provision, the local housing crisis, child poverty in the city, to the closure of five of the city's libraries.
Sean Hoyle, the new RMT transport union president, promised solidarity from the TUSC affiliated union over backing the 'people's budget'. He also said establishment politicians are there to convince 51% of the population that they can have whatever they like in life as the other 49% will pay for it!
Southampton councillor Keith Morrell (who rebelled from Labour over cuts) also spoke. He talked about how people want accountability and a principled stand from their representatives on the local council - instead of doing whatever the government tells them to do.
People don't expect betrayal from those that they voted into a position on the council.
Keith said Southampton Labour council and other councils around the country should stand together and demand that the government return the funding stolen from us.
The Labour Party, including its councillors, should get behind Jeremy Corbyn's, anti-austerity call, on which he was decisively elected Labour leader. We should demand that Labour candidates support the People's Budget. But, Keith doesn't believe that this will happen and Labour could lose in May's local elections. The consequence will be a Tory council in charge of our city.
Nick Chaffey, TUSC, closed the meeting saying that the council should utilise its reserves as a temporary tactic to protect our services. He said TUSC is 100% behind councils opposing the cuts and will stand with Labour councillors that oppose them, but we will not support those who accept them.
The meeting agreed to call a demonstration against the cuts on Saturday 6 February, 12noon outside West Quay, Southampton and to lobby the council on Wednesday 10 February, 1.15pm, Civic Centre, Southampton.
The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) is an electoral alliance involving the RMT transport union, the Socialist Party, other socialist group and leading members of trade unions.
A friend died recently and I was encouraged to take some of his many political books. One I found was Victor: An Unfinished Song by Joan Jara, published by Jonathan Cape in 1983. It tells the story of the years before General Pinochet's coup in Chile in 1973.
Joan, a British ballet dancer, first married another Chilean, then divorced and came to know the songwriter and poet Victor Jara. In Chile in the 1960s and early 1970s they live the political struggle to change society.
Victor is now internationally known. He has travelled throughout Latin America collecting folk sounds and musical instruments which would otherwise have been lost.
In these travels he mixes mostly with his own kind: the poorest, those with least. He is a poet, musician, actor, theatre director and Communist Party member. When possible, both he and Joan supported trade union struggles.
Victor had been to the Soviet Union. He had dedicated an album of songs to the people of Vietnam who were fighting US imperialism. And he had met with Che Guevara in Cuba after the revolution there.
In September 1970, Salvador Allende is the presidential candidate for the left-wing electoral alliance Popular Unity. He wins 36.3% of the vote, against 34.9% for the right-wing candidate and 27.4% for the Christian Democrat. Despite the right's attempts to prevent it, Chile's congress confirms Allende as president.
In the next few years, Allende introduces major reforms in favour of the working class. More than half of the economy, however, remains owned by the capitalist class, with US imperialism behind it. Also, the state machine - the unelected heads of the civil service and judiciary, and the armed bodies of men who defend them - is left untouched.
The signs that there can be no "co-habitation" between left and right are all there. Bosses organise informal sabotage of Allende's economy. There is a failed military coup attempt; secret stockpiling of weapons; demands for new powers for the military to search workplaces.
Just three years of Popular Unity proved too much for the capitalists.
Joan admits that "everyone understands that we are fighting for our lives, but we don't seem to know by what means, with what weapons." She recalls "the sense of a terrible threat hanging over us for which we were completely unprepared especially as it never seemed clear what form the danger would take."
The Communist Party, despite widespread support, had failed to understand and prepare for the coming, inevitable showdown.
The coup of 11 September 1973 was planned in detail and carried out without pity. Thousands died. Victor is recognised, arrested, tortured and killed.
Her British passport allows Joan to escape; thousands of other leftists flee to Europe. The UK government, far from being "against fascism" recognises the new military dictatorship at the earliest opportunity.
Before he died, in captivity, already injured, Victor Jara wrote a last poem, his unfinished song. When the workers of Chile and the world put an end to poverty, hunger and inequality, they will finish that song.
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The New Year release of cabinet papers from 30 years ago is not the first time Oliver Letwin has been exposed as one of the most right-wing of Thatcher's 'advisers'. Last year it was over the poll tax.
As reported in the Guardian (30 December 2014), cabinet ministers like Nigel Lawson and Douglas Hurd voiced opposition to Thatcher's flat-rate tax, foreseeing mass resistance to such a harsh attack on working people.
But 29-year-old policy adviser Letwin pushed for Thatcher's flagship local government policy - initially known as the 'residence charge' - to be tried out in Scotland first. This confirmed the charge, the paper said, that Thatcher treated people there as "guinea pigs".
