VICTIMS OF the very miscarriages of justice which the government's new Criminal Cases Review Commission is supposed to prevent reacted angrily to its announcement last week.
The planned body is a result of the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice set up following the release of the Birmingham Six.
But Billy Power, one of the six, says, "We should have no faith in this body." The commission is to rely on the police to carry out its investigations--the people responsible for most miscarriages of justice in the first place.
Billy Power says, "It's a joke. The Devon and Cornwall police investigated the West Midlands police for the Birmingham Six case. It was a sham. They referred to us as "the bombers". Is it any surprise they didn't come up with much?"
Ann Taylor, mother of Michelle and Lisa released two years ago after being wrongly imprisoned for murder, agrees the new body is "a load of rubbish". "In our case the police decided the girls were guilty and that was it. They ignored everything else. They got the facts to fit."
Those fighting for people still in jail for crimes they did not commit also agree the new body will do nothing to help their battle for justice. Ann Whelan, mother of Michael Hickey of the Bridgewater Four, says the new body "is horrendous".
"If you look at all the miscarriages of justice it's the police that get them into the courts in the first place. The Bridgewater Four are inside because the police fabricated evidence against them. This will mean more and more cover ups."
George Silcott, brother of Winston Silcott, agrees: "Most of our problems are via the police. When they interviewed Winston they already had their minds made up that he was guilty.
"The police will only whitewash themselves. This can never work."
Yet the four are still inside because, as the Home Office memo put it, their release could mean "an embarrassing trickle of similar cases could follow".
The new review body will do nothing to help those suffering from injustice and will simply ensure more such cases in the future.
But when Sita fled to Britain she was thrown into detention at the notorious Group 4 run Campsfield House along with fellow refugee Anne-Marie Brou. Sita and Anne-Marie protested, going on hunger strike on 8 February.
On Monday Sita, though too weak to walk, was told she would be put on a plane to the Ivory Coast. As Socialist Worker went to press, her fate and whereabouts unknown.
Rush protests to: Secretary of State for Immigration, Home Office, 1 Queen Anne's Gate, London SW1.
Contact for info and speakers: Ivorian Relief Action Group, c/o Greenwich Racial Equality, 115 Powis St, Woolwich, London SE18 6JL.
So ranted former Scottish Office minister Allan Stewart in parliament in response to the marvellous demonstration against the M77 last Saturday. Stewart was forced to resign last month after waving a pickaxe at anti-M77 protesters.
Up to 3,000 protesters marched on an illegal protest against the road which will plough through the working class area of Pollok. They clearly got up Stewart's nose.
OLD PEOPLE are being thrown out of hospital and forced to pay for their own care. New rules issued by the health department mean patients lose their right to long stay hospital beds.
People with any savings, or who own their homes, will be forced into means tested homes or have to pay for care in their own homes. Bills for private homes can be #350 a week.
No problem for the rich. But for most elderly people it means using all their savings to pay for their care, even though they have paid tax and national insurance all their lives.
"WHEN THE system has been so ruthlessly exposed, you sense that the financial doomsday clock has notched another minute or two towards midnight."
That was the response of a London stock exchange trader to the events which led to the collapse of Barings over the weekend.
Eddy George--governor of the Bank of England--moved quickly to say that "we need to be very careful in drawing conclusions from this episode".
What George and his super-rich friends are worried about is that ordinary people across the world will look at the international banking system and conclude that it has to be got rid off.
The system has been revealed as a roulette wheel--a privileged club where arrogant, Porsche and yacht owning dealers gamble with almost unimaginable amounts of money.
The collapse of Barings is a powerful argument for socialism, for a society planned around people's needs and not the profits of the super-rich.
Yet it comes just when Labour leader Tony Blair is campaigning up and down the country to scrap Clause Four--the Labour Party's commitment to public ownership.
Gordon Brown, Labour's shadow chancellor, spends his time in the City of London assuring the bankers that a future Labour government poses no threat to their profits.
The vote at the London Labour conference at the weekend to retain the clause, just when the Blair campaign is beginning to wear down opposition, is an indicator that there is still substantial resistance to Blair's plans inside the Labour Party.
But the fight over Clause Four is more than an internal Labour debate--it is about whether we allow the madness of the money markets to continue or fight for a new society altogether.
US MARINES stormed ashore this week to give covering fire to the United Nations soldiers retreating from Somalia.
They were bringing to an end a bloody and humiliating operation which showed that outside military intervention is never the answer to war and poverty.
Two years ago 30,000 American troops poured into Somalia claiming they would bring peace and an end to famine. Practically every newspaper and political party supported them.
Socialist Worker's warning then that "US gunmen will not end the horror" has proved tragically accurate.
The troops did not stop people starving or do anything to stop the civil war. The occupation cost over #3,000 million--#400 for every person in Somalia. That would have been enough to give them a much better life. Iinstead it was spent on guns and missiles.
The invasion of Somalia was all about America showing it still had the power to intervene in the world's trouble spots and ruthlessly to defend the interests of
American big business. Now nearly all those who praised the invasion in 1992 admit it has left nothing but a country torn apart and sown the seeds of future agony.
Real change comes when ordinary people unite and fight against the rich and powerful. In that conflict US and UN troops are always on the wrong side.
Even the City of London, with its involvement in vast global financial speculation, is increasingly staking its claim to be the European financial centre, with some success.
One of the big German banks, Deutsche Bank, recently announced it was relocating its investment banking arm in London.
So one factor in the Tories' growing hostility to the EU is uncertainty within big business about where the future of British capitalism lies.
Another is the changing character of the Tory rank and file. Party membership has plummeted, from 2.5 to three million in the 1950s, to1.5 million in the mid-1970s, and well below 500,000 today.
Philip Stephens of the Financial Times describes the decline: "Local recruitment and fund raising have collapsed. The progressive decline of the party's base in local government--it has lost a third of council seats in the past decade--has deprived it of the locally ambitious.
"The solid citizens who once aspired to lead the district council or to have a say in local education policy are better off now signing up for Paddy Ashdown's Liberal Democrats."
It's worth bearing in mind that Tory activists are drawn from groups--small business people and the professional middle class--that were hit hard by the recession of the early 1990s.
Rather than--like most people--blaming the Tory government itself for what went wrong, they have turned their anger on an external enemy-- the "federalist" EU. The wave of bigoted nationalism that has swept Tory ranks may have strengthened the hand of Portillo and the right. But it also threatens to cut the party off from a powerful wing of big business.
"THESE people know what they are doing, whether it is at director level or the chaps on the desk." EDDIE GEORGE, chairman of the Bank of England, on bank traders last year
"PERHAPS HE did a little business he shouldn't have."
"I CAN'T believe they are just going to let us go under. I don't know whether I've got a job any more."
"I HAVE before me photographs of 12 Asian men, all of whom look exactly the same."
"WE are consciously submitting to the imposition of Napoleonic totalitarianism."
"THE country has done enough for black people. Ninety percent of Asians were illiterate when they came to this country--they have failed to integrate and are not part of our community."
"I HAVE no doubt Tony Blair is right to want to abolish Clause Four."
"BEING ENGLISH is being a gentleman. There is no word for gentleman in the German language."
CAPITALIST competition is wrecking the search for a decent elephants' toe clipper.
An intense battle is being waged between rival firms to produce a more effective device so that zoo keepers can safely work on jumbos' nails.
In the United States there are two main challengers. One gently holds the elephant by gradually shifting a moveable wall until the animal is held tight.
