This weeks features

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`WE CAN'T ALLOW THESE CUTS'

"WE HAVE to defend children's education. That means not pushing through the cuts, and setting budgets which meet the needs of children, not the government's needs."

So says Chris Blakey, an Oxfordshire school governor and one of the thousands set to march against education cuts this Saturday.

Governors at dozens of schools have refused to push through cuts. Instead they have set budgets which reflect the needs of the children in their schools.

Behind this defiance are thousands more parents, governors and teachers across the country who want to defend their children's education.

All week governors, parents and teachers have been protesting. On Tuesday 1,000 turned out to tell parliament the cuts are destroying our schools.

On Wednesday education secretary Gillian Shephard was forced to meet governors.

The Tory cuts can be stopped, if the example of those schools that have already set needs budgets is followed.

That would happen if Labour Party and trade union leaders backed those governors who have set needs budgets and called on others to do the same.

Instead Labour leaders and councillors are actively campaigning to STOP governors setting needs budgets because these could be illegal.

"Governors are getting a lot of pressure put on them not to set illegal budgets," says Warwickshire parent Joanne. "They need the support of parents."

Parents should insist our children's education is more important than Tory laws.

Nor can our children wait for the change of government promised by Labour's education spokesman, David Blunkett. The cuts must be fought now.

Tony Nash, a Warwickshire governor, says, "Some people are saying the fight is over for this year. I don't agree."

"If we make a big enough impact we can change things--look at the poll tax."

Gill Owen, headteacher at the school where Tony is a governor, explains, "The cuts would mean losing two teachers out of a total of seven. It would mean a second rate education system."

The more schools that join the revolt the harder it will be for local education authorities to step in and push through the cuts.

The leaders of the teaching unions should throw their weight behind the fight.

Teachers, parents and governors together could force this government to cough up the money needed for our schools.

Estonia disater--all the danger signs ignored

VITAL SAFETY devices on the doomed Estonia ferry had been tampered with to cut corners.

This astonishing claim is one of a series of reports which last week exposed the full scandal behind the disaster which saw 900 people die when the ship sank in the Baltic last September.

The basic reason for the disaster was that the open car deck on roll-on roll-off ferries is a lethal design fault.

A leaked Swedish report into the Estonia sinking said a weak lock on the bow door broke, the door was ripped off and water flooded into the car deck sending the ship to the bottom in minutes.

Another leaked report by the German shipyard which built the Estonia has now claimed that safety indicators on the ship's bridge showing whether the bow door was locked had been tampered with to display permanent "green".

The report also alleges that safety sensors on a key component of the Estonia door lock had been removed altogether.

Most incredibly of all it has now emerged that the Estonia's sister ship, Diane II, was sailing in the Baltic in January 1993 when the bow door lock broke open in heavy weather, exactly as it did on the Estonia.

The Lloyds List shipping paper reports that despite the incident, "No special warnings were issued to owners of ships with similar bow visor arrangements."

Britain's gas horror

BRITAIN'S TORY government refuses to sign a treaty banning deadly nerve gases like the sarin used in the attack on Tokyo's tube system.

Top scientist Dr Alistair Hay said this week that trade and industry secretary Michael Heseltine was blocking any signing of the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention.

"The major obstacle in the UK is Mr Heseltine," says Dr Hay.

Britain has hundreds of tons of sarin and other nerve gases stockpiled at sites like Porton Down in Wiltshire.

Porton Down is the government's chemical and biological warfare plant.

The US too has huge stockpiles, estimated at up to 15,000 tons, of weapons containing lethal nerve gases.

There are at least 400,000 rockets, some up to 35 years old, stockpiled at US bases throughout the world.

Scientists are worried that the corrosive nerve gas may eat through the rusting metal rocket casings and mix with the rocket fuel to cause a chain reaction explosion sending clouds of the deadly gas into the atmosphere.

But in the 1980s British firms, encouraged by the Tory government, sold 20 tons of sarin to Iran and a similar amount to Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

Saddam Hussein used the sarin in his 1988 attack on Iraqi Kurds when over 4,000 were massacred in the village of Halabja.

Nazi cover up

POLICE IN the Kent town of Gravesend have admitted hushing up a string of vicious attacks by the Nazi terror group Combat 18 for over a month.

C18 was responsible for the riot in the recent England-Ireland football match in Dublin.

Police now admit that two shops and a home belonging to Asians and Greeks living in the town were attacked on the same night.

Nazi slogans were daubed on the walls and petrol used to set fire to a door.

The attacks came just weeks after Gravesend Anti Nazi League member Gill Emerson had her home petrol bombed by C18.

Gill told the local Gravesend newspaper, "It's deplorable that the police have yet again tried to sweep racist attacks under the carpet."

Luckily the petrol bomb failed to ignite. Local Anti Nazi League supporters will be out petitioning against this latest Nazi attack--which happened on the border of the electoral ward where the BNP stood a candidate in last May's local elections.

Poverty wage's

WHILE BOSSES of privatised industries pay themselves huge sums, over a million people in Britain are earning less than £2.50 an hour.

A survey this week revealed that, incredibly, there are 330,000 people nationally who are paid lower than £1.50 an hour.

Workers are forced to claim top up benefits. This means taxpayers are subsidising the very worst employers with £2.5 billion.

Labour Party leaders rightly said that the figures showed the need for a legally enforceable minimum wage. But Tony Blair is straining every nerve to avoid having to put a figure on it.

Last weekend he insisted Labour could not name a figure until after the next election and that it would have to be reviewed "in the light of economic circumstances".

Feel good?

CHANCELLOR Kenneth Clarke says it will be years before the "feel good factor" returns. If he wants to know why, look at figures published last week.

Jobs fiddle

TORY minister Michael Portillo claimed recently that "unemployment is falling by 1,000 a day"--but full time employment is still actually falling.

In the last three months of 1994 173,941 part time jobs were created but almost 75,000 full time jobs went.

The Tories could claim that unemployment had fallen by nearly 100,000 yet full time jobs declined sharply.

There are five million fewer men with full time jobs compared to 1979.

Experts reject Houses of Pain

TORY MINISTERS tried to hide a report rejecting home secretary Michael Howard's plan for US style "boot camps" for offenders.

A pilot scheme is to be announced soon for a camp near Warrington, to be followed by the setting up of ten more camps.

Yet just last year three senior prison service officials and a member of the social services inspectorate visited five US camps--nicknamed Houses of Pain--and decided the camps were expensive failures. They did nothing to stop crime and did not reduce overcrowding in mainstream prisons.

They even warned that British prisoners could riot if subjected to the "humiliating and degrading" American punishments.

Derek Lewis, the prison service's director general, wrote to Howard recommending boot camps be abandoned. Instead ministers suppressed the report.

The report quotes one US study saying, "There is no doubt the shots of prisoners marching, drilling and doing regimented PE make good television clips and this has been mentioned as one of the reasons for their rapid spread in the US."

As some commentators have pointed out--why copy US law and order policies?

The US crime rate is ten times higher than Britain's and the US locks up five times as many people as England and Wales. Hardly a success story.

nTHE JAIL population in this country has reached a record 51,300. The Penal Affairs Consortium says there are now 2,000 more prisoners than the system can accommodate.

Hitting kids

CUTS IN local councils look set to devastate social services provision.

A survey by the Association of Directors of Social Services found more than 80 percent of departments were making cuts in 1995-6.

The cuts range from 0.5 percent of the budget to 10 percent.

Two common ways of making savings are limiting eligibility or charging higher fees for services.

Childrens services are being cut in 30 percent of departments.

Shropshire County Council last week announced it was closing four residential homes for the elderly and transferring eight others to independent management.

Derbyshire which is cutting £7.6 million has so far announced the closure of a children's home, three nurseries and a hostel for people with learning difficulties.

INCOMPETENT TORIES HAMMERED OVER CSA

TORY MINISTERS have to take the blame for the failings of the Child Support Agency according to a new report by the Parliamentary Ombudsman Select Committee.

The report criticises the CSA for sloppy procedures, carelessness, delay, inattention and incompetence and for not ensuring that complaints were dealt with.

Two earlier inquiries, also followed by critical reports, forced the government to make changes and introduce a new bill which was discussed in parliament yesterday.

But Labour's Frank Field, chair of the all party social security select committee, failed to attack the way the CSA is robbing ordinary people to stuff Treasury coffers.

Instead, Field focused on divorced and separated couples who are colluding "to defraud the taxpayer".

But it is no wonder people want to stop the CSA pushing single parents and children into even worse poverty while their ex-partners maintenance contributions go directly to the government.

The anti-CSA groups stress the way men and women are united in their opposition to the act. They rightly say that the agency does nothing to help single parents and their children.

The Network Against the Child Support Act (NACSA) now plans to step up its campaign to get the CSA scrapped.

To mark the second anniversary of the agency, anti-CSA groups are planning a week of action in April.

Tuesday 4 April--women's lobby of parliament and speak out, 1pm-4pm, Westminster.

nWednesday 5 April--national all day pickets of the CSA centres which include the headquarters at Millbank Tower, Westminster; the DSS/CSA centre at Longbenton, Newcastle; Dudley CSAC at Brierly Hill, West Midlands. Protests are planned at Plymouth, Falkirk, Hastings and Birkenhead CSA centres.

Saturday 8 April--local events are planned including marches.

Why should we wait to finish off the Tories?

LORD McALPINE, former Tory party treasurer and favourite of Margaret Thatcher, says the government needs to "go into the wilderness" of opposition.

The Sunday Telegraph, a slavishly loyal Tory rag, says, "Lord McAlpine is right."

What a contrast this is to the message from the Labour and trade union leaders.

We are seeing almost daily demonstrations against the government by teachers, governors, nurses, council workers and others.

Yet Labour and the union leaders are telling those fighting education and council cuts to "wait until the next election".

They are telling nurses to prepare for a "long and drawn out" pay campaign.

This cowardice has already had an impact. For example, some school governors, who spearheaded protests last month, have been overwhelmed by the pressure to set cuts budgets.

Why should we wait? It is obvious that one concerted push now could sweep the government away.

Brown bows to bosses

SHADOW chancellor Gordon Brown has wasted no time in spelling out what Labour without Clause Four will do for big business.

He told a conference of financial chiefs last week that Labour would institute sweeping legal changes to create a "coherent, pro-competition policy".

Brown accepted demands from the bosses' Confederation of British Industry for lower taxes for investors.

He even hinted that Labour would ease the laws on "insider" share dealing so big shareholders would no longer face prosecution if they act on information not available to the public.

This extraordinary speech could have been made by a Tory minister.

