NURSES ARE fuming at the government's miserly 1 percent pay offer.
A hospital worker in Cardiff told Socialist Worker the atmosphere had become "explosive". "This is the final insult for many nurses," she said.
The anger is so great that the no-strike Royal College of Nursing (RCN)--which represents 300,000 nurses--has been forced to promise a ballot over its no-strike rule.
RCN leader Christine Hancock had to admit, "For the first time, many nurses are prepared to consider industrial action."
The RCN also says it will back nurses who refuse to work unofficial overtime. Nurses currently do an average 4.8 hours a week unpaid work--saving the government #180 million a year.
"The RCN's decision has given a boost to people," a nurse in Salford told Socialist Worker. "People feel that maybe now action will get off the ground. Lots of people are asking, `When is the union going to ballot?'"
"I've never seen nurses so angry," says a nurse in Nottingham. "All it would take is a lead from the union."
"We've had two workplace meetings since the government announced its crummy deal," reports a hospital worker in Aberdeen. "People were fuming.
"Two members of the RCN asked to join UNISON because they want to strike. "We're sending a letter to union leaders saying we want a national demonstration and a strike." Activists should start building now to get action off the ground.
"We need to build local union organisation," says a London nurse. "We need to recruit to the union, call meetings on wards or wherever we work, even if there have never been union meetings before."
HEALTH workers lobbied leaders of health union UNISON on Tuesday to demand a national strike over pay.
They called on the union to stick to its 8 percent pay claim and refuse local bargaining.
UNISON's national nurses' group has already recommended a campaign of protests and demonstrations.
LOCAL PAY bargaining is a joke, say health workers. Only 11 out of 500 hospital trusts have even set up negotiating bodies.
Any local rises nurses win will mean cuts in patient care. So the money has to come from the government.
Local deals would also threaten nationally agreed conditions for maternity and sick leave and for night shift payments.
MICHAEL HESELTINE has unleashed a new wave of corporate asset stripping, on a scale unprecedented even for the Tories.
The trade and industry minister announced last week that he had no objections to Trafalgar House's takeover bid for power company Northern Electric. Trafalgar House is a leading donor to Tory funds.
Northern Electric bosses want to keep control and responded with a "package of goodies" giving shareholders #5.07 per share if they do not sell to Trafalgar House. These shareholders only paid #2.40 per share on privatisation four years ago and have been paid handsome dividends since.
The company proposes to borrow hundreds of millions to pay for the handouts.
Its workers and customers will be the first to pay--through job cuts and higher prices.
But the other 11 power companies--and every other privatised utility--will be under pressure to make similar payouts.
City analyst Nigel Hawkins admitted in the Independent, "The bid puts pressure on other companies to do something dramatic in terms of payouts."
The drive towards bonanza payouts is also fuelled by a desire to plunder the utility companies before the next election. "The industry is determined there should be nothing left for Labour," a "leading electricity industry source" told the Independent.
However, Labour leader Tony Blair continues to insist "ownership does not matter".
RAIL TRAVELLERS are in increasing danger because of cutbacks. But increasing incidents of trains skidding out of control are not being centrally recorded because of the break up of the rail network.
The Independent reports a series of accidents and near misses involving trains passing red signals or through closed level crossings. The worst was last November when a train crashed into buffers at Slough after skidding 1,200 yards.
Railtrack's director of production, John Ellis, told the Independent, "We have had a disastrous leaf fall season in terms of safety."
He admitted, "I am aware of at least one zone that curtailed its tree felling to meet budget targets."
Yet neither Railtrack nor the train operating companies are compelled to collect details on all accidents, let alone act on them.
A TRAIN driver rushed from his cab shouting, "Take cover, we are going to crash," last Saturday, as one train went into the back of another in east London. Thirty one people were injured.
THE GOVERNMENT has paid its ombudsman overseeing the Student Loans Company #34,000 since November 1990, and there have been no lack of student complaints.
The company had a backlog of 35,000 unprocessed claims at the end of last year. Yet the 70 year old ombudsman David Birrell has handled just three cases!
Details of his busy job came to light when a student's father complained about the handling of his son's case.
Howard Franklin says, "My son fell ill and had two major operations while he was at Leeds University. He found himself facing legal action for not repaying his loan within weeks of going into hospital."
Birrell ruled the company had behaved correctly.
THE BOSSES investigating excessive pay and perks for top executives could start with themselves.
Sir Richard Greenbury made #1.1 million last year as chair of Marks and Spencer.
Sir Denys Henderson, chair of ICI and Zeneca, made #832,066.
Sir Iain Vallance, BT chairman, got #652,853. Sir David Lees, GKN chairman, got #339,386. Sir Michael Angus, non-executive director of Whitbread, got #155,485 and David Simon, chief executive of British Petroleum, got #634,076.
The bonuses of top bosses rose by an average 51 percent last year, while non-executive directors got an average #14,400 for 15 days "work".
NATWEST BANK has announced it made a #1,600 million profit last year.
Chairman Lord Alexander will get a #100,000 bonus on top of his #362,157 basic pay as a result. But many of the bank's 55,000 workers will get no pay rise at all.
In total the banks are expected to announce profits of over #10,000 million. SCOTLAND'S Clydesdale Bank made more than #100 million profit last year, while offering its workers peanuts. Clydesdale workers showed how to respond by striking last week
IF THEY do not like the figures, the Tories fiddle them.
Not content with changing the definition of unemployment more than 30 times in order to cut the dole figures, the Tories are now doing the same to inflation.
Margaret Thatcher did not like the high inflation shown by the old Retail Price Index (RPI), so she ordered a new Tax and Prices Index designed to produce a lower figure.
However, this included mortgage payments. When these rose the Tories changed again, excluding them from the "RPI(X)" inflation figure.
Now this too has started to rise and chancellor Kenneth Clarke wants a new indicator, the "RPI(Y)", which will exclude tax rises and let him pretend inflation is under 2 percent.
DEMONSTRATORS picketed the office of Korean Air in London last week, demanding the release of 36 socialists facing a show trial in South Korea.
There were similar protests across the United States, in Dublin and in Paris. The trial of Choi Il-bung and up to 13 others charged under the National Security Law resumed last Wednesday.
The evidence against them is simply that they attended socialist meetings, had contacts with socialists from other countries and supported trade unionists and strikers. One defendant, 26 year old Yee Heh Sook, has already been sentenced to a year in jail.
A statement in their defence, signed by MPs, trade union leaders, writers and academics from around the world, will now appear in the influential New York Review of Books in a fortnight.
For further details of how you can help win these socialists' release, contact: Committee to Defend South Korean Socialists c/o Bookmarks, 265 Seven Sisters Rd, London N4 2DE, or phone 0171 538 5821.
AN ANTI-deportation campaign in Manchester has scored an important victory against racist immigration controls.
Helen Aladesanwa and her family have won their seven month battle against the Home Office.
It has given them "exceptional leave to remain" for 12 months. Campaigners believe it is unlikely to enforce deportation after this. A jubilant Helen said, "I want to thank Socialist Worker supporters, the unions and everyone."
Chris Andrews of the campaign explained, "Helen had a lot of local support. We collected signatures door to door. We worked in the unions and got the backing of Manchester NUT and 20 trade union branches."
THE TORY press has been full of condemnation for last week's Nazi inspired violence at the Ireland-England football match.
"Exposed: the fanatics who shamed England. We name thug army," ran a Daily Express headline.
But such papers see no contradiction in printing this alongside the latest anti-foreigner rant or racist scare story from the mouths of their Tory friends.
They cheered minister Peter Lilley's Tory conference speech making fun of foreigners and regularly applaud anti-foreigner rants from Tories like Michael Portillo. They whip up anti-immigrant hysteria and trot out a string of lies to justify it.
These papers bang the jingoistic drum whenever there is a chance "Great Britain" may go to war against "foreigners" as in the Falklands or the Gulf.
