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no 293 7 August 2013 30p/80p www.workersliberty.org for a workers’ government

Defend tories play Lessons of the Labour-union race card Biafran war link pages 4-5 page 7 pages 11-12 A win for the nhs

After LewishAm court victory, fight tory pLAns for heALth cAre “mArket” see page 7 2 NEWS what is the Alliance for Climate activists fight fracking workers’ Liberty? By clarke Benitez escape from fracking sites equivalents. Today one class, the working class, lives by selling its labour power to and contaminate ground - Workshops at the “Re - another, the capitalist class, which owns the means of production. Energy company Cau - water. Fracking has also claim the Power” camp will Society is shaped by the capitalists’ relentless drive to drilla has begun test been linked to increases in include a discussion on the increase their wealth. Capitalism causes poverty, drilling in Balcombe, tremors and earthquakes. role of energy workers and unemployment, the blighting of lives by overwork, West Sussex, in a possi - From 16 August, a unions in struggles for imperialism, the destruction of the environment and ble precursor to “frack - protest camp due to take transitions, with speakers much else. ing” — drilling shale rock place near West Burton gas from transport union TSSA, Against the accumulated wealth and power of the to extract gas for energy power station in Retford, the TUC, and activists in - capitalists, the working class has one weapon: solidarity. generation. The Alliance for Workers’ Liberty aims to build solidarity through north Nottinghamshire, volved in the Workers’ Cli - struggle so that the working class can overthrow capitalism. We want Local residents say they will also relocate to Bal - mate Action network, a socialist revolution: collective ownership of industry and services, are “overwhelmingly combe. As part of the “No direct-action solidarity net - Dash For Gas” movement, work that formed amongst workers’ control and a democracy much fuller than the present system, against” the process and rupting Caudrilla’s tests. campers will demand tran - climate and labour move - with elected representatives recallable at any time and an end to want their village to remain Fracking, which is now sitions away from fossil ment activists and was ac - bureaucrats’ and managers’ privileges. “frack free”. Climate ac - widely used in America, fuel-based energy genera - tive between 2006 and We fight for the labour movement to break with “social partnership” tivists have been protesting carries significant environ - and assert working-class interests militantly against the bosses. tion rather than a rush to 2010. at the drilling site since the mental risks. Potentially Our priority is to work in the workplaces and trade unions, replace coal-fired power For more information, beginning of August, dis - carcinogenic chemicals can supporting workers’ struggles, producing workplace bulletins, helping stations with gas-powered see nodashforgas.org.uk organise rank-and-file groups. We are also active among students and in many campaigns and Anti-fascists mobilise alliances. tunisian unions we stand for: ● Independent working-class representation in politics. in East London ● A workers’ government, based on and accountable to the labour fight islamist movement. By Darren Bedford far-right provocation in ● A workers’ charter of trade union rights — to organise, to strike, to their town) set out work - picket effectively, and to take solidarity action. 70 activists attended a ing-class, direct action ● Taxation of the rich to fund decent public services, homes, education meeting in Bethnal Green strategies for fighting the violence and jobs for all. called by the Anti-Fascist EDL, and the meeting dis - A workers’ movement that fights all forms of oppression. Full ● Network to discuss mo - cussed a range of possible By Dan katz equality for women and social provision to free women from the burden bilising against a planned approaches for the day. claims were widespread of housework. Free abortion on request. Full equality for lesbian, gay, EDL action in Tower The current call-out is after Belaid’s murder. bisexual and transgender people. Black and white workers’ unity Hamlets on 7 September. for 7 September is for The 600,000-strong Following the killing against racism. 11am at Altab Ali Park on Tunisian General Labour there were immediate Speakers from London ● Open borders. Whitechapel Road, but as Union (UGTT) organised large demonstrations. In Anti-Fascists, South Lon - ● Global solidarity against global capital — workers everywhere have more details of the EDL’s general strike on Friday Sidi Bouzid, Brahmi’s don Anti-Fascists, and more in common with each other than with their capitalist or Stalinist plans emerge, anti-fascist 26 July in response to hometown and the place Brighton Anti-Fascists (who rulers. plans may alter to disrupt the murder of a secular the Arab Spring began in set up the successful “Stop ● Democracy at every level of society, from the smallest workplace or and counter them more politician, Mohamed January 2011, rioters the March for England” community to global social organisation. effectively. Brahmi, a leader of the fought police, blockaded Working-class solidarity in international politics: equal rights for all coalition to stop an annual ● Popular Movement. public buildings and at - nations, against imperialists and predators big and small. tacked the Ennahda office. ● Maximum left unity in action, and openness in debate. The strike brought The opposition has called ● If you agree with us, please take some copies of Solidarity to sell — Tunis, the capital, to a and join us! Zimbabwe poll rigged? standstill, as flights were for civil disobedience and cancelled, trains stopped for occupations of govern - By Andy forse World Bank. running and most shops ment offices. contact us: Mugabe’s main oppo - were shut. Hussein Abbassi, head Robert Mugabe has of the UGTT, stated: “We ● 020 7394 8923 ● [email protected] nent, Morgan Tsvangirai, The following day po - claimed a landslide vic - trapped as nominal prime lice fired teargas on thou - consider this government the editor (cathy nugent), 20e tower workshops, riley tory in elections held in minister in an outgoing sands of demonstrators incapable of continuing its road, London, se1 3Dg. Zimbabwe on 31 July for government dominated by protesting outside the work.” The UGTT called ● printed by trinity mirror the presidency and na - Mugabe, and ex-general parliament. for Ennahda to be re - tional assembly. secretary of Zimbabwe’s Brahimi’s assassination placed by a “technocratic government,” demanding Yet Human Rights Watch Congress of Trade Unions is the second murder of that Ennahda resigns reports that many voters (ZCTU), has called the elec - an anti-Islamist MP this get solidarity every week! within one week or the were turned away and tions “a huge farce”. year. In February Chokri union will be “forced to Trial sub, 6 issues £5 o many duplicates were on Trade unions in Zim - Belaid was killed. The ● consider” other options. the voter roll. A mole inside babwe face continued re - government claims both ● 22 issues (six months). £18 waged o The Education minister Mugabe’s Zanu-PF cor - pression. The ZCTU men were shot with the £9 unwaged o Salem Labyedh resigned. rectly predicted the alleged supports Tsvangirai’s same weapon, blaming Over the weekend of ● 44 issues (year). £35 waged o assassination of one MP Movement for Democratic salafist militants for the 3-4 August, anti-govern - £17 unwaged o and claimed that “disap - Change party (MDC), but murders. ment protesters sat-in pearing ink” pens had been has also criticised the MDC However Chhiba ● European rate: 28 euros (22 issues) o in a central square, supplied to polling stations. for acting against the inter - Brahmi, Mohamed while tens of thousands or 50 euros (44 issues) o In a poll last year 65% of ests of workers. Brahmi’s sister, accused of Ennahda supporters Tick as appropriate above and send your money to: respondents agreed or Workers should continue the ruling Islamist En - rallied to back their gov - to organise for a genuine nahda party of the mur - 20e Tower Workshops, Riley Road, London, SE1 3DG strongly agreed that “fear ernment. of violence and intimida - socialist alternative that ex - der: “It was [Ennahda] Cheques (£) to “AWL”. tion make people vote for pels market ideology and Or make £ and euro payments at workersliberty.org/sub. parties or candidates other uses the mineral wealth of than the ones they prefer”. the country for the common good. Name ...... Yet monitors from the Here in Britain we African Union have given should offer support and Address ...... the nod of approval to solidarity so that a these elections. strong, unrepressed ...... Despite claiming to be a trade union movement champion against colonial - I enclose £ ...... can emerge from the po - ism, Mugabe has pursued a litical ruins of Mugabe’s neo-liberal agenda at the Zimbabwe. protesters hold an image of mohammed Brahmi behest of the IMF and who killed him.” Similar 3 NEWS Victory at Lewisham Hospital!

