So& Wloirkdersa’ Lirbeirtty y No 262 26 October 2012 30p/80p www.workersliberty.org For a workers’ government

Savile and Class struggles Hobsbawm on the BBC in South Africa democracy page 3 page 5 page 11-12 Planned for 2013 AVALANCHE OF CUTS! Fight back: see pages 8-9 2 NEWS What is the Alliance for No way to create police accountability Workers’ Liberty? By Robert Theakston have the power to stop the the elections and poured Today one class, the working class, lives by selling its labour power to police from crushing vast resources into cam - another, the capitalist class, which owns the means of On 15 November, people strikes, arresting and ha - paigning for them. production. Society is shaped by the capitalists’ in England and Wales will rassing trade unionists, as - This is at a time of mas - relentless drive to increase their wealth. Capitalism have the opportunity to causes poverty, unemployment, the blighting of lives saulting workers and sive cuts and worsening vote for a Police and students on demonstra - poverty. by overwork, imperialism, the destruction of the Crime Commissioner in environment and much else. tions, or murdering people Labour Party activists’ each of the 41 police Against the accumulated wealth and power of the in custody. time would be better spent capitalists, the working class has one weapon: solidarity. forces across England Nor can the Police Com - building the fight against The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty aims to build solidarity through and Wales. missioners end the sys - the cuts and privatisation, temic, institutional racism on campaigning in the struggle so that the working class can overthrow capitalism. We want The PCCs replace the ex - of the police. party for Labour Councils socialist revolution: collective ownership of industry and services, isting Police Authorities Lord Prescott: clean hands? workers’ control and a democracy much fuller than the present system, Unbelievably, the Labour to refuse to implement any and will be in charge of with elected representatives recallable at any time and an end to Party have stood John cuts and for Labour to com - holding the police fund, bureaucrats’ and managers’ privileges. Prescott as their candidate mit to rebuilding the NHS producing a “Police and Commissioners are “the We fight for the labour movement to break with “social partnership” for Humberside Police as was agreed at its confer - Crime Plan” — which in - most significant democratic and assert working-class interests militantly against the bosses. Commissioner; a man al - ence. cludes policing priorities reform” to policing in Eng - Socialists should also Our priority is to work in the workplaces and trade unions, legedly responsible for the and objectives — and a set land and Wales “in our life - be using this time to supporting workers’ struggles, producing workplace bulletins, helping cover-up of the racist mur - of policing targets. That in time”. counterpose the work - organise rank-and-file groups. der of Christopher Alder turn is supposed to be used We know this is a lie. The ing-class alternative to We are also active among students and in many campaigns and by Humberside Police 14 to hold the chief constable police cannot be “democra - the police and to demand alliances. years ago. to account. tised”, and Police Commis - that institutions such as While claiming to oppose We stand for: The Conservative Party sioners have no real MI5, MI6, TSG, and other the establishment of PCCs, G Independent working-class representation in politics. — who created the role — powers to “hold the police special forces be imme - Labour has nonetheless G A workers’ government, based on and accountable to the labour have argued that Police to account”. They do not diately abolished. movement. stood its own candidates in G A workers’ charter of trade union rights — to organise, to strike, to picket effectively, and to take solidarity action. Tony Osborne G Taxation of the rich to fund decent public services, homes, education and jobs for all. G A workers’ movement that fights all forms of oppression. Full By Janine Booth tempts by the Council to Tories tell poor: equality for women and social provision to free women from the burden privatise and/or “rede - of housework. Free abortion on request. Full equality for lesbian, gay, I’m sad to report the velop” it. bisexual and transgender people. Black and white workers’ unity death of Tony Osborne. He was also active in the against racism. “stop breeding” borough-wide tenants’ Some comrades will re - G Open borders. movement. member Tony coming to G Global solidarity against global capital — workers everywhere have Tony was liked by every - more in common with each other than with their capitalist or Stalinist AWL events before he be - one on our estate, with the By Clarke Benitez think they can afford,” he rulers. came too infirm. Others will unusual quality of being re - said, while criticising the G Democracy at every level of society, from the smallest workplace or remember him as our elec - spected by all generations. Iain Duncan Smith has “clustering” of larger fami - community to global social organisation. tion agent when two AWL He was also a popular char - announced that the gov - lies on welfare and bene - G Working-class solidarity in international politics: equal rights for all members stood as Socialist acter with Hackney’s anti- ernment is considering fits. nations, against imperialists and predators big and small. Unity candidates in the cuts activists, and with the capping children-related Fancy words only thinly G Maximum left unity in action, and openness in debate. 2006 council elections in the many campaigning and benefits at two children, disguise social prejudice. G If you agree with us, please take some copies of Solidarity to sell — Hackney Central ward. community groups that reg - essentially telling poor and join us! Tony was a tireless com - What he means is: “the ularly used our community families to stop breeding. munity activist, particularly poor breed like rabbits.” hall. passionate about working- He explicitly said the The move is estimated to Residents are asking the Contact us: class people’s right to de - move is being considered save £200 million, a tiny Council to consider renam - G 020 7394 8923 G [email protected] cent housing. in order to disincentivise fraction of the new £10 bil - ing the hall the Tony Os - The editor (Cathy Nugent), 20e Tower Workshops, Riley He was the Secretary of poor families from having lion cuts currently being borne Community Hall. Road, London, SE1 3DG. our estate’s Tenants and He was also a great more children: “When you sought from the welfare G Printed by Trinity Mirror Residents Association until friend of me and my fam - look at families across the buTdhgeetT. ories are deter - his death, keeping the TRA ily. We’re gutted. board across all incomes, mined to make procre - going through a decade- you find the vast majority ation — like education, plus of improving the es - make decisions about the • If you’d like to send a travel, and decent hous - tate’s facilities and number of children they Get Solidarity every week! message email solidarity@ ing — an area of life ac - environment, winning im - have, the families they workersliberty.org and we cessible only to the rich. G Trial sub, 6 issues £5 provements to homes, and want, based on what they  will forward it on. G 22 issues (six months). £18 waged  fighting off various at - £9 unwaged  G 44 issues (year). £35 waged  £17 unwaged  Bed cuts plan in NW London G European rate: 28 euros (22 issues)  the eight-borough area. or 50 euros (44 issues)  closure plans has just fin - elective cases — and outpa - Tick as appropriate above and send your money to: The A&E units are at ished. Their plan, “Shaping tient attendances by a Healthier Future”, sug - 20e Tower Workshops, Riley Road, London, SE1 3DG Charing Cross, Central 600,000 a year. gests that patients could be Health Emergency also Cheques (£) to “AWL”. Middlesex, Hammersmith and Ealing hospitals. The diverted from hospitals claims that there are addi - into more treatment in the Or make £ and euro payments at workersliberty.org/sub. campaign against closure tional plans to axe more By Vicki Morris community, but union rep - has included local marches, than a quarter of the 3,449 resentatives have pointed Name ...... Health Secretary Jeremy available beds in the NHS including one march of at out that community health Hunt will take the deci - least 2,000 people in Ealing services are themselves NoInrththWe elisgthLtoonfdtohnisa, rea. Address ...... sion in 2013 on whether where the local council has being cut. to close four A&E units in Health Emergency is call - delivered leaflets opposing According to Health ...... North-West London, ing for the consultation to closure to all of the resi - Emergency, the plan is to be re-opened so that the I enclose £ ...... against a backdrop of dents. massive bed closures in reduce hospital admissions bed cuts can be factored NHS North West Lon - by 158,000 a year — 148,000 into plans. don’s consultation on the emergencies and 10,000 3 NEWS

