So& Wloirkdersa’ Lirbeirtty y No 214 24 August 2011 30p/80p For a workers’ government

Ban the EDL? 1911: Liverpool The religion of the page 3 on strike page 8-9 Socialist Party pages 11-12 Post-riot clampdown on working-class youth OPPOSE THIS CLASS-HATE BLITZ See page 5

More socialist ideas and labour movement news online: www.workersliberty.org NEWS

What is the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty? Libya: the return of hope

Today one class, the working class, lives by selling From back page workers’ rights. gogue on the British left and its annihilation, it is its labour power to another, the capitalist class, But in fact the funda - will ever have to face. irresponsible and morally which owns the means of production. Society Outright support for Qaddafi is confined to a mental lesson of Libya — Workers’ Liberty be - degenerate to simply de - is shaped by the capitalists’ relentless drive to marginal fringe of sects,. as with all the heroic and lieves that a people staring mand that it ceases, or to increase their wealth. Capitalism causes inspiring uprisings we down the wrong end of a oppose it ever taking poverty, unemployment, the blighting of lives by For most of the far-left, have see in the Middle state-sanctioned massacre place. We believe that the overwork, imperialism, the destruction of the the intervention of NATO East and North Africa this have the right to call for gains of the uprising vin - environment and much else. in Libya cancelled out the year — is that no ruling assistance, even from im - dicate that view. Against the accumulated wealth and power of the genuine democratic con - class is unbeatable. Those perialist powers. It is not What now? At this capitalists, the working class has one weapon: solidarity. tent of the Libyan upris - on the left have no busi - for us, from the safety of stage, when much still The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty aims to build solidarity ing. To argue that NATO ness ignoring, marginalis - Britain, to sanctimoniously hangs in the balance in through struggle so that the working class can overthrow somehow engineered or ing or misrepresenting the condemn as insufficiently Libya, and at this distance, capitalism. We want socialist revolution: collective ownership orchestrated the Libyan political will of the Libyan “anti-imperialist” the our main job is to support of industry and services, workers’ control and a democracy uprising is a form of “anti- people who organised to Libyans who demanded any elements struggling much fuller than the present system, with elected imperialism” based on a overthrow a tyrant. NATO intervention, such for the maximum democ - representatives recallable at any time and an end to cynical, nihilistic de - The NATO intervention as the thousands of racy and the maximum bureaucrats’ and managers’ privileges. featism. If American impe - helped them by prevent - women who demon - freedom. rialism is so all-powerful ing the crushing of the up - strated in Benghazi in If working-class organi - We fight for the labour movement to break with “social and all-pervading that it rising at a critical point. early March. sation is our starting partnership” and assert working-class interests militantly can conjure up a mass That is a good thing. But We know imperialism point, then the fundamen - against the bosses. movement in a foreign this victory does not be - will only act in its own in - tal question must be Our priority is to work in the workplaces and trade unions, country entirely at will, long to NATO, who inter - terests, and if and when it whether that organisation supporting workers’ struggles, producing workplace bulletins, then surely it is unbeat - vened for their own intervenes it will do so is more or less possible, helping organise rank-and-file groups. able? Of course the many reasons. It belongs to the using its own, blundering, easier or harder, without We are also active among students and in many campaigns kinds of imperialist inter - Libyan people who fought means. We offered NATO the crushing, murderous and alliances. ests that will now come to and died to get rid of no positive support, trust QaTdhdeaafinrsewgiemrei.s that it is the surface in Libya — Qaddafi and who re - or confidence. But when infinitely more possible. We stand for: around oil, and rebuilding mained resolute in the face such an intervention is all And that alone is cause G Independent working-class representation in politics. infrastructure — will not of conditions far worse that stands between the for celebration and G A workers’ government, based on and accountable to the be there to act in the inter - than any more-anti-impe - continued existence of a hope. labour movement. ests of democracy or rialist-than-thou dema - revolutionary movement G A workers’ charter of trade union rights — to organise, to strike, to picket effectively, and to take solidarity action. G Taxation of the rich to fund decent public services, homes, education and jobs for all. Assad must go now! G A workers’ movement that fights all forms of oppression. Arab Full equality for women and social provision to free women By Mark Osborn from the burden of housework. Free abortion on request. Full ingly isolated Syrian killing 2200 civilians and equality for lesbian, gay and bisexual people. Black and white spring regime faced UN, US and of a shoot-to-kill policy The rebel victory in European calls for Assad against unarmed volun - workers’ unity against racism. Libya will strengthen the to step down. teers. The friends of the Open borders. G resolve of the Syrian The UN Human Rights Syrian dictatorship — au - G Global solidarity against global capital — workers frees the democracy protesters Council has ordered an in - thoritarian Russia, one- everywhere have more in common with each other than with and weaken the vestigation into violations party China and Cuba — their capitalist or Stalinist rulers. Baathist dictatorship of carried out by the state attempted to prevent the G Democracy at every level of society, from the smallest Berbers Bashar al-Assad. during the five month-old UN investigation. workplace or community to global social organisation. uprising. The UN accuses Last week the increas - G Working-class solidarity in international politics: equal the single-party state of rights for all nations, against imperialists and predators big By Gerry Bates and small. One consequence of the Maximum left unity in action, and openness in debate. “We can no longer live under the regime” G uprisings across North G If you agree with us, please take some copies of Solidarity Africa is the new free - to sell — and join us! doms won by the Berber By Ali Khalaf, a have an economic impact nesses and even livestock. 020 7394 8923 [email protected] peoples. Syrian activist based on the regime. On the danger of sectar - 20e Tower Workshops, Riley Road, Authoritarian Arab in the UK There are no organised ian strife, I quote from a regimes had suppressed trade unions in Syria. Peo - letter send to me: London, SE1 3DG. Berber history and lan - Syrian people that can ple would always be wor - “For many years, all reli - guage, claiming they no longer live under the ried that some of their gions and sects have lived threatened ‘national unity’. regime started the move - co-workers could be spies close to each other without Islamists supported Arabic- ment. The main demands for the government. Cor - any problems. ... It is true GET SOLIDARITY only laws. of the people remain ruption has been wide - that many of these crimi - There are perhaps over freedom and dignity for spread, and trust in the nals in the regime are 20 million Berbers, mainly all Syrians. Due to the workplace is rare particu - Alawi, but many collabo - EVERY WEEK! in Morocco, Algeria, Libya, way the regime has re - larly with any kind of civil rators and beneficiaries are Mali and Niger. They share acted, they are now de - service job. from across the board in - Special offers a common history and manding the regime is Despite great efforts cluding Sunnis and Chris - mainly speak variations of toppled. from the regime to divide tians. Many Alawi are G Trial sub, 6 issues £5  the Tamazight language. the people of Syria, this decent citizens who do not This revolution was not revolution has never been agree with what the G 22 issues (six months). £18 waged £9 unwaged In Libya Qaddafi be -   lieved Berber culture was started by any political a religious one. regime is doing. A lot of party. Political parties in - Protests are organised them are poor and many G 44 issues (year). £35 waged  £17 unwaged  “colonialism’s poison” and banned their language. dependent of the Ba’ath via the internet and word are fearful and therefore of mouth. remain silent. The regime’s G European rate: 28 euros (22 issues)  or 50 euros (44 issues)  Many of the rebel fighters Party have never been al - in the West of Libya are lowed in Syria. This will Every day there are sol - attempts to create an eth - naturally change, but it diers defecting from the nic war have not suc - Tick as appropriate above and send your money to: Berbers from their heart - lands in the Nafusa Moun - will be the people of Syria army. It holds high risks ceeded so far and we have 20e Tower Workshops, Riley Road, London, SE1 3DG tains. The rebel-controlled that will choose their fu - not only for them but for to be alert to this and fight Cheques (£) to “AWL”. station, Libya TV, broad - ture leaders. No party will also members of their fam - such a conflict as much as casts in Tamazight for two- ever be allowed to appoint ilies. When the soldiers do possible as this would only Or make £ and euro payments at workersliberty.org/sub. hours a day. themselves sole rulers desert and come to the side help these criminals in In Morocco, where the again in Syria. Any promi - of the people, many bring poTwoesr.u” pport the Syrian nent figure involved in the reports of their colleagues Name ...... monarchy has made con - revolution come along to cessions to head-off demo - protests always quickly in the army being shot be - demonstrations in the cratic opposition, a new disappears. cause they refused to shoot UK and show support di - Address ...... constitution officially The strikes are happen - at the unarmed protesters. rectly. Demand the ex - recognises the Berber lan - ing for many reasons. The The people have not pulsion of the Syrian people of each city want to armed themselves. There ...... guIangTeu. nisia and Egypt, ambassador, write to show their support to the has been no looting or your MP... each with only a few burning of homes by the ...... other cities that are being thousand Berbers, com - attacked by the regime. people asking for freedom, munity associations have but the regime have been • Abridged from: I enclose £ ...... People are far more edu - been formed for the first cated than in the past, and filmed regularly looting www.workersliberty.org/ time. they know strikes will and burning homes, busi - node/17239

2 SOLIDARITY NEWS Help Dale Farm resist! Ban the EDL?

By Hannah Thompson ing Gypsy and Traveller and Bill Holmes Site Grants to local authori - By Charlie Salmon cial market) doing on this ties to pay for travellers’ list? What’s their interest in Dale Farm travellers’ sites, and regional supervi - On what looks set to be banning the EDL march? community in Basildon, sion to ensure that they their biggest racist No doubt, the Canary Essex has been fighting a did. But the policy was not provocation to date, the Wharf Group PLC is a battle against eviction by enforced and local councils anti-Muslim English De - multi-ethnic, multicultural District Council for the continued to block plan - fence League plan to employer. How likely is it, past ten years. From the ning permission for trav - march through Tower though, that the Canary end of August they could ellers or failed to provide Hamlets, East London on Wharf Group PLC and its face the bailiffs. adequate sites. 3 September. CEO would like to see the The Coalition’s “Plan - banning of all demonstra - The momentum of the The EDL are seeking op - ning for Travellers’ Sites dren are not enrolled in ed - ligious bigotry in any com - tions in and around that current attacks on the trav - portunities to disrupt the Policy” plans to scrap ucation. munity. It is decades of palace of unbridled, cor - elling community stems community and attack Labour’s limited provi - This eviction takes place racist bullying that have rupt and feral capitalism? from racism towards gyp - local Muslims. sions, and gives local au - against a backdrop of impeded the ability of trav - The coalition will hold a sies in towns like Basildon This is the predictable thorities more power to broader attacks. ellers to access education, “counter-demonstration” — reflected in the council’s pattern of EDL demonstra - remove illegal settlements. New legislation will fur - build relationships with on Weaver’s Fields in Beth - willingness to spend £18 tions. Councils are not required ther criminalise trespass wider society, and control nal Green on 3 September, million on this eviction in a Calls to ban them are un - to find money to support and legal aid will be re - their own lives. but in all likelihood this period of austerity and derstandable, but what travellers and local authori - fused to those accused of Dale Farm desperately will be a “counter-demon - cuts, but nothing on pro - would any ban achieve? ties have no obligation to trespass. This would effec - needs working-class soli - stration” that the EDL will viding alternative sites. The most recent example find sites. tively deny squatters, trav - darity to protect itself. never actually see. In real - Some of the cash for the is the EDL march through Eric Pickles, minister for ellers and demonstrators Imagine a PCS strike in the ity it will be a tame cele - eviction has come from the Telford on 13 August. The Communities and Local the ability to enter any local council, or an NUJ bration of the status quo in government but the bulk is Home Secretary, Teresa Government, argued that property without permis - strike against anti-gypsy the borough. Local politi - being funded by the coun - May, banned the march but local authorities are “best sion of the owner or the racism in the press. But cal, religious and business cil. It’s a case of make cuts the EDL staged a static placed to know the needs local authority. Travellers failing that it needs a phys - officialdom — much less to save money, but keep the protest in its place. The of their communities”. Yet who are occupying land il - ical presence of solidarity the state — are not trust - gypsies out whatever the “ban” did not stop the racism in the local commu - legally will be affected. to argue the case for trav - worthy allies in the fight cost! EDL from congregating nity towards travellers is Anyone refusing to leave ellers’ rights and to block - against the EDL’s violent Dale Farm is the largest nor did it stop confronta - strong — all non-traveller could be immediately ade the site from bailiffs. racism, particularly at a travellers’ community in tions between the racists pupils left Crays Hill Pri - forcibly removed by the time when Lutfur Rah - the UK, housing 1,000 peo - and their opponents. mary School once gypsy police. Property owners CAMPAIGN man’s council is pursuing ple. Dale Farm residents A coalition of Tower children became the major - could also issue injunctions The Save Dale Farm cam - a cuts agenda and attack - own the land but on Hamlets councillors, the ity. not just against the person paign calls for supporters ing local unions. around 40% of the site, (54 GYPSY COUNCIL mayor, Unite Against Fas - re-entering their property, to join Camp Constant; a Working-class organisa - of the plots), planning per - The Gypsy Council, cism, “One Tower Ham - but on any property they group of tents occupying tions in Tower Hamlets mission has been refused. which represents trav - lets”, Unite, CWU, NUT, are likely to enter having the site until eviction day. need political independ - These residents on these ellers internationally, has Citizens UK and the “Ca - been moved on. ence so we can continue to “illegal” plots face eviction. argued that “institutional It has gained support nary Wharf Group PLC” The ideology behind this explain how cuts like Rah - Around 90 families will be racism” exists “in the from campaigns No One Is have issued a statement in is clear: if you don’t own it man’s help create condi - affected. way the planning system Illegal, Feminist Fightback, the national press calling — get off it! tions in which the far-right Basildon Council argues works against us to re - Campaign to Close Camps - for the march to be The most vulnerable can grow. the site is built on greenbelt fuse and restrict planning field, Oxford and District banned. The call has been travellers will be forced, And organisational inde - land, yet has built several permission”. They say Trades Council and others. signed by figures from the with the rest of the home - pendence so that when the industrial sites in the area applications fail at the The action so far has in - labour and trade union less and impoverished, into EDL come to the borough, which are used for scrap consultation stage. cluded the erection of a movement along with a council housing that is di - whether to march or to disposal and storage. scaffolding “barrier” and a group of priests, rabbis There are 300,000 gypsies lapidated, overcrowded, in “protest” statically, we are Dale Farm has existed call for eviction training, and representatives from and travellers currently liv - increasing short supply. not too busy with some since the 1970s, and many and human rights monitor - the Muslim community. ing in Britain in houses and It is a bold move to push mushy liberal fair on of the plots have bunga - ing on the weekend of 27- The “Hope not hate” caravans, and roughly 20% the non-propertied classes Weaver’s Fields to confront lows built on them, includ - 28 August at the camp. campaign has separately of those are living on land further into the gutter. the racists in the street if ing fences and walls to There will also be a launched a petition calling illegally. There is nothing inher - necessary. separate the plots. Many of march against the eviction for the banning of the A 2007 Department of ently sacred about living in (Abridged from the children have attended on 10 September 10. march, which has gained Communities and Local a caravan, or moving http://bit.ly/mPLhbS) the local school. If they are Organisers want to hold over 20,000 signatures. Government survey con - around the country in a evicted, access to schools back the bailiffs long The coalition looks rea - cluded that travellers’ life way that makes access to and GPs will become very enough to allow a final ap - sonable enough at first EDL attacks Norwich expectancy is 10-12 years education and healthcare difficult. peal to a high court judge glance. But hang on ... SWP meeting, and anti- below the national average, very difficult. But such in - New Labour’s 2004 toGsteotpinthveolevveicdtiionnt. he anti- what’s the ‘Canary Wharf fascist defence outnum - 18% of mothers experience sularity, leading to a lack of Housing Act made some eviction campaign. Con - Group PLC’ (the owner of bered. the death of a child in their education, would help recognition of travellers’ tact: 100 acres of property in the workersliberty.org/node lifetime, 62% of adults are maintain such things as mi - rights to housing, provid - [email protected] citadel of London’s finan - /17274 illiterate, and 25% of chil - sogyny, homophobia or re - Australia gets its Tea Party

By Colin Foster intentionally misleading The NRFA complains Mount Isa (in western right-wing populist move - nal of the way Australian the Australian people by about government regula - Queensland), but stood ment, One Nation, which politics is going. Labor has Australia now has its introducing a Carbon tions limiting drivers’ down for the convoy. He burgeoned briefly in 1997- squandered the popular “Tea Party”, in the form Tax”. hours on grounds of fa - claims: 8 but then collapsed boost it got from the cam - of the Convoy of No Other grievances in - tigue management: these “It would shock you, the through internal strife and paign against the Howard Confidence of trucks clude: regulation will “have no number of Labor people being politically government’s Work - and other vehicles head - • ”This Governments at - appreciable advantages for [joining the convoy]. gazumped by the right- Choices anti-union legisla - ing for Canberra. titude to immigrants, the owner drivers and “They believe that Labor wing Howard govern - tion, and the good luck it whether legal or other - small fleet owners”. is no longer Labor. They ment. got after 2008 from the The first contingent wise, is seriously flawed to Both the right-wing op - believe it has been hi - It looks unlikely to have Chinese government's in - started from Port Hedland the detriment of true Aus - position parties, Liberals jacked by the Greens. It’s as much autonomous im - vestment drive, and conse - in Western Australia on 16 tralians”. and Nationals, have gone too far to the left and pact as the Tea Party, be - quent high imports, August, and all the eleven • Government debt (ac - backed the convoy. The they don’t like it.” cause the relative weight maintaining Australia's contingents converge in tually very low for Aus - parliamentary politician Pattel says that the con - of small-town and rural minerals boom. Canberra on 22 August. tralia compared to most most vocally aligned with voy does not plan to or - population in Australia is Even though Australia The main organisation other countries) and the the convoy is Queensland ganise any blockades. much smaller than in the has suffered less from the sponsoring the convoy is Government’s scheme for Senator Barnaby Joyce, a The Convoy has paral - USA, and the convoy has world capitalist turmoil the National Road a National Broadband Net - right-wing rural populist lels with the Tea Party less autonomy from the in - than other countries, dis - Freighters' Association. work. and high-profile cam - movement in the USA and cumbent leadership of the content is widespread - It is promoting a petition • ”The anti family paigner to ban abortion. the truckers’ and farmers’ conservative parties than and, in the absence of bold to demand a fresh federal movement” and “Marxist- The convoy organiser, blockade movement in the the Tea Party has from the and sufficiently audible election because the Gov - loving ‘Useful Idiots’ at Mick Pattel, had been se - UK in September 2000. It Establishment, big-city, voices on the left, currently ernment “has been com - their [Sydney] Northern lected as the Liberal Na - also has some parallels big-business Republicans. being hegemonised by the promised into wilfully and Beaches cocktail parties”. tional Party candidate for with Pauline Hanson’s Nevertheless, it is a sig - populist right. SOLIDARITY 3 REGULARS Is the future with Russia’s workers?

