So& Wloirkdersa’ Lirbeirtty y No 251 29 June 2012 30p/80p www.workersliberty.org For a workers’ government

Demolition Greece’s EU crisis man page 3 fascist threat deepens page 7 page 10 Fight Tory plan to axe benefits MAKE THE RICH

See page 7 PAY Tories want to scrap Housing Benefit for under-25s. If you can’t afford to pay rent, and can’t or won’t live with your parents, then it’s a friend’s floor or the streets. Jobs for all! NEWS What is the Alliance Let in more migrants, not fewer! for Workers’ Liberty? By Richard Swanley and the already-settled Today one class, the working class, lives by selling lose out too. We must its labour power to another, the capitalist class, Ed Miliband had said unite. To do this effectively which owns the means of production. Society that on immigration the we have to challenge the is shaped by the capitalists’ relentless drive to Labour Party needed to racist immigration controls increase their wealth. Capitalism causes make a break with its which systematically crim - poverty, unemployment, the blighting of lives by record in government. inalise migrants, and fight the media and govern - overwork, imperialism, the destruction of the He claims the problem is ment-driven demonisation environment and much else. that New Labour failed to of migrants, refugees, and Against the accumulated wealth and power of the impose sufficient controls. asylum seekers. Labour’s capitalists, the working class has one weapon: solidarity. In fact they imposed too current so-called change of The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty aims to build solidarity many. heart does the exact oppo - through struggle so that the working class can overthrow In 2004, New Labour site. capitalism. We want socialist revolution: collective ownership oversaw 1,098 “successful Unemployment, lack of of industry and services, workers’ control and a democracy operations” (i.e. raids) housing, and the decay of against undocumented mi - much fuller than the present system, with elected public services are caused grant workers, which saw representatives recallable at any time and an end to by the people who created the arrest of over 3,000 Migrant workers are some of the most exploited members of bureaucrats’ and managers’ privileges. the financial crisis — workers, but the prosecu - our class. Don’t demonise, organise! We fight for the labour movement to break with “social bankers, big business and tion of only eight of the partnership” and assert working-class interests militantly the politicians who are bat - employers responsible for seekers, and refugees to has shown a particular and against the bosses. tering the living standards exploiting them. something akin to slaves. ongoing increase in vio - Our priority is to work in the workplaces and trade unions, working-class people have In 2003, only one boss The Labour government lence against eastern Euro - supporting workers’ struggles, producing workplace bulletins, fought for and won. was successfully prose - also joined it with tabloid pean migrant workers. helping organise rank-and-file groups. British working-class cuted, while 1,779 workers hysteria about immigra - At the Young Labour We are also active among students and in many campaigns people cannot fight effec - were arrested and re - tion. Labour leaders fed conference on 23-4 June, tively for their own inter - and alliances. moved from the workplace the far-right’s agenda by both Tom Watson and Ed ests without standing in (and presumably de - dressing up endorsement Balls claimed that solidarity with our broth - We stand for: ported). of “coming-over-here-tak - Labour’s new so-called ers and sisters who come G Independent working-class representation in politics. Even laws which were ing-our-jobs” scapegoating “tough approach” is not here to flee persecution or G A workers’ government, based on and accountable to the motivated as improving as concern for the interests about pandering to racism. build a better life. labour movement. conditions for migrant of white working-class They said it responds to Socialists in the labour G A workers’ charter of trade union rights — to organise, to workers — such as the constituents. people’s concerns about movement must fight for strike, to picket effectively, and to take solidarity action. Gangmasters Licensing Helping whip up at at - cheap migrant labour solidarity between G Taxation of the rich to fund decent public services, homes, Act of 2004 — were used mosphere of racist fear and being used to undercut British-born and migrant education and jobs for all. by employers and the state hatred can have a terrible wages and conditions. Im - workers, against immi - effect on the lives of mi - migration control is a G A workers’ movement that fights all forms of oppression. for further crackdowns gration controls, for de - grants. Crown Prosecution “class issue”. Full equality for women and social provision to free women against undocumented cent homes, jobs, and Service figures for 2010- This is indeed a class from the burden of housework. Free abortion on request. Full workers. public services for all, Labour’s 2004 Asylum 2011 showed that racially issue. According to official and against racism. equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. and religiously motivated figures ( Guardian , 1 April Black and white workers’ unity against racism. and Immigration Act made the meagre housing and hate crimes were at a 2008), immigration gener - G Open borders. • For more on New social support to which record high, with over ally increases living stan - G Global solidarity against global capital — workers Labour’s record on immi - most refugees were enti - 13,000 people appearing dards for the everywhere have more in common with each other than with gration, see tled conditional on their before courts (and that’s already-settled. But if the their capitalist or Stalinist rulers. bit.ly/MXoVdd, performing unpaid “com - just the ones who were bosses can divide already- Democracy at every level of society, from the smallest bit.ly/MyzbKH, G munity service”. caught, arrested, and settled workers from mi - bit.ly/OmrjAp, and workplace or community to global social organisation. In 2003, the Labour gov - charged). Research by the grants, then the migrants bit.ly/MqU6kg G Working-class solidarity in international politics: equal ernment deported 17,040 Institute of Race Relations become super-exploited, rights for all nations, against imperialists and predators big asylum seekers and their and small. dependants. That was a G Maximum left unity in action, and openness in debate. record at the time, and a LRC Youth makes an impact G If you agree with us, please take some copies of Solidarity 23% increase on 2002 fig - to sell — and join us! ures. By a delegate jobs created by the government should in - 020 7394 8923 [email protected] Britain’s current points- clude union membership as mandatory, based immigration system, Young Labour’s annual conference in and Labour should push for a 35 hour 20e Tower Workshops, Riley Road, which allows entry for Newcastle on 23-24 June decided to working week and equalisation of the min - “entrepreneurs” with make its “priority campaign” youth imum wage across age-groups. London, SE1 3DG. £200,000 or more, or em - homelessness. The conference’s guest speaker Ed Balls ployees with high qualifi - was sharply questioned about pandering It resolved that Labour should commit cations and “future to racist sentiments in his statements about to building at least one million new coun - expected earnings”, but immigration. cil houses, to ease the waiting list of five GET SOLIDARITY excludes ordinary work - Much of this was won by the work of million in England and Wales alone, and ers, was introduced not by Labour Representation Committee (LRC) the wealth of the nationalised banks the Tories, but by Labour Youth, which produced bulletins, organ - should be used to fund socially useful EVERY WEEK! in 2008. ised fringe meetings, and spoke success - Labour’s record in gov - projects such this. fulAlypoentimtioannygalerfnt-ewreindgjumsottoiovnesr. 100 sig - Special offers ernment is not one of After a close debate, it also resolved that natures, calling for next year’s confer - being a “soft touch”. It is Labour should abolish the “right to buy” Trial sub, 6 issues £5 ence to be more democratically G  one of ratcheting up immi - council housing. organised and allow clearer debate, and gration controls, increasing It agreed on repealing the anti-trade G 22 issues (six months). £18 waged  £9 unwaged  for more guarantees of conference pol - deportations, and reducing union laws, imposing a moratorium on icy getting implemented/ G 44 issues (year). £35 waged £17 unwaged the legal status of many sackings, encouraging young workers to   join trade unions. All new public works migrant workers, asylum • www.lrcyouth.org.uk G European rate: 28 euros (22 issues)  or 50 euros (44 issues) 

Tick as appropriate above and send your money to: 20e Tower Workshops, Riley Road, London, SE1 3DG Shaking hands with the “Brits” Cheques (£) to “AWL”. Or make £ and euro payments at workersliberty.org/sub. By Liam McNulty tion for the meeting speaks other words, let the Queen willingness to content itself volumes about the prob - speak for the unionists and with managing the antago - Former Provisional IRA lems of Northern Ireland’s Sinn Féin will continue to nisms between what are Name ...... leader Martin McGuin - communal carve-up of a represent the nationalist presumed to be two im - ness has shaken hands political system. community. mutable and separate (but Address ...... with Queen Elizabeth II . Shaking hands with the Throughout the Troubles, now equal?) communal Yes really. Queen is, said McGuinness, Sinn Féin protested that its blocs suggests there was “about me representing my ideology was about univer - much truth to our analysis...... After a lifetime of fight - But the monarchy is party, wishing to show the sal rights such as national ing for “Brits out”, still an affront to democ - unionist people in the self-determination and not, McGuinness welcomed the racy and equality, no ...... north that we are prepared as Workers’ Liberty has head of the British State at matter what role it is said to respect what they be - said, a Catholic-chauvinist a Diamond Jubilee do in to be playing in the so- I enclose £ ...... lieve in, albeit that we are sectarian ideology. Belfast on 27 June. called “peace process”. still Irish republicans.” In Sinn Féin’s post-conflict McGuinness’s justifica - 2 SOLIDARITY NEWS Gove’s demolition plan for schools

By Pat Yarker touted as better-able to dif - primary pupils in main - ferentiate among the high - tained schools, notably in As an ex-journalist, Tory est-attaining pupils. A London. education minister system which had only two Government cuts forced Michael Gove knows how tiers might well be seen as three thousand school to use the press to fur - an advance on what pupils breakfast clubs to shut in ther his own agenda. currently endure. 2011 and in October next Gove’s plans rehearse yet year welfare reforms will A timely leak from his again a ruling-class obses - ensure 350,000 children lose department to the Daily sion with narrowly-defined their entitlement to free Mail (20 June) flagged up “academic standards” and school meals. This at a time Gove’s intention to replace its enduring neglect of the when many children from GCSE exams taken by most needs of a sizeable minority low income families are students at 16 (and brought constructed by the system going hungry. in by the Tories thirty years as “non-academic” or “less Such changes do not ago) with a system based able”. worry “free schools”. on the previous model: O- Gove’s plans drew fire These take on average half Levels and CSEs. from some within Tory the number of pupils enti - There was much excite - ranks. Kenneth (now Lord) tled to such provision com - ment among Tories who Baker, who as Thatcher’s pared with the average in rushed to equate O-Levels Education Secretary over - local maintained schools. with “academic rigour” be - saw the introduction of Clegg and Gove visit Durand Academy in south London. The school spent nearly £200,000 on By introducing city acad - cause the exam was de - GCSEs, warned his succes - hiring a PR firm! emies in place of “bog-stan - signed to fail four out of sor against “resurrecting a dard comps”, New Labour five members of the school failure”. But the Tory right set in train the demolition population. came to office there were a Twigg as for Gove, a com - to pupils which fails to are, as the ambitious Gove of England’s system of Some commentators dozen or more, each with prehensive education sys - meet the nutritional-stan - must have calculated, ec - maintained schools. Gove lamented the damage its own legal status and tem in which children of all dards legally required of static. has dramatically quickened caused by the return to a unique admissions proce - backgrounds are educated maintained schools. the tempo and broadened “two-tier system”, noting dures, including private together from 3 to 19, with - The extent to which acad - DENY the scope of the destruc - that CSEs, which many schools, city technology col - out segregation by so-called emies can continue to do They deny that all chil - tion. teachers struggled for years dren are educable and leges, grammar schools, “ability”, in schools demo - what they like over admis - to establish, were never re - the state should ensure foundation schools, vari - cratically accountable at sions will soon be tested in FAITH garded as on a par with O- high-quality education for eties of special and of spe - local and national level, court when parents of a Evangelical Christians, Levels. all. cialist school, and learning free and fully-funded, does child with cerebral palsy other faith groups, and Yet the current version of support centres. not register, even as an (and an A* in Maths at private schools, have GCSE, departing from its Their ideal is a privately- New Labour added city ideal. GCSE) confront those who been quick to take ad - original conception, is al - funded model catering for a academies to the mix, en - Norms of bourgeois- run Mossbourne Academy, vantage. ready a two-tier system privileged caste (the public abling Gove to claim his democratic accountability, which has refused the child under a single designation. school system) with a academy-and-”free-school” the flip-side of a commit - a place. Other similar legal Faith groups have set up Students are divided into highly-selective and hierar - programme is merely an ment to public service, are challenges are in the more academies than any those deemed capable of chised state system, differ - extension of pre-existing another target for Gove’s pipeline. other kind of provider. sitting Higher Tier papers entially-funded, as a policy. wrecking-ball. LAW Public money goes to sub - fall-back. Hence their fond - Shadow Education Secre - Once a school becomes sidise pupils in formerly and so given the chance of Legislation rushed ness for grammar-schools tary Stephen Twigg has an academy and is re - fee-paying schools to at - securing top grades, and through Parliament by and silence about second - drifted with the current. moved from local authority tend the very same institu - those who can secure at Gove means academies ary-moderns, and their de - He is not opposed to the oversight and some vestige tions now re-branded “free best a grade C via the are not routinely subject light in Gove’s accelerated “free school” idea. In re - of local democratic ac - schools”. Free indeed. Foundation Tier route. to educational statute ex - demolition of what remains sponse to Gove’s back-to- countability, parents have Gove’s vandalism has It has become common cept as laid down in their of a national system of edu - the-future exam-plans he no meaningful say in what made a breach for even for graded students funding-agreement with cation, locally adminis - has only spoken about a the school does, and no se - more disturbing interlop - awarded less than a C to be the Education Secretary. told they have “failed”their tered. “modernised” system, cure way to assert any ers. In keeping with the GCSE. The 1944 Education Act which for him means the rights. Instead, tellingly, they are Tory view of who is, and is Additionally, alternative established three types of Blairite agenda of educa - Hence the great majority governed by corporate and not, educable, the DfE re - qualifications such as the maintained secondary tion for employability and of academies get away, for charity law. cently put up £1 million in iGCSE or the IB have been schools. When New Labour entrepreneurship. For example, with selling food At a time when the Coali - research-funding to investi - tion has been slashing pub - gate “how a military ethos lic spending, Gove has been could be used to support able to lavish vast sums on pupils who are either disen - academies and the small gaged with education or at Ofsted inspectors should get a “fail” number of “free schools”. risk of becoming disengaged.” The DfE estimates that This insidious proposal By Dave Harris ing overly-bureaucratic between 2011 and 2013 it takes forward ideas worked workload. Ofsted makes will spend an extra £1 bil - on by Phillip Blond of the According to the BBC (26 matters worse. lion on these schools on top think-tank, ResPublica, June) a number of Of - Ofsted inspections are of their normal funding. who bought us “the Big So - sted inspectors have no an officious and pointless Gove has already spent ciety” nostrum. Blond calls teaching experience waste of learning time. £337 million funding such on the government to ad - whatsoever. Since few of them look at schools — a big chunk of it dress what he terms “poor more than fifteen minutes waste. discipline and educational Other reports suggested of an hour-long lesson, The DfE gave £26 million failure” in some schools that at least two inspectors they don’t even evaluate a in 2010/11 to academies through the inculcation of a were former head teachers representative sampling of and “free schools” to pay “military ethos”. of schools failing against educational standards. for 4700 sixth form students Branches of the military Ofsted criteria who had The threat of an inspec - who never enrolled. An could sponsor academies, left their posts! tion is used as an excuse academy in Stockwell spent whose graduates could This will come as no sur - for developing a school ence, past work history or to expect them to grate - almost £200,000 to pay for a then join the armed forces prise to many teachers. management agenda not personal context. All based fully accept the results of PR firm. An academy CEO toGwoovrek’. s is a purposeful Gove has used Ofsted as in the interests of staff,, on a few minutes and a an inspection they neither in Lincolnshire is under po - destruction. He aims to a threat to force through such as extra meetings and brief browse through exer - wanted nor needed, lice investigation following rapidly to clear the decks his unwanted academies compulsory “training proj - cise books. staffed by those who, it misuse of the school’s and establish conditions — as a kind of Damoclet - ects” which only add to es - To have confirmed that now appears, are least ca - credit-card for apparent in which schools can be ian sword hanging over calating stress levels. Ofsted are recruiting — pable of understanding personal gain to the tune of run for profit. He is deter - the heads of teachers Worse yet, under new via, please note, private that which they inspected. tens of thousands of minedly in earnest. It is all everywhere. If the school A clear message needs DfES guidelines (which consultation companies — pounds. an under reported and fails it will have to become to be sent to the teach - many schools are unthink - individuals with little or Gove’s department has under-challenged scan - an Academy. ing unions; non-compli - ingly and uncritically ap - no experience of the reali - earmarked half its school dal. Those who oppose Classroom teachers face ance with Ofsted should plying), a single negative ties of the role is an insult. building budget (some £1.6 the project, and princi - constant erosion of their be one of our priorities Ofsted observation could It is an insult to the profes - billion) for academy and pally the unions, must conditions of employment as a vital part of the next trigger capability proceed - sional integrity and stan - “free school” projects at a fight him with no less re - and pension rights com - round of non-strike ac - ings against a member of dards of school staff. An time when there is an acute solve. bined with an ever increas - tion. staff, regardless of experi - insult to their intelligence shortage of classrooms for