Pushing ahead on that option was Thatcher's gravest mistake. 18 million people refused to pay, backed up and organised by the anti-poll tax unions. Militant, forerunner of the Socialist, was to the fore. The defeat of the poll tax spelled her downfall.
Who knows what next year will reveal?
I was reading some of the information released about Thatcher's government, and wondered if anything has ever been found proving the poll tax riot (1990) was set up.
In the national steel strike (1980) we experienced people turning up at peaceful picket lines and causing trouble. We all felt it was being set up to discredit the strike.
My neighbours were part of a coachload of people who went to London for the anti-poll tax march. Half the coach was filled with pensioners. Les and Edna said they parked the coach and joined the march and it was all very friendly.
But later as they walked, they heard chanting and shouts. On one side of the road the police parted ranks and about 100 'yobs', as Edna called them, came out of a side street.
After that the mood changed completely and people became worried, so about half of their group decided to return to their coach - but they were stopped. The police line at the back of the march refused to let them leave the march.
Les and Edna were pensioners, there were people with pushchairs and kids - surely letting people go away from any trouble was a good idea? They were forced down the road until they couldn't move. People were crying. 'Shameful' is the term they used to describe how they were treated.
I would love to hear evidence that the disruption and violence was down to Thatcher. Who were these 'yobs' who appeared from nowhere with ease and changed the atmosphere from peaceful protest to riot?
The shocking attacks on scores of women in Cologne, where up to 1,000 North African or 'Arab-looking' men were said to be on the rampage, brought the inevitable baying from the far right and a backlash from the establishment media and politicians. As so often happens, where political capital can be made, the victims have become almost secondary.
These terrifying attacks should not be dismissed: Cologne police took statements on assaults from over 500 women - many of whom were subjected to terrifying sexual attacks. But the ensuing media outcry and political debate has not been about this sexist violence.
It is unlikely that the real truth will prevail, which is why Sozialistische Alternative (SAV - CWI, Germany) is demanding an independent inquiry.
Ultra-right groups and violent racists have attempted to seize the initiative, exploiting popular fears. Last Sunday (10 January) far-right gangs in Cologne attacked foreigners, including Pakistanis, Syrians and a group of Africans. Police arrested hundreds of far-right thugs rampaging through Leipzig.
An anti-asylum seeker demo in Cologne called by the xenophobic Pegida movement attracted around 1,500 people, mostly neo-Nazi hooligans. A counter-demo organised by the Left mobilised 4,000 people. Many racist arson attacks on asylum seekers' hostels are going unreported in the media.
Right-wing nationalists like the Alternative for Germany party (AfD, who currently are around 10% in opinion polls) and Pegida, who organised some alarmingly big racist marches in 2015, quickly blamed Chancellor Merkel's apparently 'soft' approach to the refugee crisis and almost gleefully claimed vindication of their opposition to the borders being opened (albeit temporarily) last summer.
Criticism also came from Merkel's own Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party: "Urgently needed: reduction of influx, secure borders, intensifying of deportations and meaningful justice," tweeted one CDU MP.
Before a single culprit was identified there was talk of the "clash of cultures", a "wholly macho culture" and "people living in the Middle Ages" and the finger pointed at the Muslim refugees who arrived over the last five months.
There are many reasons to feel this is unlikely: the attackers were said to be drunk, threw firecrackers (a widespread German tradition) and they knew the best areas to target. All of this displays a good degree of 'assimilation' into western 'culture'.
According to observers it was an apparently coordinated attack. It would not be unusual for gangs of pickpockets to target big gatherings, but the figure of 1,000 attackers has been refuted.
A more likely figure is under 200, possibly many from North Africa, not refugees from Syria or Iraq.
In fact, once infringement of residency and asylum laws are eliminated (which might include visiting a family member in a different area), non-German residents are generally less likely to commit crime than Germans. So it is inexcusable that a Green Party mayor Boris Palmer should again be calling for tougher asylum laws, arguing that "petty criminals going through the refugee process feel there's practically nothing to fear from German law".
He, like the Minister for Home Affairs Thomas de Maizière (CDU), has raised the possibility of deportations - including changing the law to allow repatriation to countries where the life of the refugee is at risk.
Thus the terror experienced by young women wanting to see in the New Year with their friends is being cynically used to fuel the increasing tensions over refugees.
The police have been criticised for their abject failure to stop the attacks or arrest assailants. The city's police chief was forced into early retirement over his handling of the assaults. One spokesperson admitted "perhaps they downplayed reports of a slap on the bum"!