By a Lewisham nurse seem a little nervous of tak - keep our hospital. This ing the credit. public support heartens us On 31 July, a High Court It was the campaign that here in the hospital. Even judge ruled that health won, it was the people of though the fight isn’t over, minister Jeremy Hunt had Lewisham. It was all of us. the High Court victory acted unlawfully in order - We did it, us, us! The tens shows us that we can force ing the closure of of thousands of people on the government back. Lewisham Hospital’s A&E our historic demonstrations These last few days, and maternity unit. The did it. We didn’t need any - we’ve been smiling at each ruling slammed the one else coming in to do other in the corridors, and brakes on the closures. this for us — we cam - patients have been telling We won! paigned, and fund-raised, us how pleased they are The Save Lewisham Hos - and refused to rest and ac - about our victory. But we pital campaign warned us cept Hunt’s decision. know the fight is still on. in advance the announce - We would never have Tim Higginson [Chief ment would be at 11:30am; been in a position to take Executive of the hospital] a tweet went out at 11:37, this case in the first place if has warned us that even if tuc.org.uk/nhs299 and by midday everyone in it were not for the financial the judgement stands and the hospital that I could and campaigning support the appeal fails there will find already knew the re - of thousands of people. be changes at Lewisham. control of our workplace. protect ourselves and the in the interests of profit. sult. Lots of friends and This is a significant vic - The threat from govern - We need to learn together, services we provide. We have set that project family texted me to con - tory; the reverberations are ment has receded by a few we need to plan. If we can learn to com - back with our win in the gratulate me, and through - being felt up and down the months’ distance at least, We have organisations to municate and work to - High Court. out, hospital staff have country, including in the but we must be wary of our help us do this. Used prop - gether for ourselves, just as But to derail it entirely, been commenting in won - corridors of power. But the own management too, and erly they can help us fight, we work together every we must counter it with der at how the “little peo - fight is far from over. note carefully what hap - not just on the grand level day to provide our serv - our own project to remake ple” have won. We know already the pens. of fighting cuts and clo - ices, then we can do even society in the interests of Everyone remarks about government is planning to We know that things can sures but on a daily level of more. Because we cannot human need. And to do how proud they are of appeal the High Court de - be changed, that we have helping resist and reverses be satisfied, surely, with that, our unions must be - Lewisham. Funnily, people cision. NHS England had some power now. But we, little injustices in the work - saving the status quo. come organisations that Lewisham marked as one as workers in the hospital, place. We need to improve it. can fight for a government of nine A&Es in London have a special, unique These are our unions, our We should all be able to be that will serve workers’ in - that should close. The fight power beyond the general staffside. Unite is currently truly proud of the services terests as much as this gov - is still on, and the cam - potential power of the com - leading the way in actively we provide — top-quality, ernment serves the paign is already planning a munity campaign. We opposing cuts and support - free, public healthcare. interests of the rich. demonstration in know how to run this hos - ing the campaign, but all Hunt’s legal blunder was This week’s win should Lewisham in September, as pital, because we do run the unions need to work to - part of the Con-Dem proj - galvanise us in that fight. well as having a presence this hospital. We are the gether, so we as a group of ect to reform the NHS, and at both Labour and Conser - people who make it func - staff can stand together and public services in general, • savelewishamhospital.com vative party conferences. It tion, day in, day out. is right to do so. If cuts are to be beaten Time and time again, the back for good, we need to local community will show learn our unique power as that they are determined to workers to change and take win at the whittington

By a Dwhc activist cuts will be expanded The plans are also un - the next battles with a £10 million invest - clear about how many The Whittington Hospital ment beds there will be. It is un - in Archway, north Lon - • plans to cut 570 jobs clear what will happen to The Judicial Review trator recommended a se - Manchester NHS Trust stops Hunt’s closure don, has been under • plans to cut sixty hos - agency and temporary ries of cuts very similar to says it needs to cut £19m a threat of an enormous pital beds staff, whose pay makes up plan, but means no extra those at Lewisham and year from the budget. money for the PFI- sell-off of around half of • plans to sell the Jenner 10% of the hospital’s these will now be put to a Campaigners are consider - its buildings and a re - Building and the Whit - budget. caused deficit in the public consultation to run ing whether to apply for a DWHC activists have South London NHS Trust sulting heavy reduction tington Education Centre over a very short timetable Judicial Review. Let’s hope in patient provision. • plans to reduce nurse- been heroic in their that the plan was meant (and in the middle of the they have been encour - dogged determination to to cover. Since January, cam - patient ratios. summer). Cuts include aged by Lewisham. However, the DWHC confront senior mem - Trust bosses will already maternity, emergency op - savetraffordgeneral.com paigners have been inter - bers of the Hospital vening and agitating to isn’t declaring a full vic - be working on other plans erations and critical care. Barts Health, which runs tory. There are still prob - Board, in rifling through for cuts. We must demand supportstaffordhospital.co. six London hospitals plans stop the plans. endless confusing docu - Defend Whittington lems with the new that the PFI debt is abol - uk to make £77.5 million of proposals. Job numbers ments and proposals, ished. Campaigners at Trafford savings, including almost Hospital Coalition and in agitating on a (DWHC) activists trawled haven’t been quantified, The Mid Staffordshire General Hospital are fight - £30 million in emergency just the promise of “mini - number of different lev - NHS Trust went into ad - ing plans to downgrade care and surgery. Prob - through papers at hospital els in order to achieve Board meetings in order to mum redundancies”, ministration on 16 April their A&E to an urgent lems have been exacer - meaning there could still these gains. after a report concluded it care centre and then in five bated by the shape of the find out plans: even MPs from the boroughs af - be job cuts. Voluntary re - was not “clinically or fi - years’ time to a minor ill - “Reformed NHS”, in par - dundancies are already get involved nancially sustainable”, fol - ness and injury centre. The ticular NHS England and fected were unaware (members of the Board happening. lowing critical failings at change would also see crit - clinical commissioning The new plans also in - Stafford Hospital. But on ical care, emergency sur - groups failing to pay their were even dragged into • Next DWHC planning the House of Commons by clude the aim to signifi - meeting — 2 September, 20 April, 50,000 people gery and children’s bills on time. cantly increase early marched against threat - services being cut. What is likely to be angry local MPs). 7pm, Archway Methodist cut? Services to some of After months of cam - discharges. This puts the Church, Archway Close, ened cuts and closures at These plans have noth - responsibility at the feet of the hospital. They did not ing to do with improving the most vulnerable peo - paigning, the following London N19 3TD. ple. Mental health, care plans have been dropped: the social care services of • Public meeting, 19 Sep - want to lose the buildings services, centralising spe - local councils, who simply and service provision cialist services, or any of people with learning • cap hospital births at tember, 7pm, Archway disabilities. 4,000. The maternity unit do not have enough staff Methodist Church there. other often-heard “reason” to cope. On 31 July the adminis - for A&E closure. Central that was previously facing • More info: dwhc.org.uk 4 LABOUR PARTY much more threat than opportunity

