Up to 20,000 people at any one time could be fined or have their benefit stopped completely for not 'properly or effectively searching for work'. The result of all this, boasts Lilley, will be 8 billion pounds stolen from the poor. Now he is even talking about 'localised' benefit where the amount you receive would be dependent on where you live. That would mean big cuts in areas of greatest hardship. It would mean a system like the Poor Law of the 19th century. Yet while the Tories hunt for every penny from benefits, they allow water company bosses to seize vast pay rises and look on as the banks prepare to announce profits of 10 billion pounds. It is more vital than ever that we build a fight against the Tories.
THE LONDON Ambulance Service needs more money. That is a key finding of an inquiry by William Wells, chair of the health authority responsible for the service since last April.
The inquiry was launched after 11 year old Nasima Begum died last June. She lay screaming in agony while her family made five 999 calls. But it took 53 minutes for an ambulance to arrive and by then it was too late. Ambulance workers and their unions have long warned the service was starved of cash and predicted dire consequences.
This inquiry follows the 1992 scandal when a new computer system for dispatching ambulances collapsed. Workers had warned the new system would be a disaster. It had to be abandoned with management blamed for putting lives at risk.
Now the London Ambulance Service has been left with 'totally inadequate' technology according to the latest inquiry. Workers have to hold information about the location of up to 70 ambulances in their heads. Despite this health minister Tom Sackville wrote congratulating the health authority running the London Ambulance Service just three months before Nasima's death.
Now they say the health authority has to take responsibility for any failures. Phil Thompson, London region spokesperson for the public sector UNISON union, says, "Ministers seem to be blaming everyone but themselves."
The inquiry blames the current mess on the South West Thames Regional Health Authority which used to run the service and the special committee set up after the computer collapse. But it also tries to blame workers, saying they should be forced to change their shift patterns and that the London Ambulance Service should become an NHS trust.
This is no answer. Only two thirds of London ambulances turn up for emergencies within 14 minutes of a 999 call. The only solution is for the Tories to provide better funding and more ambulances. As Nasima's sister says, "The only thing we want to hear is that no other person will be allowed to die waiting for an ambulance."
FOUR NHS patients have died at a private psychiatric hospital in the last five months amid allegations of excessive use of tranquillising drugs. A report on Kneesworth House Hospital, Hertfordshire, by London's City and Hackney Health Authority found a 'factory' approach to disturbed patients and the use of 'custodial techniques.' Private psychiatric hospitals made 129 million pounds profit out of NHS patients last year.
"WE WANT the demonstration to be as big as possible. We don't want any more racist attacks.' That's what one member of the family of murdered Asian shopkeeper Mohan Singh Kullar said this week. Mohan died after being savagely beaten by racist thugs in Neath, south Wales, at the end of last year.
His family's call to support the 'South Wales Unite Against Racism demonstration on 28 January is getting a marvellous response. Cardiff buses TGWU shop stewards' committee is backing the march. One steward says, "In 19 years I can't remember our branch committee supporting a demonstration of any kind until this one. Representing a multiracial workforce we feel it is important for trade unionists to be in the forefront of the fight against racism."
A student at Neath Further Education College where both students and lecturers will take part says, "I feel angry at such an injustice. I want the community to give theKullar family support and to condemn racism." And a Neath nurse says, "The attack was absolutely sickening. We have to ensure that it doesn't happen again."
March sponsors include: Peter Hain MPfor Neath and four other MPs, Glenys Kinnock MEP, Plaid Cymru, AntiNazi League, 11 local union branches, Cardiff Trades Council,University of Cardiff Students Union and Labour Students Society, seven local councillors, West Glamorgan Race Equality Council, Castle Ward Labour Party, Vibes record store, Neath and Dyfed Road Health Centre.
No more racist murders Wales national demonstration Assemble Sat 28 Jan, 12 noon, Cardiff City Hall, National Museum of Wales Called by South Wales Unite Against Racism
THE TRIAL of John Rutter, accused of taking part in the attack on Quddus Ali in east London in September 1993, began this week. Qudduswas kicked unconscious and repeatedly stamped on in an 'exceedingly nasty and vicious' attack by a gang of white youths, the court heard. He suffered a brain haemorrhage and was taken to the intensive care unit of the local hospital.
The attack on Quddus and his four friends came two weeks before Derek Beackon was elected Britain's first Nazi BNP councillor on the Isle of Dogs. One of those attacked with Quddus told the court that one attacker "came near me and punched me in the face. He was swearing, "Eff you, Paki"
THE TORIES are trying to deport two children to Zaire even though they witnessed the torture and murder of their father. Nine year old Bunza Eseko and her 12 year old brother Biango Mbumba face being thrown out next month.
"If we go back to Zaire they will kill us because they killed our father,"says Mbumba. He describes how soldiers of the Western backed regime of General Mobuto came to his house: " "They kicked our father, put a knife in his body and then shot him. I was watching, hiding in the kitchen."
The guardian of the two traumatised children, their elder sister Nkose Bugundi, was released this week after seven months in a detention centre at Gatwick airport. Last year she was arrested on suspicion of social security fraud and thrown in jail. The case was dismissed by the court but the Home Office then ordered the deportation of the whole family.
The government even ignored its own 'independent adjudicator'who said the three should stay. A massive campaign has forced the Tories to delay the deportations. Now campaigners want action from local MP Michael Portillo whose own father was a refugee from death and tyranny in fascist Spain.
TEN ROAD protesters have shared M-#50,000 damages from Hampshire police for wrongful arrest at demonstrations against the M3 at Twyford Down. Another 40 cases are on the way and the total bill could cost police 500,000 pounds. Yet many who have won their cases are currently being sued by the Department of Transport for delaying the motorway. The case, due in court later this year, could bankrupt them all.
PRODUCERS of the Channel 4 soap Brookside acted shamefully in dropping a lesbian kiss from the Saturday evening edition of the programme. They caved in to the anti-gay prejudice of the right wing press, despite the lesbian storyline 'that has been running for a year' attracting just 14 complaints from five million viewers.
These papers consider the violence of a children's series like Power Rangers or a James Bond film acceptable 'family entertainment'. They push images of young women as sex objects daily, but would happily see young people grow up ignorant and unhappy about the realities of sex.
HIGH STREET banks are set to announce record profits of 10 billion pounds a 50 percent increase from last year. Barclays is predicted to make profits of 2 billion pounds up 300 percent. They are growing rich from the misery of People in the Third World suffering poverty, disease and starvation as their governments slash social provisions to repay huge debts.
Ordinary customers who are ripped off. We pay 50percent extra in bank charges since the 1990 recession began. Thousands of bank workers who have been sacked.
THE CHILD Support Agency has included a 14 year old girl's 94p a week interest from a National Savings account in its assessment of her divorced father's income. Tory minister Alistair Burt admitted it was government policy to count children's savings and pocket money in maintenance assessments.
NHS TRUST bosses have received rises of up to 27.8 percent according to pay monitors Incomes Data Services. Chief executives were awarded an average 6.6 percent while the pay of other NHS workers was held to the Tory's 1.5 percent pay limit.
PRIVATE companies providing courses for 400,000 long term unemployed people have been ordered to spy on trainees to uncover benefit 'fraud'. The government has warned it will withdraw contracts with any that do not comply. One training consultant who pulled out of the scheme says, 'Ministers want a network of informers.'
WATER BOSSES have given themselves rises of up to 571 percent since privatisation. Twenty five senior water company directors each became at least 500,000 pounds better off. Five became millionaires. Meanwhile, 150,000 jobs across the privatised utilities are under threat.
MAJOR'S GOVERNMENT is just over half way through its official term of office and the Tories this week produced a list of 100 claimed 'achievements'. In fact, the only thing they have accomplished is to make the rich richer at the expense of the poor.
Millions are angry, fearful and bitter at what the Tories are doing to their lives. They are anxious about their jobs and homes, about the state of the NHS and the future of their children. We have put up with Major for far too long.
But the Tories will not simply collapse by themselves, and it is no use hoping Tony Blair's New Labour will come to the rescue. An election could be more than two years away, and every day Blair makes clear a Labour government will not even begin to repair the damage the Tories have done.