The other, which costs over #60,000, grasps the elephant in a cuddly embrace and rotates it until the feet are held up invitingly for the clipper to get to work.
This "hugger" instrument is being heavily marketed and its makers have even taken out a patent for a giraffe restrainer.
Competition--honestly, this is all straight out of the Wall Street Journal--has left elephants bemused, wondering if their best interests are being served.
However, proving that labour is the source of all health, London Zoo uses a quite different method.
Keepers are taught the Indian languages of their elephant's place of birth and are encouraged to develop relationships with them rather than whirling them round in a "hugger".
The result, according to zoo spokesperson Kirsty Watson, is that the elephants learn to stand on three legs and present their feet for a pedicure. So, like the elephant, never forget that capitalism stinks and that cooperation works best.
Other British advisers in Bahrain include Brigadier Michael Barclay, who gives guidance on oil policies, commercial development and military matters, and former intelligence officer Tony Ashworth who advises on how to deal with the press.
CAMEL numbers have fallen disastrously in Mongolia since agricultural collectives were sold off four years ago.
The two humped Bactrian has declined from 900,000 to just 366,100. Asset strippers just move in and sell them off for meat while other camels are distributed to people without the necessary herding skills.
No wonder Ulan Bator's postal workers are worried about the effects of a proposed sell off.
AN AMERICAN soldier in Haiti has been court martialled for doing too much to defend civil liberties.
Captain Lawrence Rockwood landed as part of the occupation force last September. Thinking he was meant to protect human rights he tried to arrange inspections of prisons, dungeons and detention centres where he knew inmates received brutal treatment.
But as soon as he arrived at Port-au-Prince prison he was confronted by a major from the US embassy who ordered him out.
Within days Rockwood was back in the US. His court martial, for exceeding his orders, began this week.
But blind profit seeking invariably leads to financial crises. In fact, as the bankers operate more and more on a world scale, the crises become more uncontrollable.
When a number of "secondary banks" went bust in the mid-1970s, and when Johnson Matthey Bank came close to collapse in the early 1980s, the Bank of England was able to intervene to prop them up.
But when the Bank of Credit and Commerce International collapsed four years ago, the Bank of England was helpless. And on Sunday it could not save Barings.
It did this by promising those who lent to it massive returns which it would pay for by ripping off the assets of the firm it brought.
The result, inevitably, was a wave of bankruptcies and collapses in 1989-91.
The great invention of the 1990s has been the "derivatives market"--by which giant firms gamble on future changes in share prices and currency rates and then trade their gambles with each other.
Enthusiasm for the derivatives market has swept through the great financial centres and involves giant industrial firms as well as banks.
The heads of these firms have ignored warnings about the dangers of "derivatives", just as they ignored warnings about junk bonds in the Reagan-Thatcher boom years of the 1980s.
Yet already the chickens have been coming home to roost for several major firms: The US financial firm Kidder Peabody has been closed down by its owner, General Electric, after one of its bosses was fired for creating $350 million of fictitious profits.
The Wall Street firm Salomon Brothers had to pay several hundred million dollars in fines after one of its bosses faked customer bids. The food and drink giant Allied Lyons made large losses on foreign exchange speculation.
The US soap giant Procter and Gamble and the German bank Metalgesellschaft both made large losses on derivatives.
No wonder the Financial Times can report virtually every top banking executive in the City was at the Bank of England this weekend trying to handle the Barings mess.
One of them told the paper, "We all looked at the floor and felt, `there, but for the grace of God, go I'."
The "suffering" of the pinsuited wonders at Barings would be comical--except they always have a marvellous ability to use their wealth and family connections to emerge successfully from such episodes.
Those who lose out at are those at the bottom--the ordinary workers in the banks, those employed by firms who lent them money, and all those who will suffer as interest rates rise to make up the banks' losses.
WILLIAM WALDEGRAVE is a hypocrite. He pretends to care passionately for animals, pointing out how "humane" British farmers are.
Yet Waldegrave raises veal calves and sells them for export. His family owns a huge chunk of Somerset.
He is trying to win popularity on the back of the animal protests. Waldegrave was responsible for the Citizen's Charter and is a former health secretary who closed hospitals and cut beds.
It was his party that organised against the European Social Chapter, ensuring that British workers don't share the same rights as workers in the rest of Europe.
The only solution he offered was to lobby the four Tory MPs in Derbyshire and wait for the general election.
When asked from the floor why Labour controlled Derybshire could not follow Shropshire and set a "needs based" budget, we were given a completely technical response.
He said this would mean sending out two lots of council tax bills, and this would cost money.
Tony Benn did understand that the struggle against the cuts this year has the potential to become a mass struggle and defeat the Tories. But sadly he would only hint to Martin Doughty that sometimes the most powerful word in politics is no.
He wouldn't tell the council to break the law. We were really disappointed by Dennis Skinner who seemed cynical about the mood for a fight and the possibility of winning.
But it is clear that in Derbyshire there is a growing anger. Like the poll tax campaign, the fight will be built from below.
Efforts by anti-Nazis and fanzines have isolated Nazis at most grounds. It now seems they are making a real effort to come back. They are doing this because they are weak and have failed politically.
It is possible to fight racism at football and to isolate the fascists. I told a racist to shut up when he ignored the woman in front of me who also told him off for abusing a black player.
The racist apologised for his remarks and later other supporters said, "I'm glad you said what you did-- you got in just before me."
The fascists from Motherwell are a tiny, tiny minority.
They shouldn't be given the slightest toehold in Motherwell or anywhere else.
BRITISH Telecom bosses' plan to force workers to work alone up ladders in darkness (Socialist Worker, 18 February) is absolutely appalling.
I am grateful to have a telephone for my use at any time, but not at the expense of a person working alone at night.
As a loved one of such a worker I would be in constant fear of whether or not they were lying unconscious in the wet and cold all night alone.
Are the perpetrators of such an idea human beings or are they completely impersonal robots with no feelings whatever?
WHEN THE job seekers' allowance is introduced in 1996 the pressure on the unemployed to find jobs will increase.
Each unemployed person will be given an "individual contract" that lays down specific requirements abo8 February) and others like her were disabused of their illusions in the Labour Party.
The leadership of Phoney Blair are trying to jettison any pretensions to socialism and representing working class interests.
New Labour is a party dominated by business suited champagne sippers and faceless hollow spin doctors totally out of touch with what people need.
GERMAN ENGINEERING workers have begun an all out strike over pay and set bosses and governments sweating throughout Europe.
Some 11,000 workers set up pickets at 22 plants in the southern state of Bavaria last Friday.
They are members of the three million strong IG Metall engineering union. The strike has huge implications.
Germany is the biggest economy in Europe and IG Metall is the biggest and potentially strongest union. It has not staged an all out strike in western Germany since 1984. There has not been an indefinite strike by engineers in Bavaria since 1954.
But now a shop steward at AEG says, "We're prepared to go on as long as we have to. There's only so much you can take."
The strikes immediately had Germany's bosses and its Tory government in a lather.
Finance minister Theo Waigel complained, "Even a week of strikes is too much," and warned they threatened "social stability".
There was immediate speculation of a rise in interest rates that would force a similar move in Britain.
It had the British bosses' paper, the Financial Times, worrying that "the union moderation of the past two years in Germany will not live through the recovery".
Leaders of other German unions moved quickly to jump on the bandwagon.