"Pro-competition" policies have produced an unprecedented transfer of wealth and power from the poor to the rich.

The result is record unemployment, homelessness and poverty. It is "market forces" wrecking our schools, health and social services.

Brown's speech went to the heart of the debate at next month's special Labour conference on Clause Four of the party constitution.

The issue is not about "making Labour electable". It is about what sort of government Blair and Brown will lead.

"New Labour" will not redistribute wealth looted by the Tories back to the poor. Indeed, Brown promises more opportunities for the rich under Labour.

That's why every socialist should continue to fight to retain Clause Four. Trade unionists should pass motions in their union branches to keep Labour's commitment to public ownership.

The message should be clear. The market economy cannot deliver jobs and homes. Never has public ownership been more needed.

Wrong road to peace

TORY MINISTERS and newspapers were scandalised by Gerry Adams's visit to America.

John Major claimed ludicrously that the American people knew nothing of the realities of the Irish conflict--as if millions of people of Irish descent were ignorant of the divisions and bloodshed caused by British rule.

Another leading Tory said that the warm welcome for Gerry Adams had set the peace process back.

In fact the outrage over the visit shows that it is the Tories who are still dragging their feet over any moves towards a lasting peace. They still refuse to open direct talks with Sinn Fein.

The Tories put their alliance with the bigots in the Unionist parties before an end to violence.

But Gerry Adams is also wrong if he thinks that the way forward is to clink glasses with Bill Clinton, ultra-Thatcherite senator Newt Gingrich and the obscenely rich Donald Trump.

These are the people who cheered as the US launched Cruise missiles on Baghdad during the Gulf War, ordered the invasion of Panama and sent helicopter gunships to rain rockets on the people of Somalia. They are no friends of anyone fighting for freedom.

Charming the millionaires on the White House cocktail circuit may get Gerry Adams accepted as a world statesman. But such manoeuvres run counter to encouraging the struggles Irish workers need to organise if they are to get real change.

Queen's tour highlights need for new struggles

AS THE queen toured South Africa this week she was followed by a pack of 80 British businessmen.

Their presence revealed the main reason for her trip.

It is no more than nauseating hypocrisy for the queen to congratulate black South Africans on the "miracle" of change in their country.

It is no miracle. Apartheid was broken by struggles, and the British government was on the wrong side every time.

At the turn of the century Britain introduced the concentration camp to the world during the Boer War in South Africa. On her last visit in 1947 the queen presented the Order of Merit to General Jan Smuts, one of the most brutal supporters of racism.

Throughout the 1980s the British government opposed sanctions against apartheid, denounced Nelson Mandela's ANC as "terrorists" and encouraged Chief Buthelezi's murderous Inkatha organisation.

But now British business wants to make profits in South Africa and the queen is the spearhead of the public relations offensive.

So this week she spoke of her "admiration" for the ANC government and presented the Order of Merit to Nelson Mandela.

Very few people were fooled. While the whites waved their Union Jacks and paraded their corgis, few black people turned out spontaneously to meet the queen. Some demonstrated against her visit.

It is sad that Nelson Mandela should play along so eagerly with this fraud.

But in welcoming the queen enthusiastically he confirms the character of his government.

It has done virtually nothing to improve conditions for the mass of the people while it has pandered to the demands of big business.

In its recent budget the ANC led government told public sector workers they could expect a maximum pay rise of 3.25 percent at a time when inflation is running at over 10 percent.

That means a 7 percent cut in living standards for workers who presently earn about £35 a week.

The Times' correspondent enthused that the government "has adopted economic policies more conservative than those of its National Party predecessor."

Themba Ncalo, leader of the Health and Public Sector Workers' Union condemned the budget as "the perpetuation of apartheid" and said, "The government has abandoned the people who voted it into power."

Mandela now tells workers they must "tighten their belts". They should respond with the sort of struggles that got rid of apartheid.

Labour - same as the Tories?

"THIS IS no time to be abolishing Clause Four. Never has it been more apposite.

"It is certainly better written than anything that is likely to be put in its place in April."

These words were not written by anyone predictable, like Arthur Scargill or Tony Benn. They appeared a fortnight ago in Alan Watkins's column in the Independent on Sunday.

Watkins is a dyed in the wool old Labour right winger. If what Tony Blair does sticks in his throat then things must have reached a pretty pass.

Watkins was certainly right to have expected the worst of the new Clause Four. Rarely have I read a more meaningless mass of verbiage than the guff the Labour Party special conference is being asked to approve next month.

Confronted with the media celebration of Blair's draft on Monday of last week, a friend of mine could take no more. She ripped up her Labour Party card.

There must be many others like her--and a good thing too. But that does not mean socialists can simply write off the Labour Party as just another party, no different in its fundamental character from the Tories or the Liberal Democrats.

The most important political issue in Britain today is the Tory government and the tidal wave of opposition to it.

It is this wave, not Tony Blair's smile or his right wing politics, that has thrust Labour into its current 40 point lead in the opinion polls.

This means that "New Labour" has become the bearer of the hope for change of millions of working people. Many have convinced themselves that Blair is more radical than he is willing to admit publicly.

Thus it's clear that many Labour Party members who support the present Clause Four nevertheless accept that it should be scrapped as a tactical move to win votes.

Simply to dismiss Labour as now no different to the Tories would be to cut oneself off from the aspirations for real change that have become concentrated in it.

Moreover, nothing that Blair has done has changed the basic character of Labour.

It is still what the great Russian revolutionary Lenin called a "capitalist workers' party"--a political party based on the organised working class but seeking to keep the struggles of that class within the framework of the existing system.

It is true that what the Financial Times calls "modernist ultras, grouped around the pro-Blair Labour Coordinating Committee", want to reduce the influence of the trade union leaders over Labour.

I doubt, however, if these moves will go very far. One of the interesting things about the debate over Clause Four is the way in which Blair has been forced to woo the unions and party activists in order to get his way.

Left to himself Blair would probably like to turn Labour into a version of the American Democrats, an openly pro-business party with no organic links to the working class.

But that will be hard for him to achieve. Too many moves against the unions and he could drive hundreds of thousands of working class activists--and even some trade union leaders--into real opposition.

Blair could find himself isolated and in head to head combat with substantial figures who would prefer to set up an alternative rather than see their influence entirely eliminated.

So Labour will continue to be a contradictory beast. It is a party which expresses workers' desire for change but also seeks to channel and contain it.

Socialists who really want to transform society have to organise independently of Labour. But they cannot afford to treat the millions looking towards Blair like Tories.

Clarke--why don't you live in Consett?

CHANCELLOR KENNETH Clarke has delivered a double insult to the people of Consett, an isolated town in north west Durham.

He showed his ignorance and contempt for people this month by praising a steelworks and nappy factory in the town that have both closed down.

Socialist Worker spoke to people who know the reality of what the Tories have done to Consett.

DAVY BUCHAN is 26 years old. He was born in Consett and has lived in the area all his life. He used to be a postal worker but is now unemployed.

"I THINK Clarke's comments show how out of touch the Tories are. They just don't care. They should be shot.

The whole of Consett is talking about it. He's just offended people even more now.

The industrial estate with the nappy factory was built after the steelworks shut. It was supposed to bring jobs but it went bust.

It was like a lot of firms round here. They open up, get a lot of grants, then shut a few months or a couple of years later.

Most of the jobs are on temporary contracts and the pay is really low.

When I grew up everything here was linked to the steelworks. When it shut it was like taking the life out of the town.

A lot of people were glad to see the back of the works--it was so dirty. Consett was officially the dirtiest town in Britain. When the works "blew" a red rain came down. You could make pink snowmen in the winter.

But despite all the talk about new jobs, unemployment is really high and now there is more crime.

The council talks about tourism as the new industry that will bring jobs. That's a joke.

If you are young and live here it is just scheme after scheme. People feel hopeless and rejected.

The council talks about the crisp factory (Derwent Valley Foods which makes Phileas Fogg snacks) but that employs very few people.

I was a postal worker for four years,. Then I was laid off. For three years I worked at a place making garden ponds but I have been on the dole since, apart from schemes.

When you go in the job centre there are no decent jobs at all. There's no future for kids growing up here.

The Tories should try living here and see for themselves what it's like.

No one has got a future. They can't plan anything or have any long term hopes.|

No hope at Bolton's

"I HAVE just applied for a job at R B Bolton's," Davy told us.

The company makes mining equipment.

The local paper announced the same day that R B Bolton's had called in the receivers.

It has been badly hit by the shutting of the north east's pits.

Another 100 people will now join Consett's dole queue, and Davy won't be getting a job there.

Tory dream - low pay, weak unions

RAY THOMPSON is 63. He was an electrician at Consett steelworks for 33 years until it shut.

He was a shop steward for 15 years and union convenor for craft workers for 10 years.

"THIS WAS a one horse town and they shot the horse. It wasn't just the thousands who worked at the steelworks but all the other industries connected to it.

I hate the Tories. Clarke is just a smug, arrogant, complacent git.

People say the Tories have been a disaster for Consett. That's true but you have to be clear which Consett you are talking about.

The Tories have been good for some people round here. Employers now have a pool of cheap and demoralised labour which they make money from.

But for the working people of Consett the Tories have been a disaster. The only jobs you see are appalling, temporary contracts, low paid, non-unionised.

I find it offensive when people like Clarke--and even our Labour council--use Consett as an example.

They say we lost the steelworks but look at all the new jobs that have come.

They had the cheek to say to people in the mining villages when they shut the last pits, "Don't worry, look at Consett".

It's dishonest. It is just to condition ordinary working people into thinking you are lucky if you've got a job, never mind what it pays.

Fifteen years ago people here were getting £200 a week. Now you see people happy to get £75 a week.

Many of the firms only stay until they've exhausted all the grants. They're all non-union.

When they took the steelworks away it affected everything. Socially the area has degenerated.

When the works was open it pulled people from all the areas and villages together. Now that securing knot has been severed, the community has lost its binding ties. The same thing is happening in the pit villages today.|

Millionaires back Labour

RAY HAS managed to find another job in the printing department of the local college. He is also secretary of a local UNISON trade union branch which organises around 500 workers, mainly school cleaners and dinner staff.

His anger is not just directed at the Tories, but also at Labour and trade union leaders.

"LABOUR attacked Clarke over what he said about Consett. That's fine. But all they say is that the Tories are incompetent and that things would be better with competent people like us.

That's not the point. The Tories stand up for their class but Labour just want to run the same system.

I think its disgusting and obscene what Tony Blair is doing to Labour. He is out to make it a party fit for managers.