SOLIDARITY 3 INTERNATIONAL The debate on austerity is shifting

Katy Clark, Labour MP for North Ayrshire and Arran, spoke to Solidarity about the Greek election and the future of the left Brotherhood supporters celebrate. What deal have they struck with the army? in Europe. Syriza did really well. People are disappointed they didn’t win, but con - Egypt: the army and the sidering where they were coming from and the in - ternational pressure, they did astonishingly Muslim Brothers manoeuvre well. I think what happened in France was also impor - Syriza didn’t win, but their fight has shifted politics in Europe By Mark Osborn The announcement of Mursi’s victory tant and the debate seems to have come after a deal between throughout Europe is be - An old Labour council trick is to an - the Freedom and Justice Party, the Brother - ginning to shift. confidence in doing so. pect that is an issue that is nounce £30 million in cuts and then, a hood’s political arm, and the SCAF. Under Those arguing against Any coalition will not be dividing people in Greece little later, declare they’ve managed to it, the military will control internal security, austerity are getting very stable; it is far from a and Britain. find a bit of money to reduce the cuts to defence and foreign policy, leaving domes - stronger;. It doesn’t mean convincing win for ND John McDonnell’s cam - a mere £19 million. Everyone breathes a tic matters largely in Mr Mursi’s hands. we are winning, and it and there could be more paign had a good slogan sigh of relief; things aren’t as bad as The democrats, the feminists, the labour isn’t automatic that we will elections in the future. — “Another World is Pos - were expected. movement, liberals and the youth who be successful in getting the Even the parties in sible.” That wasn’t a took to the streets and actually overthrew Of course Meals on Wheels, Library and policies we need, but it is a favour of the deal are now British slogan. Mubarak dictatorship — well, they are Children’s Services are still devastated. Ac - shift in the right direction. arguing for a renegotiation I remember being in caught between the state and the Islamists. tivists who’ve seen it before suspect that For most people the eco - so Syriza have been suc - Spain during the begin - The democrats may well become the vic - £19 million was always the intended, real, nomic crisis started in cessful in that sense. ning of the Iraq war. You tims of both — unless the dangers are figure. 2008, and it’s fair to say the I think it’s important would see rainbow flags recognised and fought against. Perhaps the Egyptian military are play - Neither the military, nor the Islamists, left has not been successful that we build alliances everywhere with that slo - ing a version of the same game. but liberty and workers’ rights! in providing leadership throughout the left in Eu - gan. There is a power in First, on 14 June, the Supreme Court and articulating the argu - rope. We have not been trying to use some of the ruled that the Islamist-dominated parlia - ments about how we very strong with that in same language and in try - ment, elected last year, must be dissolved. should respond. the past. We have huge ing to find ways in joining The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces It is not any individual’s and significant left tradi - up the labour movement (SCAF) — the real rulers in Egypt — then “Welcome to Gaza” fault, it’s a collective prob - tions in Europe and, in different countries. allowed themselves the right to legislate, lem, and we could discuss maybe because of lan - I don’t mean we should and to select the body producing a new In the run-up to Egypt’s presidential at great length why, but guage and other reasons, change our traditions but constitution. election results being announced, the those who have argued for these traditions have not sharing some of the same For a while it seemed that the Muslim Gaza Youth Break Out group (Gazan massive cuts in public been shared. narrative can be very pow - spending and welfare have Brothers’ candidate Mohammed Mursi activists who published a radical mani - Q: How should the left erful. We should not let the been very successful in would then be denied the presidential elec - festo for change denouncing Israel, react to the divide being issue of the EU divide us. winning the public argu - toral victory that they were convinced he Hamas, and Fatah) tweeted: “Shafiq posed between those in When you analyse politi - ment. That is beginning to had won. The Brothers’ supporters rallied losing is good but Mursi winning is the stable countries hav - cally and economically shift and I think Syriza are in Tahrir Square and were jubilant when bad. Dear Egypt: welcome to Gaza.” ing to ‘bail out’ those what is going on in Eu - a very important part of the vote was announced last Sunday. GYBO also tweeted that “most Gazans” whose economies are rope, your analysis of the the shift in the debate. Mursi’s supporters celebrated his victory, believed a win for the Brotherhood failing? EU is not that central. rather than rioting. would strengthen Hamas and therefore I think it is essential that It is relevant in the sense But the military handed the presidency galvanise their repressive rule in Gaza. Syriza are an effective op - of institutions. But this to Mursi only after taking much of the See GYBO’s Twitter page at position, that they oppose WHOSE EUROPE? isn’t about the institutions. power for themselves. twitter.com/gazaybo in such a way that they In Westminster we talk It is about the politics of have credibility, and at the about “the narrative”. what is going on — a next elections in Greece The left and labour bankers’ Europe vs a peo - they do well enough to movement throughout ple’s Europe. We need to Syria: sectarian lines deepen form a Government. Europe should have a find a way of cutting No one is suggesting common narrative. through the divide and there are easy solutions to Essentially this debate tackling it. what needs to be done. But The argument over By Dan Katz cers have been in southern leaders to go, but are centres on whether you the extreme austerity and membership of the euro in Turkey for several weeks, frightened about what will have a bankers’ Europe or massive cuts in public Greece was obviously a di - The most recent Syria in part to help keep replace them and alarmed a people’s Europe. That spending in Greece is un - viding line, and looking at peace plan, brokered by weapons out of the hands about the activities of Is - isn’t down to whether or acceptable. Syriza are part the British left it has the Kofi Annan for the UN of fighters allied with al- lamists. not you have a EU or how of that alternative, and I potential to be the same. and Arab states, has Qaeda.” The US is attempt - According to the Econo - that would be organised, pay tribute to the cam - In the last few months failed. The UN monitoring ing to vet the groups that mist the regime has two big but how we operate as paigning they have been the public debate and the operations were sus - receive Saudi guns. current fears. First that countries and as a society. doing to convince people. language amongst the elite pended in mid-June. The US is also worried fighting in the capital, The struggle of the peoples It has clearly appealed to a has shifted. That is signifi - that shoulder-fired anti-air - Damascus, is getting out of of Europe is all our strug - One consequence of its lot of people especially cant and something that craft missiles, known as control. There are now reg - gle, and that should be the failure is that the Saudis young people. we need to build upon. MANPADS, could find ular battles in the city cen - way that we look at it. and Qatar are beginning to The fact that the [Greek The shift of language has their way into the hands of tre, and the state has In terms of the Greek sit - send significant amounts of election] has been on come from Europe, and Islamists fighting in Syria. responded by violent at - uation, the anti-austerity money and weapons to the everybody’s TV screens not from anything that the Reuters reports that, “hun - tacks on opposition strong - left was not united. Syriza armed Syrian opposition, has meant that now we are UK labour movement has dreds, if not thousands, of holds in the satellite areas was successful in bringing the Free Syrian Army. discussing austerity and done. MANPADS were looted of Douma, Qudsaya and together a lot of the More sophisticated debating an alternative. I It is a debate we need to from arsenals accumulated Harasta. strands of the left, but not weapons are being chan - Second, that it might also think it has given the continue to engage with. by late Libyan leader all. If the Communist Party nelled through Turkey and lose the support of Rus - Labour Party leadership a This includes any attempt Muammar Gaddafi, and tradition in Greece had the fighting in northern sia. Obama met Putin on bit more confidence. I’m to get people together to are floating on the Middle come on board then they Syria is intensifying. The 18 June and asked him to not exaggerating this shift, have this discussion on Eu - East black market.” may have been successful. Saudis hope by paying the force Assad’s hand.Also but there has been a slight ropean wide level. Hillary Clinton said the I don’t want to attack the People talk about revo - fighters they will buy con - Russian ships recently shift in emphasis and I US government was sup - left, but yet again we pay lutionary optimism. Even trol and encourage dissi - sent to their naval base in think those who are argu - plying communications for the price for disunity. in the most difficult of dents in the army to defect. Tartus, on the Syrian ing there needs to be an al - equipment, not weapons, We need to unite beyond times you have to look at On 21 June the New York coast, are preparing for ternative to austerity in to the opposition. The issues of the EU and our the positives. Times reported “CIA offi - evacuations. Britain have a bit more wants Syria’s murdering attitude to the euro. I sus - 4 SOLIDARITY INTERNATIONAL Greece: the rise of the Golden Dawn fascists

By Theodora Polenta tection) declared that ille - have a duty to counter-in - gal immigrants were re - form the Greek public and These are the election re - sponsible for most crimes expose Golden Dawn. sults for the neo-Nazi and that law and order was 4. In every neighbour - movement Golden Dawn, the major concern of the hood the trade unions, in Greece. Greek people.. Health min - alongside the neighbour - ister Loverdos, also Pasok, hood committees, should • National Elections said that illegal immigrants form popular defence 2009: 0.29% (19,636 votes) should be put in separate squads and solidarity • European Elections units in the hospitals and squads aiming at solving 2009: 0.46% ( 23,564 votes) all immigrants from certain the social problems via soli - • Athens Elections 2010: countries should be put in darity and cooperation, the 5.29% (10,222 votes) quarantine. establishment of a sense of • National Elections May Athens mayor Giorgos safety within the neigh - 2012: 6.97% (441,018 votes) Kaminis started a crusade bourhoods, and the self-de - • National Elections June to “reinvigorate and recon - fence against the fascist 2012: 6.92% (425,980 votes) struct” the centre of Athens thugs. The general shift of the — police storming immi - 5. To link the call for the Greek people to the left grant areas with the aim of formation of workers’ de - was reaffirmed in the June deporting as many as pos - fence squads with work - 2012 elections, where sible. Antonis Samaras em - place organisations, mass Syriza scored almost 27% phasised ND’s strikes, occupations, demo - and the combined electoral commitment to act against cratic organisation of percentage of the left “illegal immigrants”. “The neighbourhood commit - reached almost 40%. were partly a product of leased on YouTube of Dawn MP Ilias Kasidiaris Greek toddlers and kids tees, in short, the a mass But that was not all. The that work in neighbour - scooter battalions of threw water at a Syriza should be given priority in movement that aims for the “Independent Greeks” hoods of Athens. However, Golden Dawn approaching woman MP and slapped a kindergartens over the chil - most extensive democracy. have established them - many Golden Dawn voters isolated immigrants, stab - KKE woman MP. Protest dren of immigrants in selves as a force of the anti- live in remote rural areas of bing them or racially abus - demonstrations were or - kindergartens”, he said. SAVIOURS memorandum right, Greece where there are no ing them. Golden Dawn ganised on 8 June; but Although the main - The committees should gaining over 10% in the “foreigners”. has expanded its targets there was no central call stream political world con - avoid links with groups of May election and stabiliz - After the May election, from the “foreigners and from Syriza or KKE to par - demned the public display so-called anti-authoritari - ing at 7.5% in June elec - the stance of both Synaspis - dark skinned” to white ticipate, though members of violence in the TV attack ans who, when referring tions. Counterposed to the mos (the main component Greek homosexuals; it has from both parties did come. by a Golden Dawn repre - to anti-fascist commit - formation of a left pole in of Syriza) and KKE could distributed leaflets describ - When Golden Dawn ex - sentative on women from tees, understand small the Greek society is the for - be summed up as follows: ing lesbians and gays as a ploited the assassination of Syriza and KKE, Samaras groups that will act as mation of an ultra-right People voted for Golden “foreign”, “abnormal” part a young Greek by an immi - said that the violence of the saviours of the working pole. Dawn to express their of Greek society. grant in Patras, mobilising Golden Dawn was only the class and immigrants by To the left pole belong anger against the memo - Nazi thugs from Athens to counterpart of the “vio - chasing the fascists. the majority of the working HOSPITALS randum and the political attack an abandoned fac - lence of the Left”. Thanos class and the youth. To the One Golden Dawn 6. Systematic and persist - establishment; but the vote tory where refugees were Plevris, a ND and ex-Laos right pole belong some cap - spokesman called on ent campaigns, around the did not express an accept - living, neither Syriza nor MP, declared that Antarsya italists and others from the people to treat immi - schools, in the squares, ance and endorsement of KKE in Patras made any is the equivalent of the higher layers of the Greek grants in the same way door to door, etc., com - racist and fascist politics. initiative. Golden Dawn on the left. society. It is common that the citizens’ move - bined with the creation of That assessment was Since May KKE [the Pasok leader Evangelos knowledge that ND [Greek ment in Keratea got rid of defence squads and with partly refuted by 17 June. diehard-Stalinist Greek Venizelos declared: “The equivalent of the Tories] the rubbish dumped in the basic motto “Fascists Between May and June Communist Party] has violence, the tension, the employ Golden Dawn their area. out of our neighbourhoods, Golden Dawn’s openly begun to acknowledge the jeering, the counter demon - members in its security our schools, our parlia - Nazi character was amply A Golden Dawn candi - threat from Golden Dawn. strations were not brought team. The bulk of the ultra- ment”. exposed. Golden Dawn date pledged to create But KKE’s polemic against into civilian life by [lead - right electorate are scared 7. The anti-fascist com - people attacked students armed battalions to kick Golden Dawn is mostly re - ers] of Golden Dawn. They petty bourgeois, well-off mittees must at the same and ordinary people who African and Asian immi - stricted to the pages of its came from the left...” pensioners, and farmers do not look like their stan - paper Rizospastis, and all time to address social prob - grants out of the hospitals lems created by the crisis who want to hang on to dard of the Aryan race; or - that are hospitalized for the articles in Rizospastis COMMITTEES their small properties and ganised a massive armed focus on the historical role In each city and neigh - and poverty and by the free, as opposed to the ghettoising and dumping their euro bank deposits. attack on refugees in Patra Greek patients that have to of Nazism during World bourhood, local people The hard core of Golden exploiting the murder of a War Two and the Greek re - and immigrants must of all immigrants in the pay. He pledged to organ - most deprived areas. They Dawn are young people Greek young man by an ise groups of people to en - sistance, led by members of take the initiative to es - who are permanently un - immigrant. the Communist Party. tablish anti-fascist com - must fight for decent ac - sure that the public commodation, food, educa - employed, from what is Golden Dawn activists kindergartens and nurs - The latest statement by mittees. A powerful termed the lumpenprole - broke into the political of - Syriza leader Alexis anti-fascist front is a ne - tion, etc., for all economic eries are free from “dark and political refugees and tariat. fices of SEK [Greek group skinned” babies and tod - Tsipras, calling on all par - cessity in order to defend Golden Dawn has built linked to the SWP in liamentary parties to deal our struggles to come in for all locals. dlers. 8. Fight for a program of some base in deprived, Britain]. They sent death In June, Golden Dawn with the threat to parlia - defence of our wages, ghettoised and margin - threats to veteran leftist mentary democracy posed jobs, pensions. transitional demands based got its 7% not despite the upon workers’ self-man - alised neighbourhoods and Manolis Glezos, and threat - fact that it was exposed as by Golden Dawn, exposes ghost cities, where ened councillors from the a lack of understanding of The main duties of the agement and control and a Nazi gang, but because of revolutionary left should the social planning of the refugees, immigrants, and left coalition Antarsya and its provocative behaviour. fascism and the way to marginalised sections of prominent leaders of the confront it. Golden Dawn be the following: economy to meet the needs One third of Golden 1. To take the initiative in of the people and not for the working class have anti-racist anti-fascist Dawn’s May voters in power would dissolve been left to rot. Golden movement. parliament and all the rem - building united fronts able the profits of a handful of switched, but they were re - to smash the developing capitalist parasites. Dawn’s electoral results Videos have been re - placed by racist and possi - nants of parliamentary democracy, but the bour - fascist movement ideologi - 9. The left must give an bly fascist voters from the cally, politically, and physi - internationalist response to older-established far-right geois parliamentary bour - International stories on our website geois parties of Pasok and cally, in the streets. the crisis. As long as Greece movement Laos, whose 2. To build anti-fascist remains under the dictator - percentage plummeted ND do not want to and Support jailed Iranian activists cannot lead the fight committees in every town ship of the Troika and big from 2.9% in May to 1.5% and every neighbourhood capital, racism will develop in June. In June as in May, against fascism and racism. The last act of the Pa - that embrace political or - and fascism will be “avail - On 15 June about 60 Iranian labour activists were over 50% of the police force ganisations, social organi - able on request”. Fight beaten and arrested during a raid on a house in Taraj by voted for Golden Dawn. pademos coalition govern - ment was to pass a law for sations and institutions, alongside the European agents of Iran’s Intelligence Ministry. Nine are still in During the last two cultural and sports associa - working class for the over - detention. This is the latest of a series of attempts by years, with some excep - the construction of 31 con - centration camps for “ille - tions, refugee and immi - throw of the capitalism and the regime to crack down on independent workers’ tions on the revolutionary grant organisations and the establishment of the organisations. left and the various immi - gal” immigrants. This was the mark of a collectives, and particularly United Socialist States of Model protest letter and more information at: grant and refugee organisa - trade unions. Europe. www.workers-iran.org tions, the left has done little government that did not Due to the change in hesitate to form a coalition 3. Rank and file trade the left political land - More: tinyurl.com/iransupport about forming a front to union activists should link confront the emerging fas - with the openly racist Laos scape, a particular re - Turkish aviation workers under attack party of Georgios anti-fascist and anti-racist sponsibility lies on Syriza cist-racist threat in the actions their industrial streets, in the neighbour - Karatzaferis and put in the to initiate a united front cabinet the fascist MPs struggle. Particular empha - and mobilise its members The Turkish government has banned strikes by hood, in the workplaces, sis should be placed upon aviation workers — but the workers are fighting back. and in every section of the Boridis and Georgiadis. to fight against the threat Pasok cabinet minister the trade-union journalists of Golden Dawn. tinyurl.com/turkeystrikeban Greek society. and media workers, who On 7 June, on TV, Golden Xrisochoidis (citizen pro - SOLIDARITY 5 REGULARS Back to that first International?