Officials of the chemical workers' union broke off pay talks. The union representing 1.5 million building workers demanded a 6.5 percent rise--more than the engineers are after. And leaders of 450,000 bank workers threatened "warning strikes" over pay.
The metal union is demanding a 6 percent rise and no strings. It planned to call out workers at a further 12 plants on Wednesday and at seven more next Monday.
The economy is booming, yet workers have suffered effective pay cuts for the past three years and the government has imposed a 7 percent special tax for this year.
The bosses have so far refused to make an offer, insisting the union must first make productivity concessions and forego an hour's cut in the working week due in October.
But the bosses are also split, a split that reflects real pressures. The order books of many big companies are full and one leading economist suggests these companies "would pay up at once".
But 40 percent of members of the bosses' federation--mainly smaller firms--are still struggling out of the recession. At the same time, German bosses as a whole and the government of chancellor Kohl know a victory for the engineers will spark similar claims in every other sector.
Unfortunately union leaders are scared to call the kind of action that could win the claim outright.
They also openly concede they will settle for less than the full claim. But IG Metall members are prepared for much wider action.
Another 33,000 workers staged solidarity walkouts in Bavaria last Friday, as did 20,000 at Mercedes Benz in Stuttgart.
They deserve better than the sell out their union leaders have in mind.
Among the dead were leading members of both the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) and the Armed Islamic Group.
Fighting between Islamist groups and the army backed Algerian government began in 1992 when the military cancelled elections because the FIS was on the verge of victory.
Now human rights organisations estimate that up to 30,000 Islamic militants are in detention centres.
The fight should not be to exclude Poles or any other non-European Union national from working. That would divide workers and only help the bosses.
Instead it should be a fight for all cross channel seafarers to be paid at the French rate for the job.
The seafarers' strike was suspended on Friday after France's Tory government stepped in and appointed an official mediator.
The government was quick to act because it fears workers' struggle could scupper the hopes of prime minister Edouard Balladur in April's presidential election.
Talks were due to start on Monday, but the seafarers threatened to resume their action if no satisfactory deal was made.
Britain's RMT seafarers' union says anti-union laws here mean British seafarers can only sit and "watch their French counterparts fight their battles for them". Nonsense. The RMT should be ignoring the anti-union laws, fighting alongside the French seafarers and demanding the same wage for all cross channel seafarers.
A group of young teenagers passed the Nazis as they ran to catch a bus. The National Front members pulled out guns and started shooting. Nine bullets were fired in all. Seventeen year old schoolboy Ibrahim Ali, whose family came to France from the Cormoros Islands in the Indian Ocean, was shot dead in the back.
Three Nazis have been arrested. Key Marseilles National Front leader and Euro MP Bruno Megret defended the murders saying it was "legitimate defence".
Le Pen dismissed the killing as "a tragic accident" and expressed sympathy for the National Front killers "who had the misfortune to be caught up in it".
It was not self defence, but cold blooded murder. One of Ibrahim's friends said, "They just saw us, blacks running at night, and started shooting."
Over 3,000 people, black and white, attended Ibrahim's funeral in Marseilles last Friday. The same day anti-Nazis confronted NF supporters attending a meeting in the city of Rennes.
The bald fact of so many unemployed gives the lie to this nonsense. Where is the wealth that was supposed to pour into Eastern Europe, establishing new industries and raising living standards?
It never materialised. In its place has come industrial collapse, mass unemployment, rising infant mortality, declining life expectancy, ethnic conflict and war.
What happened to the bright new future in Latin America?
The US bosses' paper, the Wall Street Journal, admitted last week that recent events "seem like a replay of the bad old days of the 1970s".
Where is the hope in sub-Saharan Africa?
The continent is crippled with #120 billion of debt--more than its total annual production. The World Bank reported last year it would take Africa 40 years to reach the levels of "wealth" it enjoyed 20 years ago.
Supporters of the system hold up countries of south east Asia--the "Pacific Tigers"--as models of "dynamic capitalism".
But economic growth in places like the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia has been accompanied by dictatorship and poverty for the mass of people. The truth is that the free market has not delivered prosperity.
In the Third World it has produced poverty on an unprecedented scale.
In the advanced industrial countries it has led to those with jobs being forced to work longer and harder while millions languish on the dole.
According to the Financial Times, the ILO report "challenges the views of other international bodies such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank".
In fact, it does little more than warn against "a defeatist attitude on full employment" and calls for "the maintenance of an open and efficient global economic system".
Yet mass unemployment and poverty in the midst of plenty are fundamental characteristics of the market system.
The market creates a constant mismatch between the economic capacity to produce goods and the ability of most people to buy them.
When bosses see a chance of making money they join in a scramble for raw materials, machinery and skilled workers.
In order to make a profit, they pay workers less than the value of the goods produced, limiting ordinary people's ability to afford what they make.
At some point this mad charge for profits results in more being produced than workers can buy. Prices fall and profits dry up.
The boom turns to slump. Factories close and millions are thrown on the scrap heap.
Once the bosses see a chance of making money again the whole crazy cycle begins anew. But each wave of redundancies deepens the overall crisis of the system. This system, now embraced by Tony Blair's Labour Party, produces fabulous wealth for a tiny minority and mounting misery for many. The only real alternative requires a reorganising of production to satisfy human need, not on filling the pockets of bankers and big business.
It depends on workers writing a new page in history by seizing control of the world's resources and democratically deciding what to produce and how.
That is what they are doing now.
The Unionists are terrified of losing their support amongst ordinary Protestants.
In the past they controlled who got a home or a job and saw to it that only "good Protestants" did so.
They have retained support--in a region poorer, on average, than anywhere in Britain--by insisting "nationalist" (Catholic) rule would discriminate against Protestants.
The Unionist reaction to the document shows who really stands in the way of peace.
They oppose a joint North-South body for fear it would guarantee Catholic rights.
In fact, ordinary Protestants have nothing to lose from the proposals--though they would not gain anything either.
But the Unionists' blood curdling sectarianism has already had an impact. Leaders of the Loyalist paramilitaries, who initially reacted cautiously to the document, then moved quickly to join the Unionists in condemning it.
WILL THE FRAMEWORK DOCUMENT END SECTARIANISM?
THIS IS unlikely. It is really about restructuring division on religious lines, not abolishing it.
The proposals do nothing to end the false idea that Protestants and Catholics have separate identities and cannot live together.
They could simply lead to the maintenance of rival communities, represented by competing politicians elected on sectarian lines.
The two governments want to undercut Republican desire for Irish unity by drawing the Catholic middle class of Northern Ireland into a "power sharing" arrangement with the Unionists.
They are also responding to the needs of big business within the European Union, which sees greater profits coming from a unified economy across the island of Ireland.
SURELY THE PROPOSALS OFFER SOME WAY FORWARD?
JOHN MAJOR has made it clear that he does not want real change. Instead he says, "I am a Unionist."
Major is pursuing a deal with the Irish ruling class while attempting to retain Unionist support for his government.
That is why he keeps British troops on the streets of Catholic areas.
That he makes any moves reflects the fact that British interests in Northern Ireland have changed.
In the 1920s Britain's rulers pushed the division of Ireland through to protect huge industrial investment in the area around Belfast.
Later their control of the North was strategically important--especially during the Second World War and the first stage of the Cold War.
However, since the mid-1960s they have been looking at ways to establish all Ireland arrangements.
A Tory government proposed an arrangement almost identical to that on offer today, called Sunningdale, in 1973.