By Dale street ”but they offer the prospect of tens of thousands of Unite the same right to vote on pay offers as union members.” members playing a more active role within the Labour Imagine a union rep who then responds: On 24 July Unite General Secretary Len McCluskey told Party.” ”Some pundits were expecting me to reject this proposal an emergency meeting of all members of the union’s Re - Members of affiliated unions can already join the Labour outright. But I see it as an opportunity, not a threat. gional Political Committees and the union’s National Ex - Party cheaply. Unite levy-payers can join for £19.50 a year, “Could I continue to go before the media and pretend to ecutive Committee that Ed Miliband’s new proposals for rather than the standard £45. speak on behalf of the entire workforce? No, half of them are Labour Party structure are “not a threat but an opportu - Unite leaders have been campaigning to recruit them to not even in the union. It’s indefensible, and I don’t want to nity.” Labour, but with little success, signing up only a fraction of defend it. “Ed Miliband has made some bold and far-reaching pro - their modest target of 5000 new Labour Party members “But the offer has to be an attractive one. The employer will posals for recasting the trade union relationship with the (0.35% of the union’s membership). continue to attract staff only if he offers the terms and condi - Labour Party. Some pundits were expecting me to reject them That is not because workers lack the chance to “opt in”. It tions the union wants. And I believe Mr. Grindgrad can be outright. When Ed made his speech, I saw it as an opportu - is because the Unite union machine is not good at campaign - that employer.” nity not as a threat”. ing among its members; because the Labour leaders’ current Exaggeration apart, that pretty much up sums up the logic Miliband’s main idea (9 July) was that trade unionists message is unattractive; and because Unite cannot show its of the position taken by McCluskey. should be required to “opt in” individually to the political members a strong union drive to change Labour policies Miliband’s proposals point to a reduction in trade union levy paid to Labour, rather than paying so long as they do which they could join by joining the Labour Party. Those influence in the Labour Party. They are the latest step in a not “opt out”. things need to be changed — not the opting-out rule. consistent drive stretching over three decades. And that is This will lead to: Miliband offered those who “opt in” no individual rights why the proposals have been greeted with enthusiasm by the • A big fall in payments (maybe balanced by union leaders or powers in the Labour Party beyond those which levy-pay - anti-union Blairites. making more donations to Labour out of their non-levy ers already have (the chance to vote once every several years McCluskey: ”The relationship between the unions and funds) in Labour leadership contests). Making the levy-payers opt Labour has not always worked for working people. Too often • Inevitable pressure to cut drastically, or even abolish, col - in, rather than giving them the option to opt out, will not in the past the party has favoured establishment interests lective trade-union input to Labour Party conference and make them more active. It will not increase the numbers who over improving the lives of ordinary people.” Labour Party committees opt to pay more and do more by becoming individual mem - Until Neil Kinnock started the counter-reforms in the mid- • Given the current condition of CLPs, a further elevation bers. 1980s affiliated unions had 90% of the votes at Labour Party of the Labour leadership out of democratic control. Falkirk West was the exception among the generally poor conference and a majority on Labour’s National Executive ”The details have yet to become clear”, said McCluskey, results of Unite’s drive to get its union members to join Committee. Labour. There, Unite activists in a big local factory convinced Often the General Management Committees of local a hundred-plus fellow trade unionists to join the local Labour Labour Parties were dominated by delegates from affiliated Party. trade union branches. speeding the campaign The result? A witch-hunt was launched against the union. Yet, as McCluskey indicates, the union leaders backed The leading union activist involved, and the constituency right-wingers such as MacDonald and Henderson in the A campaign to defend the Labour-union link was ini - Labour Party (CLP), were both suspended. 1920s, and in the 1950s union barons such as Lawther, Deakin tiated by some activists at the Tolpuddle Festival in That will not encourage others. and Williamson used the block vote to crush left-wing oppo - late July, and discussions are in progress about a sition based in the local Labour Parties. broader organising committee for it. DiscourAging Activism As the author of a Fabian pamphlet on the union-labour Miliband’s other 9 July proposals cut against trade Union branches, Labour Party bodies, and individual link published in 2005 put it: unionists becoming more active in the Labour Party. activists can add their support to the campaign’s state - “Unions... protected the party against extremism, the polit - ment at defendthelink.wordpress.com. The statement has “Standard constituency agreements with each trade union ical obsessions of the ‘chattering classes’ and a focus on cul - already been endorsed by the Labour Representation so that nobody can allege that individuals are being put tural politics.” Committee and the Campaign for Labour Party Democ - under pressure at local level”? But if Labour councillors and The real problem lay in the lack of democracy within the racy. MPs can evade all pressure from the rank and file — i.e. pay affiliated trade unions, and their domination by privileged It’s a slow start, partly because Ed Miliband chose a no attention to rank and file views and decisions — that dis - officials whose vision never extended beyond getting a time for his announcement when little more than the July- courages people from joining. slightly better compromise deal with “establishment inter - August holiday period stood between it and Labour Party Labour candidates – initially for London mayor – to be se - ests”. Lack of rank-and-file control over the union leaders al - conference starting 22 September. But we have to move lected in US-style primaries? That would mean that if tens of lowed them to serve the Labour Party leadership rather than