The Nazi violence in Dublin is fuelled by the nationalism of Tory politicians and their press.
This nationalism helps gives the Nazis confidence to carry out not just Wednesday's mayhem but racist attacks and murders.
As well as kicking the Nazis off the football terraces we also need to challenge those hypocrites in government and the press who give them space to breath.
POLITICIANS OF all parties praised Tory MP Nicholas Fairbairn who died last week.
"A true Scottish patriot who was passionate in seeking justice for everyone," said Scottish Tory chair Sir Michael Hirst.
"A man of wit and style," said Scottish Nationalist Party leader Alex Salmond. Labour MPs agreed, with one saying, "Nicky was brilliant."
The truth is Fairbairn was a reactionary, racist bigot. At the age of 11, while at public school, he flew into a rage when Labour won the 1945 general election.
A Labour voting gardener told young Fairbairn, "We're gonna wipe out the likes of you."
Fairbairn later boasted about his response: "I took my catapult and put out every window in the Co-op at Musselburgh, the only symbol of socialism in range."
As an adult he claimed women who "said no" to sex often "meant yes" and that rape victims were "tauntresses".
He backed South Africa's apartheid regime, denouncing Nelson Mandela as a "terrorist" and his supporters as "left wing scum".
During the 1992 general election Fairbairn said, "Under Labour the country would be swamped with immigrants of every colour and race," and denounced West Indians as "lazy".
He also boasted, "My sole reason for entering politics was to destroy socialism."
Thankfully, his life was a dismal failure. Good riddance to him.
THOUSANDS OF school governors are so worried about education cuts that they are considering challenging the government by setting illegal budgets.
If Labour had an ounce of fighting spirit it would back this revolt and do its best to spread it.
Instead Labour leader Tony Blair insists he is completely opposed to setting illegal budgets.
Blair thinks Labour will be regarded as "loony left" if it backs the fight of parents and governors in places like Shropshire, Somerset, Oxfordshire and Warwickshire.
Labour leaders think anything which hints at defiance--like the rebellion against the poll tax or the signal workers' strike--is likely to damage the party's chances.
Yet several of the places where the revolt against education cuts is strongest have Tory or Liberal Democrat MPs.
Are parents, teachers and governors in these areas more likely to vote for Labour if it backs their revolt or if it tells them they are mad?
THE MIDDLE classes are in revolt. Such has been the theme of much media coverage of the uproar over the funding of education which has united teachers and school governors against the Tories.
The picture that is painted is of nice affluent professional people who have been goaded into militancy by government policy.
This picture isn't wholly inaccurate, but it needs to be handled with care.
It rests on certain assumptions about the nature of British society and others like it. Politicians, commentators and academics claim that we live in societies where the majority is now middle class.
The late John Smith, when leader of the Labour Party, talked of a "two thirds, one third society", in which the majority is comfortably off with a wretched and impoverished underclass beneath it.
Until recently there was much concern about "the culture of contentment", as the economist J K Galbraith called it. The fear was that the middle class majority would selfishly ignore the plight of the poor minority.
Now the emphasis is on what one journalist, Matthew Symonds, has dubbed "the culture of anxiety" gripping the middle class.
After a good time in the 1980s, the argument goes, the middle class has now come in for a bashing. The recession has led to the "down sizing" of the white collar workforce in both the private and public sectors.
The depression in the property market has hit middle class families for whom home ownership used to be a sure-fire way of increasing capital.
A combination of these and other factors has created a new condition of insecurity for the middle class which may drive sections of it into the arms of Tony Blair's reassuringly new Labour Party.
But what is this middle class? Typically it is thought to be composed of three groups distinguished by market researchers--the As, Bs and C1s.
The As--3.1 percent of the adult population--are the upper middle class, those in higher managerial, administrative and professional jobs.
The Bs--17.7 percent of the population--are the middle class proper, occupying the intermediate positions in the same white collar job ladder.
And finally there are the C1s, the so called lower middle class--supervisory and clerical workers and those in junior managerial, administrative and professional posts.
Financial Times columnist Samuel Brittan observes, "The placing of the C1 groupIis crucial. For they represent 27 percent of the total population.
"But as less than 10 percent of households use fee paying schools, the C1s can hardly be typical of the upper-middle-class groups, with the worries about school fees, about which Symonds writes."
Brittan has put his finger on a crucial point. Simply calling all white collar employees middle class obscures the fundamental differences that exist among them.
What does BT boss Iain Vallance have in common with the mass of his white collar staff, from whom he's been trying to squeeze redundancies and higher productivity at the same time as giving himself ever bigger bonuses?
Almost all C1s and even many Bs experience the same fundamental lack of control over their work as, and receive comparable wages to, the mass of manual workers.
Of course it's true that often the attitudes of some white collar workers to their jobs may set them apart from other workers.
But one of the most important developments over the past few years has been the way in which the constant pressure from management at work has injected a powerful dose of militancy into white collar groups which previously seemed immune to it.
Think, for example, of the struggle against the imposition of new contracts that's being waged by further education lecturers, hardly in the past a stronghold of militant trade unionism.
Once we break up the so called middle class in this way, the picture of British society changes radically.
Together the C1s and C2s-- skilled manual workers (23.5 percent of the adult population)--plus the Ds, semi-skilled and unskilled manual workers (16.2 percent) make up to thirds of the population. Add the Es, state pensioners and widows and casual and lowest grade workers (12.4 percent), and the working class turns out to amount to just under 80 percent of the population.
Far from becoming of diminishing significance, class is central to the growing divisions in our society.
"KENNETH Clarke is smug, complacent and stupid."
JONATHAN TAYLOR, chair of the education committee in the Tory flagship council of Trafford in Greater Manchester, writing about Clarke's lack of understanding about the financial difficulties faced by schools
"I DON'T pretend that the present level of benefits is anything more than meagre in the long run." Social security minister PETER LILLEY
"HOW CAN we explain that the bottom 10 percent have such low incomes yet half have cars and videos? How many are students--people who 15 years ago would have had no chance of going to college, and who in two or three years' time may well have well paid jobs?" Welsh secretary JOHN REDWOOD
"WE HAVE nothing against share options." Labour leader TONY BLAIR in the House of Commons
"I HAVE been a member of the Labour Party for 29 years. For 28 of those years I have been described as a rightwinger. This year, I have noticed that I am described as a leftwinger. I have not shifted an inch--other people have passed me by." Thurrock Labour MP ANDREW MacKINLAY
PARENTS IN Wandsworth, the Tory flagship borough in south London, are furious at being denied freedom of choice.
The Tories repeatedly spout on about the importance of parental choice in education.
Now parents are learning the truth about what the return of selection in schools really means.
Only 19 places are available at the Graveney grant maintained school for local pupils.
Parents, who held an angry protest meeting, are now threatening to keep their children at home. They were refused places because they live more than 600 yards away.
The catchment area was halved to just 598 yards this year. Local parents blame the school's decision to reserve half the places for pupils who scored top marks in an entrance exam, open to any 11 year old.
Graveney head teacher Graham Stapleton insisted selection was needed: "We changed our admission because other schools in Wandsworth have selection.
This year we had to deal with 758 applications and we cannot satisfy everyone." What is happening at Graveney school shows that rather than the parents choosing the schools they want, the schools are choosing the pupils.
THE TORY solution to poverty is grow your own vegetables.
Wealthy Tory MP Toby Jessel said Britain's unemployed, "Sit in front of the television for hours on end, complaining about their poverty and not growing vegetables when they could do so easily and cheaply."
Company director Jessel--who lives in a mansion near Hampton Court Palace--says, "If more people could be encouraged to have allotments and grow vegetables, then if they are in poverty that would help alleviate their situation." Jessel, who once boasted about eating seven lobsters at one sitting, claimed poverty in Britain was exaggerated. Why? Because so many pensioners own their own cars.