Pay-outs to Jobs massacre wealthy on the rise Dividends are the portion of profits which companies at Ford plants pay out to shareholders instead of investing in expansion, holding the money in reserve, or By Darren Bedford More than 4,000 workers handing it over in the guise lost their jobs. of top bosses’ pay and Ford has announced Justin Bowden of the bonuses. plans to close two UK GMB said: “Ford’s track Dividends paid out in plants, with unions put - record in Britain is one of 2012 will total around £78.6 ting estimates for the re - broken promises and fac - billion ( Financial Times , 22 sulting job losses at tory closures.” October). This is a 16% around 2,000. Ford workers in the UK increase on 2011, and to a have already struck this Unite leader Len Mc - level way above the pre- year over attacks on pen - Cluskey said that union crisis in 2007. sions. thought that 10,000 further The company has said Some dividends go to jobs along Ford’s supply it plans to shut the plants pension funds, which in chain could also be threat - next year; stewards held 5.1 per cent by value of ened. should immediately begin UK shares, and some “Ford has betrayed its planning an industrial and pension funds pay out to 150,000 on TUC march workforce”, he said. “Unite political campaign to re - working-class people, But is going to fight these clo - sist closure, up to an in - even in pension funds the Over 150,000 people demonstrated in London on 20 October and tens of thou - sures. This announcement cluding sit-ins and big pay-outs go to the well- sands more in Glasgow and Belfast. has been handled disgrace - occupations. off; and it is only 5.1% of fully. Only a few months the share value which they There were many flashes and flurries of militancy on the London demo — from direct ago Ford was promising hold (on the latest official action against companies involved in “workfare” to disability activists blocking Park staff a new transit model Former figures, from 2010). Lane and stopping traffic at the end of the demo. for Southampton in 2014.” The great bulk of dividend Despite discouragement from the TUC, there were a number of lively feeder marches. The transit van factory in Birmingham payments go to the rich. These included several thousand from South London anti-cuts groups and more than a Southampton and the Their total in one year, thousand on a student bloc organised by the student left through the University of Lon - stamping plant in Dagen - council almost £80 billion, is about don Union. ham are set for closure, twice the total reduction in Although 150,000 is still very big — a clear indication that, despite setbacks, vast num - with transit van production workers’ equal all annual government beTrshoisf iwsonrokterasswuarnptriasefi.gThht e—2i6t wMaasrcsmh adlelemr oancdalmeses amtialittainmtethoafn“Masacrechnt2”0,1a1.few potentially moving to spending (including cuts in months after huge student protests and just before the first strikes to defend pub - Turkey. pay win — military spending, which lic sector pensions. The announcement came socialists do not object to) a day after Ford closed a bit.ly/XZonMi which the Government plans plant in Genk, Belgium. to achieve by 2015. • Full report of the London and Glasgow demonstrations: workersliberty.org/tucdemo Learning the wrong lessons from BBC Savile scandal Press elsewhere and things were different then. abused by another, older, mutual friend, a man who “was The problem with the right-wing attack on the BBC is not then, and to some extent still is, in a position of authority By Pat Murphy that it is inaccurate or even that it is partial. The fact that over other teenagers.” When asked why she didn’t report other organisations may have allowed the same behaviour him she said, “the shocking thing is that it never occurred to and been guilty of the same excuse-making doesn’t lesson me”. So all that faith and God turned out to be useless in the Anger and outrage at the vile crimes committed against one iota the culpability of the BBC. face of a moral no-brainer. children is of course universal, as is shock that the The problem is inconsistency and hypocrisy. There are Melanie Phillips has decided that the cause of Jimmy Sav - widespread rumours about Savile were never acted lessons to be learned from the Savile affair but the right- ile’s crimes and impunity was “the increasing sexualisation upon and the victims were ignored. If you read any of wing press is determined not to learn them. of young girls”. A growing issue in the 21st century, but can the Mail , Express or Sun , however, there is no avoiding she really believe this was any kind of explanation for the their sense of glee that the organisation at the centre of BLAMING VICTIMS 1970s and 80s? And the early sexualisation of girls is a prob - the controversy is the BBC. Jimmy Savile, Gary Glitter and others like them got lem mainly because of the way it denies and cuts short away with their crimes in large part because they were childhood not because of the “temptation” it places in the The publicly-funded broadcasting corporation is a target at the height of their fame in a time when children were for the right-wing press at the best of times, portrayed as way of predatory adults. To suggest otherwise is just an - expected to know their place, when allegations made other variant of the idea that scantily-clad women cause the main source of left-wing propaganda, purveyor of loose by children against adults were not taken seriously let morals and a tax-payer funded competitor to the privately- rape. alone believed, when rape victims were blamed not de - In fact Phillips’ argument develops into a wholesale ob - owned and profit-making media corporations. In the after - fended. math of Leveson, when the tabloid press are at their lowest jection to sexual freedom and openness, seemingly oblivi - standing for decades, a chance to redress the balance by In almost every edition of the Mail and Express you will ous to the way in which sexual repression and ignorance lambasting the BBC is one not to be missed. read highly-paid columnists bemoaning the end of that era allows abuse to flourish. That said, the substance of the criticism of the BBC, even and urging us to go back to it. Melanie Phillips and Peter On the more grimly amusing end of tabloid coverage was in the right-wing tabloids, is actually fair. Hitchens in particular date the end of modern civilisation the Sun’s reaction to Entwhistle’s select committee appear - On the day after BBC Director General, George Entwhistle from the 1960s with the advent of the pill, legalised abortion ance. Under the headline “Baffling, Bumbling, Clueless” the appeared before the Media Select Committee the Mail , for and the permissive society. They don’t acknowledge the paper mocked the Director General for his poor memory example, chose to emphasise three key failings at the BBC. link to, or consciously wish for, the bad bits of their imag - and lack of curiosity when he was alerted to the Newsnight There was, they said, a culture of sexual harassment, cit - ined golden age, but they do work for a return to the culture item on Savile which was pulled by the programme’s pro - ing among other witnesses, Liz Kershaw who reported of deference and patriarchy within which the likes of Savile ducer. He failed to ask what the contents of the programme being groped by a fellow DJ while live on air. thrived. were. He couldn’t remember why he hadn’t asked. There was a pattern of belittling the victims of harassment A stark and shocking example of this could be found in Fair criticism, perhaps. But it is not just Entwhistle whose summed up in a leaked email which revealed that one Beeb the belated confession of columnist Anne Atkins. Having memory is failing him. What other chief executive of a executive argued that the alleged victims were teenagers so preached her peculiarly reactionary morality at us on Radio major media corporation has recently displayed a startling they “were not that young”. Four’s “Thought for the Day”, over breakfast for years, lack of curiosity and memory loss in the face of serial And there was a reliance on unacceptable and lame ex - Atkins revealed in the Mail on Sunda y that she had failed to wrAonnsgwdoeirnsgoant the hbeaacrkt ooffthaepiroosrtgcanrdisaptlieoans? e, to the edi - cuses including the statement, in the same leaked email, report a known paedophile because he was a family friend. tor of the Sun . that it was all a long time ago, similar behaviour went on She described how a friend told her he had been sexually 4 INTERNATIONAL Balls: Italy: scandals deepen crisis learn By Hugh Edwards On his government rested Vatican sect, to provide a Lazio, led by a neo-fascist With new elections fol - the hopes — the fantasy! — focus for the despair, frus - governor in Berlusconi’s lowing the end of Monti’s In the early 90s, Italy — in of not only the economic tration, impotence, and con - party, involved literally and term in office in March, from the the midst of a deepening and financial world in Italy fusion at the heart of the “legally” the wholesale such a picture is anything economic and financial (and elsewhere), but every widespread “anti-political” theft of millions of public but reassuring to the crisis — was shaken by vehicle of the most pro - sentiment in the country. funds (Italians are com - EU/ECB/IMF Troika and the most serious political found reaction in the coun - Though from the financial pelled to contribute to all the markets. So far, from right? events since the rise of try — led, of course, by the sector he was popularly re - major political parties, as their point of view, Monti fascism in the 20s. Vatican — that Berlusconi, ceived as an honest man! they also must make to all has done well, with the By Martin Thomas the corrupt, depraved crim - Even the fact that the most the major bourgeois news - spreads on Italian bonds at A systematic and wide - inal and Mafia associate enthusiastic support for the papers) by council mem - their lowest since the crisis spread network of corrup - The Financial Times re - from Milan, would whip savagery of his austerity bers. began. tion amongst the political ports that one European into competitive and moral measures came from the Lombardia, again of the But a political crisis is establishment and big busi - state has broken ranks shape a society the Chris - now dismissed political right unchallenged in looming, if the “anti-politi - ness was exposed. Bribery with the neo-liberal tian Democratic burghers of forces did not, initially, power and mired in filth of cal” anger grows side by and embezzlement were consensus and started its First Republic had qualify that. every kind since 1995, re - side with widening social now the modus operandi of Keynesian policies of brought to the edge of the vealed a thriving network protests and disorder. With the Government itself, or - extra state spending abyss. FEROCITY of votes for cash, run by the the eclipse of the right, the chestrated cynically by the rather than cuts to deal The truth is, as current But as the ferocity of the Calabrian mafia, securing spineless centre left looks to then coalition-Socialist with the crisis. events graphically show, attacks on conditions and both the election of officers be the only political base for Prime Minister Bettino “Bribesville” never disap - rights have continued to and the mafia grip on the the bourgeoisie to offer the Craxi. It is... the solidly right- peared. The “fundamen - fall on the working lucrative market of public “democratic” option. That is The “Tangentopoli” wing government in Swe - tals” that have long defined masses, and the paucity administration contracts. why the pressure on Monti (“Bribesville”) scandal den. It has announced Italy’s obscene reality have of the measures, despite A recent report states that increases, as a rallying point brought down the post-war plans to spend SKr23bn to swollen exponentially to an the rhetoric, against the half the regional councils for a “responsible” opposi - political order of the First boost growth, and said it unstoppable, poisonous rich and powerful every - may be in their hands in the tion. Republic and the centre- will invest more if the tide, sweeping across every where, a sea-change is north. Similar eruptions are The putrefaction of Italy’s right Christian Democracy downturn gets worse. part of economic and social observable. occurring in regions like institutions and political life under whose hegemony Swedish prime minister life — tax evasion, fraud, Piedmonte, Emiglia Romag - has always been evident Italian capitalism and its It began with the corrup - Fredrik Reinfeldt says he embezzlement, bribery, nia, and other cities. Symp - underneath a veneer of bourgeoisie emerged as a tion scandals that have can do it because Swe - blackmail and, as Roberto tomatically the opinion bourgeois civility. significant force in Europe rocked the Lega Nord, then What happened in den’s debt and deficit lev - Saviano’s novel Gomorra in - polls speak of the end of the and the world. the dissolution of the coun - Genoa in 2001, when Ital - els are much lower than dicated, the influence and honeymoon with Monti and The “self-made” billion - cil of Reggio Calabria for ian police violently re - others’. But if he’s right consolidation of the crimi - the collapse of the centre- aire entrepreneur Silvio mafia infiltration (the 52nd pressed anti-capitalist (as he is) that extra state nal world at every point. right parties. The centre left Berlusconi and his new time it has occurred!). demonstrators and mur - spending can help drag It needed the markets to leads, just ahead of the “5 party, Forza Italia, in al - Most recently, the col - dered Carlo Guiliani, a capitalist economies out unseat Berlusconi, and the Star Movement” of Beppe liance with the populist lapse of the regional gov - young activist, should arrival of the technocrats Grillo. The abstentionist of recession, that truth Lega Nord, won the first ernment of Lazio in Rome, warn us of what may be in led by the pious Monti, a current stands at nearly holds also for more in - post-Tangentopoli elections. and Lombardia (Milan). store. debted states. denizen of some archaic 30%! Back in 2010, running for the Labour leadership, Ed Balls was an aggres - French car workers defy plant closure sive Keynesian, arguing that the British govern - ment should spend more From Convergences union confederation], but On 20 September, 400 on economic expansion Révolutionnaires this time refused to join the Aulnay workers met with rather than cutting, or at committee, apart from dele - Hollande, without many il - least rather than cutting The announcement by the gates from Ferrage. lusions, given the surprise as “far and fast” as the To - PSA group (Peugeot Cit - On 25 July the unions of smack of the Sartorius re - ries. roën) of their decision to the PSA group unanimously port, but nevertheless with Since then Balls has close the Aulnay-Sous- refused to make any decla - some hopes. rather been proved right. Bois factory was officially ration regarding the redun - In fact the response must The Tories’ cuts have pro - made in July. dancy plans; this blocks the be organised in a different duced renewed recession whole procedure for the direction: joining up strug - and an increase, not a cut, But since June 2011, with time being and gives time to gles on all PSA sites, and in the budget deficit. But the exposure of a secret doc - organise a response. more broadly, all sectors. Balls has toned down his ument [about the closure], In July, Hollande like That process was begun at “Keynesian” line. He has activists in the factory had Montebourg [government the 29 September meeting, not made it more strident. been preparing the struggle Minister of Industrial Re - as workers from Roissy, In Sweden the leader of against the closure. newal] had feigned indigna - Carrefour, Ikea, Magneto the opposition Social De - On 12 July, a general as - tion against PSA. After the and Sanofi were present as mocrats, Stefan Löfven, sembly brought together summer [the government well as Ford workers from 800 workers; daily meetings responded wretchedly by changed tack]. “social return” [demonstra - Decisions were: opening the Bordeaux. followed. The experience of warning darkly that Rein - On 11 September, the ex - tion] on 4 September at toll booths at Senlis [i.e. or - Preventing job losses can strikes in 2005 and 2007 feldt’s growth policies pert nominated by the gov - Aulnay, but several days ganising free entry], de - only be imposed by strug - pointed the way, in the fol - could harm Sweden’s ernment, Mr Emmanuel were needed to relaunch the manding a meeting with gling together. Workers lowing week, for a commit - budgetary discipline, and Sartorius, gave the green mobilisation, to which end Hollande, and a demonstra - from threatened workplaces tee for preparation of the moaning that the right light to PSA in their deci - meetings of the struggle tion at the complex in must meet to develop co-or - struggle to be created. had “had stolen many of sion to close the factory. preparation committee took Aulnay on 29 September, dinTahteiodna. y of action and Around 160 delegates were the left’s ideas”. There are The bosses have recruited place. with participation from the demonstrations of 9 elected across all sectors: a few differences, he extra security, some of On 11 September, the day Sanofi, Air France, and all October will give us the trade union reps, rank-and- whined: the Social De - whom have on their CV… of the hand-in of the gov - the enterprises confronted opportunity to do this. file union members and mocrats want to increase fighting in Chechnya! They ernment expert’s report, with the redundancy plans. many non-union workers. benefits, not cut employ - have also brought over staff general assemblies of two The action at the Senlis • Convergences Révolution - The “house” union, SIA, from other sites on certain teams in the morning and toll booth on the A1 road naires is the magazine of ersB’utatxifesB. alls would say had up until that point days to “protect industrial the afternoon, plus a rally at brought sympathy and L’Etincelle, a faction within even that, it would be an joined in action with the tools at Aulnay”! shift change, brought to - money from motorists and France’s New Anti-capital - advance. CGT [France’s biggest The press focussed on the gether around 800 workers. lorry drivers! ist Party (NPA) 5 INTERNATIONAL Capital versus labour in South Africa

By Martyn Hudson tempt to forge a democratic multi-linguistic and non- racial South Africa is not “The worst thing that can be - served by tribalist cliques fall a leader of an extreme continuing their reliance on party is to be compelled to take what Neville Alexander over a government in an epoch called “the technical hocus when the movement is not yet pocus of the apartheid ripe for the domination of the racial ideologies”. class which he represents, and The task is to support for the realisation of the meas - working-class self-emanci - ures which that domination pation through a working implies... Thus he necessarily class seeing itself as a class finds himself in an unsolvable against, physically and ide - dilemma. What he can do con - ologically, the power of the tradicts all his previous ac - ANC and capital. tions, principles, and the The search for national immediate interests of his unity and a national ideol - party, and what he ought to do ogy was always doomed to cannot be done. In a word, he fail in South Africa — the is compelled to represent not contradictory racial and his party or his class, but the class genetics inherited class for whose domination the from colonialism meant that movement is then ripe. In the the Rainbow Nation was interests of the movement he is Marikana miners won their demands. Now their leaders are being hounded by the ANC regime never going to last much compelled to advance the inter - longer than Mandela him - ests of an alien class, and to self. feed his own class with phrases its own version of events, in ing South Africa to the the early 90s pointed to the state and economy and the Socialists should continue and promises, and with the as - which the miners were brink of political and eco - need for vast public works international investment in to agitate for consistent and severation that the interests of murderous gangs evading nomic collapse. It pointed to programmes, proper hous - the system by transnational extreme democracy in the that alien class are its own in - the control of the officially- the “declining quality of the ing for the majority of black corporations. Mining in par - industries, housing projects, terests. Whoever is put into sanctioned trade unions. government, growing social South Africans, education, ticular continued with the inquiries, and political con - this awkward position is irrev - Meanwhile, the labour stresses and worsening con - and a development pro - same relationship with free gresses. They should ad - ocably lost.” dispute is spreading ditions for investment”. The gramme for the South trade as it had done under dress the key question of Friedrich Engels, The peasant throughout the mining ter - incompetence of the gov - African economy based on apartheid. the differing needs of the war in Germany , 1850 ritories and, according to ernment in dealing with the the recognition of the needs The rhetoric of anti-colo - observers on the ground, is mining catastrophe was of labour. Even in 1997 nialism issued by the ANC urTbahneyansdhorurldalepdouocr.ate At the KDC East gold turning into a generalised making corporate investors COSATU was arguing for a left and its social forces rep - the new generation of mil - mine outside of Johan - struggle against the corrup - nervous. state in which the ANC was resented by Malema is itself itants into a socialism free nesburg 8,000 workers tion of the ANC and its Certainly the strikes and “transforming how work a smokescreen. Its focus on of the taint of personal were sacked this week for backers in the international the burgeoning call for was managed — towards race actually undermines enrichment and the intol - refusing to return to work. mining corporations. workers’ ownership and workers’ control and workers’ self-understand - erance of dissent repre - At the same time, the Mining corporations like control in the mining areas worker self-management – ing, and entrenches the sented by the tripartite commission of inquiry into Lonmin are not only ene - are a sign that the two to empower working peo - power of the black middle alliance. the killings of the 34 miners mies of working class self- golden decades of neo-lib - ple”. Theoretically this is class of the ANC. The at - at Lonmin platinum mine in organisation but also eral governance is now still COSATU policy. Yet far Marikana was opened. Ini - actively foster the genocidal being tentatively overcome. from delivering reforms tial evidence presented to cliques in countries such as ANC and empowering the work - Health care in China the enquiry indicated that the Democratic Republic of ers, ANC has stabilised cap - the Congo. There, the sourc - Ironically for both capital italism in South Africa. 14 of them were shot in the and labour the problem ing and mining of mineral This is why the eruption By Rhodri Evans unlucky to be in the way back as they turned to run lies in the nature of the wealth by the corporations in the mining territories is when the exasperated pa - from the police gangs. ANC itself. As the inquiry opened goes hand in hand with the so significant — it threatens Despite becoming the tient lashed out. there were several shocking destruction of whole com - Governing in the name of capital and free trade at the favourite hunting-ground Yet so exasperated are detentions of Marikana munities. a black working class which same time as it undermines of global corporations many more Chinese that a leaders and the leader of the But in South Africa the had hoisted it to power on the social base of the ANC greedy for cheap labour poll by the official People’s local Marikana solidarity democratic settlement of the back of its liberation itself, and the idea that it is stripped of rights, China Daily found two-thirds of campaign. The police 1994 was also a ruling struggle but unable and un - the force for working-class still claims to be “com - the people it asked saying wanted to intimidate those against the working class willing to challenge the rule emancipation. munist” or “socialist”. that they were “delighted” and for corporations then The political revolution, to hear of the attack. giving evidence about the of capital, it eased and de - So it has a good health nervous about some kind of regime change and transi - There is practically no police and the vicious gang veloped capitalism in South service? Better, surely, than transition to social democ - tion to democracy in 1994 primary health care — GP regime of the mining com - Africa rather than satisfying shamelessly neo-liberal racy or “soviet power” was for the socialist Neville surgeries, clinics — in panies. the urgent and growing Britain? under the ANC. Alexander about the inter - China. If you want med - They Marikana leaders needs of the working class. The Chinese people In the wake of the col - section between national- ical help, you have to go to were detained as they re - As the Economist has don’t think so. So great is lapse of the Stalinist states liberationist, liberal- a crowded hospital. There, turned from the commis - pointed out, ANC member - their frustration that in in eastern Europe F W De democratic programmes, you have to pay, and on sion. They were taken from ship is “a ticket for the 2010 (the latest year with Klerk calmed the fears of in - and the socialist left, each top of the official payment their taxis, kicked and gravy train. Jobs in national official figures) there were ternational capital and ne - with its own base in a vari - you usually have to pay a beaten as they lay on the and local politics provide 17,000 protests or attacks gotiated the transition to the ety of social forces. bribe to get a doctor’s at - ground and were threat - access to public funds and directed against doctors or ened with being killed. governance of the tripartite cash from firms eager to The “National Demo - tenTthioend. octors are so alliance of the South African cratic Revolution” as it was hospitals in China. They were all key wit - buy social influence”. The In a recent case, Wang low-paid that they take nesses. Communist Party, the dishing out of contracts to perceived on the left, was bribes and are widely COSATU union federation, an attempt to square the cir - Hao, a trainee doctor at a A class war is being con - public works programmes hospital in northern suspected of prescribing sciously waged against the and the ANC. to the cliques provide com - cle of these competing pro - additional, useless but This week even the Econo - grammes, ultimately China, was stabbed and workers by the forces of law fort and finance for a one- killed by a 17-year-old expensive, treatments to and order. Far from the mist waded in to criticise party state enriching itself. without success. those patients whom the ANC leadership arguing Success came to the cor - whom he had never even ANC reining in its bootboys Yet, for all its faults Man - treated: Dr Wang was just they do see. it is avidly proselytizing for that its nepotism was bring - dela’s “Freedom Charter” of porate backers of the ANC 6 COMMENT ANTONIO GRAMSCI: October 20: media blackout