What I find really offensive is that Labour is relying on the unions to win the vote to get rid of Clause Four. Then he's going to keep all the Tory anti-union laws. All he wants from the unions is our money.

I left Labour a few years ago because of the drift to the right. They've got no principles left. They'd sell their granny. They just take the working class for granted.

Round here the traditional people, our people, who would have joined Labour in the past aren't doing any more. Instead it's managers and yuppies.

There's even a local boss, a millionaire, who's joined!

I have no hopes about what will happen when Labour get in.

Look what the Labour county council is doing, cutting the hours of school dinner staff and cleaners. That means 25 percent less money coming in for low paid workers.

Union leaders have abdicated any fight.

What do we get from union head office? A brochure about a trip to Disneyland. Tell it to my school cleaners.

Union leaders should remember that people join unions for two things only: to protect their job and to make it better.

Blair will disappoint people, but I hope then we get a wave of industrial militancy. That's the only way.|

Boardroom corruption

THE TABLOIDS rejoiced last week as three footballers were arrested for alleged match fixing. They saw it as another juicy circulation raiser as soccer reeled from yet another scandal.

There have always been such scandals in the game--from Burnley's goalkeeper in 1900 offering Nottingham Forest players £2 a head to "take it easy" to the jailing of three Sheffield Wednesday players in 1964.

In the circumstances what is remarkable is that 99.9 percent of footballers do not seem to accept bribes.

After all, only the top players earn enough to enable them not to have to work again. Many pros outside the Premier League do not earn much more than the average skilled industrial wage and have short and insecure careers due to injury or lack of success.

Anyone who has witnessed the various dire attempts to portray football in cinema will testify to the near impossibility of faking matches.

That is not to say that it does not happen. But the motivation for any corruption comes from the boardrooms not the players and their supporters.

The Premier League rejected calls for an independent inquiry into how football is run, claiming "the industry has integrity and credibility".

Any real probe would uncover more dodgy transfer dealings by managers and directors.

The multi-billion pound sport of soccer with its sponsorships and lucrative television contracts reflects a society where profits and markets dictate priorities.

Players are bought and sold as commodities then blamed if any scandal erupts.

The fans are ripped off through expensive tickets or bonds (it's £18 for away fans at Crystal Palace for a crummy plastic seat barely under cover), the endless changes in costly strips and no say in how "their" club is run.

But the tabloids don't want to know about that.

Why pamper car owners?

JOHN MOLYNEUX (Socialist Worker, 11 March) says that the government's proposals to crack down on pollution from cars present a problem for socialists as they mainly penalise the poor.

This is a bogus argument. In fact very few poor households in the UK depend on cars. Around a third of all households in the UK don't own a car, and in our major cities many areas are dominated by non car owning households.

Attempts to reduce the number of cars on our roads, to make them cleaner and to make driving more expensive, should be welcomed.

These are all measures which hit the pampered, car addicted middle classes, not workers.

What's more, car travel is not in fact very important to rich people.

Russian kids taught not to think too hard

I WAS informed by Euro File (Radio 4) that under Communism Russian children "were taught the dogma of Marx and Lenin" but that now they are taught to "question everything".

The Soviet Union was not communist in anything but name. Furthermore, Marxism is not dogma, it is a set of tools with which to dispel dogma.

Soviet children were taught dogma, but that of Stalinism, which distorted Marx beyond belief.

I believe that "question everything" was one of Marx's favourite sayings, and rightly so.

However, question everything in the now trendy sense, especially in academic circles, means pretending Russia was socialist and questioning the truth of Marxism.

In fact, Marxism can more than ever explain and provide the means to change the rotten, corrupt and barbaric world we live in.

The specific school mentioned on Euro File is an expensive private one which is sponsored by a big electronics company.

I wonder if the students are encouraged to question these facts?

Rolling the bosses

I WAS pleased to see that workers at Rolls Royce, Coventry, took action to defend their convenor's facility time.

For six years I was MSF convenor just down the road at GPT, Coventry.

On 17 May 1993 the company considered that it was essential that I spend the mornings working in my department. On 20 August they announced its closure and on 15 November I was sacked.

It may well be that Rolls Royce have similar plans for the AEEU convenor at Ansty.

I hope that Rolls Royce workers are successful in defending their convenor, but if they are, it will be no thanks to their invertebrate full time officials.

Repudiating the spontaneous action of the workers seems designed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

If Robert Maxwell could salt away the money he stole in Liechtenstein, why can't union leaders place their funds out of the reach of the Tory courts and tell the judges where to stuff their anti trade union laws.

South Africa

AS YOU say, poverty in Africa could be greatly helped by the banks cancelling their debts.

Socialist Worker could help by setting up a nationwide petition against the banks, to cancel debts in Africa.

If they have proof that this is what people want then they can no longer use British people not caring as an excuse not to get off their arse.

Against racism and the bosses' club

ROBIN Taylor's letter (Socialist Worker, 18 March), that Socialist Worker holds the same position as the Tory right on Europe, is ridiculous.

Socialist Worker has always stood firmly against racism and for workers' rights.

The EC was set up by the ruling classes of various nations in their own interests--to set up a trading bloc to compete more effectively in the world economy. For us to rely on this bosses' club to bring advances for the working class would be a disaster.

The EC is developing a "hard outer border" to keep out immigrants. It is not the job of socialists to side with the EC, rather we should stand against all immigration controls.

As for the Social Chapter, it has delivered very little for workers. Labour and union leaders over here use it as a cop out from leading a real fight for improved conditions.

The bosses' motivation behind the Social Chapter is not about workers' rights but rather equalising social costs for employers across Europe.

We stand against the "little Englander" chauvinism of the Eurosceptics and also against a bosses' Europe.

Rather socialists should stand for workers' solidarity across Europe and the world.

`Outing' misses out on the political shift

LAST WEEK saw another outing of a Church of England cleric--David Hope, bishop of London--by Peter Tatchell and OutRage!

The bigoted press denounced Tatchell as a blackmailer and terrorist. The Sun called him "an Australian draft dodger".

This is total hypocrisy from a gutter press that for years has attacked the gay community with vicious headlines and negative articles.

However, I feel that the outing campaign by OutRage! is counter-productive.

It creates a climate of fear which does not help people come out and feel secure about their sexuality.

This contrasts with the exciting shift in British politics which has seen gay and straight marching together against the Nazis and the Criminal Justice Bill. It has shown that we can fight together to get rid of the Tories.

This is the way forward for the gay community. It holds more potential for the liberation of gays and lesbians than OutRage!'s futile outing campaign.

TURKEY

Barricades go up as police kill thirty

THE TURKISH government has been rocked by street protests which followed fascist attacks and then a wave of killings by police.

Police shot dead at least 30 demonstrators in working class districts of Istanbul during demonstrations over the murder of four people by fascists.

People had poured onto the streets after fascists with machine guns attacked buildings used by the Alevi religious minority which makes up about a third of the population.

Instead of hunting down the fascists, the police began a week of slaughter. They opened fire after angry protesters stoned a police station.

People retreated and set up barricades. The police attacked, firing again, then withdrew as the crowd swelled to 20,000. When protesters marched back to the police station, police opened fire a third time.

All but two of the dead were shot in the back as they tried to run away.

By Monday evening 16 were dead, police were conducting house to house searches and the army had imposed a curfew.

Several hundred wounded were undergoing police interrogation--and beatings--in hospital, and up to 300 were declared missing.

However, demonstrations spread to other parts of Istanbul and continued throughout the week in Ankara, Izmir, Bursa and Adana.

The scale of the reaction forced the government to promise an inquiry and to suspend some police chiefs. But ordinary people were sceptical of the effect this would have.

The massacres came days after European Union heads of government agreed a customs union with Turkey from January 1996.

An unofficial part of the package is that Turkey cleans up its human rights record.

But the Thatcherite government of Tansu Ciller has launched vicious military repression in Kurdistan against demands for independence. Soldiers have destroyed thousands of villages and displaced over a million people.

At least 60,000 have been killed.

The Ciller government has also allowed the fascists to build support within the state machine.

Last week's attacks were almost certainly carried out by supporters of the fascist MHP (Nationalist Movement Party) which has 20 MPs and won 11 percent of the vote in recent local elections.

Since October it has mounted a series of attacks against left wingers in Turkey's universities.

Last month, during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, fascist gangs armed with knives and iron bars attacked students eating in canteens during the day in an attempt to create chaos and stir up communal hatred.

Islamic fundamentalist students played no part in the attacks and at Istanbul University called a meeting to condemn them.

Hackney is the centre of the Turkish and Kurdish communities in Britain.

There were protests, too, in Germany--where the government is deporting Kurds for opposing the killings in Turkey.

Crisies sparks strikes

TURKEY FACES a huge economic crisis and workers are beginning to fight back.

Inflation rose 150 percent last year while wages fell dramatically. In April the government imposed a pay freeze. The same day it doubled basic food prices.

At least 500,000 workers have since lost their jobs.

There have been a rash of strikes--all illegal--and protests by rail workers, telecom workers, post workers, public sector workers, health workers and miners.

"We are seeing a social explosion," admits one MP.

On Saturday there was to have been a protest by public sector workers against the government's refusal to recognise their trade unions.

Union leaders cancelled it to show their "responsibility". However, a one day general strike is still planned for the end of March.

Who are the Alevis?

THE ALEVI religion is a form of Islam.

The Alevis do not have mosques and imams, but meeting houses and elders. They do not observe the strict rules of Islamic sharia law--Alevi women are not covered, for example.

Traditionally, Alevis support secularism and democracy. They have frequently been the focus of racist abuse and fascist attacks.

Italian left backs the right

RIGHT WING Italian prime minister Lamberto Dini has pushed through a budget which will hit workers hard--thanks to the vote of left wing MPs.

Dini recently took over from the previous prime minister Silvio Berlusconi. The latest budget is a slightly watered down version of the one that provoked the massive working class anger which pushed Berlusconi out of office.

But the traditional left has completely failed to give a proper lead in the midst of the political and social turbulence.

The left parties are scared at the prospect of an election and in the budget vote the PDS ex Communist Party voted with Dini "in the national interest".

Half of the 39 MPs from the "hardline" split from the old Communist Party--the Reconstructed Communist Party--also voted for Dini. Their votes were crucial.

But Italian workers are still fighting. The day after the budget was passed rail workers halted the rail system in a 24 hour strike over pay and conditions.

FRANCE

Anger as Tories bail out bankers

THE PRESIDENTIAL election campaign in France took a series of dramatic twists last week with only a month until the first round of voting.