ITALIAN FASCISM is trying to dress itself up as respectable and democratic. But do not be fooled. The National Alliance which has replaced the fascist MSI is less democratic than its neo-fascist predecessor.
Its leader Gianfranco Fini has enormous power. He chooses half of the 500 delegates to the party conference, nominates the 100 members of the directive committee and "constitutes" the 25 members of the executive.
The historian Nicola Tranfaglia has pointed out the National Alliance bears a striking resemblance to the 1938 constitution of the fascist party, making Fini a dictator within his own party. The best selling books at the National Alliance founding conference also speak volumes.
One that sold well was Julius Evola, a cult figure for the MSI, who in 1938 stood out for his anti-Semitic campaigning. He also wrote a preface to the Protocols of Zion.
ITCHING powder should be sprayed on Nottingham's Council House steps to stop people sitting there.
So says Tory councillor Margaret Crowe. She said people sitting on the steps could put off potential employers visiting the council.
"We could have an itching competition in the Old Market Square--it could be our new summer event," she suggested.
The council already hose down the steps to make them uncomfortable to sit on. Margaret Crowe added, "People standing there waiting a few minutes to meet someone is fine, but these people are just sitting there, drinking as well. They have all got dogs on bits of string--but dogs shouldn't be in cities. They should be in more pleasant surroundings."
What about the people? Don't they deserve better than being hosed down and treated with itching powder?
HOME Secretary Michael Howard never stops banging on about joy riders. Inside the System wonders if he was so quick to condemn his aide, Janine Barnes. Janine caused #1,600 worth of damage to three vehicles while driving an unmarked
Special Branch police car without permission.
After a lunchtime drink Janine followed a cyclist through a security gate at New Scotland Yard, made her way to the underground car park, got into a Ford Mondeo--which had the keys in the ignition in accordance with police rules.
Two witnesses then saw her reverse out and hit two cars. She then hit the two vehicles for a second time before speeding off.
A POLICEMAN had to be rescued by an Oxford University porter after he climbed into a locked compound at Trinty College to confront a burglar. The burglar was a statue.
REMEMBER THE image in films of chain gangs working on the US railroads? Well, they could soon become a feature of British primary schools.
Channing Wood prison in Devon has just won the contract for ground maintenance at a near by primary school.
Prisoners will be forced to work for as little as #9 a week under the supervision of jail staff.
A prison official said pressure was coming from the home office to generate income by competing in the open market.
THERE IS an irate letter in the magazine of the UNISON union which represents health and local government workers.
Daniel Groves writes, "My UNISON magazine tells me what I get from my UNISON membership includes discount travel, holiday centres, discount mortgages, education, legal help and credit cards.
"Unhappily, what I do not get from my UNISON membership is a negotiating team able to deliver a decent pay award to members to enable me to afford any of the above benefits." So much for the plan of some union leaders to win new members by offering credit cards and free holidays.
INVESTIGATING government sleaze seems like a profitable business. The Nolan Committee members get #1,000 every month. Not bad considering the Committee only sat for three mornings last week.
GOVERNMENT special advisers are moving straight from ministerial office into private sector jobs, free of the restrictions applied to mainstream civil servants.
Among 23 recent advisers to Tory cabinet ministers at least seven went to lobbying or public relations firms. Others went to industry or the City, some even became Tory MPs.
by JANE ELDERTON
"WE HAVE got to get as many people as possible down to London for Saturday 25 March." That is what Warwickshire parent Joanne O'Hara says.
The national organisation FACE--Fight Against Cuts in Education--made the call for the national march earlier this month, and there is no time to delay. Parents, school governors and teachers need to start building this national demonstration against education cuts now.
Transport needs to be booked and leaflets and posters distributed. "Get leaflets to parents at every school so people have something to hand out," says Joanne.
"Parents can call meetings through the schools or the Parent-Teacher Associations.
"The closer the campaigning is to the school the better," she says. "We have got to have people speaking to parents face to face.
"I'm campaigning around my children's primary school but I also went into the school at the end of my road.
"We have to move quickly to keep the momentum going. Schools have faced cuts year after year, but this year parents are saying they are not going to accept it."
There is no doubt parents see the need for a national demonstration.
Ben, a Sheffield parent, explains how a meeting of 150 people against rising class sizes last week backed the national march.
They also agreed to take up the FACE call for bonfires to be lit at every school the night before the demo.
"Parents really want to do something. In my school there are already two classes of over 30. if the cuts go through, eight classes will be over 30. "Everyone knows their children are getting a worse education."
The Sheffield meeting also decided to call a mass meeting of parents and governors, support a lobby of the council on 10 March and organise a Sheffield demo on 11 March.
The best way to build the national march is to ensure all local protests planned for the next month are as big as possible.
"After our last Warwickshire FACE meeting I typed out a letter to every headteacher in the county and asked them to distribute it to parents," says Joanne. "I explained what we are fighting against--classes of over 40, sacked teachers, the lack of equipment.
"I said they should get to the protest outside Shire Hall in Warwick on 28 February. Each school should bring their own banners and placards. Quite a few schools are already sending at least one coach."
Lobby Warwickshire County Council: Tuesday 28 Feb, 10am, Shire Hall, Warwick. Next Warwickshire FACE meeting: Thursday 2 March, 7.30pm, Irish Club, Holy Walk, Leamington Spa.
EVERYWHERE THE call for a national march against education cuts is being enthusiastically received.
"The national demonstration was really welcomed," said a teacher at the founding meeting of Barnsley FACE last Friday.
The 70 strong meeting, mainly of parents, agreed to call a public meeting locally and lobby the council on 9 March.
A Newcastle teacher told Socialist Worker that people said the march was a brilliant idea when he raised it at his union meeting.
"Straight away we decided to send buses," he explained. The Rotherham association of the NUT teaching union has already agreed to put on three coaches. What you can do:
Contact FACE nationally on 0589 789104 or 0926 410930. Petition against the cuts and leaflet for the national march.
Set up a local FACE group by calling a meeting for parents, governors and teachers, and call local protests.
Get your union branch to book transport to the march and make a donation to the campaign.
NOBODY should think the fight is over if your local council pushes a cuts budget through.
The school governors' revolt means the fight goes on.
In Warwickshire last week governors from over 90 schools, nearly a third of the county's schools, met and voted to refuse to set cuts budgets.
Dave Thomas--a Warwickshire governor from a school hit hard by the cuts--explains, "Anyone can balance a budget. But what is the net result? The children suffer."
Now the National Confederation of Parent-Teacher Associations has announced it is to ballot its nine million parent members on whether they support the governors' civil disobedience.
The result is expected before Easter.
Parents will be asked, "If your governing body seeks to protect the quality of education of your children by action which could be regarded as illegal, would you support them?"
This ballot is designed to put more pressure on the government. But already the governors' action means every school can become the focus to keep up the campaign against the cuts.
"We have passed a resolution saying we are not going to cooperate with any cuts," says Cathy MacErras, a school governor at Malinslee County Primary School in Telford.
At Cathy's school the projected #14 million county wide cut would mean axing all the support staff and a part time teacher.
"We are going to protect jobs and not allow any cuts, even if that means we overspend," says Cathy. Shropshire County Council says it will break the government's cap--the limit on how much each council can raise in local taxes--and raise more money through putting up the council tax.
But as Cathy says, "It's good the county council is making a stand but it doesn't solve the problem. We have to keep maximum pressure on the government to provide more money.
"We took this decision because we are part of a campaign. If enough schools do it, then it will be effective."
The alternative to governors setting an illegal budget is for them to resign. But this is less effective.
If governors refuse to make cuts nothing happens immediately. But at some point the local authority will be obliged to step in and take over financial responsibility for the school.
If hundreds of schools rebel, then the authority will not have the resources to run all the schools.