The ruling class in Britain and Ireland now see a chance of moving towards an all Ireland arrangement on their terms and over a period of decades.
WHAT IS IN IT FOR REPUBLICANS, FOR SINN FEIN AND THE IRA?
THE SHIFT in Republican politics has been massive.
The IRA rejected Sunningdale out of hand. Now Gerry Adams says the Framework Document marks a new stage in the peace process.
Sinn Fein and the Provisional IRA have fought British rule and the Unionists for 25 years, and enjoyed widespread support among oppressed Catholics.
But today their leaders see change coming from within the corridors of power--from an alliance with the Irish government and US president Clinton. They hope to pressure the British government to push the Unionists slowly towards a united Ireland.
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams has said this process could take 20 years. The move towards talks and diplomacy has meant a turn away from any sort of focus on struggle by the mass of people from below.
It meant that when the Irish government was rocked by scandal before Xmas and Tory prime minister Albert Reynolds was forced to resign, Sinn Fein leaders appealed for Reynolds to stay in office!
Within Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein wants an electoral alliance with the SDLP to share out the Catholic vote.
WHAT IS THE ATTITUDE OF SOCIALISTS?
WE HOPE the peace continues. But there cannot be a stable peace on the basis of two groups of capitalists coming together. It requires that Protestant and Catholic workers come together.
There is a tradition of this.
It happened in 1907 in a great strike wave in Belfast, and again in strikes at the end of the First World War.
It happened in the 1930s when Catholic and Protestant unemployed in Belfast fought the police together, and again in a strike wave in 1944.
Even before the ceasefire workers were showing glimpses of this tradition--most notably last year when Protestant shipyard workers at Harland and Wolff walked out in protest at the murder of a Catholic colleague.
The Protestant working class experience has always been contradictory. They were led to believe that Catholics were inferior and that they benefited from union with Britain.
At the same time, Protestants and Catholics have always worked together in some industries--and this is more the case today than ever.
What is more, Protestant and Catholic suffer the same Tory limit on pay rises, the same council cuts, hospital closures and all the other attacks.
A fightback against the government and bosses in Britain and Ireland could see Protestant workers shift. Instead of feeling "betrayed" they could begin fighting for their class, with Catholic workers as their allies.
CAN THE PEACE HOLD?
THERE ARE a number of reasons to be optimistic. First, there is widespread hope throughout Ireland that the ceasefire continues. People in Belfast are enjoying being able to go out at night without fear. Few want a return to war.
Second, the Unionists are in a far weaker position than in the past. They brought down the last attempt to share office with Catholics in 1973-4 by calling a general strike. They mounted mass demonstrations against the Anglo-Irish Agreement ten years ago.
Now they threaten Major only in parliament and did not immediately feel confident enough to call marches, let alone strikes. The problem at the moment is that the only alternative to the Unionists on offer appears to be a nationalist alliance between Gerry Adams and the Irish government.
In that situation it is easy for Unionists to claim that any gain for nationalists will mean a loss for them.
That is why there is a desperate need for socialist politics and an organisation that emphasise the united interests of Protestant and Catholic workers in fighting Tory governments and bosses throughout Ireland.
In practice this could mean in education, for example, recognising teaching qualifications both sides of the border.
The body would be accountable to a new Northern Ireland assembly and to the Dublin government.
The document proposed a vague "charter" to "protect and guarantee human rights".
The Irish government pledged to change two articles of its constitution with a territorial claim over Northern Ireland, once all party talks have ended.
In a separate document the British government proposed a new Northern Ireland assembly elected by proportional representation.
Britain would retain control of the police and courts.
The RUC, the non-jury Diplock courts and the authorities' emergency powers would remain. Major insisted Britain would "keep troops on the streets of Northern Ireland as long as necessary".
Both governments expect the talks on these arrangements to last years. There is nothing in either document, or anywhere else, about new jobs, homes, better wages, benefits or healthcare.
Two things are responsible for the turn about--the student protests at education cuts and a scandal over phone tapping by interior minister Charles Pasqua. Balladur may still win because the Socialist Party opposition is so weak. But his popularity has nosedived.
It is an increasingly familiar story. Around the world we see the phenomenon of politicians swept to office on a wave of enthusiasm and just as rapidly finding their support has collapsed. Silvio Berlusconi is one example.
The right wing media mogul took Italian politics by storm after the Christian Democrat and Socialist parties were destroyed by a corruption scandal.
Yet within a matter of months he faced enormous opposition on the streets, further corruption charges and his government on the rocks. At Christmas he resigned.
Bill Clinton is another example. He won the US presidency on the basis of George Bush's economic failure--Bush had also looked unassailable 18 months earlier--and bland slogans.
His victory was hailed as a new dawn for America.
In office, however, Clinton has delivered nothing and been met by a fierce Republican backlash.
Similarly, when Boris Yeltsin climbed onto a tank in Moscow to defy the Stalinist coup, he won the support of the vast majority of Russians.
That support carried him to the presidency by a huge margin. Now he is utterly discredited.
John Major is yet another case.
When he took over from Thatcher he gained ten points at the polls and survived the 1992 election by doing as little as possible.
But within months he and his government plunged into a crisis from which neither has ever recovered.
Taken as a whole this syndrome can be called the crisis of the incumbents. Leaders and parties, more or less regardless of their ideology, are devastated by the experience of government which they so desperately craved.
Underlying this is the crisis of the system--the decay of the international capitalist economy, West and East.
This decay has reached the point where even in the "recovery phase" of the boom-slump cycle it is not possible to generate much in the way of rising living standards or the so called "feel good factor".
Not surprisingly, politicians in government get the blame for this failure, the more so as they have invariably claimed voting for them would make everything better.
Two other factors have contributed to this situation. The first is the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and Russia, which also greatly weakened the Communist Parties of the West.
The second is the move to the right and acceptance of the market by almost all the Labour type social democratic and reformist parties.
As a result the general crisis of capitalism is accompanied by a huge political vacuum in which there seems no coherent or credible challenge to the system from the left.
This makes it possible for all sorts of politicians to gain huge popularity--provided they are relatively new on the scene, appear to have a clean record untainted by office, and say vaguely appealing things.
But the popularity is as shallow as it is wide. It is not based on any deep political or organisational loyalty, but on large numbers of people simultaneously thinking that at least this new figure must be better than the present lot.
A good deal of this applies to Tony Blair. Of course, there is a hard core of traditional loyalty to the Labour Party among substantial sections of the trade unions and the working class.
Nevertheless, Blair's high standing in the opinion polls is a bubble that could easily burst if and when he gets to Downing Street. As long as there is a Tory government, Blair's electoral popularity is probably fairly safe.
He can rely on hatred of the Tories and a strategy of avoiding any policy commitments that might alienate the middle classes, while taking the left and the working class for granted.
But in office he will have assumed reponsibility for a decaying capitalist economy over which he has no control.
He will face choices, and all the evidence from Blair's record and that of past Labour governments is that he will choose in favour of the bosses and against workers.
The danger is that when Blair's honeymoon with the voters ends, and if there is no alternative from the left, Michael Portillo and Co will be waiting in the wings.
This is one reason among many why building a genuine socialist movement is so important.
The bosses and government did not use the law against strikers. Then, as now, they knew their laws were of limited use in the face of united action.
The bosses tried other tactics. Their favourite was to try to divide and rule.
