For a Solidarity workers’ & WORKERS’ LIBERTY government For social ownership of the banks and industry No 345 26 November 2014 30p/80p www.workersliberty.org The Unequal States of America

Protests flare across USA after killer cop goes scot-free 2 NEWS

What is the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty? NHS: we need more than Efford By Jill Mountford Save Our Surgeries Cam - cept the confines of the 2012 Today one class, the working class, lives by selling its labour power to paign; Peter Roderick (the Act. Describing the NHS as another, the capitalist class, which owns the means of production. Labour MP Clive Efford ’s lawyer who is working with being a “service of general Society is shaped by the capitalists’ relentless drive to increase their Bill on the NHS got Allyson Pollock and others economic interest” in terms wealth. Capitalism causes poverty, unemployment, the through its second read - on the NHS Reinstatement of EU competition law. Rod - blighting of lives by overwork, imperialism, the ing in Parliament on 21 Bill); Joanne Lund, of the erick says Member States destruction of the environment and much else. November with 241 votes Darlo Mums 999 Call for the have considerable discretion Against the accumulated wealth and power of the in favour and just 18 NHS; and Dr Jacky Davis, in determining what are capitalists, the working class has one weapon: against. solidarity. co-author of NHS SOS. SGEIs, and he asks, why The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty aims to build It was a good though un - We expected Clive Efford make reference to it in this solidarity through struggle so that the working class can overthrow expected result, though to be confident and buoyant Bill when there is no legal capitalism. We want socialist revolution: collective ownership of nothing for the government after the success of the sec - requirement to do so? industry and services, workers’ control and a democracy much fuller to get worried about. ond reading. Instead he was Efford was impatient and than the present system, with elected representatives recallable at any There ’s not enough time for very defensive and brusque. gruff and failed to convince time and an end to bureaucrats’ and managers’ privileges. the Bill to go too far before When challenged by Peter many of us. He was also Lib-Dem MPs asking them We fight for the labour movement to break with “social partnership” the general election next Roderick as to whether the taken to task about Clause to lobby their MPs to put and assert working-class interests militantly against the bosses. May. Bill restores the Secretary of 14 of his Bill and the pressure on the government Our priority is to work in the workplaces and trade unions, The Bill gives an opportu - State ’s legal duty to provide Transatlantic Trade Invest - to set up the committee supporting workers’ struggles, producing workplace bulletins, helping the NHS he said anyone ment Partnership (TTIP). Ef - stage for the Bill. We are organise rank-and-file groups. nity to have discussion and debate about what changes who suggested otherwise ford says he ’s in favour of asking 38 Degrees to launch We are also active among students and in many campaigns and was “stupid and annoying”. Parliament deciding a petition demanding the alliances. are needed to restore the NHS; and maybe to get a CONVERSATION whether the NHS is exempt government set up the com - from TTIP. However, Clause mittee stage. We stand for: sneak preview of what This was no way to start a 14 of his Bill does not say We want the discussion in Independent working-class representation in politics. Labour has in mind for the constructive conversation ● that! preparation for a possible A workers’ government, based on and accountable to the labour NHS. with people who cam - ● The lawyers who put Ef - Labour government after movement. The Save Lewisham Hos - paign relentlessly for the ford ’s Bill together on behalf next May. We want to use A workers’ charter of trade union rights — to organise, to strike, to pital Campaign called a NHS, many of whom will ● of the Labour leadership the Pollock/Roderick NHS picket effectively, and to take solidarity action. rally outside Parliament to be voting Labour at the welcome the limited have set their stall out on Reinstatement Bill to amend ● Taxation of the rich to fund decent public services, homes, education next general election. some key issues, and it ’s changes of Efford ’s NHS Bill theW Eef fworadn Nt aH rSe Bali ldl. ebate and jobs for all. lacking. (the repeal of Section 75 reg - Efford appeared out of his over the next few months ● A workers’ movement that fights all forms of oppression. Full We should now campaign ulations which cover pro - depth, unused to explaining around fundamental is - equality for women and social provision to free women from the burden to get the government to of housework. Free abortion on request. Full equality for lesbian, gay, curement, “patient choice” himself and his actions. sues for the NHS. and competition) and to According to Peter Roder - allow the Bill to go to com - bisexual and transgender people. Black and white workers’ unity mittee stage. We can then against racism. raise our own independent ick, Efford ’s Bill will not re - instate the duty to provide try to influence amend - Critique of the Efford Bill ● Open borders. demands to restore and re - or secure provision as it was ments to the Bill and have a by Allyson Pollock: ● Global solidarity against global capital — workers everywhere have build the NHS. We organised a meeting in the NHS Act 2006. Rather bigger and more far reach - bit.ly/pollcrit. more in common with each other than with their capitalist or Stalinist ing discussion on the detail. rulers. inside Parliament with Clive it transforms the duty to Efford and a line-up of NHS provide into a duty to com - Save Lewisham Hospital The Pollock/Roderick NHS ● Democracy at every level of society, from the smallest workplace or campaign is contacting NHS reinstatement Bill: community to global social organisation. campaigners, including Dr mission. Efford ’s Bill seems to ac - campaigners with Tory and bit.ly/pollbill ● Working-class solidarity in international politics: equal rights for all Jackie Appleby from the nations, against imperialists and predators big and small. ● Maximum left unity in action, and openness in debate. ● If you agree with us, please take some copies of Solidarity to sell — Dublin retreats on and join us! Contact us: water fees ● 020 7394 8923 ● [email protected] By Micheál MacEoin hike rents or evict tenants if The editor (Cathy Nugent), 20e Tower Workshops, Riley they do not pay. Road, London, SE1 3DG. On 19 November the Irish The concessions in effect government granted some ● Printed by Trinity Mirror mean that the government concessions on water will have to increase its sub - Two-thirds of new jobs charging, in an attempt to sidy to Irish Water to make quell a wave of increas - up the shortfall – lending Get Solidarity every week! ingly heated protests and weight to the argument that under living wage demonstrations. the whole scheme should ● Trial sub, 6 issues £5 o By Gemma Short banks. Almost 500,000 simply be scrapped. ● 22 issues (six months). £18 waged o Tánaiste Joan Burton had adults and children were her car surrounded by pro - Protests in some areas are £9 unwaged Two-thirds of people o given three days ’ food in testors in Dublin, and continuing, with a major who found work in the ● 44 issues (year). £35 waged the first six months of the Taoiseach Enda Kenny anti-water charges demon - o past year have taken current financial year — it faced a hostile reception at stration planned in Limer - £17 unwaged o jobs for less than the liv - was 355,982 for the same an event in Sligo. ick. Ireland ’s largest union, ● European rate: 28 euros (22 issues) ing wage, according to o period last year. Under the new proposals, SIPTU, remains opposed, the Joseph Rowntree or 50 euros (44 issues) o Most sought help be - announced by Environment with its National Executive Foundation. Tick as appropriate above and send your money to: cause of delays or prob - Minister Alan Kelly, house - Council saying that the lems with benefit charges regime “remains re - 20e Tower Workshops, Riley Road, London, SE1 3DG Overall 22% of workers holds will be liable for payments. But a growing charges of €160 for single gressive in character”. Cheques (£) to “AWL”. earn less than the living The concessions show wage. The foundation re - number, over a fifth, did adult homes and €260 for all Or make £ and euro payments at workersliberty.org/sub. so just because of low fam - other homes, capped until that the government is in - ports during the last creasingly weak, and the ilyT irnucsosmeell. Trust chief January 2019. Water conser - decade only a fifth of low- Irish political class is rattled. Name ...... paid workers managed to David McAuley says that vation grants of €100 a year A recent poll, taken just move to better paid jobs. families are “living on a will also be available, as an before the latest charging Address ...... As many people from financial knife-edge incentive to sign up to Irish announcement, showed working families are now where one small change Water. both Fine Gael and Labour ...... in poverty as from work - in circumstances or a life However, the carrot well below their levels of shock can force them comes with a stick. At the support at the general I enclose £ ...... less ones. The Trussell Trust re - into a crisis where they same time, it emerged that election, and independ - ports that record numbers cannot afford to eat.” local authorities will be ents reaching 30% sup - are resorting to food given increased powers to port. 3 NEWS

Israel: “an anti-democratic bill”

By the Alternative this nation-state bill,” said Information Centre in Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid. “The bill submitted Jerusalem today to the government A bill defining Israel as puts a Jewish state before “the nation state of the democracy... It is an anti- Jewish people” was democratic bill. Neither I passed on Sunday 23 nor Yesh Atid will vote for November by the Israeli the nation-state bill as it cabinet, despite protests was submitted.” that this bill undermines The National Demo - the “democratic” char - cratic Assembly (NDA) acter of Israel and dis - party said “the law criminates against strengthens the discrimi - Israel ’s Palestinian citi - nation against the Arab Daesh: a slow fightback zens, who comprise 20% minority and facilitates of the population. racist legislation for na - tionalistic reasons ... the By Colin Foster “destroyed” by US air that the Iraqi-Shia Badr resistance and help it de - law includes gender dis - strikes against Daesh. Brigade, which now controls velop requires that visibly Fourteen ministers sup - crimination, racist separa - According to the Kurdish Regaining territory, how - the city, hand it over to non-sectarian and demo - ported the bill while Jus - tion and exclusion on the website Rudaw, the Syr - ever, is a slow process of them. cratic forces take the field tice Minister Livni and five one hand, while preserv - ian-Kurdish forces in street-by-street fighting. The governor of Diyala against Daesh. ministers from the Yesh ing the rights and national Kobane, augmented by In Iraq, on 23 November has complained to the Iraqi While asserting solidarity Atid party voted against. self-determination only for peshmerga troops from Daesh launched an attempt government about Shia mili - with the fighters in Kobane, The attorney general, Jews on the other”. Iraqi Kurdistan, are now to take the city of Ramadi, tias killing and kidnapping socialists in Britain can give Yehuda Weinstein, has Taleb Abu Arar, a pushing back the ultra-Is - but elsewhere they have Sunnis in the province for no confidence to the US op - also expressed concern. A United Arab List member lamists of Daesh (ISIS, or been marginally pushed “sectarian reasons, extor - eration and its sectarian al - number of Israeli basic of the Knesset (Parlia - “Islamic state”). laws use the term “Jewish ment) called the bill a back. tion, and to cause change in lieWs. e should do all we can and democratic”, giving racist law aimed at forc - The same day, Iraqi-Kur - demographics”. to help the socialist and Kurdish commanders in equal weight to both. The ing Arabs out of Israel. dish forces and Iraqi Shia There have been repeated working-class forces in Kobane say that they now new law would enshrine The bill now has to go to control half the city, which militias retook the city of reports of incipient resist - the Kurdish areas, in Iraq, Saadiya, in Diyala province. ance to Daesh ’s ultra-Is - only the Jewish character parliament. is in a Kurdish-majority part and in Turkey. of the state. of Syria close to the Turkish That victory, however, has lamist rule by Sunni Arabs been followed by a dispute, in the areas which Daesh “Yesh Atid and I are for border, and the other half is • bit.ly/aic-law with the Kurds demanding controls. To encourage that a nation-state bill, just not Union revolt in South Africa Free Shahrokh Zamani and Reza Shahabi Workers ’ Liberty is cam - national demonstration for and in other campaign By David Kirk class. The paigning for the release of Free Education. We also meetings. ANC, in power both Shahrokh and Reza, did the first of our com - Thank you also to rail The largest South African since 1994, and for all charges against muter petitioning sessions workers in Nottingham trade union, the National quickly made them to be dropped. We and collected 50 signatures. who posted us some signa - Union of Metalworkers of clear that eco - aim to collect 10000 signa - Campaigners have also col - tures this week. South Africa (NUMSA), nomic inequal - tures by February 11 2015. lected signatures at Kur - We have now collected has been expelled from ity would This week we collected dish solidarity events, the over 2,100 signatures. Lets South Africa ’s union con - remain un - over 300 signatures on the Defend Julie Davies lobby keep going! federation COSATU by touched when that body ’s executive. political minor - The reason for this expul - ity rule was sion is that NUMSA mem - abolished. Iranian workers protest The ANC bers voted in December By Iranian Workers ’ 2013 at a special conference has followed a NUMSA members on strike in March number of workers insured He added: “Of course, we to refuse to support the rul - neo-liberal Solidarity Network will help developers to will sign contract with the ing ANC in elections. agenda supple - often amass small fortunes boost their profits. sub-contractor if the dura - NUMSA wants to move to - mented only by adding non- through their own personal On Sunday, November 16, Sacked workers from Ilam tion of the contract is not wards a independent work - whites to company boards. business links. 