WORKING-CLASS that something like 150,000 people had taken to the streets, though neither gave a very clear picture of why this hap - Eric Lee pened. REVOLUTIONARY But the Guardian’s sister newspaper, the Observer , com - pletely ignored the march and rally. It wasn’t buried — it Mainstream media coverage of the labour movement is, Antonio Gramsci was a as we all know, awful. But just how awful it is became wasn’t deep inside the paper somewhere — it was as if never leader of the Italian clear following the TUC demonstrations on Saturday, 20 happened. Communist Party in its October. I admit that I didn’t buy the Sun , Mail , Express , Independ - revolutionary days, and ent , or Telegraph , but from what I can tell, none of them put The BBC, to its credit, led the news at nine o’clock with cov - spent all of his last the march on their front pages either. erage of the march and rally. But it chose not show any of the Observer years bar a few weeks The front page stories in the focussed on Tory dis - trade union speakers — not even a soundbite — and instead enchantment with David Cameron’s leadership and an arti - in Mussolini’s fascist showed a few seconds of Labour Party leader Ed Miliband cle on racism in football. jails. The Prison saying something stupid and being booed. That was so pre - One would have thought that a colourful photo of the Notebooks he wrote in dictable that it could almost have been written before the demonstration might grace the Observer ’s front page, but that jail have been quarried event even took place with the film clip of Miliband added didn’t happen. to justify many later. That was the story the BBC was going to run with all Now here’s the odd thing about the Observer (and along. varieties of reformist or Guardian ): they appear to be newspapers for those people Sky News, unsurprisingly, ran the exact same clip. liberal politics. who see themselves as caring about injustice and wanting a Miliband getting heckled and booed by the crowd. It looked like he was the only speaker, and the only message anyone better world. They are full of articles bashing the Tories and This booklet discusses heard was his commitment to a “realistic” policy of painful ads for charities promoting social justice. a major recent study cuts and more austerity. People who read these newspapers will in many cases even on the Notebooks — One almost wonders why people were in the streets think of themselves as progressives, as people of the left. But Peter Thomas’s The Gramscian Moment — and argues demonstrating if all we wanted was more cuts, except under the newspapers themselves have no interest whatsoever in that the Notebooks were in fact a powerful a Labour government. The TUC’s message was completely the one social force that is actually challenging the Tories in contribution to the working-out of revolutionary ignored. the streets — the trade union movement. working-class strategy in developed capitalist Sky of course went looking for trouble, and found a clip of Unions, it seems, are just not newsworthy. Not even for societies. some police wrestling with anti-tax-avoidance demonstrators newspapers read by people who think of themselves as pro - on Oxford Street. This actually had nothing whatsoever to do greBssriivtaeisn. ’s unions desperately need a daily newspaper £4 from AWL, 20e Tower Workshops, Riley Road, with the TUC demonstration, which was quite peaceful. But of their own — and that newspaper is not the Morning it made for exciting television, I guess. Star . London, SE1 3DG. Order online at The BBC and Sky, it must be said, at least acknowledged www.workersliberty.org/gramscibook Book launch A European general strike? Speakers: Martin Thomas in discussion with Peter Thomas, author of The Gramscian Moment . not the English or the Castilians but international capitalism. The ETUC is committed to a “day of action” against auster - 7pm, Wednesday 31 October, at University of Letters ity on 14 November. Whilst its demands and plans are, pre - London Union, Malet Street WC1 dictably, inadequate, we must take advantage of this call to urge the maximum of solidarity action with our brothers and The TUC General Council is supposed to be committed sisters in Southern Europe. to investigating the practicalities of a general strike. Even if we can not push the union leaders into calling Unite’s general secretary Len McCluskey asked the for a general strike in the United Kingdom, we must crowd in Hyde Park on Saturday if they wanted a general make sure that as many activists as possible are aware Books from Workers’ Liberty strike. and got a resounding yes. of what is going on across the channel and that any “day of action” over here is not limited to some poorly at - The National Shop Stewards Network and the Socialist tended lunch time rallies in a handful of locations. Party are asking the TUC to name the day. In fact we already What is capitalism? have a day: 14 November. As things stand, there are plans for Toby Abse, south London Can it last? simultaneous general strikes in five countries, three major — Spain, Portugal and Greece — two minor — Cyprus and Hobsbawm, Labour, and With articles from Leon Trotsky, Malta. Max Shachtman, Maziar Razi and Saturday‘s large CGIL rally in Rome heard calls for a gen - eral strike from the crowd in Piazza San Giovanni — unfor - the popular front many more. Edited by Cathy tunately, CGIL general secretary Susanna Camusso has said Nugent. £5 — buy online from that she needs to discuss this with the leaders of the CISL and I agree with the thrust of what Sacha Ismail wrote in his UIL, who are likely to sabotage plans for Italian involvement; letter in Solidarity 261 (“Hobsbawm, party and class”, 17 tinyurl.com/wiccil CISL did not even participate in the recent Italian public sec - October). tor general strike. I could have been more precise with my phrasing, because Working-class politics If this international general strike goes ahead, it will be un - in the article I unintentionally conflated the debate about precedented in the history of the European labour move - party and class in Marxism with Hobsbawm's support for the and anarchism ment. The only previous attempt at something of this sort — Labour Party machine in the 1980s. on the initiative of the Comintern in July 1919 — flopped due Debates between members of With reference to Hobsbawm and the 1980s I meant that in to the last minute treachery of the leaders of the French CGT his autobiography where he justifies his support for Kinnock, Workers’ Liberty and comrades from and of many, but not all, Italian trade unions. Hobsbawm was overly concerned with the continuing in - The bosses’ austerity offensive is being conducted on a Eu - various anarchist traditions. £5 — tegrity of the Labour Party, as against the prospect of it split - ropean scale. Our response must be European, not national. ting up in the course of left-wing struggle. tinyurl.com/wcpanarchism The EU/ECB/IMF Troika can not be beaten in one country. Sacha is correct in saying that the deeper roots of why Hob - Nor can the UK escape from the austerity agenda by simply sbawm thought this were more to do with his political pop - withdrawing from the EU as certain of our more militant ular frontism than any understanding of the nature of the Treason of the Intellectuals union leaders — the RMT executive in particular — believe. proletarian vanguard. An independent capitalist Britain would be more closely This is not least because, in the absence of any size - Political verse by Sean Matgamna. linked to the American neo-liberal agenda , rabidly hostile to able Communist Party, the rightwards-moving Labour Party was clearly central to any sort of “broad popular £9.99 — tinyurl.com/treasonofintellectuals trade unions and the welfare state. Equally an independent capitalist Scotland, like an inde - alliance” in Hobsbawm’s popular frontist schema. pendent capitalist Catalonia , is a blind alley. The problem is Liam McNulty, east London 7 WHAT WE SAY