and the textile, leather and garment workers. The first day of ish miners. the congress was taken up by the business of dissolving But there was none of the sharp ideological edge one used those three global unions. to find in some of the global union federations. The former What followed was a bit reminiscent of the First Interna - leader of the International Metalworkers Federation, Her - tional, but not in a good way. man Rebhan, was a staunch anti-Stalinist, having battled The Latin American delegates noisily walked out, furious against the American Communist Party in his days working Eric Lee at their reduction in representation on IndustriALL’s Execu - side by side with Walter Reuther in the United Auto Work - tive. As they pointed out, in one of the key global union fed - ers. So was the former leader of the chemical workers, A century and a half ago, workers’ leaders from a num - erations that had just dissolved itself (the metal workers), Charles “Chip” Levinson. Levinson was a pioneering advo - ber of European countries met in St. Martin’s Hall in Latin America had 15% of the seats. That was reduced to cate of global trade unionism, and also an iconoclast. His London under a banner proclaiming “All men are broth - 10%. They felt they were being cut out and replaced by pow - book, Vodka-Cola , published in the late 1970s, made the ar - ers.” The organisation they founded has come to be erful and rich northern European unions including Germany gument that Stalinist states had become junior partners in a known as the First International. and the Nordic countries. As one them put it in a speech to globalized capitalist world. Both Rebhan and Levinson came Last week at the giant Bella Center in Copenhagen, a much congress, “one dollar one vote” was “a bourgeois form of out of the North American unions during the time of the cold larger conference representing many more workers was democracy”. They wanted the leadership of the organisation war, and had politics that we might recognize today as being held. The organisation it formed was called IndustriALL to reflect the size of the working class, not how rich it was. not far removed from the third camp politics of Max Shacht - Global Union. FEMALE man’s organisation. If I seem to be comparing the two events, it’s not to wrap The politics of their successors is somewhat more mud - They were not the only ones to feel under-represented. dled. At the opening congress of IndustriALL, congratula - IndustriALL in the glory of that legendary First Interna - The report from the Credentials Committee noted in tional. It’s because the parallels where they exist are not flat - tory videos were shown featuring the exiled leader of the passing that about 22% of the congress delegates were tering. Mexican mine workers, Napoleon Gomez, and the Aus - The First International was Eurocentric, male-dominated female. Only one of the eight elected officers was a tralian Labor prime minister, Julia Gillard. That made sense. and paralysed by in-fighting. While some of its leaders such woman. But videos were also shown featuring Noam Chomsky as Marx and Engels had a clear view of the direction the (whose connection to the trade union movement is tenuous And in creating the Executive, there was little effort to en - at best) and then one featuring a vice president of Nike. workers’ movement must follow, others were — to put it sure equal participation by women, who were allocated, at mildly — cranks. The First International was not a Marxist The last of these reflected a view common among the pow - best, about 30% of the seats. erful European unions, which is that some kind of “social organisation in spite of Marx’s participation in it. It was not This contrasts sharply with the practice at other global even social democratic, as many of its members were anar - partnership” needs to be reached with companies like Nike, union federations. For example, the food workers (IUF) re - which have very poor records of respecting workers’ rights chists. And it lasted for little more than a decade. It wasn’t quired delegations to its recent congress to be at least 40% until the formation of the Second International in 1889 that or recognising unions. This view is probably not shared by female. Delegations that didn’t meet that requirement lost the Spanish miners who face daily confrontations with one could speak of a global organisation of workers united votes. When a male European delegate rose to challenge this, behind socialist ideas. armed police. the IUF general secretary basically said, “tough.” It would be a great thing if IndustriALL succeeds. The IndustriALL was meant to be the biggest and most pow - The Copenhagen launch of IndustriALL was supposed to woBruldt wdohesnnIetehdinlkaragbeo, suttrothnegrgelloabtiavleuanbiosnenfecdeeoraftwioonms. en, erful of the global union federations, which are unions of be a celebration, so there was little in terms of politics. A ten the domination by established and powerful European unions around the world organised by sector or profession. point action plan was adopted committing the federation to unions, the ideological muddle — I am unfortunately re - It’s a merger of three existing federations, some of which global organizing, democracy and so on. Resolutions were minded of the the First International, which never did live have histories going back more than a century. These were passed against precarious work and for democracy in Fiji. up to its promise. the metal workers; the chemical, energy and mine workers; An online campaign was launched to support striking Span - Marxism? Or catch-the-mood opportunism?

And all in the space of just twelve months! Socialists of the Marxist tradition generally favour larger The ISG’s explanation for this state of affairs? “The de - political units, reducing to a minimum the barriers between cline of the trade unions and the decline of the Labour Party people embodied in state frontiers, and the unification of are linked.” the working class over wider areas to fight for common con - Scotland But this does not square with reality. One example. in the ditions. By Dale Street Scottish referendum, the driving force in the unions for The exception to this general principle is where the cre - “devo max” and a third question is Unite, a Labour Party ation of a larger political unit involves the domination of “We believe that the Marxist tradition is essential for affiliate. But if the unions were under “Labour control”, then one (or more) nation(s) by another. But Scotland does not anyone who believes we need radical social change and they too would oppose devo max, as Labour does. constitute an oppressed nation. And the ISG does not pre - will attempt to develop Marxist theory.” One of the many peculiarities of the political universe in - tend that it is: habited by the ISG is that everything (apart from itself) is “It is a long time since I met anyone foolish enough to be - This was the ringing declaration issued by the 39 Scot - either dead or about to expire. The left in Scotland included. lieve that the Scots, like the Irish or the Palestinians or the land-based members of the Socialist Workers Party in April “The collapse of [the SSP] project flattened the left like a Kurds, are an oppressed people. Left nationalism of this sort of last year when they quit their organisation and formed great course of chemotherapy — killing new and old alike, is a chimera dreamed up to motivate the Trotskyist sects.” the International Socialist Group (Scotland). and leaving the scene barren and confused.” That Britain is a ‘bad’ state with a ‘bad’ history (genocide!) The ISG’s pretensions to uphold the Marxist tradition suf - (But the SSP project collapsed when Sheridan led a futile that still does ‘bad’ things and does not even have a culture but utterly destructive split from it. ISG members, at that fered an immediate loss of credibility if the lack of princi - is not decisive. Why, after all, would any socialist expect a ple, logic and consistency they have subsequently displayed time part of the SWP, walked out with him. When the ISG capitalist state to be anything but that? Would an independ - is anything to go by. subsequently walked out of the SWP in 2011, they immedi - ent bourgeois Scotland be not ‘bad’? Most recently the ISG has decided Independence for Scot - ately allied themselves with ... Sheridan’s “Solidarity”!) Nor is there anything Marxist, or even logical, about the land is the key to opening up the political universe. An ar - ticle on the ISG website (May 2012) informs its readers: “The WASTE argument that independence for Scotland would end the SNP leadership’s attachment to independence is of the ro - In this wasteland of political and state corpses, salva - Labour-unions link. mantic obscure variety.” tion will come in the form of ... Scottish independence! The projected 2014 referendum is about the relationship Yet just three months earlier (February 2012) they were which five million people living in Scotland choose to have There is “a lot to hate about Britain.” There can be no com - with the rest of Britain. They have the right to decide that re - saying: promise with “its (Britain’s) ‘culture’ (which is barren) and “Leading figures in the nationalist hierarchy are visceral lationship. its history (which is genocide).” Scottish independence The idea that a decisive argument in favour of independ - in their hatred for ‘cultural sub-nationalism’. Their national “poses the greatest existential threat to British imperialism ence is that it (supposedly) presents a chance to break vision is resolutely business-like.” since decolonisation.” union-Labour links is therefore nothing short of nonsense, And then there is the ISG’s analysis of the British workers’ “By far the most convincing — and ultimately conclusive made even worse by the ISG’s weird conceptualisation of movement, past and present. — argument for a yes vote,” explained the ISG in July 2011, the relationship between the unions and the Labour Party. A website article in April sounded the alarm about “the “is that it will break up the British state. Minor scrutiny will influence of two toxic British diseases — Fabian moralism, reveal that the history of Britain is written in blood rather The way the ISG advocates independence for Scotland on and syndicalism .... which says that the only ‘working-class than ink.” the basis of the quack "anti-imperialism" (strike a blow politics’ worth thinking about is rank-and-file factory com - And, “On this basis, any excuse (emphasis added) to break against British imperialism by breaking up Britain!) is in fact mittees.” the British state should be welcomed by the left.” the hallmark of the SWP over the last decade. To describe “Fabian moralism” as a “toxic British disease” Devo max is rejected because “the Britishness we will re - And its sectarian approach to the Labour Party is a contin - is not controversial. But the description of syndicalism as a tain will be the ugliest and most decrepit elements of the uation of the SWP’s own long-standing sectarianism. “toxic British disease” is something else entirely. There was state: ... unconditional subordination to American foreign The ISG also continues the SWP’s practice of raising slo - nothing “syndicalist” about the decision of British trade policy, including support for Israeli ethnic cleansing.” gans to "catch the mood" rather than on the basis of any unions to create the Labour Party! Independence will also cut through the Gordian knot of kind of political rationale. At the moment they want to catch The ISG paints a grim (but not entirely unrealistic) picture the Labour-union link: “The independence referendum rep - the mood of the ‘rebellious’ fringes of the pro-independence of the current Scottish labour movement: “With plummet - resents an opportunity to hasten the demise of Labour con - camInptahigenc. ourse of a political dispute with the leaders of ing membership, little purchase on the political scene and trol over the trade unions. ...” few victories on the industrial scene, the Scottish unions are the French Workers Party (POF) in the early 1880s, Marx “A vigorous campaign to break the unions from devo declared that if the POF leaders deserved the new term perhaps the weakest they have been for over a century.” max and towards leading the arguments for a yes vote can But there is no explanation of how this squares with the of abuse coined by their left-wing rivals, “Marxist”, then begin to permanently break the link between Scottish trade “me, I am not a Marxist!” Marxists will have the same ISG’s promise to engage in “workplace and trade union ag - unions and the Scottish Labour Party.” itation for a general strike.” Last year a general strike was on comment to make on the ISG’s pretensions to “develop But how any of this can be deemed a “development of Marxist theory”. the horizon. This year the unions are a virtual basket case. Marxist theory” remains a mystery. 6 SOLIDARITY WHAT WE SAY Help the AWL raise £20,000 Over the weekend 29 June to 1 July Workers’ Liberty will be hosting our Ideas for Freedom conference. Unlike at some other socialist and labour movement events, the participants will not be “fed a line”, talked down to or stopped from saying things which contradict the opinions of the “top table”. It may seem staggeringly obvious, but that is not the way to create a healthy social - ist culture. We will be having robust debate, discussing big ideas and arguing the fine details of theory, contemporary pol - The government talks about getting people into work — and cuts jobs! itics and activist organisation. You may or may not be there. You may or may not agree with us on everything... or even very much. But you may like our attitude. Want to keep the spirit of critical socialist culture alive? PleYaosue cseanndaulssoahdeolnpaotiuorn!fundraising drive by: Fight Tory plan to G Taking out a monthly standing order. There is a form at www.workersliberty.org/resources and below PleGase post to us at the AWL address below. Making a donation. You can send it to us at the ad - dress below (cheques payable to “AWL”) or do it online axe benefits! at www.workersliberty.org/donate G G Organising a fundraising event On 25 June David Cameron bid to shore up his support Taking copies of Solidarity to sell at your workplace, The official Labour Party response to Cameron, from on the Tory right by floating plans to cut welfare bene - university/college or campaign group. Work and Pensions front-bencher Liam Byrne, was piffling. G fits. Get in touch to discuss joining the AWL. “Chaos at DWP is stalling the Government’s reforms... The More information: 07796 690 874 / Government’s welfare plans are shambolic...” All the proposed cuts would come on top of what’s al - [email protected] / AWL, 20E Tower Workshops, The labour movement should say: tax the rich heavily — ready under way: drastic cuts in housing benefit and in eli - 58 Riley Rd, SE1 3DG. gibility for disabled benefit; increases in the state pension not just income, but wealth. Nationalise high finance, and age; and more. reorganise it as a public banking, pensions, and insurance Cameron pitched his proposals as an appeal to hard- service under democratic and workers’ control. pressed working people who pay taxes and end up no bet - Redirect investment to expand affordable social housing ter off than jobless people on benefits; and as a drive to get and public services, and thus create good, useful jobs for all! Total raised so people into jobs. According to the Royal College of Nursing, the Govern - He ignores six facts: ment’s cuts have already taken 26,000 “front-line” NHS jobs, far: £15,107 • 2.65 million people are unemployed. There are 2.65 mil - and are set to take another 35,000. Already the number of ,107 lion fewer jobs than there are people trying to get jobs. If all teachers in schools has been cut by 10,000. £15 We raised just £62 this the jobless suddenly improved their job-getting abilities, Cameron sketched a big range of cuts, some of which he week. Thanks to Dan, Ed, that might “churn” the figures — some people currently will discard as unworkable when they’ve done their job of Emily, London AWL, Mick with jobs would lose them, and some people without would rallying the flog-the-feckless brigade. and Stuart get jobs — but there would still be 2.65 million jobless. The proposals include: • Of those who have jobs, 1.4 million can only get part- UNDER 25 time work, though they want full-time. • Axing housing benefit for under-25s. (Currently • The Government is rapidly cutting public-service jobs. 385,010 under-25s claim housing benefit, of whom At present, the number of private-sector jobs is rising a bit. 204,450 have children). Standing order authority That’s a recovery from the drastic private-sector crash in 2009 that would happen more or less whatever the Govern - • Excluding people on higher incomes from council hous - ment did. With the global economy at best depressed, there ing (and maybe also from housing-association places). To: ...... (your bank) is no guarantee that small increase of jobs will continue. • Uprating benefits only by the lower of prices and • Real wages are being pushed down, in part by the Gov - wages, so that they decrease both in real terms and relative ...... (its address) ernment’s public-sector pay freeze. The pay of bosses of the to wages. top 100 companies rose 10% in 2011, but the income of a • Cutting benefit rates for those out of work for long pe - ...... middling household fell 3.2%, to below its 2004-5 level. The riods. government has cut the top income-tax rate back from 50% • Further “capping” housing benefit so that large house - Account name: ...... to 45%. holds in expensive areas have to move or become homeless. • Cutting income support and possibly child benefit for MINIMUM single mothers if they have three or more children. Account no.: ...... • The government is cutting the legal minimum wage in • Cutting off benefits after a time unless you pass a liter - real terms. In October, the money minimum-wage rate acy and numeracy test. Sort code: ...... will be increased just 1.8% for over-21s, and not at all • Making full-time “work for the dole” compulsory after for under-21s. Inflation is 2.8% (CPI) or 3.1% (RPI). a time. Please make payments to the debit of my ac - • Many, in fact most, benefits are claimed by hard-pressed • Refusing benefits to school-leavers until after they have working people who have jobs but low pay. The proportion first had a job. count: Payee: Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, of households “in poverty” which are also “in work” has • Paying welfare benefits “in kind” (vouchers?) rather account no. 20047674 at the Unity Trust been increasing for a decade. More than half of all children than in cash. “in poverty” live in “working” households. Instructively, Cameron’s proposals do not include cuts in Bank, 9 Brindley Place, Birmingham B1 2HB For example, Cameron proposes to abolish housing ben - state pensions, or in other payments to the elderly such as (08-60-01) efit for people under 25, unless they can prove (how?) that free bus passes or winter fuel payments. Cameron started they had a “terrible, destructive home life”. But many peo - his speech by boasting that the Government has committed ple under 25 claim housing benefit because they move to to raise pensions in line with whichever rises faster, prices Amount: £ ...... to be paid on the find a job, and can’t instantly find a permanent one well- or earnings, and to fold the complicated pension-credit sys - ...... day of paid enough to pay the rent. Should stay with their parents tem into an increased basic state pension. in areas where there are no jobs? He skated over his government’s plans to raise the state ...... (month) 20 For example, Cameron spoke about housing benefit as if pension age; but it’s true that benefits for people who are it is claimed only by the jobless. But 93 per cent of new hous - currently past pension age, or nearing pension age, are sur - ...... (year) and thereafter monthly until ing benefit claims made between 2010 and 2011 were made viving this government’s cuts much better than benefits for this order is cancelled by me in writing. This by households containing at least one employed adult. The younger people. high housing benefit bill is a subsidy by the Government to By now, possibly for the first time ever, people in their 60s order cancels any previous orders to the profiteering landlords, generated by the refusal and then are on average better-off, and less likely to be in poverty, failure of successive governments to invest in cheap social thaOnldpeeroppleoinpltehehira2v0es b( FeicnoanmciealbTeimttees r,-1o6rgMaanricshe2d0,1h2)a. ve same payee. housing. campaigned harder, and use their votes more. The labour movement has failed to organise, inspire, and Date ...... Boycott Workfare is having a week of action in the UK from mobilise young people sufficiently. That is why 7-14 July. BW campaigns to end forced unpaid work for Cameron’s proposals specially target younger people. Signature ...... people who receive benefits. www.facebook.com/#!/boycottworkfare/events • Solidarity ’s schedule is varying from usual around the www.boycottworkfare.org Workers’ Liberty summer school, 29 June to 1 July. This issue is dated 29 June. Solidarity 252 will be dated 11 July. SOLIDARITY 7 HEALTH SERVICE The legacy Fight to reverse p