"If you resign you might hit the headlines but you lose any power. We decided to stay and build a campaign round the school," explains Cathy.
Already the governors at her school have sent letters to the local press outlining their stand, the chair of governors has written to all the parents and they have contacted other local primaries in the area.
Cath Howard, the secretary of the Shropshire School Governors Association, explains, "If the local education authority does take over the budget then the governors can appeal to the secretary of state.
"We could bury Shephard's desk under a mountain of appeals. "This can be like the poll tax. The government said they were never going to change that. But when ordinary people refused to co-operate they had no choice."
THE TORIES claim their tests and league tables raise standards in schools. But new evidence shows the number of 16 year olds leaving school in England and Wales with no qualifications rose last year.
In the last three years, while schools have been concentrating on the league tables, the number of pupils failing to get even one GCSE has risen.
At the same time the number with at least five GCSEs has risen. It shows the pupils who need the most help are getting dumped as schools worry about their place in the league tables.
TWO HUNDRED Strathclyde police sealed off a mile of main road through the south side of Glasgow last week to back up 150 security men working for Wimpey Construction.
They were attempting to fell trees to clear the site of the Pollok Free State on the route of the proposed M77.
The site has been occupied for the last ten months by locals and environmentalists, who were taken by surprise by the scale of the operation. It followed a weekend which saw two protestors jailed for refusing to accept bail conditions barring them from the site.
The site was saved when over 200 school students arrived and surrounded the trees. Twenty six of the security guards resigned, one of them saying, "I'm not here to fight children." Many of them had been recruited in the previous week for #3 an hour. The road is set to direct traffic away from middle class suburbs of Glasgow and channel it through working class housing schemes.
It will pass the massive Cowglen National Savings Bank and go through the largest urban green belt area in Europe, bringing more asthma and pollution. The scheme has split Labour MPs. Those from Ayrshire are in favour, those from Glasgow opposed.
But it is the young people of Pollok who have shown what is needed to stop the motorway. The whole community, and the workers at Cowglen, need to be convinced that they can do the same.
A demonstration on 25 February, from the city centre to the camp, can be an important first step.
COLIN VETTERS, Glasgow
I'M BLOODY angry at the government cutting the hours you can go to college part time if you are unemployed.
From now on you won't get benefit if you do more than 16 hours a week. I'm a single mother, and there are no jobs for us.
If you stay at home it's just you and your children. You are bored and isolated. Going to college, you don't just learn. You mix with people. It helps stop you getting depressed and running to the doctor for pills.
If they cut my money I won't be able to manage. Life is hard enough as it is. I would just have to drop out.
As a part time student you have to buy books and materials. To take exams you have to fork out more than #40. My friend dropped out because she couldn't afford to pay.
I want to go on to further education. I'm pushing myself so hard. I want to move on.
My son suffers because of it. I used to give him #1 a week pocket money. Now there is no pocket money.
I can't buy him a new pair of trainers. His uniform is falling to bits. He needs a PE kit, but I can't afford to buy one.
I don't have a choice to do part time or full time. I couldn't cut my hours. I can't take all the subjects I want as it is. I wanted to do more hours. But I was told it would affect my dole and I had to cut back.
It's about time we did something and let the Tories know we can't be kicked around for ever. JOAN, South London
PEOPLE QUEUED to sign our petition against the cuts in Plymouth on a recent Saturday despite pouring rain and gale force winds.
A local school governor was almost in tears as he told of plans to sack four teachers and put 38 children to a class in his primary school.
Yet until last week local union leaders had done nothing more than hold backroom talks with the councillors organising the cuts. People want to act. In desperation we started petitioning and organised a public meeting.
The response was tremendous and forced UNISON leaders to ballot for strike action.
The one leaflet we produced was copied and spread around Devon like wildfire.
Local fire stations already had them on their noticeboards when we visited. They had been distributed by the firefighters' union.
The cuts also link with other campaigns. The local Coalition against the
Criminal Justice Act is protesting at Development Corporation plans to build luxury apartments on public land.
The #45 million handed to this business led quango by the government stands in obvious contrast to the #35 million slashed from public services.
Links between the various campaigns are growing. Political generalisation is happening. But the issue is leadership.
Our local experience is that, where a lead is offered, people are ready to act. Socialists can make a difference.
TONY STAUTON, Plymouth
I WENT on an Employment Training course that provided no work placement and, having got my qualification, spent three weeks on a job search as part of my training.
While I was there it was suggested the trainees could go to the Job Club on work experience. When we had time, having helped others find work, we could look for work ourselves.
So the unemployed were expected to do the work of a paid employee, instead of somebody getting paid to do the job.
And when other unemployed workers at the Job Club became angry because of the pressure to find non-existent jobs, they might take it out on the unemployed trainee.
JANET HARRINAN, Newcastle
WHY DOES Socialist Worker continue to champion the cause of the Labour Party, to the extent of leading the fight to retain Clause Four?
Yes, the ideas behind Clause Four should form an essential part of any socialist organisation's manifesto.
However, the Labour Party has no truck with anything we might identify as even approaching socialism.
Let Labour continue its rightward shift. That doesn't mean an increasing number of disaffected party members will necessarily shift with it.
On the contrary, the movement towards the centre ground only serves to emphasise the enormous gulf to be filled on the left--a gulf with the potential to link the left's disparate elements in a common cause.
Shouldn't we be looking to build a revolutionary socialist alternative by celebrating the Labour Party's demise rather than clinging to its coat tails?
DAVID JACOBS, South London
IN AN otherwise compelling rebuttal of Guardian columnist Will Hutton's recipe for reforming capitalism in Britain, Chris Harman (Socialist Worker, 11
February) drew up short of fully answering the question, why is Major still in office?
True, the Tories have the enduring support of "top" people in the CBI, the boardrooms and the media.
More important, though, are the successive failures of Kinnock, Smith and Blair to support--let alone lead--any of the struggles that could have finished off the Tories.
Over the next few months the battles to defend Clause Four and, more importantly, to resist council cuts and privatisation give us the chance to turn the tables on the Tories and Blair's "modernisers". RICHARD PURDIE, Keighley
SOCIALIST WORKER was absolutely right to warn that animal rights protesters can easily end up in alliances with Tories (18 February).
The funeral of animal rights protester Jill Phipps at Coventry Cathedral bore that out, I think. Jill's death was tragic. But the fact that Brigitte Bardot and Alan Clark showed up demonstrated that such protests do not necessarily lead in a leftward direction.
Bardot is a committed campaigner for animal rights who was also married to a fascist MP, a member of Le Pen's National Front in France.
Alan Clark is as hard a Tory right winger as you can get, a Thatcher loyalist and former arms minister who openly boasts he is unmoved by human suffering. JOANNE BRODIE, North London
AFTER THE racist killing of Mushtaq Hussain in Blackburn, members of the Anti Nazi League and Socialist Worker went on the streets with a petition to "Stop racist attacks".
It called on the authorities to take action against racist groups like the BNP which encourages attacks.
Local shops took up the petition and ANL members were invited to speak at local youth centres. L SCOTT, Blackburn
EVEN THOUGH I'm a regular reader of Socialist Worker I didn't realise how low
the Tories could stoop until a blind friend told me he now has to pay #5 for his white stick.
He is also concerned that no braille voting slips are available at polling booths. As he is totally blind it is necessary for someone else to make his cross. Like he told me, "For all I know they could be using my ballot paper to vote Tory." GLYN EVANS, West Bromwich
THE BIGOTED Unionist politicians of Northern Ireland showed their true face as the British and Irish governments prepared to release the so called "framework document" for peace talks this week.
Leading Unionists warned they would not even discuss a document which set up an all Ireland body.
Instead they insisted, "We will talk to the government about our own proposals."
In other words, they will sit down with politicians representing the Catholics of Northern Ireland only if they can choose the agenda.