Letters vented themselves as recognisably modern capitalist Euro - pean cities. They have a full array of pleasant bars and restaurants, and a layer of the population with the money and leisure to frequent them. As well as a famously super-rich post-Soviet oligarchy, Dave Osler there is a middle class comprised of 20-25% of the popula - Riots: how are tion that has taken the transition to capitalism in its stride. The first time I visited Russia, it was still the core of the These are the people you will see on such elegant shopping experiment that will go down in history as the Union of streets as Tverskaya Ulitsa and Nevsky Prospekt. Soviet Socialist Republics. Mikhail Gorbachev was at - But not everyone is doing as well as they are. While I did - schools to blame? tempting to transform Stalinism into something nicer n’t get out into the sticks, ex-pat bankers told me that many instead, and frankly not making a very good fist of it. people in the industrial interior have witnessed minimal As commentators wring their hands with anguish at ter - change from the Soviet period. A substantial minority have rible kids who have “lost their moral compass”, once The place was just opening up to the outside world in seen their income deteriorate sharply, while 15% of Russians again schools — including a lack of discipline in 1989, and I got a reasonably-priced package deal through a live in poverty. Entire villages are reputedly close to eco - schools — are getting the blame. travel company tied to the old Communist Party of Great nomic collapse, to the point where city dwellers consider Britain. Also on the trip were two very prominent British This misses the point... again. The incredible work being them too dangerous to visit. Trotskyists. done in schools, by very dedicated people, is being done de - As is now extensively documented, the transformation Somewhere or other, I still have a photograph of a leading from bureaucratic collectivism to private capitalism took spite the education system, rather than because of it. Workers’ Power comrade looking distinctly silly as he clam - Teaching Assistants and Learning Mentors (like myself) Russia close to collapse. The problem with the so-called bered on the gates of the Winter Palace in a mock attempt to “shock therapy” strategy adopted in the 1990s is that it was spend a lot of their time not assisting in the academic learn - storm it. I suspect that particular piece of play acting will be ing but in trying to convince the kids they work with that based on too much of the former and too little of the latter. the closest he ever comes to achieving the deed. Many enterprises reverted to barter if they produced at they are not the “crap” or “losers” or “failures” or any other It is difficult to bring home to younger comrades just how of the derogatory terms they pour on themselves. all, paying workers with a proportion of the goods to be central the issue of Russia was to the political identity of far sold for food. Criminality was rife, tax wasn’t being col - This is done against a backdrop of other messages. “If you leftists of that period. This was particularly so for the So - don’t get 5 A-Cs”, “if you don’t pass your SATS”, “if your lected, and president Yeltsin didn’t even maintain a pretence cialist Workers’ Party, who used the claim that Russia in - of sobriety in public. school is not at the top of the league tables”, “if you don’t stantiated state capitalism as a means of differentiation BOOM achieve now, you will miss your chance”, “this is your only between itself and everybody else. The 2000s changed all that, thanks to a boom in oil and chance, don’t throw it away”. For a child coming from a In hindsight, the SWP analysis was less incorrect than the other commodities, and a new ruler who prevented the home where learning is not the norm, or who won’t, for main alternative designation (that Russia was a “degener - entire show coming off the road. Serious people — such whatever reason, make the grade, the message is “you’re ated workers’ state”), at the time when it mattered most. as Carter administration Soviet specialist Zbigniew worthless”. Russia after the late twenties clearly was not a workers’ state Brzezinski — have compared Putin to Italy’s prewar dic - Such kids come to secondary school already with an over - of any description, degenerate or otherwise, and all of us tator Benito Mussolini. That is obviously overdoing it whelming feeling of failure and a deep desire not to be who maintained in public that it was that stand exposed by somewhat. there. Add to that the message given by the media, advertis - history as seriously mistaken. ing and government propaganda, that “making it” means But at the same time, it was difficult to regard the place as It is true that Putin made the trains run on time, carefully owning things, being rich and everything else that is out of meaningfully capitalist, either, and I always had a sneaking manages ostensible democracy, and presides over a system reach, then the self-loathing is reinforced. suspicion that dissident US Trotskyist Max Shachtman’s de - that has integrated capital and the state to a degree that Add to that those kids whose families are not able to be a scription of the USSR as bureaucratic collectivist rang true, Tony Cliff’s designation seems, retrospectively, completely source of support, then some of these kids are in free fall at least from what I knew about it. apt. with no “moral compass” pointing the way. Yet nobody on the 1980s British left — not even the pred - But there are legally functioning opposition parties, even I thought the picture on the TV of the Malaysian boy ecessor of the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty — articulated if they do not compete on a level playing field. There are being supposedly helped whilst actually being robbed was that position, and Shachtman’s writings were pretty much dissenting newspapers, even if star reporters not infre - awful — this was an incredibly two-faced, anti-social act unavailable. And being just a rank-and-file young member quently end up as corpses. Most important of all from our rather than a kick at the face of authority or the establish - of a small group, I didn’t dare question the wisdom of the point of view, there is the nucleus of an independent labour ment. elders, and kept my doubts to myself. movement. We don’t have to like the behaviour, and we certainly To describe Moscow and Leningrad — as the latter city I’m still not sure how and why the AWL became the first don’t have to support it or make excuses for it. But we was then — in the years of perestroika and glasnost as group to think the unthinkable and proclaim its adherence should try to understand it. “chaotic” would be way too kind. Even the Lenin Mau - to Shachtman’s position. But remembering the derision such I remember, when the council cuts were being put soleum was out of action. Few shops seemed to have any - ideological evolution quite predictably attracted from those through, talking to one of the council officers responsible thing to sell, and such goods as were on offer were priced still stuck in untenable orthodoxy, it was brave move. Fair for social services. It was very clear that, though on the face without rhyme or reason. Either they were ridiculously play to you lot. of it, the council could claim that they were not hitting front cheap or ridiculously expensive, but nothing in between. Where Russia is going now is difficult to read. I inter - line services directly, they were, by removing other back up Worst of all for a young man trying to have a good time viewed several billionaires, and certainly they do not lack services, pushing many families down into the place where on holiday, there was no beer to be had anywhere. I recall confidence in the future of their country as an oil and gas fiefdom. So far it has proved immune from the unrest that staAtuntdorwyeneneodwishaacvkenotwhrledegaecda. demies in the borough. complaining about this fact to Olga, the burly middle-aged has upset much of the Middle East, and the complacent That is three schools who will reinforce the whole ide - Intourist guide from central casting, who had from day one striven to prevent anybody in the package tour party from thinking is that most people are more bothered with having ological notion that there are kids who are “crap”. What enjoying themselves too much. bread on the table than with human rights. a terrible indictment of our education system that is. But where there is social polarisation, there is at least “Never mind,” she sighed resignedly. “Next time you Kids aren’t crap. Society creates the conditions in the potential for social explosion, too. While we are not come to my country, there will be plenty of beer.” And you which kids do crap things. far off the centenary of 1917, I did come away with the know something? She was right. impression that the final chapter has yet to be written. Frances Burrows, Tower Hamlets As I can testify after a journalistic assignment last month, History sometimes does take a bloody long time. both Moscow and the renamed St Petersburg have rein - Our class needs Summer camp: socialism and socialising

riots provoked lots of contributions from comrades from consciousness, across the country. One other excellent session was “the me - chanics of exploitation”, which included a range of props such as a bottle of Dettol, a toilet roll and the “bread trick” from The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists were used to ex - not “direction” AWL news plain how capitalism works. On the Sunday morning there was a women’s meeting Much of the left’s response to the riots centred on the which discussed plans for our socialist feminist student argument that the whole thing would’ve been positively By Sam Greenwood, Hull AWL speaker tour, for our paper Women’s Fightback and for our progressive if only the “anger” or “rage” of rioting youth upcoming socialist feminist conference on 19 November. could have been successfully “channelled” or “di - Workers’ Liberty’s summer camp, the first we have or - The weekend also had lots of time for further discussion rected”. ganised, took place in Hebden Bridge, in West York - and socialising. shire, on 19-21 August. 35 young activists, a mix of This is not only thoroughly patronising but also a total During the camp there was a socialist library where books young workers, uni and school students and unem - misunderstanding of the importance of ideas for socialists. could be taken out to read during the event, or bought to ployed people, took part in a weekend of political dis - Patronising, because it implies that all we can expect from take home, along with Workers’ Liberty literature and mer - cussions, workshops and socialising. urban working-class youth is a formless “rage” that must chandise. The food was excellent, communally prepared by those that attended (special thanks to Kieran from West of be “channelled” and “directed” by an enlightened leftist From the opening workshop on Marxist ecology to the London AWL for both planning the menu and assisting in elite. And a misunderstanding because it forgets that for our closing rendition of the Internationale, the event was a suc - cooking throughout the event!) politics to win, millions of working-class people must take cess. There were eleven workshops, ranging from a social - Three people joined the AWL during the event, with more coFnascnitoaussisoiwngnearbshoiuptoavner“aMnagrrxyis”tmidaesas. being “directed” ist attitude to imperialism and what this means particularly arrTahnegienvgentot meneceot urpafgoerdfudrethmeor cdriasctiucs,soiopnesn. socialist de - by the far-left turns the anarchist caricature of van - in Iraq and Libya, to the lessons of the Russian, Chinese and bate. It felt like a fantastic event to take part in and I guardism into a reality. It is one we should reject. German revolutions and organising in your workplace. A public speaking workshop and a night featuring a series of would guess everyone who attended is eager to discuss short films produced by during the 1984-1985 miners’ strike plans for a bigger camp next year. By Ira Berkovic, east London were also on the agenda. A discussion around the recent 4 SOLIDARITY WHAT WE SAY Oppose this class-hate blitz!

Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered I’ve seen lots of funny men; Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen. And as through your life you travel, Yes, as through your life you roam, You won’t never see an outlaw Drive a family from their home. Woody Guthrie

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Falling fine acidic rain, The moral culture eats At the ties and fabrics of the society That makes, remakes, sustains and poisons it. Tory politicians, magistrates and press, ranting about “criminality”, “pure criminality” and “only criminality”, whipping up a crusade of class hatred and class scape - goating against the poor, their language that of stark class hatred. Judges and magistrates told by the Prime Minister and by their superiors to “ignore the rule book and lock up loot - ers”. Police breaking into flats mob-handed looking for looted goods. The courts sitting all day and sometimes through the night. Children and adolescents remanded without bail for petty offences and then sentenced to jail. Women with young chil - dren jailed for petty theft, or for “receiving” such things as “Get rich or die tryin’” is not our credo. Equally we defend the people who will now be the victims of the backlash. a pair of trainers. This is Britain in August 2011. In response to the riots and the widespread outrage, the isation against itself. Those who are loudest in condemning the rioters and right has gone on the offensive, howling for blood. “Public In that sense, and from that point of view, from a direct- looters — the media, the politicians, the police, the racist opinion” has been mobilised on the basis of the ugliest so - actionist anarchist idea of politics, they can be seen as posi - and “anti-foreigner” agitators and the vengeful magistrates cial stigmatising, and hostility to the poor, the underedu - tively, rather than merely implicitly, “political”. — bear most of the blame for these outbreak. cated and excluded. They see their chance and they are The outrage that saturated the press and TV coverage was And they serve the bankers, the factory owners, the giant grabbing it. in part the indignation of “respectable” people who stick to store owners and the stock exchange gamblers. They are re - A 16-year-old boy gets six months imprisonment for rob - the rules against those who refused to. It was all a piece with sponsible for creating the conditions and the mind-set that bing a few pounds worth of bottled water. What did the the witch hunting of the poorest for benefit-fraud, benefit- has led to the rioting and looting that has swept through bankers get for robbing people of their homes, jobs, savings, abuse, benefit-drawing — for being. It was the — under - Britain. hopes, prospects, sense of security? As the reader knows standable — outrage of small shopkeepers who had been But there is nothing for the left to romanticise in these out - very well, they got public money on a vast scale, and most looted or feared they would be rooted. The press and politi - breaks, by giving them titles such as “insurrection”, “rebel - of them continue to draw bonuses on a scale that beggars cians took it up, multiplied, magnified it. The Murdoch and lion” and “resistance”. Socialist Worker has surpassed itself belief. Desmond press found a variation of their staple agitation in an orgy of crypto-anarchist coverage of the riots and loot - What, exactly, happened in the four days of riots and loot - against “undeserving” immigrants. Even OK magazine took ing. Rioting is good! Looting is better! It’s a proper form of ing in London and in cities across England? The picture is it up! fighting back! clear at the end of the cycle of riots, looting and burning. The ghost of Tony Blair has come back to contradict They write as if completely unaware of the effect of the PROTEST Cameron’s verdict on the riots and looting, that it was all a riots, looting and burning on the society in which it occurs, It started in Tottenham with a peaceful protest against matter of “criminality”, one aspect of a “broken society. including on the working class and the labour movement. the killing by the police of a black man, Mark Duggan. Cameron is wrong, Blair insists, to talk about “a broken so - They write as if they don’t notice the tremendous use which It spread to other parts of London and then to cities ciety” and a general moral decline in Britain: only specific the Tories, the press and the whole Establishment is mak - outside London. identifiable families contributed people to the riots, only ing of the riots to forward a regressive “law-and-order” they are responsible for gangs on council estates. It has noth - agenda, in preparation for the resistance they expect from Beginning in the heavily black areas of London — Totten - ing to do with a general social malaise. These are young - the working class when the cuts and the second-dip eco - ham, Hackney, Peckham — and triggered by seething in - sters, he implies, completely unaware of what’s going on in nomic recession begin to bite seriously. dignation against the police, rioting and looting spread the rest of the society in which they live. For all his supersti - By contrast with Socialist Worker , Hannah Sell in The So - quickly to layers of white youth in London and then out - tious God-bothering, Tony Blair is morally blind, deaf and cialist writes as if she lives in the same world as the rest of side London to Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and other numb! us, or near enough to it to know more-or-less what’s been places. Not-all-that-large groups of young people ran going. She tried to tell the truth. But she too falsifies the pic - amock, most of them, deprived, under-educated, unem - STUPID ture. Though she notes the looting of electronic goods, Sell Of course, denouncing the riots as “pure criminality” is ployed or in dead-end jobs. They broke windows, looted seems to think that these were hunger riots by people des - simply stupid. However many gangs exist in these areas and burned on a small scale perately looting for food. Although food was taken, surely and however much opportunist looting contributed to With not too many exceptions, the looters targeted shops they were not that. the outbreaks, it took more than criminal gangs to ignite selling consumer goods they coveted — mobile phones, The left must understand the significance of a revolt of these explosions. trainers, TVs, electrical goods. The riots were from the be - mainly young people that took the form of rioting, looting ginning, or quickly came to be, direct action to seize desir - The deprived young people who have come out on the and senseless burning. Despite the hostility which so many able things which they either could not afford or could streets to fight those they see as their enemy, the police, and of them feel for the Establishment and their bitter sense of afford only with great financial stress and strain. to grab a little instant prosperity have good reason to feel exclusion, the psychology, ideas, goals and aspirations of Despite some looting of food in some places, these were that they are outsiders, that they have been excluded. these young people are shaped and determined by the dom - not “hunger riots”. You can see what happens as a revolt of Unemployed or working in dead end, unskilled, low-paid inant ideas of the rulers of our society — the attitude the hungry, but it wasn’t hunger for food. It was about jobs, they have come through the education system maimed summed up in American rapper 50 Cent’s maxim: “Get Rich things considered to be as fundamental as food by young and semi-literate. They live in a society where great robbers Or Die Tryin’.” people saturated in the values which incessantly bombard and swindlers are admired whether they are legal, semi- The job of winning then to a different outlook, the work - them from TV, newspapers, CDs, DVDs, and magazines in legal or downright criminal. Where they enrich themselves ing-class, socialist, class-struggle, Marxist outlook, is shown the media-saturated, commerce-mad society in which we without any regard for other people. to be very urgent. That is easier to define than to accom - live. Why, many of them will think, shouldn’t we help our - plish. But it won’t be done so long as large parts of the left The looting which has caused such outrage in the bour - selves by looting shops and great stores, in a world where pretend that the riots were glorious resistance or sheer out - geois press was only the other side of the values and ideals bankers can loot and get away with it? Where the politicians breaks of hunger-driven desperation. of that press, the capitalist ruling class and of official society. who serve them have looted society to bail out the bankers. However we analyse the riots and looting, socialists The looters refused to abide by the rules of distribution in a Where the super rich know how to evade taxation. must fight to get the labour movement to defend the market economy. They attempted to acquire what they No matter how inattentive to politics many of the young victims of the political backlash in which Britain is now wanted by direct action, strong-arm grabbing, despite the people may normally be, they will have gained a general gripped . We must insist, against the capitalist Estab - rules, and in defiance of the rules. impression about what has been going on at the top of soci - lishment — the politicians, the press and the courts — It was a wild revolt of the “lower” elements of commer - ety. that the responsibility for the blind raging anger that cial civilisation — in the great cause proclaimed and ide - Many of the rioters in London live side by side with the erupted across Britain in early August lies squarely with alised incessantly by commerce itself. In a small way this very wealthy — the towers of Canary Warf are visible from those who run British capitalist society. was a revolt by a part of Britain’s commercial-capitalist civil - half the London riot zones.