of PFI Jacky Davis is a member of the council of the British Med - for any decisions, saying, well, it's down to the PCTs. More ical Association (the doctors' trade union) and chair of cam - and more, as the service becomes more and more frag - paigning organisation the NHS Consultants' Association. mented, we'll see a dispersal of responsibility, away from the She spoke to Solidarity in a personal capacity. government and the Secretary of State and onto Clinical By Todd Hamer It's important to understand why we lost on the Health Commissioning Groups, which means GPs. South London Healthcare NHS Trust includes Queen and Social Care Bill. Until we understand we won't be RESPONSIBLE Mary Hospital in Sidcup, Queen Elizabeth Hospital in able to regain the upper hand. GPs are supposing getting a lot of power in the new sys - tem, but in fact they'll be the ones made responsible for Woolwich and Princess Royal Hospital in Bromley. Its Partly it was the simple mathematics of the Coalition. The carrying out the £20 billion spending cuts the Tories are budget shortfall (£1 million a week) is the equivalent Lib Dems are so unpopular now they can't afford to leave the insisting on, and for the measures of marketisation and of employing 1,200 nurses or doing 200 hip opera - Coalition, no matter the political price. And they give the To - privatisation necessary to carry that out. tions a week. ries a very solid majority. It is the first NHS organisation to go into the "unsus - But we also have to look at the response from the unions Already in Ealing I heard a local councillor blame a hospi - tainable providers regime" — a system set up by New and professional associations. Unison did nothing, as far as I tal being shut down on local GPs. Of course if GPs are judged Labour but never used. Under that regime an adminis - can see. Unite was more active but isolated. And medical or - to fail, then the private sector will be brought in directly, by trator is brought in to run the Trust's board and to rec - ganisations like the BMA did not step up in time and sharply which I mean even faster. ommend measures directly to the Health Secretary about oppose the Bill. Even the idea that the NHS is free at the point of use is al - how to put the Trust on a more sustainable footing. The government was very clever, pitching their plan in ready being challenged. Services that were free are ceasing The Trust's outgoing Chief Executive, Dr Christopher terms of GP commissioning; it was very attractive to GPs to be so, and I'm not talking about things like tattoo removal, Streather, says that the administrators will succeed until they finally understood it, too late. That muffled any re - but hip replacements and cataract operations. The question where he has failed. He believes they will be able to se - sponse. is, if it's free, what's actually on the menu. If the only thing cure a subsidy to help with two PFI deals that bleed The media also played a terrible role, with the only the that's free is, say, a burst appendix, then talking about a free funds by £61 million a year. Maybe, but only if the gov - Guardian even providing serious coverage. The BBC was so health service is ludicrous. ernment agrees to such a subsidy. bad that there are rumours that it did some kind of deal with The first thing is to get the information out there, to the More to the point, Streather has said the administra - the government. I remember a headline on the BBC website wider public, which means particularly into doctor's surger - tors are likely to sell off parts of the hospital estate and calling it a "Bill to give power to GPs and patients”. BBC ies. Keep Our NHS Public has produced a postcard which shut down services, shifting them onto primary care and workers reported that stories about criticism of the Bill were patients can give to their doctors objecting to private treat - community providers. raised internally, but never taken up. ment but there are obvious limits to this, as it's potentially This Trust was recently shortlisted for an award for its UNDERSTANDING unfair to ask patients to forego treatment for their principles. quality of care, management and innovation. It has one Partly because of the media, I'm not sure how much pub - Then there's the GPs' pledge written by John Lister of of the best mortality rates and infection control records in lic understanding there was, or is, about what the Bill Health Emergency, which opposes GPs being pushed into the country. But it costs money to deliver this level of means. The government has kept the debate focused on privatisation. care. These standards cannot be met whilst private sector the idea that the NHS will still be free at the point of use. I think we may also see more local campaigns around pri - parasites demand their risk-free returns on their PFI vate beds in NHS hospitals. The Bill raises the cap on private racket. In a situation where the government is demand - I think one thing which disoriented the unions was the fact beds from something in the order of two percent to 49 per - ing NHS Trusts slash their budgets, the burdens of PFI that the screws on the NHS had already been unloosened be - cent. Hospitals will have to become Foundation Trusts, and schemes — massively expanded under New Labour — fore the Tories came to power. Lansley had some truth on his their basic obligation will be to stay out of the red - not to may send many Trusts into bankruptcy. said when he described the reforms as “evolution, not revo - provide any particular services. They will shed services, both According to the Daily Telegraph up to 22 NHS trusts lution”. To some extent Labour has not even known what its to Clinical Commissioning Groups and to direct private sec - are facing serious financial difficulties because of expen - position should be, given its own record, and that disoriented tor provision, which will take on more and more of the low- sive PFI schemes, and six are thought to have taken on the unions too. cost services and procedures. More private beds are the Beyond that, we face the fact that unions are often run in obvious way to make this up, but of course there can be a prAojsecytsouviecwanednobtyrmunintishteerNs HasS"uonnsuthsteailnoaobsle".change the interests of the people who run them, not their members. fight about that. There are already local campaigns linked to that is left over once the millionaires who benefited That is hard to change when there is not much pressure from many hospitals and this is an issue they can take up and cam - from PFI have all taken their slice of the cake, the PFI the grassroots. In the NHS, staff are very apathetic and unor - paign on. "legacy" could threaten very future of the NHS as ganised, because they see no fight being led from above and There may or may not be legal limits to what a Labour gov - system of free quality healthcare. without that they are frightened of losing their jobs. ernment can reverse. But our basic tack should be to demand Even before the Bill passed, Hinchingbrooke hospital in they reverse the Tory “reforms”, cancel as many private con - Cambridgeshire was taken over by Circle. Now Virgin is tak - tracts as fast as possible — but also go beyond that. ing over services all over the shop. In Camden we have an inquiry because of a practice given to United Health by the PURCHASER-PROVIDER The crucial thing here is the “purchaser-provider split”, PCT. United Health pulled out, and then another “partner” the basis of the internal market which was introduced by pulled out, with the result that the practice has now closed Thatcher. down, leaving 4,000 people without a GP. This was all done without any democratic process or transparency. So there is With this split, admin costs soar. There are no longer exact an inquiry, but doctors have been told not to testify to it! figures, but we are talking about a rise from 6 to something The point about transparency is crucial. Take Lansley's fig - like 16 or 18 percent. And the waste of money is not just a ures he gave the RCN conference about nursing numbers. If question of bureaucracy. When money is allocated in this [RCN general secretary] Peter Carter had been less polite, he way, it creates perverse incentives, where different bodies would have told Lansley his numbers were lies. But what's seek to attract patients in order to attract funding. There is even more important is that Lansley dismissed responsibility evidence this creates false, unnecessary demand. Treatment rationing in the new NHS

By Todd Hamer perience of a patient in west Yorkshire who received a letter sure provision of a comprehensive health service was delib - from his GP informing him that treatment for a skin condi - erately abolished as part of the Health and Social Care act. If you are losing your sight, in chronic pain or need a tion was no longer available on the NHS and was given a Any legal challenge to treatment rationing would probably wart removed, your chances of being treated in the NHS menu complete with prices for treatments available at a pri - fail as the Secretary of State absolved himself of the "duty to are greatly reduced under the new regime. vate clinic. provide" free NHS care. When challenged about treatment rationing in the House Powers to decide which treatments are included in the A survey commissioned by the Labour Party revealed that of Commons, William Hague, deputising for the Prime Min - free NHS service was largely devolved to the Clinical Com - over 90% of Primary Care Trusts and shadow Clinical Com - ister, claimed that this practice is illegal and any PCT/CCG missioning Groups. missioning Groups are restricting access to treatment due to These organisations have a direct financial incentive that is denying treatment on financial grounds will be held financial pressure. 125 assorted treatments are no longer to deny their patients treatment. Their members, as il - to account by the government. available or severely restricted on the NHS due to the cuts. lustrated by the west Yorkshire example, have multiple However, as health policy expert Allyson Pollock has But as the NHS shrinks the private sector moves in. links to the private sector. pointed out, the legal power of the Secretary of State to en - Shadow Health Minister Andy Burnham described the ex - 8 SOLIDARITY privatisation! We need co-ordinated action to save the NHS

By Vicki Morris

Against the backdrop of the new Health and Social Care Act, and deep cuts to NHS budgets, Keep Our NHS Public (KONP) held its AGM on Saturday 23 June. The meeting lasted just one hour but was followed by a public conference, “Reclaiming our NHS”, sponsored by a number of organisations including KONP, TUC, Unison, Unite, NHS Consultants Association, Socialist We lost the fight to stop Lansley's Bill becoming law. How do we block implementation and force repeal? Health Association (SHA), Health Emergency and the NHS Support Federation (NSF). There were about 60 people at the KONP AGM and This situation doesn't exist in the devolved nations, which would be to put pressure on Labour to take a strong stand on around 350 at the conference. Both events showed the do not have the internal market [which was scrapped by the the NHS. need for more coordination of NHS campaigning efforts. Blair government and then reintroduced in England after de - KONP is probably the best established campaigning organ - The KONP AGM was sometimes cosy and sometimes volution]. As the NHS degenerates and fragments in Eng - isation on the NHS. Its strength is its local organisations. If fractious, but more like a family gathering than a cam - land, that contrast will become even sharper - because what people start new groups, it would be ideal for them to come paign that could save the NHS. There are just 33 local exists now is not really an internal market, but an external unAdenratthioenbaalndneemr oofiKsOaNgPo. od idea; it could help galvanise KONP groups. market, a market pure and simple. public opinion and activism. But we can’t rely on a demo KONP runs on a federal model. Local groups are rep - Scrapping the market set-up would save enormous solving everything, even a very big one — look at the Iraq resented on the steering committee. The model has its amounts of money which could be ploughed back into front - war. We need a much broader campaign, including cre - virtues, but the KONP central office is run on a shoe - line services even if funding was not increased. In my area, ative use of social media. string, it seems, and with a tiny staff. radiology, for instance, the Blair government ignored the views of professionals on how to overcome bottlenecks with COORDINATE MRI scans and instead went to the private sector at enormous PROTEST AGAINST Key KONP activists Wendy Savage and John Lister cost. The same goes for enormous PFI bills hospitals and have resisted the idea of an umbrella group to coor - trusts are saddled with. A straightforward, publicly funded OUTSOURCING dinate the campaigns to save the NHS, and resisted health service is not only more equitable, but cheaper and KONP assuming this role. Yet it seems that they have more efficient. Friday 13 July come under some pressure and realise they must The point is that there are a few fairly simple demands we raise their game. can make on Labour, which would be a very big deal if they 5.30-6.30pm, Capita HQ, 71 Victoria Street, They helped to call the bigger conference on Saturday; were carried out. If Labour were willing to campaign on these London SW1H 0XA and at their AGM passed a “strategy statement” that said issues it would win enormous support among NHS workers the organisation should aim to raise £200,000 a year in and hundreds of thousands if not millions of new votes. Protest against the threat to hand over more order to become “more professional”. (This seems to be A number of campaigners have founded a National Health and more of the NHS to Capita and other about five times as much as they spend at the moment.) Action Party to raise a protest about how the Bill was bull - Later, at the main conference, in a summing up plenary dozed through. I think it will have a broader agenda in de - profit-greedy “outsourcing” companies. session, KONP activist and SHA chair Brian Fisher said fence of education and the rest of the welfare state too. More details: that the suggestions coming from the day’s workshops There will be a careful discussion about the right people to would be collated and followed up on by KONP. challenge, which seats to stand in. It’s possible they will stand healthalarm1159.wordpress.com Is KONP up to taking on the vital coordinating role that against prominent individuals like Cameron or Lansley. The is needed to save the NHS? It seems to be assuming a aim isn’t to take seats away from Labour. In fact, one aim greater role — but reluctantly. There are tensions in the organisation between those who want KONP to be beefed up and play more of a coordinating role, and those who want to stick with the “federal” model of (an insuf - Save Trafford General! ficient number of) local groups. Workers’ Liberty members attended both the KONP AGM and the public conference. We argued for more By Nik Barstow services at the hospital, and stopping all acute surgery. pressure on the Labour Party to commit to reversing the The Report says: Health and Social Care Act should it win the next elec - The National Health Service was officially launched at “Critical Care Level 3 services (ICU) currently available tion. We encouraged activists not to wait for KONP, but Park Hospital in Davyhulme on 5 July 1948 by Health at TGH should be reprovided elsewhere.” to support the new NHS Liaison Network and to urge Secretary Nye Bevan. As he symbolically received the “The current model of Accident and Emergency (A&E) KONP to participate. keys to the hospital, Bevan was conscious of the place provision at TGH is not sustainable.” We promoted the lobby of Labour Party conference in the hospital would occupy in Britain’s history. “A Paediatric Observation and Assessment unit (POAU) Manchester on Sunday 30 September called by the NHS (children’s services) is not sustainable in the absence of a Now, 64 years later, NHS bosses have been planning in Liaison Committee, North West Region of Unite the full, Type 1 A&E department.” secret to close it. Earlier this year the hospital was taken Union, and Wirral TUC. “Emergency surgical services currently available at TGH over from local managers by the Central Manchester Foun - Saturday’s conferences underlined the urgent need for should be reprovided elsewhere.” dation Trust because they said the hospital’s finances are a bigger coordination of efforts, with resources particu - Save Trafford General campaign Chair Matthew Finnegan “unviable”. larly from Unison and Unite, the main unions represent - said: “This report passes a death sentence on the birthplace By June the new Trust bosses and NHS officials had come ing health workers. of the NHS.” up with sweeping plans that would leave virtually nothing The Save Trafford General campaign has organised a Although these two unions supported the conference, in the local area. A report to Greater Manchester NHS dis - march and rally on 7 July – 11.00am from Golden Hill theAyt hthade nKoOt NmPobAilGisMed, tchaemir pmaeigmnbeerrs teoxaptrtensdse. d their cussed, in secret, by Trafford Council’s Health Scrutiny Park in the centre of Urmston — and is urging health anger with the unions and Labour at not leading a Committee proposes the closure of the A&E department at campaigners to join local people in their protest. bigger fight against the Bill. We must continue to the hospital (now called Trafford General) and of the Inten - push Labour and the unions to act. sive Care Unit by April next year, the end of all children’s • savetraffordgeneral.com