Cologne mayor Reker has announced security would be stepped up for the "crazy days" of next month's carnival, but she played into the hands of the racists by adding: "We will also have to explain our carnival better to people from other cultures".
But visitors to the Rhineland carnivals or the Munich October beer festival will know that drunken loutish behaviour is not uncommon. There were over 2,000 police interventions reported at the last beer festival and one multiple rape.
Countless young women have been sexually harassed at festivals, discos and places frequented by drunken young men. Often the 'law and order brigade' are the first to blame rape victims for being drunk and 'provocative'.
In this case the race supremacists are hypocritically denigrating the victims again as "our women violated" by Arabs. Women should be able to feel safe in public spaces. Racism and sexism are twin evils - and we need to fight both of them.
Before the Cologne violence the migration issue was already causing tension, with a rise in racist attacks and marches. Now it has spiralled to another level, furthering polarisation and escalating violence.
The left, particularly Die Linke (the Left party), has to act to explain what happened in Cologne and bring together the women's movement, anti-racist movement and trade unions to explain and educate on the questions of sexism and racism. This must be in conjunction with organising against racist violence and building a movement to cut across a rise in right-wing nationalism.
* Sue, a Socialist Party member in Gloucestershire, worked with refugees in Germany and was a Sozialistische Alternative member for over 20 years
The Committee for a Workers' International (CWI) is the socialist international organisation to which the Socialist Party is affiliated.
The CWI is organised in 45 countries and works to unite the working class and oppressed peoples against global capitalism and to fight for a socialist world.
The recent execution of 47 prisoners by Saudi Arabia's rulers has been widely condemned as barbaric. These killings have also ratcheted up tensions with the oil-rich state's main regional political rival - Iran.
The latter's regime has issued warnings over the killing of Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, a prominent political opponent of the Saudi Arabian Sunni regime.
Saudi's ruling clique, which executed 151 people last year (mostly for non-violent drugs offences), has said the executions were of "terrorists". But the country's repressive judicial system is notorious for witch-hunting the regime's critics, especially among its Shia minority community.
Iran on its part is equally notorious for its regular executions of political opponents since the country's 1979 revolution.
The two regional powers were already in conflict, with their proxy wars being fought in Syria and Yemen.
Since the executions the Saudi Arabian embassy in Tehran, Iran, has been firebombed, while Tehran has accused Saudi Arabia of "intentionally" bombing its embassy in the Yemen capital, Sanaa.
This deepening antagonism has polarised the region's ruling classes.
Despite the feudal-rulers of Saudi Arabia having one of the worst human rights records of any country on the planet, UK Tory Prime Minister David Cameron remained tight-lipped in condemning the latest spate of executions.
The Foreign Office merely expressed "concern". Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond suggested there was little point condemning the executions, since it wouldn't change the minds of Saudi's rulers.
One year ago Cameron, along with a host of other Western 'democratic' leaders, jetted off to Saudi Arabia to attend the funeral of the country's absolute monarch King Abdullah and endorse the succession of his half-brother Prince Salman to the throne.
The Tory government's reluctance to criticise the House of Saud has a lot to do with lucrative arms and other trades deals with Britain, as well as Saudi Arabia's vast oil reserves.
The regime is also a key regional power broker, vital to western governments' geo-political interests in the Middle East.
Last October, on Channel 4 news, David Cameron repeatedly refused to answer questions on Britain's secret security pact with Saudi Arabia (which saw both countries elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council).
Cameron eventually conceded that the British government "has a relationship with Saudi Arabia" which means "we receive from them important intelligence and security information".
Cameron also admitted that he personally had not intervened in the widely publicised case of 17-year-old Ali Mohammed al-Nimr (nephew of Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr), arrested during the Arab Spring protests three years ago and who faces execution.
Saudi Arabia is dependent for 90% of its revenues on oil sales. However, the collapse in world oil prices has resulted in the country's budget deficit ballooning to an enormous 15% of GDP last year, gouging $100 billion of its $650 billion of foreign reserves.
In turn, this has prompted spending cuts and hikes in petrol, electricity and water prices.
A combination of cutting subsidies and increasing taxes on the population can only deepen discontent within the kingdom.
Undoubtedly it is the fear of widening internal dissent that in part lays behind the recent mass executions and the regime's clampdown on 'terrorism'.
The executions also reflect Saudi leaders' anger at the western powers' rapprochement with Iran over its nuclear programme - forgetting that it has been the continual support of the West that has kept the House of Saud in power.
On Friday 22 January, protests will take place outside Honduran embassies and consulates all over Europe over the increase in violent attacks and human rights violations directed at lawyers and democratic rights activists in Honduras.