Help us raise £15,000 Rebuild from the base! AWL members sold several hundred copies of this newspaper on the 20 October TUC demo in central London. is part can do that. A re-run of 30 November, by itself, can’t. SWP’s and SP’s invoking of the future 24-hour general Our paper has two prices — 80p waged and 30p un - strike as the sunrise which will dispel all Tory darkness is waged — to make it more accessible to people on low in - misleading in two ways. Firstly, no government would give comes. But on the demo, and regularly on street and up just because of a 24-hour general strike. estate sales, people ask us why we don’t copy the Metro , Secondly, the agitation evades the issue of what replaces a paper read by hundreds of thousands of people, and the current government if the coalition does break up. give Solidarity away for free? Wouldn’t we then be able to A Labour government pushed to deliver improvements by “compete” with the mainstream media? strong pressure from the unions which fund Labour and con - In a word — no. A revolutionary socialist paper pro - trol 50% of the votes in its conference would be a step for - duced by a small group is never going to “compete” with ward. the reach of a mainstream publication, owned by a huge But no 24-hour strike can guarantee that. If the labour capitalist corporation, with millionaire backers, and fi - movement does not have a better political option than the nanced by advertising. current miserable Labour leadership, then the Tories could But how seriously do people take the Metro or the well win a general election even after industrial militancy Evening Standard anyway? Certainly they have some role had broken up the current government coalition. Strikes can in influencing and shaping people’s opinions. But articles read in a publication acquired for free on a tired journey Does it make sense to make calls for a “24-hour general do many good things; but they are not a tool to win elections. to or from work are unlikely to make much of an impact. strike” our focus now? And if the Tories lose...? Ed Miliband is aiming for a Labour/ Lib-Dem coalition, or a right-wing Labour govern - We want Solidarity to make a different kind of impact, The chief things to press in the unions are mobilisation ment continuing many Tory policies, and the unions are not and asking for a small financial contribution is one way of now against the attacks now; democratic discussion of seriously challenging him on that. Strikes are not a substitute making the act of obtaining a copy a more serious ex - a strategy of ongoing action to win; and clear union de - for political action to change political options. change than picking up a free-sheet. mands on a Labour government to replace the Tories. The SWP and SP slogans express wishful thinking rather But the money we make from selling copies of Solidar - than a clear idea of means and ends. ity is only to cover our costs and is just part of the finan - With those, a 24-hour general strike — in other words, a cial support the AWL relies on to survive. We rely much bigger version of 30 November 2011 — could greatly increase What about a full, open-ended, continuous general strike more on regular financial contributions and donations, so confidence and solidarity. Without them, it would be just a rather than just a 24 hour one? we’re able to continue producing the paper and other ma - protest. An open-ended, continuous general strike, though still not terHiaellsp, aunsd rsauissteain£1o5u,r0a0c0tibviystMwaoyrkD. ay 2013. You can The TUC congress in early September voted to consider a a substitute for politics, would indeed change the political contribute in the following ways: general strike. Len McCluskey of Unite, Mark Serwotka of framework. G PCS, and Bob Crow of RMT, backed that call on 20 October. Unless cut short by bourgeois concessions or working-class Taking out a monthly standing order using the form Socialist Worker and the Socialist Party picked up on that and exhaustion or betrayal, a full general strike would, by its own below or at www.workersliberty.org/resources. Please went for “General Strike Now” (SWP) or “24 Hour General momentum, develop towards a direct challenge to capitalist poGst completed forms to us at the AWL address below. Strike Now” (SP)? power in general, not just to the current government. Making a donation by cheque, payable to “AWL”, or The SP is strong in the leadership of the civil service union A full-scale general strike is a serious thing! If it were on doGnating online at www.workersliberty.org/donate. PCS. It wriggles out of fighting now against pay freeze, job the agenda now, the worst thing for the labour movement G Organising a fundraising event. cuts, pension cuts, etc., by saying that that only a general would be slippery, demagogic agitation, drawing out none G Taking copies of Solidarity to sell. strike, or something close to a general strike, will do. of the implications, such as SWP and SP provide. Get in touch to discuss joining the AWL. More infor - The invocation of a general strike (and not in fact “now”) In fact no-one campaigns for a continuous general strike mation: 07796 690874 / [email protected] / AWL, becomes not a means of advance, but a means of evading or now. 20E Tower Workshops, 58 Riley Road, London SE1 3DG. downplaying the immediate struggles whose escalation is the If by some freak the TUC were to call “now” for a full gen - way we might get to a general strike. eral strike, then not enough workers would come out for it to In 2011, SWP and SP focused on hyping up the 30 June and be effective. It would be a fiasco. Total raised so far: £1,861 30 November strikes. SW headline: “November 30: our day to This year looks like being the lowest for strikes since the We raised £778 this week from smash the Tories”. record lows of 2005 and 1997-9. In the first eight months of 861 sales of literature and merchandise The SWP decried (as “boring”) calls from AWL for demo - 2011 there were 225,000 striker-days. Compare: 2011, £1, on the 20 October demonstration cratic mass meetings of strikers on those days, to debate fu - 1,388,000 — 2010, 365,000 — 2009, 456,000 — 2007, 1,040,000. and increased standing orders. ture strategy and demands. They opposed calls from AWL In a time of social crisis, this ebb can change quickly into Thanks to Duncan and Dan H. for self-controlling strategies of rolling and selective strikes. flood-tide (perhaps, for example, by big battles elsewhere in The effect was to leave workers, after the great mobilisa - Europe stirring up Britain). But such change will not come Standing order authority tion on 30 November, passively waiting for the union leaders through a call by the TUC. to name another day, and easily sold out on 19 December 2011. We don’t want a repeat in 2013. If you need ideal conditions before you call for a general To: ...... (your bank) strike, then you will never do so. You think a 24-hour general strike is unrealistic? ...... (its address) AWL’s forerunners did agitate for a general strike in 1972 150,000 was a big turnout for the TUC’s 20 October 2012 — when, in July, there was a spreading mass strike move - ...... demonstration. But it’s smaller — unsurprisingly so after 19 ment to force the release of five dockers jailed under Tory December 2011 — than the 500,000 on 26 March 2011. (Both anti-union laws, and the TUC called a one-day general strike, Account name: ...... figures TUC estimates). cancelled when the dockers were set free. Demanding the TUC call a general strike can’t reverse the We agitated for a general strike during the miners’ strike of Account no: ...... ebb. Organising and winning battles now, and fighting effec - 1984-5. Sort code: ...... tively for rank-and-file control in the unions, can. At both those times SW rejected a general strike slogan as Maybe some unions are considering another big multi- too advanced. In 1972 it eventually started talking about a Please make payments to the debit of my union one-day strike in early 2013, primarily against the pub - general strike — but only, it emphasised, “as propaganda”, account: Payee: Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, lic sector pay freeze. That’s better than nothing. not as agitation, and only after the TUC had made its call. In But for it to be more than a lower-key re-run of 30 Novem - 1984-5 it glumly insisted that “the downturn” (average an - account no. 20047674 at the Unity Trust Bank, ber 2011, the movement must be remobilised. nual striker-days for 1980-5: 9.8 million, about 30 times as 9 Brindley Place, Birmingham B1 2HB (08-60-01) On 20 October AWL headlined “Fight for a workers’ gov - many as 2012) made large action impossible. ernment”. That’s even further away than a general strike. The SP, then called Militant, has advocated “24-hour gen - Amount: £ ...... to be paid on the ...... day eral strike” in all times and tides. of ...... (month) 20 ...... We are for advanced slogans which raise our sights above In 1984 they could have made a difference by using their the humdrum of immediate possibilities. Only, we’re against strong position in Liverpool Labour council to pull the Liver - (year) and thereafter monthly until this order is slogans which tend to divert away from tackling the hard pool labour movement into a local general strike against cuts, cancelled by me in writing. This order cancels tasks of today by way of abstractly appealing to a future great a move for which there was wide support. Instead they made dawn which will make them all easy. any previous orders to the same payee. a rAogttaenincsotmbportohmciasetcwhipthenthneyToopripeos. rtunism and timeless A 24-hour general strike could defeat or beat back the formula-mongering, we recommend Trotsky’s precept: Date ...... Tories! “to base one’s programme on the logic of class strug - Signature ...... An escalating movement of which a 24 hour general strike gle”. 8-9 An avalanche of cuts

The TUC's “A Future That Works” march, 20 October: PCS “tax justice” banner; Unite union contingent; trade union leaders lead the march — but what about opposition to the cuts?

By Colin Foster On average, people who currently don’t pay council tax are Still only a proposal, but reaffirmed by George Osborne in likely to be made to pay £4 or £5 a week. October as part of a wish for £10 billion extra welfare cuts, is Birmingham City Council’s Labour administration has Overall, about 70% of the cuts the Government planned in the withdrawal of all housing benefit from all under-25s. The forecast it will lose almost half its current controllable ex - 2010 are yet to come through. The planned cuts in welfare Government has cut the budget for new social housing by penditure by 2017. benefit spending in 2013-4 are over twice as big as in 2010-3 60% over four years, and is pushing councils to set rents for combined. new tenants at or near private-sector rates. The council spends about £3.5 billion each year, but much Two of the biggest items in 2013-4 are the phasing-out of of that is set by central government policies beyond its con - Another new measure from April 2013 is the replacement of child benefit for households with a high-waged member trol. The “controllable” part of the council’s budget is about Disability Living Allowance, for working-age people, by Per - (from January 2013) and the rolling-on of the cut in contribu - £1.2 billion, and it is set to lose £600 million. sonal Independence Payments. The government’s own esti - tory Employment and Support Allowance (what used to be Council leaders warn of “the end of local government as mate is that harsher criteria will throw 500,000 people off this Invalidity Benefit) which results from that allowance being we know it”. benefit by 2015-6. automatically stopped after a year for disabled people who Northamptonshire’s Tory council has presented council Increases in public-sector workers’ pension contribution are told that “their condition means they should be prepar - unions with a choice for April 2013: 3.6% pay reduction and rates from April 2013 will be much larger than in 2012-3, and ing for work”. other cuts; or more than 300 compulsory redundancies. the cumulative effects of the Government’s paring-away at In April 2013 the Government’s cap on the total benefits Sometimes councils hype up such warnings so that, closer Working Tax Credit will also be bigger in 2013-4. that a household can receive comes in. Housing benefit cuts to budget day, they can push through horrible cuts with the which started in April 2011 are still rolling on. The final tran - INEQUALITY excuse that they are, after all, less than the meltdown first pre - sitional protection for people who were already claiming will The British Social Attitudes survey, published in mid-Sep - dicted. expire at the end of 2012. tember, found the proportion saying that “unemployed The underlying fact, though, is that local services are the Even a Daily Telegraph blog post aiming to show that the left benefits are too high and discourage work” had risen to hardest-hit major sector in the coalition’s planned cuts. Cen - had been needlessly scaremongering about those housing 62%. It was only 24% in 1994. tral government funding for local government is being cut benefit changes found that Westminster’s Tory council reck - Behind that finding, almost certainly, lies the big fall in av - 27% from 2011-2 to 2014-5, while council tax is effectively ons on about 1,200 extra people becoming homeless as a result erage workers’ real wages since late 2009, a fall which is set to frozen. of the cuts. Homelessness has risen by 26% over the last three years. Many other people will be holding on to their homes by continue for several years more. CRUEL This is the first time there has been a sizeable and sustained April 2011 and April 2012 council budgets saw cruel cuts. taking more money out of their other benefits, or low wages, fall in real wages in Britain since the 1920s. It must make some April 2013 will be more cruel. With each year the cuts get to make good the gap now opened up between housing ben - workers think that if wages are falling, then benefits should closer to the bone. efits and rents. be cut too. Labour councils which think they can pass on Tory cuts and Over time, more and more will realise that most of the ben - still be “fair” will get a shock. They will box themselves in to efit cuts hit, not some special class of idlers, but people in making, not just cuts, but some of the sharpest and most hurt - working households on low wages; and some of them hit a lot ful of the Tory cuts. of people on middling and higher wages too. Also in April 2013 comes what at least one Labour council After being bailed out by the taxpayer in 2008, banks are leader, Catherine West in Islington, has called “the new poll set to make about £35 billion profits this year. That is a sum tax”. comparable to the total cuts planned by the coalition govern - “Next April, when high income earners start to benefit from ment in education and welfare by 2014-5. the Tory-led government’s cut to the 50p tax rate, millions of Despite a few high-profile bankers such as Stephen Hester people with the lowest incomes will receive council tax bills of RBS being shamed into not taking bonuses, the banks and they cannot afford to pay because of the government’s other financial firms paid out £13 billion in bonuses in 2011- changes to council tax benefit. 2. “5.9 million low-income households benefit from council Dividends paid out to shareholders in 2012 will total tax benefit — more than any other means-tested benefit in the around £78.6 billion. This is a 16% increase on 2011, and to a United Kingdom. [But] the Government will cut the funding level way above the pre-crisis in 2007. Directors’ pay at the councils receive by 10% and ask local councils to develop top 100 companies rose 49% in 2010-11 and 14% in 2011-2. their own local scheme to collect the council tax required to Syriza supporters, TUC march In short, top bosses and profiteers are doing very well. The make up the difference”. cuts in benefits and the driving-down of wages are not alter - CLASS STRUGGLE

and schools would be protected from its cuts. But in October 2011 the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that around two- Southampton thirds of primary schools and over 80% of secondary schools would see real-terms cuts between 2010–11 and 2014–15; and that estimate didn’t include, for example, the impact of diver - sion of resources to the Government’s favoured “free Labour councillors schools”. The Government plans £50 billion cumulative cuts (“effi - ciency savings”) in the Health Service by 2019-20, at the same time as costs of administration and amounts paid out to pri - oppose the cuts vate profiteers rise steeply with its Health and Social Care Act. The damage to the fabric of the NHS from these cuts is cer - tain to step up in the financial year beginning April 2013. By Darren Bedford The Government’s NHS measures are of a different order TSSA banner, TUC march Labour councillors in Hull and Southampton have from its other cuts, because they threaten to change the whole broken the cuts consensus by responding to labour- nature of the NHS, changing it from a public service which natives, but part of a single drive by the Government to use movement and community pressure and vowing to provides for all into a marketplace with government subsi - the crisis to reduce costs for capital, to push down the work - defy cuts. ing class, and to make society more unequal dies which allow most people access only to some treatments. In October 2013 will come another shock to the welfare sys - But they mesh into a broad picture of a severe squeeze not In Southampton, two councillors have been suspended tem, when Universal Credit is brought in as a compendium only on the “middle”, but on the working-class majority of from the ruling Labour group after they refused to vote replacement for Jobseekers’ Allowance, housing benefit, society, operating simultaneously through service cuts, ben - for cuts to Oaklands swimming pool. Councillors Keith council tax benefit, child tax credit, and working tax credit. efit cuts, tax rises, and reduced real wages, which in straight Morrell and Don Thomas have formed a “Labour Coun - It will be introduced for new out-of-work claimants from money terms are the biggest factor of all. cillors Against The Cuts” group on the City Council. The October 2013, for new in-work claimants from April 2014. All Individual scraping-by and misery, or collective resistance: cuts to Oaklands were part of a “mini-budget”, and al - claimants who report a change in circumstances after October those are the choices for us as to how to respond. though the fight currently focuses on reopening the pool, 2013 will be moved onto it, and all working-age claimants And with collective resistance we can win. the councillors are clear that the attack on Oaklands is will be moved over to Universal Credit by 2017. Households THE DEFICIT just the first of many. will get some transitional protection from cash losses as long Morrell and Thomas said: “We refuse to be silenced, It is not true that the government budget deficit makes as their circumstances do not change. and are determined to continue speaking out on behalf of these cuts inevitable. Universal Credit will be paid monthly and will be based on constituents and users of the pool, and continue demand - monthly assessments of income. At present these cuts are increasing the deficit, not reducing ing that the City Council finish off the stalled repairs, re - In theory, the idea of simplifying benefits and reducing per - it. The cuts reduce government tax revenue — by reducing call the staff and immediately re-open the pool.” verse cut-offs (where a wage rise can leave you worse off, or income and spending across the economy — more than they They said that they hope Labour Councillors Against no better off, because you lose benefits) has merit. But Univer - reduce government spending. The Cuts will “provide a focus of opposition to the claims sal Credit is being introduced within a regime of general and And, cruel though the cuts are, their financial amount is by the three main political parties that ‘there is no alter - large cuts in welfare, by a government which, in George Os - quite small compared to the loot of the wealthy. native to cuts’, that ‘we have no choice but to make cuts’, borne’s speech to Tory party conference in October 2012, has The Government’s total cut in annual social budgets (not and that ‘tough decisions have to be made’. already said it wants to cut yet a further £10 billion from ben - counting reductions in military spending, for example, which “Labour Councillors Against The Cuts demands that efits. Millions will lose out. socialists do not object to) is planned to rise to maybe £65 bil - the City’s Labour administration immediately announces Universities and older school students have already been lion by 2014-5. A 16% super-tax on the incomes of the top 10% that it will refuse to do the Government’s dirty work of hit by the drastic cut in government funding for university (not touching their wealth), or a 1.3% tax on their wealth (not forcing through massive cuts in public services, and that teaching budgets, the introduction of £9,000-a-year univer - touching their incomes), or a combination, would be enough the City Council will lead a national campaign to de - sity fees, and the scrapping of EMA paid to 16 and 17 year to put that £65 billion back in. mand that the Government restore the money it has olds. The first step is to prepare the fightback for the new stolen from local authorities.” The Government initially claimed that the Health Service cuts avalanche which faces us in April 2013. The councillors’ stand was backed by town hall unions. Southampton District Unison branch secretary Mike Tucker told Solidarity in August that his union sup - ported the fight against cuts at Oaklands and was back - ing the rebel councillors. Since then, the Unite Executive ratified a motion from its Local Authorities National In - dustrial Sector Committee backing the councillors, and calling on the Labour group not to take any disciplinary sanction against them for their stand. A similar movement could be developing in Hull, where 250 people lobbied the Labour-controlled council on 18 October, demanding they refuse to make £100 mil - lion of proposed cuts. The anti-cuts movement includes Unite, GMB and the National Union of Teachers locally as well, crucially, as seven Labour councillors. At the lobby, Councillor Gareth Wareing calling on Labour Party members in their branches and CLPs to hold coun - cillors to account and demand that they refuse to pass on central government cuts to local working-class commu - nities. In Glasgow, a joint campaign between council unions (Unison, Unite and GMB) is demanding that the city’s Labour-controlled council defies cuts and sets a “needs budget”. One Labour council taking a stand against Tory cuts coLuoldcableathcetivspisatrsk, fLoarbaomuruPcharwtyidmerefmigbhetbrsac, ka.nd rank- and-file activists in public sector unions should use every channel available to demand that Labour coun - cillors take a stand against cuts, even if it means de - fying central government and facing sanctions. Central government is cutting funding to local government. Councils are responding with cuts, outsourcing and attacks on pay 10 FEATURE Bring back the pamphlet!