This week he refused even to commit Labour to renationalise the railways. Fortunately we do not have to rely on Blair or wait for him. It is possible to turn the widespread anger at the Tories into protests right now. Teachers and parents showed the way. Their campaign to maintain the boycott of Tory school tests took off over the past week.
Similar campaigns are possible over countless issues that rarely make the national news from local council cuts and hospital closures, to protests at the Criminal Justice Act and efforts to rebuild unions. Building these protests is the best way to ensure Major does not survive. It is also the best way to build the kind of grassroots organisation and struggle necessary to defend ordinary people, whoever is in government.
THE RESPONSE of the West to Russia's war against Chechenia shows the utter hypocrisy of the ruling class. When Britain, the US and other powers saw their oil interests threatened by Iraq, they launched the Gulf War under the pretext of defending 'poor little' Kuwait.
Kuwait is an entirely artificial country in which the majority of people have no rights whatever. Chechenia, by contrast, has long suffered brutal national oppression at the hands of Russia's rulers.
Its people have shown their commitment to winning national rights by their resistance to the invasion. Yet all Western governments have done is express 'concern' and call on Russian ruler Yeltsin to show 'restraint'.
The truth is that the world's rulers only use force, dressed up in talk of 'freedom' and 'democracy', to protect their own interests. They expect fellow rulers to do the same in their 'backyards', and never mind the rights of ordinary people.
NEWSPAPERS HAVE once again devoted page after page to tittle-tattle about the royals from tiffs on the ski slopes to the latest turn in the Camillagate saga. What most fail to mention is the growing contempt ordinary people have for the royal family.
An opinion poll in the Guardian this week showed a majority now believe the royals are a waste of money and the government should slash its handouts to them. Almost one in three think we should get rid of the royals altogether another third are not bothered.
If we lived in any kind of real democracy the government would now have to stop paying millions to these parasites. That it does not says a lot about just how undemocratic this society really is.
IN AN astonishing move, South Korean president Kim Young Sam has been awarded the 1994 Martin Luther King Prize for "non-violence and peace". Yet Kim's government operates a police state. It continues to jail socialists, trade unionists and other opposition figures.
America's Martin Luther King Centre, founded in honour of the murdered black civil rights leader, has clearly been taken in by Kim's claims that South Korea is now a democracy. It justifies the award saying, "President Kim has fearlessly struggled for liberty." He is the first civilian president for 30 years, it is true, and was formerly an opponent of Korea's military regime. But Kim effectively surrendered to the military rulers in 1990 when he allied his opposition party to theirs.
Since becoming president in 1993 he has behaved little better than past dictators. Last summer Kim mobilised helicopters to put down strikes and demonstrations. Right now 436 people are in prison on political charges. Some 363 people including 36 members of the International Socialists of South Korea were charged with violating the notorious National Security Law in 1994. This was a sevenfold increase on the previous year. They face long prison terms.
Kim's government claims the National Security Law is used only to counter the supposed threat from North Korea. At the same time it allows South Korean bosses to travel to North Korea to do business and South Korean companies to employ cheap North Korean labour.
Amnesty, the organisation which campaigns for prisoners of conscience, reports such charges are brought against people "merely exercising their rights to freedom of expression and association". "In practice", it says, "the law is us supposed to watch over. They include Tom King, a former defence minister and Northern Ireland secretary.
Others are Sir Archibald Hamilton, a former armed services minister, and Sir Giles Shaw, another former Northern Ireland minister. Most incredible of all though is the presence on the committee of Michael Mates. Mates, you may recall, had to resign as a minister after his connection with crooked millionaire Tory businessman Asil Nadir came to light.
Mates, a former army officer, also has a long record of working very closely with British 'intelligence', especially during his period as a minister in Northern Ireland.
REMEMBER Patrick Nicholls? He was the Tory MP who had to resign as vice-chair of the party before Christmas after making disparaging remarks about the French and Germans. There are some foreigners Nicholls is keen on though. He is chair of the all party parliamentary group on Indonesia and last September went on a free junket to the country.
Now he claims Indonesia's brutal military dictator General Suharto has 'raised the condition of its people' and dismisses as exaggeration criticism of the regime's record in East Timor. Indonesian troops have killed over 200,000 people, a third of the East Timorese population, since they occupied East Timor in 1975.
JIM MARTIN is quitting as head of the Scottish teachers and lecturers EIS union. After presiding over a string of sell outs in recent years he is changing sides. His new job is as 'human resources director' (that's management speak for personnel director) for the Scottish Amicable insurance company.
SOME TOP Tories are in a state of utter panic about what could happen at the next election. Defence secretary Malcolm Rifkind spoke to a meeting of young Tories at the exclusive Carlton Club recently. Apparently he was worried about suffering the same fate as the Canadian Tories who were wiped out in the country's last election. "You know what happened there," Rifkind told his audience. "Two seats! That's what we face."
HOW LOW can the Tories get? Recent Tory local by-election performances are plumbing new depths. In east London's Lansbury ward the Tories managed just 24 votes. Also last month the Tories managed a magnificent 14 votes in a local election in Dumbarton. They were helped by a candidate who said, "I don't even know if I'm still a member of the Tory party." Socialist Worker would be happy to hear from readers if the Tories have managed to beat even these lows in your area.
COLLEGE lecturers may be interested to hear the advice of Labour shadow home secretary Jack Straw on theses for up to 15 years if found guilty.
Tony Budge is a nice chap. He has recently set up a new firm exporting arms to the Third World. At the centre of the investigation into the collapsed firm is a bizarre string of investment in yachts, racehorses, London Docklands office blocks and even a Scud missile.
Richard Budge's interesting business history has not stopped the Tories allowing him to take over Britain's coal mines. Last week he completed the takeover of all of British Coal's English pits. He is not in court because he resigned as a director of the doomed family firm a few months before it collapsed. His move has obviously caused some family bitterness, with brother Tony thinking Richard should be in the dock too. "Everything the company did was carried by unanimous decision of the board", he says.
IT'S UNUSUAL, to say the least, for any socialist to receive a lengthy and generally friendly obituary in the Financial Times. Yet such was the fate of Joe Slovo, chair of the South African Communist Party and minister of housing in Nelson Mandela's government, who died on Thursday last week. Slovo, the bosses paper declared , was a giant of the anti-apartheid struggle and a communist revolutionary turned pragmatist."
Undoubtedly Slovo was a giant. The child of poor Lithuanian Jews who emigrated to South Africa in the 1930s, he joined the Communist Party (SACP) at the age of 16 in 1942. He and his first wife, the brilliant writer Ruth First, were among the small but heroic group . "The economy of South Africa that day after the ANC flag flies over the Union Buildings in Pretoria will be exactly the same as the day before," he declared in February 1990. So how could political change win jobs and houses for ordinary blacks?
Traditionally the SACP had seen socialism as a "second stage" of the struggle, coming after the fall of apartheid. The party's vision of socialism was provided by the Soviet Union, to which it remained doggedly loyal almost to the very end. In an interview not long before his death, Slovo described how First had been "sidelined" for her criticisms of Stalinism. That stage, independence was just not tolerated." Slovo kept quiet about his own "doubts, which were growing and growing", in order to "continue to contribute to the struggle".
Only after the 1989 revolutions had swept away the East European regimes did Slovo publish a pamphletM-PHas Socialism Failed? in which he denounced the crimes of Stalinism. Till his death Slovo continued to attack the misery wreaked by capitalism. But he was no longer sure about what to put in its place. "Socialism can come later," he joked at a dinner party, "when I have worked out what it is."
In practice, during the long negotiations between the ANC and the National Party, Slovo became the leading advocate of compromise between the mass movement on the one hand, and big business and the state on the other. It was he who persuaded the ANC to accept the idea of "sunset clauses" temporary concessions to white interests like the five year Government of National Unity that binds the ANC and the National Party in coalition.
IF PRISONS cut crime, why has reported crime risen 250 percent under the Tories despite the biggest prison building programme in over 100 years? Why is crime rising in the USA when its prison population is up from 300,000 in 1980 to over one million today?
Prison does not work. Two thirds of people who go to prison are back inside within two years. By contrast, 88 percent of young people cautioned by the police rather than prosecuted and jailed are never picked up again. But the Tories aim to send more people to jail, especially the young.