The Tory government stepped in after the country's biggest bank, Credit Lyonnais, revealed losses of over £6 billion.

The crisis has not helped Tory prime minister and presidential candidate Edouard Balladur, now running at just 20 percent in polls after earlier being the clear favourite.

Rival Tory Jacques Chirac is well ahead on 30 percent with the Socialist Party's Lionel Jospin on 21 percent.

The established parties' candidates have been tainted by a series of high profile corruption trials--and corruption at the top is matched by growing discontent at the bottom of French society.

The last week has seen a rash of strikes.

Renault car workers struck demanding pay rises to match those won at Peugeot.

The French island of Corsica has been paralysed for three weeks by a near general strike over pay.

Workers in Air Inter, France's internal airline, have been out over pay, as have a host of others. Now miners plan stoppages and a national rail and Paris bus and metro strike is set for 30 March.

The growing discontent led newspaper Liberation to comment, "It's enough for one group of workers to win a pay rise for two or three other conflicts to erupt.

"It's only a bad cold for the moment but it threatens to become a serious flu."

Whoever wins the presidential elections could face a rising level of struggle.

INDIA

Nazi alliance hits the poor

THE NEW state government of Maharashtra in India took office this week and showed what it has in store for workers and the poor.

The right wing Hindu chauvinist BJP is now in government with the Nazi Shiv Sena. It is the equivalent of the NF and the BNP controlling a local council in Britain.

They say they will stand by their pledge to expel thousands of Muslim immigrants.

The new deputy chief minister, a BJP member, said last week, "We have given them notice to prove that they are Indian citizens. Otherwise, we send them back."

When asked if Hindu immigrants would be sent back he replied, "Please do not confuse refugees with infiltrators."

But the new government faces problems. There has already been squabbling between the BJP and Shiv Sena over who gets what job.

And the government is balancing its scapegoating of Muslims with promises to provide "stable and responsible" government in order to attract business investment.

It's time to rebuild

TONY CLIFF, a founder of Socialist Worker, opened the conference by contrasting the working class victories of the 1970s with the defeats of the 1980s.

He explained how "in 1972 five dockers were arrested for breaking anti trade union laws. The general secretary of the TUC threatened a general strike and the government capitulated.

"Rank and file confidence was the key--95 percent of strikes were unofficial.

"But in the 1980s defeat followed defeat.

"Today we are not in the 1970s or the 1980s. We are not going from victory to victory. But neither are there catastrophic defeats. We are in a period of transition.

"Last year's signal workers' strikes beat the government, but weren't followed by other victories.

"We have to introduce solidarity into the language of the trade unions and do it concretely, by organising petitions in support of strikes, taking collections, preventing scabbing and so on.

"Politics are crucial--because when it comes to wage demands, for example, there is always the question, where will the money come from? We have to make clear who benefits from the current crisis and who pays for it.

"This will become even more important when Blair is prime minister.

"This conference is about how to get more socialists in the workplace and to draw them together."

Members want to do something

BOB ARNETT, secretary of the TGWU Chelmsford bus drivers' union branch, told the conference about Badgerline drivers' fight for reinstatement after they were sacked for going on strike over pay.

"We followed the law", said Bob, "and notified the company of our action." This simply gave Badgerline time to prepare a scabbing operation.

The TGWU is now running a free bus service for the public. The problem, said Bob, "is this keeps the strike confined to Chelmsford, when we need to be taking it out to other Badgerline depots and the rest of the TGWU membership."

MARIA HOYLE, of the journalists' NUJ, told how she was sacked from Today newspaper for organising a meeting of six colleagues to discuss things like broken keyboards.

"Why does News International sack one woman for organising a meeting?" she asked. "Because they are terrified of any organisation. Their profits are vulnerable.

"Our union leaders wanted me to go to a tribunal. I pushed for a demonstration at Wapping. They said no one would come.

"But we organised a series of meetings, attracting people who had never been to union branch meetings, and over 450 people turned out.

"Now the union has launched a recruitment drive.

"Union leaders forget people join unions when they do something. Around 2,000 joined the media unions at the BBC during last year's dispute."

A signal worker in the RMT rail union said, "Our strike strengthened the union. Over 400 signal workers joined the RMT during the dispute.

"We won a big pay increase and led other grades to press for ballots. A lot more could have been won if RMT leader Jimmy Knapp had called us all out."

Teacher ADRIAN BLOW from Shropshire described the rebellion against education cuts.

"Shropshire is a Tory county," he said. "But there was a demonstration eight weeks ago of 1,000. Then we had another of 3,000--the biggest march in Shrewsbury since the peasants' revolt!

"The protests are not led by the TUC or Labour leaders, but by people like us."

People grow in confidence

A MEMBER of the AEEU engineering union described how he had unionised a factory.

"When the boss came on the shop floor I told him we wanted decent pay. He rounded on me and said I should be on the works committee.

"I went and put a motion that everyone should join the union and get rid of the committee. Everyone said, `I'll join but the others won't.' But the committee voted unanimously to join the union, and now other workers are also joining.

"Now I sell Socialist Worker and have been elected a steward."

A shipyard worker from Govan, a member of the GMB, admitted being pessimistic about the state of union organisation until workers at his yard won a victory over the use of subcontractors.

"The company backed down after a very low level campaign. All we did was withdraw goodwill," he said.

Southwark College lecturer DAVID JENKINS reported, "Over 300 FE teachers are on indefinite strike against redundancies at my college.

"This is in a borough that came bottom of the national exam league tables and has the lowest staying on rate in Britain.

"What's happening to us is happening everywhere. There have been two years of constant strikes.

"Now the support we get from the wider trade union movement can hold the strike together."

A member of the CWU communications union explained how she had helped build the union.

"Seven months ago in BT where I work there was 28 percent union membership and one rep. Now there is 50 percent union membership and nine reps.

"We pulled together a group prepared to do stuff and put on stalls in the canteen, with leaflets and petitions."

CANDY UDWIN, UNISON branch secretary at the UCH and Middlesex Hospitals, argued, "You can't just look at the union in your own workplace. If you do, you only see how weak you are. You have to start with the bigger picture.

"When there was a strike at my hospital, no one thought it would last longer than a week. But we kept going for six weeks. The support outside gave us the strength to go on."

A shop worker described how he had built up union membership at a Sainsbury store from 15 to 50.

"There was no union tradition, so we had to show we meant business.

"The first issue was stocktaking. Management said it was compulsory. We forced them to admit it was voluntary.

"It was followed by a fight for a union noticeboard." Such things can seem small, but "they show we mean business. The result is people are joining and getting more confident."

John, who works at the Guardian and Observer newspapers, told how management did not recognise the NUJ union in some sections at his work.

"I was still able to collect £200 for the signal workers", he said, "and another worker collected £100.

"In the process we met people we could recruit to the union. Now four of my workmates have joined and we're going to form our own chapel."

The law can be beaten

JIP, AN ex-miner, led off a session on fighting the anti-union laws.

"The law is not a new problem for workers," he said, and we should remember the successes workers have had in breaking laws in the past."

He pointed out employers only use the law if they think they can get away with it.

Unfortunately, union officials hide behind the law as an excuse not to call action. That is why we need socialists in every workplace organising to counter them.

A postal worker from Liverpool spoke of the high level of unofficial action in the Post Office.

"People aren't always prepared to wait for an official ballot," she said. "Support from other branches is key once you are out.

"When we went on unofficial strike in Liverpool last year, union leader Alan Johnson said we should go back to work because we didn't have any support. We were able to show him we had 30 odd UCW branches behind us." NIGEL FLANAGAN from Sefton UNISON spoke of council workers' successful unofficial action against privatisation last year.

"Our union branch is bigger since we took unofficial action," he said.

"But every victory brings its own problems. Sefton now want to sack me. The struggle doesn't stop when you win."

DICK, a firefighter from Essex, told of a fight against £5 million cuts.

"We won almost every branch meeting to take action on a show of hands," he said.

"The council backed off--the cuts went down to £142,000. Our officials argued we'd won and scaled down the action. The council then came back and doubled the cut. It showed you can't trust the officials."

WHY WE NEED POLITICS

YUNUS BAKHSH, UNISON branch secretary at Newcastle General Hospital, introduced a session on why Socialist Worker is important at work.

"Effective trade unionists and shop stewards need politics," he said, "because the outside world does not stop at the factory gates.

"If you are identified as a steward or as a fighter people come to you with other questions. You've got to show you understand the world.

"Socialist Worker gives people the information they need to argue with those around them, and it organises people.

"We have to put it at the heart of rebuilding in the unions."

JO BENFIELD, a branch committee member of the CWU union in Bristol, spoke of building the union in British Telecom.

"Our union organisation has been strengthened by having Socialist Worker.

"We've had a recent dispute and, through selling Socialist Worker, had a network of people confident we could win.

"They knew BT is vulnerable to a fightback, but that we had to rely on ourselves.

"People read reports about BT from all over the country and know other workers will read our report from Bristol. It breaks down people's isolation."

GERRY HICKS, AEEU convenor at Rolls Royce test areas in Bristol, explained, "We have methodically used Socialist Worker, with regular petitions and collections for other workers to foster a feeling of solidarity.

"When workers at the Rolls Royce plant at Ansty walked out two weeks ago, we forced management to give us time for a meeting and stopped production.

"We knew what was happening at Ansty because we read about it in Socialist Worker."

LIZ, a student nurse at Guy's in London, told of the difference Socialist Worker had made at her hospital.

"When I first started as one of 200 student nurses, the UNISON reps didn't come near us because they were so demoralised," she explained.

"But we did a regular Socialist Worker sale around the nurses' home and were able to mount our own union drive.

"We recruited 50 student nurses to UNISON, and they made up the bulk of the nurses on a recent march to save Guy's. Since then the hospital has been reprieved."

ROBERT, a TGWU transport union member, told the conference, "When I first started working for TNT you'd get racist and sexist comments all day long in the canteen.

"But now I sell three Socialist Workers at work. I collected £40 for the ANL Carnival and money for the signal workers.

"Now in the canteen I'm not the only person arguing against the racism and sexism. When one worker was ranting against travellers recently it was my workmates who slaughtered his arguments."

FIGHT FOR ORGANISATION

"We had to look to where we were strong," she said, "in the unions and the workplaces.

"We got together Health Workers against the Nazis, teachers against the Nazis and so on.

"We went onto the estates and realised most people were as horrified as us.

"The local health authority tried to close a surgery. We organised a campaign and found working class people who had voted BNP standing on picket lines with black and Asian people.