By Martin Thomas With the huge expansion in academic publishing, no uni - versity degree can cover more than a small fraction of the lit - Material conditions for socialist education and self-edu - erature in its subject. So lecturers go for the easily available, cation are better than they’ve ever been. Much socialist the quick summary, the overview, the extract, the digest. literature which previously you could read only if you Research shows that on average people reading things could get into a good library is now freely available on from the web take in only one-sixth as much as when read - the web. Vastly more has been translated. ing print. So what? The skill of quickly skimming a range of material, taking in a suitable one-sixth of it, and rehashing it Thanks to second-hand book sales moving onto the web, fluently in an essay or assignment, is what employers want, printed books which you’d previously find only by searching not deep specialised knowledge. second-hand shops are now also easily available. Thirty years ago, if a newcomer started reading the Com - SUBSTANTIVE munist Manifesto , and wondered who Metternich and Guizot The system thus works to deter people from deep study were, they were on their own. These days the Workers’ Lib - of substantive texts, rather than processed rehashes, erty website alone has more study guides and aids, available and to train them in the idea that the deep study is too free on any internet-connected computer, than the whole of difficult. the left could offer then anywhere or at any price. Even without a study guide, Google will tell you in sec - Then, if the student comes into the socialist movement, the onds who Metternich and Guizot were. And Marx’s declara - way to seem on top of the current debates is to skim blogs tion, "the emancipation of the working classes must be and Facebook, not to read books. conquered by the working classes themselves" — maybe you In the 1960s, by contrast, socialist meetings would have thought it was in the Manifesto ? You can check in a minute stalls piled with pamphlets. For Trotsky and Luxemburg we where he wrote it, what the context was, how exactly he put An AWL literature stall on the 20 October demonstration. We depended on pamphlets printed in Sri Lanka, which at that it. should rebuild a literary and pamphlet-based culture on the time had the world’s strongest English-language Trotskyist Today 52% of young women, and 42% of young men, go left! movement, but we had them. through university. Not so long ago, many new recruits to The serious activist would always have one or another the socialist movement would have left school at 14 or 15, have done decades ago. pamphlet in her or his bag or coat pocket; anyone who at - and would at first find the language of the Marxist classics To do better, I think, we have to make a deliberate effort to tended socialist meetings at all often would check out at least difficult. bring reading pamphlets back into daily political life. the main pamphlets. Today many socialists have been trained as teachers, learn - The root of the problem, I think, is that social-science and There is no cause to idealise the system of socialist educa - ing techniques which they can bring over from their paid humanities university education today often works to deter tion which depended on pamphlets. Still, pamphlet-reading work into our study sessions. In the old days it was often the people from serious study rather than help them towards it. did something. It inserted serious study into the main flow of straight lecture, or just collectively reading aloud. I have a daughter about to finish a university degree in socialist activity. The pamphlets were in every activist’s bag It’s a lot easier to be a well-read socialist now than it used psychology. She is a conscientious and competent student. or coat pocket, on every stall. If you wanted to know more to be. Yet active, intelligent, university-educated young peo - Yet her course has never required her to read a single book on than the minimum, your course of action was clear and ready ple in the AWL today usually read less than our young ac - psychology, rather than bits and pieces from the web. to hand, and involved serious study, not one-in-six skim - tivists did 35 or 40 years ago. (We collected statistics). Her university campus has a good library. The newer cam - ming. It gave a frame of more-or-less known references for Even the better-read young activists do not own their own pus of the same university has a library with hardly any deWbaetess.hould use the new possibilities, but also bring little library of the classic Marxist texts, ready to lend out to books. Most of its space is taken up by computers. back the pamphlet. new people who show interest, as they automatically would A revolutionary for reproductive freedoms

She became an outspoken supporter of the platform of the United Opposition of Trotsky, Gregory Zinoviev, and Lev Our Movement Kamenev, and as a consequence she lost her position as an instructor in her local CPUSA party training school. By Micheál MacEoin In November 1928, Konikow was expelled as a Trotskyist by the Executive Secretary of the CPUSA, Jay Lovestone. Antoinette Konikow (1869-1946) was a feminist activist Lovestone was soon expelled himself as part of the Bukha - and founding member of both the Communist Party USA Modern-day abortion rights campaigners are building on ranite Right Opposition, and later became a Central Intelli - and the American Trotskyist movement. Konikow’s legacy gence Agency (CIA) agent. Born in the Russian Empire, Konikow attended school in Upon being summoned before the party’s Political Com - mittee, she wrote a defiant letter to Lovestone which stated: Odessa, in the Ukraine, before emigrating to Zurich, where tion, and thus became a founding member of the Communist she attended university. It was in Switzerland that she became Party of America, later the Communist Party USA. “I did work for Trotsky’s ideals and tried to arouse sentiment politically active, joining Georgii Plekhanov’s Emancipation The nascent Communist Party was soon driven under - for the Opposition in our party, and I consider I have the full of Labour group, the first Russian Marxist group and a fore - ground by the “red scare” in the US which followed the Russ - right to do so according to the party’s stand on inner party runner of the Russian Social Democratic and Labour Party. ian Revolution in 1917. In addition to its underground democracy. In 1893, Konikow came to American and studied as a networks, however, it used a legal party organisation, the “But it is useless to expect your committee to accept this physician. Almost immediately she joined the Socialist Labor Workers’ Party of America, to promote “above ground” activ - viewpoint, for your leadership would not last long under Party of America (SLP), attending the 1896 conference that ities such as elections. Konikow was involved in this work, rules of real democracy in our party. I consider that the party founded the revolutionary trade union, the Socialist Trade and stood as the Workers’ Party candidate for the US Senate has taken an outrageously wrong standing on the Trotsky sit - and Labour Alliance, which later became the Industrial in Massachusetts in 1924. uation in Soviet Russia. This stand is a result of the servile Workers of the World (IWW). As a physician and a feminist, Konikow was committed to submission to the Stalin faction.” Increasingly disillusioned with the dogmatic politics of the the then-taboo cause of birth control. Konikow then formed a small group in Boston called the SLP as it came to be dominated by Daniel De Leon, Konikow She was a member of the Society of Sanitary and Moral Independent Communist League, which merged with the followed Eugene V Debs and become a founding member of Prophylaxis and, along with her son-in-law and fellow Com - Communist League of America at the time of its foundation the Socialist Party of America. She involved herself in the so - munist, Joseph Vanzler, she developed an inexpensive con - by James P. Cannon, Max Shachtman, and Martin Abern in cialist educational movement, helping to run Socialist Sun - traceptive which she shared with Soviet officials on a visit to MSayhe19r2e9m. ained active in the American Trotskyist move - day Schools, aiming to provide an alternative to religious Russia as a birth control specialist in 1926. ment until the end of her life. In 1938 she was named an instruction for children. It was while she was in Russia that Konikow was won over honorary member of the national committee at the The Socialist Party split at an emergency convention in to the ideas of the Leon Trotsky against Joseph Stalin and founding conference of the American Socialist Workers 1919 over the question of affiliation to the Communist Inter - Nikolai Bukharin — the leadership of the Russian Commu - Party. national. Konikow sided with those who supported affilia - nist Party and the Communist International. 11 HISTORY How democracy was tamed