quickly. thousands of Unite members do become more active in the in the interests of their own members. Miliband’s plan is for a “consultation document” writ - Labour Party, they will find that in selection contests their The answer is not to cut union voting rights in the party, ten by Ray Collins to be put to the September conference. votes will be dwarfed by those of people who are not even but to increase membership involvement and accountability Possibly, probably, Collins will aim to bounce it through party members and who have paid no or only a minimal sub - within the trade unions. in the same way “Refounding Labour” was in 2011 — a scription. To reduce the role which unions play in the Labour Party, long document voted as take-it-or-leave-it after delegates McCluskey said: ”The offer [from Labour to the trade and maybe seal off that role from rank-and-file influence had had only a few days or hours to read it, and with no unionists it wants to “opt in”] has to be an attractive one. even more, by making the main relationship between the speeches against. Above all, that means a Labour Party that (is) not a party that unions and the Labour Party lump-sum donations from po - Final proposals will be put to a special Labour confer - is a pinkish shadow of the present coalition that gives the litical funds, with their terms negotiated between closed ence around March 2014. City a veto over economic decisions and embraces the auster - doors between union and Labour leaders, would take us Best reports are that the unions are divided, with Unite, ity agenda. I believe that Labour under Ed Miliband can be backwards. Community, and Usdaw broadly favouring Miliband’s that party – a party that our members want to support be - McCluskey again: ”The experience of the last generation proposals, and all the other unions opposing, but not yet cause it feels like their party.” on this issue [of party reform] was: the party leader says campaigning against, them. Labour’s right wing has long wanted and worked to cut something, the unions reject it and have no positive propos - Exactly what the Unite leaders understand they are wel - the potential influence of the affiliated unions in the Labour als of our own, the first plan goes through anyway and we coming when they welcome Miliband’s plans is not clear, Party, so as to make it easier for a future Labour government look like not just losers, but conservative losers.” and may be quite different from what Miliband’s office to continue with austerity. All six-hundred-plus local Labour Parties and all affiliated thinks the plans are. There are discussions in Unite about McCluskey argues that a cut in the potential influence of unions used to be entitled to submit motions to party confer - schemes which could help what the Unite leaders see as the affiliated unions would result in a future Labour govern - ences. But now a maximum of just four “contemporary” mo - good — getting more individual trade unionists active in ment being more likely to... serve workers’ interests. tions from local Labour Parties and four from affiliated the Labour Party — without hurting the collective trade- Imagine an employer who announces: unions can be debated at party conferences. union voice in Labour. ”I’ve read about the scandal in our Falkirk factory in that Labour Party leaders have always been quietly dismissive Unite’s Executive Committee meets to discuss the issues well known organ of journalistic honesty, the Daily Mail , and of defeats at party conferences. But under Blair this escalated early in September. have decided to re-cast my company’s relations with the into brazen contempt for conference decisions. Every socialist can contribute by canvassing individu - trade union. Trade unions used to control 90% of the votes at party con - als; promoting model motions; inviting speakers; circulat - “Henceforth, there will be a cut in the number of recog - ferences. Successive cuts have seen that fall to 49%. Unions ing campaign materials; and organising local campaign nised reps, a cut in their facility time, and every member of used to have a majority of seats on the party’s National Ex - meetings and networks. our scattered workforce will automatically lapse from the ecutive Committee. Now they have 12 out of 32. On the Na - Within the broader campaign to defend the link, so - union from next month unless she or he signs a form opting tional Policy Forum, an invention of the Blair years, trade cialists will argue for union democracy and for unions in to it. unions have just 30 out of 186 seats. to use the link to promote working-class policies. “We will make sure union members can apply no pressure And real decision-making powers about party policy have • More: www.clpd.org.uk to union reps. Passing members of the public will be given been moved away from conference, the National Executive Committee, or the National Policy Forum, to a Labour Party 5 LABOUR PARTY falkirk: the dodgy dossier

The police have now confirmed that nothing in the Labour Party dossier on alleged irregularities in the re - cruitment of Labour Party members in Falkirk justifies a police investigation, never mind arrests. Although the dossier remains “confidential” — it has not been seen by members of the party’s National Executive Committee, by Unite, by Falkirk Labour Party officers, or miliband’s proposals threaten collective union representation in the Labour party by the two party members suspended on the basis of the dossier’s accusations — more and more of its contents have leaked. leadership sealed off from rank-and-file pressure. lition. In 2005 Blair suffered five straight defeats on the five The dossier’s Executive Summary claims: Those were the “plans” which “went through”. The unions conference motions debated. It could be done. But once the “Members were recruited without their knowledge, sometimes complained about the plans at first, but then motions were passed, the union leaders let them slip into the members were pressurised into completing direct debit voted them through because they thought it “divisive” or archives with not even a murmur of pressure on the Labour forms... signatures were forged on either application forms “helping the Tories” not to. leaders to respect them. or direct debit mandates... members were recruited in an Union leaders deferred to the Labour parliamentary lead - It was a similar story with the Iraq war. attempt to manipulate party processes.” ers again and again because they aspired to no more than get - In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq all union representa - But: ting the Tories out (before 1997) and keeping them out (after tives on the party’s National Executive Committee voted — • The main body of the dossier does not support the con - 1997). in breach of their own unions’ policies — against a left-wing tents of the Executive Summary. After the Labour Party swung to the left in the early 1980s, motion opposing the invasion of Iraq. They backed a vague • Only a handful of people, in just one or two families, 17 trade union leaders in the so-called St Ermin’s Group – in - motion which functioned as a licence for war. were supposedly recruited without their knowledge (i.e. cluding the general secretaries of the engineering, rail, elec - After the invasion union delegates again ignored their by other family members signing for them). tricians’, postal workers’, steelworkers’ and shopworkers’ unions’ policies and unanimously agreed to “move to next • Some of those who were supposedly unknowingly re - trade unions – took the initiative to win