SOLIDARITY 5 ECONOMY Global finance markets extend their rule

Dick Bryan, professor at the University of Sydney and co- because individual heads of state can call for it, but it could author of Capitalism With Derivatives, spoke to Martin only be implemented if all nation states were in agreement. Thomas about the trends behind current US economic dif - It’s an easy nation state response because no nation state can ficulties. be expected to implement it. Sarkozy has been advocating it For 70 years we have existed with the idea that the US since 2008, but it never advances beyond being a one-liner: dollar is some sort of quasi world money, even when, nothing ever gets to detail. But the problem is that markets with the end of the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1971, are already so complex and unbounded it will be impossi - it stopped being officially so deemed. Especially over ble to define what gets taxed and what doesn’t. How is a the last year, the international consensus on the US dol - “financial” transaction different from a “non-financial” lar has come under threat. transaction (indeed what is a non-financial transaction?). It is all too complex, and I think that complexity is king It is notable that when there was extreme volatility in — these markets are not about some notion of efficiency in markets after the recent dollar credit rating downgrade and resource allocation, and reforms to make them more trans - great fear of a global recession, there wasn’t a rush of asset- parent or efficient really miss the point. We have no means selling to get back into dollars. The move was to assets like to verify whether they become more or less efficient. What the Swiss franc and even, to a lesser extent, the Australian is the meaning of efficiency in relation to finance? They are dollar. These are not serious safe-haven currencies. These what they are because capital needs and wants them as they are bits of evidence that US dollar is in decline as a safe are; not because of arguments about “efficiency”. haven. Greenspan said as much earlier this year. A couple of years But if there is indeed decline, it is not an instant process. What will follow from that, I think, is the ongoing massive after his famous “flaw in the market model” confession, he First, if the US dollar is now in decline as a safe-haven, it growth of more and more sorts of financial products, more was saying in April this year in a Financial Times opinion carries forward much status from the past. No-one holding and more ways of holding wealth in a liquid (tradable) piece that, and the fact that markets appear opaque and in - US Treasury Bonds (especially the Chinese state) wants to form. If financial market trading is everything, more and coherent, is just the cost of their increasing complexity, and see them crash, so the accumulated history of the US dollar more diversity of things to trade will become the order of we have to live with it as part of their development. For as an asset-holding currency counts for much. But even the the day. We have seen derivative markets, condemned so him, that’s just the cost of having this wonderful capitalist Chinese state said recently in the context of the credit rat - widely in the midst of crisis, again surge in growth. In par - system. I think he’s right, not in the sense that the system is ing downgrade of the dollar that there should be some inter - ticular more and more facets of subsistence, and of daily life, wonderful, but in the sense that increasing complexity is the national supervision of the dollar, and perhaps a new global will be re-configured as financial products and play out this projected path and any notion that these markets can be currency. Neither of these possibilities should be taken seri - calculative logic. made transparent or efficient and thereby acquire some ously — there is no political momentum for either, and be - The person on the political right who has understood this form of renewed legitimacy misunderstands the role they sides it is unclear what exactly they would mean. But the is Robert Shiller, at Yale. He explains that most of the play. proposals see the Chinese state giving a rhetorical public world’s wealth is tied up in households, rather than in fac - Another development I think we need to consider associ - slap to the US state — and that’s significant. Will the Chi - tories or infrastructure. Capital is developing ways to recon - ated with this scenario is that monetary measures are show - nese state act on the belief that they are already holding too figure the ordinary mundane parts of household life as ing signs of detaching from states. many US treasury bonds? The future status of the US dollar financial assets. Shiller is behind the development of prod - Throughout the 20th century, money has been in nation- may well be changing. ucts to trade indices of house prices, where you and I could state denominations, where states take responsibility for the Second, we need to distinguish between the dollar as a effectively insure our house price or the cost of rent in - stability of the unit of measure. We are seeing states coming trading currency and as an asset-holding currency. For his - creases, but his point goes further, to developing markets into disrepute as overseers of the value of money — not the torical reasons, the US dollar remains the major currency of around many more things that look like insurance or con - currencies of failed states like Zimbabwe, but states at the transactions in international trade and investment. That role tracts for the regular purchase of services. centre of capitalism. A once-taboo issue is now being dis - will not change quickly, for there is no obvious alternative REMARKABLE cussed: do people trust the state’s money? Would they treat to take its place. While asset holdings can be readily diver - Mortgage-backed securities were one well-known ver - sovereign bonds as a “safe” investment? The downgrading sified across a range of currencies, trade needs an agreed sion of it. But the process of securitisation takes this of the US credit rating was a sign in the negative — it was unit of measure. There is no real alternative to the US dollar process beyond mortgages. The securitisation of stu - purely symbolic (the US is not broke, and the downgrade is here. It guarantees significant on-going demand for dollars dent loans, health and house insurance payments, tele - minor) but money is all about symbolism. And of course the so that in foreign exchange markets, the US dollar is on one phone contract payments and electricity bill payments sovereign debts of southern European states (and others) side or the other of over 84 percent of contracts. This figure are other illustrations. This is a remarkable change, be - points in a similar direction. They are tied up in the supra- has hardly declined in the past few years. But the growth of cause it is bringing things of labour’s subsistence into national Euro, so it is not reducible to a national currency foreign exchange transaction volumes on the dollar is a clear the domain of financial assets. issue, but the evidence here points in the same direction: na - sign that even though trade and investment occurs predom - tion states are currently not securing the value of money, inantly in dollars, market participants are desperate to House, health, heat are all now financialised. Every but undermining it. That is a significant change of percep - hedge their exposure to dollars. month you and I pay a telephone bill, power bills and health tions. insurance. Some pay interest on mortgages and student TRUSTED loans, car loans, credit card payments. Securitisation sees WORKING CLASS Something has to give here: it is hard to see how a cur - these regular payments sold into the market in return for a And of course the working class gets drawn into this rency can stay trusted as a means of exchange, but not cash payment. Someone out there buys a security backed by process for the state’s perceived path to redemption is as a store of value. mortgages or a bundle of household ‘assets’ (asset-backed fiscal austerity — cutting back on state expenditure and securities) and, in return for a payment now, they receive thereby reducing the requirements of state borrowing, We cannot underestimate the significance of a loss of safe- to be seen to be financially “responsible”. haven status for, in the absence of another nation’s currency ownership of those future streams of household payment. assuming the mantle (and nothing presents itself here), it This process of securitisation is seeing workers being re - People talked about something called neo-liberalism in means that there is no anchor in global financial markets. If configured as an asset class — not an asset-holding class, relation to Thatcher and Reagan and an ideological assault you were holding US treasury bonds for safety, they are though people do have pension fund stakes and so on, but on the working class. This time it takes the form of an im - now worth less since the downgrade. Hold cash, and the ex - an asset class. Capital wants to invest in households and get perative as states grasp for financial reputation. Here, ideo - change rate drops. There is no benign way to hold wealth. access to workers’ income streams to convert them into fi - logical “critiques of neo-liberalism”are ineffective in setting The implications are enormous. It means that in calcula - nancial assets. political agendas. The answer is not to rally behind the state tion, there are no absolute measures; only relative ones. It is Workers start to take on a new role in this new financial as opposed to markets, for states have been central to the as if we were acknowledging that our standard measure - world. It is no longer just that workers are borrowing and problem. ment anchors — yards, kilos, degrees — are no longer stan - lending, as they long have done, but that they are being Perhaps we have the monetary crisis of the state — not dardised. How would the world work if these units of linked directly into global securities markets. And in a exactly parallel with the “fiscal crisis of the state” which measure became volatile? “How long is a piece of string?” world where there is no longer an anchor unit of measure, James O’Connor wrote about in the 1970s, but something would also be “how long is a yard of string?”. these financial contracts based on household payments related. It suggests that where the state’s priority is to ver - But this is the situation in financial markets. Has the price come into the mix as part of the commensuration of capital. ify its own monetary integrity, it will cut living standards to of oil gone up or down? There is no absolute answer — it all Notice some parallels with our understanding of labour do it. It will have to subordinate all economic and social pol - depends what currency you measure it in. In US dollars it in production. There, we know labour’s role as the source of icy to secure the unit of measure. You cannot look to the US has gone up; in Swiss Francs it has gone down. It means value, appropriate via a process of commodity exchange government or the Federal Reserve to guarantee the value that there is no wealth-holding that is immune from market (labour power for wages) In finance, we need to see wages and purchasing power of the US dollar. It can’t guarantee variability: all you can do is position yourself inside the as a foundation of financial valuations, via purchase of com - the exchange rate or the inflation rate, or the credit risk on market. The only security to be found, if we can use that modity exchange (contractual payments for loans/services). the dollar. The only thing it can guarantee is the prime inter - word, is not in a quantum of wealth but in a rate of return. Both versions tell us that labour is the foundation of value. est rate — the rate paid by the central bank, and last week You must try and keep up with or beat “the market” (some Therein lies a working class political potential in finance. we saw the Federal Reserve locking in the prime rate for index of asset values) in order to preserve value. That potential is not devoid of an emphasis on regulatory two years. The Fed will forego the tool of monetary policy The attachment of a conception of “stability” to a rate of reform – just as labour in the workplace has benefitted from in order to demonstrate that it can guarantee something — return rather than a quantum of wealth should not be sur - some restrictions on the capacities of capital. But regulatory anything! reform, in finance as in the workplace, presents a limited In aggregate, the formal financial anchors are loos - prising. It is the way capital measures itself (it measures its ening their hold. The US dollar is under challenge as the value in terms of the rate of profit), and our incorporation political vision. It is important too that Marxists do not get diverted by an emphasis on regulatory reform of finance. flagship, and nation states do not have money in har - into the calculative logic of finance universalises that con - ness. Yet at exactly this time where liberal, fluid capital ception. Many on the left have advocated a turnover tax on finan - cial transactions, in the belief that this would discourage is ascendant, it looks to labour as its source of security I think this is the most likely, and the most scary, scenario and stability. The effect is that labour, not capital, car - of the future of financial markets. The music never stops. speculation and help to tame finance. This is an idea that seems to arise when no-one knows what to do, on the left ries the risks of finance, and thereby underwrites capi - Financiers will never get out of the market. They have got to tal markets. Capital has manoeuvred well to get to this keep playing and trying to beat the market, because there and the right of politics. Sarkozy and Merkel have just called for a turnover tax on position from the midst of the global financial crisis. But is nowhere safe to hide. The circumstances of us all will be it is not a safe place to stand. tied up with the successes and failures of market trades. financial markets. My guess is it will never be implemented, 6 SOLIDARITY ISRAEL/PALESTINE Reactionaries gain from Islamist attack