Between 2010 and March 2015 there were 91 deaths of lawyers as a result of targeted killings.
In London, lawyers, paralegals and campaigners, with the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, will hand in a petition on behalf of the Honduran lawyers and other law professionals to the Honduran Ambassador.
Protest 22 January 2016 at 12noon at the Honduran Embassy, 115 Gloucester Place, London W1U 6JT. Nearest tube: Baker Street.
Members of the Scottish teachers' union EIS took strike action at five secondary schools across West Dunbartonshire on 12 January, in defence of education services threatened by the Labour council's "restructuring" of school management.
West Dunbartonshire Labour council plans to cut the number of principal teachers it employs leading to the loss of specialist heads of department.
This loss of expertise, as the strike leaflet produced by the local association explains, will lead to one "faculty principal" being responsible for a range of subjects - that can be quite unrelated like PE and home economics - some of which they have no previous knowledge of.
The local governors association, responding to teacher anger, has campaigned against these proposals culminating in the solid picket lines and strike action.
There is growing awareness among other education workers, the wider community and parents that this "restructuring" is in reality cuts to education and is damaging to children's secondary school experience.
The council is coming under severe public pressure. From 13 January, teachers will work-to-rule and there is a mandate for further strike action to come in February, if the council does not change course.
Eva, EIS school rep at Clydebank High School, told the Socialist: "We are determined through this strike action that the council and education services managers get the message after being forced to close the schools to pupils. 88% of us voted for this strike".
After well attended picket lines at all five schools, hundreds of teachers and supporters packed into Clydebank town hall for a mass meeting.
The gathering was chaired by Jim Halfpenny EIS West Dunbartonshire joint secretary and Socialist Party Scotland member.
Jim read out messages of solidarity and support that had poured in since the strike date was announced.
EIS general secretary Larry Flanagan pointed to both Labour and the SNP's rhetoric over "protecting" education. He contrasted this with the reality of cuts biting and significantly said local authority unions need to unite and fight together against the latest round of cuts. Socialist Party Scotland believes the fightback by West Dunbartonshire should be taken up by the union on a national level.
The mood in the room was determined, with many focused contributions on how the union can step up its media and parent engagement campaign and make the work-to-rule fully effective. This week's council Labour group meeting will be lobbied by teachers.
Jim Halfpenny closed the rally by raising the need to link this strike with the wider struggle against austerity, coming from the Tories and implemented by the Scottish government and councils. Reflecting the fighting spirit, all in the room stood up together, and applauded.
Socialist Party Scotland raised the example of Glasgow and Dundee where local authority unions are campaigning for no-cuts budgets. Trade unions including EIS also urgently need to coordinate industrial action, mass protests at budget setting meetings and a conference to plan a national campaign against the cuts.
Unite members employed as meter operatives in London began five days of strike action on 11 January. Pickets at EDF headquarters in Bexleyheath, Kent formed a determined barrier to block vehicles entering the building, leading to massive traffic congestion.
Angry managers pleaded with pickets to move. When this failed, the company called the police. When they arrived the police entered into debate about the merits of trade union membership and complained that they were not allowed to strike - saying they hoped this changed soon!
The strike is in protest at extended weekend and evening working, performance management, failure to stick to agreements, on the spot drug and alcohol checks, increased CRB checks and tracker devices on vehicles. Where these issues are covered by agreements, the employer has said it will rip them up!
Recent talks at Acas broke up when the employer constantly added new controversial items each time an agreement was near - frustrating not just the Unite negotiators but Acas too. One striker said: "We were prepared to talk but instead of talking the employer came back with ridiculous demands!"
Spirits on the picket line were kept very high by playing cat and mouse with the employer who had assigned managers to follow the pickets - presumably to act as the most obvious bugging devices in the history of espionage.
Once the pickets realised they were being followed, they simply walked around and around the depot - with the manager following!
Despite the antics of the employer this is a very important dispute. The employer is out to break the union at EDF - which is why Unite will be escalating strike action and campaign activity to ensure a workers victory.
The Socialist would like to congratulate victimised CWU (postal workers' union) union rep John Vasey who has been reinstated to his workplace at Wakefield Royal Mail delivery office. John was sacked on 21 August on a charge connected with non-delivery of election material and had been removed from duty on 1 May, and then suspended for three months.
On his reinstatement John has said: "This is a great success. I have to give massive praise to the Socialist Party and its intervention and work through NSSN played a very good role in the campaign and is now a respected organisation among Wakefield postal workers."
He finished by reiterating support for fellow victimised CWU rep Clive Walder and his reinstatement campaign. There will be more in next week's issue of the Socialist.