control of the Na - business” when the issue of the invasion was raised on the cruited are quoted as saying that they had been asked if tional Executive Committee and reverse the swing to the left. National Executive Committee. they wished to join and had said that they did. The main tool they used was the trade union block vote. At the 2003 party conference motions on Iraq did not even • None of the disputed party recruits were Unite mem - At the 1993 Labour Party conference – where unions still win sufficient union support to be prioritised for debate. bers, none of them had been signed up under the ”Union had 90% of the votes – John Smith was able to win sufficient At the following year’s conference 90% of the union votes Join” scheme, and none of them had had their membership trade union support to secure a reduction in the union block backed a bland platform statement uncritical of the invasion fees paid by Unite. vote from 90% to 70%, and the introduction of one member, and proposing a vague and conditional timetable for the • No-one accused of wrongdoing was given an opportu - one vote in leadership elections and parliamentary selections. withdrawal of troops from Iraq. The same proportion of nity to answer the allegations before the dossier’s authors Ironically, in the light of more recent developments, the union votes was cast against a more critical RMT motion call - set out their conclusions. Labour Party leadership sold these cuts in union influence to ing for an early date for troop withdrawal. Yet it has come to light that one of the Labour Party’s ex - the unions by introducing the “levy plus” scheme – members The basic problem was not that the block vote and affilia - ecutive directors even suggested, on the basis of the of affiliated unions could join the Labour Party for just £3 a tion held back unions. It was that the unions chose not to dossier, that the Labour Party affiliation of Unite at a na - year. fight for their policies in the Labour Party, and failed to fol - tional level should be suspended. low up their successes when they did vote down Blair at con - Demands by Unite that there should be an independent BLAir AnD After ference. inquiry into Falkirk have previously been rejected by After Blair took over as party leader following Smith’s McCluskey: ”Could I go before the television cameras and Labour Party officials on the grounds that “there is an in - death in 1994, the pace accelerated. The trade union pretend to speak on behalf of one million Unite members dependent inquiry — by the police.” Those officials are still leaderships acquiesced. who pay the political fund, wanting to affiliate to the Labour refusing to accept an independent inquiry. In 2011 TULO (the unions affiliated to the Labour Party) Party? No, half of them don’t even vote Labour. It was inde - Instead, a spokesperson has announced: “As a result of produced “positive proposals” (though small ones) on fensible, and I don’t want to be defending it.” the police decision, we will now pursue disciplinary action Labour Party democracy, in response to the Labour leader - The Labour Party was established in order to provide a po - as a matter of urgency.” ship’s “Refounding Labour” consultation. The Labour lead - litical voice for the working class, to give individual workers Labour officials say nothing about the “Progress” con - ership ignored the union proposals, and bounced an the chance to vote for representatives from their own organ - tender for nomination for the seat paying £130 by cheque undemocratic package through Labour conference 2011. isations rather than for the lesser evil among the candidates for the membership fees of eleven new members he had re - of the rich. cruited. Again, the unions acquiesced. • Lift the suspensions and restore control over the Prior to 1909, when it was made illegal by a court ruling, The answer here cannot be to move from complaining, selection process to the local Labour Party! unions simply took a collective decision about whether to af - then acquiescing, to... acquiescing straight away. • Scrap the 2012 cut-off date for participation in the filiate to the Labour Party. If the union voted in favour of af - McCluskey: ”Strains in the Labour-union link have been selection process! filiation, it paid an affiliation fee and was given collective fuelled by the failures and disappointments of Labour in of - • An independent labour movement inquiry into representation in the Labour Party. Until 1918 there was no fice. The block vote didn’t stop a Labour government invad - Falkirk and the falsehoods in the dossier! ing Iraq. Affiliation didn’t keep Labour out of the clutches of individual membership. The local Labour Party organisation the banks and the City. Our special relationship didn’t get in most areas was the Trades Council. the union laws repealed.” Only 63,000 people voted Labour in 1900, when Labour’s This is rather like arguing that because mass demonstra - affiliated membership was 570,000 and the TUC’s 1.2 million. tions of a million or more did not prevent the invasion of Only 254,000 voted Labour in 1906, when Labour’s affiliated Iraq, small demonstrations are better. membership was 900,000 and the TUC’s 1.7 million. Although denunciation of the failure of New Labour to re - The vote was low partly because Labour stood in few seats. peal the Tories’ anti-union laws has now become a stock-in- It stood in few seats because it had done a deal with the Lib - trade of union leaders’ platform speeches, the union leaders eral Party, in force until 1916, to run only where the Liberals themselves failed to campaign for repeal when New Labour stood aside for Labour. If workers had been asked individu - was in office. ally to “opt” Labour or Liberal, a majority at that stage would In the Warwick Agreement of 2004 — the “deal” the union have opted Liberal. leaders struck with Labour for the 2005 general election — But by setting up the Labour Party the trade unions had repeal of the anti-union laws got no mention. created a new political opening for workers. Union proposals for a Warwick Agreement Two for the No-one would suggest that trade union affiliation to CND 2010 general election were ignored by the party leaders, and or War on Want should be based only on the number of included only minor changes to the anti-strike laws. members who individually sign a piece of paper authorising Only once in the Blair-Brown years — at the 2005 party a proportion of their dues being handed over to such cam - paigns. conference — did the unions submit a motion advocating Historically, the same outlook has governed trade change in the Thatcher-Blair anti-strike laws, though that mo - union affiliation to the Labour Party: affiliation is a col - tion called for only modest reforms rather than outright abo - lective input from a collective organisation. 6 LEFT the tortoise and the hare