By Dan Katz world. It has become one of the most unequal of all the ad - vanced states. Since the 1980s a series of governments have attacked welfare provision and privatised services. This week the Palestinians The average income after tax for the wealthiest 20% of Is - Asked the UN raelis is 7.5 times higher than the poorest 20% of society For recognition of (2008). The State of Palestine. The gap between the rich and poor in Israel has been They will not be put off steadily increasing. 25% of Israelis — or 1.7 million people With crumbs. — live in poverty, (the average in advanced Western coun - tries is about 11%). 57% of ultra-Orthodox Jews and 54% of This week the Israeli Israeli Arabs live in poverty. Social protest leaders Israeli education has been cut. Expenditure per student Formed a in primary school is 36% lower than the average in the rich Committee of experts OECD countries. Poorly funded state education has led to To pursue their demand the expansion of private education for the children of par - For an Israeli welfare state. ents who can afford it. They will not be put off Since market reforms to the health service were made in With crumbs. 1994, many medical services have been cut. Costs of treat - ments have soared, meaning many are not able to access ad - Netanyahu has nothing to offer equate health care. For example, around one third of the To either of them. population does not use dentists and the percentage of eld - erly people who are completely toothless is estimated at (Advert placed in the Israeli paper Ha’aretz, by the Israeli left- over 50%. wing peace campaign Gush Shalom) In 2010, the subsidising of the water prices was com - The mass Israeli protest movement for social justice, pletely halted, and the cost of water increased by 40-50%. which has been gathering in strength since July, has Israel’s social safety net for the unemployed is especially been seriously set back in the aftermath of an Islamist flimsy: unemployment insurance in Israel is one of the poor - terrorist attack. On the day Gush Shalom was placing est in the West, both in terms of eligibility requirements and A political shift in Israel, set off by the Islamist attack on 18 its Ha’aretz advert, in an attempt to link the struggles in terms of the money provided. In 2010, only about 25% of August, has set back Israeli “tent city” protests for social for Israeli-Palestinian peace and the fight for a more the non-working population in Israel was eligible for unem - justice equal Israel, Islamists from Gaza were busy helping ployment benefits. The budget cuts in professional training Binyamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Israeli government off have created a situation where today there are almost no the hook. housing means soaring rents. 20% of Israelis now spend professional training programs provided by the State. (Sta - tistics from the Association for Civil Rights in Israel). Israeli officials say Palestinian fighters entered Egypt more than half of their disposable income on rent. through tunnels from Gaza. They then travelled 200km Instead of paying the new rate she created a Facebook event announcing that from 14 July her new home would ISLAMIST TERRORISM: WHO GAINS? through Egypt’s Sinai, entering Israel near Eliat on Thurs - Israel’s new progressive movement has been, at least be a tent in central Tel Aviv, on Rothschild Boulevard. She day 18 August. Six Israeli civilians, two soldiers, seven Is - temporarily, set back by the Islamist attack. Debate invited others to join her, not knowing if anyone would. lamists and five Egyptian policemen were killed by gunfire about the need for state-provided welfare in Israel has However her protest did not fizzle out. It quickly spread, and explosions. been replaced with patriotic flag-waving. Following the attacks the series of mass protests set to drawing in wide sections of the population who brought take place across Israel on the evening of Saturday 20 Au - their own demands for social justice. Every extra Hamas-launched missile fired into Israel cre - gust were cancelled. One of the organisations coordinating The Israeli union federation, Histadrut, has rallied to the ates fear which helps the Israeli right. Every Israeli death the movement, the Israeli National Union of Students, movement under the banner “Workers support the means it is harder for those who are arguing inside Israel stated: “[The protest movement is] lowering its head on this Protests”. Histadrut Chair Ofer Eini said to a rally of thou - for welfare, not arms spending. difficult day [of mourning for Israeli dead].” sands of trade unionists, “we lost our compassion and be - Israeli workers are not the only losers. Rational, demo - This was the first weekend for five weeks with no Satur - came a capitalist country. And not only a capitalist country, cratic voices among the Palestinians and inside Egypt have day night demonstrations. Veteran Israeli activist Uri Avn - but a piggish capitalist country.” Pnina Klein from the suffered too. The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, ery commented, “Since the beginning of the [Israeli-Arab] Movement of Working Women & Volunteers, called the gov - under nationalist Fatah leadership, has despaired of the conflict, the extremists of both sides have always played ernment “a disgrace to the state of Israel in the way it aban - stalled “peace process” and is making an initiative at the into each other’s hands… Netanyahu and his colleagues dons Israeli children [to poverty, with one-third of all UN to have a Palestinian state recognised. The PA, in con - have already ‘liquidated’ the chiefs of the group which car - children living below the poverty line].” trast to the Islamists, wants peace and a “two States” solu - ried out the attack, called ‘the Popular Resistance Commit - British trade unions — such as Unison — who are consid - tion — an independent, sovereign state in the West Bank, tees’. ering breaking links with the Histadrut over the Palestinian Gaza and East Jerusalem (occupied by Israel in the 1967 Six “What now? The group in Gaza will fire rockets in retali - issue should look at the Histadrut’s role in this movement. Day War) alongside Israel. Apparently they have the sup - ation. Netanyahu can — if he so wishes — kill more Pales - Unison could learn a lot about how to defend the welfare port of over 120 states for their perfectly reasonable — but tinian leaders, military and civilian. This can easily set off a state from the Histadrut. largely symbolic — UN recognition. vicious circle of retaliation and counter-retaliation, leading NETANYAHU The Israeli government, however, is deeply hostile to the to a full-scale war. Thousands of rockets on Israel, thou - Netanyahu has now responded — aiming to buy time, PA’s UN move, saying it will lead to violence. Islamist ter - sands of bombs on the Gaza Strip. One ex-military fool al - dissembling as normal — by appointing a “panel of ex - ror and killing helps the right-wing in Israel prevent a dem - ready argued that the entire Gaza Strip will have to be perts” to meet protest leaders and to look at their griev - ocratic solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. re-occupied. ances. Netanyahu is a right-wing nationalist and, in And in Egypt, the killing of Egyptian policemen by Israel “In other words, Netanyahu can raise or lower the flames economics, he is a Thatcherite. He has no intention of during the pursuit of militants who had carried out attacks at will. His desire to put an end to the social protest move - giving anything to the Palestinians or the Israeli welfare- on Israeli citizens, has provoked Islamist/nationalist ment may well play a role in his decisions.” state protesters. demonstrations in Cairo. Although the current military-led Egyptian government ARAB SPRING, ISRAELI SUMMER The protesters countered by forming their own 60-strong has repeated that the Egypt-Israel peace treaty of 1979 will A coalition has emerged of those protesting against the advisory council, composed of some of the most prominent be respected, there is an Egyptian foreign policy shift which high costs of housing, childcare, fuel, electricity and university professors, including an Arab woman professor, includes a harder line against Israel. The Egyptian authori - food. and headed by a former deputy governor of the Bank of Is - ties have made angry noises; alarmed, Israel appears to be backing off. Over 40 tent camps have been established around the rael. One aim of the Gaza Islamist militants — and their sup - country. The core protest, based in the well-off Rothschild Originally the protesters were firmly anti-political. That porters such as the SWP in Britain — is to draw Egypt into Boulevard area in Tel Aviv, now has more than 500 tents. mood has, to some degree, given way as concrete reforms conflict with Israel. Such politics are poisonous and are a di - The protests, mainly led by youth and partly organised have been demanded, including progressive taxation and version from the burgeoning class struggle in Egypt. using the web, look a little like the recent Arab uprisings, workers’ rights. Writing in Ha'aretz the author Amos Oz Renewed Egyptian-Israeli hostility — or even worse, war but in content are closer to the “Indignant” movement in suggests that, “The resources required for establishing social — could only benefit the right in each state. Spain; it bears some features of the movement the AWL ad - justice in Israel are located in three places: First, the billions vocated and attempted to build in the 1990s in defence of Israel has invested in the settlements, which are the greatest the British welfare state. mistake in the state’s history, as well as its greatest injustice. On the web: 250,000 marched in Tel Aviv on 7 August, followed by “Second, the mammoth sums channelled into the ultra- massive local marches on 14 August. A quarter of a million, Orthodox yeshivas, where generations of ignorant bums Chocolate and the Palestinians from an Israeli population of only 7.5 million, is the equiv - grow, filled with contempt toward the state, its people and alent of two million in the UK. Such mass demonstrations the 21st-century reality. And third, and perhaps foremost, make those on the British left who view Israel as a society the passionate support of Netanyahu’s government and its Agitation about boycotting Israel which hit without a “real” working class or class struggle look foolish. predecessors for the unbridled enrichment of the various ty - the headlines in April 2011 when Greens- According to opinion polls the protests attracted the sup - coons and their cronies, at the expense of the middle class controlled Marrickville council, in Sydney, port of around 90% of the population and have badly and the poor.” shaken Binyamin Netanyahu's government. Opinion polls show great support for radical welfare re - decided on a boycott, has emerged again At first Netanyahu dismissed the protests, which started forms. 82% of Israelis believe that free medical care should with pickets outside Max Brenner chocolate with demands for affordable housing. be provided even to patients with no health insurance; and 79% believe Israel must invest more money in the education shops. The upheaval began in mid-July, when the landlord of 25 www.workersliberty.org/node/17264 year-old Daphni Leef raised her already high rent. There are system. no rent controls in Israel, and an acute shortage of public Israel was once one of the more equal societies in the SOLIDARITY 7 ANNIVERSARIES A time

By Edd Mustill

The summer of 1911 saw the high-point of Britain’s pre- war industrial unrest, with a strike wave that engulfed the country’s ports and railways. On Merseyside, the situation developed into something approaching a regional general strike. The Berlin wall going up It began with seamen in Southampton. The immediate is - sues were medical examinations, which they regarded as hu - miliating, and the employers’ “ticket” that the men had to pay As we were saying: for in order to be taken on any job. But the deeper underlying issue, as it was for many disputes during the “great unrest”, was that of union recognition. The Shipping Federation re - fused even to communicate with union representatives, let why did the Berlin Wall fall? alone recognise them. Soon dockers, who had their own list of grievances, were The Berlin Wall, erected fifty years ago by the East Ger - side down by a central government intent on crude quan - joining in the action across the country. The docks of imperial man state, was a symbol of the totalitarian Stalinist sys - titative goals and using an immense machinery of terror as Britain were sprawling industrial complexes which employed tems. The wall was a monstrosity and we are glad it was its instrument of control, motivation, and organisation. tens of thousands of people. For many, work was casual and ir - torn down by Berliners at the end of 1989. The collapse of When the terror slackened off — and that is what regular. Labourers’ pay had barely increased since the great Stalinism was a victory for freedom. Despite a wave of Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin essentially meant: he London dock strike of 1889. Docks were also home to thou - capitalist triumphalism that followed, the workers of the told the members of his bureaucratic class that life would sands of rail workers who fared little better; Liverpool’s rail - former Stalinist states are now able to meet, discuss and be easier from then on — much of the dynamism of the sys - way porters earned 17 shillings per week and worked as much form their own organisations. Here, an editorial in Work - tem slackened off too. as 16 hours per day. ers’ Liberty magazine of July 1990 examines the reasons To survive, the bureaucracy had to maintain its political INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM behind Stalinism’s collapse in Eastern Europe. monopoly. It could not have democracy because it was in The complex system of employment on the docks meant For over 60 years the typical totalitarian Stalinist soci - a sharp antagonism with most of the people, and in the that there had been many different unions representing ety — in the USSR, in the USSR’s East European satel - first place with the working class. sectional interests, along with the general unions which lites, in Mao’s China, or in Vietnam — has presented So there was a “compromise formation”, neither a self- had appeared during the wave of New Unionism twenty itself to the world as a durable, congealed, frozen sys - regulating market system nor properly planned, domi - years earlier. tem, made of a hitherto unknown substance. nated by a huge clogging bureaucratic state which could take crude decisions and make them good, but do little Because of the nature of dock work, their membership was Now the Stalinist societies look like so many ice floes in else. State repression was now conservative, not what it transitory. They would grow vastly during strikes and collapse a rapidly warming sea — melting, dissolving, thawing, was in the “heroic” days either in intensity or in social again in periods of defeat. But they came together to form the sinking and blending into the world capitalist environment function. National Transport Workers’ Federation (NTWF), which held around them. its first annual conference in Liverpool at the beginning of June To many calling themselves Marxists or even Trotskyists, STAGNATE 1911. The USSR slowed down and began to stagnate. And Stalinism seemed for decades to be “the wave of the fu - Ben Tillett, veteran union leader and sometime member of then the rulers of the USSR seemed to suffer a col - ture”. They thought they saw the future and — less explic - the Social Democratic Federation (SDF) and Independent lapse of the will to continue. They collapsed as spec - ably — they thought it worked. Labour Party (ILP) , was an important figure in the NTWF. tacularly as the old German empire collapsed on 11 The world was mysteriously out of kilter. Somehow Other activists included revolutionaries who believed that November 1918. parts of it had slipped into the condition of being “post- such industrial unions were the most effective way of fighting capitalist”, and, strangely, they were among the relatively Initiatives from the rulers in the Kremlin, acting like 18th capitalism. They wanted the merger of smaller and craftist backward parts, those which to any halfway literate Marx - century enlightened despots, triggered the collapse of the unions into larger, more powerful organisations that did not ist were least ripe for it. Now Stalin’s terror turns out to Russian empire in Eastern Europe. But it was a collapse in shut out unskilled workers. have been, not the birth pangs of a new civilisation, but a preparation for at least quarter of a century. Few embodied this spirit more than Tom Mann. He set up bloodletting to fertilise the soil for capitalism. The Stalinists had tried nearly 30 years before to make the Industrial Syndicalist Education League (ISEL), dedicated to spreading militant syndicalist ideas, influenced by what he VISIBLE their rule more rational, flexible and productive by giving more scope to market mechanisms. Now, it seems, the had seen in France and his own experiences organising in Aus - Nobody foresaw the way that East European Stalin - tralia. He saw unions as potentially revolutionary organisa - ism would collapse. But the decay that led to that col - dominant faction in the USSR’s bureaucracy has bit the tions and urged direct action. Mann described wage lapse was, or should have been, visible long ago. bullet: they want full-scale restoration of market capital - ism. Some of the bureaucrats hope to become capitalists conciliation boards as “Capitalist agencies for tying workers According to every criterion from productivity and tech - themselves. But with its central prop — its political mo - down and keeping them down without a further thought.” nological dynamism through military might to social de - nopoly — gone, the bureaucracy is falling apart. Mann arrived in Liverpool early in the summer and quickly velopment, the world was still incontestably dominated by The fundamental determinant of what happened in East - became a force on the strike committee. He started a paper, the international capitalism, and by a capitalism which has for ern Europe in the second half of 1989 was that the Kremlin Transport Worker . It was like an extended workplace bulletin decades experienced consistent, though not uninterrupted, signalled to its satraps that it would not back them by covering the whole transport industry, dedicated to strategic growth. force: then the people took to the streets, and no-one could debates. Its contributors were trade unionists reporting on By contrast, the Stalinist states, almost all of which had stop them. their own disputes from across the north west, in their own begun a long way down the world scale of development, It is an immense triumph for the world bourgeoisie — words. have for decades now lurched through successive unavail - public self-disavowal by the rulers of the Stalinist system, When the strikes broke out in June, the NTWF was there - ing efforts to shake off creeping stagnation. and their decision to embrace market capitalism and open fore well-placed to co-ordinate action across the transport in - The Stalinist systems have become sicker and sicker. The up their states to asset-stripping. dustry. On the weekend on 25-26 June the seamen’s strike was bureaucracies tried to run their economies by command, We deny that the Stalinist system had anything to do generalised in Merseyside, and shore-based workers started and in practice a vast area of the economic life of their so - with socialism or working-class power. Neither a workers’ to boycott work on ships belonging to offending companies. cieties was rendered subterranean, even more anarchic state, nor the Stalinist states in underdeveloped countries, This kind of industrial solidarity was the most striking feature than a regular, legal, recognised market-capitalist system. could ever hope to win in economic competition with cap - of the period. The ruling class of the model Stalinist state, the USSR, italism expanding as it has done in recent decades The so - Some of the bigger shipping firms very quickly conceded emerged out of the workers’ state set up by the October cialist answer was the spreading of the workers’ revolution big wage increases, showing how easily they could afford 1917 revolution by way of a struggle to suppress and con - to the advanced countries; the Stalinists had no answer. them. But the principle of union recognition proved to be trol the working class and to eliminate the weak Russian The Stalinist system was never “post capitalist”. It paral - much more contentious. bourgeoisie that had come back to life in the 1920s. It made leled capitalism as an underdeveloped alter ego. Socialists The same was true on the railways and trams where Mersey - itself master of society in a series of murderous if muffled have no reason to be surprised or dismayed about Stalin - side workers had been involved in a simmering dispute for a class struggles. Its state aspired to control everything to a ism losing its competition with capitalism. few months, which had included taking one-day wildcat strike degree and for purposes alien to the Marxism whose au - The bourgeoisie has triumphed over the Stalinists, actions. By the first week of August, they were joining the thority it invoked. And it did that in a backward country. but it has not triumphed over socialism. And genuine strike from the dock depots, and starting to picket out other In the days of Stalin’s forced collectivisation and crash socialism receives the possibility of rebirth as a mass locations. This, along with other unofficial action in the north industrialisation, the whole of society could be turned up - movement from the events in Eastern Europe. of England by members of the Amalgamate Society of Railwa

8 SOLIDARITY of possibility

and sat on strike committees during the unrest. They eventu - ally forced their parties to reappraise their views on the value of industrial work. Nevertheless, old habits died hard for the leadership. The internal struggle was reflected in the confused attitude of the SDF in August 1911: “We Social-Democrats stand by the workers in any conflict in which they may be engaged. We do not advocate strikes, although we support them; but we never cease to insist upon the truth that, whatever they may gain by a strike, the emancipation of the working class can never be achieved save by the conquest by that class of polit - ical power.” It was probably this ambivalence that helped drive Mann out of the SDF and towards setting up a syndicalist organi - sation. While Tillett wrote that he was “proud to associate myself with my SDF comrades in this big fight,” the reality was that revolutionary industrial militants got little or no help from their party, and were more-or-less left to get on with it. By the end of the summer’s strike wave, some on the SDF left were urging the party to send speakers to every union branch, and to actively recruit trade unionists. E.C. Fairchild began to write in favour of synthesising industrial and polit - ical struggles. But it would take more shop-floor experiences and an ousting of the old leadership during the war to make Tom Mann addresses the strikers the party finally take industrial action seriously.