But the Daily Record noted, "Even when tempting offers have been made to sections of the strikers the men have resolutely declined to divide their forces and all along they have contended that no one will start work until all have been satisfied."
This solidarity was based on organisation. A strike committee linking stewards across the city was leading the fight.
Willie Gallacher--a leading figure--explained, "Every morning mass meetings were held in the areas and the discussions and decisions of the previous day's committee meetings were reported."
The strike committee eventually had to call a retreat, but a new kind of organisation had emerged.
Several refused to pay and three were jailed.
The response was immediate. A telegram from Fairfields workers landed on government desks in London: "Fairfields shipwrights demand release of three shipwrights by Saturday: failing which we cease work."
The government feared a strike across the Clyde, and the three were released. On the back of such victories the city wide stewards' organisation revived and established itself as the Clyde Workers Committee.
This was not an alternative to or in opposition to the trade unions. Rather it spelt its attitude out in a famous statement:
"We will support the officials just so long as they rightly represent the workers, but we will act independently immediately they misrepresent them." It was a way of organising which could pressure the union officials and leaders, but which could also act independently if the officials refused to move.
From October 1915 until April 1916, when the government smashed it, the Clyde Workers Committee provided a model which militant workers across Britain followed later.
Between 250 and 300 delegates met every weekend in Glasgow--the vast majority stewards in engineering and the shipyards.
Almost all the committee's leaders were socialists.
At one point Lloyd George--soon to be prime minister--was forced not only to meet the CWC leaders, but also to hold a humiliating meeting at which 3,000 Clydeside workers gave him an angry reception.
The government was terrified of this new kind of workers' organisation. In the spring of 1916 the government and bosses combined to launch a major offensive. After a long drawn out battle the government did succeed in breaking the Clyde Workers Committee.
Its leaders were jailed, and ten stewards were deported from Glasgow. But the defeat was not final.
In late 1916 and through 1917 the same kind of stewards committee started to developed in other industrial centres.
The Sheffield Workers Committee in particular was even stronger than the Clyde organisation had been.
On the Clyde too by 1917 the stewards' organisation was rebuilt.
And in the great battles that were to come in 1918 and 1919--when Lloyd George feared Britain was "nearer to revolution" than at any time in history--these shop stewards and their organisations were to play a key role.
This is most graphically demonstrated by the question of the First World War. Almost all the shop stewards' leaders were socialists, and so opposed to the war.
But they never raised this inside the stewards' organisation or argued for opposition to the war in the Clyde Workers Committee.
The same divorce between "economics"--wages and conditions--and "politics" occurred time and again.
In 1915 a huge and successful rent strike erupted across Glasgow. Many workers struck to back up the strike. But the Clyde Workers Committee played no role in leading or backing this struggle.
Such weaknesses undoubtedly made it easier for the government to break the committee.
We need the kind of independent rank and file union organisation the Clyde workers pioneered.
But we also need to avoid its weaknesses, and ensure that socialist politics and arguments are at the heart of rebuilding that kind of tradition in Britain today.
A STARTLING new scandal surrounding leading members of the Labour Party in the days before Tony Blair is coming to light, I can reveal.
The new story is likely to be more damaging than the allegations that Michael Foot was a KGB agent, which appear to have been dismissed as a ludicrous smear even by the likes of John Junor in the Mail on Sunday.
He recalls trying to get Foot to write an obituary of Daily Express baron Lord Beaverbrook as he was dying. "I couldn't bring myself to do anything which I felt might hasten the old man's death," replied Foot.
Junor concludes that no one so honourable could be in the pay of traitors. The new allegations were revealed to me in a restaurant in Brussels by a man who had close contacts with several high ranking party officials. For security reasons he can only be referred to as "K".
"Up until recently", he told me, "some of our leading membersI" He paused, leaned across the table and began to whisper nervously, "had principles." He wrung his hands.
"Sometimes we'd promise something like full employment or increasing taxes on the rich to give back to the poor without even checking the opinion polls to see if it was popular.
"On a few occasions we'd adopt a policy without even asking the stock exchange first.
"We weren't even paid extra for these thoughts," he continued. "I know it sounds ridiculous but sometimes we'd promise to do something like spend more money on the health service just because it was morally right.
"Of course we always knew we'd break the promises as soon as we got in, but even so. Do you know, once we supported CND?
"Imagine having a policy of opposing all out nuclear holocaust without testing whether it would lose us crucial middle class votes in Guildford. I'm so ashamed.
"When I think about it now I can't believe how open we were about our plot to have opinions. Sometimes our followers would be encouraged to recruit new members from working class areas, the youth and even the trade unions.
"What were we thinking of, having the party represented by these types?" he added.
"I mean some of them don't even have their own personal stylist. Do you like the waistcoat?" he went on.
My source informed me that a list of the members who would sometimes dare to think includes a number of the current shadow cabinet.
But these all now agree that the controversial Clause Four of the party's constitution should be amended to read, "Er, I don't really know, mate. You'd better ask Tony, only he's not in at the moment." I asked him what were the aims of the "principles" ring.
"I know it sounds crazy," he answered, "but we planned to undermine the democratic process by getting elected by a majority of the people and then passing acts to make the country different from how it was before we were elected.
"I suppose we were all a bit young and idealistic in those days thinking that just because a government had been elected it had the right to change things."
The allegations come at an embarrassing time for Labour, just as it is priding itself on finally being able to convince the electorate that it doesn't think anything at all because someone might disagree.
As K picked up his notes and turned to leave, I stopped him. "You know there is one more thing I have to ask," I told him. "This conspiracy to have opinions--did it ever include Tony Blair?"
My informant looked relieved. "Oh no," he replied. "He was a grovelling creep all along."
The debate, about the state of our schools, is certainly crucial. But I found Hearts and Minds a disappointment.
The best moments are the humorous ones when pupils are trying to liven up lessons and their lives.
But in the main the drama relies on stereotypes.
So, when a teacher tries to coax a quiet pupil to speak in class, he is confronted by her father who announces, "She is a Muslim girl."
The teachers in the first episode were almost all busy drinking in the toilets or having sex with ex-pupils or physically bashing pupils to within an inch of their lives.
All except our hero, the young teacher determined to give working class kids an education. The author claims this character is based on his own experiences. "When I eventually took up teaching I was determined that education had changed my life, so it was going to change theirs", writes McGovern.
The theme he develops in Hearts and Minds is the familiar Tory refrain (echoed by Labour Party leaders) that standards are falling and teachers are to blame.
McGovern told the Times Education Supplement, "An awful lot of our schools are staffed with third-rate people with third-rate brains. They have no enthusiasm. Our kids deserve better."
McGovern's method of improving schools is to put teachers on short term contracts.
But schools are shaped by more than just teachers. Since the introduction of the Tories' national curriculum and tests teachers have little control over what they teach.
McGovern partly recognises this. As he argues, "It is not just the teachers who are failing our kids. We have an examination system designed to make 95 percent of our kids fail."
He admits that after three years of teaching "all the energy had gone. I just lost it."
McGovern left teaching to become a writer, but how would a short term contract have helped him stay and be a better teacher?
Schools affect teachers as well as the pupils, and the biggest influences come from outside--from the government and the whole education system.
If you separate schools from the wider society, you end up with poor drama which locates all the problems inside the schools.