1000 construction workers Petrochemicals were also less than a year and our job ers ’ party. These black company direc - A new wave of working protested outside the protesting against unfair security is not endangered if The background to this tors are often leading offi - class struggle has developed Iranian regime ’s “parlia - dismissals and unpaid the sub-contractor is goes back to the struggle cials from ANC, SACP, or in South Africa. Strikes of ment”. wages. Ilam ’s management changed. The boss says he COSATU, or members of miners, agricultural labour - are also not willing to pay will sign a one-month, or at against apartheid. In the They were protesting their families. ers, and transport workers the workers their back-pay. most 45-day, contract with 1970s and 80s black South against proposed changes to A few people from the have won major wage rises A sacked worker said that us.” African workers were in the the social insurance law. black middle class have despite the active hostility the boss is refusing to pay Hossein-Ali Amiri, an In - forefront of the struggle Workers have written to the joined the ruling class, but of COSATU leaders. workers 50 million tomans terior Ministry spokesman, against the white suprema - Iranian regime ’s “MPs” the vast majority in South Non-COSATU unions like (£11,841) in defiance of a said that peaceful protests cist state. But moves for a protesting against the Africa remain extremely the AMCWU have sprung ruling by the Justice Min - by workers demanding the workers ’ party then failed. change to the social insur - poor and live in crowded up, even despite threats of istry. pay and rights are permissi - COSATU, formed in 1985, ance law approved by the and unsanitary conditions death being made against This worker also pointed ble unless they damage pub - joined a “triple alliance” Health Commission of “par - in townships. their leaders and activists, out that the Labour Office licD suecruinrgit yth aen dn eoxrtd feer.w with the ANC and the South liament”. Under this plan African Communist Party, The ANC ’s and the and some of these activists has ordered the boss to sign months workers through - SACP ’s base amongst black there will effectively be no contracts directly with the focused on ending apartheid haNveU bMeSenA alerraedsteerd I.r vin Jim out Iran need to test how workers has withered as new building workers in - dismissed workers. The but keeping capitalism. has called for a new work - genuine this statement re - disillusion has grown. sured and 400,000 of those workers are prepared to The end of apartheid in ing class united front and ally is. COSATU ’s relationship currently insured by the So - sign contracts with the sub- 1994 was a victory largely vowed to fight the union ’s with these parties is medi - cial Security Organisation contractor only if their job due to the militancy of expulsion from COSATU. ated by bureaucrats who will also lose their insur - security can be guaranteed. • From: bit.ly/IranWorkers South Africa ’s working ance. The reduction of the 84 CFOEMAMTUENRET There must be Hyping it up room for doubt Letters In her article “Don’t ban the SWP!” ( Solidarity 344) Cathy Nugent argues, rightly, I think, that we should “challenge and protest”, “try to discuss with” SWP members, not try Duncan Morrison’s irate letter ( Solidarity 344) misses the to ban. point in Jon Lansman’s column in Solidarity 343 which really most calls for criticism. Along the way, though, she drops in the assertion: “There is no doubt whatsoever that the SWP has been guilty of rape Jon wrote that “no shortcoming of Ed Miliband is respon - apologism, of denying the complaints of rape by women in sible for the rise of UKIP.” He probably meant that no other their organisation”. halfway-likely leader of the Labour Party in anything like its I still think what I wrote in Solidarity 281: “The SWP lead - present shape could have stopped a rise of UKIP, either, ership’s approach, over two years and more, was to steer as which is true. Miliband: “least worst”? near as it could to bureaucratic brush-off”. But: “Such wrong If so, that truth is only a half-truth. UKIP feeds on social despair. Social despair feeds on the perception that no large attitudes do not make them ‘rape apologists’.” call only in the headline. Maybe he thinks that the anti-cuts party offers social hope. That Labour offers so little social Bodies investigating rape charges should have a default, headline was added in the Solidarity editorial office to hope — no relief from cuts, from pay squeezes, from inequal - fallback assumption that there is a crime to be investigated. smarten the article up. But in fact it came from Jon’s original ity — is partly down to “shortcomings of Ed Miliband”. But there must still be room for due process, for “innocent version of the article, on Left Futures . But Jon’s article was a guest column, and as Solidarity read - until proven guilty”, for the possibility of finding that a par - We might make literary criticism of the fact that Jon, writ - ers know, our guest columnists, like Eric Lee, do not neces - ticular charge does not have enough evidence. ing a short article for readers he assumes to be left-wing, felt sarily at all reflect our “line”. Pat Stack, chair of the disputes committee which heard a he could put an anti-cuts call in the headline without arguing Duncan implies that Jon calls for us to move motions “ex - rape charge against then SWP organiser Martin Smith, dis - it through in the text; but surely not a political criticism. tolling the virtues of the current [Labour] leadership”. But sociated from the committee report and later quit the SWP That things are bad in the Labour Party at present is true. Jon doesn’t. Essentially he says no more than Duncan explic - with RS21. He said that there was inadequate evidence for But Duncan’s efforts to hype up that fact don’t help. itly agrees with: that Miliband is “the least worst on offer” the rape charge, but Smith was guilty of sexual harassment. There has been “another point in the past 25 years when right now. Is he right? I don’t know. We don’t know. But we haven’t we wouldn’t have welcomed the opportunity [of] a leader - Duncan also censures the article for including its anti-cuts heard Stack, or the SWP for that matter, saying, as rape apol - ship election”. ogists do, that there was sex without consent, but “what else When John Smith died in 1994, we had no joy at the could she expect?”, or “she was asking for it”, or “she had no prospect of a leadership poll which Tony Blair was certain to bruises or cuts, so it couldn’t be rape”, or such. Not my argument win, and where the left ended up shrugging and voting for The SWP leaders’ bureaucratic brush-off (which very many John Prescott or Margaret Beckett, candidates which both SWP members have protested about, to one degree or an - Thank you for printing my letter in Solidarity 344, but I had no chance of winning and were not even clearly anti- other) is quite bad enough to bring them condemnation. Ver - don't think the headline “Nothing to be done about Blairite. bally inflating that condemnation into a claim that the SWP, Miliband” expresses what I was arguing. Rather, I was It’s not true that Miliband could be summarily replaced by as such, is “rape-apologist”, feeds the culture on the left suggesting that the Labour Party structures make it diffi - the Labour MPs. At any time in Labour’s history, if a major - where every perceived mis-step becomes, not cause for de - cult to do anything about Miliband through them. Indeed ity of MPs called on the leader to resign, then he’d find it hard bate, even angry, hot debate, but cause for banning (“racist”, if anyone was arguing “Nothing to be done about to stay on. “misogynist”, “pro-imperialist”, “Islamophobic”, etc.) But, unlike before the 1980s, the leadership contest Worse, that verbal-inflation culture chooses “soft tar - Miliband” it was Jon Lansman in the original article. In would have to give votes to trade unionists and con - gets” (smaller groupings on the left). No-one tries to ban fact his argument seemed to be nothing should be done stituency party members, and might (as in 2010) return a the Tory Party as being, as such, “rape-apologist”. about Miliband. candidate disfavoured by most MPs. Martin Thomas, Islington Duncan Morrison, Deptford Colin Foster, London From the Youth of All Nations

Oh, chide us not. Not ours the crime. We kneel at no ancestral shrine. War Poems by Janine Booth Oh, praise us not. It is not won, With admirable blasphemy The fight which we shall make sublime We desecrate the old divine From the Youth of All Nations reads to Beneath an unaccustomed sun. And dream a new eternity. me as a bitter complaint against the rul - ing classes on all sides of the First World Think not, my elders, to rejoice The simple world of childhood fades Destroy the history of men, War playing out their arguments with the When from the nations' wreck we rise, Beyond the Styx that all have passed; The weary cycle of decay. sufferings and lives of soldiers. With a new thunder in our voice This is a novel land of shades, We shall not pass that way again, And a new lightning in our eyes. Wherein no ancient glories last. We tread a new untrodden way. Its title declares both a bitterness of the young against old leaders, and an interna - You called with patriotic sneers, A land of desolation, blurred Though scattered wider yet our youth tionalist outlook. Then its fifteen four-line And drums and sentimental songs. By mists of penitence and woe, On every sea and continent, (quatrain) stanzas spell out the manipula - We came from out the vernal years Where every hope must be deferred There shall come bitter with the truth tions of the call to war and promise rebel - Thus bloodily to right your wrongs. And every river backward flow. A fraction of the sons you sent. lion rather than reverence. The strict iambic tetrameter rhythm creates an impression of The sins of many centuries, Not on this grey and ruined plain When slowly with averted head, an army marching to settle scores with its Sealed by your indolence and fright, Shall we obedient recall Some darkly, some with halting feet, rulers. Have earned us these our agonies: Your cities to rebuild again And bowed with mourning for the dead Sadly, I can’t tell you much about the The thunderous appalling night For their inevitable fall. We walk the cheering, fluttering street, poet, H C Harwood . He was a student at Balliol College, Oxford, where many stu - When from the lurid darkness came A music terrible, austere dents held radical views in the early twen - The pains of poison and of shell, Shall rise from our returning ranks tieth century. Harwood contributed some The broken heart, the world's ill-fame, To change your merriment to fear, work to the “Oxford poetry” collections, The lonely arrogance of hell. And slay upon your lips your thanks; with this particular poem appearing in an anthology published in 1915. Reviewing the Faintly, as from a game afar, And on the brooding weary brows book in the socialist newspaper The Herald , Your wrangles and your patronage Of stronger sons, close enemies, Gerald Gould described it as “one of the Come drifting to the work of war Their call Are writ the ruin of your house few vital things to be have been written Which you have made our heritage. to arms And swift usurping dynasties. about the war”. 95 WHATF EWAET USARYE Unequal States of America Protests erupted across the USA after the Grand Jury in - vestigation into the fatal shooting in St Louis, USA, of un - armed black teenager Michael Brown concluded on Monday 24 November. Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed Michael Brown on 9 August, could have faced charges ranging from involuntary manslaughter to first-degree murder. However the jury (nine white and three black) decided that “no prob - able cause existed to indict Wilson.” An indictment required Protesters in Ferguson (left) support from nine of the twelve jurors. and Darren Wilson’s injuries St Louis Governor Jay Nixon has called in the National (above). Guard and declared a state of emergency. Several school dis - tricts closed schools on Tuesday 25 November. Police have Michael then started to run attacked protesters with tear gas, rubber bullets and “hor - away, before turning and ad - nets’ nest sting grenades” which carry rubber bullets and a vancing on Wilson again. toxic chemical powder repeatedly throughout the night. A Wilson states that Michael no-fly zone has been instigated around the area, and the kept advancing as he shot at media have been asked repeatedly to leave “for their own him, until he was fatally shot safety”. in the head. In Oakland, California, dozens of people blocked traffic on Several eye witnesses, Interstate 580. Rubber bullets have been fired on protesters in while supporting a confronta - Los Angeles. Protests have also happened in New York, tion, dispute that Michael ad - Chicago, Seattle, Washington and Philadelphia. vanced on Wilson when he EXPLODE on the minimum wage. Officially-defined “poverty” covers was shooting. Many described how Michael understandably As we go to press, police report 29 people have so far 28.1% of African-Americans and 11.1% of the general popu - doubled up after a few shots. Some claim he stumbled a few been arrested in St Louis, but the figure may be much lation. Unemployment is double that of white workers. In St steps forward as he fell. Michael was 35ft (10.7m) from Wil - higher. One local preacher stated “you cannot shake a Louis it is three times as high. son’s car when the fatal shot was fired. soda can repeatedly and not expect it to explode.” Black workers are disproportionately represented in low- Photographic evidence of Wilson’s injuries presented to paid and insecure service industry jobs. In St Louis cam - the jury [pictured] shows small red patches on the face and The background is inequality in the USA: growing inequal - paigners for “Show me $15” are fighting for a $15 minimum the back of the neck, no cuts or bigger bruises. Wilson was ity in power, wealth, and substantive rights between the rich wage, and have staged strikes in fast food outlets across the not carrying a taser (which can temporarily disable people and the poor, and between white Americans and African- city, including in Ferguson. without killing them). He reports that he doesn’t like to carry Americans. Young African-American men are jailed at seven times the one. An African-American president has not stopped that in - rate of young white males. There are about 840,000 black men Police are given broad latitude as to what constitutes “rea - equality increasing. In 2007 inequality in net median wealth in prison in the USA, fewer than the 1.4 million black men in sonable” force. between (non-Hispanic) white and non-white families was universities or community colleges, but not that many fewer. 6:1; in 2013 it stood at 8:1. Inequality in median income be - Black Americans account for 40% of the USA’s prison popu - KILLED tween (non-Hispanic) white and non-white increased from lation. In 2012, 426 people were recorded as having been killed 1.4:1 in 2007 to 1.7:1 in 2013. Under Missouri law, police officers are entitled to use by police officers in the USA (records are patchy and The white 64% of the US population own 88% of its wealth. deadly force for two main reasons: if they believe that a threat there is no national legal requirement to report). 11% of the workforce are African-American, but 14% of those of death or serious injury is posed to the officer or others, or 31% were black, though only 13% of the US population is they believe that a suspect is trying to escape and would then black. 39% of black people killed were classified as “attack - pose that same threat of death or serious injury. ing” when shot, and 42% as “not attacking”. Police kill 12 year old boy St Louis County prosecuting attorney Bob McCulloch Many young black men reasonably fear that any wrong On Sunday 23 November, 12 year old Tamir Rice died claims some witnesses changed their accounts or were un - move can lead to their death. after being shot by police in Cleveland, Ohio. clear. However none other than Wilson himself came even Popular culture propagates a fear of young black men. The close to describing a scene where Wilson was in fear for his 30% white population in Ferguson are buying guns to arm A member of the public made a 911 call, saying that life. themselves against this imaginary threat, yet that 30% control Tamir had something like a gun, but also (twice) that the Evidence presented to the Grand Jury showed that when the political structures and the police. Just 17% of city coun - gun was “probably a fake”. The 911 responder twice Michael died he was too far from Wilson’s police car to offer cillors are black, compared to 67% of the population. asked whether the boy was black or white before dis - Wilson immediate harm. At least seven bullets hit Michael, The shooting of Michael, the failure to indict him, is the re - patching officers. and Wilson’s gun discharged 12 bullets in total in the en - sult of a deeply unequal society. The law applied by the Witnesses say he made no verbal threats and did not counter. Wilson testified that after he stopped Michael and Grand Jury reflects that unequal society. point the replica gun towards police officers.. Police offi - his friend for “jay walking” [walking in the street illegally] When all police are armed, when they are allowed to use “reasonable” force when they see a threat, and cerTsa smhoirt’ sT afamthire trw, Gicree igno trhye H uepnpdeer rbsoodny,. said that police Michael attacked him in his car, punching him twice to the face. Wilson repeatedly referred to Michael as “it” and “being where their thinking is shaped by a culture which sees should have used a stun gun to subdue his son rather young black men as routinely a threat, then they will than shoot him. like a demon”. Wilson then says he fired two shots out of the car and that shoot young black men like Michael. UKIP: symptom of decline On 20 November UKIP won its second elected MP in the Rochester and Strood by-election. much they could claim that their 35 per cent of the vote, com - with the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats are not pared to UKIP’s 42 per cent, was not that bad. But Conserva - looking to Labour or moving left, but moving right to UKIP. In many ways this is a worse result for the Conservatives tives had done everything they could to win the seat. Many in the Labour leadership and the press have reacted than the Clacton by-election that UKIP won on 9 October. Some media commentators attempted to talk the result by calling for New Labour Mark 2 (thus the Alan Johnson There, the profile of the population was on UKIP’s side, down on the grounds of the turnout being only 51%, but plot-that-never-was). white, ageing, and poorly educated. Rochester is another that’s a very high turnout for a by-election. But a Blairite retread is no longer an option for the Labour matter. The result is also bad news for the left. Rochester and leadership. In 1997 Blair’s strategy was to appeal to “aspira - In their book about UKIP, Revolt on the Right , Matthew Strood incorporates much of the old Medway constituency tional” voters who lacked class consciousness while relying Goodwin and Robert Ford suggested that Clacton had a de - that Labour won in 1997 and held (marginally) in 2005. If on the core working-class vote who (he believed) had mography where UKIP would prosper, but the population Rochester and Strood had existed in 2005, it would have been nowhere else to go. That core vote was fragmented by the ex - of Rochester is younger and more educated. It has more Lon - a Conservative gain from Labour with a small majority. perience of New Labour , and w ill not be rallied so easily don-facing commuters who may have a more cosmopolitan In the by-election Labour won back none of the votes lost agUaKinIP. is not the cause, but a symptom, of the decline in outlook. since 1997, and received no benefit from the near-complete working-class politics. The answer is to rebuild the con - For the Conservatives to lose Rochester and Strood on a collapse of the Liberal Democrat vote. Rather, the Labour fidence of the working class to assert itself in politics. swing against them of 14 percentage points is bad news. leaders’ slightly-less-austerity programme lost much of even By polling day the Tories had lowered their expectations so Labour’s rump of support from 2010. Voters disillusioned 86-7 FEATURE Marxism and imperialism

By Martin Thomas In militarism, war and public debts they have a direct inter - mally independent states, for example Turkey. “Oriental des - est, not only as creditors, but also as government contrac - potism becomes horrifyingly oppressive wherever it masters By the end of the 60s, what had once been “the pride” of Marxism tors... the instruments of power of European civilisation, but at the — the theory of imperialism — had become a “tower of Babel”, in “It is wholly different with industrial capital. Militarism, same time becomes the debtor of Europe... [The resulting which not even Marxists knew any longer how to find their way. war and public debts signify high taxes... War signifies be - regime] brings to a peak the oppressive and degrading ef - Giovanni Arrighi sides this... a break in trade... A strong governmental power fects of capitalism, without developing any of its progressive arouses anxiety in [the industrial manager] because he can - qualities... It pairs despotism and capitalism in an abom - There is not, nor can there be, such a thing as a “negative” Social- not directly control it... he inclines rather to liberalism... [But] inable union.” Democratic slogan that serves only to “sharpen proletarian con - The opposition between finance and industry continually de - “If the ethic of capitalism says that it is in the interests of sciousness against imperialism” without at the same time offering creases... finance ever more and more dominates industry.” culture and society for lower classes and nations to be ruled, a positive answer to the question of how Social-Democracy will Much of Kautsky’s argument was a Marxist conversion of the ethic of the proletariat says that precisely in the interests solve the problem when it assumes power. A “negative” slogan un - ideas which were to be summed up with great verve by the of culture and society the oppressed and those under tute - connected with a definite positive solution will not sharpen, but English radical liberal, J A Hobson, in a book motivated by lage must throw off all dominion.” This remains the bottom dull, consciousness, for such a slogan is a hollow phrase, meaning - the Boer War ( Imperialism , 1902). line for revolutionary Marxists to this day. less declamation. V I Lenin For Hobson, “the economic taproot of Imperialism” was This analysis of capitalist development in the colonies was overproduction and glut of capital. “Messrs Rockefeller, Pier - taken further by Rosa Luxemburg in her 1913 book, The Ac - Maybe the first big classical-Marxist statement on impe - point Morgan [etc.] need Imperialism because they desire to rialism was by Karl Kautsky, in 1899, replying to Eduard cumulation of Capital. use the public resources of their country to find profitable She too described how the development of capitalist rela - Bernstein’s call for a “revision” of the perspective of employment for the capital which would otherwise be super - Marx and Engels. tions in the underdeveloped countries, and the clawing-in of fluous.” their pre-capitalist economies to the capitalist world market, In the 1890s Engels had identified monopolies, cartels, Kautsky saw a similar permanent glut. He differed from led the big powers to use force, seizing colonies or using the credit and high finance as expressions that classic individual Hobson in arguing that this glut would be resolved by the local state as, “a political machinery for exploiting peasant capitalism was decaying and becoming “socialistic”, but in collapse of capitalism and the socialist revolution, rather than economy for capitalist purposes — the real function, this, of an upside-down way which sharpened plunder, swindling, by “social reform”, and in contending that finance-capital all Oriental states in the period of capitalist imperialism.” It and crises. Colonialism was a profit-making venture of the dominated, rather than being only a “sectional interest” created, “the most peculiar combinations between the mod - new financial aristocracy. counterposed to “the business interests of the nation as a ern wage system and primitive authority in the colonial Bernstein argued, on the contrary, that the new trends whole”. countries.” made capitalism more open to peaceful and piecemeal Many of the core ideas of the whole literature were already Capitalism in the colonies and semi-colonies, however, oc - progress. Credit gave the system more flexibility. Industrial expressed by 1902: militarism, colony-grabbing, conflict and cupied only the last quarter of Luxemburg’s book. She gave cartels (associations of companies bound together by agree - an authoritarian state as the political trends; high finance, pride of place to a new statement of the thesis that a perma - ments on production levels, prices and sales) gave the capi - economic decadence and glut, and export of capital, as the nent “glut” within the advanced capitalist economies was the talists more conscious control. They could avoid economic underpinnings. motor force of imperialism. But what exactly was finance capital? This question was overproduction by mutual agreement. The growth of the HILFERDING world market, and improvements in communications and never properly resolved. And the recurrent idea of metropol - Rudolf Hilferding’s Finance Capital was published in transport, also made the system more flexible. Capitalism itan capitalism having become “glutted” would also cause could probably postpone “general commercial crises” for a confusion. 