Servants (ASRS), precipitated a national railway strike. viously unorganised workers like taxi drivers and paper RESULTS It coincided with the hottest week of unrest in Liverpool. boys. The rail workers retreat from action certainly repre - Police had been brought in from Birmingham, and soldiers Although the Merseyside strike committee which had been sented a defeat nationally. Nevertheless, the Merseyside were deployed to the city. At a mass outdoor meeting on formed included some representatives from these sectors, labour movement was seriously strengthened by the end “Red Sunday,” 13 August, the police attacked three young - like the bakers, it remained overwhelmingly dominated by of the summer. sters and the situation soon escalated into brutal street fight - the NTWF. By mid-August, the strike committee was issu - The ship stewards more than doubled their membership, ing. “The fight between the workers and the police,” ing permits for the transportation of essential food and sup - while the number of unionised dockers increased nearly reported the SDF, “Was carried on from the roofs of the plies, which could only be undertaken by unionised workers. fourfold. Big sections of the workforce had won significant houses with slates, bricks, and bottles.” Because of this, many of the city’s hostile employers sud - pay rises and promises to recognise the union card. Even the At the meeting, Mann got approval for what he called a denly allowed their workers to join unions. railway bosses were forced to quietly recognise the unions general strike of all transport workers in the city. In the event, George Dangerfield remarked that “the unions had not in the following months. cargo workers were locked out by the employers first, and gone forth to convert the disorganised and the underpaid, it The story of the unrest does not end in autumn 1911. the general strike began on Tuesday 15 August. The same was the disorganised and the underpaid who had converted Strikes would continue, with mixed success, until the out - day, the rail unions met in Liverpool and presented employ - them.” Were the older leaders getting soft? There was cer - break of the First World War. Liverpool’s railway workers ers with a 24-hour ultimatum to come to the negotiating table tainly the stomach for a fight, but also a sense of apprehen - would be out again, boycotting scab goods during the Dublin before a national strike was called. sion about what the consequences would be. No-one, lockout of 1913. Home Secretary Winston Churchill had dispatched troops socialist or syndicalist, seemed ready to acknowledge the Many contemporaries, on the right and the left, saw to over 25 railway towns. In the face of the overwhelming huge political implications of the general strike. the unrest as the beginnings of a revolution. Liverpool military presence Mann wrote “Let Churchill do his utmost... The national rail strike was called off by union leaders after probably represents the furthest the working class went not all the King’s horses and all the King’s men can take the three days, with the question of recognition still not settled. in these tumultuous years towards wielding actual vessels out of the docks to the sea.” By September, Liverpool had calmed down, and most sec - power over a part of society, albeit only for a few weeks. On the Tuesday, a crowd attacked a convoy of prison vans tions of workers had settled their disputes favourably. The The city saw a level of working-class self-organisation carrying protesters who had been arrested on Sunday. Sol - issue of reinstating sacked tram workers was still a live one seldom reached in British history before or since. A rep - diers, who were supposedly in the city to help forcibly move and provoked solidarity demonstrations. etition on a national scale would have seen the country goods from the docks, killed two men. Four days after that, Britain’s small socialist movement was challenged by the on the verge of a revolutionary situation. Unfortunately, with the railway strike gathering steam, a similar incident unrest. The SDF had previously been ambivalent about or the labour movement was not quite strong enough, ma - would occur at a mass picket in Llanelli in Wales, resulting in hostile to strikes, believing them to be a distraction from the terially or ideologically, to achieve this. the shooting dead of two more. fight for socialism. The ILP had a similar attitude. Prime Minister Asquith showed no remorse. When rail But members of both these groups were active in unions union representatives rejected the government’s offer of a Royal Commission to look at their grievances on the 17 Au - Glossary gust, in between the deaths at Liverpool and Llanelli, he re - portedly replied: “Then your blood be upon your own ASRS : Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. One of head.” the big rail unions that organised drivers and station work - A GENERAL STRIKE? ers, it merged with others to form the National Union of Railwaymen in 1913. This was the week when, famously, the government dis - ILP : Independent Labour Party. The ILP rejected revolu - patched two warships to be stationed in the Mersey. Ben tion but suffered internal tension between its moderate Tillett described it as “a week so pregnant with possibil - and radical wings. ities that some of us old campaigners had our nerves ISEL : Industrial Syndicalist Education League. The prop - shaken.” aganda group founded by Mann in 1910 to spread syndi - During this week it appears that even Tom Mann recom - calist ideas in Britain. mended that the dockers, threatened with a general lock-out, NFWW : National Federation of Women Workers. Some return to work. But the majority resolved to stay out to sup - unionists encouraged women to join this rather than their port the rail workers. own, male-dominated, unions. Strikes occurred in industries as diverse as tailoring, rub - NTWF : National Transport Workers’ Federation. Founded ber manufacturing, and sugar refining. Some of these won in 1910 as an alliance of unions, it was the main forerunner quick, almost instant victories, again showing up the com - of the TGWU. panies’ claims that they couldn’t afford to pay more. Many SDF/BSP : Social Democratic Federation/British Socialist disputes included women workers who were building up Party. The SDF, Britain’s biggest Marxist group, was in union organisations from scratch, like Mary Macarthur’s 1911 beginning the process of merging with others to form NFWW. Transport Worker recorded action being taken by pre - Strikers’ rally the BSP.

SOLIDARITY 9 FEATURE How workers can find their power

This is the second part of JT Murphy’s 1917 pamphlet The LOCAL WORKERS’ COMMITTEE functions of the committee should be confined to the fo - Workers’ Committee . Murphy was a founder member of There are no clear demarcation lines between one in - cussing of questions of a national character relating to the the Communist Party and a Sheffield metal worker. Here dustry and another, just as there are no clear demarca - industry. It must be clearly understood that the National In - Murphy outlines his socialist-syndicalist viewpoint: how tion lines between skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled dustrial Committee is not to usurp the functions of the ex - workers organised in workers’ committees, plant commit - workers. A modern engineering plant, as we have ecutive councils of the trade unions. Power to decide action shown, has in it workers of various kinds all of which tees and local federations of those committees could de - is vested in the workshop so far as these committees are velop class consciousness as well as organise themselves are dependent upon the engineering plant, and must accordingly be represented on the Plant Committee. concerned. to win class battles. The pamphlet remains a source of If the occasion arises when the rank-and-file are so out of ideas for any union militant wishing to building rank- This drives us clear into other industries than engineer - touch with the executive councils of their unions that they and-file organisation. More background and the first part ing and makes imperative a similar development in these can be found at: www.workersliberty.org/node/17209 take action in spite of them, undoubtedly they would use other industries as in the engineering industry. Then, just as whatever organisation lay to hand. Apart from such abnor - from the trade union branches we have the Trade Council, mal circumstances the functions of the committee should be PLANT COMMITTEES so from the various industrial committees representatives confined to the building up of the organisation, to the dis - The next step to intensify the development of the work - should be elected to form the Local Workers’ Committee. semination of information throughout the workshops of all shop committees [is] by the formation in every plant of It will be similar in form to a trades council, with this es - matters relating to the industry, initiating ways and means sential difference — the trades council is only indirectly re - a Plant Committee. All the stewards of each firm, from of altering the structure and constitutions of the trade lated to the workshops, whereas the Workers’ Committee is every department of that firm, should meet and elect a unions, and working with the true spirit of democracy until directly related. The former has no power, the latter has the committee from amongst them to centralise the efforts the old organisations are so transformed that the outworn or link up the shop committees in the firm. driving power of the directly connected workers in the workshops. So the Workers’ Committee will be the means of and the obsolete are thrown off, and we merge into the Just as it is necessary to co-operate the workshops for pro - focussing attention upon those questions which affect the larger, more powerful structure we have outlined. duction, so it is necessary to co-ordinate the work of the workers as a whole in that locality. NATIONAL WORKERS’ COMMITTEE shop committees. As there are questions which affect a sin - The possibilities of such an organisation in a district are But just as we found it necessary to arrive at the class gle department, so there are questions which affect the plant tremendous. Each committee will be limited by its nature to as a whole. The function of a Plant Committee, will be such certain particular activities: the Workshop Committee to basis in the local workers’ committee, so it is essential that every question, every activity, can be known through - questions which affect the workshop, the Plant Committee that we should have the counterpart to it to the National out the departments at the earliest possible moment, and to questions affecting the firm as a whole, the Industrial Workers’ Committee. the maximum of attention be rapidly developed. The com - Committee to the questions of the industry, the Workers’ Again we find that history justifies the development. As plaints of workers that they do not know what is happening Committee to the questions relating to the workers as a the trade unionists of the past felt that there was a commu - would become less frequent. The trick of “playing” one de - class. Thus we are presented with a means of intensive and partment against another to cut rates could easily be extensive development of greater power than as workers nity of interest between all trade unionists in a locality, and stopped. we have ever possessed before. formed the Trades Council, so they eventually found a sim - Without a Central Committee on each Plant, the work - One has only to consider modern machine development ilar move on national lines necessary and formed the Trades shop committee tends to looseness in action, which is not to readily realise that as machinery enters the domain of all Union Congress. Its counterpart in our movement is the Na - an advantage to the workers’ movement. On the other hand industries, as transport becomes more easy and mechani - tional Workers’ Committee. To form this we suggest two with a Plant Committee at work, every change in workshop cal, all kinds of workers become intermingled and interde - delegates should be elected from each National Industrial practice could be observed, every new department tackled pendent. The consequences are such that fewer situations Committee. The smallness of the committee will not be a as to the organisation of the workers in that department, arise, fewer questions come to the front affecting, one indus - disadvantage. Of its nature it will confine itself to questions and everywhere would proceed a growth of the knowledge try alone or one section alone, and it becomes increasingly which affect the workers as a whole. among the workers of how intimately related we are to each imperative that the workers should modify or adjust their Having outlined the manner in which the structure can other, how dependent we are each to the other for the pro - organisations to meet the new industrial problems; for no grow out of the existing conditions, we would emphasise duction of society’s requirements. There would proceed a dispute can now arise which does not directly affect more the fact that we are not antagonistic to the Trade Union cultivation of the consciousness of the social character of the than the workers in one industry, even outside a single plant movement. We are not out to smash but to grow, to utilise methods of production. Without that consciousness all hope or firm. every available means whereby we can achieve a more effi - of a united working class is vain, and complete solidarity A stoppage of much magnitude affects the miners by cient organisation of the workers, that we all may become impossible. modifying the coal consumption, affects the railways by conscious by an increasing activity on our part how neces - Instead of it being a theory of a few, that the workers are holding up goods for transport, and in some cases the rail - associated in production, the organisation of the workers at way workers are called upon, to convey “blackleg” goods sary each worker is to the other for production and for the centres of production will demonstrate it as a fact. Then and men to other centres than the dispute centres, and vice emancipation. will the smelters, the moulders, the labourers, forgemen, versa. A stoppage of miners soon stagnates other industries, Unity in the workshop must come first, hence we have blacksmiths, etc., and all other workers, emphasise their so - and likewise a stoppage of railway workers affects miners, dealt more in detail with the Shop Committees than the cial relationship, their interdependence in production, and engineers, and so on. The necessity for mutual assistance larger organisations growing out of them. Not for a moment the power they can be when linked together on a common thus becomes immediately apparent when a dispute arises, would we lay down a hard and fast policy. The old mingles basis. and an effective co-ordination of all wage workers is urged with the new. Crises will arise which will produce organisa - Not only do we find in modern capitalism a tendency for upon us. tions coloured by the nature of the questions at issue. But nations to become self-contained, but also industrial enter - The Workers’ Committee is the means to that end, not apart from abnormal situations we have endeavoured to prises within the nations tend in a similar direction. Enter - only for fighting purposes, but also for the cultivation of show a clear line of development from the old to the new. prising employers with capital organised for the that class consciousness, which, we repeat, is so necessary to Working in the existing organisations, investing the rank exploitation of certain resources, such as coal, iron and steel working class progress. Furthermore, as a means for the dis - and file with responsibility at every stage and in every cri - productions, etc., find themselves at the beginning of their semination of information in every direction, such a com - sis; seeking to alter the constitution of every organisation mittee will prove invaluable, and reversing the procedure, enterprise dependent upon other groups of capitalists for from within to meet the demands of the age; working al - it will be able to focuss the opinions of the rank and file on certain facilities for the production of their particular spe - ways from the bottom upwards — we can see the rank and ciality. The result is that each group, seeking more and more questions relating to the working class as no other organisa - file of the workshops through the workshop committees to minimise the cost of production, endeavours to obtain tion has the facilities to do to-day. dealing with the questions of the workshops, the rank and first-hand control over all which is essential for that busi - NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL COMMITTEES ness, whatever it may be. file of the firms tackling the questions of the plant as a whole The further extensive development in the formation of a through the plant committee, the industrial questions For example, consider the growth of a modern armament National Industrial Committee now demands our atten - firm. It commences its career by specialising in armour through the industrial committees, the working class ques - tion, for it will be readily agreed that the local organisa - tions through the working class organisation — the work - plate, and finds itself dependent on outsiders for coal, trans - tions must be co-ordinated for effective action. port, machinery, and general goods. It grows, employs ers’ committee. The more such activity grows the more will navvies, bricklayers, joiners, carpenters, and erectors to We are of the opinion that the local structure must have its the old organisations be modified, until, whether by easy build new departments. It employs mechanics to do their counterpart in the National Structure, so we must proceed stages or by a general move at a given time, we can fuse our own repairs to machinery and transport. As new depart - to show how a National Industrial Committee can be forces into the structure which will have already grown. ments come into being a railway system and carting sys - formed. In the initial stages of the movement it will be ap - So to work with a will from within your organisations, tems follow. With the enlargement of the firm electrical parent that a ballot for the election of the first National Com - shouldering responsibility, liberating ideas, discarding prej - plant and motors, and gas producers are introduced, which mittee would be impossible, and as we, as workers, are not udices, extending your organisations in every direction until again enlarge the scope of the management for production investing these committees with executive power there is we merge into the great Industrial Union of the Working of goods for which hitherto they had been dependent upon little to worry about. Therefore a National Conference of Class. Every circumstance of the age demands such a cul - outsiders. A hold is achieved on some coal mine, a grip its Delegates from the local industrial committees should be mination. The march of science, the concentration of the obtained of the railway system, and so at every step more convened in the most convenient centre. From this confer - forces of capitalism, the power of the State, the transforma - and more workers of every description come under the con - ence should be elected a National Administrative Commit - tion of the military armies into vast military industrial trol of a single employer or a group of employers. tee for that industry, consideration being given to the armies, all are factors in the struggles of the future, stupen - We are brought together by the natural development of localities from which the members of the committee are dous and appalling to contemplate. industry, and made increasingly indispensable to each other elected. Having thus provided for emergencies by such ini - “His Majesty’s Government will place the whole civil by the simplifying, subdividing processes used in produc - tial co-ordination the first task of the committee is to pro - and military forces of the Crown at the disposal of the tion. We have become social groups, dependent upon a ceed to the perfecting of the organisation. railway companies...” So said the Premier of 1911 [dur - common employer or group of employers. The only way to It will be essential for efficiency to group a number of cen - ing the strike wave of that year] to the railway men. So meet the situation is to organise to fight as we are organised tres together for the purpose of representation on the Na - will say the Premier of England to-morrow. The one to produce. Hence the Plant Committee to bring together all tional Administrative Committee of the industry. We would mighty hope, the only hope, lies in the direction indi - workers on the plant, to concentrate labour power, to meet suggest twelve geographical divisions, with two delegates cated, in a virile, thinking, courageous working class or - centralised capital’s power. from each division, the boundaries of the division depend - ganised as a class to fight and win. ing upon the geographical distribution of the industry. The 10 SOLIDARITY LEFT

Were Stalinist dictators like Romania’s Nicolae Ceaucescu (above) presiding over some form of “deformed” or “degenerated” working-class rule, innately more progressive than capitalism because of state-owned property and centralised planning? Belief that they were became an article of faith for much of the would-be revolutionary left. “Every sect is religious”