As the Tories prepare for the return of the 11 plus and education cuts mean children could end up at school for only three or four days a week, can McGovern think of nothing better to say? Hearts and Minds, Thursday, 10pm, Channel 4.
by NICOLAI GENTCHEV
THE FOUR part series Messengers From Moscow churns out the familiar Cold War rhetoric that Stalin was out to take over the world.
In parts the programmes do reveal the reality of Stalinism both inside and outside Russia. This is true, for instance, of an interview with the man who ordered the execution of the revolutionary Trotsky.
Such snatches, while the only part of interest in the first programme, offer no real insight into the Cold War or Stalinism because they are presented with no explanation.
The series fails to convey why any of these events happened.
The "Soviet threat" has nothing to do with Stalin as an individual and nothing at all to do with socialism.
The truth is the Russian Revolution of 1917 was defeated.
As the Soviet bureaucracy consolidated its class rule, it sought to build a strong empire to rival its other capitalist competitors.
Don't be misled by Messengers From Moscow. If you want to know what happened in Russia you would be better off reading the pamphlet From Workers State to State Capitalism by Peter Binns, Tony Cliff and
Chris Harman. (Published by Bookmarks, price #2.50, available from Bookmarks, 265 Seven Sisters Road, London, N4 2DE.) Messengers From Moscow, Sunday, 10pm, BBC2.
A GROUP of dejected BNP Nazis huddled together in a corner of Tower Hamlets town hall, east London, last Thursday night as they saw their latest by-election candidate go down to defeat.
The Weavers ward by-election saw Labour win with 45 percent of the vote and the BNP come third with 16 percent.
This is cold comfort for the BNP leaders who are envious of the relative success of European Nazis like Le Pen in France and Fini in Italy.
Yet again the Nazis have been faced down by anti-Nazi campaigners--nurses, council workers and college students amongst them--in a successful "Don't Vote Nazi" campaign.
A series of recent by-election defeats has seriously dented the BNP's growth and its members' morale.
The Nazi vote has been sliding from a high in September 1993 when Derek Beackon won 44 percent of the vote on the Isle of Dogs and became the BNP's first councillor.
Inside the count last Thursday the BNP was complaining that the Dublin riot the week before had done it no favours at all on the doorstep.
But the BNP is not finished yet. Its 486 votes represents hard Nazi support. Very few of those voters will have been confused about what the BNP stands for--especially after the violence in Dublin.
In addition, second place in Weavers went to the "rebel" Liberals who split from the official party after they were criticised for running a racist campaign in the election won by Beackon.
The "rebel" Liberal candidate was prominent in a recent campaign to stop a Muslim community centre and prayer room being built in the area. Then there is the question of what the victorious Labour candidate will deliver to those who voted for him.
These people are ready to cash in if the Labour council doesn't deliver on its promises--and the signs are already ominous.
Labour won control of Tower Hamlets council during the huge, united campaign to oust Beackon from the Isle of Dogs in last May's local elections.
The local party, backed by their national leaders, made a series of promises. But on the day before last week's by-election, the Labour group announced plans to cut nursery and social services provision, sack council workers, increase rents by 12 percent and the council tax by 5.5 percent.
A local council worker told Socialist Worker, "The cuts, especially in youth provision, and the rises combined could lead to a right wing backlash against the council which the BNP could pick up on."
That is right. The Nazis in east London are resting on a bedrock racist vote. Their lowest showing in Tower Hamlets was last September in Shadwell where they got 305 votes--12 percent.
The problem for the BNP leadership is whether they can keep their footsoldiers content with donning suits and pushing leaflets through doors long enough for their electoral strategy to pay off.
In the Weavers by-election Anti Nazi League campaigners noticed that fewer Nazis were turning out to canvass.
Some of their local bootboys seemed uninterested in going door to door--preferring to look for an opportunity to have a punch up.
Combat 18--the organisation behind the Dublin riot--has a heavy influence on the BNP. They scorn electoralism for sheer terror. It offers a "quick fix" of street violence, racist attacks and intimidation of socialists and anti-Nazis.
The Nazis and their hardcore support are not going to go away and there is every chance of their fortunes reviving unless there is a real fightback against the
Tories involving ordinary people, both black and white.
That is why local campaigns, like the Bethnal Green fight against the closure of the London Chest Hospital are so important.
It is also why we need socialist politics which offer hope to counter the despair which the Nazis prey on.
Only one Tory councillor voted against the Labour group's proposal to defy government spending limits by #6 million.
This will still mean #7 million cuts and an average #44 increase on the council tax.
In Ipswich some 500, mainly firefighters, joined a march backed by local teachers, civil servants and print unions.
Steve Brinkley, secretary of the local FBU, said, "These are Tory cuts, but the knife is in the hands of people elected to fight the Tories and not to do their dirty work for them.
"If they won't be accountable to the people of Suffolk, we'll have to be." Protesting firefighters have answered 999 calls only for two periods of 24 hours.
There were other substantial demonstrations: in Gloucester, where hundreds marched, Worcester where 500 joined a rally organised by UNISON and supported by the NUT and NASUWT, and Plymouth where 400 backed a protest called at nine days notice by a newly formed Fightback group.
A further 200 protesters lobbied Tory MP Anthony Steer in nearby Totnes last Saturday.
The fight against cuts in Lambeth, south London, moved up a gear on Tuesday when teachers struck and hundreds attended a lunchtime demonstration.
Virtually all schools were shut, with UNISON supporting any workers refusing to cross NUT picket lines.
In Strathclyde some 500 lobbied the council's Labour Group meeting, which agreed #70 million cuts.
Strathclyde UNISON branch is now set to ballot its 20,000 members on strike action on 4 April--two days before the new council elections. About 2,000 to 3,000 members in social work will also be balloted on boycotting work associated with vacant posts which have been frozen across the board by the council.
Other workers moving towards strikes include UNISON members in Newham libraries who are calling for a walkout on 6 March to lobby the council.
UNISON in Sheffield was set to hold a mass meeting on Thursday to decide on a one day walkout on 10 March.
The union branch has also launched a recruitment campaign among education workers--clerical and support staff and nursery workers--some 1,000 of who are not in any union.
In Hackney, east London, a 350 strong UNISON meeting of white collar and manual workers voted unanimously for industrial action if any cuts are announced.
The meeting also backed refuse and cleansing workers in their fight to stop the council putting hours up from 35 to 40 a week.
Meanwhile 50 people lobbied the council against attacks on the meals on wheels service.
There was a range of protests elsewhere in the country including: OXFORD: Protesters were out again on Monday as Tories and Liberals united to push #24 million cuts through Oxfordshire County Council.
Robin McCleery, chair of the Association of City Governors, says, "Governors may feel that if the county council won't stick its neck out then we jolly well will."
Members of UNISON are set to ballot for strikes. Contact Oxfordshire Stop the Cuts Campaign: 0865 251441 or 0865 777851. BRADFORD: Around 450 joined a rally against the Labour council's #18.9 million cuts but their anger was not reflected by UNISON leader Rodney Bickerstaffe.
Another rally was set for this week, backed by the teachers' NUT and council workers' UNISON branch, which are also demanding a one day strike ballot and have voted to send a coach to the 25 March FACE demonstration.
BUCKS: Forty people lobbied Buckinghamshire County Council last Thursday when the council met to approve an #11 million cuts package.
The lobby was initially called by the Fire Brigades Union which withdrew at 24 hours notice when the Tories found #35,000 to lift the immediate threat of closure from two fire stations.