1910 but mostly written in 1905. Effective demand depends not only on consumption but long time. The book starts with a long and intricate discussion on the Bernstein’s scenario of peace and free trade was an illusion, also on investment; and, in fact, fluctuations in demand for investment goods are generally the prime movers in crises. theory of money, credit, interest and the stock exchange, aim - replied Kautsky. “Protective tariffs are easier introduced than ing to show that, “there is a growing tendency... to concen - abolished, especially in a period of such raging competition Demand for those investment goods can soar while final con - sumption stagnates — and, vice versa, the run-up to a crisis trate all capital in the form of money capital, and to make it on the world market... Free trade! For the capitalists that is available to producers only through the banks... Even today, an ideal of the past.” Bernstein claimed that speculation was is generally a period of unusually high working-class con - sumption but sagging investment. taking possession of six large Berlin banks would mean tak - a disease of capitalism’s infancy. But infant capitalism was ing possession of the most important spheres of large-scale being promoted across the world by the “overflowing capi - “Overproduction” is not a permanent condition; capital - ism constantly sheds overproduction through crises and then industry.” tals of the older countries... Argentinian and Transvaal spec - Hilferding defines finance capital as, “capital in money ulation holds its ‘wildest orgies’ not only in Buenos Aires and builds it up again. The notion of an absolute level after which a capitalist economy will become permanently “glutted” is a form which is... transformed... into industrial capital.” He Johannesburg, but equally in the venerable City of London.” adds a qualification: “this does not mean that the magnates And colonialism, Kautsky insisted, was inseparable from recurrent theme in mainstream economics, from Adam Smith to Keynes. It has been attractive to socialists because it seems of industry also become dependent on banking magnates”; militarism and the despoiling of colonial peoples for the ben - rather, bank capitalists and industrial capitalists, “unite in efit of “the modern kings of finance [who] dominate nations to show that capitalism must inevitably break down. It is mis - leading. close association.” directly through cartels and trusts and subject all production Cartels are generated because otherwise the rates of profit to their power”. AFTER 1907 would be lower for giant enterprises. With modern credit it “The financier,” Kautsky went on to argue, “finds mili - In Germany’s election of January 1907 the ruling Conser - is easy to get into large-scale production; given the huge tarism and a strong active governmental policy, both external vative/National Liberal bloc made imperialism the cen - amounts of fixed capital involved it is difficult to get out. So and internal, very agreeable. The kings of finance need not tral issue. They denounced the Social Democrats, who the giant enterprises form cartels to keep their profits up. The fear a strong governmental power, independent of people had been criticising the German state’s brutality in its banks help them. and Parliament, because they can rule such a power directly South West African colony, as unpatriotic — and re - Kautsky and Luxemburg, in polemic against Bernstein, either as bondholders [i.e., as people who lend money to the duced them from 81 parliamentary seats to 43. had stressed the instability and fragility of cartels, but Hil - government], or else through personal and social influences. ferding shifts the emphasis: “there is a constant tendency for For a party so convinced that the laws of social develop - cartelisation to be extended.” Cartels generate high profits, ment guaranteed it steady growth, this result was a catastro - but they also restrict investment, both inside the cartel (be - phe. What had gone wrong? Too much radical agitation, said cause it restricts production) and outside (because profits are DISCUSSING MARXISM the right wing. Imperialism had attracted the middle classes, low). Cartelisation therefore gives an extra push to the ex - replied the left, and undercut liberalism; but it would lead port of capital. AND IMPERIALISM capitalism into convulsions, and eventually alienate the mid - Since they export capital, the big powers need to clear the dle classes. The socialists must prepare for revolutionary up - way for capitalism in underdeveloped countries. They force Between 18 and 21 December Workers’ heavals by militant anti-imperialism and by distancing peasants to become wage-workers. “these violent methods themselves from liberal illusions. Liberty is holding an educational event in are the essence of colonial policy, without which it would Kautsky wrote a pamphlet on Socialism and Colonial Policy London to discuss classic Marxist theories of lose its capitalist rationale.” But “capitalism itself gradually to defend the views of the left. This was the most compre - provides the subjected people with the ways and means for imperialism, dependency theory and critiques, hensive statement of classical Marxism on imperialism as it their own liberation” through national independence move - affected the colonies. “globalisation” and the left’s use and abuse ments. Colonialism, despite all the Revisionists’ argument, wrote of theories of imperialism. The competitive drive for economic territory will lead to Kautsky, was inseparable from brutal force and heavy, pau - war between the big capitalist states. “The response of the Interested? Contact Cathy on 020 7394 8923 perising taxation of the local people. And so India showed proletariat to the economic policy of finance capital — impe - or [email protected]. Registration is “continual increase in famine and misery, in spite of heavy rialism — cannot be free trade, but only socialism.” flow of English capital to India with a consequent improve - essential. The book was a formidable work, but not the definitive ment of the Indian “productive forces in places”. summing-up which Hilferding intended. Rather than devel - The export of capital produced malign results even in for - 9 FETAHTEUORRE Y

Monopoly is not necessarily the direct opposite of compe - tition. Global corporations may operate fiercer competition than the smaller local-market-focused capitalists of “compet - itive capitalism”. An “imperialism of free trade” in which huge global corpo - rations are central has become the dominant pattern. States play a big role, but are structured by a drive of each to make its territory a congenial site for mobile global capital, and by the drive of the hegemonic US state, in particular, to make the whole world congenial for mobile capital. The wartime political struggle gave Bukharin’s and Lenin’s pamphlets greater vividness and focus than the pre-1914 lit - erature. As polemics they were devastating; as sharpened summaries of the Marxist literature, they stand up very well to later bourgeois-academic criticisms. Their adequacy as textbooks for the study of imperialism across the whole of the twentieth century — which is not the purpose for which they were written — is another matter. Their summary state - ments on finance capital and monopoly capital, if cited as laws for the broad sweep of history, are wrong. Bukharin’s schematism led him to present a world of mil - itarised state-capitalist monoliths as an irreversibly estab - lished fact, rather than a one tendency among others in a complex whole, and to argue that national self-determina - tion had thus been made “economically impossible”. Lenin — despite summary statements implying otherwise — did allow for much more complexity in the relation be - tween economics and politics than the other classical Marx - ists. “At the same time,” he emphasised, “capitalism engenders democratic aspirations in the masses, creates dem - ocratic institutions, aggravates the antagonism between im - perialism’s denial of democracy and the mass striving for democracy.” He ridiculed Bukharin’s crude argument that, The Marxist debate on imperialism developed through disputes about responses to the First World War “imperialist annexation is only a case of the general capital - ist tendency towards centralisation of capital.” “Everyone oping a whole new theory, it pulled together ideas from writ - nopoly capital and its inherent striving for “violence and re - would laugh... if, parallel with the law that small-scale pro - ings such as Kautsky’s into a tidier structure — and often action”. duction is ousted by large-scale production, there were pre - through very dubious logical deductions. The analysis moves “Economically, the main thing in this process [of imperial - sented another ‘law’... of small states being ousted by big too directly from abstract economic reasoning to current Ger - ism emerging] is the displacement of capitalist free competi - ones.” man realities and back again, so that we get a picture of fi - tion by capitalist monopoly.” “Domination, and the violence THE STATE nance capital in general, and of Germany in 1905-09, but not that is associated with it, such are the relationships that are There was a problem, however, I think, with the grid much of the general development of imperialism in a variety typical of the ‘latest phase of capitalist development’; this is within which even Lenin saw the question of bourgeois of countries. what inevitably had to result, and has resulted, from the for - state forms. About 1912 Kautsky shifted to views on militarism and mation of all-powerful economic monopolies.” inter-capitalist conflict (though not on colonialism) very sim - Where Lenin honed down the stock ideas of the pre-1914 At one pole was a parliamentary republic based on small ilar to those of Bernstein which he had criticised 13 years ear - left, Bukharin expanded them, taking up an idea hinted at by proprietors, with a minimal permanent state machine, no lier. In 1914 world war erupted. Kautsky said that socialists Rosa Luxemburg in 1899 when she wrote about “the contra - standing army, wide civil rights, etc. At the other pole was should press the capitalist governments to make peace — for diction between the international character of the capitalist Prussian absolutism — a big military machine and state bu - that was a better policy in the long run even from a capital - world economy and the national character of the capitalist reaucracy, topped by a monarchy, with restricted civil rights ist point of view — and in the meantime each group of so - state...” Technical progress, improved communications, and the most limited forms of parliamentarism. All other cialists could only defend their “own” country. The next larger-scale industry, and the expansionist drive of capital - state forms (so the implicit assumption ran) were to be found phase in the classical Marxist argument was a polemic ism, led capitalists to make more links across national bor - somewhere on the scale between those two poles. against Kautsky from the revolutionary anti-war left, by the ders. “The course of economic development creates, parallel Monopoly capitalism required a sizeable state machine, Russian Marxists Bukharin and Lenin. to this process [of internationalisation of capitalist interests], and the big capitalist interests would often bypass parliament a reverse tendency towards the nationalisation of capitalist to deal with state officials directly. It meant a move away BUKHARIN interests.” So: “The process of the internationalisation of eco - from Jacksonian democracy — and therefore necessarily to - Bukharin’s book Imperialism and World Economy was nomic life can and does sharpen, to a high degree, the conflict wards Prussian absolutism. written in 1915, and read by Lenin, who wrote a preface of interests among the various ‘national’ groups of the bour - The modern bourgeois democratic state machine makes for it in December 1915. The manuscript was lost, and geoisie...” the Prussian state of Lenin’s time look a very skimpy ama - recovered for publication only late in 1917. Bukharin It is true that “high imperialism” was based on, depended teur outfit. Yet it has parliamentary democracy (hollowed- rewrote missing sections and added material from on, arose from, the development of large concentrations of out but still not meaningless) and relatively wide civil rights. Lenin’s pamphlet. Imperialism , written in January-June highly mobile capital, ready for bold foreign ventures. In the It is not somewhere on a spectrum between Jacksonian 1916, and published in April 1917. Each work