Those in jail are overwhelmingly young, working class, unskilled, unemployed, poorly educated, often homeless, disturbed and victims of discrimination. One in three prisoners have been in council care, almost as many have mental health problems and at least half had problems at school. Probation officers report young offenders are "often destitute, barely able to subsist". Around 70 percent of those convicted last year were unemployed. The Tories' own chief inspector of prisons, Judge Stephen Tumim, says "80 percent of inmates are not dangerous. They are desperately in need of education, of a crash course in becoming members of society."
It is Tory policies that have excluded so many from society in the first place denying them jobs, homes, benefits, hope.
Almost 25 percent of all those sent to prison are fine defaulters. One in four are on remand they have not been tried. Two out of five are inside for petty offences fraud, drugs, handling stolen goods. The resulting overcrowding means people cannot serve their sentences near their homes and that wives, lovers, children, parents cannot easily visit them.
It means prison conditions are more disgusting than ever and tensions continually rising. It also means that more disturbed and sometimes dangerous inmates are spread around the system to jails not designed for them. Howard insists on "austere regimes" that deny inmates "privileges" like watching TV and access to telephones. He has cut prisoners' rights to parole and visits home for those nearing the end of their sentences. Now Howard has instituted a crackdown on drugs, which means increased harassment when all the evidence is that tolerance of drugs by prison regimes keeps a kind of peace.
He and his predecessor Kenneth Clarke now chancellor reversed a previous government trend which acknowledged prison should be a "last resort". The government's own Woolf Report, following the 1990 Strangeways riot, had argued for a lower prison population that would allow people to be held near their families and permit more activities for inmates. Instead the Tories went for a crackdown on crime when Major attacked "airy fairy" theories for dealing with "criminals" and Howard insisted "prison works". They wanted to make prisoners one more scapegoat for the state of Tory Britain.
But at the same time they aim to cut the cost of prisons, along with everything else. So they have attacked prison officers' pay and conditions, introduced private prisons to drive down conditions for inmates and officers alike, while making profits for their friends.
THE SUICIDE of alleged serial killer Frederick West got massive news coverage. But West was only one of 61 inmates who killed themselves in the past year. Almost half were 25 or under. Prisoner Paul Jones was just one. He hanged himself in Dartmoor after being raped by a fellow prisoner at the start of a nine month sentence for cannabis possession. Overcrowding, harsher conditions and a productivity squeeze on prison officers are to blame. Stephen Shaw of the Prison Reform Trust explains: "There are fewer staff working shorter hours [to cut overtime payments], looking after more inmates. There is less human contact, less opportunity to offer support." Suicides are only part of the picture of suffering. Around 3,000 prisoners mutilate themselves each year.
THE HOME Office recently labelled Everthorpe, which saw two days of rioting last week, among the worst prisons in the country. It was designed for inmates serving short sentences for non-violent offences. But overcrowding at other, higher security prisons had seen it take prisoners acknowledged by governors to be "more likely to commit disciplinary offences". Other prisoners were shipped hundreds of miles from around the country to Everthorpe, on Humberside, to relieve overcrowding just before Christmas. Some had Christmas leave withdrawn.
A 17 year old serving three months for cheque fraud was even refused permission to attend his dad's funeral. At the same time prison officers began Howard's crackdown on drugs, repeatedly searching inmates and cells. One visitor said, "They were harassing them all the time with petty restrictions every time they moved out of their cells."
PRISONS BOSS Derek Lewis is a Tory businessman turned highest paid civil servant. Before his present job he was sacked as chief executive by Granada, the TV and motorway service chain, leaving with a 90,000 pound pay-off. He "earned" 160,000 pounds last year. Lewis has plans for a prison population of 60,000 and hopes to see private firms make 100 million pounds a year profits out of inmates. By contrast, those prisoners lucky enough to have paid work in jail make an average 6 pound a week.
LABOUR leaders have attacked Howard for being soft on prisoners. They have even repeated myths of "luxury conditions" in some jails. Instead, they should be demanding alternative ways of dealing with the four fifths of prisoners who are no ave been mastered before secondary schooling starts." Now where have I heard that before? Being a bit of a Bolshevik does help though in reading this: "A meritocracy [what?] demands the highest possible standards for all and not an escape hatch for a few." Good, but also, "Private education will remain." Pardon? Blunkett's article appeared within a few hours of Tory Gillian Shephard saying "Boo" to Labour's education proposals whereupon Labour's front bench immediately turned into a troupe of acrobats. IAN WALLACE, Sheffield
MAUREEN KELLY (Letters, 17 December) is entirely correct about Sunday trading. Many low paid workers rely upon premium payments, enhanced rates and time off in lieu for working at unsocial times. The insidious development of a 24 hours a day, seven days a week society threatens all these rights. In the sick Tory fantasy world people are supposed to exist as nothing more than consumers while workers are expected to be an infinitely exploitable resource. Of course the union leaders who dropped their objections to Sunday trading are politically naive fools. Whenever workers are faced with arbitrary changes to conditions and loss of payments, they will have to fight with or without these union goons. P D JACKSON, Brighton
YOUR cartoonist Tim has come up with brilliant and apt cartoons regarding rail privatisation and the Tory research students who were found in Tony Blair's office. Well written words are more powerful than swords and a picture is worth a thousands words and a cartoon does not need any caption. A cartoon can be like a ton of bricks and still leave you with a smile on your face. HARISH SHAH, North London
RECENTLY there was a wonderful 3,000 strong demonstration in Norwich around the closure of the Nestles factory. Every survey shows that workers across Britain are worried about their jobs. This protest showed that is possible to do something when redundancies are announced.
It showed that if workers are given any sort of lead and a focus for their anger they can respond with action and that if they act they will get support from other groups of trade unionists and the general public. In Norwich there were delegations from other local workplaces and another Nestles plant. But what will happen to all that potential now?
The trade union and Labour leaders are refusing to call for the industrial action that could win. John Arnold of the USDAW union has proposed a plan to make NestlM-^N's more cost effective. But Nestles made in excess of 2 billion pounds last year how much more cost effective do they need to be? The union leaders must get off their knees and call immediate industrial action in all Nestles factories.
They should also seek solidarity action from other workers who will be affected by Nestles closure. In their speeches after the demo the MPs and MEPs made no such proposals. Their parliamentary manoeuvres are not going to save jobs now. The time to act is now. RICK DUTTON, Norwich
I AM entering my eighty first year on this planet and have seen both private and nationalised governments only come together in times of war or when threatened by trading competitors. Seeking profits the private sector encourages the selling off of the nation's assets.
We need an administration to safeguard our resources which are being wasted to satisfy a minority. I suggest a return to a Co-Operative society with all workers donating 5p or 10p a week to found a united workers' society. ANON
I WOULD like to draw attention to the case of Steven Aherne who was recently sent to prison for three years. He is heavily involved in the South Wales rave scene as a DJ. His case is important to those concerned with the erosion of young people's freedom by the Tories. The police claim they were "just passing a house" when somebody came out smoking a joint. They therefore decided to search all the rooms.
Steven was found with 24 ecstasy tablets in his pocket. He was charged with intent to supply a Class A drug. Steven pleaded guilty to possession but not to intent to supply. Nish prisoners in England suggests the British appear to be intent on further tightening the screw.
Republicans were always told there were non-violent ways to change British policy. Now those who made this claim should show that it can work. FM'CILIM HADHMAILL, Irish political prisoner, SSU, Full Sutton Jail, York YO4 1PS
ORDINARY PEOPLE will cheer at the news that there are to be curbs on handing out legal aid to rich tycoons like Roger Levitt, Peter Clowes and Asil Nadir. At present they get money while less well off families are unable to get legal aid.
But the reform plans announced just before Christmas also include proposals that will hit ordinary legal aid claimants. The new proposal is that people in civil legal aid cases will have to take out a loan to cover solicitors' costs which must be repaid whether they are successful or not.