Yet 160 teachers' jobs are still threatened. Teachers in nearby Berkshire showed how to stop redundancies with a successful strike ballot this year. Milton
Keynes teachers are already proposing strike action to stop redundancies in Bucks.
WALTHAM FOREST: Council workers, teachers and local people were set to lobby Waltham Forest council in east London on Monday.
NORTHANTS: A 60 strong lobby of teachers and council workers protested against the cuts last Thursday.
The local school governors association is planning a meeting this month. A Fight Against the Cuts in Education meeting is planned for Monday 6 March at 7pm at the Teacher Centre, Barry Road, Northampton.
WARWICKSHIRE: Local people lobbied the council on Tuesday against massive cuts. A meeting of governors from 92 schools has already voted to call for no-cuts budgets in local schools.
NOTTINGHAM: Hundreds joined an anti-cuts lobby of the council last week.
The campaign against the education cuts continues to gather momentum. A FACE meeting is planned for Mansfield on Wednesday 8 March and a Nottingham-wide FACE meeting, backed by Nottingham NUT and UNISON, is set for the next night.
DERBYSHIRE: Parents, teachers, firefighters, council workers and service users were set to lobby the council this Tuesday. This protest follows the successful demonstration against the cuts in Derby last month.
A Derby wide governors meeting is now planned for Thursday 9 March. The FBU union is set to meet this Friday. If the Labour council pushes the cuts through, the union is set to move to a ballot for a series of one hour strikes.
NORFOLK: Firefighters were set to protest against a cut of #482,000 in the fire service which the council was meeting to approve on Monday.
Local firefighters had voted to take action and answer only 999 calls for 24 hours from 9am on Monday.
HERTFORDSHIRE: Around 100 firefighters protested against the cuts last Tuesday. Around 80 firefighters turned out to protest against the cuts last Thursday. The planned action--answering 999 calls only--was undermined by management's claims that the cuts could be absorbed and threats of an injunction against the union.
CAMBRIDGESHIRE: Massive cuts in the fire service mean management have now threatened to halve firefighters' 17 days annual leave.
NORTH YORKS: Around 45 firefighters lobbied against a #17 million total cuts package last Wednesday. The fire service is now set to be cut by #178,000. Firefighters have already taken action and some are angry it has not continued.
SOUTH YORKS: The joint secretaries, who conduct national negotiations over the fire service, have now presented their report following the long running dispute over detached duties. The local authority is set to respond to the report this month.
LEADERS OF ASLEF, the train drivers' union, were meeting British rail management this week before announcing the result of their referendum on action over pay and privatisation.
Drivers are on a basic #215 for a 39 hour week and national bargaining is threatened by next month's breakup of British Rail.
"People do want action," said a train driver. "But our leaders have a history of talking about fighting and then doing nothing. The executive will use the referendum result to try and squeeze a few more crumbs out of British Rail. We have got to let them know crumbs won't do."
Serious action over pay could win substantial rises and still derail Tory privatisation plans.
Activists should circulate petitions in every depot and push resolutions demanding the executive call a quick strike ballot.
If British Rail tries to try to avoid giving the men their jobs back, RMT leaders must be forced to act.
But strikers have been let down by the union. At Bristol--the headquarters of Badgerline--none of the local officials had set up mass meetings.
However, the strikers got an excellent reception in South Wales, where local activists had set up meetings in every depot.
This week the strikers are travelling to west Yorkshire.
Workers at Yorkshire Rider, also owned by Badgerline, are balloting for action as the company attempts to drive down their wages and conditions.
"Our leadership should be calling strike action now," says Bob. "Why should each workforce be left to fight the same company alone?"
THE BANK workers' union BIFU called off a second one day strike over pay planned to hit the Clydesdale Bank on Monday.
Workers are now balloting on an improved offer which gives all bar 51 workers a minimum rise of 3 percent. Some 65 percent of staff will get 4.5 percent and another 5 percent will get 3.5 percent.
"This is a big change for those at the bottom who were to get nothing," says one Clydesdale worker. "But I'm disappointed there's no overall rise above 3.5 percent. We are low paid workers."
Another worker says, "Management were definitely shocked by the strike. We've not won a knockout, but we've probably won on points."
Other bank workers should take note--striking gets results.
SIX HUNDRED workers in a section of the Rolls Royce aero-engine plant at Ansty, Coventry, walked out on Monday afternoon in defence of their AEEU engineering union convenor, Alan Wilkins.
The company is seeking to cut Alan's union facility time to mornings only. It took him "off the clock" for the afternoon so he would not be paid.
The rest of the workforce in the repair and service section (RAES) saw this for what it was--an attack on their union.
They held a factory gate meeting and walked out without waiting to ballot when Alan was made to stop work--threatening to do the same every day the convenor's time is cut.
Rolls, one of the two biggest engineering employers in the country, was reportedly considering escalating the dispute by locking the workforce out.
The workers in turn were rushing to complete a ballot for strike action over a separate issue.
The company has been on the attack against the union at Ansty for some time, insisting on a cut in the number of shop stewards and a reduction in union meetings.
But this assault comes as part of a gathering offensive by Rolls Royce bosses.
They have recently announced a new spate of job losses--at the East Kilbride plant near Glasgow and at their turbine manufacturing subsidiary Parsons in Newcastle.
Rolls is also pressing for the unions to accept "annualised hours". This would abolish overtime, weekend and bank holiday bonuses and mean workers would have to do whatever hours they were ordered so long as they averaged 37 a week over the course of a year.
The company is pushing this most strongly in the repair and services section which is based at East Kilbride, Ansty and Bristol.
It split the plants into separate "companies" in an attempt to make this kind of attack more easy.
But the attacks are being met by an increasing determination among workers to fight back.
Over 1,000 Rolls workers rallied in East Kilbride on Saturday against the threatened closure of the research and development section of the local plant. This will cost at least 1,000 jobs.
They voted unanimously on a show of hands for strike action to save the plant. At the same time shop stewards in the repair and services section jubilantly announced that their 600 members had voted 92 percent in favour of striking against the new working hours.
Bob Summerville, AEEU repair section convenor, told Socialist Worker, "The bosses must be rocked by this result.
"We've had enough and the lads have told them in one voice that they will fight."
The Ansty workers were balloting to strike over the same issue this week. Jimmy Gaffney, engineering union convenor at Rolls Royce Hillington in Glasgow, told Socialist Worker the company was trying to introduce the same system of working hours in part of his plant.
"It looks like the bosses are ganging up for a fight," he said.
The Rolls Royce Combine--the organisation of union reps across the company--is pledged to defend any site prepared to stand up to an attack on the union.
Shop stewards need to ensure there are immediate mass meetings at every site of Rolls Royce to organise solidarity.
The threat of a strike across the company forced Rolls to back down from tearing up every employee's contract three years ago. The unions need to respond in the same way now.
"GET BEHIND 8 March". That was the feeling of lecturers in further education as they met at an FE sector conference of their NATFHE union last Saturday.
The conference overwhelmingly endorsed the national executive's decision not to refer the long running dispute over new contracts to the arbitration service ACAS.
Delegates were critical of the union's leaders and reiterated calls for nationally co-ordinated action.
Two leading figures in the union who supported the ACAS move, Tom Joliffe and Peter Latham, were voted off the national negotiating committee.
"The mood was good," says one delegate. "It is clear the national leadership have no strategy whatsover.
"There is a new sense of determination since the national talks broke down. It is clear we have to fight or give up--and we're not going to give up."