"An Asian nurse was attacked by racists and we forced the BNP to issue a statement claiming they didn't support racist attacks. That would be like Socialist Worker saying it doesn't support strikes."

A firefighter described the fight against the Nazis following a recent horrific attack in south London.

A shop steward from a Belfast engineering factory described the situation in Northern Ireland.

"All you hear on the news is the politicians negotiating a deal," he said. "But the real story is that there is an overwhelming desire for peace among ordinary people, coupled with a hatred of the Tories and what they've done to Northern Ireland.

"A socialist newspaper is vital to stand against sectarianism and to put across the need to oppose the bosses as a class."

Socialist Worker editor CHRIS HARMAN summed up the conference by arguing activists need to do four things:

"We have to rebuild union organisation.

"We have to fight for representative shop stewards who report back and try to involve other workers in the union.

"We have to fight for joint shop stewards' organisations--genuine organisations that look to build across different sections in a workplace or industry.

"We have to support the left against the right in elections, but with an independent organisation."

Chris argued the British working class has a tradition of separating bread and butter issues from political ones. "But if you don't connect the two, you can't rebuild.

"Solidarity is indispensable. You have to take the petition about the local hospital closure or anti-deportation campaign or collection for strikers around at work. These are issues that bind shop floor organisation."

Chris said there is an ideological struggle to be waged as well.

"When Blair talks about the `dynamic of the market', we have to say he means factory closures.

"When he talks about `the rigours of competition', we have to say he means longer hours, harder work and stress.

"We've got to start the argument now, and Socialist Worker is the key."

Government stood by as millions starved

by IAN TAYLOR

WE OFTEN see terrible images of black babies starving in the famine areas of Africa.

But if there had been TV 150 years ago we would have seen the same much closer to home, in Ireland.

Between 1845 and 1848 more than a million people starved to death or died of fever brought on by starvation. More than a million and a half fled across the Atlantic to America or across the Irish Sea to Britain.

It was called the Great Hunger.

In the western province of Connaught between one in four and one in three people died.

The politicians of the day regarded it as a natural disaster--"like a famine of the 13th century", said prime minister Lord Russell. But it was no more natural than famines of today.

Farming and harvests continued. Food flowed out of Ireland. People starved because they had no money to buy it.

Ireland produced enough food, wool and flax to feed and clothe its population twice over.

Six times as many grain ships left during the Great Hunger as delivered food. Why?

THE WHOLE of Ireland was then a British colony and the poorest country in Europe.

Up to 1829 Britain denied the Catholic majority any rights at all.

The mass of the nine million people were tenants on tiny plots of land. Potatoes were their only food.

Many landlords lived in Britain, never saw their estates, charged high rents and could throw tenants off at will.

The immediate cause of the famine was the failure of the potato crop, attacked by blight--a fungus that rotted the potatoes, turning fields black overnight and potatoes into a stinking pulp.

At least half the crop was lost in 1845, and the whole of it in 1846 and again in 1848.

In between, in 1847, there was a good harvest--except that less than one fifth of the usual crop was planted because the starving had eaten their seed potatoes and the government refused to replace them.

The British government reacted throughout with inhuman cruelty.

Britain was the most advanced industrial power in the world. The government could have halted food exports from Ireland, imported other food and handed it out and so on.

Instead first a Tory and then a Liberal government insisted they could do nothing to interfere with business and free trade, nothing that might lower prices.

When the blight first appeared, the government promised some relief. It paid the merchant bank Barings to buy £100,000 worth of maize and put it in stores around the country.

But this was to replace potatoes worth £3,500,000 that had been lost.

What is more, there was nowhere to grind the maize since Ireland had few mills and those were used for grinding wheat for export.

So the government instructed people to eat unground maize, despite the agonising stomach pains it caused.

From then on ministers insisted they would leave all imports to private traders.

An Army officer working with the "relief" effort explained that the result was that there were "dealers hungry for money who buy up whatever comes to market and offer it again in small quantities at a great price which a poor man cannot pay and live."

In 1846 the government promised a programme of "public works"--mostly roadbuilding, later stone breaking--to provide wages. This would enable people to buy food, it claimed. Three quarters of a million people were put to "work".

To qualify they had to be utterly destitute. So the starving gave up what little land or property they had.

Then in 1847 there was a financial crisis. The Treasury ruled it could no longer afford "public works" and simply stopped the programme.

The starving, and now unemployed, masses could not afford them. They went on starving.

THE EFFECT of British policy was appalling. A report by a Quaker minister noted children with "the look of premature old age, like skeletons, limbs wasted, arms emaciated".

An army colonel reported:

"I confess myself unmanned by the intensity and extent of the suffering, especially among the women and little children, crowds of whom scatter over the fields like famished crows, half naked, shivering in the sleet, uttering exclamations of despair, their children screaming with hunger."

Landlords simply evicted starving tenants who could not pay their rent.

At Ballinglass in County Galway, for example, troops evicted 300 people when the landlord wanted the land turned into pasture for animals.

Their homes were demolished. When they tried to sleep in the ruins, the foundations were torn up.

When they took to living in ditches, they were chased out.

By mid-1846 millions were nearly naked, having pawned their clothes. Nettles and weeds across Ireland disappeared--all eaten. On the coast seaweed disappeared--also eaten.

Dead bodies lined the roads. Beggars crawled through the towns.

Yet at the same time observers reported "fields teeming with crops".

At Skibbereen in December 1846 an Army major reported "a market plentifully supplied with meat, bread, fish, everything", while nearby lay a pile of naked bodies--living and dead together.

Typhus and dysentery rampaged through the country.

Those who escaped abroad bore their malnutrition and disease with them. A fifth died on the way to America--another one in five when they got there.

THERE WAS resistance. Riots occurred everywhere. "Mobs" descended on towns demanding work. Crowds tried to stop ships exporting grain and ambushed carts and barges.

Troops were sent into the fields to protect crops. In February 1846 the army reported a "state of insurrection".

The government declared martial law and imposed curfews.

In 1847 six landlords were assassinated and in 1848 there was an attempt at an insurrection, though it was a flop.

The government was preoccupied with thoughts of a rising. There were revolutions across Europe in 1848, and the great working class Chartist movement in Britain terrified it.

Arms flowed into Ireland, into the hands of the wealthy, anxious to protect their property.

In 1849 Britain announced the famine was over even though eyewitnesses reported people still dying by the roadsides.

And to mark this official "end" the government finally decided to send something other than soldiers--the queen.

Victoria visited Dublin for a four day "jubilee", the Times joyfully reporting that "triumphal arches, platforms meet you on all sides".

But Britain's rulers would spend nothing on reconstruction or improving agriculture outside of the "loyal" area around Belfast.

The mass of Irish people continued to have to rely totally on the potato. Landlords retained the right to evict people at will.

Small wonder that Irish Catholics hated British rule and would one day overthrow it.

Portillo of the day blamed the poor

THE GOVERNMENT response betrayed the British ruling class attitude to its colony.

In 1846 the ruling class newspaper the Times reported the "total annihilation" of the potato crop, but complained it had "heard the tale of sorrow too often" from Ireland.

The prime minister when the famine began was the Tory Sir Robert Peel--founder of the police. He was so anti-Catholic he was nicknamed Orange Peel.

When Peel tried to encourage grain imports by repealing the Corn Laws--which fixed duty on foreign grain and kept domestic prices high--he split the Tory party and brought his government down.

The Liberal government that took over embraced the market with even more enthusiasm.

The "relief effort" was controlled by the Treasury and its boss Charles Trevelyan, a sort of Michael Portillo of the day. Trevelyan was private enterprise mad and blamed the poor themselves for starving.

"The great evil with which we have to contend", he said, "is not the physical evil of the famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people."

Don't feel sorry for the royals

by CHARLIE KIMBER

A FILM about royal madness and scheming by the Prince of Wales to get to the number one spot more quickly than nature intends was always going to be essential viewing.

But The Madness of King George is not about Charles's desires. Rather it deals with George III, who reigned from 1760 to 1820.

It records his descent into derangement and temporary recovery. It somewhat underplays the truth.

George did not simply rant and have trouble in the hygiene department. He once stopped the royal coach in Windsor Park and tried to shake hands with an oak tree under the impression that it was Frederick the Great, king of Prussia.

He was finally locked up because he had started the King's Speech to parliament with, "My lords and peacocks."

On one level this is simply a film about George's dementia, his unpleasant family and the manoeuvres of ambitious people.

But it also wrestles with bigger themes. It shows MPs pondering whether they really need to bother with the king any more.

We see them discussing (not very earnestly) whether the rising business class still needs this ancient relic.

Most interesting of all we see George trying to define what is the king's role given that real power has slipped away to parliament.

In one of his more lucid moments George tells his son, "Smile and wave. We have model farms, model factories now. We must be a model family."

George was hinting at the process whereby the royals were "remade" and surrounded by invented "traditional" ceremony to act as a brightly coloured justification for the divisions in society.

But the film fails because it reeks with sympathy for this king and, by implication, with the "terrible burdens" faced by anyone born into a royal household.

King George had a rather more pleasant life than his subjects. During his reign capitalist industrialisation tore apart the lives of millions of people in Britain.

When they protested, kindly old George's troopers attempted to cut them down. More sense of this would have made for a better film.

It is still worth seeing, even if only for the crushing demonstration that the royals are much worse than ordinary people, and also for the humour.

But the major difficulty is that I have absolutely no empathy with royal distress.

A CARICATURE OF REAL THATCHERISM

by STUART MORGAN

SAVAGE LIFE by James Rogers (Serpent's Tail, £8.99) is an enjoyable but disappointing read.

It is enjoyable as a farcical thriller, set in the hot summer of 1990, as many people's illusions in Thatcherism began to fall apart.

The characters believe they can make it big by climbing on the bandwagon just as it begins to grind to a halt.

It is set in a Britain falling apart as everything that once appeared glamorous is exposed as tawdry and second rate, with greed taking over from any other emotion.

It is disappointing because the characters who embody greed are not the real rich, as in Jonathan Coe's What a Carve Up or Iain Banks' Complicity.

They are the loadsamoney lower middle class who have become recently yuppified and the lumpen lager swigging Sun readers up to any fiddle around--the Nick Leesons, not the Baring family.

This is an unreal caricature of what Thatcherism really represented. You can't help feeling it reflects the moods of an established middle class, fearful of what they see as an uncouth mob of newcomers.

Films and a war

by NIGEL DAVEY

FEW WARS have had the shattering impact the conflict in Vietnam did.

A tiny Third World country defeated the most powerful imperialist nation ever seen. This affected every aspect of life in the US.