These are the people Major relies on to maintain his majority in parliament while holding down pay and slashing cash for schools and hospitals in Northern Ireland like everywhere else.
Of course, the Unionists make these threats to increase their bargaining power in talks.
But, more importantly, they aim to scare ordinary Protestants in Northern Ireland into believing they are about to be taken over by the Irish government in the South.
They pretend any Southern involvement in the affairs of Northern Ireland will be a step on the way to Irish unity, and that this would turn Protestants into an oppressed minority.
It is absolute rubbish.
The people who are oppressed in Ireland are the Catholics of the North.
They are 40 percent of the Northern Ireland population but for 50 years they were denied even the most elementary civil rights.
They remain discriminated against and have suffered 25 years of violent harassment from British troops.
The Unionist parties used to organise this discrimination through controlling Northern Ireland's parliament (Stormont) and all its local councils.
They lost this control when Catholics--and some Protestants--rose against them in the late 1960s.
The British government took over and removed some of the most blatant discrimination.
Now the Unionists want some of their power restored.
John Major continues to insist any deal must have the Unionists' agreement and thereby promises them an effective veto.
He insisted last week, "I fully support the Union."
At the same time he offers Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams and the IRA--which declared the ceasefire that brought about the current peace--almost nothing.
Adams was forced to protest last week about British soldiers rampaging around the Cullyhanna-Crossmaglen area of south Armagh.
The Irish Times reported soldiers "blocking off roads, abusing people, making victory signs".
Major and the Unionists will be to blame if the peace does not hold. Sinn Fein spokesperson Mitchel McLaughlin was only stating the sad truth when he warned at the weekend that conditions do not yet exist "which will ensure there will be no return to political violence."
THE FRAMEWORK document which is to form the basis of talks between Irish politicians was likely to propose three things:
A new Northern Ireland assembly elected by proportional representation.
An Anglo-Irish body, made up of representatives from the new assembly and the Irish parliament, to oversee various arrangements for the whole of Ireland. One newspaper report suggested, "These may include management of rivers and museums."
Important powers, like control of the police, to remain with the British government. But the police to be "reorganised" to win Nationalist [Catholic] involvement, and the Irish state to be involved in some way as a "guarantor" ofNationalist interests. This will not, by any stretch of the imagination, mean a united Ireland.
It will simply mean a restructuring of the existing sectarian arrangements, to allow middle class Catholic politicians to represent "their" community alongside Unionist politicians.
The two sides will be left to argue over the diminishing jobs, schools, hospital beds and council services for everybody.
The Unionists are happy with the first proposal, but object to the others.
The assembly will inevitably have a Unionist majority. They want to ensure its powers will not be limited by the all Ireland body or by the Irish government.
The Unionists aim to create a siege mentality among working class Protestants and to pose as their defenders.
Of course, what they are really out to protect are their own interests. But they may not have it all their own way.
The biggest Unionist party, the UUP, won the recent Rathcoole by-election in an overwhelmingly Protestant working class area. Yet the turnout was just 22 percent.
It was a massive show of no confidence in Unionism. What is desperately needed now is an alternative to the bigots, one based on Protestant and Catholic working class unity in a joint fight against the Tories.
THE UNIONISTS are politicians whose careers depend solely on maintaining sectarian, anti-Catholic feeling.
They have tried to whip up similar scares whenever they have felt threatened in the past.
"GO HOME Fini!" Over 300 anti-Nazi protesters picketed a meeting where Italian fascist Gianfranco Fini was due to speak in London on Tuesday of last week. Fini was forced by the protest to sneak in the back door of the meeting at the Royal Institute of International Affairs.
Anti Nazi League and Royal Institute member Dave Schonfield made an anti-fascist stand at the beginning of the meeting when he demanded that "the direct descendant of Mussolini should not be allowed to speak."
However, the meeting went ahead to the anger of all the protesters. Outside, Labour MP Denis MacShane denounced the Institute: "We see the red carpet of the English establishment for the new leader of pan-European fascism and racism."
by PAUL McGARR
PENSIONERS IN Britain today are among the poorest section of society. Yet the Tories have pushed through a series of changes which mean the present generation of pensioners could be the richest ever.
Anyone retiring in 20 years time can look forward to an old age of miserable poverty.
The Guardian's economic editor Will Hutton has been among those who have recently exposed the great Tory pensions robbery: "One of the greatest frauds perpetrated by a democratic government against its people in modern times."
The result will be: "The old will be stuck with the reality that between them and the grave lies worry and despair... the children of the 1960s will wish they had died before they got old."
Even today pensioners are poor. They account for half the poorest fifth of the population. Almost half of the next poorest fifth of people are pensioners too. Britain's pensioners are the worst off of any in the European Union.
The state pension is no longer linked to average earnings, so its value is set to fall to around 7 percent of average earnings by the year 2020.
The SERPS earnings related top up state pension is also set to collapse in value. In 1986 Margaret Thatcher halved the value of SERPS.
Now, in the Pensions Bill the Tories are pushing through parliament, another assault is coming which will halve its value again.
In 40 years time the state pension and the SERPS top up together will be worth at best 20 percent of average earnings.
The Tories don't try to hide this. Instead they claim no-one will be poorer thanks to the growth of private pension schemes.
Tories like Michael Portillo sing the praises of "personal provision" for retirement, and the philosophy of "thrift".
It is a grotesque lie which is set to condemn millions of today's workers to a miserable old age.
Over half of all workers have no occupational or private pension scheme and so are dependent on the shrinking state pension.
When they retire they can look forward to their living standards being instantly cut by over 80 percent.
And even for those workers with occupational or private schemes things are little better.
In the mid 1980s the Tories pushed many workers to switch from occupational pension schemes to private schemes.
The companies involved made millions. But it soon became clear people had been persuaded to switch on the basis of lies and would be substantially worse off as a result.
Even the courts have ruled that hundreds of thousands of people have a right to compensation, so blatant has the rip off been.
The greatest con of all is that the vast majority of people simply cannot pay enough into the private schemes to give even a very basic pension on retirement. For example someone retiring in 30 years time who wants to have a pension of say #9,000 a year will have to pay a minimum of #2,000 into a private scheme in every single one of the next 30 years.
For most people that is simply impossible.
The only workers who can look forward to a decent pension at the moment are those on occupational schemes, like nurses, teachers and firefighters.
But now the Tories are even moving to privatise those schemes. Workers on occupational schemes will have to organise and fight hard in the years ahead to defend their right to a decent pension.
For most people the only alternative to an old age of dire poverty is for the state pension to be raised to a decent level and to end the whole sick business of private pension schemes. That will be a fight we will have to have not just with the Tories.
Labour refuses to commit itself to doing anything at all about the miserable future facing today's workers when they grow old.
And worse still Labour's Commission on Social Justice even echoes Tory talk of means tests and moving towards reliance on private pensions.
Arthur Scargill told the meeting, "Blair has declared war on socialism itself. "Clause Four is what marks out the Labour Party from the other major political parties in Britain. Without Clause Four the Labour Party is indistinguishable from the Liberal Democrats and the Tories.
"I didn't join the party because I wanted to see Labour run the system better than the Tories, I joined it to destroy capitalism."
Scargill attacked Blair's belief that a competitive market economy could work in the public interest.
"I want to see a planned economy--not one that closes pits and steelworks and then spends #40 billion keeping people unemployed.
"You can't have a competitive economy working on capitalist lines and at the same time hope to have an economy that works to meet the interests of the majority.
"The only thing that's wrong with Clause Four is that it has never been implemented," Scargill said to applause.
How could Blair justify his assault on Clause Four after 15 years of Tory rule, asked Scargill.
"In 1979 Margaret Thatcher pledged she would wipe socialism off the agenda of British politics. She failed and has been consigned to the dustbin of history.