The Left Unity group, launched in late 2012 by Andrew Bur- selves have become reluctant to argue openly for socialist Another concern is whether LU has enough puff to make gin and Kate Hudson after they quit Respect, and given a ideas and socialist change. They think that, if you water your it viable. It’s not set up as the type of thing socialists can do boost in early 2013 by support from film-maker Ken Loach, ideas down, you might get electoral support. at any scale, large or small, but as something that has to be plans a conference on 30 November to constitute itself as an We’d prefer to play a longer game. This is not an overnight fairly big or nothing. People talk of it as being as big as organisation and adopt a political platform. get-rich-quick exercise. We want to take socialist ideas into Syriza, which doesn’t seem likely to us. Burgin and Hudson are promoting a draft called the Left working-class communities and give them roots so they last. Party Platform. Its supporters include the Socialist Resistance We don’t want an ephemeral, here-today-gone-tomorrow NW: Those are all concerns that people in the Socialist Plat - group. Tom Walker, a former Socialist Worker journalist who success. form would share. The people who have that view about LU quit early in 2013 and is now prominent in the SWP-splinter One of the criticisms that’s been raised against the Platform becoming a force equivalent to Syriza over a very short pe - International Socialist Network (ISNers), writes, in support: is that it’s too abstract, and that somehow we’re not inter - riod of time are going to be sorely disappointed. “The Left Party Platform stands explicitly in the ‘European ested in day-to-day battles. But the statement itself is not a In a sense it’s the tortoise and the hare, and the So - Left Party’ tradition, encompassing parties like Greece’s party programme, or a tactical recipe for the here and now, cialist Platform is the tortoise. Some of my comrades Syriza, Germany’s Die Linke, Portugal’s Left Bloc, France’s it’s a statement of aims and principles. might not like that, but I think that’s a good analogy. Front de Gauche... Socialists obviously get involved in all working-class strug - “We’re told that it’s a statement that almost anyone to the gles, whether it’s strikes, struggles in communities, or on left of Labour could agree with. Yes — exactly! That’s the campuses, but link those to a battle to change society funda - point!” The draft is, as Walker puts it, “inclusive of social- mentally. the socialist platform ism”, but not explicitly socialist. The main rival draft is the Socialist Platform, explained on Solidarity: You mentioned some of the previous attempts to 1. The [Left Unity] Party is a socialist party. Its aim is to this page by one of its authors, Nick Wrack. set up left electoral coalitions or parties. What lessons do you bring about the end of capitalism and its replacement by Wrack was editor of Militant (forerunner of the SP’s The draw from those experiences? socialism. Socialist) in the early 1990s, and has since then been promi- 2. Under capitalism, production is carried out solely to nent sucessively in the Socialist Alliance, SWP, Respect, and NW: There are two fundamental lessons — whatever project make a profit for the few, regardless of the needs of soci - TUSC. we set up has to be socialist, and it has to be democratic. ety or damage to the environment. Capitalism does not There are also other factors behind the failure of those pre - and cannot be made to work in the interests of the major - • More: leftunity.org vious projects. You can’t analyse the failures outside the his - ity. Its state and institutions will have to be replaced by torical context we live in. The last few decades have been a ones that act in the interests of the majority. period of defeat for the working-class in Britain and else - 3. Socialism means complete political, social and eco - Nick Wrack: We have 79 names now, so I can’t speak for the where. Those failed attempts have been against that back - nomic democracy. It requires a fundamental breach with whole platform. ground of defeat and retreat. From the beginning of LU, there have been different ap - The other thing we face in Britain, which doesn’t exist to capitalism. It means a society in which the wealth and the proaches to what sort of party we want to come out of the the same degree elsewhere in Europe, is a monolithic labour means of production are no longer in private hands but process. Most people signed up because Ken Loach issued movement party. The idea that the Labour Party can simply are owned in common. Everyone will have the right to an invitation for people to debate and discuss a new party. be supplanted overnight is a big mistake. It will take a long participate in deciding how the wealth of society is used He didn’t set down any confines for that discussion. time to challenge Labour. That’s not to rule out smaller vic - and how production is planned to meet the needs of all A lot of us have been through similar experiences — Re - tories in isolated places to begin with. My position is that you and to protect the natural world on which we depend. We spect, the Socialist Alliance, the Scottish Socialist Party, or the work patiently over a period of time, and the electoral tactic reject the idea that the undemocratic regimes that existed Socialist Labour Party — and want to make sure we don’t go is part of your work, not the be-all-and-end-all. in the former Soviet Union and other countries were so - down the same route again. cialist. One of the things that struck some of us from the begin - Solidarity: There seems to be another discussion going on in - 4. The [Left Unity] Party opposes all oppression and dis - ning was that a lot of the material being produced was ex - side Left Unity. Is this mainly an electoral vehicle, which sup - crimination, whether on the basis of gender, nationality, tremely vague and nebulous, and probably deliberately so, so ports struggles, but doesn’t see itself as having a role in trying ethnicity, disability, religion or sexual orientation and aims it didn’t have to define exactly what the aims of the party to initiate them, shape them, or propose policy for them? Or to create a society in which such oppression and discrim - would be. is LU trying to build something which is systematically active ination no longer exist. in everyday struggles? Solidarity: Many people make that vagueness a virtue. They 5. Socialism has to be international. The interests of the argue that it will help to garner wide electoral support from NW: Left Unity hasn’t actually been set up yet. It doesn’t working class are the same everywhere. The [Left Unity] everyone to the left of the Labour Party, and that the Social - exist except in an inchoate, putative manner. The national Party opposes all imperialist wars and military interven - ist Platform would narrow it down. conference in November will set up the new party, and what tions. It rejects the idea that there is a national solution to kind of party it is will be partially decided by the debates we the problems of capitalism. It stands for the maximum sol - NW: Our aim should be to make socialist ideas popular, not have now. I would imagine that everyone involved in LU idarity and cooperation between the working class in to become popular by hiding them. The view that’s shared would say they are in favour of participating in and helping Britain and elsewhere. It will work with others across Eu - by the platform signatories is that popularity based on ap - to build working-class struggles in their areas. Of course, we rope to replace the European Union with a voluntary Eu - pearing as all things to all people is not worth having. You’re need to turn that into deeds. ropean federation of socialist societies. building on sand. In terms of elections, there is a danger in some of what’s 6. The [Left Unity] Party aims to win support from the I believe that socialist ideas, explained patiently, are inspi - being said about attracting everyone to the left of Labour. working class and all those who want to bring about the rational, and the socialist left has forgotten how to inspire Does that mean winning their conscious support for a set of socialist transformation of society, which can only be ac - people. One of the consequences of socialist ideas being in ideas, or just capturing their votes? complished by the working class itself acting democrati - retreat in society is that even a section of the socialists them - What we’ve tried to do with the Platform is set out briefly cally as the majority in society. and succinctly some basic socialist aims and principles. It’s a 7. The [Left Unity] Party aims to win political power to bit disturbing that people who actually agree with those aims martin smith resigns from swp are arguing that the platform shouldn’t be supported because end capitalism, not to manage it. It will not participate in it’s “tactically wrong”. If everyone who agreed with it sup - governmental coalitions with capitalist parties at national Martin Smith, the former Socialist Workers Party ported it, there’d be no problem in getting it adopted in the or local level. (SWP) leader at the centre of the scandal in the party conference. 