was there - world as it was in 1916 — where British industrial supremacy democracy and Prussian absolutism; it represents movement fore influenced by the other. had broken down but no rival had been able to establish gen - in a different direction. Lenin drew on the same concepts as Kautsky in his radical eral supremacy, either, and where vigorous capitalist ex - After Lenin’s death, the Stalinists constructed a chopped- days, but crafted a sharper and tighter argument, and with ploitation in the less-industrial countries generally required up orthodoxy of “Leninism”, which, by sheer weight of liter - militant conclusions. He built on the identification of monop - a capitalist state authority imposed from outside to establish ature and resources, shaped left wing thinking way outside olised, cartelised, organised, gigantified capital as the core of its preconditions — those large concentrations of highly mo - the Stalinist parties. imperialism first made, I think, by Hilferding, but honed the bile capital were the vectors of imperialism. Recent research Lenin’s pamphlet did not cover what became the hottest argument done to something much crisper and more politi - also indicates that Hobson and Kautsky were probably right question about imperialism, its relation to economic devel - cally pointed than Hilferding’s sprawling volume. Like Hil - about Empire bringing net gains only to some sections of the opment in the Third World. To fill the gap in “Leninist” the - ferding, Lenin used the term “finance capital” a lot, but capitalist class — in Britain, lords, landowners, bankers and ory, phrases from the pamphlet which looked as if they finance was far less central for Lenin than it had been Kaut - London merchants — while for the class as a whole the extra might be about that were taken as the “Leninist” line! And sky at the start of the whole classical-Marxist discussion. taxes cancelled any extra gain. the theory got distorted “honestly” by statements about ten - The immediate cause that Lenin cited for “the conquest But large concentrations of highly mobile capital can oper - dencies being taken as a comprehensive account, without re - policy of modern capitalist states” was the competition be - ate under different regimes, as since the mid-1980s. The gard to counter-tendencies. And some real weaknesses in tween the great monopoly capitalists for raw material structure of the world economy, rather than just the growth Lenin’s account provided fertile ground for confusion. sources. He cited other factors, but as secondary: a struggle of big capitalist money-fortunes in a few countries, was the Imperialism, wrote Lenin, was “parasitic”, “decaying”, and to seize potential sources of raw materials as well as actual fundamental basis of “high imperialism”. “moribund” capitalism. He was restating Kautsky’s ideas of ones, arenas for other monopoly business, ideological rea - Moreover, the early 21st and late 20th centuries prove that 1899-1909. In so far as he was just doing that, he was trapped sons, territory for emigration. “monopoly capitalism” — a capitalism dominated by huge by the mechanical alternatives of pre-1914 “Marxist ortho - This argument obviously raises the question: could not the corporations — divides the world into territories policed and doxy” — either capitalism was progressing, and its new de - monopolies obtain their raw materials more cheaply through tariff-walled by rival states only under certain conditions. velopments, like imperialism, should therefore be supported, free trade? In replying, Lenin puts the competition for raw Kautsky’s and Luxemburg’s stress on the fragility and insta - or it was plunging to collapse — and within those false alter - material sources into context as only an expression of what bility of cartels has turned out more accurate, in the long run, natives he was plainly wrong. A hundred years later, capital - he considers fundamental to imperialism: the growth of mo - than Hilferding’s scenario of ever-more-cartelised, ever- more-”organised”, capitalism. Continued on page 8 8 FTEHAETOURRYE

From centre pages of formal colonial rule had not removed those hindrances. Warren replied that colonialism helped the development of ism has grown, not collapsed. the colonies — and that the end of colonialism helped even As Lenin himself noted: “History does not stand still even more! in times of counter-revolution.” He played up everything that pointed to capitalist progress To recognise this is not to slacken our fight against capital - in the Third World, and played down everything else. ism. As Lenin put it: “Can anyone in his senses deny that Bis - By Stalinised “Leninism”, meanwhile, the theory of impe - marckian Germany and her social laws are ‘better’ than rialism was converted into a set of axiomatic equations: ad - Germany before 1848?... Did the German Social-Democrats... vanced capitalism equals domination of monopolies and vote for Bismarck’s reforms on these grounds?” finance-capital, equals imperialism, equals a push for colony- To discard mechanical notions of the “epoch of decay” is, grabbing, equals “moribund and decaying capitalism” in the however, essential if we are to understand realistically the metropolis and blight in the periphery, equals the dead-end adversities and the prospects of the socialist movement. of capitalist progress. There have been several “epochs of imperialism”, not one. We should also discard Lenin’s confused link, following STALINISED “ANTI-IMPERIALISM” Kautsky, between “decay” and “finance capital”. In his This turned “anti-imperialism” into a garbled global ver - analysis, Lenin has two completely different concepts of fi - sion of the 1950s-1960s European Communist Party line nance capital, incoherently combined. He writes of “the sev - of “the anti-monopoly alliance”, which defined the eral hundred kings of finance who reign over modern biggest, most advanced, capitalist interests as ipso facto capitalist society”. Elsewhere, however, it is a matter of “the the worst. extraordinary growth of a class, or rather, of a stratum of ren - Advanced capitalism was bad not so much because it was tiers, i.e., people who live by “clipping coupons”, who take capitalist as because it was advanced . Stalinism, or Islamic fun - no part in any enterprise whatever, whose profession is idle - damentalism, should be supported because, despite their ness.” Indian capitalism: sub-imperialist crimes, they could not fail to represent progress as against So which is it? Are the finance capitalists the masters of the absolute dead-end denoted by imperialism. large-scale industry, the directors of the economy — or peo - The Stalinised “Leninists” claim great strictness in their ple like the rentier who “if he speaks of work at all means the laying the material basis for the succeeding stage of social - ism. Lenin and Trotsky argued that the bourgeoisie in Russia definitions. Because the strictness is not true theoretical ‘work’ of picking flowers or calling for a ticket at the box of - rigour, developed by constant checking and revision of the - fice of the opera.” (then a relatively backward country) was too weak to carry through the political tasks of the bourgeois revolution, so that ory against reality, but rather a matter of esoteric codes and Weaknesses in Lenin’s pamphlet enabled later writers to buzzwords, they invariably end up slipping and sliding be - stamp “Leninist” authority on arguments about the perma - the proletariat had to take the lead and could then carry straight on to the socialist revolution. The evolution of a rel - tween their “high science” and looser usages imported from nent “glut of capital” and about the capitalist development of current radical politics (such as “dependency theory”, as poorer countries being impossible under imperialism. atively backward country differed from that of the more ad - vanced centres. above). Politics becomes wordplay. BARAN “This argument, however still presupposes the existence The USSR was not dominated by finance capital, hence its In 1957 Paul Baran, an unorthodox Stalinist, initiated a of a proletariat adequate to the task, and thus a certain de - conquests could not really be imperialist, hence they could new strand: “dependency theory”. gree of capitalist development. However, in the first half of not represent domination, oppression and plunder of the the 20th century, there were few signs of capitalist develop - weak by the strong. Or at any rate they were less grievous Third World countries were underdeveloped, argued ment in underdeveloped countries, and many Marxists came examples of such evils than “proper” imperialism. Baran, mainly because of parasitism within the Third World to argue a position almost diametrically opposed to that of The only way to break through this word-play is to recog - countries and a drain of surplus to the advanced countries. the classics. nise flatly that we must use a broader definition of imperial - The answer was for those forces seeking development in “Where it had been argued [by Marxists] that capitalist de - ism, and within that to distinguish between forms of Third World countries to follow the model provided by the velopment had to create first the possibility of a socialist rev - imperialism. Advanced capitalism continues to be imperial - USSR — expropriate the parasitic old property-owning olution, it was now argued that the absence of capitalist ist, but less-advanced capitalism, or Stalinist state-capitalism, classes, centralise resources in the hands of the state, cut development made socialist revolution necessary... This shift is not necessarily less imperialist. down economic relations with the rest of the world to a min - of perspective entails a shift to a more voluntaristic concept The evil in advanced capitalism is capitalism, not advance. imum. of politics and to treating the peasantry or lumpen-prole - Capitalism develops unevenly on a world scale, and with a Andre Gunder Frank, Samir Amin, Immanuel Wallerstein tariat, rather than the industrial proletariat, as the revolution - tendency for the unevenness to increase and compound it - and others built on Baran’s analysis, developing the idea that ary class.”In some circles, the idea of the “glut of capital” led self. Some countries become sites for modern infrastructure, imperialism created distorted, stunted, dependent structures to the conclusion that decolonisation would mean metropol - advanced industries and services, major finance capital, the in Third World countries. Though heavily discredited by re - itan capitalism choking to death on its uninvestible riches. headquarters of multinational companies, and heavy invest - cent facts, such as the capitalist development of Asia’s Pacific Thus the Second World Congress of the Fourth International ment, while others remain with few industries (often pri - Rim, this “dependency theory” remains very influential on in 1948 argued that the loss of colonies for Europe removed mary-product or low-technology), operated by low-wage the left, especially in pseudo-Trotskyist restatements. all chance of regaining “even the pre-war [i.e., 1930s!] eco - labour, with low investment and widespread pauperism. This doctrine (“import of revenue”, so to speak) had obvi - nomic equilibrium”. Capitalism is in its very essence a system of ruthless com - ous differences even from the conventional interpretation of petition, where the rich and the strong do down the poor and Lenin (“export of capital”), but was assimilated to it via KIDRON the weak, and the richer capitalist states, and the banks and Lenin’s speculations about metropolitan capital “growing Michael Kidron of the International Socialists (now SWP), multinationals based in them, dominate over poorer coun - rich by usury” or “tribute from Asia and Africa”. on the other hand, used the same assumptions to argue tries. This is imperialism. Crucial to the “dependency” framework is the notion that that the post-1950 metropolitan capitalist prosperity Against political domination we fight for the right to self- the essence of world capitalism is the relation between two meant the end of imperialism. determination of all nations and for consistent democracy. relatively homogeneous blocs, centre and periphery. The Against the impositions of the IMF on poorer countries, we focus of study is on factors keeping the hierarchy of capital - Imperialism had been the “highest stage but one” of capi - support the struggles of workers and peasants in those coun - ist economies fixed, keeping centres central and peripheries talism. The SWP has since flipped over from that view to tries. Against the depredations of international capital, we peripheral. The classical Marxists, on the contrary, focussed something much more like standard Stalinised-Leninism, but fight for social ownership and for the planned use of the on the fluidity and changeability of the hierarchical relations at the time Kidron’s argument was an organic part of a world’s resources and technology to get rid of poverty. between capitalist economies. world-picture also involving state capitalism in the USSR and This fight against imperialism is a part of our fight against Robert Brenner commented: “So long as incorporation into the “permanent arms economy” in the West. capitalism, not something superseding and overriding it. The the world market/world division of labour is seen automat - Arms