Even if tycoons are barred from legal aid, the rest of us will continue to suffer from the vindictiveness of the Tories and the greed of a few lawyers. Legal Aid Board worker
I CAN agree with much of your criticism of Tony Blair but surely he is right to demand some changes to Clause Four of the party's constitution. There is no reason why we cannot have a better, more socialist clause which also recognises the new dimensions of race and gender oppression which so called socialists 80 years ago were very slow to put at the front of their politics. ERICA COTTON, Birmingham
AFTER WEEKS of parliamentary crisis we now have a new government in Ireland consisting of Fine Gael, Labour and the Democratic Left. Fine Gael are a right wing party hated by workers for their record of attacks on living standards. They are no more liberal than the previous Fianna Fail governing party which was driven out over covering up the crimes of the church hierarchy. Labour are the largest left party. But their record in the last government showed them to be incapable of opposing the attacks of their right wing partners.
Early hopes of them bringing change after the 1992 election were soon dashed, with Labour ministers endorsing welfare cuts and attacks on jobs. Democratic Left seem more radical having never been in government and after mobilising workers against tax rises. But the price of their cabinet seats is to keep quiet about attacks on workers.
The new government has already spelt out that it has an agenda of holding down state spending. As the new Labour finance minister, Ruairi Quinn, put it, "There is nothing in the programme of government that will scare the markets." As a result the only organised socialist opposition to the government is the SWM, the SWP's sister organisation. Although very small we have now launched a fortnightly paper and anticipate playing a role in giving a voice to the vast discontent that exists. ALAN O'DOWD, Dublin
SOCIALIST WORKER is absolutely right to denounce the 14 year sentence on animal rights activist Keith Mann. But I don't think we should support the activities of groups like the Animal Liberation Front.
There would be no cure for common diseases like diabetes without animal experiments. Yet animal rights activists have tried to blow up scientists trying town. The police then piled in, dragging people across the road, booting people." Night after night over 1,000 police from Sussex, Kent and London have been deployed to hem in and attack demonstrators.
On Wednesday night of last week Metropolitan Police, drafted in to act as the heavy mob, abused and clubbed people at random. One person arrested for simply standing on a sea wall says, "They put a pair of cuffs on me and tightened them up so they were cutting into my bone. "The pain was incredible. I told them, `I'm not resisting. Loosen the cuffs.' But they wouldn't until I was lying on the van floor retching with pain." Ranks of riot police drew up, with shields and side-handled batons drawn at the ready.
One out of control policeman demanded a pensioner "get back" with his baton raised to strike. There were 17 arrests that night, including a man with his small child standing peacefully at the side of the road. Another man was dragged away by police as he screamed, "They hit my 52 year old mother."
Bridget, one of those attacked, said, "We were just standing talking to an old lady and police just started pushing us. "We're just here to demonstrate our point of view. It's really frightening." The police operation is costing M-#155,000 every night. The police officer in charge absurdly stated, "It was policing commensurate with the threat."
protester rightly noted, "The police haven't yet used the Criminal Justice Act against us but they could." The powerful livestock traders lobby group have met home secretary Michael Howard to press him to use the act against protesters. Under the act Howard could activate the "trespassory assembly" clause. This gives him the power to ban future protests by throwing up a cordon round Shoreham setting up roadblocks with a hefty fine or three months jail for anyone defying the ban.
THE SHOREHAM demonstrators should have everyone's support against police brutality. Police and big business who make M-#200 million a year from the live animal export trade should not be allowed to get away with crushing protests.
1,000 police can be mobilised to protect a few lorries against animal rights protesters, they can certainly be mobilised in future as they have in the past to protect lorries crossing a picket line of striking workers. The Shoreham protesters should have our support in their right to demonstrate.
Most people also support their cause of protesting about cruelty to animals. There certainly is such cruelty. Just last week a major trader involved in exporting live calves to the continent was fined 12,000 pounds for using unnecessary suffering to seven day old calves. The court heard the calves were packed into lorries for 37 hours without adequate food or water. The firm involved has a turnover of 30 million pounds a year.
In a society not dominated by the pursuit of profit, there is no doubt livestock would be treated far more humanely. However, animal rights activists are wrong if they think animals should have the same rights as people. Socialist Worker is in favour of keeping cruelty to animals at a minimum. But we also believe that if experimentation on animals is needed to find a cure for AIDS, for example, then it should take place. That is why we are utterly opposed to animal liberationists bombing or threatening scientists involved in research using animals.
We are also totally against putting workers at risk, such as the Stena Sealink ferry worker injured last year after a bomb attack on the company's head office. Socialists are also not in favour of multinational drugs companies using impoverished people instead of animals to test products. We are in favour of developing reliable non-animal tests for the safety of, for instance, washing powder. But where such tests are not available, we are in favour of such products being tested properly and as humanely as possible on animals rather than on human beings.
Fighting for animal liberation is not a challenge to those who run the rotten system we live under. Tory agriculture minister William Waldegrave says he wants to stop the live animal trade, and will pressure the European Union on this. Yet Waldegrave's farm sells calves for the veal market, showing him up as a hypocrite. And Waldegrave's supposed concern for animals stands in stark contrast to his attitude to people. He backs European rules on animal treatment while he and his government reject European rules limiting the hours people can be forced to work to 48 a week.
Waldegrave is also up to his neck in the arms to Iraq scandal, and has hosted arms fairs at which Britain's government supplies arms to dictators around the globe arms which are used to kill and maim people. Tory bigot Alan Clark has also come out in support of the Shoreham protests. Clark is a former arms minister who again was quite happy selling weapons to any regime who had the money.
Clark wrote in his diaries of his regret at shooting a heron. "Yet if it had been a burglar or a vandal I wouldn't have given a toss. It's human beings that are the vermin."
Most animal liberationists would be horrified to find themselves on the same side as people like Alan Clark. Yet this is the logic of elevating animal rights to the same level as human rights. The likes of Waldegrave and Clark are our enemies they can never be our allies.
In reality the suffering of the calves being shipped from Shoreham is insignificant compared to the horrors of Rwanda, the suffering of pensioners freezing to death because of VAT on fuel, or black people targeted by Nazis. Socialist Worker supports the Shoreham protesters against the police and the bosses. But we believe that if you want to stop unnecessary cruelty to animals, then you have to fight for a world which puts the majority of people first.
THE TORIES want to introduce tests for 11 year old schoolchildren this summer. It is the clearest step yet in the Tory plan to reintroduce the old system of selection with an "11-plus" exam and a two tier education system. A small minority of children, mainly from better off areas, will be creamed off for a new breed of "grammar" school.
The majority of working class children will be branded as failures from 11 and channelled into run down, underfunded "sink" schools like the old secondary moderns. Until now these plans have been frustrated by teachers and parents boycotting those tests the Tories have already tried to introduce. Yet instead of building on this action, Labour Party leaders have moved to accept the Tories' plans.
Now leaders of the largest teaching union in England and Wales, the NUT, are calling on their members to vote to end their boycott. In this Socialist Worker special JANE ELDERTON puts the case for teachers and parents to keep up the boycott to stop the Tories wrecking our children's education.
THE RETURN of the 11-plus would be a disaster for children's education. "I remember the 11-plus," says a parent campaigning against the tests. "If you failed that one exam at 11 it badly affected the rest of your life. I don't want my children going through that." In a few parts of the country, like Trafford, Greater Manchester, the old 11-plus still exists. "It is really clear how the selective system works," explains a secondary school teacher. "In the primary schools in the working class areas only a few go on to grammar. "But in the middle class areas a lot more will pass.
Some people say everyone has a chance in a selective system. But when the race starts some kids start from 100 yards further back. "When the kids first start at our school and you ask why they are there, they just say because complicated than saying a child has reached a certain level. "You have to know how each child is progressing, what their strengths and weaknesses are. "Children do not all progress at the same rate. In my class some children have a reading age of ten, some have a reading age of six.
"Smaller classes make a real difference to how children learn. I know the difference between trying to teach a class of 23 and a class of 36. If we want children to learn that is more important than the tests." In one primary school last year the teachers stopped the tests halfway through because they knew they were doing nothing to help the pupils learn.
"One teacher was not in a union and the other one had only just started teaching," another teacher in the school explained. "They were pressured and intimidated to start the tests. But they were time consuming, the class went to bits, teaching was impossible. "They were just an irrelevant waste of time. They didn't help us teach and they didn't tell us anything we didn't know already," she added.
THE GOVERNMENT has already tried to push through tests for seven and 14 year olds. But for the last two years teachers have successfully boycotted these tests. The boycott began after parents organised meetings and some withdrew their children from the tests.