Hollywood's response can be seen in the current season of films on BBC2.

All the films scheduled are worth seeing and reflect how Americans had to face up to what became a hugely unpopular war. My favourite is Oliver Stone's Born on the 4th of July.

The disappointing thing about the season is the films left out.

Green Berets was the only film made as the war took place. It is a right wing film that glories both American involvement and war itself.

If it had been included we could see how Hollywood has changed, like the rest of the US.

After 1968 the war suddenly looked unwinable for the US. Anti-war protests flowered everywhere.

As the crisis of defeat worsened, conversely, Hollywood entered a golden age. Easy Rider is the first major film that portrays America as a nation bitterly divided against itself.

These are the types of films the ruling class hates us watching. They are movies that criticise not just the war, but the whole system that started it.

ISLAM HAS replaced communism as the world's "bogeyman".

Hardly a day goes by without Western governments and press denouncing Islamic militants as violent, extreme and irrational--from Pakistan to Egypt, Algeria to Turkey.

In France scaremongering about Islam has been used for racist crackdowns against immigrants.

SAM ASHMAN looks at the situation in Algeria.

A VIOLENT and bloody civil war is raging in the north African state of Algeria.

The death toll since the fighting began in 1992 is over 30,000.

Western papers present the war as though the violence comes from one side alone--the Islamic militants of the FIS (Islamic Salvation Front).

But the fighting began in 1992 after the army backed Algerian government cancelled the second round of elections because the FIS was on the verge of victory.

Since then the Algerian state has been out to smash the FIS and other groups which have split from it like the GIA (Armed Islamic Group) and the AIS (Islamic Salvation Army).

Human rights organisations estimate that up to 30,000 Islamic militants are in detention.

An Amnesty International report last year found:

"Hundreds of individuals are reported to have been extrajudicially executed by the security forces.

"Torture has become increasingly widespread. Tens of thousands have been detained under emergency laws."

The French newspaper Le Monde estimates over 800 FIS sympathisers a week are executed by security forces.

State security forces carry out some of the worst atrocities disguised as Islamists--as one plain clothes policeman recently admitted to an Independent on Sunday journalist.

State repression, however, is not enough to defeat the Islamists.

They can stand up to the repression and win popular support because of years of rule by governments that have ignored the needs of ordinary Algerians.

The regime originated in the FLN (National Liberation Front) resistance to French colonial rule in Algeria.

But following independence in 1963 the FLN established an increasingly corrupt one party state--although today the FLN itself has been virtually pushed aside by the military.

The regime is detested by the mass of the population. Widespread poverty fuels support for the Islamists.

Mass overcrowding means many families have to sleep ten to a room. In Algiers it is almost impossible to get a house or a job.

As one FIS sympathiser told a journalist, "Our people want bread and justice, not theological tracts."

A bloody impasse

THE WAR in Algeria has reached a bloody impasse.

The state cannot defeat the Islamists, but neither can the Islamists overthrow the state.

At the start of this year the FIS and other opposition parties put forward a peace accord, the "Rome platform", in which all sides renounced violence.

But the military regime rejected this peace accord.

That attempt at compromise reflects the nature of the FIS as a movement.

The FIS, like other Islamist movements, claim to offer a solution to people's problems. They win support because they condemn people's suffering and say they stand for the poor and the oppressed.

They say that "Westernisation" and "Western values" have led to disaster and that a return to some supposed "traditional" ways offers a solution.

Their leaders, however, are from the better off sections of the middle class. They also get money from big business.

They are not opposed to the exploitation of workers. The FIS organised against a strike by dust workers in Algiers in 1990.

They pull in behind the mass of the young unemployed of the cities who cannot find work and are excluded from higher education and those who have left the villages looking for work but are unable to find it.

They do not have real solutions, however. They promise a dream of liberation through Islam while at the same time diverting people's anger against women who will not wear the veil, against national minorities and against other religious groups.

They grow as a consequence of poverty, and because of the failures of the left to provide any viable alternative.

Left groups in Algeria did not oppose the years of FLN government. Instead they said it was "progressive".

That mistake created a vacuum that has allowed the Islamists to grow.

The way forward

ISLAMIST ORGANISATIONS like the FIS do not look to the real power to bring about change that lies in unity between workers and peasants.

There are workers' struggles taking place in Algeria.

At the end of last year a strike by 100,000 workers in the crucial petrochemical industry was only narrowly averted.

There has also been agitation amongst Algeria's 700,000 building workers. Airport workers have taken action against privatisation and 4,000 dock workers struck for higher wages in July 1993.

The mood to resist is shown in the number of workers affiliated to the main UGTA union. It has increased from 700,000 in 1990 to 1.3 million in 1993.

But the biggest mobilisations against the state have been in the Kabyle region where the minority Berber population are demanding the recognition of their language.

A four month long strike is currently paralysing schools in the region.

There were big general strikes at the end of last year demanding and winning the release of a kidnapped Berber singer.

During one of the general strikes one million people marched through the town of Tizi Ouzou.

The FIS oppose the Kabyles' demands.

As a result some sections of the Berbers are being organised into pro-state militias.

Similarly some women's groups back the regime.

But the potential exists to build unity between the democratic demands of the Berbers and the class demands of Algerian workers.

Linked together these two would be a powerful force against the state that could pull in the demands of the poor and the young unemployed.

Sadly, no organisation is trying to do so. The task of building a genuinely socialist left in Algeria is both possible and urgently needed.

THE PRESS portray all Islamist movements as though they are identical and unified in their fight for a sole cause.

This could not be further from the truth.

Some Islamist movements seek to change society through peaceful reform, some wage the armed struggle.

They vary between those that are in power and those that are not.

In Sudan, Islamists form a highly oppressive government, repressing non-Arab communities and arresting and torturing trade unionists.

Amongst Palestinians in the Hamas movement there are arguments about whether to compromise with the Israeli government's puppet Palestinian state run by Yasser Arafat or to carry on fighting.

And while some young militants' instincts will tell them to back workers' struggles, their leaders will tell them not to.

Socialists do not believe that Islamists are the main enemy.

They have not divided the world into class. They have not wrecked whole continents in the drive for profit.

They are not responsible for poverty, misery or the repression of human rights.

But we do not believe they provide any solutions to the problems of the poor and workers either.

We therefore oppose state repression of Islamist parties and movements. We oppose any attempts to make them illegal, or to repress, jail and murder their leaders.

We will sometimes find ourselves on the same side as them, over issues like opposition to the Gulf War or fighting racism.

But that does not mean we support their aims.

We oppose any attacks on women's rights, gay rights or the rights of religious and ethnic minorities.

Above all we seek to build independent socialist politics that can win over workers and the poor who are bitter against the system. We want to prove to them that socialism is the road to liberation, not Islam.

ENGINEERING

Rolls win over pay but it's a sell out

ENGINEERING UNION officials pulled the rug from beneath a planned all out strike at Rolls Royce last week.

Workers in the repair and services (RRAES) section at East Kilbride were due to strike from Monday over pay.

Those in the same sections at Rolls' Ansty (Coventry) and Derby plants had balloted overwhelmingly to strike too.

But full time union officials stitched up a deal at the end of last week and insisted it be put to a mass meeting at East Kilbride on Tuesday morning.

The deal represented a big climbdown by Rolls bosses,who dropped demands for "annualised hours".

This would have abolished almost all overtime pay, holiday pay and other allowances. It would have left people to work whatever shifts management demanded, so long as they averaged 37 hours a week over a year.

Rolls was also forced to agree a 2 percent pay rise for last year--for which RRAES workers had until now got nothing--and a 2.5 percent increase for this year.

But the officials made a rotten and unnecessary concession in return.

All the Rolls plants currently work a 37 hour week and--as is common in engineering--finish at Friday dinnertime.

If they accept the deal, Rolls RRAES workers will in future do a "ten day fortnight"--retaining an average 37 hour week, but finishing Thursday afternoon one week and Friday afternoon the next.

The officials have conceded the principle of extended hours and given back the hard won Friday afternoon off for just a small lump sum payment.

Workers at East Kilbride were not happy. Their shop stewards refused to recommend but did not reject it either.

The threat of a strike had forced Rolls to drop its previous demands wholesale.

Strikes could have made the company back off completely.

The ballots for action were overwhelming. But the officials saw these votes chiefly as a means of increasing their bargaining hand.

Workers in the RRAES section at Bristol have still to ballot at all.

Rolls management is on the offensive throughout the group and this is no way to beat off its attacks.

It tried to scare workers at Ansty into rejecting a strike by attacking their AEEU convenor. They responded by walking out three days on the trot. But then union officials pulled the rug from under that action too, by disowning it as illegal.

The convenor is now on half time--and the company has got away with a serious assault on the union that it is bound to follow up.

At the same time up to 1,000 workers in the research and development section at East Kilbride face the sack.

They have voted to ballot for an all out strike.

Monday's planned indefinite walkout at East Kilbride offered a chance to hit back. The other strike votes gave a chance to turn it into an all out fight across Rolls.

Instead workers at East Kilbride were under pressure to accept a lousy deal on Tuesday--and if they do, the same deal will go to the other plants.

ROUND UP

An offer of £4.50 a week rise and improvements on overtime payments came the next morning. The firm refuses to recognise the union.

The revised offer followed a 60 percent vote for action.

British Airways

WHITE COLLAR workers at British Airways voted to defend national bargaining at a conference in Manchester.

The national conference was of delegates from APEX, part of the GMB, that represents white collar workers at BA.

The AGM of Manchester Airport APEX has already voted for industrial action if the company continues with plans to break up the National Sectional Panel covering 12,000 admin workers.

One delegate explained, "This is not about negotiating structures, it's about defending our pay and conditions."

Many delegates were also rightfully distrustful of our national official who seems prepared to accept some form of compromise.

This dispute can be won--if activists do not rely on the officials to lead it.

Chelmsford buses

Back the bus workers' march

By BOB ARNETT secretary of Chelmsford 105 strike committee

THIS SATURDAY sees the national demonstration in support of the Chelmsford 105.

The Chelmsford 105 bus dispute has been running since November of last year, when drivers were sacked by Eastern National--part of the massive Badgerline company--for taking half a day's strike action in protest at an attack on our working conditions.

The drivers have being running a free bus service provided by our union, the TGWU.

But the dispute needs to be escalated across Badgerline.

Our union leadership shied away from calling for action at a Badgerline delegate meeting last month.

The Chelmsford workers obeyed the union in taking this dispute through all the procedures and we were still sacked.