spending was draining away the glut of capital, so capitalist classes even of the poorest countries are oppressor, ically to breed underdevelopment, the logical antidote to cap - the basic economic mechanism of imperialism no longer op - not oppressed, classes: we reject any alliance with them be - italist underdevelopment is not socialism, but autarky. So erated. Export of capital was no longer needed to provide a yond possible joint actions for political independence. long as capitalism develops merely through squeezing dry “drain” for excess capital from the advanced countries. World capitalism, and the hierarchies of power within it, the ‘third world’, the primary opponents must be core versus “The societies maimed and shattered by the imperialist ex - are fluid and ever-changing. Alongside world capitalism’s periphery, the cities versus the countryside — not the inter - plosion of the last century are again being maimed and shat - tendencies to accentuate unevenness, and interacting with national proletariat, in alliance with the oppressed people of tered — by the growing economic isolationism of the west those tendencies, are tendencies to “level out” development all countries, versus the bourgeoisie. In fact, the danger here (an imperialist implosion as it were)...” through the decay of the richest states and the emergence of is double-edged: on the one hand. a new opening to the ‘na - So drastic was the factual falsity of Kidron’s argument that new industrial centres. Imperialism is not a matter of a fixed tional bourgeoisie’; on the other hand, a false strategy for another “end of imperialism” argument soon developed imperialist “camp” confronting another “camp”, nor is it a anti-capitalist revolution... of semi-autarkic socialist devel - which was its exact contrary. For Kidron, imperialism had system which cannot change except to decay. In the last fifty opment”. ended because of “not enough” capital in the Third World; years the big colonial empires have been broken up; most of And Anthony Brewer points out, Frank ends up arguing for Bill Warren, because of “too much” capital there. the ex-colonies have won political independence; a number for socialism in a spirit very different from Lenin — not by Warren’s first article was useful in forcing Marxists to re- of them have developed substantial industry and big work - think their “conventional wisdom” of the time about the sup - identifying a revolutionary class generated by capitalist de - ingC coluanssterise. s as India, South Africa, Nigeria, Mexico, and posed impossibility of serious capitalist development in the velopment, but by indicting capitalism for its lack of capital - Brazil, have developed into “sub-imperialist” centres. ist development. ex-colonies. But Warren’s later writing became a simple in - “The classical Marxists assumed that each country must go version of “dependency”, or “centre-periphery”, theory. through successive stages of development; the capitalist “Centre-periphery” theorists said that colonialism hin - • Abridged and slightly edited from Workers’ Liberty 28 stage performed the historic task of creating a proletariat and dered the development of the colonies, also that the removal (1996). 9 FEATURE “If we burn, you burn with us!”

Daisy Thomas reviews ‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay willing to pay. Katniss, when stricken by guilt over what Part 1’ Peeta must be going through, tearfully beseeches Snow and “If we burn, you burn with us” — those were the fighting declares, “I never wanted any of this, I never wanted to be in words that rallied support behind the symbol of the re - the Games, I just wanted to save my sister and keep Peeta bellion: The Mockingjay. alive.” For Katniss, this fight will always come down to the per - Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), when pushed to her sonal. She is ready to sacrifice herself if that would ensure limit, became the symbol of hope and change that Panem’s the safety of her family and her friends. Districts were so dearly in need of. ‘The Hunger Games: And initially that noble but narrow goal is what almost Mockingjay Part 1’ was 123 minutes of being on the edge of stops the rebellion before it can properly get started. I think your seat, almost holding your breath to see what would un - Katniss’ disagreement with authority over the best course of fold next. Even though I had read the books, I found that the action is down to her personality as well as her relative youth cinematography, acting, and screenwriting were compelling and inexperience with the ways of the world. While she has enough for me lose myself in the narrative. experienced more trauma, horror, death, and pain than any - This third film from the incredibly successful trilogy by one, let alone a teenager, should ever experience, she is, at Suzanne Collins does not disappoint. Those who interested her core, still thinking only as a sister and friend rather than in the politics behind the narrative will find this instalment like a more detached strategist like President Coin (Julianne much more thought-provoking. Moore). While there has been an enduring theme of fighting against Before seeing the state of District 12, Katniss’ focus was injustice and the cruelty of the elite and privileged, there is rage against Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) more civil unrest in this film. The presumed destroyed Dis - and Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson) not saving trict 13 is arming its fighters for the battle of a lifetime. All Peeta, but the sheer mercilessness and destruction by the they needed was a rallying symbol. anger develop into planned and strategic attacks designed to Capitol’s forces on the ground at District 12 becomes one of The ‘Mockingjay’ is the final piece in the puzzle in undoing hit the Capitol where it hurts. Katniss’ defining and mobilising moments for action. From the tyrannical oppression of President Snow (Donald Suther - Instead of the chaos of separate District civil wars, the the original 10,000 residents, a mere 915 survived the (off- land) and the Capitol. As President Snow remarked previ - members of the Districts work to cut off the supplies from screen) attack after the last Hunger Games. ously, “hope is the only thing stronger than fear”. the Districts. President Snow compares the working of the Overall, ‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1’ was a re - To combat the fear and punishment raining down from the Districts to serve the Capitol as blood providing life to a beat - ally well-made, thought-provoking, emotional (I teared up Capitol through the “Peacekeepers” is to convince the resi - ing heart. Snow warns that nothing can exist without a heart, more than once), and inspiring film. I remember leaving dents of Panem that they have something stronger to fight but we also know that a heart cannot exist in isolation. And ‘Catching Fire’ and being furious at the Capitol. I left Mock - for: a new, fair Panem. inaction would come at a greater future cost than the imme - ingjay feeling like I wanted to join Katniss and the rebellion. The perspective shifts between the state of matters in the diate cost of a rebellion. I definitely recommend seeing the film regardless of Districts and in the Capitol. While Katniss is exposing the However, many, almost too many, find themselves paying whether or not you’ve read the books. And while it might be Capitol’s tyranny and destruction, Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) is the “ultimate price” for fighting for what they believe in. considered “young adult fiction”, a wide variety of ages can appearing to be the Capitol’s puppet. We see the chilling pro - While no-one is seeking bloodshed, the members in charge enAjonyd t hriesm steomryb. er that “the courage of one will change gression of the Capitol’s treatment of Peeta as the rebellion of organising the rebellion see the loss of a few good people the world”. gains momentum in the Districts. Disorganised chaos and in service of bringing down the oppressors as a price they are William Morris in a political context

By Michéal MacEoin radical movement at this time. The point of Morris’s politics from about 1883, however, after he crossed the “river of fire” and joined the Democratic The William Morris exhibition ‘Anarchy & Beauty’ at the Federation in 1883 — soon renamed the Social Democratic National Portrait Gallery is well worth a visit for anyone Federation under the influence of Marxists — was that his interested in Morris, his art, and the late nineteenth-cen - prefigurations of a more communistic and less alienated so - tury socialist movement. ciety required the overthrow of capitalism. Highlighting the The opening section, a rounded appreciation of Morris, is contrast between how we live and how we could live gained a marked contrast to the common view of him as a largely meaning in so far as it give impetus to revolutionary con - apolitical purveyor of Victorian handicrafts. As well as some sciousness. of Morris’s early wallpaper designs and an armchair pro - This is seen in Morris’s critique of utopian socialists, such duced by his collaborator and friend Philip Webb, we find as Robert Owen. He wrote in Commonweal in 1885 that it was the 1893 paperback edition of News from Nowhere . The justly impossible “to establish a real Socialistic community in the famous imagining of a less alienated and more communistic midst of Capitalistic Society, a social island amidst an indi - future society first appeared in 1890 in The Commonweal , the vidual sea; because all its external dealings would have to be newspaper of the Socialist League, of which Morris was a ‘William Morris making a wood block for the Earthly Paradise’ arranged on a basis of capitalistic exchange and would so far founder member. sketched by Burne-Jones support the system of profits and unpaid labour.” Of particular interest is a diary Morris kept from January to A large part of the second half of the exhibition deals with April 1887, at the height of his socialist activism. The diary, Though derided sourly as “anecdotes...about long-forgot - the garden city movement. A look at Welwyn Garden City which recounts a talk Morris gave to the workers’ Hackney ten Marxists and anarchists” in The Guardian’s review, items and Hampstead Garden Suburb today, in the context of Club, was intended, he wrote to his daughter Jenny, “as a such as Edward Carpenter’s sandals, a print of Kropotkin Britain’s extreme housing crisis, largely makes the point kind of view of the Socialist movement seen from the inside, working at his desk in front of Morris wallpaper and a pen - about that! Jonah’s view of the whale, you know.” cil sketch of Eleanor Marx, are necessary for placing Morris Problematic too is the holding up of figures of Clement At - But the highlight of the exhibition is the part which elabo - in context, and are a welcome correction to portrayals which tlee and Herbert Morrison as continuations of Morris’s rates on Morris’s friendship circle from his time at the house separate him from the political movements of the day. legacy, particularly the 1951 Festival of Britain public art living at the Red House in Bexleyheath, (designed by Morris’ Particularly good to see were the imposing red Hammer - show at the Southbank Centre. friend, the architect Philip Webb), and his deepening com - smith Socialist Society banner, and Morris’s copy of an 1883 Morris warned in News from Nowhere “that individual men mitment to socialist activism. French translation of Capital which needed to be rebound cannot shuffle off the business of life on to the shoulders of One series of contrasting caricatures of Morris drawn by within a year because it “had been worn to loose sections by an abstraction called the state, but must deal with it in con - his friend Edward Byrne-Jones and fellow pre-Raphaelite his own constant study of it.” scious association with each other” and elsewhere that “some Dante Gabriel Rossetti shows some of the tensions in the When it comes to Morris’s artistic legacy, however, much socialists are apt to confuse the cooperative machinery to - close-knit circle of creative companions. While Byrne-Jones’ of the politics are obscured here. The early Arts and Crafts wards which modern life is tending with the essence of so - rendering of Morris is playful, Rossetti’s ‘The Bard and the Movement is covered reasonably well, with its emphasis on cialism itself.” It is difficult to imagine the author of these Petty Tradesman’, first sketched in a letter to Morris’s wife breaking down false distinctions between work and leisure Jane in 1868, appears more like a barbed caricature of an in - words as an enthusiast of the Fabian technocracy of Attlee and countering the alienated forms of labour in capitalist so - and Morrison. creasingly rotund Morris. ciety. Particularly good were the tapestries of May Morris, There is much of interest here, and if it encourages Peter Kropotkin, Eleanor Marx, Sylvia Pankhurst, Annie the works of Walter Crane and the exquisite Kelmscott Press more people to engage with the ideas and work of Besant, Edward Carpenter, George Bernard Shaw — all make edition of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales . William Morris then it has done good. an appearance in the exhibition, showing the ferment in the 8180 FEATLUERFET Unity: real steps, or “rebranding”?