By Sean Matgamna ideas, our programme. To do otherwise would be to work on their head. against our own fundamental, longer term, objectives. The other side of Lenin’s dictum it is also true, and funda - Commenting about Martin Thomas’s article “The So - To take something nobody on the left would think of mental: a working-class organisation will, to one degree or cialist Party’s working-class base”, Dave Osler wrote doing, we do not use racist agitation or EDL-style xenopho - another, be blind unless it is armed with Marxism. And a on our website: “In general, the article is a fair assess - bia in order to reach the mass of the white working class. supposedly Marxist organisation with rotten politics is not ment of the history and politics of Militant/SP. But what That would contradict and defeat the whole purpose of our only blind; it is an active, malignant force working, some - it doesn’t mention is the class nature of the SP’s base, work. We should not — to take something that almost times against its own best intentions, to prevent the work - and that is important [...] As Marxists believe that the everybody on the left does, and has done for decades — ing class from seeing capitalism as it is. emancipation of the working class is the act of the counterpose the increasingly defunct nation-states of Eu - working class itself, I will freely admit to a grudging re - rope to the bourgeois attempt to unite Europe in the Euro - MILITANT/SOCIALIST PARTY spect for the SP. So wrong on so many issues, but still..” pean Union. There are few examples in working-class history that In my opinion, one of the great sources of corruption on demonstrate that as conclusively as the history of the This raises important issues and begs an awful lot of ques - the left is the dominance of catch-penny opportunism in its Militant/Socialist Party. tions about working-class socialism in general and the ap - agitation. There is a whole Marxist literature about that. See, Of course would be foolish to try to decide which is most proach and history of the Militant/Socialist Party in for instance, Lenin’s polemic in What Is To Be Done against important, theory and politics or practice. Both are essen - particular. And, implicitly, of AWL some of the Russian Marxists. tial, neither is self-sufficient. But it is Marxism — coherent, Lenin summed it up nicely with the aphorism: “Theory History is full of examples of what not to do here. In the consistent working-class socialist politics — that differenti - without practice is sterile; practice without theory is blind”. early 1920s — yes, the 20s, not the early 30s — the German ates the revolutionary workers, those capable of leading the The central goal of Marxist socialists in politics is to reach Communist Party played with anti-semitism, during the so- whole of their class out of capitalism, from the great mass of the working class and educate it — the actually existing named “National Bolshevism” episode. In 1881, when a the working class. In the last reckoning, politics is what is working class, as it is at any given time, in any circum - wave of anti-Jewish pogroms swept across Russia, the Nar - fundamental to a revolutionary Marxist organisation. That stances, no matter what. James Connolly put it about as well odniks, who had recently assassinated the Tsar and, all in is its special contribution. Without that, striving for influ - as it can be put: all, were splendid, magnificently heroic people who were, in ence in the working class would be a pointless exercise. It is “To increase the intelligence of the slave, to sow broad - broad terms, socialists, welcomed the programs as a mani - not enough, of course. To be effective, as Dave Osler says, it cast the seeds of that intelligence that they may take root festation of the popular will. has to win the working class. and ripen into revolt; to be the interpreters of that revolt, We work by way of general education. We use agitation What if an ostensibly Marxist organisation wins the work - and finally to help in guiding it to victory is the mission we against aspects of day-to-day life and conditions under cap - ing class to non-Marxists politics? Then you have a histori - set before ourselves.” italism to help workers see the system as a whole. We help cal abortion. The Stalinist communist parties of Italy and the working class to organise. We act to organise the work - France were, each in its own country, the mass parties of the EXPERIENCES ing class in trade unions, political organisations, ephemeral We go through its experiences with the working class. working class. specific-issue organisations, all the way to organising armed For instance, when there is conscription, we do not be - For decades they brought disaster after disaster, political insurrection, when that becomes necessary. come conscientious objectors as a matter of principle, betrayal after political betrayal, down on the working class In all these phases, our central, all-governing concern, is no matter how much we may disapprove of what the they misled. They would have brought even worse disaster to educate and prepare the working class, or a sizeable mi - army is being used for. if they had taken power. nority of the working class that can then reach the rest of Before the Second World War, the majority of the work - A young member of the Healy organisation (then known the workers. That central concern tells us what we can and ing class in Czechoslovakia backed the Communist Party. as “The Club”, later the Socialist Labour League, then the cannot do. It is the fundamental reason why Trotsky, living That party, with help from the Russian army, led the work - Workers’ Revolutionary Party) had to be persuaded by the in a political, world-flooding deluge of Stalinist lies, again ers into a terrible half-century of totalitarian subjugation. organisation not to register as a conscientious objector in the and again insisted that lying to the working class, misin - Sections of the Romanian working-class, some miners for Korean War, not to separate himself from the experience of forming the workers, misleading then, manipulating them example, were prepared in 1989 to fight for Ceausescu. Mil - his generation of workers. He died in Korea. is impermissible. itant in Britain backed those Stalinist workers at the time, We act always to help the working class to understand For ourselves, the tendency that is now called Alliance for just as their predecessors in the Revolutionary Communist capitalist society, to see it in history as one of a number of ex - Workers’ Liberty has tried to live by those rules all through Party in 1948 publicly backed the Stalinist coup that put the ploitative class societies; to see it’s own place in capitalist its existence. We regard the working class as central to all airtight totalitarian lid on Czechoslovakia. I have known society, to learn that it can be replaced with a better, social - our concerns, as any Marxist must. That is why we have fo - people who had few political illusions about the Commu - ist, society. In practice, except at the height of a revolution - cused to a serious extent on the existing organisations of the nist Party of Great Britain who yet remained in that party, or ary working-class drive against capitalism, that almost working class, including, god help us, the Labour Party. joined it, because of its vaunted “working-class base”. And always involves relating to a minority. The point here is that, Even the best Marxists are condemned to sterility if, ulti - it certainly did have a solid working-class base for most of although of course we use our heads in deciding what we mately, they cannot reach and transform the working class. its existence. select, stress, focus on at a given moment; we do not, on But to go from that general rule, the basic guiding rule, to I think it is probably true that the Socialist Party, and be - pain of political self-annihilation, dilute what we say in the conclusion that the social composition of small propa - fore it, Militant has had a majority of people of working- order to reach the maximum number of workers; we do not ganda groups — and all the Trotskyist groups are small class background in its ranks. But so too did the Healy adulterate what we say in order to have more effective agi - propaganda groups — is the all important thing, or that tation. Our agitation must be consonant with our basic having working-class members goes a long way towards Continued on page 12 compensating for political deficiencies — is to turn things SOLIDARITY 11 LEFT organisation, in its various stages. (That organisation also, movement, and indeed, helped get it started. They said the Or take international affairs. Sometimes Militant’s policies incidentally, had a lot of black workers and black young peo - “right” things. The call for a Trade Union Defence Force in beggared belief. During the British-Argentina war over the ple; and many of the people who still, occasionally, sell the 1969 originated with them (it was then picked up by the Falklands Islands, what did they have to say? They were daily paper of its ultra degenerate Qaddafi-ite remnant, in Maoist British and Irish Communist Organisation, and after very wary of seeming to oppose the war, though I think they Peckham where I live, are both working-class and black.) that by Militant, which used it as a magic slogan, long after did “make the record” in the small print somewhere that Am I saying that it doesn’t matter whether or not socialists the CPNI had abandoned it.) they were against it. What did they think of the issues over influence workers and recruit then to their organisation? Of But here the CPNIers were being liberals, having failed to which the war was being fought, the Argentine invasion of course not! I am saying that just looking at the class compo - be any sort of working-class communist politicians where it the Falklands Islands? What did they try to get workers who sition of small Marxist organisations doesn’t even begin to mattered — in the labour movement. listened to them to accept? answer the decisive questions about those organisations and They said that Britain, Argentina and the Falklands should their affect on the working class. LIVERPOOL immediately unite in a common federal state! It was the art The sad truth is that since the political collapse of the Com - When Militant in Liverpool came into conflict with the of political evasion taken to the level of quasi-lunatic genius! munist International, revolutionary working-class politics, local black community, which had been subject to insti - The reader doesn’t believe it? I don’t blame you, but it’s true. as they had been understood all the way back to Karl Marx, tutional racism for many decades, how did they explain In a previous article I dealt with their general approach to have mainly been in the custody of small organisations that, the issues to their own people, and the Labour Party politics, with their fantastical “perspectives” for the labour more often than not, were sociologically not working-class. Young Socialists, which they led, and which did have movement and the world (“Libya, anti-imperialism and the Winston Churchill, of all people, put it very well in an ar - some raw young people in and around it? Socialist Party”, Workers’ Liberty 3/34). This was not in any ticle on the “Communist Schism”, written just before World They spread the story that the black people agitating meaningful sense a Marxist organisation. It was a strange War Two, which I happened to pick up the other day. Writ - against them in Liverpool were “spivs and gangsters”. They sectarian formation, incorporating no more than strands of ing on the Stalinist-Trotskyist division he said: “Stalin has in - resorted to the worst sort of racist prejudice-mongering and Marxism and Trotskyism, making a quasi-religious fetish of herited Lenin’s authority, but Trotsky has inherited his stereotyping of black people. (That is what was being said at some of its vocabulary. Certainly, their definition of social - message”. Of course it was a different sort of “authority” in Young Socialist Summer Camps, according to our young ism, either in relation to Britain or to the Stalinist world, had organisations that were very different from Lenin’s organisa - comrades who were there.) little in common with Marxist, working-class, socialism. tion. But Stalin did “inherit” the internationalist would-be What was their general role amongst those workers they For what we are discussing, most pertinently, it parted communist working class and its movement. reached? They preached “socialism”. What was socialism? It company with Marxism and its view of the working class’s The tragedy of the working class in the mid-20th century was the “nationalisation” of “the monopolies” — by the role in the socialist revolution and in its attitude to the work - — and of course of Trotskyism, which cannot thrive when bourgeois state. ing class and its movements. the working class is defeated — was that though Trotsky and What else was it? What existed in the Stalinist states. These Their view of the world was a hybrid species of “bureau - his very small movement could see and foresee the political of course were not fully socialist. They were degenerated and cratic collectivism”. They saw as positive what a Max Shacht - realities with tremendous clarity (in pre-Hitler Germany for deformed workers’ states that needed “political revolutions” man saw as utterly negative. example, and in mid-30s Spain) they were unable to affect to make them properly socialist. But, they were the first stage Ted Grant, Peter Taaffe and Alan Woods were bureaucratic what the mass working-class movement did. In the diary he of the world socialist revolution unfolding in a perverted collectivists because what they described as going on in the kept for a while, in 1935, when he was living in France, Trot - form in response to the “autonomous movement of the pro - world was the rise of a distinct new exploitative ruling class, sky compared himself to a wise old surgeon compelled to ductive forces”. which Grant called the “Proletarian Bonapartist Bureau - watch quacks and charlatans kill someone he loves. And they And by god, they were altogether better than anything else cracy”. It had a necessary economic and social role in the un - did kill the old revolutionary socialist working-class move - that existed on earth! They were to be defended in all circum - derdeveloped world, a role comparable to that attributed to ment. stances, even while being criticised. Those who were trying the bourgeoisie by the Mensheviks in the Russian revolution. So what of Militant/the Socialist Party? In reality, Militant to create similar states, had to be supported. The Russian This “Proletarian Bonapartist Bureaucracy” was the blind has been a source of backwardness and mis-education in the army had to be supported in its terrible colonial war in creation of “the spontaneous movement of the forces of pro - labour movement. It has never been anything else. In the Afghanistan — and was, for the duration of the 10 year war. duction” and in turn created its own sort of collectivist prop - decade and a half during which they ran the Labour Party Those “defending the nationalised property”, even a Ceaus - erty. Young Socialists, that movement was on many key questions escu, were to be supported, as the Stalinist coup had been Their outlook had more in common with the views of the to the right of typical young people in Britain, socially back - supported by the RCP, one of whose key leaders has been strange Bruno Rizzi, with whom Trotsky polemicised in ward compared to large sections of working-class youth at Ted Grant. 1939, than with Trotsky’s. Rizzi saw the world being in - that time. On such things as gay rights and the legalisation of One of the oddest things was that they did not even talk volved in a progressive bureaucratic collectivism, driven by soft drugs like cannabis, for instance. But not only on things about nationalisation under workers control. In the 60s, you both the fascists and the Stalinists, in their different ways. To like that. could find supporters of Militant and supporters of the Inter - promote this bureaucratic revolution, he advocated the fu - RACISM national Socialists, now the Socialist Workers Party, in the sion of the Stalinists and the fascists in one organisation. Young Socialists, arguing vehemently that socialism was This, to Ted Grant, was a two-stage world revolution, in Take racism, for a particularly scandalous example. In a which the Stalinists (but not exclusively the Stalinists: other, notorious case in the 70s they refused to back Asian workers control (IS), or that it was only nationalisation (Mil - itant). non-Communist, forces had also turned Burma and Syria workers striking against racial discrimination at Impe - into “deformed workers states”) were the protagonists in cre - rial Typewriters. Why? Because in part they were striking It was like the blind men and the elephant in children’s parable, each of them feeling different parts of the elephant, ating an immensely progressive form of totalitarianism against white workers they accused of racism and of which replaced the working class “in the period ahead”. benefiting from discrimination. and arguing about what an elephant was — a snake, said those at the tail, a tree trunk, said those at the feet, a palm And it wasn’t just a matter of trying to define reality as he Now, plainly, where the workers are divided like that you tree, said those at the ears, and so on. It was even odder saw it. This view of progressive “Proletarian Bonapartist” to - should tread very carefully. You should advocate working- when you knew that in the late 1940s, the RCP, whose lead - talitarianism was incorporated into their own programme by class unity, as Militant no doubt did. But not unity on the ership included Ted Grant, later of Militant (and then Social - way of their support for Stalinist revolutionary movements basis of keeping quiet about discrimination and the special ist Appeal), had used the demand for workers’ control to — the inevitable “next step”. ill-treatment of some of the workers in question! Not on the differentiate their politics from the politics of the nationalis - basis of implicitly or explicitly telling the most oppressed ing Labour government. workers, in this case the doubly oppressed workers, not to Continued on page 14 split the working class. That is, not to fight back until they had first won over the white workers. Has the Socialist Party learned from this? I’ll be astonished if they have. To learn from your own history you have to know and understand it. The Socialist Party’s way with awk - ward facts in its history is to bluster and deny them. The work of another organisation, the Communist Party of Northern Ireland, is an instructive example of the same method. From 1941 until they reunited in 1970, there were two Communist parties in Ireland, one on each side of the border) built up a great working-class following during World War Two, when it was unrestrained in its British nationalism and thus in-line with the outlook of the Orange workers. It retained considerable influence in the unions for decades after the war. They had leading positions in the engineering union; Betty Sinclair, a woman of Protestant background and a one-time student at the Stalinist “Lenin University” in Moscow, was secretary of the very important Belfast Trades Council. How did they handle the fact that Catholics were discriminated against? They helped build up a tacit accept - ance in the unions, where Catholics and Protestants were united on trade-union issues, that the discrimination against Catholics in jobs, in housing, in voting rights, etc., would not be raised! That helped build the Communist Party of Northern Ire - land. It kept a deceptive facade of working-class unity, but its influence in the working-class movement was malign. There might have been a principled political campaign in the rela - tively quiet years before 1969 — when the Protestant-Union - ists did not feel actively threatened with incorporation against their will into an all-Ireland state — against such dis - crimination, in conditions where they could appeal to the class consciousness of the workers, and perhaps have edu - cated that class consciousness. Thus they contributed to the explosion that began to engulf Northern Ireland in 1967, 1968 and 1969, with the rise of the Catholic civil rights movement. Militant responded to the Falklands war by peddling utopian fantasies about an immediate federation of Britain, Argentina and Of course the Communist Party backed that civil rights the Falkland Islands themselves. 12 SOLIDARITY REVIEW A sophisticated apology for Castro

Pablo Velasco reviews Workers in Cuba: Unions and labour relations. A 2011 update . (Institute of Employment Rights)