Pressure needs to be put on TGWU leader Bill Morris to escalate this dispute with real action.

REINSTATE THE CHELMSFORD 105

Saturday 25 March

Assemble 10am, Central Park, Chelmsford

Speakers include Bill Morris TGWU, John Monks TUC

Exel

THE CAMPAIGN to reinstate Mick Danaher, the TGWU branch secretary sacked by Exel Logistics, hotted up this week with

a lively protest outside one of the main Sheffield Sainsbury's.

This week the TGWU branch at BP Chemicals, Barnsley, voted to support the campaign.

COUNCILS

Sefton

SEFTON COUNCIL on Merseyside is planning to sack Nigel Flanagan, the UNISON council workers' union No 1 branch secretary.

The hung council has so far refused to redeploy Nigel, even to jobs no one else has applied for.

UNISON members in Sefton have voted for ballots on action if Nigel is not redeployed.

A demonstration has been called by Sefton UNISON for next Tuesday, 28 March, in Bootle where the council is meeting and will be discussing the issue of Nigel's contract.

If the council gets away with sacking Nigel it will be blow to every trade unionist who wants to fight.

Sefton UNISON is calling on people from around the country to join its demonstration next Tuesday.

Hackney.

Depots were picketed at the weekend and the ban is solid.

But disgracefully the Labour council brought in workers from private contractors to scab.

Some private workers were turned back by pickets, but managers and about 30 scabs cleared up the markets under cover of darkness.

Council manual workers met on Monday to discuss escalation.

An emergency UNISON branch meeting of both blue and white collar workers from across the council was due on Thursday to vote on a branch wide strike against cuts on 30 March.

Roundup

SCOTLAND: Strathclyde, Lothian and other Scottish UNISON branches have organised a mass picket of the Scottish Office in Edinburgh on 4 April to protest against a £70 million cuts package threatening 2,000 jobs.

Strathclyde UNISON is currently balloting for strike action on 4 April. The result will be known next week.

Lothian UNISON has called a mass stewards' meeting to build the campaign.

BIRMINGHAM: UNISON is balloting members for a one day strike for 4 April to coincide with Strathclyde's ballot.

Regional officials refused a ballot, so the two UNISON branches are conducting their own.

The closure of a local swimming pool at Nechells has provoked several demonstrations in and out of the pool.

Creative support

A CAMPAIGN for the reinstatement of Sheila Gheith, branch secretary of MSF Greater Manchester Community 245 Branch, has been launched after she was sacked last Monday by a voluntary organisation, Creative Support.

Sheila has already won the backing of Manchester Trades Council.

Zeneca

LEADERS OF the unions representing monthly paid staff at Zeneca stitched up a deal with the company which totally accepts the loss of collective pay bargaining.

MSF and TGWU national officers say resistance to it would threaten all remaining union representation rights.

The company is now likely to attack pay bargaining for weekly paid staff.

Arguments for a strike ballot were won unanimously at the Blackley site meeting last week but lost at the national delegate meeting.

Activists are arguing to reject the deal and lobby the shareholders' AGM in May.

Fightback in education

Derbyshire

THE governing body at Newbold Community School resigned last week in response to cuts of £250,000--equal to 17 jobs.

"We're not prepared to get into the situation where it was necessary to send teachers down the road," a governor told Socialist Worker.

"If all governors did this the government would have to sit up and listen."

So far governors at four Derbyshire schools have set illegal needs budgets.

Up to 400 parents, governors and teachers met last Tuesday and agreed to protest.

Three coaches are going to Saturday's FACE demo and 30 schools are closing on 29 March for the "Derbyshire Peoples Lobby of Parliament".

On Thursday night the local NUT was due to meet to reaffirm its commitment to extended strike action in the event of compulsory redundancies.

Schools roundup

SHEFFIELD: The council has agreed to break its spending cap and put an additional £3 million into education.

However, up to 100 teaching jobs remain under threat and the NUT is campaigning for a vote to strike on 5 April.

BARNSLEY: Teachers are balloting for strike action on 5 April against the cuts.

ROTHERHAM: Up to 85 teachers face the sack as a result of a 4 percent budget cut. Headteachers planned to meet this week.

A meeting with a representative from every junior and infants school was held last week. Teachers are balloting for strikes on 5 April.

DEVON: Teachers in the NUT, the firefighters' FBU union and UNISON are balloting for strikes on 6 April.

The council is breaking its spending cap but up to 150 teachers' jobs are still under threat.

Tavistock School has set an illegal budget.

OXFORD: Governors at some schools are determined to set no-cuts budgets despite the recent county wide governors' vote to prepare cuts budgets alongside needs related budgets.

Cherwell FACE held a meeting of 150 parents, teachers, governors and headteachers.

A meeting of up to 90 parents in Abingdon last Thursday was determined that the school should not increase class sizes.

More than 95 percent of parents balloted in 12 Oxfordshire schools said they had no confidence in the government's education policy.

More than 98 percent opposed any reduction in teachers.

WANDSWORTH: Angry school students demonstrated against the sacking of a swimming teacher at Battersea Technology College in south London.

When a petition got no response, students organised a strike which closed the school for the afternoon.

NOTTINGHAM: Around 70 parents, teachers and governors attended a meeting for local schools at Haydn Road Primary School last Thursday.

Over 30 people attended another local FACE meeting last Monday in the Bulwell area of Nottingham.

A meeting for heads, deputy heads and chairs of governors has been called by the Notts National Association of Head Teachers this week to try to coordinate county wide action.

The NUT teaching union is balloting for strikes.

SHROPSHIRE: Two secondary schools have set needs budgets. Governing bodies at many other schools are still to meet.

HARLOW: The Save Our Schools Campaign organised an open letter condemning the Tory education cuts and supporting FACE. It was signed by over 70 heads, governors, parents and trade unionists, and featured in the local press.

BRENT: School canteen staff have won a temporary victory. Hot dinners will not be cut for school students.

The NUT seems set to ballot its members over the £822 allowance, over class size and any possible redundancies.

MANCHESTER: Teachers in the NUT teaching union at Poundswick Junior School, Wythenshawe, are balloting for a half day strike on Wednesday 5 April. A meeting of 50 parents backed the strike.

Section 11

SIX LONDON branches of the NUT are balloting for strike action on 30 March to oppose job losses amongst Section 11 teachers who teach children whose first language is not English.

Tower Hamlets, Ealing, Waltham Forest, Lewisham, Southwark and Croydon--will be organising a central London demonstration.

Teachers in all other London schools should be organising to send delegations to the march.

The NUT needs to be pressed to plan extended action in all areas facing these redundancies.

Hornsey

TEACHERS in Haringey are awaiting the next strike dates in their campaign for the £822 allowance.

The local NUT leadership is reluctant to ballot any more secondary schools. However, teachers in schools not yet balloted want to get involved.

Teachers in Hornsey School have voted three times to say they are prepared to take action.

So far 15 primaries have agreed to make up teachers' pay for the lost £822 Inner London allowance.

A ballot for action in all schools is the only way to win this campaign.

Meals

SCHOOL MEALS staff in Hounslow, west London, have voted by a massive majority for a one day strike on Monday 3 April.

The council intends to sack 50 workers. The school meals staff have produced an excellent manifesto for their campaign.

Lecturers

Southwark strikes still going strong

by a Southwark NATFHE striker

AFTER A week on all out strike against 38 threatened redundancies Southwark College lecturers are still going strong.

The response from NATFHE members has been magnificent with virtually everybody out. Every gate of the college's seven sites has been picketed every day, and morale remains very high.

College students regularly join picket lines and are organising their own protests.

Despite intimidation from managers the college's support staff continue to supply pickets with food and drink and are considering other ways in which they can support us.

As well as picketing, NATFHE members have been doing delegation work and fundraising.

Every NATFHE regional council took collections at the weekend. Over £800 was raised at the Socialist Worker Trade Union Conference.

Strikers are in hardship--with no strike pay. We desperately need financial support from other trade unionists if we are to keep up present levels of morale and win the dispute.

Hackney

AFTER VOTING by 62 percent for escalating strike action against compulsory redundancies, site closures and course cuts, Hackney Community College NATFHE decided to take four days strike action on 23 and 30 March and on 3 and 4 April.

An emergency branch meeting has been called for the first day of the strike to discuss all out indefinite action. The UNISON branch at the college will be joining the action with a one day strike on 30 March.

Roundup

The deal was announced at an hour long branch meeting--59 minutes of which were taken up by a report back from the branch officers.

Lecturers have forced another meeting to be called.

The deal is only for one year and includes no redundancy agreement. That is to be negotiated separately despite management refusing to deny rumours of 100 job losses at the college.

The deal also involves a teaching year of 800 hours and a 41 week year.

Some lecturers at the college have been arguing that Stockport should remain part of the national fight.

The week before nine staff were threatened with redundancy, a fact which galvanised any waverers into joining the strike.

The strike took place following the breakdown of local talks. Management refused to move from their demand of 950 hours teaching per year.

At South Bristol College temporary staff have been forced to sign the new CEF contracts, whilst permanent staff have been offered inducements or allowed to remain on the Silver Book.

This decision now means that management will find it harder to divide NATFHE branches by picking on the weakest.

CONNAH'S QUAY

Picket power wins

by MIKE SIMONS

AROUND 600 workers at a massive power station site at Connah's Quay, North Wales, have been out in a marvellous strike for the last week.

Yet amazingly the UCATT construction workers' union has told them, "You are on your own."

The strike began on Monday of last week, when workers were outraged that five steel fixers had been sacked by subcontractor Lancsville.

"It was the last straw," one picket told Socialist Worker.

"We were already balloting because the pay and conditions are shit."

If UCATT officials had shown a fraction of the strikers' determination, this dispute could have been won by now.

As it was, every day last week 600 pickets gathered at the site gates in a marvellous display of rank and file unity.

Every day regional UCATT official Barry Scragg demanded they return to work and every time he was overturned.

"If we go back through that gate without victory signed, sealed and delivered, we are finished," said one picket.

Lancsville has imposed a reign of terror at Connah's Quay.

Another picket said, "They've got lads working for £3 an hour, a minimum 48 hour week, compulsory overtime, no pay if we are rained off, and blokes are dismissed without notice."

The strike has a great chance of winning--if the pickets take control of the dispute, set up a strike committee and start organising solidarity.

Electricity company PowerGen wants the Connah's Quay plant built fast. It is vulnerable to a sharp, determined strike.

Postal workers

MANAGERS TRY TO BUST THE UNION

POST OFFICE bosses want to fine the CWU communications union £1 million in a desperate attempt to strangle resistance from workers.