The teaching unions failed to organise any action. But ordinary English teachers launched a boycott anyway. As it spread the teaching unions in England and Wales finally balloted for action. The Tories were forced to bring in Sir Ron Dearing to conduct a review of their own national curriculum. Dearing made a number of changes, taking on board many complaints made by teachers which the government had previously ignored. And it was not long before the previous education secretary John Patten got the boot.
The government's concessions led two teaching unions, the NASUWT and the ATL, to drop the boycott. However, the workload involved in the tests is still massive. More importantly many teachers' main objection to the tests was that they are of no educational value. For this reason the main teaching union in England and Wales, the NUT, kept up the action until the union's executive meeting in December decided to ballot the membership, recommending an end to the boycott. But the only promise the Tories are now making is to "review" the tests, not drop them.
Above all the Tories want this summer's new 11-plus to go ahead. The boycott has forced the Tories onto the retreat. To drop it now would let the Tories off the hook. If the boycott continues it can destroy the government's plan to return to selective education.
I CAN'T see what education secretary Gillian Shephard is offering. My attitude is still the same the tests have got to be stopped," says Lesley Merchant, a Sheffield parent. "If your school has not had a meeting about the tests, parents should ask for one. "We are petitioning around local schools. Parents have to show teachers they support their action."
Teachers and parents should set up parents meetings.
Leaflet and petition schools and write to newspapers.
Teachers should call school meetings and pass resolutions to keep the boycott and write to NUT general secretary Doug McAvoy.
Teachers should get letters from their schools urging a no vote to take round other local schools, and make primary schools central to the campaign.
Local NUT union associations should send out campaigning material.
Back the Anti-SATs Campaign open letter to Doug McAvoy, get petitions and stickers, raise money to publish a newspaper advert and affiliate and donate to the Anti-SATs Campaign, c/o 100 Stanhope Street, London NW1 3JX.
THE TEST boycott had stopped the Tories in their tracks. But instead of picking this moment to go on the offensive the Labour leadership are rapidly adopting the Tories' own education policies. Already this year Labour's education spokesman David Blunkett has been slapped down by Tony Blair for daring to suggest that VAT should be paid on private school fees.
Blair has already shown he wants his child to benefit from a privileged education not available to most children. He decided to send his son to the opted out London Oratory school. Labour's education spokesman David Blunkett has also backed league tables of test results.
These moves prompted even the ex deputy leader of the Labour Party, Roy Hattersley, to argue, "For most families parental choice is a myth." He insists the Tories' league tables and opted out schools are "about the wish to reintroduce secondary education in an even more divisive form than the old 11-plus. "A hierarchy of schools created by giving middle class parents first pick of places will condemn millions of working class children to an education which is generally regarded as inferior."
He says this amounts to "selection by class rather than ability" as "the middle classes elbow their way into the most popular schools". And, he says, "Parental choice" is about "already advantaged children" getting extra privileges. That is why he wants the Labour Party to "stand out against this injustice". Hattersley is certainly no left wing socialist. But his correct arguments on education show just how rotten Blair's "New Labour" is becoming.
YOU'RE fighting a losing battle," writes P Pearse from Royston (Socialist Worker Letters, 7 January). "Most of the population are full of right wing ideas handed down by the press and years of nationalistic and corrupt government." Surprising as it may seem, Karl Marx said more or less the same thing 150 years ago. "The ideas of the ruling class", he wrote, "are in every epoch the ruling ideas."
The class which has the means of material production at its disposal [the capitalist class] consequently also controls the means of mental production, so that the ideas of those that lack the means of mental production are on the whole subject to it." Yet the same Karl Marx also wrote, again and again, "The emancipation of the working class will be conquered by the working class itself." In other words Marx understood very well how the ribody accepted it about the poll tax because they themselves had to pay it.
As capitalism goes into economic crisis so capitalist ideas depart ever further from most people's real experience. The idea that the bosses and the government know best is shattered by the fact that they are obviously making a mess of things. Working class struggle above all strikes, but also occupations, demonstrations etc is the single most important factor in developing socialist consciousness.
When workers take collective action they become personally involved in making the news. They find out that the media (and the bosses' politicians, police etc) lie about them. This helps them to see through ruling class propaganda as a whole. When workers fight back they need to look to other workers for support. This widens their horizons and broadens their minds.
The way the Great Miners' Strike of 1984-5 changed miners' attitudes to black, women and gay workers is the most famous example of this. Most importantly of all, when workers take mass collective action they get a sense of their own power and their confidence rises.
Organisation, political as well as trade union, is the third crucial ingredient. When workers organise politically they get together to work out their own ideas in opposition to the ideas of the bosses and the government.
As the crisis of capitalism deepens so experience, struggle and organisation can come together. It is this explosive combination that will enable us to turn a losing battle into a winning one and this is the role of Socialist Worker to relate to working class experience, to encourage and assist the struggle, and to build socialist organisation.
WHY DID the troops go into Chechenia?
CHECHENIA IS strategically important for the Russian ruling class. There is oil in the Caspian sea and Russia wants the biggest share. It also wants the oil transported through territory under its control. That is why Russia tried to invade in November 1991 and has, ever since, been looking to bring Chechenia to heel.
The invasion happened now because of political considerations in Moscow. The army leadership has come under pressure with newspaper exposure of corruption. Defence minister Grachev is personally accused. In October a very popular Moscow journalist, Dimitri Kholodov, who exposed many of the scandals, was killed by a bomb. Most people believe it was the military, yet Grachev declared Kholodov was a fool who blew himself up and Yeltsin backed Grachev on television.
This caused real shock, lowering the leadership's prestige, and left Grachev fighting for his military life. But the real background is the economy. Yeltsin and the government are under increasing pressure. The rouble collapsed in October. At the same time the government announced that economic decline in 1995 would be worse than in 1994.
Economic activity has already halved over the last four years. The sectors opened up to the market, in the belief that they would develop, have been worst hit. Machine tools and other high tech sectors have seen a 60 or 70 percent collapse since 1990. Russia is becoming a raw material economy. Oil, coal and gas have become the mainstays.
The result is panic in the ruling class. Elections are also due in 1996, but there is pressure to bring them forward to 1995. Faced with this Yeltsin was tempted to play the nationalist card to show he is a strong candidate.
CAN YOU explain the events leading up to the invasion?
UNTIL NOVEMBER the Russian tactic was to give arms and money to the Chechin opposition. The Russian secret service, the former KGB, even recruited army tank officers and sent them to Chechenia to fight with the opposition.
On 26 November they tried to storm Grozny. It was a military fiasco with 70 Russian officers taken prisoner. Russia's rulers then faced a stark choice. Either they pulled out or they stepped up the military intervention. That is when Grachev said that with a couple of battalions of paratroops we could take the Chechin capital in 72 hours.
Remember the Russian ruling class has been trying to overcome its "Afghan syndrome" the legacy of defeat in the Afghan war. They have been building up to a show of strength.
WHAT IS the reaction to the war in Chechenia? SHOCK, DEPRESSION and shame. Many who see themselves as pro democracy were appalled that Yeltsin could do something so dirty. The level of lies from the government has been extraordinary.
They said the Chechens had been throwing babies out of windows, taking children hostage and raping Russian girls. Television, the press and parliamentary deputies have shown this is nonsense.
HAVE THERE been anti-war protests?
OPINION POLLS show up to 70 percent of people oppose the war. Gaidar, the former prime minister and leader of the Russia's Choice party called an anti-war rally in Moscow. On the first day there were 500. On the second day, 3,000.
At first Gaidar was talking about impeaching Yeltsin but that was quickly dropped. Kosirev, the foreign minister, resigned from Russia's Choice because of Gaidar's opposition to the war, and the party's major financial backer also threatened to pull out. So Gaidar has toned down his opposition.
WHAT HAS happened to people's living standards in the three years Yeltsin has been in control?
THE AVERAGE wage has halved, but over 75 percent of the population live below the average wage, 30 percent live below the official minimum wage and about 15 percent live below the official minimum forichest 20 percent became 40 percent richer in the first half of last year.
HOW HAVE people reacted? Have there been strikes?