Whether it is resolutions at union conferences, House of Commons receptions or summer garden parties, the uncritical lauding of the Cuban government in the British labour movement stretches from Brendan Bar - ber to Bob Crow. Workers in Cuba is a sophisticated piece of orthodox apolo - getics. It consists of a previously published essay by Debra Evenson, a foreword by Unite general secretary Len Mc - Cluskey and an introduction and annex by academic Steve Ludlam. The pamphlet will be widely circulated and is suf - ficiently crafted to sow great confusion. The authors assume that Cuba is, in the words of its con - stitution, a “socialist state of workers”. They believe that there must somehow be substantive workers’ power in Cuba. But although Cuban workers played a significant (and sometimes neglected) role in the struggle against Batista, it was not a self-conscious working class, with its own leadership and its own organs of class rule, that made the revolution in 1959. No working-class revolutionary party led the Cuban workers in their battle for self-emanci - pation. No democratic working-class institutions, such as soviets, were established, even in the early years, through which the working class could exercise control of the sur - plus product it produced. No-one — and certainly not the Castro leadership — talked openly about building a socialist state in 1959. Ac - Cuba Solidarity activists: spreading ilusions and ideas about false utopias cording to the historian Van Gosse, letters from Cuba to the US in the early days were stamped with the message “In ical, ideologically and economically. Cuba we are living happy now with humanism, no commu - pendent trade unionism in Cuba now and for the future. nism”. The now uncritical American SWP (no relation to the He regards the argument “that the unions are mere trans - Such a movement would clearly have to recognise that its British one) argued after the seizure of power that the rev - mitters of government policy” as “clumsy”, because unions enemies were both the existing regime and the US govern - olution was for national independence and Fidel Castro was everywhere have political alliances and the Cuban unions ment. Every new union movement emerging from Stalinist “consciously resisting the tendency to continue in a social - “transmit” in the other direction. But few would argue that or totalitarian capitalist states has faced these dangers, in - ist direction”. If socialism in one country was nonsense in workers and unions in capitalist states, dependent on bour - cluding where it seeks allies, funds and support. Russia in the 1920s, then how much more absurd is the en - geois parties, are really in power. In fact the apologists But self-organisation — and the freedom to meet, publish durance of “socialism in one (relatively small) island”? struggle to demonstrate that Cuban unions are more than and disagree that go with them, are absolutely necessary if CTC LABOUR FRONT integral agents of the Cuban state. Cuban workers are to articulate their own interests. To deny Ludlam states that the CTC takes part in the formation of even the possibility is to foreclose on the options for the Evenson’s essay uses legalistic formulas to avoid the foreseeable future and consign the Cuban working class to real issues. She writes that, “Since its founding in 1939, government policy. He states that in 2006 the CTC revived the workplace asembleas. Apparently over 80,000 assem - the role of appendage of either Castroism or US imperial - the Cuban Workers Central (CTC) has been the only na - ism. For third camp socialists, there is another path. tional organisation representing unions in Cuba.” blies met in 2008 to discuss preliminary production and service plans. Another mass consultation exercise discussed HALF A MILLION SACKED The Cuban Workers’ Confederation was from its incep - changing the age of retirement and raising pensions, with On 13 September 2010, the CTC announced that half a tion heavily policed by Batista, first with the Communist over 3 million workers meeting in 85,000 workplace assem - million state employees were to be “redeployed” Party and later by the corrupt Mujal. The first breath of rev - blies to discuss the proposals. tossed out of the public sector and into self-emplo—y - olution in 1959 shook most of the unions so hard the work - If we assume the figures are accurate, they are still not suf - ment. The CTC highlighted a million “potentially redun - ers replaced the old bureaucrats with leaders more to their ficient to bear the weight of the argument. Ludlam admits dant” posts, and the decision was endorsed by the liking — many of them Castro supporters. However, in No - that in the early 1990s, “the monthly asemblea system was recent sixth Communist Party congress, suggesting the vember 1959 the Castro government imposed its own slate, hollowed out by the mayhem of the Special Period”. They process will be implemented, albeit more slowly than using Lázaro Peña and other Stalinists as their agents in the were revived from the top down, just as the unions them - envisaged at first. workers’ movement. By the so-called 11th CTC congress in selves were resuscitated in the early 1970s at the whim of November 1961, the CTC changed its name to Cuban Work - the government. For sure the assemblies are a form of con - Ludlam tries to provide a positive gloss on this drastic re - ers’ Central (rather than Confederation — hence the same sultation and may indeed modify proposals. Staff meetings, trenchment, arguing that at least the CTC was consulted initials), Peña became the new CTC general secretary. The quality circles, toolbox talks, and management briefings and that the purpose is to “strengthen Cuba’s sovereignty CTC effectively became a labour front — it accepted gov - take place under capitalism, but they do not add up to and its solidaristic socialist model”. He makes a great deal ernment proposals to give up Christmas and sick leave workers’ control. The assemblies do not amount to work - of Resolution No.8/2005, which he believes made collective bonuses and to work 48 hours a week. ers’ power in Cuba. bargaining a legal requirement in Cuba and provided guar - Evenson argues that “Union membership is voluntary; Ludlam might like to think workers are discussing how to antees to workers in the event of redeployment. However but all workers have the right to join. There are approxi - divide up the surplus product. In reality, workers in Cuba he points out that the retrenchment undermines those mately four million workers in Cuba; about 98 per cent are have so little power they have been unable to extract a ra - promises. members of one of the national unions”. Yet such impres - tion for even half the amount necessary for their own means He writes: “It is important to recognise that in some as - sive density should make the reader suspicious, especially of subsistence. The matters discussed in the assemblies are pects of the redeployment programme, unions have agreed as strikes are unfeasibly rare (and there is no right to strike). invariably determined by the central state and focus on how to some dilution of rights established in the 2005 legislation. Cubans join an affiliate of the CTC in order to get a job and to more effectively exploit workers. Whether it is increasing The options of redeployed workers taking up ‘study as a to keep it, and to get many of the social welfare rations dis - productivity, working longer or mass sackings, the Cuban form of work’ (established in the 2005 law), or of early retire - tributed through workplaces. This is not a sign of either mil - ruling bureaucratic class have the resources and the power, ment (as in the sugar restructuring in 2002), were with - itancy or union democracy. while the Cuban workers always seem to lose. drawn. Earnings-related unemployment benefit (‘salary Evenson notes: “Until 1992, the CTC was recognised in protection’) established in Resolution No.8/2005 would INDEPENDENT UNIONS? now be time-limited; paid at 100% of salary for the first the Cuban Constitution as the representative of Cuban According to McCluskey, this pamphlet “bursts the month, at 60% for up to five further months for those with workers”. She recognises that “the CTC and the national bubble of the so-called ‘independent’ trade unions ex - 10 to 30 years of service”. unions adhere to the policies of the Communist Party of posing them as little more than a front for often foreign The authors of this pamphlet would have us believe that Cuba, which the CTC explicitly recognises in its statutes as based interests”. the supreme political and ideological force in Cuban soci - Cuban workers are basically happy to go along with their ety”. She concludes, “there is a close and interdependent re - Ludlam writes: “It is not necessary to assume that every own occupational suicide — because they are really the lationship between the unions, the government and the Cuban dissident is a mercenary, or that every Cuban critic of owners of the state. A better explanation is that Cuban Party”. But the Communist Party monopolises the state and its trade unions is a US agent, in order to acknowledge that workers have been so beaten down, so atomised and so dis - the state dominates the unions. Evenson undermines her in the 50-year US dirty war against the Cuban people, ‘inde - enfranchised that they believe such protest would be futile. own account, pointing out that “Until fairly recently, the pendent’ trade unionism in Cuba is hopelessly compro - This is not a cause for celebration. Rather it should lead the CTC and the unions did not have their own legal counsel.” mised by its paymasters in Washington and elsewhere.” Castrophiles to question the whole project they are support - Suppose everyone arrested in recent years really has been ing. WORKERS’ CONTROL? simply a US agent dressing up in the garb of independent McCluskey states that the Cuban revolution is an “inspi - Steve Ludlam’s essay is as slippery as Evenson’s. He unionism. It is not clear this invalidates every other attempt rational role model”. The Arab spring and the new work - writes that “Unions are legally autonomous and finan - to campaign for independent unions — for example in the ers’ movements and strikes in China are truly inspiring. cially independent”, which may be formally true but early years of regime or indeed in the 1980s, when a Soli - Fighting austerity across the globe, workers need those real rather avoids the historic dependence on the state and darnosc -type organisations was apparently set up, before it models. From Cuban Stalinism there is nothing inspirational the way in which they are dominated by the state polit - was repressed. Nor does it invalidate the demand for inde - at all. SOLIDARITY 13 REVIEW The myth of an “objective” media

Nick Davies is the Guardian journalist whose investiga - who were interested in little more than quality reporting in tions of the media can be understood using a metaphor of a tions into the Murdoch media helped uncover the phone the name of the public interest. This is of course naive, not plant: the news may tell you when the first sprout breaks hacking practises, exploding the recent scandal that led to to mention ahistorical. The press barons of old may have through the surface, but it does not tell you how the seed is the closure of the News of the World . Here, James Blood - been more concerned with the principles of good copy than germinating in the ground. It may tell you what somebody worth reviews his 2008 book Flat Earth News , which today’s crop of capitalist proprietors, whose only interest is says is happening to the seed underground. It does not, aimed to expose “falsehood, distortion and propaganda in their bottom line, but as Hannen Swaffer (one of the early however, serve to explain the germination process of the the global media.” 20th-century pioneers of British tabloid journalism) put it, seed itself. Nick Davies’s first book, Dark Heart , offered a brilliant long-before the era of Murdoch & Co., “freedom of the press Davies does touch on the influence of “common-sense” exposé of the impact of Thatcherism on the lives of in Britain is the freedom to print such of the proprietor’s assumptions in his critique of supposedly impartial media working people and their communities across Britain. prejudices as the advertisers don’t object to.” In other outlets: words, the capitalist press has long had other things in mind “The great blockbuster myth of modern journalism is ob - Researching the book, Davies spent time with those than straightforward truth-telling. jectivity, the idea that a good newspaper or broadcaster sim - whose lives were ravaged by the 1980s privatisation drive; SIMPLIFICATION ply collects and reproduces objective truth. It is a classic Flat people who, for all the aspirational rhetoric of the Thatcher- Earth tale, widely believed and devoid of reality. It has era, were brutally pushed aside by the culture of “greed is It is a simplification, of course, to assume that media never happened and never will happen because it cannot good” and thrown on the scrapheap. barons set the political agenda and journalists simply happen. Reality exists objectively, but any attempt to record In Flat Earth News , Davies takes on another cosy consen - jump into line; and Davies correctly points this out. For the truth about it always and everywhere necessarily in - sus — that of his own profession, journalism. Flat Earth a start, there are many journalists who would refuse to News is scathing about the way changing media ownership do such a thing, however handsomely they were paid volves selection.” patterns have led to the news-media becoming little more to do so. Davies is right to dismiss the goal of an “impartial” media than a cash-cow for ruthless, free-market capitalists. The re - as impossible. The socialist press, of which Solidarity is a sult of this change has, according to Davies, seen a once What newspapers and television stations do very effec - part, is not “objective” or “impartial”, and nor does it at - proud profession descend into banal “churnalism”, where tively, however, is reinforce orthodoxy organically through tempt to be. For us, the key criticism of today’s mass media the regurgitation of press releases supplants the search for the reproduction of their own economic interests. Should outlets is not the abstract fact that they are representative of real stories by dedicated and passionate reporters. As jour - the media accurately report voices of dissent, it may in the - particular social, political and economic interests, but that nalists attempt to turn over as much material as possible at ory cannibalise itself through a transformation in society’s the interests they represent are those of our class enemy. minimal cost to their new bosses, the quality of their output economic structure. While for socialists Davies’s book may seem relatively is invariably suffering to the point where, Davies argues, A genuine plurality of ideas is simply not in the economic timid in proposing democratic solutions to the crisis of jour - much of what we read in our newspapers is little more than interests of a heavily-concentrated mass media. The subse - naTlihsme ,bitoiosknoisnewthoerltehssaanloeonkjofyoarbalenaynodnenilnigthetrensitnegdreinada . “Flat Earth news”. quent narrowing of political debate to the “centre ground”, competent critique of the modern media, even if, at From a critical perspective, Davies is somewhat apt to ro - with most other ideas portrayed not simply as illegitimate, times, it makes you want to grab Davies by the shoul - manticise the journalistic profession of old. Rather than pro - but as disorderly and threatening, reflects economic trends ders and shake him out of his nostalgia for bygone-era posing genuinely democratic solutions, he harks back to an that have become increasingly concentrated in the West over that never really existed. imaginary golden era when the media was owned by those the past 30 years . The resulting “common-sense” assump - “Every sect is religious”

Continued from page 12 tied to Labourism, and many of its militants and rank-and- in little things as in big ones; to base one’s program on the file leaders to the Communist Party. They had very little no - logic of the class struggle; to be bold when the hour for action tion of their movement as a mobilisation, and an education arrives.” Those were his “rules” for the Fourth International, in action that would eventually overthrow capitalism. They The Stalinists, the bearers of a new form of production, that had “shown it can swim against the stream”. Instead of looked to Parliamentary action to achieve political ends, even had a progressive role to play even in a country like Por - that you had idiotic evasions like the British-Argentina-Falk - when they themselves acted to achieve political ends, as tugal, or so said Grant in their magazine, as late as 1978. lands Federation demand. when hundreds of thousands struck work to force the release And who knew what the workers would or wouldn’t un - Grant, Taaffe, Woods et al also had a full quiver of rational - of five dock workers jailed for illegal picketing in 1972. derstand? The wise men at the centre, licensed thereby, to cut isations for accommodating to the bureaucratic leadership When the labour movement brought down the govern - and trim, evade and obfuscate. The truth is that they had of the existing labour movement. Take the question of the ment in February 1974, all we had to replace it in govern - contempt for the workers. The leaders of such groups always “existing socialist consciousness of the labour movement”, ment was Harold Wilson’s Labour Party! do. which was an issue in dispute between them and those of us In that situation the revolutionaries, the Marxists, were One of their youth organisers at a Labour Party Young So - who founded what is now the AWL. those who told the labour movement the truth about its own cialists summer camp, where there were quite a lot of “raw” There was, undoubtedly, a mass “socialist” consciousness situation and about its own weaknesses, and what needed young workers, rowdy and factionally primed-up against in the broad labour movement — a belief in statism, a pref - to be done about it. The idea that the socialist consciousness the minority there (which was essentially the forerunner of erence for nationalised and municipalised industry over of the labour movement, such as it was, was adequate, or the AWL), said to one of our organisers, speaking “man-to- profit-driven-private enterprises. And, certainly, the then anything remotely like adequate, was simply preposterous. man”, wised-up Marxist to wised-up Marxist: “If we let them very widespread workplace struggles over working condi - The idea that all that was necessary for socialism, for work - off the leash, they’d tear you to pieces!” (For old-timers who tions, over seemingly small things like tea breaks, were a ing-class rule, was to generalise the widespread labour might remember the period, it was Kevin Rammage speak - form of struggle for control by workers of their industries, movement support for nationalisations into the demand that ing to Mick O’Sullivan). With that spirit, and I cite it because and their working lives. There was a very high degree of de all “the monopolies” should be nationalised, was both fool - I think it sums up their real spirit, the fundamental attitude facto workers control in a number of industries. On the ish and pernicious. Militant’s activities were the preoccupa - of the organisation’s leaders and that, whatever they say, al - docks, for instance, a powerful element of workers control tions of a self-cultivating sect for which the class struggle was ways shows in practice. had emerged within the peculiar employment structures set at best, less important than their own organisation. They did not try to develop and raise up and broaden the up under the National Docks Labour Board. (Dockers were What Militant did in all its activities was batten on the ex - outlook and the real understanding of the youngsters they employed permanently, at a very low guaranteed minimum isting movement, accepting and reinforcing but also mystify - organised, courtesy of the Labour Party. They didn’t teach wage, by local Docks Labour Boards, and hired out as they ing the ideas that existed — and sometimes even the most them to think. Instead they taught them political parrot were needed to the employer’s working the ships.) backward ideas as above — in the movement, at every point work. But all this was tremendously inadequate, measured and in every way. The Socialist Party operates with the idea that “Marxism” against what was necessary if the working class were to over - MISEDUCATION is a given, that it is fixed. In reality it has to be sifted, applied, throw capitalism and replace the bourgeoisie as the ruling Militant’s propaganda for “socialism” was a species of and redefined again and again in the light of experience. The power in society. Workers had to understand about the na - miseducation of the workers it reached. In its unrealism, Marxists have to learn and go on learning before they can be ture of the capitalist state and what they needed to do about its attitudes, its sectish schema-mongering, adequate interpreters and teachers for the working class. The it; about the difference between nationalisation and demo - Socialist Party is still making propaganda for the wonders cratic working-class socialisation of the means of production Militant peddled a kind of utopian socialism. It had an es - worked by the defunct “planned economy” in Stalinist Rus - and exchange; about the need for international working-class sentially manipulative attitude to the working class. Their sia. People like Peter Taaffe are evidently incapable of learn - unity. In reality the best of the labour movement in the 50s, formula to excuse saying whatever would help the organisa - ing. The bureaucratic sect-structures of the Socialist Party 60s and 70s came to be in the grip of a sort of headless syn - tion to survive and grow and avoid clashing with wide - prevents others from discussing and maybe learning from dicalism. spread working-class public opinion was “The workers their own and other peoples’ experiences. The key idea of In the largely syndicalist “Great Unrest” before World War wouldn’t understand that, comrade!” It generated such Marxist socialism, that the liberation of the working class One, and its continuation during and after that war, its scarcely-believable idiocies as the British-Argentina-Falk - must be self-liberation, is well put in “The Internationale”. thinkers and writers, such as James Connolly, saw the move - lands Federation and was a manipulative license for virtually “No servants from on high deliver ment they were building as a means to overthrow the bour - anything. No faith have we in Prince or peer, geoisie. They saw the industrial unions they advocated and Instead of the Marxist idea and its modus operandi that Our own right hand the chains must shiver, built as the infrastructure within capitalism of the future you function to educate the workers, that you stand against ChLaeinassotfohfatarleldw, oilflgareseodcainadlisfetasr”e. ct like the Socialist Party, Workers’ Republic. the tide of opinion when necessary, you had “the workers teaching political and intellectual docility to those it in - The de facto syndicalism in mid-20th-century Britain was wouldn’t understand”. Trotsky’s advice was “To face reality fluences, liberate the working class. As Karl Marx said: an often tremendous movement of rank-and-file workers squarely; not to seek the line of least resistance; to call things “In the last analysis, every sect is religious.” that relied on direct action. It was very often, also directed by their right names; to speak the truth to the masses, no against the union bureaucracy. But it remained politically matter how bitter it may be; not to fear obstacles; to be true 14 SOLIDARITY REPORTS Construction bosses go to war against workers