The Left other initiatives such as Hope Over Fear [a vehicle for for - After the Scottish referendum, the SWP argued, rightly, mer Scottish Socialist Party leader Tommy Sheridan], ac - that socialists should move on and seek to unite Yes and No By Colin Foster tivists must develop a united left...”. voters on class-struggle issues. The ISG’s line is more “Britain There were left reformists at the Glasgow conference. Trou - is our main enemy”, “The Yes movement was as progressive The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) has made another call ble is, they are sucked into the slipstream of the cock-a-hoop as the No camp reactionary”, etc. Now the SWP is deferring for left unity (21 November). Sadly, it seems that the SWP SNP. So are some of the revolutionaries, or at least not-quite- to that line: when they write of “activists developing a united aims more to “brand” itself as pro-unity than to get any reformists. left” in Scotland, it is “out of... the Radical Independence con - actual unity. Tommy Sheridan has called for an SNP vote in May 2015 ference... and other initiatives such as [Sheridan’s]”, i.e. exclu - (bit.ly./shersnp). Colin Fox, leader of the post-Sheridan Scot - sively from the strident Yes camp. Exits from the SWP in the last couple of years have taken tish Socialist Party, has called on the SNP to agree a common The SWP’s unity call for England reads as a perfunctory maybe half its previous active membership and made it seem “independence alliance” slate (bit.ly/sspsnp). add-on: it is for “an electoral coalition for the May elections”, more of an expert on how to get splits than on unity. How - The SNP has said it’s for a “yes alliance” slate which would including TUSC (the anti-cuts group led by the Socialist Party ever, the new call makes no offer to recent splinters from the include some non-SNP members (bit.ly/snpyes). On that and RMT union leaders in which SWP quarter-participates) SWP — Counterfire, ISG, RS21, ISN — of terms on which level the open issues are whether the SNP allows the SSP or and the small Left Unity group. They seem not to have a con - they could reunite. Sheridan a place on their slate, and whether the Greens (also stituency of “left reformists” in mind here as they do in Scot - Rather, the SWP wants to ease the isolation it has faced in the Radical Independence campaign) come in with the land. since its recent splits and scandals. An article in Socialist SNP. Guaranteed, however, is left self-submergence into the The platform (apparently for England only) in the SWP’s Worker signalled that the SWP looks to “left reformists” to slipstream of the bourgeois SNP. unity call is also perfunctory. It includes general “support for unite with, rather than the scattered revolutionary left. The Radical Independence alliance has had slogans like socialism”, but otherwise is just opposition to austerity, “The struggle in Greece has made it clear to many workers “Britain is for the rich, Scotland can be ours”, as if there is no racism, sexism, imperialism, with no positive policies, even that Syriza doesn’t have the answers. Anti-capitalists [i.e. the working class in Britain, and the Scottish bourgeoisie is so reformist ones, let alone bold calls like “Tax the Rich” or “Ex - SWP’s Greek sister group, SEK] relate to this audience partly flimsy that just a bit more loud “yes” campaigning will dis - propriate the Banks”. by standing against Syriza in elections. In Britain the balance solve it and make Scotland socialist. It is like the idea of sec - Its most specific clause is one “against the expansion of of forces is very different. So the Socialist Workers Party ond-rank countries being “proletarian nations”, whose NATO and the West’s new war in the Middle East”, code for wants to unite with left reformists and others to form a left al - competition with higher-rank countries trumps the class hinting that Russian imperialism in Ukraine is ok and ISIS ternative” ( Socialist Worker , 18 November). struggle within countries, first coined (for Italy) by Enrico conquests and slaughter of the Kurds are nothing to worry Leave aside the stuff about Greece. Which “left reformists” Corradini in 1910. about compared with the bad side-effects of the US bombing in Britain does the SWP want to unite with? How? The ISG, a 2011 splinter from the SWP in Scotland con - ISITSh. e left should unite much more. The best way to start The 21 November statement takes the Ukip victory in the nected to Counterfire in England, has proposed “a Scottish would be practical cooperation in supporting strikes and Rochester and Strood by-election of 20 November as its Podemos” instead of backing the SNP. The SWP’s call for fighting cuts, and practical agreement to run joint social - jumping-off point. But its focus is more on Scotland. Scotland is similar to the ISG’s, and seems to be motivated ist forums which will both popularise broad socialist “Some 3,000 activists meet [on 22 November] at the Radi - by a wish not to be outdone by the ISG. However, there is no ideas and allow real debate. cal Independence conference [in Glasgow]. Out of that, and talk of reunification between the SWP and the ISG. A tale of two meetings

By Mark Osborn ger and carnivorous, can’t those on the left who want to couldn’t make it up. He went downhill from then on, dis - argue with them, win the arguments? missing the rape allegations as “sniping”. On 18 November I stood outside a meeting of the Stu - That time, with John Rose speaking, no one had protested So to sum up: at the student meeting the AWL was left to dent Assembly at Goldsmiths College in south London, outside their meeting, no one had attempted to expose them make the case for free debate because the SWP are too spine - leafleting on behalf of Workers’ Liberty. A motion was to for what they are (except me, inside the meeting, and after - less to turn up and defend themselves; at the anarchist-so - be discussed which would disband the SWP’s student wards in the corridor outside). cialist debate the AWL was left to take on the SWP because society on campus. That the 2.5 SWP youth at Goldsmiths feel they can’t win those that hate them enough to support banning them (and Our leaflet said, in brief: the SWP are a degenerate sect, an argument in a hostile meeting, and with a lousy case, is no miTghhet rfe eils a abnle u tno palregausea wnti tshy tmhemme)t rwye. re unwilling. who have been responsible for covering up rape allegations surprise. The fact that the SWP leaders allowed a motion to inside their organisation, but don’t ban them, argue with ban them to go through the meeting without any opposition them. A few dozen people took my leaflet, politely, and went (except from the AWL, people they regard as their bitter en - in. No fuss. emies), is contemptible. In the meeting, the very little opposition there was to the There was no political campaign to defend their party, no GRAMSCI IN CONTEXT banning included the AWL. One non-student SWPer turned protest outside the Student Assembly, no speeches. How rub - up briefly to hand out a leaflet. The motion went through bish are the SWP? People who run away from a political fight A revised and 50%- with a big majority (although that majority was only a tiny when their party’s honour and rights are being contested. minority of students at the college). The previous week AWL And if a group runs away from a fight on a posh Univer - expanded edition of sity of London campus, how effective are they likely to be if women members had attended a meeting which discussed the 2012 booklet the issues; again the SWP had failed to show up and defend the police come for them? Or if the state bans them? themselves. DEBATE Antonio Gramsci: As we said in the Student Assembly, we are sympathetic to Two nights later at Goldsmiths there was a debate be - working-class the motion-movers’ anger against the SWP. The problem is, tween Marxists and anarchists hosted by the Platypus however, that the ban has wider implications for politics and group. revolutionary, political functioning. The people that voted to ban the SWP must surely know Platypus should be congratulated — it was an interesting summarising this too. After we had left some burned the SWP and AWL meeting where real debate took place. Next to me on the plat - Gramsci’s life and leaflets and posted a picture of it on the internet. The AWL form were a couple of anarchists and speakers from Socialist were being warned. We may be next. Appeal and the SWP. thought. A serious precedent was made here. This was the first time None of the leftist supporters of banning the SWP ap - the SWP had been banned on a British campus. A week later peared to expose them, or have them driven from campus. Edinburgh University also banned them. These bannings Which left the AWL to take on the SWP. (Socialist Appeal £6, or £7.60 may well have further implications for them, for us, for the were not at the Student Assembly, and they did not mention rest of the far left and for just for having well-functioning the SWP in their contributions, obsessed as they are with including democratic student unions. making desiccated propaganda for a bureaucratic Marxism, As far as I can work out there are 2.5 SWP members at plodding away like plodders). postage from Goldsmiths; I went to a recent meeting (on Palestine, with Of course the job was made easier because the SWP’s the spluttering, deranged John Rose) and it seems to me their speaker started his contribution with: “I joined the SWP in www.workersliberty.org/payment group is no physical threat to anyone. Even if they were big - 1996 because I fancied one of their members.” Honestly, you 311 REPNOERWTS Health strike gains momentum

By Todd Hamer crossed picket lines on Mon - afford it”. We have become pendent point of day with a kind grin on so used to fire-fighting in view. We need to Health workers struck for their faces and the words the NHS that many health find the confidence a second 4-hour block on “Thank you for fighting for workers cannot see beyond to challenge the or - Monday 24 November. us”. We can't blame them. the next crisis. ders that come Although the strike may They were acting as con - However, if we do not down from on high, not be the most militant on sumers of trade unionism. win this dispute and build a to think critically record, there is some evi - The unions have also strong union movement in about what is hap - dence that the NHS pay dis - fallen into this trap. All too the NHS then we not only pening in our pute is gaining momentum often the unions recruit face a long future of pay workplaces and and the unions are turning members by selling them - freezes, but also a slow de - where necessary up new activists. selves as an insurance policy struction of the NHS. This defy management Despite painfully timid — “essential cover for pub - will harm our patients and it — especially on leadership, the dispute has lic sector workers”. will harm us when we need strike days! become a rallying point for But the union isn't an in - the NHS in the future. Over the last health workers concerned surance policy. It is a coordi - Finally, some crossed thirty years selling about NHS cuts and privati - nation of workers, organised picket lines with their eyes the service model, sation. by its most active members, to the floor saying “I'm not the unions have be - If it is going to grow and standing ready to collec - allowed to strike”. come hollowed out Health workers on the picket outside Guys Hospital, London be successful then those new tively withdraw their labour By unthinkingly following husks, run by full- in disputes with the boss. management