SOLIDARITY 9 FEATURE Why EU is stalling on crisis policy

John Grahl (Professor of European Integration at Middle - sex University) spoke to Martin Thomas. What is likely to come out of the 28 June EU summit? There is not likely to be much movement. There may be some acceptance of moving towards a banking union. It would isolate the problem of instability and possible insol - vency of banks from the financial problems of the member states. Whether Germany is prepared to move fast on that, I don’t know, but it seems to be what the European Com - mission and some of the member states will be pushing for. Even if the summit decides for a banking union, the timescale for setting that up is much longer than the timescale of the crisis? On the basis of an agreement in principle to go for a bank - ing union, it might be necessary to increase the room for ma - noeuvre for the European Central Bank or at least the Germany is still heavily committed to the eurozone stability funds. If the eurozone can say it is going for a gen - eral regime of centralised recapitalisation of banks that are was all. Here it is already involved in high-profile politi - road. I suspect there is probably still a strong will in Ger - in trouble, it could start doing some of it now. Or a reason - cal decisions, and potentially involved in more. Some many to save the eurozone. ably solid commitment to a banking-union agreement mainstream writers have said that this shows that the might change market sentiment. Suppose you had a two- The FT has reported an estimate of the immediate, first- model of an “independent” central bank has failed. year horizon, then even an insolvent bank that could secure order costs of a break-up of the eurozone, which would funding for two years would be secure against speculation. be 10 to 13% of output for countries across the EU. The European model of an “independent” central bank There may be other moves at the summit — something has failed; but it is a very extreme model. Everywhere else You could certainly rescue Greece, Ireland, Portugal, towards eurobonds and mutualisation of some of the gov - you have only operational independence. With the Bank of Spain, and Italy for a lot less than 10% of eurozone output. ernment debt — but resistance to those seems stronger than England, a simple piece of legislation, or an Order in Coun - It struck me before the last Greek election that it would cost to a banking union. Anything worthy of the name of fiscal cil even, could change its mandate overnight in an emer - the EU states more money to crush the Greeks than to assist union is beyond the horizon at present. gency. In the United States, the status of the central bank has them. The losses on a comprehensive Greek default would not been changed in recent decades. But the period of apparent success for the EU’s band- be large, and you’d have to add the firewall that would have The notion that you can assign monetary policy to the sin - aid measures is becoming shorter and shorter... to be put in place hurriedly, using lots and lots of cash, to gle target of stabilising the price level is discredited. There stop a snowballing collapse. Spain can’t manage with an obligation to offer 6% inter - have to be other objectives. And the model of “absolute” in - est when its government borrows, though the time horizon What’s your opinion of Syriza’s programme? dependence of a central bank which you have in Europe has of its debt also matters, and there isn’t an immediate emer - also failed. It has allowed political leaders to evade their re - I very much hoped that Syriza would win on 17 June and gency there. The talk was before the Greek election that the sponsibilities for three years now. that the Greeks would fight openly for an abrogation of the Greek government would need money quite soon, but pre - What do you think is driving Angela Merkel’s policy? bailout terms. I can understand why Greeks voted other - sumably that money will now be found. But it’s true: the in - wise, because they saw a danger of isolation. adequacy of the measures is revealed at a more and more In the background is a big change in the attitude of Ger - Syriza was going to suspend some aspects of the bailout rapid rate. man corporations to economic and social development in agreement. Some of the draconian cuts were going to be sus - their home country. As they became highly globalised, Ger - It looks as if the leading EU governments still think that pended or reversed. I don’t know whether they were going many ceased to be so important to them as a market and they can hold firm and get through without a crash. to try to keep servicing the debt. more important simply as a cost. The constant pressures The primary deficit of Greece [the shortfall of government How would a break happen? The most concrete thinking from the largest corporations for cost containment condi - income from government spending, excluding debt pay - I’ve seen on that is from John Dizard in the Financial Times tion the German political class. ments] does not look that terrifying. It’s maybe two or three (18 June). He says that a member state could invoke Article That fact may help to explain the otherwise surprising per cent of GDP, and in an emergency any government can 65, which appears to give scope for capital controls. Other compression of wage costs which took place in Germany in find 2% of GDP, especially if it has popular support. A spe - states would be reluctant to see that, especially if it was one the first decade of this century. cial wealth tax would be the best way, but there are others. of the “good pupils” doing it. There might be an attempt to I find it much more difficult to assess the political calcu - The real danger would, perhaps, not be the government refinance such a government rather than see it introduce lations. Some people invoke the relative failure of integra - becoming unable to finance its current expenditure, but a capital controls. I don’t know how that would be done, but tion of the two Germanies. Jürgen Habermas has invoked banking collapse — that a Syriza government would face Angela Merkel has changed her mind in the past. the same sort of scandal as we’ve had here in Britain in re - comprehensive banking failure because nobody would de - The real imponderables are political, not financial. It’s a lations between the media and the political class. Habermas posit with or lend money to the Greek banking system. question of how much will there is to keep the show on the argues that German political culture has become “Berlus - Of course, Syriza is an alliance of disparate forces. The conified”. people I know in Syriza mainly have a background from the Yet if what emerges from the crisis is a very small euro - Communist Party (Interior). But Syriza includes other zone — say, Germany, Austria, Finland, Netherlands, Slove - Fine Barclays? forces, some of them, probably, more combative than nia, Slovakia — then they are looking at a 30 to 35% Synaspismos. appreciation in their currency. For the corporations there Expropriate the bankers! One analyst has said that the European Central Bank would be a huge cost escalation, and strong contractionary would respond to a Syriza government by cutting forces would be released in the German economy. “It’s quite hard to think of behaviour by a bank as Greece off from the Target 2 payment system, with the Another aspect is historical. Think back to the break-up shocking as this”, commented BBC business editor effect that euros inside Greece would become invalid of the European Monetary System in 1992-3. The German Robert Peston as Barclays Bank was fined £290 mil - for payments outside Greece. government squeezed harder and longer against inflation lion on 27 June for dishonestly manipulating the in - which never reached 5% than Paul Volcker in the USA had terest rates used for short-term bank-to-bank loans, Yes. That more or less coincides with what John Dizard against inflation which was verging on 20%, ten years pre - Libor and Euribor. has written in the Financial Times . You would have euros viously. trapped in the Greek banking system, which could be used They said to their partners in the European Monetary Sys - Why so shocking? It seems technical and abstruse. only for transactions within Greece with someone else who Libor and Euribor, published each morning by a commit - tem that they would cut interest rates provided that the oth - also has a Greek bank account. ers devalued. That wrecked the chosen strategies of their tee after collecting information from banks about their It would be a sort of dual currency system; but you could rates, are the benchmarks for hundreds of other interest partners, who were trying to use the Deutschmark link to have an objective, or a programme, for restoring the connec - bring down inflation. I found that episode hard to under - rates. And banks live on interest rates. They profit by tion. borrowing at one interest rate and lending at a higher stand in terms of rational interests. The previous case is de - one. Dishonestly manipulating Libor and Euribor thus Cutting off Greece from the euro payments system scribed in the autobiography of the former president of the corrupts the entire global financial system. And it can be would require a high-profile political decision by the Eu - Bundesbank, Otmar Emminger, D-Mark, Dollar, done only by central people at a bank. This is not a ropean Central Bank, which is supposed to be inde - Währungskrisen . He tells the story, with pride, of a meeting “rogue trader” thing. The Barclays fine is a pay-off to pendent of all politics. Given the will and the between himself, [then German Chancellor] Helmut avoid further investigation. No individual has been organisation, there would be large scope for a cam - Schmidt, and [then Federal Reserve president] Paul Volcker brought to court or jailed. Maybe 20 other banks are paign to stop the cutting-off. in the autumn of 1979. being investigated. The dollar was dropping like a stone. Volcker was travel - One of my worries about Syriza is that there wasn’t much ling back from an IMF. He stopped off in Germany and The people who manipulated Libor and Euribor have solidarity forthcoming. Governments in a similar position vast power to scare governments and decide which in - asked for support from the Bundesbank for the dollar. They were saying that they would never do what Syriza pro - turned him down flat. Emminger says that he insisted that vestments are funded. They can’t be trusted with that posed. If the four or five countries involved in the sovereign power. Volcker had to get the money supply under control. He The Labour front bench demanded only that “Trea - debt crisis articulated some common positions, that would quotes with pride Volcker saying as he left: “You’re right. sury Ministers now review the regulation of LIBOR strengthen their position. But Syriza is still a force. I’ll bet ThEemdmecinsigveerfraecptoorritsstthheismaosnaeytrsituomckp”h. . But that was the arrangements”. Instead the labour movement should that the new Greek government will be glad it’s there and Germans helping to precipitate the worst crisis there demand the expropriation of high finance and its re - constitutes the only alternative. The Greek government can has been in the post-war economy [Volcker pushed in - organisation into a public banking, pensions, and in - say to the EU leaders: if we fall, this is what you face... terest rates high in an effort similar to the “monetarist” surance service under democratic and workers’ The theory was that the European Central Bank would control. binge under Thatcher in Britain at the time, and real US keep in the background — regulate inflation, and that GDP in 1983 Q1 was still lower than in 1980 Q1].