The national executive's own figures show that the strategy of local negotiations is not working.
There have only been 39 local deals and only 20 of them ratified--out of a total of 341 colleges in England and Wales.
Some 172 colleges have "live" ballots, with eight new colleges balloting since Christmas.
Some officials seem determined to undermine action on 8 March, claiming many colleges will have difficulty with the "legality" of ballots.
This must not be allowed to dampen action down.
Activists in every college should fight to strike on 8 March.
Colleges set to take action include: Bradford College, South Bristol and Soundwell colleges, Hopwood Hall, Rochdale, South Trafford, City of Manchester, Wirral, Tower Hamlets, Kingsway, South Thames, Lewisham, City of Westminster. Bolton College is to strike on Friday 10 March and Sheffield and Blackburn colleges the following week.
In inner London a march will be followed by a rally outside Southwark College where staff expected the result of their ballot for all-out strike action over redundancies on Friday. Hackney College is also balloting for an all out strike against redundancies.
A rank and file paper, Fight the Contracts--headlined "all out on 8 March"--is now available from Mike Gallagher, c/o Tower Hamlets College, Poplar High Street, London E14 OAF, price 20p.
The conference also backed the 25 March FACE demo against education cuts.
THOUSANDS OF post office counter clerks, members of the recently formed CWU communications union (a result of the merger of the old UCW postal union and telecommunications NCU) are preparing for a one day national strike next Monday.
The stoppage is part of the campaign to halt the backdoor privatisation of High Street post offices.
Similar action on 12 December had solid support among workers and won public backing.
Since 1988 Post Office Counters Limited (POCL) has sold off over 700 offices to supermarkets and retail chain stores. It now plans to axe another 400 along with 3,500 jobs.
Twenty CWU branches are planning local activity on the day of action. In north west London early morning picketing will be followed by a mass demonstration outside Maida Hill branch office which is on the closure list.
There will be a demonstration in central London meeting at the Embankment later in the day.
Branches should hold section meetings, produce leaflets and visit other offices to argue for support.
Postal collections and deliveries by other CWU grades can be halted by organising effective picketing rotas. This can give counter staff confidence for more widespread action.
Areas involved in the action are Bristol, Worcester and Hereford, Glasgow, North London, SW London, SE London, City and East London, NW London, Kingston, Cambridge, Aylesbury/Hemel Hempstead/High Wycombe, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Merseyside, Sheffield, Shropshire, SW Wales, Reading, Exeter, Plymouth and East Cornwall.
Instead of prioritising Post Office customer relations, the union should be fighting to keep full time jobs. If the bosses demand job cuts, the union should demand a shorter working week.
A South Wales postal CWU member told Socialist Worker, "Most postal delivery staff are working six days a week and a basic 41.5 hour week. That gives plenty of scope for a cut in hours.
"We have a conference policy to get a shorter working week or hold a strike ballot. Why aren't the officials implementing that policy?"
CWU members should fight locally to defend full time jobs. And they must pressure the national union to start a proper campaign.
After a few hours management backed off and reinstated the rep.
However, an investigation into his conduct is now being held, and workers must be ready to take action again unless all disciplinary measures are dropped.
NURSES AT Ward One--a specialist ward for HIV and AIDS patients--in Kings Cross Hospital in Dundee have forced the NHS trust to drop plans for its closure.
Nurses launched their campaign when the closure plans were announced last year.
They enlisted the support of patients and petitioned in the city centre collecting 15,000 signatures, spoke at union meetings and held a well attended public meeting in November.
The closure decision was first deferred and then dropped three days before another big protest meeting was to be held last week.
NURSES, firefighters and postal workers are among those planning to march against the closure of two of Bristol's three casualty units this Saturday.
Saturday's march is backed by the local CWU communications union, a local NUT branch and the Second Severn Crossing TGWU and UCATT branches among others.
THE BALLOT of 50,000 Inland Revenue Staffs Federation members, on whether to accept the appalling Change Agreement recommended by the union, ended last week.
The agreement signs away at least 12,500 jobs and will hit pay and conditions.
Around 100 offices could close. But there were fears that the demoralisation of many members may have delivered the result the union leaders wanted.
CROYDON POLICE have dropped all charges against the three students and a local trade unionist arrested last November whilst demonstrating for higher student grants and in defiance of the Criminal Justice Act.
At Croydon Magistrates Court last Friday one student was cautioned and the others were bound over to keep the peace.
SOME 75 people marched on the home of Tory MPs Nicholas and Ann Winterton last Saturday to protest against the Criminal Justice Act.
Police prevented protesters occupying the grounds but demonstrators used a public footpath to get near the house.
DEMONSTRATE outside Manchester Magistrates Court on 11 April, 9 am, Crown Square, when five anti-roads protesters face charges under the Criminal Justice Act.
"Many schools will be deciding what action they take now." Dr Robin McCleery, chair of Oxford's Association of City Governors, says, "Governors may feel that if the county council won't stick its neck out then we jolly well will."
In Devon the parents' association at the 1,500 pupil King Edward VI College has called for a "people power" campaign modelled on those against the poll tax and VAT on fuel. Some local schools are discussing setting no- cuts budgets.
This kind of resistance needs to be built everywhere.
When councils set their budgets it is only the start of the process. They then have to implement them.
They and the government can be stopped by defiance.
Parents, governors, teachers, council workers, firefighters and those who rely on council services can all play a part in forcing the government to cough up extra cash.
In the councils and the fire service workers have the power to stop the cuts by striking.
Union leaders should be building for that kind of resistance.
In the schools governors can refuse to set cuts budgets. Organising parents' meetings and taking petitions around every school can help build the confidence to resist. The fightback needs to be pulled together into a national struggle. The national demonstration in London on Saturday 25 March gives a chance to do that. It is called by the Fight Against Cuts in Education (FACE) campaign, launched last month from a meeting of governors, parents and teachers in Warwickshire.
FACE has called for bonfires against the cuts at every school on the night before the demonstration.
Everyone who wants to stop the cuts and strike a blow at the Tories should throw themselves into building these protests in the coming weeks.
In London two UNISON branches have called a Pay the Nurses rally, with Labour MP Tony Benn and other speakers.
It can provide a springboard for organising action in hospitals across London. Activists should organise similar protests and rallies around the country--possibly joint rallies with teachers, governors and parents fighting education cuts.
UNISON leaders promise to begin "consultation" over a ballot for strike action if the government has not backed down by 1 April.
We need to make sure the union does not delay the ballot, and a wave of protest on 30 March will keep up the pressure.
The Royal College of Nursing has promised to ballot its members on dropping its no-strike policy.
"There needs to be a big, noisy protest to get anyone to listen to us," says Amy, an RCN member and student nurse at Guy's Hospital in London.
"I would take strike action," she says. "The recent RCN magazine just talked about writing to MPs and petitions. But that's already being done. We need to be seen on the streets."
The Royal College of Midwives has also promised to ballot its 36,000 members on the union's no-strike clause.
A midwife at an east London hospital told Socialist Worker, "We have put up with a lot.
"We've had restructuring and regrading, as well as coping with working in a run down NHS. It's time we did something."
The Health Visitor's Association, part of the MSF union, is also balloting its 16,000 members over the pay deal--the first time it has called such a ballot. "Nurses are so angry, I think action could really take off," says a nurse at Guy's, a UNISON member.
"Now we have the chance to mount a real campaign--and to get people to join the union in the process."
More reports from the hospitals--page 15