In 1951 Eric Hobsbawm, who died on 1 October 2012 full of fame and honours, wrote an article in which, for once, the imperatives of his Stalinist politics worked to mo - bilise his great talents as a historian in favour of enlight - enment in current politics. Since about 1935, and especially in World War 2, the Com - munist Party had been very moderate and full of praise for anti-fascist Tories. In 1951 it published a new programme in which for the first time it explicitly disavowed its revolution - ary origins and declared that the "British Road to Socialism" would be via parliamentary vote. In between times, however, from about 1947 to 1951, the CP had a leftist phase. Apparently Hobsbawm was reluctant to switch onto the new "British Road", and he wrote an arti - cle which, without mentioning the new CP programme, out - lined the history of how parliamentary democracy had been "tamed". In the article Hobsbawm said nothing about how the work - ing class, when it overthrows entrenched capitalist power, can create a wider democracy — nothing about the ways of the Paris Commune of 1871, or the Soviets of 1917-8, with their recallability of delegates, direct control of executive functions by the legislature, officials on workers' wages, and information free of bourgeois domination. No wonder: politically, he was tied to presenting the Stal - inist police states in Eastern Europe as "people's democra - cies". Yet his critique of what the British capitalist class did to democracy remains valuable. The article is abridged from The Modern Quarterly , autumn The massacre of the St. Peter’s Fields demonstration for suffrage (the “Peterloo Massacre” in 1819). Both the working class and the bourgeoisie understood the potential political power of democracy. 19F51o.rTheSfoulildl taerxity i’ssonloinbeitautatrinyyurolf.comH/odbesmbtaawmmed , see tinyurl.com/hobsbawmobit Britain, the American Constitution as originally framed — torship of Cabinet and Civil Service — both, as any number Martin Thomas did so. Oligarchy and property qualification were to be the of constitutional students show, effectively insulated against safeguard of “free institutions”. popular pressure, or the membership of “undesirables.” Two or three generations of middle-class parliamen - It is worth noting how late, how slowly and reluctantly At no time has the British ruling class let the levers of tarism and newspaper writing in Western Europe have universal suffrage was introduced even in the typical coun - power out of its hand, or relied entirely on its power to make almost drained the word “democracy” of any serious tries of what is today called “western democracy.” In France universal suffrage “tame.” The machinery of non-parliamen - content. the Constitution of 1875 marks the decisive step; in Britain tary rule exists, perfected, well-oiled, ready for use when nec - manhood suffrage was achieved in instalments in 1867, 1884 essary (and against real dangers to the status quo, like the Yet if we are to investigate how ruling classes attempted to and 1918, in Holland in the 1880s and 1890s and 1917. In Bel - Irish in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, and manipulate political systems based on a wide suffrage, we gium the decisive advance was won by the General Strike of the revolutionaries and Communists since 1914, it has been must abandon the jargon of contemporary cabinet ministers 1893. In Scandinavia, Norway did not get manhood suffrage used without hesitation). and leading articles and ask ourselves what “the rule of the until 1898, Sweden till 1907, and Denmark, where for a time For, as one of the wisest of ruling-class statesmen, the late people” meant to its friends and enemies in an earlier and an exceptionally advanced Constitution had been won in Lord Balfour said, “democracy” is tolerable only while it is franker age. 1848, did not establish the supremacy of the Lower House harmless; while the people are “so fundamentally at one that In the eighteenth and a good part of the nineteenth cen - until 1901. they can safely afford to bicker; and so sure of their own mod - tury, for instance, men kept their eye firmly fixed on the so - eration that they are not dangerously disturbed by the never- cial reality behind “majority rule,” the fact that the majority DECISIVE ending din of political conflict.” was poor, the minority rich. Democracy ever since the Eng - Even Switzerland, which had taken the decisive step for - In the “Golden Age” of British capitalism [mid 19th cen - lish Revolution had what an American scholar rightly calls ward in the Revolution of 1817, did not get its modern tury] the problem was simple. Bagehot rightly saw the “a levelling tendency that ran in the direction of commu - political regime until the 1870s. strongest safeguard of ruling-class policy in the “deference nism.” The French rationalist Condorcet took it for granted In the remainder of Europe bourgeois democracy was not of the old electors to their betters,” i.e. their willingness to that in a popular government “all social institutions must aim follow the ruling class lead. Radical middle-class theorists at the social, moral, physical and intellectual improvement formally adopted until just before or after World War I, and was, in the main, a temporary phenomenon. like James Mill put their money on parliamentary govern - of the most numerous and poorest class.” ment precisely because they were so sure that workers must The Chartists, who demanded on the face of it purely elec - The adoption of this new system faced all capitalist classes with extraordinary problems, but none with greater ones always follow “that middle rank which gives to science, to toral reforms, were less interested in the abstract right to vote art and to legislation itself, their most distinguished orna - (let alone the prospect of alternative party governments) than than the British, for in Britain alone of major states would universal suffrage give proletarians by themselves a majority. ments, the chief source of all that has exalted and refined in the knife-and-fork question they hoped to answer through human nature.” their possession of the vote. In France, Germany and the USA, for instance, masses of farmers, peasants or petty-bourgeois could be used to out - But in the period of crisis since 1917, the rulers of Britain The men of property and privilege were equally clear discovered that they had in fact failed to keep the decisive about the matter. Lord Salisbury, arguing against the Reform vote the actual workers. To safeguard minority rule in a state in which, theoretically, groups of working-class voters behind the old parties. If the Bill of 1866-7, warned his readers that democracy must in - labour movement was not yet a political class movement in evitably bring with it “a system of ateliers nationaux.” The the working class can vote whom it likes into power, two things are necessary: to prevent them voting for effective en - the real sense — the new Communist Party was and re - Red Peril could not be envisaged in more flaming terms by a mained small – it revealed a growing distrust of capitalists, a peer of the mid-century. emies of capitalism, and to prevent the business of state from being interfered with by parliament and public opinion at all. growing hostility to the system, a growing support of the po - A long and anxious debate raged in the early 1880s — tentially explosive doctrines of ending it, among the rank and before the Third Reform Act, which enfranchised ratepay - That the state machine has been strengthened, and been in - creasingly insulated against parliamentary and public con - file of organised workers. The problem therefore became one ers in the counties and extended the franchise in the towns — of making this new movement harmless through its own as to whether democracy must inevitably lead to socialism. trol, against every advance in the political consciousness of the working-class, and every growth in the danger to the sta - leaders. The simplest conclusion from these unpalatable facts The safest way to keep the working-class practically harm - would have been to steer clear of universal suffrage alto - bility of capitalism, is not to-day denied by anyone except newspaper hacks and campaign speakers. “Parliament,” says less is to keep enough of it, or decisive sections of it, satisfied gether; and the classical versions of Liberalism — the French within the capitalist system; better still, to persuade them that Constitution of 1791, the regimes set up in France and Bel - so orthodox an authority as Sir Ivor Jennings flatly, “cannot gium by the revolutions of 1830, the Reform Act of 1832 in govern; it can do no more than criticise”; and not very effec - Continued on page 12 tively at that. Our government is indeed, he admits, a dicta - 12 HISTORY

Continued from page 11 their prospects depend, not on the destruction of the sys - tem, but on the contrary, on its prosperity as a profit making concern. A moderately contented “aristocracy of labour” did de - velop in Britain after the 1840s: an upper stratum of workers, sharply distinct from the “labourers,” but shading off into the lower middle class of small masters and shopkeepers, and through them, into the fairly small owner-managed provin - cial mills and factories which were still typical of capitalist production. They fought a two-front war: against employers, for a small share of profits and trade union recognition; against the rest of the working population, for the enjoyment of the relative monopoly which allowed them to claim even that much. The more British capitalism expanded, the better for the “aristocrats of labour.” Hence they willingly tied their wages to the movement of prices (e.g. in the iron and steel indus - try), and habitually took the same attitude to foreign compe - tition as their masters; for instance, the cotton operatives to Indian cotton manufacture. Perhaps the extreme case of such a “partnership” is that of the Bolton cotton spinners who, between 1897 and 1906 in - vested their union funds — an average of some £16,000 per annum — in the cotton spinning industry. Other cases, al - They say ‘That’s right; tell us what to do’; and I tell them. I The decision of the British bourgeoisie to play the reformist most as extreme, could easily be given. Patently such men say, ‘Exercise your vote intelligently by voting for me.’ And game showed great political acumen. were unlikely to challenge the capitalist system as such. they do. That’s democracy; and a splendid thing it is too for It secured them three major advantages, at the cost of some The extension of the franchise [to wider sections of the putting the right men in the right place.” It is indeed. unavoidable expense: a smooth switch of the political system working class, especially after 1884] faced the ruling class In spite of the fact that the population of Britain almost from a Liberal-Conservative to a Labour-Conservative pat - with only one immediate problem: how to humour and or - doubled, and the electoral system was transformed, the num - tern, a collaborative Labour Party capable, broadly speaking, ganise the new (but politically as yet harmless) electorate, ber of Old Etonians and Old Harrovians in the House of of keeping its supporters under control; and the possibility and devise suitable tactics and propaganda for it. Up to the Commons in 1918-36 was scarcely inferior to that in 1865 (an of operating the state largely through cadres drawn from the end of the nineteenth century this did not require any major average of 148 per Parliament, compared to 157). ruling class itself, yet still enjoying a fair measure of popular changes in programme, any major shifts in political person - Yet clearly, this was not enough — especially not for the confidence. nel or organisation. masses of non-privileged workers who also, increasingly, had In these matters the British bourgeoisie, whose Wyke - POWERFUL to be granted the vote from 1885 on, who had no special tra - hamists and Etonians have to a large extent maintained a The British ruling class disposed of powerful assets for ditional link with middle-class Radicalism, and were becom - solid and unbroken grip of both parliamentary and non-par - the job, mainly concentrated in the Whig-Liberal-Radical ing more and more politically conscious. liamentary positions outside, and even within the Labour party. “We must educate our masters,” Robert Lowe had said Party, has a distinct advantage. after 1867; and the Education Act of 1870 was justified by the There was the memory of common struggles with Whig argument that voters had to be suitably educated in what DISPATCH aristocrats against the monarchy; with radical mill-owners would to-day be called “the western way of life.” To take merely one striking example: it managed the ab - against Church and Squire; the extraordinary latitude which dication of a King in 1936 with smoothness and dispatch, 18th century oligarchy had allowed popular movements TORIES while in Belgium a similar problem brought the country which did not constitute a real political danger; the propa - But it was the Tories, unencumbered by the Whig-Radi - to the verge of civil war. gandist symbol of the bluff John Bull enjoying roast beef and cal belief in reason and knowledge, who supplemented freedom, which had been formed in 125 years of expansion - education by a daring and successful use of irrationalist The inter-war years are notable for the development of a ist wars against the French. propaganda, which fitted well into the framework of early catchment system within Parliament and party organisations Naturally the interests of capitalists and workers diverged, Imperialism, with its mysticism of flag, blood, race, and (notably the Labour Party). A multitude of channels were dug as the manufacturers won the freedom and power they monarchy. through which popular agitation might be distributed harm - lessly, sped by “assurances” and “promises,” until it had, for wanted, and turned it against their employees. But “after the The Jubilees of 1887 and 1897, the foundation of the Daily the time being, subsided. artisans are once satisfied with the sympathy, ability and hon - Mail and its competitors, the Mafeking hysteria are so many These devices still retain their usefulness; but they have esty of their leaders, no class is so tolerant of differences of steps on the miserable road from reason to instinct and ceased to be adequate in themselves. Since the war parlia - opinion, or so willing to be faithful to leaders with whom magic. From 1900 on the “stunt election” appears. mentarism has had to be played in its most difficult version. they cannot wholly agree,” as a Liberal observed smugly in It is worth remembering how much of a retreat all this The business of a capitalist economy has had to be conducted 1867. meant from the tactics of the classical radical politicians, with Given the social bases of the late nineteenth-century labour their honest belief that the workers could be held to middle- through a Party whose members expected it to abolish capi - movement, only a little reassurance was needed to keep it class leadership because Free Trade, Free Enterprise, etc., talism (though they were not always clear what this implied). safely behind Liberal leaders. No man learned the rules of were invincible in argument. Moreover, this had to be done at a time when tactics were be - this new game to better purpose than the Grand Old Man Moreover, the changing structure of the economy pro - coming less flexible. The grave crisis of the economy no himself. Gladstone, who made no secret of his belief that all duced new “aristocracies of labour” in addition to (and longer permitted Labour leaders to put forward, even for desirable reforms (outside Ireland) had been achieved by sometimes instead of) the old-for instance, those managerial platform purposes, a very different programme from that of 1874; who opposed trade union rights and all social legisla - and office-workers to whom the new Northcliffe, Rother - frankly capitalist politicians. tion; who supported the extension of the franchise only to mere, and Beaverbrook Press appealed, and on whom the Three devices, therefore, are characteristic of this latest those “not presumably incapacitated by some consideration Conservative Party relies so heavily for mass support. phase of parliamentarism: a greatly increased amount of par - of personal unfitness or political danger” was and remained The imperialist era has also seen the rise of a social group liamentary shadow-boxing; a greatly increased propaganda the idol of British workers. whose function is to keep the rank and file firmly tied to the barrage against the left; and the “welfare state.” In a sense, In the main, the effort of the ruling class was concentrated capitalist wagon: the body of labour leaders and officials. For none of these is new. There have always been rhetorical duels on maintaining the support of the workers without giving these the mere creation of a state-monopoly capitalism pro - between Belloc’s “accursed power that stands for privilege anything concrete in return through conscious concessions. vided new functions, new status, new jobs. With every ad - (and goes with women and champagne and bridge)” and The period of the Great Depression and early Imperialism vance in the strength of the labour movement, the politeness “democracy” (which goes with bridge, and women, and thus saw above all the invention of modern demagogy. Two with which they as individuals are treated, grew. Whatever champagne). Only today they are both more unreal (for the aspects of this deserve brief mention: the bowdlerisation of the fortunes of the rank and file in the imperialist era, for fundamental identity of interest is much more frankly admit - the term “democracy”, and the rise of irrational propaganda. them it has quite clearly brought an almost unqualified ad - ted by representative leaders on both sides), and more neces - Some time after the passing of the Third Reform Act (1884) vance. sary, for in spite of the virtually complete bipartisanship on which first extended the vote beyond a limited circle of bet - Under these circumstances, then, as soon as the mass of all major issues of policy, the rank and file of labour is increas - ter-off artisans, ruling-class politicians ceased, on the whole, workers ceased to follow leaders who frankly supported cap - ingly intolerant of open union with the capitalists. publicly to admit that they did not like democracy, and to italism, social democracy became the main pillar of the or - There has always been propaganda against the left. Only spout instead the platitudes with which we are so familiar thodox parliamentary system. Between 1918 and 1924 the today it is necessarily shriller and more intense (especially today. Labour Party entered on the heritage of Liberal-Radicalism in froAmgtohveeornffmicieanl tLwabhoicuhr shiadse)s. o largely abandoned the tra - “Democracy,” as [George Bernard] Shaw, a sharp critic of most parts of the country. However, we sometimes forget that its bourgeois version saw, was a most valuable slogan: “I talk ditional policies of Labour’s founding fathers (and of tra - there are two sides to reformism as a policy. It requires not ditional British Radicalism) on foreign, imperial and trade democracy to these men and women. I tell them they have only a labour movement (or a body of labour leaders) willing the vote and that theirs is the kingdom, the power and the union affairs, must make a rather big noise, if it wants to to remain within the frontiers of capitalism, but also a bour - distract attention. glory. I say to them, ‘You are supreme; exercise your power.’ geoisie willing to play this particular political game. 13 REVIEW Class war, but not as it should be