10 SOLIDARITY FEATURE Healy’s WRP: the inside story

The Workers Revolutionary Party was the largest group on the revolutionary left until the mid-1970s, and a size - able force until it collapsed in 1985. Here, Richard Price, a former full-time organiser for the WRP, reviews Come The Revolution: A Memoir, by Alex Mitchell. Mitchell was the editor of the WRP paper from the early 1970s until 1985. He quit politics without explanation in 1986, returned to his native Australia, and made a career in mainstream journalism. Now Mitchell has written an autobiography. In October 1985 the Workers Revolutionary Party split explosively, amid allegations of sexual abuse of female members by its leader, Gerry Healy. Healy had led his organisation in various guises (The Club, The Group, the Socialist Labour League, which be - came the WRP in 1973) for four decades. For a long period it had been the largest Trotskyist organisation in Britain, al - though it had been overtaken by the SWP in the 1970s and by Militant in the 1980s. Within a short period the WRP splintered into a number of warring groups, most of which are now extinct, and very few of its former members remain politically active. As is the case with so many political memoirs, the most interesting parts are those covering the formative years. The first 200 pages are genuinely entertaining and engaging. As a seasoned news hound, Alex Mitchell knows how to tell a story, liberally sprinkled with witty and revealing anec - dotes. They trace his life from his childhood in Townsville, Press conference to launch Newsline, the new daily paper the WRP launched when it closed Workers’ Press on financial grounds Australia through his rapid ascent up the greasy pole of and established links with Qaddafi’s and other governments. L to R: John Spencer, Royston Bull, Alex Mitchell, Stephen Johns journalism, from cadet reporter on the Townsville Daily Bul - letin and a posting to the Mount Isa Mail in a grim outback mining town to the Sydney Daily Mirror run by a young and The truth is probably more prosaic. The WRP had been He claims the publication of former Sunday Times col - surprisingly liberal Rupert Murdoch. By the age of 22 he living beyond its means for some time, maintaining an HQ, league David King’s Trotsky: A Documentary in 1972 “lifted was reporting from the parliamentary press gallery in Can - a chain of bookshops, a school, a print shop, and a number Trotsky’s name from political obscurity”. Aside from the fact berra, and three years later he took his chances and left for of youth centres, as well as satisfying Healy’s obsession with that Trotskyist groups across the world had published a London, where he quickly found work with the Sunday acquiring expensive technology. By 1985 it employed — al - large amount of Trotsky’s writings since 1968, it was surely Times — then at the height of its liberal investigative pow - beit on small wages — about 90 full timers. Despots don’t Isaac Deutscher’s widely read three-volume biography ers. tend to like bad news, so the reality of the WRP’s financial which established Trotsky’s reputation among western in - As a member of the Sunday Times’ prestigious Insight crisis was kept from Healy, and he was fed grossly exagger - tellectuals. team, Mitchell helped break a number of high profile sto - ated membership figures by assistant general secretary He credits the Queen Mother for dragging George VI ries — an investigation of Kim Phiby, exposés of the origi - Sheila Torrance. As the attendance at aggregate meetings away from appeasement, when history records she was an nal ‘bouncing Czech’ Robert Maxwell, assignments in during the split in October 1985 showed, the WRP had an enthusiastic appeaser herself. revolutionary Paris and war-torn Biafra. active membership of barely 1,000. Bigger problems lie in what Mitchell doesn’t say. Internal In 1970 he switched to Granada Television’s fledgling repression in Iraq and Libya is only acknowledged in pass - ALLEGATIONS ing, as if it was a minor sub-plot of the global struggle World In Action , where he exposed the dodgy financial deal - As for the allegations of sexual abuse against Healy, ings of Home Secretary Reginald Maudling, who resigned against imperialism. The similarity with the method of Stal - Mitchell — perhaps truthfully — professes to knowing inist anti-fascism in the 1930s is striking. There are huge shortly afterwards. A second programme on Uganda led to very little, but he is nevertheless soft on the old brute. a face-to-face interview with Idi Amin — then a darling of gaps in the narrative. The expulsion of up to 200 supporters the Tory press. He rubbishes claims that Healy “raped dozens of of Alan Thornett in 1974, which destroyed a large part of the Already an active opponent of the Vietnam War before he women” and believes that only lower level abuse took WRP’s industrial base, doesn’t rate a mention. A whole Ob - left Australia in 1967, Mitchell was becoming steadily radi - place. This is complicated by the fact that the anti-Healy ma - chapter is devoted to the WRP’s libel action against the server calised in the London of the late 1960s. In 1968 he began at - jority by-passed holding a control commission and went for , but he doesn’t refer to its long-running litigation Socialist Organiser tending private Friday night discussion meetings organised a straight expulsion of Healy, only to conclude a year later against . Apart from cursory references to by prominent radicals in the media and theatre. Initially a that what had taken place was “not so much rape but ... sex - the 1984-5 miners’ strike, the great industrial battles of the small circle, it rapidly expanded to include the cream of left ual abuse by someone in a position of power and trust”. 1970s and 80s and the riots of 1981 and 1985 barely feature. wing playwrights, producers and directors. From a kind of Mitchell stands by the WRP’s widely discredited “Secu - CHAOTIC beauty contest between various left wing intellectuals, rity and the Fourth International” investigation into Stalin - After Thornett’s expulsion, the WRP’s industrial work Gerry Healy rapidly became the dominant influence — a ist penetration of the Trotskyist movement, which charged was chaotic. In truth, the WRP leadership instinctively process subsequently immortalised in Trevor Griffiths’ play veteran US Trotskyist leaders Joe Hansen and George No - feared organised trade union work because it might The Party , with Laurence Olivier playing the Healy figure at vack with being accomplices of both Soviet intelligence and create a potential opposition to the party’s ultra-leftism. the National Theatre. the FBI. Although its central allegation was grotesque, Mitchell’s investigative skills did throw up new informa - It preferred working with impressionable actors, inexpe - FAST TRACK tion on some key Soviet agents within the Trotskyist move - rienced youth and the permanently unemployed, while In May 1971 Mitchell resigned from World In Action and ment in the 1940s. This however only served as grist to the keeping a relationship with left-leaning trade union lead - joined the editorial board of Healy’s shoestring daily, mill of Healy’s obsessive denunciation of his opponents on ers. Workers Press. Within a short time, he had been fast the left as agents. In spite of official disinterest I succeeded in building the tracked on to its Central and Political Committees, and In what he does say, Mitchell generally comes over as a organisation’s most effective industrial group in London’s became the paper’s editor. fairly honest witness. He owns up to various doubts about largest health authority. In the middle of the 1982 NHS dis - For the next 15 years, he was one of Healy’s closest confi - the WRP’s internal regime and politics: ‘The trouble with pute I gave an enthusiastic report in which I mentioned how dantes, and acted as the WRP’s roving Middle Eastern am - the WRP was that internal discussion was confined to reaf - the dispute had united many different types of people in the bassador, conducting bilateral contacts with, among others, firming the party line, not debating it, and certainly not pyramid of nations that made up the NHS in those days. Yasser Arafat, Colonel Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein. challenging it.’ He hit a crisis in the middle of the miners’ Mitchell moved a motion of censure on the grounds that Anyone looking for major revelations from these years is strike, convinced that Healy’s line (that the strike would ei - there were no differences between the different groups and going to be disappointed. There’s nothing new on the shoot - ther end in a direct struggle for power or a military dictator - nationalities. They were all workers, and therefore my re - ing of PC Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan Embassy in ship) was completely out of sync with reality. marks were objectively racist! 1984. Mitchell does acknowledge a limited amount of “Arab Mitchell seems to have forgotten the old newspaper Similarly, the WRP’s behind the scenes “alliances” with gold” via Gaddafi and the PLO and some Gulf state fund - adage that facts should be checked from two independent various nationalist movements could be a minefield for ing of Vanessa Redgrave’s documentary The Palestinian , but sources. The text is riddled with clumsy factual errors. He members. In 1979 I was put on the standing orders commit - Sunday Times in nothing like the quantities that have been widely alleged. interviewed Daniel Cohn-Bendit, for the in tee at the WRP Young Socialists conference and made the But he also says that relations with the Iraqi Ba’athists had 1968, and writes that he was “opposed to the terrorist vio - mistake of putting a fraternal speaker from Robert Mu - cooled in 1979 and ended in 1981 as a result of the Iraq/Iran lence which was then being conducted by the Baader-Mein - gabe’s ZANU on ahead of one from Joshua Nkomo’s ZAPU. War — although not before the WRP had published a syco - hof group in West Germany”. This must have been Mitchell came up to me furiously and punched me on the phantic pamphlet entitled Iraq under the Leadership of the Arab clairvoyance on Cohn-Bendit’s part because the Baader- arm for breaching etiquette. Ba’ath Socialist Party . Meinhof group wasn’t formed until 1970, in a wave of dis - Mitchell never had much grasp of either Marxism or Trot - By 1981 Gaddafi became more distant as a result of British illusion with mass politics after the events of 1968! skyist history. Having been catapulted into the leadership, government pressure. Certainly, the WRP had accumulated He writes that Ted Knight was expelled from the Social - his relationship with Marxism was mediated through the major financial problems by the time it split, and this has ist Labour League in 1954 — five years before the SLL was person of Gerry Healy. often been attributed to its Middle Eastern funding drying launched. In fact, Knight was expelled from the Labour But having had a quarter of a century to reflect, he’s no up. But if the Arab gold dried up four years before the WRP Party in 1954 for supporting Healy’s entry paper Socialist Continued on page 12 split, then this is hardly a convincing cause. Outlook . SOLIDARITY 11 FEATURE

Continued from page 11 number of Labour councils of refusing to set a rate during the rate-capping crisis of 1985 was a policy made in Clapham. This was more success than Healy had experi - better informed now, and doesn’t refer to Bob Pitt’s The Rise enced for some years. and Fall of Gerry Healy (freely available on the net), or to Al What did for the WRP was a perfect storm involving sev - Richardson’s books on British Trotskyism. eral factors. The anti-imperialist alliances Healy thought he The WRP was part cult, part sect, with the cultish ele - had built lay in tatters. With the end of the miners’ strike, ments often winning out. It shared many common features morale plummeted and recent recruits dropped out. Follow - with the People’s Temple of Jim Jones, whose members ing Scargill, Healy insisted that the miners were undefeated, committed mass suicide in the Guyanese jungle in 1978: but the reality was there for all to see. Neither a struggle for support for progressive causes and anti-racism; puritanical power nor a military government had materialised. Healy’s self-denial alongside the leader’s “special needs”; ritualised claim to infallibility began to be questioned. Allegations of self-criticism; the inflation of minor into major differences; sexual abuse and a financial crisis in an organisation that the separation of members from family and friends. disapproved of “opportunist” personal relationships and Other parts of the WRP’s internal regime and politics regularly bled its members dry became the catalysts of an were lifted wholesale from third-period Stalinism — leader - explosion. Like all great British scandals, it took in sex and ship elections conducted by approving a recommended list money. en bloc; unanimous decision making; and the slogan of a workers’ revolutionary government. ORCHESTRATED Mitchell’s politics are full of contradictions. He derides Mitchell, unlike both Vanessa Redgrave and Ken Living - work in the Labour Party in general and dismisses the Mil - stone, doesn’t claim that state agents orchestrated the itant Tendency as “a clandestine project to burgle the split, although he does think they gave “a push to his - Labour Party from within”. But he defends the WRP’s close tory”— which is possible, but he provides no evidence. relationship with Ken Livingstone and Ted Knight, and its clandestine Labour Herald operation, “because it extended He correctly records that the anti-Healy majority carried the party’s influence into the heart of the anti-Thatcher mass out a wave of deranged violence, and points out that after movement”. He also boasts of running spies within the the split many of Healy’s most vociferous opponents “sim - Communist Party. ply evaporated, never to be seen in further political activ - Much of his analysis is questionable and reflects the fact ity”. that he divided his time between the hothouse atmosphere With some honourable exceptions — Dot Gibson of the of the WRP’s Clapham HQ, addressing public meetings and National Pensioners’ Convention and Andrew Burgin of the jetting around the Middle East, but had little knowledge of Stop the War Coalition spring to mind — few WRP mem - the consciousness of workers or the state of the rank and bers did much that was constructive in the labour move - file. According to Mitchell’s account, the WRP went from ment after 1985. Some were traumatised, no doubt, success to success “building and recruiting” in the 1970s although many on both sides claimed that they had taken and only hit serious problems in the 1980s. The truth is more part in an epoch-making struggle. For the bulk of ex-mem - bers, their allegiance had been primarily to a person rather complicated. Healy speaking at a WRP rally commemorating the murder of than a programme or a set of ideas. Once their guru had Although Mitchell briefly mentions reservations with the Leon Trotsky slogan of “the struggle for power” adopted in 1977, what fallen off his pedestal they were unable to reason independ - he doesn’t mention is that from 1975 onwards the WRP cam - ently and simply retired. For all Healy’s toxic reputation, it’s worth remembering paigned to bring down the Labour government — and this struggle. that he was not the only Trotskyist leader to have an exag - with a resurgent Tory party under Thatcher waiting in the From a high point of 2-3,000 members in 1973, the WRP gerated view of his own importance, surround himself with wings. was reduced to a shell of a few hundred by 1979. Its 60 can - bodyguards and female admirers, and pursue insanely op - It was this policy more than any other which came close didates in the 1979 general election polled a disastrous total portunist or sectarian policies. Over the years Healy had to wrecking the WRP in the 1970s. Even the most militant of 12,631 votes. It cost the party £8 per vote. managed to recruit people of the calibre of Ken Loach, Stu - groups of trade unionists during the winter of discontent With the Tories back in power, the WRP rowed back from art Hood, Des Warren, Peter Fryer, Bernie Grant, and a rejected it, knowing that it could only assist the Tories. the wilder shores of ultra-leftism and built close (and quite clutch of future Labour MPs, and several of our finest play - The WRP also abstained almost entirely from the strug - opportunist) relations with Labour left-wingers Ken Living - wrights. gle against the National Front, despite being the only far left stone and Ted Knight. During the miners’ strike it was close But if there are lessons to be drawn from the history group with a significant number of black members. to Arthur Scargill. of the WRP they are almost all negative and Mitchell is It carried out virtually no student work, and scorned Access to such nationally known figures helped it grow incapable of supplying them. women’s and gay liberation as diversions from the class slowly but steadily from 1981-4. The tactic adopted by a How Greek Trotskyism was born

who had split with the KKE in the early 1920s. Pouliopou - with Britain for economic reasons, and managed to hold off los and his group, which after December 1928 was publish - Italian invaders in 1940-1. In April 1941 Germany invaded. ing a journal called Spartacus , argued for the need to The KKE reacted with the social-patriotic slogan of “libera - Our reconstruct the KKE in accordance with ideas influenced by tion of the Nation from the foreign yoke”. Poulipoulos the Trotskyist International Left Opposition (ILO). called instead for a dual revolutionary struggle against the Movement However, the ILO believed that the KKE was not the most occupation and for the establishment of a workers’ and promising source of adherents to Trotskyism on account of peasants’ government in Greece. its shallow roots in the working class and particularly de - In 1938, after going into hiding, Poulipoulos had been ar - In an ongoing series, Liam McNulty pays tribute to some generated internal regime. The ILO passed over the Sparta - rested by the Metaxas dictatorship and imprisoned in of the heroes of revolutionary socialism. This week, he ex - cus group of Pouliopoulos to grant its franchise to the Acronauplia. He refused to kneel before the dictatorship or amines the political life of Greek Trotskyist leader Pan - Archeiomarxists, who were increasingly Trotskyist in orien - sign a declaration of repentance allowing him to flee abroad, delis Pouliopoulos. tation and were gaining influence in the trade unions. declaring that “they can only take me abroad in chains, and Pandelis Pouliopoulos (1900-43) was the first general evOennt6heJnuInwe i1ll9f4in3d, haewwaaystoerxeetcuurnte.”d by Italian occupa - secretary of the Greek Communist Party (KKE) and a CRIMINAL Spartacus refused to join with the Archeiomarxists. tion forces. In his final moments he delivered an inter - founder of the Trotskyist movement in Greece. However, the historic defeat of the German workers’ nationalist speech to his executioners, so that the firing squad rebelled and the officers had to shoot instead. As a young law student, Pouliopoulos joined the Social - movement in 1933, partly due to the criminal policies of ist Labour Party of Greece (SEKE), the forerunner to the the Stalinists, led Leon Trotsky to raise the banner of a KKE, in 1919. The following year he was conscripted to fight new Fourth International. in the Greek-Turkish war and was arrested in the final year At the same time, the Archeiomarxist leader Dimitris What is capitalism? of the conflict in 1922 for anti-war activity. Giotopoulos fell out with Trotsky and his group became af - In 1924 Pouliopoulos was KKE delegate to the Fifth Con - filiated with the centrist “London Bureau.” gress of the Comintern and later that year became general Can it last? The Pouliopoulos group fused with another tendency to secretary of the party. He came to prominence when, along form the Organisation of Internationalist Communists of with 23 others, he was tried in Athens and exiled for pro - A book of readings to ac - Greece (OKDE) in 1934. For a while Pouliopoulos, with Ray - moting the autonomy of Macedonia and Thrace. mond Molinier in France, opposed the foundation of a new company Ideas for As Stalinism tightened its grip over the Russian Commu - international, but in 1938 he took the initiative to unite the nist Party, the KKE suffered bureaucratic degeneration. In Greek Trotskyists to form the Unified Organisation of Com - Freedom 2012 March 1927, Pouliopoulos was removed from the Central munist Internationalists of Greece (EOKDE), which was Committee. He soon formed an oppositional journal Neo present at the founding of the Fourth International in Paris Xekinima (New Beginning ). With articles by Clive Bradley Stan Crooke, in September 1938. The journal moved in the direction of Trotskyism in the Harry Glass, Sean Matgamna, Theodora Karliaftis wrote: “With the unification Poulipoulos now period 1927-30. According to the Greek Trotskyist Loukas became the unquestioned leader of all the Trotskyists who Polenta, Daniel Randall, Maziar Razi, as well as Karliaftis (“Kostas Kastritis”) it “discredited the degener - remained loyal to the Fourth International, and he fought Frederick Engels, Karl Marx, Leon Trotsky, and ated leadership of the Stalinist KKE. It raised questions ceaselessly against all the social chauvinists who capitulated Max Shachtman. Edited by Cathy Nugent. about the great split between Stalin and Trotsky.” during the war.” However, Pouliopoulos “also fought against the particu - In World War Two, the “anti-fascist” Allies were repre - lar character of Archeiomarxism and its liquidatory work £5.00. Buy at tinyurl.com/iffbook sented in Greece by the fascist Metaxas government, which against the KKE.” The “Archeiomarxists” were a tendency proclaimed its ideological kinship with Hitler but sided 12 SOLIDARITY FEATURE December 1944: when Greek Stalinists murdered hundreds of Trotskyists