8. So long as the working class is not able to win politi - relating to its handling of rape and sexual harassment What’s your take on the debate? cal power for itself the [Left Unity] Party will participate in complaints against him, has resigned. working-class campaigns to defend all past gains and to His resignation comes in advance of a new internal Solidarity: Basically, that you and the Platform are right. improve living standards and democratic rights. But it party “hearing” to deal with a complaint of sexual harass - Some people in LU seem to want be an in-gathering of every - recognises that any reforms will only be partial and tem - ment ^against him. one under the sun — although sometimes excluding the ex - porary so long as capitalism continues. The party has (disingenuously) promised the hear - isting left groups — that will somehow win wide electoral 9. The [Left Unity] Party will use both parliamentary ing will be “swift and fair”. (It has been delayed and support, and that’s it. and extra-parliamentary means to build support for its ul - postponed several times.) The complainant, known as You’re right that everyone in LU would say they’re in timate goal — the socialist transformation of society. “Comrade X”, may have her hearing come “swiftly” favour of participating in and supporting struggles. But a so - 10. All elected representatives will be accountable to the now, but there is little chance it will be “fair” after the cialist party or organisation doesn’t just support struggles. It party membership and will receive no payment above the perpetrator has resigned and cannot be held to ac - tries to organise for them, develop policies and strategies, average wage of a skilled worker (the exact level to be de - count. and organise out of them. That active attitude doesn’t seem to be anywhere near as widespread in LU. termined by the party conference) plus legitimate ex - • More: bit.ly/smith-resigns penses. 7 WHAT WE SAY

BOOKS FROM WORKERS’ LIBERTY

Antonio Gramsci: working-class revolutionary This booklet discusses a major recent study on the Notebooks — Peter Thomas’s The Gramscian Moment — and argues that tories make racist play the Notebooks were in fact a powerful contribution to the working-out of revolutionary working-class strategy in developed capitalist societies. for ukip votes £4. Buy online at http://bit.ly/gramsci What is capitalism? Can it In July the Home Office launched a new anti-immigrant Randomly searching anyone who looks foreign is appar - campaign. A mobile billboard was driven around north ently lawful. Tweeting out pictures of “immigration offend - and west London with a giant poster warning “illegal im - last? ers” being arrested is just good fun (not harassment or abuse) With articles from Leon Trotsky, Max migrants go home, or get arrested.” from our friends at the UK Border Agency. Even Nigel Farage of UKIP (that’s right, UKIP!) said the Some of the people the government has recently chucked Shachtman, Maziar Razi and many more. billboards were “deeply divisive and unnecessary”. out are homeless Roma people who have literally nothing to Edited by Cathy Nugent. Yet the Tories felt able to defend the posters. Conservative go back to in Romania apart from second class citizenship MP Mark Harper said: “Let me clear this up once and for all and systematic abuse. £5. tinyurl.com/wiccil – it is not racist to ask people who are here illegally to leave Where is the trade union and labour movement when all Britain. It is merely telling them to comply with the law.” this is going on? Why is it not defending vulnerable migrant Every person who has spent any time in a UK primary workers? school will know the psychology behind the words “go As the climate gets more hostile towards immigrants and Working-class home”. This phrase is the equivalent of saying the N word more detrimental to the unity our class, we need to make the or the P word. Something you can say without getting into arguments for international working class solidarity. politics trouble. If you’re still a bigot when you leave primary school, It is our duty to take those ideas on to the streets, into what you say then will be an overt racist term. workplaces and colleges. That is the only way to counter and anarchism Whoever designed these posters understands that. The the flow of racist bile coming out of the government. Debates between posters were designed to fan the flames of bigotry in this country in order to win back the votes of people who have re - • No One is Illegal has a gathering on 1 September, 12.30 to members of Workers’ cently voted Ukip. 5, at the People’s History Museum, Left Bank, Spinningfields, Liberty and comrades The campaign is just one part of an escalating policy of bru - Manchester M3 3ER. Write to No One is Illegal, c/o Bolton tality which includes Home Office drives to “round up” “il - Socialist Club, 16 Wood Street, Bolton BL1 1DY. from various anarchist legal immigrants” — including spot checks on papers at • noii.org.uk traditions. railway stations. £5. tinyurl.com/wcpanarchism free Bradley manning! Marxist Ideas to Turn the Tide Readings and reflections on revolutionary An American military court has found Bradley Manning ing the enemy, but that may not deliver a lighter sentence. socialist strategy. Articles guilty of espionage and a series of other charges that Manning is the latest of many whistleblowers who have been could carry a maximum 136 year sentence. prosecuted using the 1917 Espionage Act. All on Barack on the history of the Manning released military documents to WikiLeaks, doc - Obama’s watch, the man who was elected President promis - uments which included footage of a US military helicopter ing increased transparency and protection for whistleblower. Communist International, gunning down a father taking his children to school; evi - During the trial Manning gave an articulate and sober ac - the United Front, dence of a death squad operating in Afghanistan; and files count of his motives for the leak, countering the propaganda showing that Guantánamo held dementia patients, taxi driv - that he had psychological problems and was a loose cannon. Workers’ Government, ers and prisoners of the Taliban. Manning’s testimony revealed an awareness of the personal The proceedings were likened to a Stalinist show trial as a risk and self-sacrifice that he was undertaking, and showed revolutionary string of technicalities went in favour of the prosecution, and a degree of courage and confidence that revolutionary social - organisation and the press were stymied by the secrecy surrounding the case. ists should aspire to. While waiting for his trial in military prison Manning was As we await the unwelcome news of his jail term, we programme. denied meaningful exercise, social interaction, sunlight, and must not forget his plight. on a number of occasions forced to stay completely naked. £5. bit.ly/m-ideas In the event Manning was found not guilty charge of aid - • bradleymanning.org 8-9 GREECE Discussing with greek socialists