"I find it incredible that in 1995 Thatcher can now see the new leader of the Labour Party take up her mantle and try to wipe socialism off the agenda, not only of British politics but of Labour Party politics too.
"You have to ask why is it that every Tory newspaper supports the leadership's move to abandon Clause Four. It's in their interest to have a party which abandons its principles, policies and faith."
Derek Cattell, local full time organiser for the GMB union's tailor and garment makers' section, pointed out that Blair had launched his campaign just when support for public ownership had never been stronger.
Blair's drive, argued Cattell, was to "accommodate the Labour Party to the free market and to prove to the British establishment that their interests are not threatened by the prospect of a future Labour government."
Democracy had been trampled on by the leadership. "No amendments or other alternatives will be allowed at the special conference in April. There was no discussion on Clause Four in last year's leadership election," he said.
"Blair says social justice and equality of opportunity are more important than common ownership.
"But if we want the power to do something to improve the lives of the majority, then we must recognise the source of power is the economy.
"In Britain ten men--the bosses of the major financial institutions--control #100 billion in insurance and pension funds. How can this system guarantee social justice?" Cattell asked.
Pat McIntyre, a member of Durham Labour Party, said, "I would welcome a debate about full employment and a radical redistribution of wealth but anyone who disagrees with Blair is denounced."
In the question and answer session which followed, most speakers wanted to know what they could do to stop Blair.
"I've been in the Labour Party 29 years," said Alan from Darlington Labour Party. "In the past whenever Labour got into power, our leaders didn't carry out the socialist policies we want.
"Now they aren't even committed to anything."
Pat Waddle, member of the Labour Party and shop workers' union USDAW, said, "The constitution of USDAW like many unions contains the words of Clause Four. But our leadership voted against the union's own constitution," she said.
"We're the only union to meet before Blair's April conference--so far there have been six resolutions in support of Clause Four and only one against.
"Every trade unionist must let their leadership know how they feel and send them motions against the dropping of Clause Four."
ANDREW SMITH is the chair of the MSF union branch at the Rothman's cigarette factory in Spennymoor which employs 600 workers. He told Socialist Worker: "I've always lived in what is now Blair's constituency.
"Though the pits are closed now, fundamental things haven't changed. There is still the huge division between rich and poor which makes Clause Four more relevant than ever.
"The reason I joined the Labour Party was because of Clause Four. I felt there was a tradition of comradeship and solidarity.
"I did my own survey on public ownership at the factory. I asked some of the workers whether they thought things like gas, electricity, coal and transport should be controlled by ordinary people.
"Everyone I asked--even past Tory voters--said yes. It shows that when you put the issues in a basic way, many will agree with some socialist arguments."
THE MEETING was organised by Spennymoor and Newton Aycliffe trades council. Alan Kelly told Socialist Worker why they had organised it.
"Tony Blair always points to his support here. We wanted to show that there is another side to his constituency.
"This was once a thriving area of small pit towns. Ferryhill used to be the biggest freight handling depot in Britain, the central point for all the coalfields of Durham.
"It's an area that's known the throes of privatisation. It's been destroyed by recession over the years.
"This isn't just an internal Labour Party debate. We wanted to get trade unionists at a grassroots level involved. "It should be an issue for all socialists."
David Guy, president of Durham NUM, told Socialist Worker: "I'm pleased to see so many down to earth people supporting the principles of socialism.
"I hope the message from this meeting reaches the ears of Tony Blair and can contribute to heading off his disastrous move.
"Blair is trying to accommodate to City institutions and big business rather than addressing the problems of working class people."
TONY BLAIR'S attack on Clause Four has sparked a civil war inside the Labour Party.
Meetings like the one in Blair's constituency are being organised around the country. Two hundred people listened to Arthur Scargill in Bradford and in Newcastle.
Such meetings have shown that many ordinary Labour Party members and trade unionists want to discuss socialist ideas.
Socialist Worker supports all those in the Labour Party and every trade unionist who takes a stand against Clause Four.
The debate is important whether you are a Labour Party member or not. But it has also provoked another question. Why should anyone who identifies themselves as a socialist stay in Blair's Labour Party?
It is a question that went unaddressed by the speakers at the meeting in Sedgefield.
The Clause Four debate is much wider than internal Labour Party politics. It is about the commitment to and possibility of achieving socialism.
Labour believes you have to work within the existing system. It ends up managing capitalism. Blair has bowed to the bosses and bankers even before he reaches Number 10.
Socialist Worker believes that it is only through a revolutionary overturn of capitalist society that we can achieve real democratic workers' control over the economy. That is why the Socialist Workers Party is trying to build a very different kind of party to Labour.
But we support all those fighting inside the Labour Party and the unions to defend Clause Four.
This commitment to socialism will be invaluable in building future resistance if we get a Blair government which, as seems certain, implements policies scarcely different to John Major's.
SOCIALIST FILM maker Ken Loach--famous for the TV programme Cathy Come Home and films like Ladybird, Ladybird--has helped produce a video on Clause Four. It brings together trade unionists, unemployed workers, young people, academics and commentators to discuss questions like whether the market can deliver full employment and decent welfare services.
Centrally it asks whether the market is compatible with social justice, equality and democracy.
In one of the most powerful moments, a worker from Aberdare describes what the market meant for him--employment as a security guard at #1.20 an hour while the dog working with him got #3 an hour.
Ken Loach said he hoped a real debate would take place around the big issues facing people across the globe but that Labour frontbencher Brian Wilson had reacted with verbal abuse and taunts of "paranoia".
You can get the video to show at your union branch by phoning 071 207 3781.
by Hassan Mahamdallie
Capitalism, the system the Tories love, could not have developed without mass movements of people. It depended on migrations from rural areas to towns and cities and from economically backward countries to the industrially advanced. For most of capitalism's history, immigrants left Europe to live elsewhere. In the last century 70 million emigrated to the United States, Canada, South America and Australia.
The most powerful capitalist country in the world, the US, was built by immigrant labour. Just look at the names on the credits of any US film or TV programme.
But the nineteenth century also saw vast migrations within Europe--from east to west and from Ireland to Britain.
The post Second World War migrations--from the Caribbean and Indian sub-continent to Britain, from North Africa to France and from the Mediterranean countries to Germany--are only the latest in this whole series.
What is more, immigrants were encouraged by successive European governments because they provided cheap labour.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, for example, the British government actively recruited workers from the West Indies.
The German bosses advertised in countries like Spain and Yugoslavia and, later, in Turkey. That is why there are five million "guest workers" in Germany today.
These immigrant workers helped create Germany's post-war economic miracle. When the Tories complain about immigrants today they do so solely for racist reasons.
They want to divide workers, to set white against black and provide someone to blame for mass unemployment, falling living standards and cuts in services. B ut the ruling class they represent can come and go as they please and live where they want.
No wealthy businessman is stopped by airport immigration. There are no police raids on the City of London to check people's passports. Big business also takes it for granted that it can move money and resources around the world.
If the bosses of a multinational company decide they can make bigger profits by closing a factory in one country and opening one somewhere else, for example, that is what they do.
Yet they insist on stern laws to prevent workers moving around the world as easily as their money.
Millions of workers lost their jobs in eastern Europe when entire industries were shut down after 1989.
But when workers from Poland, Hungary, Slovakia or Rumania try to travel to the West for work, they are met by border controls and deportations.
The same process is at work in Africa.
Western banks have built fortunes plundering Africa. Now they squeeze it dry through debt repayments. African countries owe #120 billion to the banks--more than the continent's entire production in a year.
As a consequence, the number of Africans living in poverty will increase 50 percent by the end of the decade.
Many are driven to uproot themselves in search of a living or to escape war. But if they seek refuge in Britain they are likely to end up in a detention centre. It is capitalism that creates the conditions which force ordinary people to move in order to live.
Then when they do, it criminalises them.