Jill Mountford reviews The Casual Vacancy by JK Rowling licious and over-groomed Shirley Mollison. loathes social injustice and sees class at the centre of inequal - After 15 years of writing about wizards, magic and sor - The title of the book refers to a place on the Parish Council ity, ultimately she’s too despairing. cery, ostensibly for children, J K Rowling has turned her that has become vacant after the death of one of its members Like millions of us she’s looking around Tory Britain in the hand to writing a novel for adults. (the good guy, Barry). A battle for this seat ensues. midst of a world economic crisis and doesn’t like what she The two sides in the fight are divided over the issue of The sees. But there’s stuff she can’t see, none of us can, such as a The Casual Vacancy had no magic for me, although Rowl - Fields council estate and whether it should be included or ex - confident, organised working class able to stand up and ar - ing’s magic touch meant 2.6 million copies were sold before cluded from the parish catchment area. ticulate and fight for what it needs and deserves. She cannot the book actually hit the streets. On one side are the selfish, self-satisfied and conceited see all the dignity that comes from this. Poor old Rowling is rightly angry (and very frustrated) middle classes and the petty bourgeoisie; and on the other, It is, perhaps, of no surprise that Rowling’s gut socialist about class-ridden Britain. She's angry about racism and sex - the poor working class (who are portrayed largely as an un - politics are underdeveloped. She could do worse than use the ism, the small-minded petty bourgeoisie, the smug self-right - cultured underclass), and their supporters such as Parmin - freedom she’s won from being the richest novelist in history eous middle class. She’s angry about violence against women der the doctor and Kay the social worker. to better understand class politics, how capitalism works and and abuse of children. It’s all a bit Dickensian. I feel like I’ve already watched the who are the agents for change; she would not be wasting her And oddly, given Rowling’s proven ability to conjure up TV mini-series. It was okay, but it could have been so much time to study some of our past battles — victories and de - some loveable boy characters, she’s on a big downer about better — more optimistic, more representative of the working feaDtsur—inags tahnean1t9id8o0tse tao hfeemr ginriimstdpeuspbaliisr. hing house, the men. A more miserable bunch of male caricatures it’s hard to class, less of the grotesque caricature, less of a modern-day Women’s Press, used to publish stuff a bit like this. Much imagine — violent, bullying and humiliating, or limp and soap opera. of it was not very memorable but many of the novels it weak. Jan Moir of the Daily Mail denounces the book for being a published spoke plainly and simply of women’s experi - From early on, the story is a litany of flinchingly violent “relentless socialist manifesto”. This it is not. It does at times ence from a feminist perspective. Casual Vacancy re - blows interspersed with the some vile characters who are just feel relentless, though not with socialism, rather with all that minded me of this kind of novel. Worthy but dull and so easy to detest, such as the bumptious, obese petty bour - is grim and bleak. rather bleak. geois Howard Mollison, and his wife, the mean-spirited, ma - Though Rowling has clearly not forgotten her roots — she The spin doctor’s The outsider verdict

Hilary Mantel has become the first woman to win two Booker prizes — for her novels Wolf Hall and Bring up the The Left Bodies (the first two parts of a trilogy about Henry VIII’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell) . Cathy Nugent reviews By Pat Yarker the books. Historical novelists have used the form to discuss con - Last Saturday I had the chance to sell AWL material to temporary ideas and issues. And the practice has be - a famous person when I inadvertently bumped into the come very popular in recent historical novels. spin-doctor’s spin-doctor, Malcolm Tucker. Sarah Walters has written about how sexual politics and I’d knocked the mobile phone from his hand, but man - mores were loosened and transformed in the 1890s ( Tipping aged to field it before it squelched in the mud, and so seized the Velvet ) and during the Second World War ( The Night the moment to launch my sales pitch. He listened for all of Watch ). A S Byatt’s The Children’s Book also mines the 1890s the second it took him to check his phone before interrupt - — for ideas about middle-class social conscience. ing.“Is it today’s issue, laddie?” There is none of that in either of Mantel’s Cromwell novels. I began to explain why Solidarity was a weekly paper, but: She is more focussed on recreating the Tudor world and “Look at the date on this!” exclaimed Tucker, with his char - world view. Here is the body politic of the 1530s. It is not acteristic edge-of-losing-it menace. “Fucking June!” what the body politic of the 1530s can tell us about the 2010s . But He waved a leaflet I saw had been put out by the CPGB- then the shallow PR world of modern politics is nothing to ML urging the organised working class to “Ditch Labour take seriously. That’s material for In the Thick of It, not books To Fight The Cuts!” At the bottom, the date read 9 June which discuss the Divine Right of Kings or the decline of 2012. chivalry. Tucker gestured at the nearby trees. “Does this look like Mantel’s fictional world is so perfectly imagined it induced June to you?” he asked. “Are those leaves green with high a bit of nausea and fear in me. But don’t let me put you off. summer or are they yellow as a Lib Dem’s oilskin and Mantel puts her reader into a time machine, straps her in, and plummeting like their fucking poll ratings? takes her on a thrilling ride. “And what about this?” He waved another, smaller leaflet. “Some sprog surprised me on Piccadilly. Now, I’m Vicious intrigue among the babyish narcissistic aristocrats an anarchist myself, but at least I know what fucking day it at Henry’s court drives the action. The constant threat of is!” He stopped waving the leaflet so I could read: “Sym - death by untreatable disease or beheading (or worse) infects Thomas Cromwell by Hans Holbein bolic Protest or Fight To Win? Strike Now November 30”. It the story. International political alliances, religion (Henry’s had been produced by the Anarchist Federation. split from the Pope) and business (the growth of trade) are “But here’s the one,” he said, showing me a Socialist fused together in this story, presided over by Henry and fa - their heads chopped off. Cromwell is in the end not spared Party leaflet: “24-hour General Strike Now! TUC Name The cilitated by his Mr Fixit, Thomas Cromwell. Henry’s axe. Day.” I started to argue the emptiness of such a slogan, but Mantel’s Cromwell is not the real Cromwell. No one really Too simplistic perhaps to see the fictional Cromwell as a Tucker cut me off. “No, no. Not the fucking strike-call. Rosa knows who he was because there are not enough records, or stand-in for a nascent bourgeoisie. Nonetheless it is clear in Luxemburg on a bike! A General Strike’s a prelude to fuck - the right kind of records, to tell us that. Mantel’s Cromwell is the novel that the time is up for the aristocratic fools who ing insurrection, not wished for like an iPad at Christmas! rational, ambitious, even-handed... sympathetic even. Yet this cling on to the old ways — popery, the expectation that their TUC name the day? That’ll be the twelfth of fucking Never! is man who, with his control of information, the wealth to estates will always provide them with a life of idleness. As No, this is the good bit!” lend and call in loans, and powerful influence over Henry’s And he pointed to a tiny line of print: “Text JOIN with law-making, was responsible for ruining lives and taking Cromwell dispatches them to the Tower is he not doing his - torical progress in England a service? your name and postcode to …” “You can join by text! Fuck - lives. Many TV series, bodice-ripper novels and lavish films ing genius! No chat, no boring meetings, no exchange of But as the story is told from Cromwell’s point of view Man - have been made about the Tudors. The houses, customs fucking ideas, no dues to pay, fuck-all to think about. Just tel is obliged to give us a balanced, subtle character. We also and heredity of the period are popular in primary text your fucking postcode and you’re in! Think I’ll do just see his self-delusion. Cromwell longs to be, believes himself schools. The Tudors are intrinsically gory, and are a safe that. Build my network. Polish my street-cred. Are your lot to be, part of the establishment. Yet, as the son of a black - reminder of our own mortality. But Mantel’s retelling of not doing this?” smith, in this time, he will always remain an outsider. His thumbs were a-twitch over his phone, and I re - the Tudor story is deeper, more interesting and more po - alised sadly my chance of a sale had gone. And what happens to outsiders – as much as it does to up - etic. pity queens like Anne Boleyn or impudent Dukes? They get 14 REPORTS Total Remploy strikes need solidarity

