Green AllianceA forG Green SocialismS Socialist CUTS WELFARE Welfare Reform Bill The Riots The Banking Crisis BP’s Gulf Disaster Issue No. 57 Winter 2011 ISSN 1741-5497 £1.00 Journal of the Alliance for Green Socialism Gordon www.greensocialist.org.uk McLennan Green Socialist is published by the Alliance for Green Socialism Editor Bryn Glover Editorial correspondence to: The Editor, Green Socialist, NEA 5794, Leeds LS7 3YY E-mail: [email protected] www.greensocialist.org.uk/ . The AGS is a political alliance seeking to build a future based on the twin principles of socialism and environmental sustainability - we see these two things as being inextricably linked, each being impossible without the other. If you share our concerns and our principles, if you care about the future of our planet and about social justice for all who live on it, then why not join us? Membership details are on page 9. Issue No. 57 - Autumn 2011 Issue 58 Issue 58 will be on the subject of the realities of In this issue Global Warming, contrasted with the chances of a better way of life under Green Socialism. If you have any thoughts on the matter that you Welfare Reform Bill would like to share with our other readers, please get in touch with the editor at any of the addresses Baroness Turner 3 given above. BP’s Gulf Disaster Cover Photomontage for Issue 57 by Chris Bird Mike Davies 5 The Banking Crisis Mike Pugh 6 Letters 7 The Riots Garth Frankland 10 Gordon McLennan Steve Radford 11 Book Review 13 ...and finally 14 Articles in this journal do not necessarily reflect the policy of the Alliance for Green Socialism unless specifically stated. page 1 Editorial by Bryn Glover ne mantra that Cameron, Clegg, Osborne and this radical, far-left, egalitarian, Socialist leader whose the rest of them used to spout as they policy actually provided for the lowest paid in society O introduced their spending cuts was along the the best percentage deal they had seen in decades? Why lines of “We’re all in this together”. none other than tory Ted Heath! Let’s see, shall we? [If you earned, say, £10 a week, then the policy allowed Across the entire public sector, the first year of cuts has a rise to £11 + 33p, which equals a total of 13.3%. seen massive job loss which, for our leaders’ Whereas an earner on £100 got £101 + £3.01, which information, equals drastic drops in income, and pay equalled a rise of just 4.01% ] freezes for those lucky enough to retain their already The other historical lesson would seem to be in the below average paid jobs. The next and subsequent years origin of Supersalaries. They were partly in response to will see yet more of the same except that the annual cuts Supertax which hit the high 90%s. Companies knowing will probably prove to be even bigger. that their top earners would retain only a few pennies in Across the private sector, which as we would like to the pound from the highest portions of their salaries, remind Clameregg, was supposed to “take up the slack” boosted these salaries to give worthwhile net rises, and by providing extra employment, there have also been perceived the Supertax as actually a form of hidden net job losses, as well as an average, across the board, corporation tax. However, when Thatcher began the half-inflation pay increase of just about 2.6%. process of slashing Supertax rates, there never was any sign of accompanying gross salary reductions to match, Oh, but there have been a couple of tiny niggling and now we have the obscene situation where not only exceptions to the above. As announced in an end-of- do individuals receive pay rates grossly in excess of any October report from Incomes Data Services, (IDS), not sense of their worth but they are clamouring for - and only have the numbers of top managerial posts actually getting - ever more. increased in various places, but average income amongst Directors and Executives and equivalent has If the country is in as big a plight as Osborne asserts, risen by 49% in the last twelve months alone. and if we are really all in this together, then surely a universal, rather than a But on top of that and with a Average income amongst Directors selective-on-the-poor income staggering lack of self- freeze would be called for. awareness, the new head of the and Executives and equivalent has Institute of Directors, in his risen by 49% in the last twelve There is also another tactic inaugural speech joined in the months alone. Osborne might apply, if only siren call for, amongst other he could understand it. The things, a scrapping of the 50% top rate of income tax, shambles which is tax evasion (£25 billion so far this because, apparently, it serves as a serious disincentive year being pursued by inspectors, let alone all that for his members. which they are ignoring, as against a cuts programme of about one third of that) is one area for radical action. All this makes Chris Bird’s cartoon sitting adjacent to this sentence seem hopelessly understated. Various leading capitalists and churchpersons have called for a tax on financial transactions, which the The top earners would counter these assertions by AGS supports. saying that the pay increases they have received this year are roughly at parity with those of their workers. Personally I think a better tactic might be to introduce a This is disingenuous, which is a polite way of calling taxation system based upon the exponential function, them liars. A typical CEO would have a remuneration rising steeply and continuously with income. Such a package which comprises as many as six different system would eliminate tax bands, with their poverty elements, such as share options, devised by the crooks traps, and would tax every single pound of taxable and criminals employed by their lawyers and income at an ever increasing rate. It could even tax accountants. Some even claim not fully to understand footballers on £1million a month up to an appropriate the full nature of some of the scams from which they level. I myself favour 99.9p in the pound! benefit, but quite rightly, the IDS has counted every Such measures of course are merely palliative, intended element, not just the simple basic salary. to lessen the intense burden that capitalism dumps on Cameron etc wring their hands and call pathetically for those in society least able to bear it. Radical surgery is greater responsibility in the Board Room, obviously the only long-term solution, but to pursue the analogy, implying that there is nothing they as a Government can as any paramedic might tell you, until that surgery can do about it. Perhaps a small history lesson would be in come about then appropriate and well-applied first-aid order. Back in the nineteen-seventies, the Prime can be a life saver. Minister of the time introduced a pay policy which applied to every individual in the country. It stated that it would be unlawful for anyone to increase any of their Join us ! See Page 9 earnings by more than £1 per week plus 3%. Who was page 2 The Welfare Reform Bill by Baroness Turner of Camden Before she became a Life Peer, Baroness Turner of Camden was the Assistant General Secretary of ASTMS. She was also a member of the TUC General Council, the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Occupational Pensions Board. She speaks frequently in the House of Lords on employment and welfare issues and was for ten years a Deputy Speaker in that House. he Bill has aroused great concern among These problems are not resolved by shrinking the the organisations active for the disabled. public sector, hoping that the resultant job losses T Many fear that the conditionality tests will be made up by the private sector, and relying imposed will make it more difficult for them to on voluntary organisations operating in the so- qualify for the benefit they need. It is clear that the called Big Society. A Government genuinely Government intends to get as many off benefit and committed to fairness and with respect for what into work as they can, although many believe that previous generations have achieved is what is this will result in their ultimately losing benefits required. The voluntary organisations never without which living will be very difficult. The referred to by the Prime Minister are the Trade Bill is currently under discussion in the House of Unions. Lords, and many of the concerns of these Our present Prime Minister frequently tells us that vulnerable people are being raised. we are living in a “broken society”. His The very young also face cuts. The recent riots Conservative predecessor, Lady Thatcher, have attracted much comment from those who famously declared that “there is no such thing as share the Prime Minister’s view about a “broken society, only men, women and families”. Neither society”. One should not of course condone the has any knowledge of, or respect for the struggles scary and unacceptable violence of the larsonists of previous generations resulting in the creation of and looters, most of whom were very young men. our Welfare Society. But we should be concerned that nearly half of At the beginning of the last century women really those arrested were under were second-class citizens, the age of eighteen and There is a strong feeling that the with no right to vote, were clearly alienated.