THE BOSSES benefit from the cheap labour immigrant workers provide. At the same time, it can be politically useful to them to scapegoat immigrants and use racism to divide workers.
Recent events in the US show this clearly.
The state of California has just passed Proposition 187, a law denying education and health care to "illegal" immigrants from Mexico.
These immigrants are part of the Californian economy. They have traditionally provided Californian farmers and sweatshop owners with cheap labour. Rich families use Latino women as servants.
Since 1989 unemployment in the state has risen massively. Some 200,000 workers have lost their jobs in the aerospace industry alone.
Right wing politicians used Proposition 187 to whip up anti-Latino racism, to deflect workers' anger away from the system that dumped them on the scrap heap. The big farmers and sweatshop owners kept quiet. Mexicans will still cross the border and still do low paid jobs, of course. They will simply suffer greater exploitation. White workers will not benefit, the
Californian bosses will.
TORIES like Charles Wardle, the minister who resigned, claim immigration should be stopped because it "harms race relations".
Shamefully, Labour's Jack Straw agrees. He says, "This country cannot sustain a large influx of economic migrants."
It is a lie that can only strengthen the hand of the hard racists.
When the Socialist Party government in France in the 1980s gave in to the same argument over immigration, it was the fascist Front Nationale that raised the slogan, "Four million immigrants, four million unemployed", and called for mass repatriation.
Socialists are for scrapping all immigration controls. They divide workers from one another on the basis of race.
We defend the right of any worker to travel, work and settle where they wish.
THE WORD "quango" was invented, I think, by Michael Heseltine when he was secretary of state for the environment in Margaret Thatcher's first administration.
Heseltine led a nationwide Tory campaign against "quangos"--quasi, non-elected government organisations.
Quangos were, he explained, "the essence of socialism". Like socialism, he argued, they were undemocratic, bureaucratic. They took power away from the people.
Every month the fiery dragon, the secretary of state, would publish a list of the quangos he had "slain".
Large numbers of people took his campaign seriously. Perhaps, they mused, Heseltine was right: long years of social democratic government had led to all sorts of government bodies which looked after things which could perfectly well look after themselves.
The quangos dealt with by Heseltine were mainly bodies which sought to regulate or control things for the general good. They tried to enforce hygiene regulations, for instance, or control orders against pollution.
A good example was the Wages Councils which obliged employers to pay wages slightly above starvation levels.
The abolition of these quangos favoured "business"--the class of people who make money from running enterprises and were irritated by government inspectors and regulators who told them what not to do.
These quangos were symbolic of a development which had been infuriating "business" for half a century and more: the growth and influence of directly democratic organisations.
Local councils, for example, raised local taxes according to property and wealth and redistributed a little of what they taxed to the people who had neither.
These local councils had made substantial inroads into the power of private property.
They were able to raise their taxes because they were in complete control of schools and further education colleges and municipal housing. For both of these huge items of spending they got regular government grants.
So "business" felt it was taxed twice--through local property rates and by national income tax.
The history of the Tory government since 1979 has been a history of the reversal of that process, with the clear intention eventually to abolish it. As instruments of their revolution, the Tories started to set up, well how shall
I put it, quangos--new types of quangos which were even more unaccountable than their predecessors.
These quangos sought to wrest control of whole areas of human activity from the democratic bodies which controlled them.
Council house building was effectively stopped--building affordable houses was transferred almost entirely to the housing associations, which get their money from a huge quango, the Housing Corporation.
Control of all further education colleges was transferred in one fell swoop, from elected councils to the non-elected Further Education Funding Council. Schools were urged to "opt out" of elected authorities and get their money from a quango--the Schools Funding Agency.
Planning powers for the centre of cities were taken away from the councils and given to quangos called Development Corporations. All these quangos were highly bureaucratic, utterly removed from the democratic movement.
They were staffed almost exclusively by Tory placemen and placewomen whose allegiances were exclusively to the rich.
The figures for this transfer are almost incredible. In 1979 the government spent #3 billion on "executive bodies". This had risen by 1994 to #18.3 billion--and that doesn't count the NHS Trusts or the TEC training quangos.
Even when inflation is taken into account, this means that the already huge sum of taxpayers' money on bodies unaccountable to the taxpayer has more than doubled.
Almost half the money the government spends in grants to local councils now goes directly into non-elected bodies which have usurped those councils' powers.
When Tories talk of "bureaucracy" they mean organisations set up by elected councils or parliaments which try to safeguard the people from the excesses of "free enterprise". Their solution is to replace such bodies with groups of free entrepreneurs stuffed with public money and imbued with enormous powers which will ensure that the excesses of free enterprise are given full rein.
Spot the difference
by SAM ASHMAN
BANNED IN India, refused distributors in the US, attacked by its real life heroine--that is the new film Bandit Queen, about the life of Phoolan Devi, a low caste Indian woman who fought back against terrible oppression.
It is a powerful attack on the position of women in India and on the caste system, and it does not pull its punches.
The film starts from Phoolan's arranged marriage at the age of 11, the poverty of the family forcing them to set up the marriage in return for a skinny cow and a rusty bike.
Phoolan is raped by her husband and flees the marriage. This, however, is only the start.
She is expelled from her village after fighting back when an upper caste Thakur tries to rape her.
The village council gathers round and tells her she has "no respect for Thakurs".
The Thakurs then pay for a bandit gang to kidnap and take her from the village. She is violently raped by the gang leader until a fellow gang member takes her side.
Again and again the film starkly brings out the divisions between upper and lower castes. It conveys the brutality of Phoolan's life, the torment and the trauma of her experiences.
You can hardly look when, after she has been gang raped, the upper caste bandits parade Phoolan naked through the centre of the village to complete her humiliation. "This is what we do to low caste goddesses," says one.
But we also see her fight back, form her own gang and avenge her attackers with the massacre of 24 upper caste men at the village where she was gang raped. We see the pressure on her as the police mercilessly pursue her gang, eventually forcing them to surrender.
The real life Phoolan Devi became a hero to thousands of the lower castes. When she surrendered in 1983 massive crowds gathered to cheer her.
She initially attacked the film, perhaps because she has developed more respectable political ambitions. But it is thought she will now back it--for a sum. Bandit Queen's director, Shekhar Kapur, said he wanted to use her story to show the real life fate of thousands of women and to condemn the caste system in India.
He also says he wants the film to make people angry. Bandit Queen succeeds on both counts.
by LINDSEY GERMAN
TELEVISION BOOMED in 1950s America. Advertising made it a goldmine for those who owned and ran it. Shows were geared to what they could sell.
Nowhere was this more true than in the hugely popular quiz shows, where ordinary people could--through answering a few questions--gain instant fame and wealth.
But even more wealth went to the show's sponsors. The cosmetics firm Revlon saw its sales rise by 200 percent in a few months when it sponsored The $64,000 Question.
When a woman refused to wear makeup on the show Revlon's boss told a producer to "get rid of the bitch or you're fired."
The show 21 not only coached its contestants, it even provided the answers. When it was judged that the champion was waning in popularity he or she would be dumped.
Herb Stempel was a working class Jewish ex-soldier who went through this process.
When he was dumped by the television company and replaced with the blond, good looking and wealthy Charles van Doren, he decided to spill the beans.
Stempel's revelations led to the discrediting of the quiz shows, the disgrace of van Doren and a congressional hearing.
It was, according to the new film Quiz Show, the end of a period of innocence--the moment when millions realised that television could lie. The film's director, Robert Redford, tries to show a lost world in America, before Vietnam, black riots or the Kennedy assassination.
The film laments that television's commercialism was not halted. It wears its big 1960s liberal heart on its sleeve, but that puts it well ahead of films like Forrest Gump.
by ANDREA BUTCHER
LUCIE CABROL is a peasant in central Europe.
Life is hard. She was born small and disfigured, but she fights back all her life with whatever comes to hand and finds a way to make a life for herself. This play, The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol, is performed by Theatre de Complicite. They understand the way that class eats itself into the core of life.