By Ira Berkovic include industry leaders give managers an enor - organised labour deci - ments and procedures. the bosses back, rejecting such as Balfour Beatty, mous amount of direct sively. However, many rank- the line from the union bu - The UK’s major electrical wrote to workers in late control over hours, breaks Unions representing the and-file construction reaucracy that a campaign and mechanical contrac - July announcing their in - and pay procedure, as well workers were only given workers are frustrated based on petitions and lob - tors have launched an tention to impose new as containing a no-strike access to copies of the with what they see as their bying could appeal to em - unprecedented attack on agreements. clause. Blacklisting of draft agreement after sig - unions’ inadequate re - ploTyheersm’ beetttienrgneatleucrete. d a collective bargaining by The new agreement, if union activists is already a nificant pressure. Unite sponse to the attacks. A steering committee of attempting to unilaterally imposed, will lead to a sig - factor in the industry and have since withdrawn packed meeting of activists six individuals to coordi - impose a new agreement nificant deskilling and ar - many workers see this lat - from negotiations and are on Saturday 13 August nate the rank-and-file on the industry. bitrary downgrading by est attack as an attempt by mounting a campaign in discussed the possibilities campaign. industry bosses. It will also contractors to stamp out defence of existing agree - for industrial action to beat The contractors, which Support Southampton council workers the vote to continue strikes By a Unison member has been a clear decision by well as reviewing its levels Unison and Unite members of hardship pay. Johnston A meeting of 600 workers to carry on with the strike The meeting, which was involved in the long-run - action. Myself and all the attended by a quarter of all ning battle at Southamp - other Branch Officials will council union members Press ton city council has voted now implement the demo - and represented a cross- by 4 to 1 to reject council cratic decision taken at section of the workforce, Picketing out agency workers bosses' latest offer and today’s meeting.” Unite Re - took resolutions and continue with strike ac - gional Organiser Ian Wood - amendments about the dis - strikers! tion. Barnet council workers to land said: “There was a puWteh. atever its outcome, huge amount of anger ex - The offer centred on a the Southampton dispute By an NUJ member pressed at the meeting to - strike on 13 September promised £500,000 injection has put the best of labour wards this proposal and from the council to slightly movement traditions — The media industry’s first the mandate given by our reduce the pay cut faced by control of disputes by By Vicki Morris heading to Barnet in all-out strike in decades members for further action social workers, and the rank-and-file committees droves: 100 companies at - has seen journalists is very clear.” raising of the cuts thresh - and mass meetings with Barnet council Unison is tended a recent NSCSO working for Johnston Unison will now hold old from £17,500 to £22,000, democratic structures taking industrial action “market day”, including Press titles in South members' meetings to de - meaning that slightly fewer and real sovereign con - against privatisation of “big boys” Capita, Serco Yorkshire, including Don - cide which section of work - lower-paid workers would trol — back on the council services, and on and BT. caster Free Press and the ers will be next to face the cut. agenda. Saturdays in August has The action in revenues Selby Times , take over a participate in the strike, as picketed an attempt to and benefits is beginning month’s worth of action. The meeting discussed whether to suspend the break a work-to-rule in to bite. There are around revenues and benefits. National Union of Jour - current strike actions and 140 permanent staff, plus The branch is also or - nalists (NUJ) activists have enter detailed negotiations 50 agency staff brought in ganising a one-day strike accused the company of on this offer, or to keep the to deal with a backlog current action live and con - on Tuesday 13 Septem - caused by problems with a failing to act “humanely” ber. towards its employees; it tinue general negotiations. new computer system. The agency staff are now being has so far refused to negoti - Speaking after the vote, Around 400 staff in plan - kept on to deal with the ate on any of the workers’ Unison branch secretary ning and regulatory serv - backlog caused by the in - grievances and is pushing Mike Tucker said: “there Voting to continue the strike ices, and revenues and dustrial action. Around 130 ahead with its plans to benefits have for several Unison members are tak - make across-the-board job weeks not been doing ing action. cuts, including the merging Another win overtime and refusing to On Saturdays the council of three titles into one Victory on cooperate with the work has offered overtime to for London being done on privatising under a single editor. agency and permanent their jobs. Richard Parker, NUJ staff. The Unison branch is cleaners Barnet’s Tory adminis - members at the Selby Times , the tube treating this as an attempt tration plans to privatise said "The sense of unity Cleaners working at the at breaking the industrial the bulk of council services among NUJ branch mem - landmark Heron Tower action and, with the sup - By an RMT member spected RMT member. A under the One Barnet Pro - bers, and the overwhelm - near Liverpool Street in port of the local anti-cuts union meeting about his gramme (OBP), this in ing level of public support, Leytonstone-based London have won a pay group and Barnet trades sacking drew over 100 spite of the fact that the has been astonishing. It driver Tunde Umanah, increase to a “living- council, has organised workmates in his support, planned savings would be convinces us we're right to the latest tube worker to wage” rate of £8.30 per picketing at the council. members of RMT and tiny. OBP will disrupt take this important stand, fall victim to London Un - hour, and have secured We have deterred agency other unions. The meeting council services and the and that we must keep derground’s attempts to commitments from man - workers from going into resolved to take industrial council is spending a for - fighting for the future of victimise union activists, agement to resolve is - work. Five or six perma - action if he was not rein - tune on consultants and local journalism." has won his job back on sues of staff shortages nent staff who are not in stated, sending a strong overpaid executives expert Darren Burke, a member appeal. and unfair dismissal the union have driven into message to management. in “change management”. of the chapel committee, practises. work. Pickets have man - As with the campaign to Privatisation will mean said "Our Members still The investigation found aged to stop a few of them defend victimised Eamonn cuts in pay and conditions feel as resolute as they did inconsistencies in the story Cleaning contractor LCC and speak to them. Lynch and Arwyn Thomas, of service in order to boost on day one. The longer this of the manager who had also agreed to open up for - The Unison branch has the successful battle to re - their profits. goes on the more deter - gunned for Tunde’s job, mal discussions with the organised a one-day strike instate Tunde has proved The council has already mined our members will and that memos relating to workers’ union, the Indus - of all members involved in that fighting to defend offered three big contracts become.” the incident were con - trial Workers of the World the work-to-rule. On Tues - sacked workmates pro - worth more than £1 billion Please send messages of cealed from the discipli - (IWW), with a view to es - day 13 September they will duAcnesErmespulotsy. ment Tribu - to the private sector: nary panel. While Tunde tablishing a recognition start their strike during the support to the strikers from nal has also recently • Parking (£25 million) has been praised for his agreement. day, to encourage maxi - your union branch. ruled that another • Planning, regulatory honesty, the manager has The IWW’s negotiations mum participation in • Donations to Account sacked driver, James services and Hendon received a 12 month warn - were backed up by solidar - picket lines and other ac - name: DFP NUJ Chapel. Masango, was dismissed cemetery (£275 million) ing. ity demonstrations, part of tivities. In the evening No: 35630388. Sort code: unfairly. • New Support and Cus - Tunde was a well-re - an ongoing campaign to or - there will be a lobby of the 60-06-39 tomer Services Organisa - ganise City of London Barnet council meeting, • Messages of support tion (includes revenues workers which has already 6pm, Hendon Town Hall, can be sent to one of the and benefits, HR, procure - More on our website: won victories for cleaners the Burroughs, London reps at dar - ment, finance, IT and a call On... Oxford youth workers’ strike, Northern employed by Ocean Con - NW4 4BG. [email protected], tract Cleaning at Guildhall. centre to deal with resi - • To find how to sup - copy in nujmanches - Ireland health strike, Transpennine Express dents) (£750 million.) port the pickets, please [email protected]. strike, Thurrock refuse workers’ strike, Off the Rails a platform for These contracts are for email • Invite an NUJ striker to rank and file railworkers. 10 years with the possibil - [email protected]. speak at your next union strikes in USA and Canada. Summer issue out now. ity of extending for a fur - Please email messages branch/ campaign meeting http://tinyurl.com/strikeroundup See: www.workersliberty.org/ ther five years. No wonder of support to contac - by emailing Darren Burke offtherails private companies are [email protected] (address above). SOLIDARITY 15 Fight union S&o Wloirkdersa’ Lirbeirtty y busting at Plymouth The end of a council

By Darren Bedford Kaye said in a letter to members: “Our concerns dictatorship In the midst of long- are not just technical, running negotiations they are about the actual over a council cuts human impact of an By Martyn Hudson walked away from their activists in the working plan, in which 300 jobs agreement that poten - posts. In the south of Libya class neighbourhoods of are threatened and tially discriminates The hopes and aspira - the stronghold of Marzuq Tajoura and the Suq al- some workers could against mainly women.” tions of revolutionaries was taken by Toubou tribal Juma came out onto the lose up to 20% of their across North Africa have rebels. By Saturday 20 Au - streets and marched on income, Plymouth City ANTI-UNION TURN The unilateral de- apparently been vindi - gust the revolutionary key installations in the city. troops left their posts and Council has de-recog - recognition of a 1,500- cated by the fall of forces lay poised outside They captured the Mui - handed their arms to the nised the public sector strong union in a public Tripoli, the lair of the of the city limits of Tripoli. tiqa military base and rebels — having seen that Unison, leaving 1,500 sector workplace despotic Qaddafi family, The utterly brutal crack - stormed the residence of the regime was coming to council employees marks an alarming new to the democratic Libyan downs in the city back in Mansour Daw, head of an end. (80% of whom are turn in class struggle in revolution. As we go to February had seemed to Tripoli’s secret police and Qaddafi and his odious women) voiceless as local government. press remanants of the intimidate Tripoli’s rebels security services. At the security head Abdullah al- the council seeks to im - Senussi have been offered pose its new pay plans. regime are still fighting and aside from minor up - same time the rebel armies 2010 saw local authori - with rebel forces. clemency and the rule of risings amongst youth on entered Tripoli and found The council’s plans are ties in Neath & Port Tal - some estates and neigh - their way already levelled law if they give themselves The victory in Misrata, extensive and include bot, Birmingham and bourhoods the rebellion by the working-class revo - upT. he idea of coming to where massacre was cuts to annual leave, the Walsall all use loopholes seemed to be extinguished. lutionaries of Tripoli itself. trial will not be attrac - averted by its struggling abolition of unsociable in employment legisla - But they were just biding Suffice to say that the tive, as the evidence for and heroic population and hours payments and a re - tion to impose cuts pack - their time to take their his - ideas of liberty and mass murder and sup - the intervention of NATO duction of maternity and ages on their workforces toric role in seizing their democracy had already pression of civilians is forces had led to a west - paternity rights to the by threatening mass re - own city! paved the path to Green compelling. This seems wards advance by the statutory minimum. The dundancies. On Sunday morning the Square. From this point the to be the end for a family rebels. The key towns of council initially wanted The London Fire Au - call to prayers was re - rebels simply walked in to who have acted as Zawiya and Zlitan fell. The to extend the working thority used a similar tac - placed in the minarets by central Tripoli as pro- bloodthirsty robber pro-regime troops in the week to Monday-Satur - tic and was eventually the call to revolution. This regime loyalist govern - barons since the first decisive port of Brega in day (6am-8pm) but were forced into some conces - signalled a mass uprising ment members escaped or 1969 revolution. central Libya literally forced to climbdown sions by strike action by in the city. Thousands of defected and thousands of after unions refused to the Fire Brigades Union. negotiate while proposals Using the threat of mass relating to nationally-ne - redundancy, effectively gotiated terms and condi - forcing unions to negoti - tions such as sick pay, the ate at gunpoint and en - working week and basic tirely on the bosses’ salary were included in terms, was a way of un - the council’s plans. (For a dermining and shortcut - The return of hope comprehensive exposi - ting around collective tion of the council’s pro - bargaining agreements posals, see here.) The and became the default council has also publicly tactic for any local gov - threatened to cut 300 ernment management WHAT WE SAY jobs. looking to make cuts. Unless Plymouth City BALLOTS For anyone who believes Council is defeated, then against Qaddafi on the The three unions organ - in basic human freedom, simply ripping up union ground, its leaders ising at the council the fact that Muammar recognition agreements grouped in the National (Unison, Unite and the Qaddafi’s 42-year long altogether could become Transitional Council, ap - GMB) balloted on the reign of autocratic terror the new go-to measure pears to contain very di - council’s proposals in in Libya is seemingly at for public sector bosses verse political elements, March. an end must be a cause looking for a quick and some at odds with each easy way to ram through for celebration. Unison members nar - other. Some are secular, cuts. rowly voted to accept, some Islamist. The rebels 125 miles east along the As we go to press fight - but GMB and Unite included some defectors south coast, council ing is still going on in the members rejected the from Qaddafi’s regime and workers in Southampton capital Tripoli, but for the bosses’ plan. As a conse - some supporters of the de - have recently voted over - vast majority of Libyan quence slight changes posed monarchy. A com - whelmingly to continue people it seems to be the were made to the cuts petitive battle to shape their battle with a Tory return of hope. package and the unions Libya’s future is now un - Celebrations now, but what next? council attempting to Qaddafi’s rule was char - went back into negotia - derway. force through significant acterised by the most bru - no working-class organisa - Libyan people’s joy. The tion. Unison reassessed The Transitional Na - cuts to pay and condi - tal extermination of all tion in Libya. That is Stop the War Coalition, led the offer and, after its political opposition. Tor - tional Council’s “Draft tioInf sS (osueeth paamgep t1o5n). and Constitutional Charter” al - hardly surprising, given by Stalinists like Andrew legal department warned ture and public execution the brutal nature of Murray and the eclectic that recommending ac - Plymouth are anything were commonplace. The ready expresses many of to go by, then it seems those contradictions; it Qaddafi’s rule. But if Counterfire group, prefers ceptance of an offer scenes of mass jubilation Libya’s future is to be even to emphasise the “negative which disproportionately public sector bosses in on the streets of Tripoli seeks to enshrine freedoms Britain are taking les - of assembly and associa - a minimally democratic aspects” of the overthrow impacted against low- and other Libyan cities one, trade unions and of the regime, and can only paid women workers sons from their coun - that greeted the rebels’ ad - tion, as well as the right to terparts in Wisconsin, strike, but also states that working-class political or - bring itself to say that could result in legal ac - vances are an inspiring ex - ganisations need to be “many Libyans may wel - tion being taken against USA and deciding that pression of joy and relief Islamic Shari’a is the “prin - straightforward union cipal source of legislation”. given space to develop and come the outcome, and the union, it recom - that Qaddafi’s vice-like assert themselves. The will be glad to see the back mended a no vote to its busting is the easiest grip on power is irre - There will be battles over way to bludgeon their women’s rights, Libya’s re - basic levels of freedom that of Qaddafi”. The word members. The council’s versibly loosening. we hope will exist in the “many” does not even response was to summar - employees into accept - But while celebration lationship to foreign coun - ing cuts. They must not tries and over control of its new Libya — freedoms begin to quantify the im - ily de-recognise Unison. and hope are the proper that did not exist, that mense, mass, celebration While it is claiming GMB be allowed to get away first reactions, they must natural resources. Tribal with it. tension may blight the could not have existed – that is now taking place in and Unite are now on be tempered by a sober as - under Qaddafi will make Libya. And mealy- board with its latest pro - sessment of the uncertain country as sectarian ten - sions have blighted post- such developments possi - mouthed does not describe posals, both unions are • Send messages of solidarity to political future the Libyan ble. this zombie-like response seeking withdrawal of people now face. Ba’athism Iraq. [email protected] and For us, the point-of-de - Perversely, some on the to these tremendous their signatures from the copied to The opposition which would-be left in Britain events. new deal. Unison’s Re - organised the fighting parture is workers’ organi - [email protected] sation; but there is next to will not share in the Continued on page 2 gional Secretary Joanne