The RMT has announced a new series of strike action on London Underground grades in two separate disputes over pay and night tube and the plans to bulldoze through massive cuts to station staffing numbers. The walkouts are on 27 January, 16 February and 18 February. RMT General Secretary Mick Cash said: "RMT members are furious at the bodged introduction of the mayor's Night Tube plans and the fact that they have been tied in with a pay deal that has left our members dangling on a string and out of pocket since April last year. RMT supports the principle of a properly worked out Night Tube service introduced through agreement with the unions. But the abject failure to work through the detail has forced us to name a programme of further industrial action." The RMT and other tube unions shut the network down completely in July 2015.
Lambeth Libraries staff have voted overwhelmingly for strike action to save jobs and keep all ten libraries open. Staff voted 89% to strike against plans to close libraries and cut jobs. Unison will now be discussing extended strike action with workers in the borough. This strike vote follows a significant community campaign to keep the libraries open as well as a walk out by staff in December.
Socialist Party members in Birmingham have recently been focusing on campaigning on the Socialist. This has resulted in an increase in sales over a short space of time. Members suggested various ideas on how our branch could achieve this and hopefully our points may help other branches around the country!
The first task was to check that all members in the branch had signed up to receive the paper by subscription and if not ask if they can - by emphasising the importance of supporting the Socialist.
With mainstream media being controlled by the right-wing establishment and information being cherry picked to support capitalist interests, it is imperative, now more than ever, to support and actively promote a publication which is in the interests of the working class.
Birmingham members are also now more consciously ensuring they carry papers at all times. So, if in conversation with someone at home, work or in general daily life, interest is shown by the other person, a member is able to sell them a paper straight away. Not only does this help with the sales but it also helps spread our ideas to a wider audience.
Another great opportunity for increased sales is through our campaigning stalls.
At branch meetings we are reminding members to push paper sales and especially not to be afraid of asking for the solidarity price of £2 - if you don't ask you won't get! This has significantly helped recently with our latest Saturday stall selling 15 papers.
Lastly, we are arranging a meeting specifically to discuss the history of the paper and its importance to the party. By remembering the role the paper has played in defending working people and the 99%, we hope to inspire people to go out and spread their passion for the Socialist.
On 9 January around 40 members from across the country travelled to London to attend the Socialist Party's annual national women's meeting. It's an event I always eagerly anticipate, and this year was no exception.
The discussion kicked off with an excellent first session on Jeremy Corbyn and looked at what fresh political developments may mean for women in 2016.
George Osborne's proposed £10 billion of budget cuts will hit women hardest as they struggle disproportionately with rising childcare costs, domestic violence and low pay.
Next, there was an important discussion on the role women workers played in the rise of 'New Unionism' in the 1880s. That period saw the fight for a broader trade union movement that organised women and unskilled workers for the first time.
The key dispute that ignited that struggle was the London matchgirls strike in 1888, who despite being the most down-trodden group of workers were able to score a great victory.
These developments were the foundations of the modern trade union movement today and ultimately lead to the formation of the Labour Party, then a political voice for the working class - something we vitally need today.
The final session covered current trends and ideas in the women's movement, such as identity politics and intersectionality, which focus on the different forms of oppression in society and how they interact.
Reflectively, the meeting itself did not just represent women but also members of ethnic minorities and the LGBT and disabled communities.
Socialist Party members, like the rest of the population, do not fit neatly into boxes but face a variety of oppressions created by the capitalist system.
We discussed how as socialists we do not allow ourselves to be divided by those differences. Instead we are united in our shared need to break the chains of oppression and understand that it is only by the whole of the working class standing together that we can achieve this.
Celebrate the 160th anniversary of the birth of Eleanor Marx who played a pivotal role in the development of the trade union movement, the birth of the Labour Party and as a tireless fighter for working class people, especially women, all over the globe. The event will include speeches from Rachel Holmes, Author of Eleanor Marx: A life (Radio 4 book of the week) and Hannah Sell, deputy general secretary of the Socialist Party. Performances by Townsend Productions and an exhibition of photographs entilted 'Women in struggle'. All the family welcome. Refreshments available.
To hear an audio version of this document click here.
What the Socialist Party stands for
The Socialist Party fights for socialism – a democratic society run for the needs of all and not the profits of a few. We also oppose every cut, fighting in our day-to-day campaigning for every possible improvement for working class people.
The organised working class has the potential power to stop the cuts and transform society.
As capitalism dominates the globe, the struggle for genuine socialism must be international.
The Socialist Party is part of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI), a socialist international that organises in many countries.
To hear an audio version of this document click here.
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/22018