THERE WAS a strike wave in the spring of 1992 and a much more powerful one in the autumn of 1993 and spring of 1994. This involved oil workers, miners, teachers, ambulance workers, meteorological workers, communications workers, fishermen and many others and won some concessions. The main grievance is that many workers have received no wages for six months and the government has broken promises to pay up.
IT SEEMS then that living standards have been hammered but the state has also lost the power to intimidate and stop people from striking?
THE GOVERNMENT moves quite fast to settle strikes when they happen and I am not aware of the police being used against strikers. The government is also gradually pulling out of the economy. Over 50 percent is now in "private" hands.
This makes strikes more bitter and class polarised. The last wave of strikes saw management attempts to victimise and sack workers. On the other hand workers realise that economic questions are political questions. You now see strikers coming to Moscow to protest outside parliament.
WHAT ABOUT trade union organisation?
THERE ARE some independent trade unions. The miners' union is the most powerful. Others are small and weak. The official unions have a large but extremely passive membership. However, they can move workers and get some results.
Eight million people took part in the day of action on 27 October demanding the payment of wages owed. There were 6,000 people on a demonstration in Moscow, but there was no feeling that the union leaders were under pressure.
THE PRESS paint a picture of anarchy on the streets, daily murders and gang rule. What is it really like?
IT IS anarchy at the top, with chaostern correspondents talk about Yeltsin betraying the hopes of 19lising that Yeltsin has extended his hand to the extreme right. He has also healed a lot of the rifts with the nationalist parlientary opposition that took place after the coup attempt. He is incredibly weak but there is no obvious challenger.
One of the most extraordinary recent events was when 10,000 people turned out on a freezing cold weekday for the funeral of the murdered journalist. But there is no organisation or individual that can channel that feeling or give it an outlet. That is one reason why the initial anti-war demonstrations were so small.
The Nazis, and the Red-Browns the alliance of Stalinists and fascist groups can mobilise tens of thousands, but their demonstrations have been smaller than two years ago. An open Nazi who stood in a by-election in November got 10,000 votes, 6 percent.
ARE YOU saying the discrediting of the left by the idea that Stalinism equals socialism still prevents any real left organisation arising?
IN EASTERN Europe there are reconstructed Communist Parties in government. They favour the market, but it is a social market. They are Tony Blair type parties. There is no such party in Russia that workers associate with standing up for their interesousness is rising. Russia is extremely volatile but in the comincould easily go to the left.
There is talk in Moscow of a military coup but that would not end the ferment in Russia because the army is thoroughly demoralised and split because of Chechenia.
by HAZEL CROFT
RIGHT WING Republicans in the US showed their might last week when they took control of Congress the US parliament for the first time in 40 years. Ultra right winger Newt Gingrich, the new speaker of the house, announced measures to enact the Republicans' so called "contract with America" and to try to balance the budget.
It signals a war on America's poor. The balanced budget proposal means that welfare spending will be slashed including a massive $450 billion cut in social spending. Meanwhile the rich will get some $100 billion worth of tax cuts. The "taking back our streets act" Clinton abandoned his plans to reform healthcare, for example, and now he has even proposed a welfare "reform" bill that would deny benefits to single mothers.
His crime bill last year accepted Republican proposals for increasing the numbers of prisons and making the death sentence more likely. Clinton raised expectations when he was elected president, promising change after over a decade of Republican rule. Now those expectations have been shattered. Clinton has failed to deliver reforms or to provide any hope for the millions of Americans living in poverty.
Clinton's Democrats were hammered in the elections to Congress last November. But the right were elected not because of any enthusiasm for their policies but because of the massive disillusion with Clinton. The Republicans will not necessarily get things all their own way. They have no real answers to the long term decline in US economic fortunes. Their only solution is to batter the US working class into paying the cost.
But those workers are increah to be the wife of the president". Gingrich scored a 100 percent rating from right wing business lobbyists. He also scored a 60 rating (out of 100) from the anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby. As Gingrich's former press aide says, "I respect him like you respect a snake." MacMillans Tory government the intelligence services to fund a right wing anti-socialist "pressure group" inside the trade unin movement. The aims were simple to roll back the left in the unions and to protect the right wing stranglehold on the Labour Party.
Labour had just been riven by battles over Clause Four, which the leadership unsuccessfully tried to dump, and nuclear disarmament, which the leadership had to "fight, fight and fight again" to maintain the party's pro-nuclear position.
In 1963 Macmillan personally authorised payments to the Industrial Research and Information Service (IRIS). This followed an approach by Lord Shawcross, a former Labour cabinet minister who had defected to the Tories. Shawcross wanted M-#10,000 to "defeat communism" in the Amalgamated Engineering Union. The government gave him four times that. Shawcross claimed IRIS was working undercover in the unions, had affected the outcome of the National Union of
Mineworkers presidential elections, and was building "anti-communist cells", targeting left wing activists. Macmillan also agreed to canvass support from bankers and big business. The government set up a committee, including civil servants and "outsiders"
The north west was a left wing stronghold in the AEU and a targ Benny Rothman, who worked at Metro Vickers, a leading left wing factory, told Socialist Worker: "In every dispute, in every election, they got their pennyworth in. They heavily influenced our union's national committee and national officials." The government funded IRIS organisers and columnists like former Labour MP Woodrow Wyatt. He used his Sunday Mirror column to tell workers how to vote in union elections.
However, they could not prevent left winger Hugh Scanlon becoming AEU leader, nor did they stop a wave of militancy in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Another engineer still working in Warrington told Socialist Worker: "IRIS and other outfits like Trumid, who were trying to organise a private army to scab on a general strike, were up to their necks in our union. "We should not be surprised. The secret services were started to spy on workers and have done so ever since. "Outfits like IRIS and Trumid can interfere in our unions. They can blacklist activists. "But they can never stop new fighters emerging, generation after generation, to take on the bosses."
Now LATE is calling for teachers to vote NO in the NUDLANDS: Wolverhampton, Sandwell, Dudley and Birmingham NUT associations have sent out anti-SATs material to every school. A school in Walsall has unanimously decided to vote no and to contact other local schools.
WEST YORKSHIRE: Teachers at a Huddersfield school have voted to keep up the boycott and demanded the resignation of the union executive.
SOUTH CAMBRIDGESHIRE: Two rural primary schools have unanimously voted to continue the boycott and written letters of complaint to NUT general secretary Doug McAvoy.
BRISTOL: Teachers at eight secondary schools have had school meetings and voted to continue the boycott. Local workplaces, including Rolls Royce and British Telecom, have sent motions supporting the teachers' fight.
AROUND 100 teachers attended the Anti-SATs Campaign meeting in London on Saturday to hear reports from around the country and build the campaign for a no vote. Back the campaign's open letter to Doug McAvoy, get petitions and stickers, affiliate and donate to the Anti-SATs Campaign, c/o 100 Stanhope Street, London NW1 3JX.
THE NATIONAL executive of UCAC, the Welsh teachers' union, has decided to continue its SATS boycott after a survey of members showed 74 percent wanted to keep up the action. UCAC has 2,500 members, one in six of the teachers in Wales.
It represent the majority of teachers of Welsh in English medium schools and the majority of teachers in all subjects in Welsh medium schools. TEACHERS across Berkshire in the NUT teaching union are balloting for a one day strike on 25 January. The strike is timed to coincide with the local education authority's finance meeting at which a #10 million cuts package is threatened.
LECTURERS IN further education colleges are returning to work for a term which is likely to be decisive in the battle against new contracts. Nearly two years on from incorporation, when colleges were taken out of local education authority control, the employers have still not broken resistance to the contracts in the majority of colleges.
Many colleges have "live" ballots votes which even under Tory anti-union laws mean they can take action in the weeks ahead and more are due to be balloted. Some colleges are also beginning to fight over pay. Lecturers in Sheffield College voted unanimously last week to ballot for strike action for a pay rise for those on the Silver Book the existing contract which lecturers are seeking to defend against the new contracts.
The employers are nervous and divided because of the level of action. This has led both to the planned restart of national negotiations on 18 January and also to many colleges offering local talks. Peterlee College, which has the chair of the College Employers Forum as principal, has asked the lecturers' NATFHE union for local negotiations.
The local and national talks are a sign of the employers' uncertainty, but activists should fight to stop negotiations being used to undermine strike action. The call for coordinated action on 25 January should still be built.