Management want compensation for the strikes at Milton Keynes (£170,000), Liverpool (£60,000), Bristol (£30,000) and NWDO in London (£250,000).

When other cases have been considered and costs added on the union could face a bill of around £1 million.

All of this is in addition to the £7,500 fine and £100,000 costs already awarded against the union for allegedly breaching court injunctions during the NWDO strike.

Simultaneously management have begun the procedure to stop the "check off" collection of union subs.

These measures represent another new level of assault on postal workers.

A CWU rep in the north west of England says, "There are two ways to meet these attacks. One--which the national officials are likely to demand--is to clamp down ever harder on anyone who dares to strike without a ballot.

"The second approach is to recognise that the CWU will survive only if it is ready to meet any big fines with strikes."

CLAUSE FOUR

CWU communications union members will have the chance to raise their voice against Tony Blair's proposed changes to the Labour Party constitution.

They will get a ballot paper in their next union journal asking them to choose between the present clause and Blair's new openly pro-capitalist clause recommended by union leaders.

Activists should demand that their branch recommends keeping the present Clause Four and encourage union members to return the forms.

NOTTINGHAM

An appeal against his sacking was expected on Thursday. Workers have already voted overwhelmingly to ballot for strikes unless Alan gets his job back.

Scotland

POSTAL workers across Scotland are threatening strikes unless their bosses back off from attempting to make May Day (1 May) an ordinary working day.

Following calls for action elsewhere, Aberdeen postal workers voted 200 to nil for strikes last weekend at a mass meeting.

Banks

Action needed

BIFU MEMBERS belonging to the IT departments of Barclay's Bank are about to be balloted for industrial action.

The dispute is over a below inflation pay offer with different grades having different percentage increases, and restructuring of grades.

The grade changes are mainly related to those staff who are on performance related pay (PRP), with the bank admitting this system is not working for a large number of staff.

PRP was forced on the staff in 1991, after 400 BIFU members were suspended for fighting against these proposals. This is not victory, as it may seem, because in 1991 staff lost out financially, and now are going to lose out once again.

BIFU members in IT find it astonishing that the union is not calling for a ballot of the clerical workers over their pay deal of 2.75 percent. This is at a time when BGSU (staff association) is balloting its members. BIFU clerical members should demand that a ballot is called, and then there should be solidarity between BGSU and BIFU Clerical and IT.

JSA

DEMONSTRATIONS and protests against the Tories proposals for the Jobseeker's Allowance took place last Thursday.

Civil service unions, the CPSA and NUCPS, planned the day to raise public awareness of what the Jobseeker's Allowance will mean.

Strike action was not even considered by the union leaders, despite the fact that the JSA will see thousands of civil service jobs lost and hundreds of thousands of unemployed people losing benefit entitlement altogether.

Where local activists took the initiative the response was good. In Liverpool 70 people attended a lunchtime protest in Toxteth.

In Brighton 60 people attended a protest. A further demonstration has been called for Saturday 1 April.

Elsewhere people attended rallies in Sheffield, London and Wakefield.

Birkenhead

AT A packed meeting last Friday at Birkenhead Town Hall around 300 hospital workers voiced their anger at proposals concerning the regrading of workers and the employment of generic multi-purpose workers.

It was agreed unanimously to set up an action committee comprising reps from all unions involved and to take any means necessary to fight the proposals.

NHS-Blood BANK

UP TO 400 people marched through Lancaster last Saturday in protest against the threatened closure of the local blood transfusion centre.

Another march is planned for Liverpool blood centre in April.

Print

NUJ

RODNEY Bickerstaffe, leader of public sector union UNISON, and NUM miners' union president Arthur Scargill will be speaking at the Union Drive `95 national demonstration called by the National Union of Journalists for Saturday 1 April.

Trade unionists from all over the country will be protesting outside the Sheffield Star offices where NUJ officers have been victimised for fighting to improve health and safety rights.

Journalists at the Sheffield Star recently won a victory when the Health and Safety Executive served a notice on management. It has until 24 April to improve conditions or face court action and a possible fine.

"Turning the Tide" meetings have been organised in London, Barnsley, Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow to build for the demonstration and the wider campaign of rebuilding media union organisation.

UNION DRIVE 95 National Demonstration Saturday 1 April

GPMU

THE GPMU print union ballot over a new national agreement with the BPIF employers' federation is due to close on 6 April.

This agreement will cover somewhere around 80,000 workers in the

industry.

The GPMU leadership is recommending acceptance, yet it is a rotten deal. Print bosses' journal Printweek called it a "you scratch my back' agreement."

It means a £6.70 before tax increase for top grade Class I printers on the minimum wage. But most earn more than the minimum, making the offer derisory.

Printworkers in the lower grades will get even less. For example a Class III worker will only get 80 percent of the deal.

In return for this the employers want more

flexibility.

A GPMU member told Socialist Worker, "This all fits in with Blair's stance of collaboration not confrontation. Every workplace should be calling a meeting on pay and rejecting this deal."

Fighting racism

STUDENTS from Rotherham College organised a march through the Meadowhall shopping centre last week in protest at harassment by security guards.

Students marched and then occupied the management suite.

They are angry at how security guards at the centre are victimising Asian youths. The demonstrators handed in a 900 name petition and will return if nothing is done in response.

end >meet

Public meeting

STOP THE deportations and detentions of asylum seekers from the Ivory Coast

lThis Saturday, 25 March, 1pm Lambeth Town Hall, Acre Lane Brixton, south London

lspeakers include Jeremy Corbyn MP

lcalled by Ivorian Relief Action Group

Rail

RAIL WORKERS look set to be offered 3 percent or less by British Rail on 5 April.

BR has made £400 million profit this year. Thousands of jobs have gone. Privatisation is looming with no guarantees about terms and conditions.

ASLEF members voted overwhelmingly for strike action in a "consultation exercise" last month but the union has still not released the result.

Further more, an ASLEF representative told Socialist Worker any ballot was only to be on whether to accept or reject the offer.

It is also obvious that Jimmy Knapp, leader of the other main rail union, the RMT, has no intention of leading a fight either.

In the coming weeks rank and file rail workers have to make plain to their leaders they want action, not bluster, over pay.

The signal workers showed what can be won when you fight--they got over 8 percent last year.

Make sure you:

Anger sweeps across NHS

"THEY'VE TAKEN advantage of us for so long. It's about time we did something."

That's what one midwife said this week following the vote by the Royal College of Midwives to ditch their 115 year old no-strike rule.

A phenomenal 82 percent of midwives voted to drop the clause which forbids industrial action.

The vote shows the depth of anger sweeping the health service at the government's derisory 1 percent pay offer.

"It's the result we expected and wanted," says Rosie, an RCM member.

A midwife from London agrees, "We can't let the government step all over us."

The RCM now plan a second ballot for midwives to decide on action.

The vote has put the leaders of the Royal College of Nursing, which represents 300,000 nurses, under pressure to call a similar ballot--with an unprecedented recommendation to drop its no-strike rule.

Last week 400 people, mainly nurses, marched through Leeds city centre in a protest called by the RCN against the pay offer.

The midwives' vote should also push leaders of health union UNISON to step up their campaign over pay and start balloting members for strike action.

Support is mushrooming for UNISON's NHS Fair Pay Day of action next Thursday, 30 March.

Demonstrations and rallies have been called outside hospitals across the country.

In the Manchester area over 20 hospitals and health centres have called lunchtime protests.

In Cardiff there will be protests outside Ely, Whitchurch and Heath Hospitals.

A UNISON branch secretary explains how they've organised the protests through holding meetings.

"I didn't expect many people to turn up to our meeting in Ely Hospital. But nearly 70 workers came along.

"Some nurses on nights made a special effort to come in during the day for the meeting. Now we're holding meetings over pay in all the hospitals in my trust."

In Newcastle the action is being coordinated by weekly stewards meetings. A town centre rally is planned on the day.

Even hospitals and health centres where there is little tradition of union organisation have been gearing up for action.

At Normanton Hospital in Teddington, Middlesex, the UNISON branch has called a day's protest from 9am till 5pm outside the hospital gates.

In Horsham they are linking the pay protests with the fight to save the hospital's casualty doctor.

In Hackney, east London, campaigners plan to unite the demonstration outside Homerton Hospital with a day of action by council workers and teachers against the cuts.

The anger over pay gives workers the chance to put health secretary Virginia Bottomley on the run.

The Tories are already under pressure after the recent spate of horror stories about the effect of NHS cuts and bed shortages.

Even the Guardian newspaper says, "The risk is of one spark setting the NHS ablaze."

The 30 March protests should be a springboard for a national pay strike across the health service.

But UNISON have said they will only start "consulting" their members on industrial action at the beginning of April.

"What is there to consult about? Everyone knows the anger is there. UNISON should stop dragging its feet," fumes Paul, a nurse in Manchester.

Strike action across the NHS would receive fantastic support.

A poll in the nurses' Nursing Times magazine found 91 percent of people supported the nurses' pay claim and 61 percent said they would support industrial action by nurses.

As a hospital worker says, "Everyone knows the future of the NHS is up for grabs."

Nurses most likely to take own life

THE NHS market is exacting a toll on nurses' lives as well as on patients.

A survey out this week shows women working in the NHS are more likely to commit suicide than any other group of workers.

This is a direct result of the market madness which now dictates working conditions in the NHS.

It means more job insecurity, overwork, low pay and more stress.

As one nurse says, "Over the last few years the internal health market and the switch to trust status has meant the whole way we work has changed. We work much harder now, and there are fewer nurses on the ward."

Local pay deals will add to the pressure.

Local trusts have been told to offer between 0.5 and 2 percent on top of the 1 percent national offer.

But only 11 out of 500 trusts have proper negotiating mechanisms in place.

Trusts will try to tie local pay deals to "strings". The Pay Review Body, which recommended 1 percent, has given the go ahead for trusts to also negotiate on national agreements and conditions.

That's why local deals must be resisted. They will give the green light for hospital trusts to go on the attack.

Union leaders should be pressured not to enter into local negotiations.

Unfortunately the RCN has already agreed to the principle of local pay.

"It's a game of divide and rule," a London nurse told Socialist Worker. "We can't let the Tories turn nurse against nurse. "

Last year UNISON threw away a vote by its admin and clerical workers in the health service to strike for their pay claim and against local pay.

Health workers are determined there must be no repeat this year.

A branch secretary of a Cardiff UNISON health branch says, "This is our last chance to protect national pay. But hospital workers hate local managers so much they are keen to take any action against them."

WHAT you can do