land, was timed to coincide tential new owners plan to Springburn workers want with a meeting of the Rem - cut the number of staff from guarantees for their jobs ploy Task Force in the Scot - 47 to 15, and also attack and terms and conditions, policing tish Parliament. terms and conditions such whoever runs their factory. Following a wave of clo - as sick pay and holiday pay. Remploy workers from the sures of Remploy factories Slashing the workforce other Scottish factories, under the last Labour gov - could even be the prelude which have not been the Ira Berkovic picked up a What will officers be ernment, recent months to complete closure and offer of potential buyouts copy of the Metropolitan wearing? have seen another round of transferring the work to a and where 200 jobs are at Police’s “Total Policing” In the main you can ex - closures, based on the argu - site in England. risk, are demanding gov - leaflet on the 20 October pect to see officers in yel - ment that Remploy “ghet - According to a statement ernment intervention to TUC demonstration. If it low jackets and traditional By Dale Street toises” disabled workers, issued by Remploy last save their jobs. was more honest, it police hats. If violence or who should instead be inte - month, the “preferred bid - Unfortunately, one sour would have said some - disorder takes place, how - For the fourth time this grated into “mainstream” der” for its Springburn and note to the events of the thing like this… ever, we will tool up. year, pickets were out in employment. Chesterfield sites is a com - strike day was the lack of The Metropolitan Police We’re talking visors, force at the Remploy fac - But as the statistics from pany called RLink. support for the Remploy Service hopes that you shields, night-sticks, and tory in Springburn (Glas - the pre-2010 closures con - RLink has already an - picket lines from the wider stay at home. specially-trained two- gow) on Monday 22 firm, people with disabili - nounced that if it takes over labour movement. tonne animals. We also October as workers there ties who lose their jobs with the Chesterfield site it will Although Remploy GMB However, if you insist have 50,000 volt tasers, kept up their fight in de - Remploy do not end up in - cut the workforce from 70 to members had been in the on demonstrating, we are and we’re not afraid to use fence of jobs and terms tegrated into the “main - 40, cut terms and condi - lead of the anti-austerity here to make sure you them… especially if you’re and conditions of employ - stream” labour force. They tions, derecognise the union demonstration in Glasgow only do it within strictly a 61-year-old, blind stroke ment. end up on the dole. And and replace it with a “works just two days earlier, there defined parameters and victim.* Don’t fuck with they remain on the dole. council”. was no turnout last Mon - with constant reminders us. The only person crossing Some Remploy factories, The transfer of ownership day to demonstrate solidar - that we are in charge. This the picket line was one of including the company’s of the Springburn and ity on the picket line. What if I become a vic - This certainly does not leaflet explains how the the £300-a-day consultants Springburn site, have been Chesterfield sites from tim of crime? devalue the strike action demonstration will be po - brought in by the company the target of possible buy - Remploy to RLink, if it goes by the GMB members. liced. Depends who commits to “facilitate” the rundown outs. But the price of any ahead, is due to be com - But it does raise a ques - What you can expect to it. If it’s us... forget about and possible closure of the such buyout is unaccept - pleted by the end of Octo - tion about the value of all see? it. Since 1990, more than factory. ably high for the workers ber. But RLink has yet to those wordy speeches in 1,400 people have died in The 24-hour strike, which involved. even meet with representa - Glasgow Green on Satur - A large police presence. police custody or after also involved the five other Workers at the Spring - tives of the Springburn day. We’re clever about this, be - contact with the police. Remploy factories in Scot - burn site fear that the po - workforce. cause we’ll do a “good- Not a single police officer cop” thing by having the has ever been convicted nice, smiley cops in the for any of this. On 9 De - Joint action fights union busting in schools sky-blue tabards wander - cember 2010, we beat stu - ing around giving out dent protester Alfie these leaflets, but we’ll Meadows to within an By Patrick Murphy, ers decided to escalate the strike action announced in critical that they win. It is also make sure you get a inch of his life. But he was NUT Executive (pc) dispute to strike action. The advance. especially important that look at mounted cops and the one who ended up in first national victory on this By far the most serious union-busters like the the Territorial Support the dock. Don’t fuck with The joint action by the was at Bishop Challoner battle is taking place at Head at Stratford Academy Group, who might be film - us. two biggest teacher School in Tower Hamlets Stratford Academy in are not allowed to succeed. ing you, so you won’t get What if there is violence unions is creating some and that has sent the mes - Newham, East London. The most significant and any dangerous ideas about or disorder? sharp battles between sage out that members will There the unions had not impressive victories in this deviating from the classroom teachers and be supported in pushing even decided on their ac - campaign are those in planned route or taking We can’t be held respon - their immediate bosses for their demands. tion before the Head schools where the staff any more impacting direct sible. And we won’t be. across the country. There are further schools launched an aggressive were previously too cowed action. Don’t fuck with us. Don’t fuck with us. where strike action has union-busting attack. He toSchcahloleonlgre pthseabroesseasy. ing You can also expect to For the most part, it What if I want to make a been called to win our de - demanded that all teachers that messages of support see us maintaining heavy seems that workers are complaint? mands. sign a letter by Friday 19 and solidarity are incredi - presences around shops winning back some control At Mount Carmel School October to confirm that bly helpful in building that we think you might over their own workplaces Haha. Good luck. in Islington, teachers voted they would not be taking morale and demonstrat - target. Because although and challenging the endless to refuse all co-operation part in any of the joint ing to members as well we say we’re “here to fa - * Colin Farmer was re - expansion of their work - with lesson observations union action. cilitate a safe and peaceful load demands. as managers (they are cently tasered in the back and requested strike action DEDUCTED posted on staffroom no - protest”, we’re really here by police after they mis - after the Head refused to SUCCESS Those who did not return tice-boards) that we have to protect the interests of took his white stick for “a agree to a maximum of Probably the most com - the letter signed would the strength to win. private property. Don’t samurai sword”. three observations per year. mon success is that lim - then have 15% deducted fuck with it… or us. At Deptford Green its are being put on the from their pay every day G number of formal obser - School in Lewisham, the starting immediately. Send messages of sup - vations of lessons to Head took a bullish and port to: which teachers are sub - dismissive attitude to re - The first deductions • Steve Charles (NUT rep jected. quests for a more accept - would be in their October at Stratford Academy): able monitoring regime, pay slip. Last week mem - [email protected] Union groups have also insisting that he would bers of both unions met in • Karen Wheeler (Deptford drawn a line under exces - carry on as he pleased and school with their officials Green School): sive planning, meetings ignore the industrial action. and agreed to call six days karen_wheeler@ and reports. Schools in sev - NUT and NASUWT mem - of strike starting on Thurs - hotmail.co.uk eral areas have cancelled bers promptly met to con - day 25 October, and in - • Katherine O’Sullivan mock inspections (“Mock - sider their response, and creasing to two days in the (NUT Rep at Mount steds”) after union mem - voted to request strike ac - first week after half-term Carmel): osullivan@ bers decided they would tion from their national (beginning 5 November) mountcarmel. not co-operate. unions. Wherever man - and three days the follow - islington.sch.uk The most impressive ex - agers throw down the ing week. • Phil Davison (NASUWT amples of this have been gauntlet in this way the re - The response of teachers Rep at Mount Carmel): where Heads insisted the sponse should be to esca - in these schools and their davison@ inspections would go late and to do so with a wider union organisation is mountcarmel. ahead regardless and teach - substantial programme of absolutely right and it is islington.sch.uk 15 REPORTS Contact Centre dispute: reject the deal! British Museum By a PCS activist (PCS) DWP Group Execu - member Fran Heathcote) dent refused to let a vote pute clearly shows that we tive Committee (GEC) are voted to recommend ac - take place in the room. can keep on winning gains Workers in Jobcentre Plus now recommending that ceptance. It is understood that some each time. So why settle cleaners “Contact Centres” have members accept a new One GEC member, Alan of the GEC had doubts as to now? It seems that PCS ne - been in dispute over management offer, which in Smith (also the editor of the whether there was enough gotiators may have become working conditions since vote to fact offers very few concrete DWP members’ journal), re - strength to continue to jaded by the long-running 2009. signed from his GEC posi - gains, and the vast majority fight. But the answer to this dispute and were looking tion soon after this meeting of which consists of plati - is not to admit defeat, but to for a way out. strike There have been several where he had argued strikes since the beginning tudes about how bosses are organise effectively on the Nearly every member of “committed to a new start”. against the recommenda - ground. By Ruben Lomas of 2011. In each case Depart - tion. the GEC would define ment for Work and Pen - themselves as socialists, and VICTORY? There was a call from ac - DEFEATIST Cleaning workers at the sions (DWP) management This offer hardly spells a This is a defeatist atti - most as revolutionaries. tivists for a national reps British Museum have have been adamant there victory, especially when tude, and it appears the The fundamental lack of meeting to discuss the offer voted to strike against will be no settlement after one considers the original leadership takes no re - prior to any recommenda - analysis of the strategy of a plan to outsource action, but in each case the demands of the cam - tion, which would have sponsibility for this sup - this campaign and its fail - strikes have been well sup - their work to a private paign. been in line with the posed lack of ings is shameful, and sug - company. ported and small gains have union’s response to previ - organisation, when this gests that the SP majority been won. Rather, it seems to be an ous offers in the campaign. dispute has been running do not have the confidence Members of the Public After the last strike, in excuse for the negotiators to Instead, the GEC met first for three years. that they can win more. But and Commercial Services August, again some small duck out of a troublesome and made their recommen - if this is the case then they union (PCS) and Unite gains were made, but there and difficult dispute rather dation, and it seemed the There is no doubt that have to look to themselves voted by 90% and 100% is still much to fight for be - than keep fighting. reps’ meeting was called there is still an appetite to respectively to strike after for the reasons why. fore Contact Centre work - In the GEC meeting merely to “inform” and to fight in many places; this museum bosses an - ing conditions are where the offer was dis - recommend acceptance of can be heard in offices up PCS activists should or - nounced a plan to out - comparable with those of cussed, the Socialist Party the deal. and down the country ganise in Contact Centres source the work from 1 colleagues in other parts of (SP) and Communist Party The reps’ meeting was where workers angrily ask and to keep on fighting April 2013. The unions Jobcentre Plus. (of Britain/ Morning Star ) clearly mixed, and reps their local reps why they are unTtihlawtemweiann. s rejecting are now discussing dates However, the Public and majority (including DWP present called for a vote. being sold out. this shoddy deal. for joint action. Commercial Services union Group President and SP However, the DWP Presi - The pattern of this dis - Contracting out could lead to cuts in pay and at - tacks on terms and condi - Warehouse tions for the workers. Reinstate Andrej Stopa! Cleaning contractors are notorious for their pre - carious working arrange - working in the store. tice, meaning Andrej was workers strike ments and high levels of Almost straight away, unable to attend. As a re - exploitation. key organisers found them - sult, he was fired. PCS Regional Secretary selves victimised. One Other members of the By Darren Bedford between 2008 and 2011. Keith Johnston said: worker was given a disci - union also faced systematic Unite members working “With food and energy plinary hearing for an intimidation, including one DHL warehouse workers as delivery drivers for Tesco costs going through the “unauthorised absence”, member who was given a in Scotland struck for the roof, the last thing low- even though he had been full-time contract along in Doncaster also rejected a second time on Monday paid workers need is the off sick and phoned the with a “strong recommen - deal from management. 22 October, after a first threat of privatisation store to inform them. The dation” that he leave the They are in dispute over the By Ira Berkovic hanging over their heads, hearing was deliberately union, and who was told walk out Friday 19th. outsourcing of their con - and this vote for a strike Workers at the St Pan - scheduled for after the that his grievances would tract to haulage firm Eddie The strikes are part of a shows the strength of cras Station outlet of Olympics so the worker be better dealt with if he Stobart, as their new em - dispute over pay. Workers feeling at the museum. chain sandwich shop could be kept on during pursued them “infor - ployer is threatening to have rejected management’s “These staff work hard Pret A Manger are facing the busy Olympic period. mally”. maUknei tjeob o cffuictsi.al Harriet latest pay offer, which is for to keep this prestigious intimidation and victimi - Eventually, the worker was Andrej says that because Eisner said: “Stobart’s a 2% increase over the next cultural attraction clean, sation for organising a given a final warning and of this treatment, many would have to recruit new tidy and safe for millions trade union in the store. transferred to another workers are now too fright - two years. The firm’s site in drivers on worse terms of visitors to enjoy, yet store. ened to join the union or North Lanarkshire has al - and conditions to run the they receive little reward A group of workers The Pret A Manger Staff continue organising. His ready seen 100 redundan - operation, once they have or recognition. We are de - began organising in August Union (PAMSU) was for - dismissal appeal hearing is cies in recent years, and sacked our members.” termined to oppose these 2012, around a series of on - mally established on 1 Sep - at 1pm on Monday 29 Oc - workers faced a pay freeze plans that would mean going grievances including tember. Two weeks later, tober, at 1 Hudson’s Place, non-payment, late notifica - shareholders profiting leading organiser Andrej London SW1V 1PZ (near tion of shift changes, bully - from cutting both the Stopa found himself facing Victoria Station). Uni workload strike Activists are planning a conditions of already ing by managers, and disciplinary charges for demonstration to support poorly-paid cleaners and being rostered fewer hours events which took place in his reinstatement outside By Bob Sutton ratios of any British uni - the quality of services to than their stated contracts. January 2012. The date of the hearing. versity. the public.” A petition around these the hearing was moved G Email pret.staff.union@ Members of the Univer - One of the workers at Unite regional officer demands was signed by several times, and finally gmail.com for more info. sity and Colleges Union the morning picket line Carolyn Simpson added: nearly half of all staff rearranged at 24-hours’ no - (UCU) at the University of told Solidarity : “I wouldn’t “It is unacceptable that East London struck on be here if we were striking our members are re - Pickets of the Crossrail construction site in New Oxford Street, Thursday 18 October over pay, but this is an quired to bear the cost of central London, have been continuing as part of a campaign to over management’s new issue which directly affects management failures at win reinstatement for 28 electricians sacked from Crossrail’s our ability to do our job: the British Museum. We Westbourne Park site because they raised safety concerns. proposed workload pol - icy. provide a decent education believe this move to be Workers and supporters have also been maintaining a daily forF ouurtrh setru dacentitosn.” on Tues - driven by greed and to - As things stand, UEL ac - presence at Westbourne Park, successfully turning some day 23 October was tal“lyWuennnoewceshsaavrye. a situ - ademics, in a survey con - delivery lorries away. called off due to ongoing ation where members, ducted by the UCU, came negotiations, but the dis - who have been working out as working the longest The pickets have blocked traffic on Oxford Street for up to an pute has not been re - at the museum for over hour, and are causing so much disruption and negative publicity hours of any university in solved and further 30 years, are being sold for Crossrail that the company is desperate for talks at ACAS. Britain. UEL also has one strikes are possible. off like cattle.” of the worst staff-student Drop the charges against S&o Wlorikdersa’ Libreirtty y Bob Carnegie! 14 November: European unions to strike together

By Ruben Lomas The direction of the strikes must be responsive Trade union federations in to the struggles of workers Greece, Spain, Portugal, at workplace level and de - Malta, and Cyprus have velop and escalate as neces - called general strikes on sary. A European general Wednesday 14 November. strike as a one-day spectac - Unions in France and ular, an exercise in letting losses during the dispute: Italy are also said to be con - off steam, will not be good By Martin Thomas $300,000 a day, they said. sidering calling mass enough. Those losses would best strikes. Revolutionaries in the The defence campaign have been avoided by ne - Spanish union federation British labour movement for Bob Carnegie, com - gotiating and agreeing to munity protest organ - CCOO said: “Unemploy - should fight for our unions the workers' demand iser at the August- ment, cuts, the impoverish - to be involved. Where pos - much earlier, rather than October 2012 Queens - ment of the majority and sible, live disputes should stonewalling for nine the deterioration of public land Children's Hospital weeks as Abigroup did. schedule action for 14 No - construction site dis - services justify a general vember. Obviously those losses strike.” pute in Brisbane, is get - cannot be recouped by ting underway. UNIONS DIRECT ACTION legal proceedings against If it’s not logistically pos - a person like Bob CCOO and UGT, Spain’s In the dispute, the main Carnegie who has no fi - two main union federa - sible, or doesn’t make in - contractor, Abigroup, nancial resources other tions, held a “social sum - dustrial sense within a eventually conceded the than what an ordinary mit” with working-class particular campaign, to workers' demand for strike on that day, other union-negotiated Enter - worker has. community organisations, The proceedings students’ unions, and direct actions should be prise Bargaining Agree - organised. ment with a clause against Bob Carnegie can smaller trade unions to only be seen as a spiteful launch the strike call. ensuring that workers get Stewards should organise the rate for the job, attempt to intimidate workplace meetings to dis - every community activist CCOO leader Ignacio Fer - Italian unions whichever one of the nandez Toxo said he ex - cuss any ongoing disputes, many subcontractors they who may in future wish pected other countries to and, in the public sector, are employed by. to assist workers in ob - general strikes have been pean working-class re - join in. Unemployment in Abigroup also agreed taiTnhinisg ijsu sat icea.u se which for a single day, although sponse to a European building a fightback against Spain has reached 25%. not to pursue legal pro - concerns every work - some have lasted 48 hours. bosses’ offensive. the pay freeze. The FILT-CGIL, FIT-CISL ceedings for damages ing-class organisation. The step is an important 14 November will not be Lobbying the TUC to call UILtrasporti, UGLtrasporti against a number of one. The European-wide na - a magic bullet. As the Greek a general strike on that day and FAISA CISAL unions in workers on the site. But ture of the crisis and the experience shows, even a is unrealistic. Even if by Italy already have a trans - they are suing Bob • See austerity agenda has always barrage of general strikes some freak the TUC sud - port strike scheduled for 16 Carnegie on 54 separate bobcarnegiedefence. been clear, but until now does not necessarily topple denly decreed a “general November. counts, with thousands of wordpress.com for peti - the response from workers governments or force them strike” on that day, it would The European TUC has pages of legal documen - tion, model motion, letter, has tended to be national in to change course. But it can not really happen. called for “a day of action Instead, 14 November tation. The charges could etc. character. be a focal point and a plat - and solidarity on 14 No - should be a platform for lead to fines of up to A day of coordinated form for fighting for ongo - vember, including strikes, developing independent $400,000 and maybe a jail • Campaign secretary: strike action will help shift ing coordination. demonstrations, rallies and rank-and-file organisation sentence. Ian Curr — the struggle away from na - In each country, socialists other actions”. 14 Novem - Of course Abigroup [email protected] tional movements trying to must organise for the maxi - that can allow workers to ber will be the 21st day of suffered big financial +61407687016 find solutions to “their” mum possible rank-and-file take control of our own general strike action in crises and towards a Euro - control over the strikes. struggles. Greece since 2009. Most Supersize My Pay “Antonio Gramsci: working-class Film showing and discussion revolutionary” — a Workers’ Liberty How young workers in New Zealand took day school on McDonalds, Starbucks and KFC over pay... and won. Can we win at work in the 12pm-6pm, Saturday 24 November, Bloomsbury UK? Tuesday 6 November, 7pm, Room 3D, (central London, venue tbc) University of London Union, Malet Street, More: workersliberty.org/24novgramsci London WC1E 7HY. ulu.co.uk/rightsatwork