The activists' meetings which took place last term show that there is a large network of people who want to build action. These networks need to be organised now to build the maximum action and to prevent a national sell out if necessary.
STUDENTS AT Kingsway College, central London, occupied their library and finance office for two nights at the end of last term. They are fighting the victimisation of Nick De Marco, recently elected as student union president.
The campaign is set to continue when term resumes next week. The college is attempting to throw Nick out, claiming he was not eligible to stand for election because of "non-attendance" at lectures.
The students union was active in support of a black lecturer who recently won a tribunal case against the college for racial discrimination.
BARNSLEY College student Jim Taylor has been excluded from college until the summer after a disciplinary hearing. Jim was centrally involved in the students' recent solidarity campaign with lecturer Dave Gibson.
The disciplinary panel heard the college's chief executive claim that Jim had threatened him. Eight witnesses said no threat had been made but the panel reported that, "We have to support our chief executive." Messages of protest to Chief Executive, Barnsley College, Barnsley.
TWO HUNDRED angry people packed an anti-cuts meeting in Oxford last week organised by the Labour Party. Oxfordshire county council has been told by the government it must cut #25 million, which would mean massive redundancies, particularly in schools, and fire service cuts.
Local trade unionists have petitioned against the cuts and activists in NUT and UNISON are pressing for strikes. There will be a demonstration on Saturday 21 January at 11am from The Plain.
BIRMINGHAM'S Labour council plans over M-#90 million of cuts, threatening around 1,400 jobs and the closure of vital services like old people's homes. A strategy for a fightback will be discussed at a meeting of council workers' shop stewards this week.
DELEGATES FROM dozens of branches and stewards committees of the UNISON public sector workers' union are set to gather in Sheffield on Saturday for the latest in the series of Fightback meetings.
UNISON members face attacks on a range of fronts, from privatisation and cuts in local councils to pay cuts in the gas industry. On every front the union's leaders refuse to build a serious fight. It will be up to activists and local branches to dihundreds of firefighters in the council chamber, councillors held off on the threatened job cuts.
The chief fire officer was told to come back after further discussions. But the council still wants cuts. "If 300 firefighters hadn't turned up the cuts would have just been rubber stamped. The campaign is up and running," says a local firefighter. "This Saturday we are starting leafleting and petitioning on the streets. "All they've done is amend the cuts. We need to start talking about action that would make them back off. All the services being hit should all take action together," he added.
FIREFIGHTERS IN South Yorkshire look set to ballot for a series of one hour strikes. Firefighters are angry about the way the local chief officer imposed new arrangements for detached duties, when firefighters are sent to cover at another station. The only way to force management to retreat is for firefighters to take action as soon as possible.
FIREFIGHTERS AT Scarborough fire station in North Yorkshire voted to withdraw goodwill in protest at the massive cuts package the council wants to push through. The action started on Friday of last week. But within hours management had threatened the local FBU with legal action because there had been no ballot.
As a result the action was lifted. But Scarborough firefighters have shown how to fight the cuts. The best way to respond to management's legal threats would have been to spread the action. The council's Public Protection Committee was due to meet on Thursday to discuss the results of the four week consultation period on the cuts.
Firefighters have collected thousands of signatures against the cuts and built local meetings. But if the council ignores these protests, the biggest possible lobby must be built for the 22 February council meeting and firefighters across the area should follow Scarborough's example and start the sort of action which can stop the cuts.
AROUND 150 people attended a public meeting in Whitby organised by Whitby town council to protest against the North Yorkshire fire cuts. The chief fire officer tried to defend his "savings" but the mood of the meeting was against any cuts in Whitby or anywhere else. Many people were angered by the organisers' refusal to allow firefighters on the platform.
MASSIVE BUDGET cuts are planned across all council departments in Bedfordshire. Joe Hearne, Bedfordshire firefighters' FBU union secretary, says, "The fire service has been cut to the bone in the last ten years. Any more cuts will mean a serious increase in risk to firefighters and to the public. "There must be no more cuts. As elected councillors and management are unable or unwilling to oppose this destruction of local services by central government, the unions, with support from the public, must do it. "It is no use waiting for Tony Blair." MICHAEL Portillo, Tory employment secretary, was chased around Bootle on Merseyside during a visit to the health and safety executive on Fridland LLANDOUGH NHS Trust in south Wales wants to attack its workers by imposing local pay and conditions bargaining from 1 April. The proposals are an attack on the national Whitley pay and conditions agreements. They include: Cutting sick pay. Cutting maternity leave on full pay to 18 weeks. Rest day and Sunday working to be paid at time and a half, all other overtime paid in lieu time off or time and a fifth. There will be seven new pay bands. Holidays will be according to the band you are in. There will be no allowances for unsocial hours or difficult jobs. Pay rises will be according to your band and at management discretion. The workers' UNISON union plans meetings to discuss action before the proposals go to the trust board in February. Other health workers are circulating motions and letters condemning the attack. There must be no retreat from Whitley conditions.
A CAMPAIGN has been launched in Bristol to fight the planned night time closure of two of the city's three casualty units. Campaigners believe that if the health authority gets away with these closures the casualty units at Southmead and Frenchay hospitals will end up being closed completely.
Thousands of people have already signed petitions. Public meetings are taking place this month and a Bristol wide demonstration is planned for February.
HEALTH WORKERS at the Heath Hospital and Cardiff Royal Infirmary were shocked to read in local newspapers that 600 jobs were to go when the hospitals become trusts. On Sunday activists began petitioning against the redundancies and more campaigning is planned.
POSTAL WORKERS at the NWDO sorting and delivery office in north wrangements mean that new start times have been imposed, messing up people's lives. "I can hardly bear to go in there," says a worker. "The governors are thick on the ground and they are going for us like hell. Don't be surprised if we're walking out again soon because I can't stand it and there are lots who think like me. "We should have stayed out. I think we were left high and dry by the national union officials." Delivery workers at NWDO and at ten other sub-offices have voted by massive majorities for an official strike over CADR. But there has been no move to pull them out.
The postal workers' UCW should give immediate notice of a strike. But more importantly, NWDO workers should be given every encouragement to walk out now and supported when they do so.
NWDO handles a million items of mail a day. Action there, backed up by national blacking, can be very effective against CADR and against the bullying management hated by every postal worker.
In a separate dispute, around 150 admin workers in Customer Care at NWDO struck officially for 24 hours on Monday over management employing seven part time workers without agreement with the union.
POST OFFICE management in south west London have gone on the offensive since a one day strike in the district before Christmas against the results of the CADR review. Six of the 20 unit reps are on disciplinary charges. One of those facing charges is Jim Kennedy from Earls Court.
In November he was suspended for "failing to obey a management instruction" but was reinstated after the office walked out for two hours. Now he is being charged for allegedly taking absence without leave.
With a clearly coordinated attack, UCW members need a coordinated response. There must be immediate walkouts if anyone is disciplined.
WITH JUST one week left, media union activists are working hard to build for next Saturday's march on Rupert Murdoch's Wapping plant in east London. The march, on Saturday 21 January, is officially backed by the journalists' NUJ and the BECTU media unions. A number of chapels (branches) of the GPMU print union are also backing the march. Get the unions into Wapping.
The march was sparked by the case of Maria Hoyle, who did not have her contract renewed as a sub-editor on Murdoch's Today newspaper after trying to organise a workplace grievances meeting. Murdoch is now making noises about supporting Tony Blair's "New Labour". Murdoch's Today paper is strongly pro-Blair and its political editor, Alistair Campbell, recently left to become Blair's press secretary.
Today's treatment of Maria and attitude to union organisation stand in contrast with the paper's pro-Labour talk. Almost a decade on from Murdoch defeating the print unions in a year long battle as he moved his operations to Wapping in east London the giant plant home to the Sun, Today, News of the World, Times, Sunday Times and other Murdoch titles is still non-union.
Activists from all the media unions attended a meeting at the NUJ's London headquarters on Monday night to organise building the march. Maria has also been invited to speak at national meetings of BECTU and GPMU reps. Next week's march is also part of a wider move to rebuild the media unions. In recent years the NUJ in particular has suffered under a barrage of employers' attacks, with many derecognising the union.