orders, we are time officials on activists need to turn out - are a disruptive and ob - theTihr eu nieowns a acntdiv isstrtsuggles. The entire purpose and contributing to the steady comfortable salaries who wards and convince the structive force in the unions. thrown up by this struggle power of the union lies in its demise of our health service don't understand the diffi - large numbers of strike - However, we will not get will need to learn the les - ability to organise strikes. and acting against the long culties we face in our jobs or breakers to join us and cre - a bolder leadership or a sons quickly and turn out Others who crossed picket term interests of our pa - our lives. They have hob - ate a renewed union more democratic union until to convince others. Soli - lines had an embarrassed tients. Health workers need nobbed with management movement. health workers become ac - darity gets results! Many healthworkers grimace on their face. “My to find a bit of courage and and have middle-class tive participants in shaping patient needs me” or “I can't stand up for our own inde - lifestyles and politics. They ISS cleaners strike Employers discuss plans to undermine unions By a PCS member by maintaining dialogue union activists is regularly bulk of the members work - only to meet statutory mini - reviewed in light of achieve - ing in these two depart - In leaked documents from mum requirements.” ments flowing from the rec - ments. If check-off was HMRC (the tax and cus - The paper outlines “ad - ommendations above”. ended then the union would toms part of the civil serv - vantages: creates pressure Beyond calling for an be in a very serious situa - ice) we see in the open on PCS to re-engage with ACAS meeting between the tion. No doubt finances are how bosses try to “han - the employer as this is the union and HMRC, no con - a factor in the union’s think - dle” unions. only means by which they crete action is being pro - ing. In the document a senior can be fully involved as the posed. The union has not The union should be call - manager writes:“...If we are business reshapes ... enables said explicitly it will defend ing upon Labour, and in - unable to persuade the new the change agenda to be activists, despite the threats deed the Lib Dems, to GEC (the union body that progressed without the need made above. Nor said it will condemn any moves to runs the PCS union in for time-consuming discus - take industrial action. “mIta srghionualdis eb Pe CdSe”m. anding HMRC) and full time offi - sion ... sends a clear signal This relatively muted re - that a future Labour gov - By Sacha Ismail The first strike day in their cials to change their stance to union members that their sponse could be because the ernment will positively campaign was 8 October. union is no best positioned union fears that HMRC will make the case for unions Over two hundred out - this suggests that the usual Last week, ISS took the to serve their needs.” end check-off [paying union in the civil service, and sourced workers who rules for engagement with a workers and their union to The paper ends omi - dues through wage packets] elsewhere, and positively are members of the GMB trade union will not work.” the High Court to try to nously with “the position if the union protests too engage with unions. at Queen Elizabeth Hos - The paper recommends stop the strike. The GMB “aiming to marginalise PCS regarding further proactive much. HMRC and DWP are pital in Woolwich (South refused to back down and measures targeted at key key to the union, with the London) struck for 48 in the event the company hours on 24-26 Novem - lost, costing itself tens of Sell-out in UCU dispute? ber. thousands of pounds. (The Defend Julie Davies! On the 24th the workers, judge's ruling about work - By Lucy Clement By Gemma Short ers' right to strike may also promise plan is better than who are employed by the employers’ proposals, it Dutch multinational ISS as provide helpful case law After only two weeks of Strikes to defend vic - in the future.) will still leave many mem - cleaners, security, ward action, the marking boy - bers facing a six-figure loss timised Haringey NUT hostesses, caterers, on the It says something that cott in pre-92 universities (National Union of Teach - this giant multinational across their retirement switchboard and as has been put on hold until when compared with what ers) secretary Julie Davies porters, struck alongside company is so determined mid-January. have been suspended as to deny its low-paid work - they would have received directly employed NHS under the final salary headteachers in the bor - staff striking for their na - ersT ah eriys ea.r e obviously The decision to abandon ough agree to pay into fa - the action for talks just as it scheme! With an 87% vote tional pay dispute. scared of the QEH work - for action on the biggest cility time agreements The outsourced GMB ers' example inspiring was beginning to bite has regardless of who is prompted furious criticism turn-out since UCU was members are looking to others and spreading. formed in 2006, the boycott elected secretary. level up to the same terms by branches, unhappy at the clearly had the support of NUT members at the lobby and conditions as directly enormous compromises the Disciplinary charges relat - • Messages of solidarity: members. Its suspension employed NHS workers leadership seems prepared ing to Julie still stand. On nadine.houghton now for no concessions be - — on basic pay rates, to accept to cut a deal. There Monday 24 November over Protesters outside the @gmb.org.uk yond a promise of no pay unsocial, weekend and is already evidence that uni - 100 activists gathered out - council held placards say - Interview with one of the deductions for action taken bank holiday hours rates, versities are taking advan - side Haringey Civic Centre ing: time for Labour values strikers' reps: to date is bizarre. The nego - sick pay and other issues. tage of the suspension to to lobby the council meet - from a Labour council. bit.ly/QEHstrike bring forward exam-setting tiators urgently need to be ing. The council meeting re - Activists in the public deadlines. This will make it calBlerdan toc haeccso suhnot.u ld sup - ceived a deputation led by gallery heckled council speakers who claimed the As Solidarity goes to press we hear that Care UK workers much harder to make action port UCU Left’s call for a Niall O'Connor of Haringey attack on Julie is not po - have voted to accept their pay deal. More details next week. effective in January. special conference to de - NUT who attacked Labour Although the UCU com - bate the tactics to date. council leader Clare Kober litical. in his speech. No 345 26 November 2014 Solidarity 30p/80p 10,000 students march in London for free education On Wednesday 19 Novem - ber, ten thousand students support of free education. marched through central This was the first time NUS London to demand free ed - conference had backed free ucation. education since 2004. Ncafc quickly issued the call for a The political waves from national demonstration and this demonstration are hav - in September Ncafcers on ing a positive impact on the NUS national executive student movement. We hope pushed through a motion to they will have a positive im - support it. pact on the wider class strug - After the motion passed, gle. NUS did virtually nothing to In the last six months, free help build the demonstra - education has been put back tion. Formal support from on the student movement’s NUS did help the organisers agenda. The people who work effectively with a large made this happen were the number of student unions, organisers of the demonstra - buTt wthoa t’ws aelel.ks before the tion – above all the National demo, NUS withdrew its Campaign Against Fees and support on the most spuri - Cuts. ous of pretexts. And yet 19 At NUS conference in November was maybe the April 2014 the Ncafc and oth - biggest student demo in ers on the left defeated the Britain since the upheaval (broadly right-wing Labour) of 2010. leadership to pass policy in Free education: demand, don’t plead!

By Micheál MacEoin summary notes: “higher ed - of the new system have devi - say – which is no surprise ucation could be funded by ated wildly from its stated given the NUS’s recent at - As 10,000 students collective public investment purpose — but makes the tempts to wreck the growing marched for free education through progressive taxa - mistake of assuming that the free education movement on in London on 19 November tion, with an increase on tax government was other than campuses. on a vibrant demonstration of the richest in society.” wholly dishonest in its stated No doubt the NUS is hop - largely organised by the This is good, and is what reasons for deepening the ing that Labour will be National Campaign Against the Ncafc has been arguing. marketisation of higher edu - Fees and Cuts (Ncafc), the elected in May 2015, and that Moreover, some of the fig - cation. Increased marketisa - the movement for free educa - National Union of Students ures and arguments in the tion was never about (NUS) meekly published a tion can be won on the ter - Roadmap could be useful for reducing the deficit, provid - rain of water-cooler chats “Roadmap for Free Educa - activists. ing better value for tax pay - tion”. with higher education minis - However, the Roadmap is ers or “putting students in ters. That too is an illusion. The NUS full-time officers explicitly not about mobilis - the driving seat”, so simply Liam Byrne, the shadow (FTOs) did all they could to ing students on campuses to pointing out that these things minister for universities, sci - scupper the 19 November demand free education. As have not happened is not ence and skills, has so far re - free education demonstra - the introduction makes clear, going to change the govern - mained wedded to the idea tion – flouting the decision of the NUS has “put together a ment’s mind. of a graduate tax, and even the union’s National Execu - roadmap to help our politi - All those arguments were the modest talk of a move to cians and our vice-chancel - designed to cover for the tive as a whole. They have re - £6,000 fees has reportedly lors to make the right government’s real intentions. leased the “roadmap” report been scuppered by Ed Balls. in order to do the bare mini - decisions on higher educa - The homogenisation and As well as simply making mum on their mandate from tion reform.” quantification of education the arguments, the student the last NUS conference. These are the same politi - and the market-driven movement needs to step Since left-wing activists cians and vice-chancellors course closures are not “fail - up its pressure on the won the debate on free edu - who have created and pre - ures” of the government’s Labour Party to adopt free cation at the NUS Conference vailed over the “market ex - policy — they were the point. education, using the run- To continue the fight for free education, join 2014, the full-time officers periment” which the The government will not up to the General Election (FTOs) have had to shift their Roadmap rightly argues has be swayed by polite argu - to organise demonstra - the NCAFC at anticuts.com/membership, and position away from the failed to deliver an improved ment, but only by force and tions and demand guaran - come to the national conference in Blairite policy of a “graduate higher education system. pressure from a re-energised tees from Labour Manchester on 13 December: anticuts.com tax”. The document usefully student movement. On this, candidates. The document’s executive shows how the consequences the Roadmap has nothing to