In December 1944, the Stalinists in Greece massacred sev - and replaced by self-consciously more “diplomatic” Comin - eral hundred Trotskyists, anarchists and other internation - form. Stalin agreed to give Churchill a free hand in Greece alist communists. In doing so they strangled the in exchange for greater Russian influence in other countries. revolutionary dynamic of the Greek movement against In April 1944, the Cairo government was entrusted to German occupation, paving the way for the conservative- Georgios Papandreou, who pressured the EAM leaders to led White Terror of 1945-6, which was backed by British sign the Lebanon Charter on 30 May, which denounced troops in Greece and led directly to the Greek Civil War ELAS “terrorism” and agreed to unite the Greek armed from March 1946. Liam McNulty looks at the background. forces under government control “alongside the Allied German forces invaded Greece on 6 April 1941. Athens troops.” fell by 27 April and, by the end of the month, the German The KKE was unhappy but a Soviet mission led by campaign claimed victory with the capture of Kalamata Colonel Popov pushed them into unconditional agreement. in the Peloponnese. With Churchill’s backing, Papandreou attempted to disarm ELAM on 2 December, provoking the resignation of the The Communist Party of Greece (KKE), like other Com - EAM ministers and a mass demonstration the following day munist Parties, had been in a state of confusion about its at - in Athens. The protesters in Syntagma Square were fired titude to the Nazis, in the period following the Nazi-Soviet upon by the police. More than 28 people were murdered Pact of August 1939. All that changed after the Nazis and at least 148 wounded. opened hostilities against the USSR with Operation Bar - During the consequent wave of struggle, known as the barossa on 22 June 1941. The KKE was ready to swing four- December Events (Dekemvrianá), fighters from EAM-ELAS square behind the Allied side. fought the Greek government and its British backers. On 27 September, the Seventh Plenum of the KKE formed Churchill, announcing that he was intervening against “tri - a popular front for the liberation of the country, the National umphant Trotskyism”, finally unleashed his plan to crush Liberation Front (EAM), along with a number of other the Greek revolution. minor parties. Lefteris Apostolou represented the KKE, with Christos Chomenidis from the Socialist Party (SKE), Ilias RUSSIANS Tsirimokos from the Union for People’s Democracy (ELD) Abiding by the Stalin-Churchill agreement, the Russians and Apostolos Voyiatzis from the Agricultural Party of told the KKE leaders to abide by the counter-revolution - Greece (AKE). ary doctrine of “national unity” and to hold off on at - On 10 October EAM published a social-patriotic mani - tacking the British. By February 1945, the Varkiza festo calling for the “liberation of the Nation from foreign agreement provided for the disarmament of all resist - yoke” and the “guaranteeing of the Greek people’s sover - ance forces. eign right to determine its form of government”. One ELAS leader, a member of the KKE Central Commit - However, as Pierre Broué has written: “This desire to tee, Aris Velouchiotis, denounced the agreement as a be - maintain a ‘united nation’ against the invader — when it trayal. He was isolated by the party who refused him was not united — and to ignore in silence the class sources permission to leave Greece, and he was assassinated on 16 of the popular opposition to the occupiers and to the mem - June by pro-government paramilitaries, possibly with KKE bers of the Greek bourgeoisie who collaborated with them, collusion. did not, however, succeed in preventing the workers and If revolutionaries had not suffered enough repression the poorest strata of the people from laying hold of the KKE headquarters in 1944 from the Axis occupation, the Greek government and British framework of the organisation which the KKE offered. They imperialism, they had the KKE to reckon with. instinctively used it to fight for their demands. The influx In a tragic mirroring of Stalinist conduct during the Span - of fighters gave a working class character to the EAM, by students and by wounded war veterans. ish Civil War (1936-9), the Stalinists backed the forces of which was doing so much to reject it.” On 15 March 1942 there were strikes in several cities, in - “order” despite having an influential position at the head By 1942, EAM had its own popular militia, the Greek cluding Athens, which were followed by a strike of 40,000 of a popular movement which revolutionary potential. Just People’s Liberation Army (ELAS). ELAS fought the Ger - civil servants led by Trotskyist militants. as in Spain, they also extended the methods of the Russian man, Italian and Bulgarian occupiers and in November 1942 On 25 June 1943 there was a general strike in Athens secret police to the conflict within the liberation movement, carried out one of the largest acts of sabotage in occupied against the execution of hostages by the occupation forces forming the Organization for the Protection of the People’s Europe during the Second World War when, along with the which saved 50 tramway workers who were sentenced to Struggle (OPLA), which was accountable directly to the National Republican Greek League (EDES) and British death for participation in the tram drivers’ strike two weeks Politburo of the KKE. Its ostensible role was to protect EAM agents, it attacked the Italian garrison and destroyed the earlier. and track down collaborators but it served a more sinister Gorgopotamos bridge. According to Broué: “By 1944 not only were wide rural purpose. Such spectaculars strengthened ELAS and it spread areas liberated, but the German troops lived under siege in Before and during the “December Events” the OPLA through the Greek countryside, including to territories such the cities, which they could only leave in guarded convoys. murdered revolutionary opponents of the KKE, particularly as Thessaly and Macedonia. During the winter of 1942-3, The ‘Red Belt’, the workers’ quarters around Athens, were Trotskyists, but also Archeiomarxists [a longstanding Greek large mountainous regions of central Greece passed from nothing less than fortresses of the armed people.” revolutionary group, briefly associated with the Trotskyist Axis control to ELAS and the EAM became the largest mass Despite this explosion of workers’ struggle, the KKE lead - opposition] and anarchists. “We killed more than 800 Trot - political organisation in Greek history, with 1.5 million ership of EAM denied the class character of the movement skyists”, boasted KKE Politbureau member Barzotas. In the members and 150,000 partisans. and insisted on its purely national basis. It announced that period before December, Loukas Karliaftis (“Kostas Kastri - By 10 March, EAM-ELAS controlled most of the country the “KKE supports by all possible means the struggle for tis”), the secretary of the united Trotskyist organisations, and established the Political Committee of National Liber - national liberation, and will do all in its power to help narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. Many more ation (PEEA), often referred to as “the Mountain Govern - gather all the patriotic forces into one unbreakable national were not so lucky. ment”, which rivalled both the Greek government-in-exile front, which will unite the whole people to shake off the for - Amongst those murdered by the Stalinists included the in Cairo and the collaborationist administration in Athens. eign yoke and to win national liberation at the side of our whole Archeoiomarxist group in Agrinio, and cadres from What gave EAM its base, which far exceeded that of the great Allies.” the Opposition faction of the KKE. According to the mem - small KKE, was the spontaneous mass movement of Greek oirs of the one-time Trotskyist Agis Stinas, they murdered workers and peasants which spread across the country dur - RULING CLASS The ruling-class had no such illusions in national unity. the leading Trotskyists Dimosthenis Voursoukis, a member ing the occupation. of the Organisation of International Communists (OKDE) Workers demonstrated in their thousands on 18 October Elements of the officer corps of the Greek government-in- and later of the International Communist Union (KDEE), 1941, the first anniversary of the initial Italian invasion, and exile in Cairo, under the protection of Winston Churchill, “one of the most devoted, active and competent militants, throughout the winter and the following spring were joined grouped together their own forces, linked to the military hi - and one of the best trained, an escaper from [the prisoner of erarchy and the secret services, and organised a counter-at - war camp] Acronauplia.” More on our website: tack. They tried to organise non-Communist nationalist Broué writes that “throughout the country OPLA agents guerillas to fight the Axis forces and also hoped to under - abducted, tortured and murdered such militants as Stavros Stalinists smear AWL on mine ELAS. One British Special Operations Executive, Veroukhis, the Secretary of the Association of the War agent, Eddie Myers, recorded being told by his superiors in Wounded, and Thanassis Ikonomou, former Secretary of the Palestine: an exchange of letters April 1943 that “the Cairo authorities consider that after the Communist Youth at Ghazi. Workers, dockers, metal work - liberation of Greece, civil war is almost inevitable.” ers and teachers all suffered alike.” On 22 May, the Morning Star , newspaper of the rump- That year Ioannis Rallis, who was in close contact with The murder of genuine revolutionaries by the Stalinist Stalinist Communist Party of Britain, printed a review of the British secret service, became the Prime Minister of oc - forces during the Greek struggle for liberation was the hor - Colin Shindler’s book Israel and the European left . The cupied Greece, and with British help took steps to curb the rific extension of the KKE’s counter-revolutionary policies, review included an attack in passing on the AWL, resulting popular movement. It was with these forces, backed by which saw it betray the struggle against capitalism and im - in an exchange of letters. The attacks on us are clearly British imperialism, that the KKE sought “unity”. perialism. attempts to hide the real dividing lines on the left through In October 1944 Stalin held talks with Churchill at the Long transformed into an instrument of Kremlin political smear tactics. Judge for yourself at: Fourth Moscow Conference, where they reached the cynical diplomatic intrigue, the Stalinists in Greece confirmed www.workersliberty.org/node/19045 “percentages agreement” to divide spheres of influence in their role as border guards for the new Russian empire the region. The Comintern had been dissolved in May 1943 and the ‘“syphilis of the working class movement.” SOLIDARITY 13 LEFT

Songs of Liberty Debating the SWP on Egypt? & Rebellion and the youth that follow the MB that they should be pur - suing a resolute struggle against the army and old regime. The MB took a turn after the book Signposts , by Sayyid Qutb, was published in the mid-60s. They stopped seeing The Left the only enemy as imperialism, and attacked the local state Global, directly. Thousands of young radicals were inspired. By Mark Osborn AWL: Yes, but inspired to do what, exactly? You are relat - ing to them like they were the Labour Party, which is ab - impersonal, surd. They are no sort of working-class or social-democratic AWL activists have been leafleting SWP meetings to try party. to engage SWP members over their organisation’s support SWP: Your argument has become even weaker as the mil - uncaring, for a vote for the Muslim Brotherhood in the Egyptian itary have begun to move against the Brothers and against presidential elections. Generally we found SWP members democracy. Socialists defend the MB against the military unwilling to discuss. If a debate had taken place it might and defend the right of the MB to take power after winning ruthless and have looked like this. a majority in an election. Let’s put them to the test. When SWP: Fundamentally you are sectarians. You intend to the MB take people out onto the streets in self-defence we turn your backs on the mass of workers who are fol - must be with them, against the military. Or would you stand lowing the Muslim Brothers. on the sidelines while the military take full control again? divisive but... AWL : If big, popular mobilisations against the military The Brothers got 10 million votes in the parliamentary threat take place, led by the MB, socialists would take part. elections in December 2011. Yes, the leaders are well-off, but We’d intervene, organise our own contingents; organise our Fragile the rank and file are workers. In the Suez industrial area, for own initiatives. Attempt to rally the workers and poor not example, the big majority of workers voted for the Brothers just against the military but for democracy, women’s and or the salafist party Nour. We need to win the workers and workers’ rights. We would aim to rally people not just against the military, but for positive, socialist demands. Global. to do that we need to get close to them, link up with them SWP: And you fail to understand the potentially anti-im - A machine that will not sway in its quest, our daily and talk to them. perialist role of Islamism. The Iranian Islamists took control lives to control. AWL: Get close to them and link up? You’re addressing of the US embassy. The Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Capitalist society has become a monolithic empire, in this as an organisational matter, as if all we need is a bus Palestine have played a key role in the armed struggle control of all of our thoughts. ticket to Alexandria. Talk to them? Of course, but what against Israel. The Algerian FIS organised huge demonstra - A construct of enormous proportions, computed, should we say? tions against the first US war against Iraq. controlled by We shouldn’t “follow the workers” irrespective of what AWL: Before coming to power Khomeini said he was for ones and by noughts. “the workers” are actually doing. We don’t want to “ignore” the workers who follow the Brothers, but it is necessary to democracy, women’s rights as well as against imperialism. He destroyed democracy and trampled on women’s free - Impersonal. tell workers the truth: this party will lead you to a disaster! dom. A machine that will not sway in its quest, our daily Workers have their own interests, distinct from the right- lives to control. wing religious sectarian, pro-market millionaires and pro - KILL fessionals who run the Brotherhood. Capitalism, an alienated system of profit, of greed and Anti-imperialism is not enough. You need to know what By endorsing the Brothers you are turning your backs on of war, has but one single desire. a political group is for. You fail to understand the other workers — those who are rightly alarmed by the For profiteering and accumulation, the only things able counter-revolutionary role of Islamism. These forces Brothers as well as women, Christians, young liberals, trade to stoke the insatiable fire. will smash us and kill us if they can. unionists and leftists and everyone who is for democracy! Uncaring. The MB’s support peaked in December 2011, millions have SWP: The job is also to relate to the radicals amongst the A machine that will not sway in its quest, our daily turned away from them – our job is to encourage that flow Islamists. In the Prophet and the Proletariat (1994) the SWP’s lives to control. towards us. Chris Harman wrote, “As with any ‘petty bourgeois utopia’ “I am not a worker” he indignantly claimed, “I’m part SWP: If you fail to back a vote for the Brothers you will its supporters are faced with a choice between heroic but fu - of the management team. never get a hearing from the many millions that still follow tile attempts to impose it in opposition to those who run ex - I’m valued, respected and highly regarded, I am the them. We have not dropped a single criticism of them. That isting society, or compromising with them, providing an cream of the cream.” is not necessary. We have made no political concession. ideological veneer to continuing oppression and exploita - AWL: Advocating a vote for them is a political concession! tion. It is this which leads inevitably to splits between a rad - Ruthless It means taking some responsibility for them. At some level ical, terrorist wing of Islamism on the one hand, and a A machine that will not sway in its quest, our daily you are recommending them to the workers. reformist wing on the others...” lives to control. COMMON AWL: So Harman thought that the radicals, involved in Capital is happy all the while it maintains that, “We are You say they are “not the counter-revolution”, but “the armed “resistance” were automatically closer to us than the all in this together”. right wing of the revolution”. You advocate that the left reformist Islamists? Hasn’t this nonsense been ended by But it jettisons anyone who gets in the way when and MB agree on a common immediate programme. 9/11? hitting economic stormy weather. This is another example of the SWP becoming mes - SWP: They are preferable to the tired, corrupt old regime. merised by “militancy” rather than asking what a particu - Is that not true? Our slogan is the old communist one: lar political force positively stands for. Look at Hamas — “march separately, and strike together”. the Brothers’ sister party — in Gaza. Sure, they oppose the AWL: That useful idea is rewritten by you as “march be - Israeli government — but in their own way, for their own re - hind, help them strike for what they want”. actionary reasons. In Gaza they have smashed unions, up - “March separately; strike together” is the idea behind the rooted secularism, enforced backward dress codes on workers’ united front. It is a joke to use it here, now, with the women, created a one-party religious state. The Islamists’ clerical right-wing MB! During the election campaign they revolution against the state and imperialism is both partial presented themselves as pro-market, overtly Islamic, de - and — more to the point — against us (the left, the unions, vout. women, religious minorities, lesbians and gay men) too. SWP: Well, what do you expect? Most Egyptians are de - SWP: Yes but, as Harman also said, “On some issues we vout. Simply denouncing religious parties and Islam will will find ourselves on the same side as the Islamists against get you nowhere. We need to be sensitive to religious sensi - imperialism and the state. This was true, for instance, in bilities. The MB is the right wing of those people who want many countries during the second Gulf War. It should be to continue the revolution against the old regime. Given the true in countries like France or Britain when it comes to choice of only two candidates a vote for them is a rough ex - combating racism. Where the Islamists are in opposition, pression of opposition to the old regime. We have to relate our rule should be, ‘with the Islamists sometimes, with the to that. Moreover the attempted on-going “slow” coup by state never’”. the army makes this more important. Right now, on the AWL: This is sloppy. If the fascists attack a mosque, for streets, it is: for the military? Or for democracy and the peo - example, the socialist left will be with the Muslim self-de - ple’s choice, the Brothers? fence. It might be necessary to conclude a practical agree - AWL: What about “for the revolution?” The Brothers sat ment with the Mosque leaders — even Islamists — to that Divisive. on the sidelines while the youth fought in the streets against end. However, we are never “with the Islamists” in politics A machine that will not sway in its quest, our daily Mubarak. The political benefits of that fight have, unfortu - or ideas. lives to control. nately, fallen into their laps. The aim of socialist activity is to And by the way, Harman also wrote this: “But socialists But… make workers’ liberty a possibility and a political collapse cannot give support to the Islamists either. That would be to in front of people who are hostile to workers’ liberty will call for the swapping of one form of oppression for another, Fragile. not do that. to react to the violence of the state by abandoning the de - Because it will only exist for as long as we allow it, our No-one advocates headlines on all socialist propaganda: fence of ethnic and religious minorities, women and gays, to daily lives to control. “Down with Islam!” Equally, we are secular Marxists, and it collude in scapegoating that makes it possible for capitalist There exists a real alternative to this unfair economic would be better if you remembered that and were more cau - exploitation to continue unchecked providing it takes ‘Is - paradigm. tious about your political bedfellows. lamic’ forms. It would be to abandon the goal of independ - Overthrow existing order and rid ourselves of divisive Let’s accept that the Brothers are “making a revolution”. ent socialist politics, based on workers in struggle ugly crime. This is their revolution, which is both against the army, and organising all the oppressed and exploited behind them, for Robert Ford simultaneously against us — the left, the workers, the fem - a tail-ending of a petty bourgeois utopianism which cannot inists. evSeno seuvcecneeHdairnmitasnowansteargmasin.”st what the SWP is saying (Robert Ford is an activist and poet based in south SWP: Reformists always compromise and often let others now! west London) do their fighting. We must be there to point out to the poor