In other places organisation has often become near moribund. But there is clearly a changing mood in the industry which provides the opportunity to begin rebuilding union organisation. One indication of the potential is the Independent strike vote. Another is the meeting that was set for Wednesday in central London aimed at workers in the magazine publishers in the area.
Activists have been leafleting for the meeting and the Guardian's Seumas Milne had agreed to speak on "Rebuilding the Union". Speakers already include John Monks, general secretary of the TUC, Mike Grindlay of GCHQ, Louisa Ball from the Daily Telegraph GPMU and journalist Paul Foot. Every print and media worker should work to build the turnout for next Saturday's march over the coming week.
For details of speakers, posters and leaflets call NUJ general secretary John Foster's office on 071 278 7916. nRebuilding the Union, 6.30pm, Wednesday 11 January, Blue Posts Pub, corner of Broadwick St and Berwick St, central London. nMarch, Saturday 21 January. Assemble 9.45am at Tower Hill. March to Wapping.
AROUND 40 production staff in the journalists' NUJ union at the Independent newspaper have voted to strike over a change in working patterns which means worse working conditions. The ballot was won by a majority of one, though a larger majority voted for action short of a strike. The issue is the change from a nine day fortnight to a five day week with the paper's move to east London's Canary Wharf tower.
The change means considerable disruption to many workers' lives. After the strike vote an NUJ chapel (branch) meeting decided to ask for talks and called for the arbitration service ACAS to be brought in. As a result there is unlikely to be any action, especially as the new arrangements are already being worked. An earlier ballot over the issue among all NUJ members at the Independent was called off by branch offrung up."
What makes this betrayal even worse is the fact that management have offered no new concessions. They still want to force workers to work at Christmas and New Year. A meeting of all workers was planned for this week.
SMITHS Industries, the aerospace manufacturer in Cheltenham, is trying to victimise Derek Eyres, the full time AEEU union convenor. Derek has been selected for compulsory redundancy in March.
The union members agreed at a mass meeting to ballot for action unless Derek's sacking is dropped. Unfortunately the right wing leadership of the AEEU nationally seems to be making no attempt to build any campaign to defend one of the industry's leading activists. It is vital that AEEU activists across the country take up this issue.
TRANSPORT AND General Workers Union general secretary Bill Morris delivered two more union minibuses to the sacked Chelmsford bus workers last week. Four buses are being driven by sacked workers on their old routes.
The 91 bus workers were sacked by Eastern National a subsidiary of the Badgerline company last November after they balloted and struck over excessive working hours. They were being forced to work over five hours without a break, compromising health and safety.
Morris went down to Eastern National last week to speak to managers who refused to negotiate. But Morris has said he will not call national action in defence of the Chelmsford workers. However, he is under pressure as bus firms go on the offensive to smash workers' conditions and bust the union across the country.
Morris is hoping local opinion will cause Eastern National to buckle. The free service has a box if passengers wish to donate. Hundreds of pounds has been collected showing local support.
However, at the end of the day this tactic is not gong to beat a company with Badgerline's resources. Yet Morris still shies away from calling other depots out, even though other Badgerline drivers are having their wages cut and hours extended.
Drivers getting around the other depots and calling for fellow workers to give support on the picket line is the best way forward. More pressure needs to be put on Morris to call a national strike in defence of the sacked workers to stop bus company union busting elsewhere.
A NEW anti-Nazi and anti-racist body, the National Assembly Against Racism, is having its founding meeting in east London next month. It has been called by the Tower Hamlets Anti-Racist Committee, and is sponsored by many organisations including the south east region of the TUC, the Scottish TUC and unions MSF, FBU, NAPO, NUCPS and UNISON.
The Assembly plans to launch an anti-racist charter "as a united focus for anti-racist campaigning". National Assembly Against Racism, Saturday 4 February, 10am-5pm, York Hall, Old Ford Road, London E2 (Bethnal Green +) nDetails of registration from Tower Hamlets Anti-Racist Committee. c/o CAG, 22 Hanbury Street, London E1.
HOUNSLOW MARCH AGAINST RACISM, Saturday 11 February, assemble 12.45pm, Thornbury Playing Fields, London Road, Isleworth, west London (buses 116, 117, 237 & H37 or British Rail Isleworth Station) called by Hounslow Trades Union Council
TWO BLACK school students are facing charges of carrying offensive weapons in Liverpool's juvenile court this week. The two are from a school where students faced vicious attacks by a group of Nazi thugs last May.
When police were called the Nazis ran off and the police arrested a number of black students instead. Parents mobilised alongside the ANL at the time and saw the Nazis off.
Self defence is no offence. Picket the court Thursday 12 and Friday 13 January, 8.30am, Dale Street, Liverpool.
ANTI-NAZIS in Reading have been petitioning after a Combat 18 attack on a local Asian shopkeeper.
A REAL battle has started inside the Labour Party and the trade unions over Clause Four of Labour's constitution. Clause Four commits Labour "to secure for the producers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production".
Labour leader Tony Blair wants to dispose of it as part of his project of making Labour acceptable to the rich and powerful. On Tuesday Blair was rocked by a newspaper advert, backed by a majority of Labour's European MPs, supporting the present Clause Four.
The majority of Labour constituency parties which have discussed the issue have called for the clause to be retained and the Scottish Labour Party conference has been deluged with motions defending it. Blair has called a special conference on 29 April before most trade unionists have a chance to discuss it at their own conferences to ram a new clause through.
Although it has not yet been officially released, press leaks suggest the new clause will support a "dynamic private sector" and some public ownership "where necessary" or "where justified". A senior TGWU union official told Socialist Worker, "That sort of formula could mean, Keep the Post Office in public hands, and let the market have the rest.' It simply is not acceptable. "Lots of Tories and most of the Liberals could swallow it happily.
If Labour is going to have a different base, primarily organised workers, then it should have different aims and objectives that reflect that." Over Christmas Labour made a number of significant policy retreats. But these are never enough for Labour's "modernisers" or the Tory press.
They will not be satisfied until Labour poses no challenge to the market system and is reduced to a copy of the US Democratic Party. Blair's insistence on making no promises and crushing every spark of struggle has caused disquiet, even among Labour members who grudgingly accept Blair as the "only way to win the next election". A leading UCW communications union activist told Socialist Worker, "When Labour talks about how the fat cats in the privatised industries are ripping us off, it goes down well with people. "But then someone asks, So why don't we nationalise these things again? Why should we be dropping Clause Four?' Even though I'm in the Labour Party I have to say the leadership are a bunch of gutless creeps l and gas, electricity, BT and so on should be renationalised. But there should be no deals over Clause Four.
Blair's attempt to change it should be entirely rejected. One danger is that union leaders will surrender Clause Four in exchange for some empty promise that Labour will work for "full employment". However, Labour's leaders have rejected giving any commitments to renationalise anything if they come to office as the price of getting their own way.
This week when asked if he would promise to renationalise British Rail, Blair said, "I am not going to get into the situation where I am declaring that the Labour government is going to commit sums of money to renationalise several years down the line." Blair's supporters regard public ownership and control of services like rail as a "mad left agenda".
That is why the debate on Clause Four matters. It is really about whether the labour movement should openly embrace capitalism and the market or whether it has any sort of vision of a different society. Labour in government has never come remotely close to implementing Clause Four.
What nationalisation it has supported has given no real control to the workers in those industries. But to drop the clause would be a blow against everyone who wants a society where need comes before profit.
1. This (branch, stewards' committee etc) deplores the attempt by Tony Blair to press ahead with attempts to change Clause Four of the Labour Party's constitution.
2. We believe that a market economy cannot deliver a decent society for workers and that public ownership and control are necessary to tackle poverty and unemployment.
3. We call on our union delegation to vote against any attempts to change Clause Four at Labour's special conference on 29 April. Send the motion to the Labour Party and your union office.
TONY BLAIR flew to Brussels this week to explain Labour's policy to a gathering of businessmen paying #500 a head. Among those splashing out for the half day conference and dinner were Coca Cola, Marks & Spencer and National Westminster Bank.
Blair says, "Marks and Spencer, Tesco and BP believe that if you treat employees as partners, if you pay them a fair day's wage, the people will be proud to work for the company." The lowest paid Tesco worker gets less than the minimum wage Labour proposed at the last election.