The production has turned a good short story by John Berger into a brilliant play.
Go and see an evening of political theatre that is well worth the price. The Three Lives of Lucie Cabrol is in London until the 25 February and then goes on tour: 28 Feb-4 March: Liverpool Everyman, phone 0151 7094776 7-11 March: Leicester Haymarket, phone 0116 2539797 23-25 March: Blackpool Grand Theatre, phone 01253 28372 28 March-1 April: Bury St Edmonds Theatre Royal, phone 01284 769605 5-8 April: Newcastle Playhouse, phone 0191 2305151 25-27 May: Bournemouth International Festival, Poole, phone 01202 685222
THE RESULT of a ballot among 50,000 members of the Inland Revenue Staff Federation was due on Friday over an agreement that signs away jobs, conditions and pay.
Union leaders had recommended their members accept the Change Agreement negotiated with tax office bosses, but early returns suggested the result could be close.
There are at least 13,500 jobs at stake and 100 offices threatened with closure.
Among the workers who are left "they want us to do work for #10,000 a year that is currently done by people on #16,000", explained an IRSF rep.
Whatever the result, Inland Revenue bosses cannot implement the agreement without IRSF members' cooperation.
"We had a meeting in my section and it was unanimous for industrial action," says the rep.
"If the union leaders won't do it, we've got to fight this on a local level."
A RECENT one day strike and work to rule by the civil servants' unions, NUCPS and CPSA, throughout the Driving Standards Agency has forced management to back down.
DSA bosses had planned to turn this year's pay rise into an attendance bonus, payable only to those who are not off sick.
MEMBERS of the civil service unions CPSA and NUCPS have a little over two weeks to organise action for "JSA Day" on Thursday 16 March.
This is the official day of action called by union leaders in protest at the Job Seeker's Allowance.
The unions are sanctioning local protests and calling for members to hand out leaflets.
Activists need to ensure there are demonstrations outside every Employment Service and Benefits Agency office and argue for walkouts on the day.
THE 105 Chelmsford bus workers, sacked by Eastern National before Christmas, are still fighting for their TGWU union to give them the solidarity they need. Union delegates from all the subsidiaries of
Badgerline--which owns Eastern National--ducked calls for solidarity strikes across the group.
Instead they have called a demonstration in Chelmsford on Saturday 25 March and plan to send TGWU minibuses on a tour of other areas where Badgerline operates.
Bob Arnett, secretary of the Chelmsford strikers, told Socialist Worker, "I am disappointed and angered. More of us are realising the need to call out all the depots."
The TGWU is set to discuss the dispute again next month.
TGWU activists, especially in the bus industry, need to pressure their leaders to call a strike and ensure the 25 March demonstration is big and angry.
A UNION rep for lorry drivers facing attacks on pay and conditions has been sacked after getting stuck in a snowstorm.
Mick Danaher, TGWU branch secretary at Exel Logistics, Rotherham, was dismissed for allegedly leaving his vehicle as he tried to help others on the night five people died during traffic chaos in South Yorkshire.
Messages of support: Mick Danaher, c/o TGWU, Transport House, Hartshead, Sheffield S1.
A MASS meeting of workers at C A Parsons in Newcastle on Thursday of last week voted to oppose the 400 redundancies management are out to impose.
The meeting of up to 600 MSF members agreed that the union should argue that management should agree to work sharing to avoid redundancies.
If that approach fails, the meeting voted overwhelmingly to back the stewards' argument to ballot for strike action on top of the overtime ban already in place. The ballot would be for a day's strike a week.
"The mood was good after the meeting. We have shown we will not just accept these redundancies," said an MSF steward. "Since the meeting the management have shifted. "At first they were adamant that they would not shift from the 400 redundancies. Now they are saying the company would be prepared to look at an equivalent cost reduction in other ways than 400 going out the door," he explained.
THE shocking events at last week's Ireland-England football match show clearly who Britain's Nazis are and what they are about.
Crowds of Nazi thugs gave Hitler's Sieg Heil salute on the terraces before the television cameras.
They started the violence and were proud of it.
At the centre of it was Combat 18, the violent hard core of the British National Party. Combat 18 is so called because the first and eighth letters of the alphabet are Adolf Hitler's initials.
Combat 18 ringleader, Charlie Sargent, told reporters last week, "I believe in Adolf Hitler and his solutions."
His statement comes just weeks after the commemorations at Auschwitz and other Nazi extermination camps reminded people of the horror of the Nazi Holocaust.
"We didn't care if England won or not," boasted Sargent. "The lads were only there for a good fight."
He admitted the Nazis planned the violence.
It was their pathetic attempt to derail the Northern Ireland peace process. Combat 18 has close links with Loyalist paramilitary groups and supplies them with guns.
As a result of the Nazis' violence one England supporter needed brain surgery, a press photographer got a fractured skull and a Dublin barman was stabbed before the match.
Black players in the England team were racially abused.
The BNP was to stand a candidate in a council by-election in Bethnal Green, east London, this week.
They have the nerve to wear suits, look respectable and say they are the "party of law and order".
The grotesque spectacle in Dublin last week showed they are thugs who have to be driven off the football terraces, off our streets and out of our communities.
These racist bigots also murder, attack and firebomb black people, trade unionists and anti-Nazis.
Combat 18 started out as BNP security for Nazi meetings and rallies.
Sargent used to guard self styled BNP "fuhrer" John Tyndall.
Combat 18 and the BNP fell out in 1992. But last year Combat 18 made up with the BNP leadership according to anti-fascist magazine Searchlight.
It donated a large sum of money to the BNP. That money came from dealing hard drugs, which is how Combat 18 funds its activities.
The Nazis have been demoralised recently at the polls thanks to campaigns against them.
They have not been allowed to march or rally because of anti-Nazi opposition.
But in some clubs they feel confident enough to pass round their literature. We have to organise to drive them out. It can be done. It was done in the 1970s and early 1980s. At clubs like Leeds, where the National Front had a following, supporters fought to drive them out and succeeded.
In 1993 the Commission For Racial Equality launched the "Let's kick racism out of football" campaign.
At the beginning of this season 91 Premiership and Football League teams signed up. York City was the only exception.
The Football Supporters Association produced a special magazine. Anti-racist statements were published in clubs' programmes.
We must build on this.
We must not let the Tories use the Dublin violence to call for heavier policing and the introduction of ID cards.
These measures will be used against decent fans. They will not solve the problem.
It is up to ordinary fans--black and white together--to get rid of the Nazis. Football is a multiracial game. Most teams have black players and supporters.
Steve Sexton, Anti Nazi League member and Chelsea fan, says, "The Nazis have reappeared at Chelsea.
"But when we do ANL leafleting and stickering outside the ground we overwhelmingly get a good response from Chelsea fans.
"People are so disgusted by what happened in Dublin. It will make it easier for us to single out the Nazis, point the finger and get rid of them."
Anti-Nazi and anti-racist football fans need to follow that example and get organised.
We need petitions and leaflets at every ground to kick the Nazis out.
WHY HAVEN'T thugs like Charlie Sargent been locked up?
Sargent has 45 convictions for violence and carrying weapons. His house in Harlow, Essex, was raided recently by Special Branch. They took away bomb making manuals, a hit list, and racist, anti-Semitic and Nazi literature.
But Sargent hasn't even been arrested.
The police have intelligence on most members of Combat 18 and the BNP. The police's National Criminal Intelligence Service revealed last week it had information on which Nazis were travelling to Dublin--down to the seat numbers on their airplanes.
Combat 18 and the BNP have also been involved in a series of attacks on anti-Nazis in Leeds and Cardiff.
Yet despite all this information the police allow them to continue their campaign of violence and terror.
THE media myth that football violence and racism is exclusive to working class people took a knock last week.