14 SOLIDARITY REPORTS Firefighters discuss Wins for Tube workers cuts battles

By Ollie Moore sion) permanently even if feel that Charlie has been on Transport for London By Jack Bradley they are displaced into a badly let down. His union will strike for one day dates for action, which Workers in various Lon - lower grade. has not run much of a starting with the night some brigades pushed don transport companies The Fire Brigades Union for. A service control RMT campaign, in contrast to shifts on Sunday 1 July, as (FBU) met in Blackpool and grades are planning rep told Solidarity , “Service the successful RMT cam - TfL refuses to pay an The conference had one industrial action as union last week for what (with international debate, on control workers across paigns last year which Olympic bonus to many one exception) was a efforts bring long-run - London Underground won the reinstatement of staff and is restricting an - whether to sever ties with ning demands to a head. fairly quiescent special the Israeli trade union have shown our solidarity Eamonn Lynch, Arwyn nual leave. conference, with the and support to each other Thomas and others.” The union is also ballot - federation Histadrut, aris - RMT London Under - union’s Executive Coun - by gaining a tremendous With just a month until ing members on First ing from last year’s con - ground service control cil carrying all the mo - victory against hostile LU the Olympics start, talks Great Western, Greater An - ference. Delegates voted members (signal operators, tions it proposed. management, in winning between transport employ - glia, South West Trains, the narrowly for the execu - line controllers, etc) have what must be a once-in-a- ers and unions have London Cycle Hire tive’s recommendation to won some important de - Delegates discussed the lifetime guarantee of earn - reached end-game; it is Scheme, three cleaning continue to critically en - mands for job security, and continued loss of front - ings protection. time to either fight for companies (ISS, Initial and gage with Histadrut, a planned three-day strike line firefighter jobs – over more or accept what is on Carlisle) and two engineer - which includes Israeli will not now go ahead. a thousand a year — and DEMANDS offer. ing contractors for strike firefighters. The resolu - The company intended to the impact these would “There can be no doubt action to demand a decent tion also endorsed a pol - use the opening of the new have on emergency fire that London Under - BONUSES offer for working arrange - icy of two states for two Hammersmith Service cover in local communi - ground saw no alterna - RMT has reached agree - ments and financial re - peoples, which the FBU Control Centre in 2015 as a ties. There are a number tive but to give in to our ment with several com - ward during the Olympics. has backed before. pretext to keep the staff of local disputes brewing demands when they re - panies, which will see Janine Booth, London Clearly this is a victory they wanted and ditch over cuts. The union an - alised that their man - members receive Transport region represen - those they did not, and to nounced dates for five for class politics and con - agers could not the bonuses of several hun - tative on RMT’s National reshape the service control strikes in Essex, starting sistent democracy over skilled jobs that mem - dreds of pounds or Executive, said, “After function in a way that un - from 28 June in a long- the anti-Jewish revan - bers do on a daily basis more. years of privatisation, the dermines effective trade running dispute about chism of the boycotters. when we announced a transport industry and its unionism. RMT demanded Some include agreed cuts to the service. three-day strike.” workforce are fragmented. POLARISED — and won — protection changes to working The threat from privati - “But RMT is looking at The most polarised of career paths, lifetime Meanwhile, ASLEF has arrangements, others (such sation and “mutuals” was co-ordinating these dis - debate concerned inter - protection of earnings and abandoned its fight for the as London Underground) also debated. Parts of the putes, which will give us nal union reorganisa - union agreement to staff reinstatement of Piccadilly preserve agreements). fire service, such as the unity and power, and we tion. movements. Service con - line driver Charlie Sav - But London Under - London control room and support and feel boosted trol staff will now keep vides, who London Under - ground could still face in - its fire appliances have al - The FBU has been by Unite’s action on Lon - ready been privatised. their rate of pay (and pen - ground sacked after he dustrial action during the squeezed by falling mem - don buses too. But profiteers are cir - made a driving error. A Games, as RMT ballots “With the revolting bership, although its den - cling for the Fire Service planned one-day strike on members to refuse to co- spectacle of corporate sity remains high. The College and setting up the line would have been operate with the com - snouts in the Olympic executive proposed re - mutuals to fragment the Bus pickets supported by members of pany’s disastrous policy of trough, transport work - ducing employed staff, service in Humberside RMT as well as ASLEF, but counting “ICSAs” (admin ers deserve decent com - facility time and other the Society called it off for staff in high-visibility pensation for the hard and Cleveland. The union confront is launching a campaign measures mainly affect - what seems to be a rela - vests) towards the mini - work and demands of ing the top bureaucracy tively small payout for mum number of staff re - Games, without having to defend a publicly of the union. Charlie. A Piccadilly line quired to be on duty on a to sacrifice hard-won owned and democrati - This included removing scabs driver told Solidarity , station for it to stay open working conditions.” cally controlled fire serv - the women, black and “Most drivers on the line safely. And RMT members ice. By an FE worker, south Pay and pensions were LGBT reps from the exec - London also debated. Fire service utive. Whilst the changes employers have refused do reduce equality voices On 22 June hardly any GMB in blacklist challenge to make a pay offer in re - on the top table and votes students made it into cent years, effectively im - in regional and brigade the college I work at posing the pay freeze. committees,they do not workers containing infor - because of the strike. The FBU is slightly out of affect equality commit - mation that could only synch with other unions tees, schools or other ac - I went down to my have come from the police on pensions, having had tivities. local picket line during or other security services. The conference voted smaller contribution in - my lunch break; it was Meanwhile, GMB mem - for the measures to en - creases in April and with the best picket line I’ve bers at a hospital in Swin - sure the FBU survives still-ongoing negotiations ever been to. There were don (pictured) are as an independent, in - By Stewart Ward construction industry. around the final scheme, at least 40 there when I continuing a dispute dustrial union. Some which have not finished. delegates argued that went, and apparently it The case is part of a agWaionsrkt eCrasrihllaiovne. so far The GMB union has The conference voted the changes damaged was much bigger earlier. wider labour movement taken 20 days of strike There was a very lively launched a landmark campaign on the issue, for national strike action the union’s democracy legal challenge against action in a battle over on both issues if accept - atmosphere and people blown open by the revela - management bullying. and equality represen - were willing to try and contractor Carillion, tion in January 2012 that able settlements were not tation. stop the scab-driven after evidence emerged the shadowy “Consulting reached, but did not set that it had been involved buses that were coming Association”, a data col - • For more on the back - in large-scale blacklist - out. There were some at - lection company used by ground to the blacklisting ing of trade union ac - Uni staff strike for decent pay tempts to block them, numerous construction in - issue, see bit.ly/NGWC7F tivists in the people shouted "traitors" dustry contractors, was and bit.ly/Op0CMy at the drivers and they holding files on over 3,000 opened the bus doors to By Darren Bedford increasing from £22.3 mil - properly argue with lion to £27 million last Unite in pro- Support workers at the them. Doctors consider next steps year. Support staff, many University of Birming - People I spoke to were of whom earn as little as ham struck for two days positive about how the Europe vote £13,000 per year, are al - in Scotland were affected last week as librarians, day had gone and were The policy conference of ready second-class citi - by the action, where 3,650 technicians, admin staff, confident that they will the Unite union has zens at the university – procedures were can - and other workers be out again. We’re en - passed a motion sup - receiving only 6 months’ celled. fought for a decent pay tering a dispute over re - porting European unity sick pay entitlement (com - The BMA’s annual con - increase. dundancies at my ference, currently taking and opposing calls for pared to a full year for ac - ademic staff). college, but staff there place in Bournemouth, Britain to withdraw from Unison, the workers’ Unison official Dawn have little history of tak - By Ruben Lomas will discuss the effective - the EU. union, says that they have Sant said: “Support staff ingThaectibouns. strike was ness of the action and suffered real-terms pay Although far from per - are absolutely vital. If aca - important because all Over 1,000 operations plan the association’s cuts every year since 2009 fect, the motion represents demics didn't have their our staff saw the im - and 7,000 appointments next steps. as pay deals have failed to A spokeswoman said: a defeat for the Stalinists support to help with stu - pact it had, so it were cancelled on keep pace with inflation. “We have always been who were pushing for the dents, or the management, showed them what can Thursday 21 June, as It is the first strike by willing to return to talks, union to take a left-nation - then the place would sim - happen when workers industrial action by the support staff at the uni - but it is the Government alist position on the Euro - ply grind to a halt. take action. British Medical Associ - versity for 20 years. Uni - “Support staff work that has failed to return pean question. ation (BMA) made an to the table to negotiate The conference also versity bosses want to shifts and work long impact. on the detail of the pen - saw a heated debate on increase support staff’s hours, so it is only right • More on bus strike: the union’s relation to the pay by just 1.9%, despite they get the pay they 60% of GPs’ surgeries sion changes.” back page Labour Party. the university’s surplus deserve.”

SOLIDARITY 15 Spanish miners are striking S&oWloirkdersa’ Lirbeirtty y for us all By John Cunningham, Spanish Miners’ Solidarity Committee (personal capacity)

After a serious of localised industrial actions, Spanish coal miners, in the main mining regions of Asturias and Castile and León, went on indefinite strike on 29 May. This is their response to the announcement by the right wing government of Mariano Rajoy that sub - sidies to the coal mining regions will be massively cut, in effect announcing his intention to close down the industry. The cuts mean the end of the remaining 8,000 miners’ jobs, with another 30,000 jobs affected indirectly. Many of the mining communities, particularly in the mountainous border region between Asturias and Castile and León, where they are geographically very isolated, will be wiped out. The miners’ unions, the Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) and the Union General de Trajabadores (UGT), are united London bus strike: in their response, and the strike is 100% solid, energeti - cally supported by their communities. Even the local po - lice seem friendly. Groups of miners at Candín, Santa Cruz, and elsewhere, “About more than the Olympics” have organised “stay down” strikes or in some localities occupied the local government offices. There have been numerous demonstrations by and in support of the miners An east London bus time. If I’m stuck in traffic transport. Our workload years I was never involved and “piquetes” have regularly blocked various motorways driver spoke to Solidarity on Oxford Street at my fin - has gone up and our in strike action. If you’d in the region. about the London-wide ishing time, I can’t just bosses are making more have said to me during The Government has sent in the loathed Civil Guard, strike (22 June) for leave the bus. money. those fourteen years that who appear to be totally ineffective in responding to the bonuses for Olympics At my garage, our staff Transport for London is bus workers could come miners’ hit and run guerrilla tactics. On occasions they working. parking has been taken desperate to make as much out and strike, I wouldn’t have turned their anger and frustrations on ordinary vil - away, which makes it very revenue as they can, so have believe you. This strike is about much But once you’ve done lagers. On one occasion they fired rubber bullets into a difficult for us to get to they’ve got revenue in - more than the Olympics. it, you know it can be group of mothers and their children gathered outside a work, especially if we’re spectors on buses really The Olympics bonus is done. village school. on an early start. If we live scrutinising people’s tick - the immediate issue, but On 18 June the miners’ unions called a regional general any distance from the ets. As drivers, we only get people voted yes to this Flying pickets cause strike which was strongly supported in both Asturias and garage, and we can’t drive a flash of a travel card or a strike because we’re fed Castile and León. A few days later the women of the min - to work because there’s ticket, so we can’t be ex - rush-hour chaos up with the attacks ing regions descended on the Senate building in Madrid nowhere to park, how are pected to catch all the peo - we’ve faced over the On the morning of and faced off politicians and police in a stormy confronta - we supposed to get in at ple who are travelling on past few years. Wednesday 27 June, tion. On Friday 22 June over a hundred miners set off on a three in the morning? expired or invalid tickets. Unite activists mounted “Black March” to Madrid, where they will eventually We’ve had our Sunday People are saying that Revenue inspectors get a flying pickets at six camp out in front of the government buildings. working payments re - this strike is last-minute, good long look, and then garages across London. This could be a long strike, and for the Spanish miners duced. We’ve had attacks but it’s not; negotiations book the drivers for failing to win it is essential that they receive our support. This is on our working time. It have been going on for to catch it! It’s all about The garages were oper - not a small localised dispute. The Spanish miners are the used to be you were enti - nine months, so manage - generating as much money ated by companies which first major group of workers in the whole of Europe to go tled to a ninety-minute ment has had nearly a year as they can, even if it injuncted the strike. on indefinite strike against the neo-liberal austerity meas - paid meal break, and if to sort this issue out. means penalising workers. The pickets completely ures being inflicted on millions across the continent. you came back late you Bosses are using the re - This strike has shown shut the garages down, Nor should it be forgotten that in the British miners’ could still take it. That’s cession as a cover to attack people that we can come and no buses ran between strike of 1984-5 Spanish miners were generous in the ex - gone now; if you come us, but it’s not as if we’re together and take action. 6-8am. The message to bus treme with their support and solidarity. It is now time to back late, your meal break workers in a factory where That in itself will give peo - bosses was: if you pre - stand shoulder to shoulder with them. gets knocked off. production has dropped ple confidence. People are vent your workers from To this end a Spanish Miners’ Solidarity Committee Finishes are getting later because of an economic prepared to dig in over exercising their demo - (SMSC) has been formed in the UK by ex-miners and other and later. It’s not like collapse. People are actu - this one and we see it as a cratic right to strike, activists and trade unionists. The Honorary Chair is Ian working in an office or a ally using the bus more key into the wider issues. we’ll prevent your buses Lavery, the ex-National President of the NUM and now a factory, where you can just during the recession, be - I’ve worked here for 16 from moving. Labour MP; the work of the committee is also supported walk away at finishing cause it’s a cheaper form of years, and for the first 14 by the Justice for Mineworkers Campaign and Chris Kitchen, the present National Secretary of the NUM. The RMT has announced its support, along with the TUC Gen - eral Council, and among many messages of support has been one from filmmaker Ken Loach. Two members of the SMSC visited Spain very recently Hospitals go to discuss how help could be best organised and to spread the message that the Spanish miners are not standing alone. The SMSC has been recognised by the CCOO and UGT, and a bank account is in the process of being set up, bust able to channel funds to the striking miners and their fam - The NHS Liaison Network is working for the maximum ilies. It is hoped that a delegation of striking miners will be coordination of campaigning efforts on the NHS. able to visit the UK shortly. It was launched at a meeting on 21 March attended by 80 Please help support the Spanish miners by sending a do - By Gerry Bates Many other Trusts and people, including key NHS campaigners. nation to the solidarity fund. At the moment we can only hospitals will find them - The Network has taken the initiative in calling a lobby of accept cheques; please make these out to “Spanish Miners’ South London Health - selves or have already got Labour Party conference on Sunday 30 September. A Solidarity Committee”and send them to: John Cunning - care NHS Trust has be - in the same position — planning meeting for the Lobby, open to all, is on Saturday 7 ham (SMSC), 136 Regent Court, Bradfield Road, Sheffield come the first NHS trust “financially unviable”. July, at 3.30pm, at Unite HQ, 128 Theobalds Road, Holborn, S6 2BW, South Yorkshire. As soon as bank details are fi - to be placed in “special In the case of South London WC1X 8TN. Please join us! nalised the Committee will publicise these as widely as measures” after racking London Healthcare Trust possible giving all the necessary information for you to up a deficit of £150 mil - this is the result of having make donations on a regular basis, including taking out lion. The Trust will now to service the huge costs LOBBY OF LABOUR PARTY standing orders. be run by insolvency ad - of Private Finance Initia - This is a monumental dispute. The Spanish miners ministrators who will be tive schemes. CONFERENCE and their families must not be starved into submis - free to impose “what - If the government does Sunday 30 September sion. ever it takes” to get the not bail out these hospi - Trust back in the black. tals the NHS will no Demand Labour rebuild the NHS! That means cuts in longer be able to provide 2.30pm. Meet at the central entrance to the services. a cHoemapltrhehaecntsivivisetse,rtvraicdee. convention complex, Peter Street, Trafford General in unionists and socialists Manchester, M2 3GX Manchester is to close be - need to sound the cause managers say its fi - alarm. More details: [email protected] / tel. 07904 944 771 nances are “unviable”. • More on pages 8-9