By tom harris

On Wednesday 17 July, Martin Thomas and I from AWL travelled to Thessaloniki, in northern Greece. Soon after arriving, we went to the Thessaloniki headquar - ters of the public broadcaster ERT (Greek equivalent of the BBC), where a workers’ occupation is defying the Samaras government’s decision to shut down ERT. The building was covered with union banners. On the pavement outside and opposite was a crowd of supporters. Some hundreds gather there every evening: apparently it was 2000 at the start of the 2011 protest in tirana occupation. There were many left-wing banners there, some attached to buildings or railings, some carried on poles. De - spite that, the gathering seemed more like a social occasion, with people chatting, than a political forum. There was Developing a left in Albania music, not particularly political, and a fast-food van. On Wednesday evening, after a couple of short speeches, the crowd formed up to march to Aristotelou Square in the city centre. By tom harris 1991 managed a peaceful transition of Albania to world-mar - On the way comrades from the revolutionary socialist ket capitalism. group OKDE used their megaphone to lead chants — for a At the OKDE summer camp we met members of Organi - The transition has led to vast job cuts in mines and other political general strike, and others — and there are also a few zata Politike (Political Organisation), an Albanian leftist large industrial units. “The majority of the Albanian work - chants led by a megaphone on the contingent with the ban - group. ing class”, the OP people told us, “are emigrating to Greece ner from Pame, the KKE’s (Communist Party’s) political Their group came together in January 2011 after a big or Italy, or moving to Tirana. What’s expanding is the infor - front. demonstration against the government, then led by the Dem - mal economy, drug dealing, remittances from Albanians The OKDE comrades told us that they had a leaflet, but ocratic Party, the more right-wing of the two main parties. working abroad, road construction, corruption, and privati - were keeping it to distribute to the bigger crowd in Aris - The demonstration against electoral fraud and corruption - sation”. totelou. And their paper? “We sold them all yesterday, when was called by the mainstream opposition party, the Socialist Do people want the old Hoxhaist regime back? The OP there was a general strike”. Party, but four people were killed by troops in Tirana. comrades raised their eyebrows: of course not. There is some Spiros from OKDE told us that the KKE — the major, The group now has around 30 people, some Marxists, admiration for some achievements of the old regime — there defining organisation of the Greek left from the 1920s on - some Trotskyists, some anarchists. They say what brings really was free health care and free education, unlike in wards — has no tradition of public paper-selling, maybe in them together is anti-capitalism and a drive to break the cul - Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China — but those achievements part because it has spent so much of its life under one or an - tural hegemony of right-wing and neo-liberal ideas in Alba - were made mostly by “voluntary labour”, unpaid labour other dictatorship. Its paper Rizospastis circulates through nia. conscripted by the state. And after Albania’s falling-out with news-stands rather than through hand-to-hand sales. On From September 2011 to April 2012 they were able to pub - China in 1976-8, things went downhill. Thursday evening we chanced upon a KKE rally in central lish a weekly paper, sold from news-stands on the basis of Foreign investment? There is some. But mostly it is asset- Thessaloniki, near the Venizelos statue, and true enough the news-stands keeping the sales money. They reckon a few stripping, or the establishment only of small enterprises, like there were plenty of KKE flags but no sign of Rizospastis , or hundred copies of each issue were bought, and the group got call centres. There is nothing comparable to the factories indeed of the assembled KKE members making any effort to some new people from the effort. Then the money ran out. which Volkswagen has established in Slovakia, the Czech Re - spread their message to passers-by. Now they mostly get new supporters through their website public, Poland, and the Ukraine. Spiros thinks the Greek working class is still moving to the and social centre. The entire group is in Tirana, where most There are two union federations, one linked to the SP, one left, but it is an unspectacular, molecular process, a matter of young people have access to the internet. The group also linked to the DP, both “totally corrupt” and with small mem - “little things”. The left is gradually winning more ground in buys up second-hand copies of books by Marx and Lenin berships. the elections. New “first-level” unions are being formed or now available cheap and in large quantities in Albania, to or - About 46% of the population is still rural. But the people in revitalised, though against those gains there are losses from ganise discussions round them. Most of the copies, they said, the countryside have only small plots of land, and do not pro - the disappearance of unions when workplace shut. were previously owned by Stalinist bureaucrats, and are in duce much for sale. A lot of food is imported, and many rural In Thessaloniki, the Biome factory is still operating under good condition, showing few signs of having been read or households depend on remittances from abroad or from the workers’ control. The 70 workers there make household even opened! cities. cleaning materials and sell them themselves, directly to the The Organizata Politike, they say, is all there is of a left in How do the people who flood from the countryside to public. “It is not such a big thing”, said Spiros, but the idea Albania. There are three or four parties, preaching nostalgia Tirana live? They build themselves houses — not shanty- of workers whose factories are abandoned by their owners for the regime of the old Stalinist dictator Enver Hoxha, but towns exactly, because these are houses built of concrete, and taking them over is becoming more current. they attract only old people. (somehow) with electricity and water supplies, but not When AWLers were last in Thessaloniki, in July 2012, the The Democratic Party and the Socialist Party call each other planned development either. Across Albania, the OP people neighbourhood assembly movement was reduced to dribs crazy right-wingers and crypto-communists respectively. In said, a common sight is houses with one storey built and in - and drabs. A year later, there are more neighbourhood as - fact, the differences of policy are as slight as those between habited, and a second storey half-built and awaiting a new semblies, some running neighbourhood markets in liaison the Tories and New Labour in Britain. remittance from abroad to finance completion. with suppliers from the countryside to provide food without The Socialist Party, after winning the election in June 2013, Maybe 80% of the population would favour reunification middleman’s profit. “People have become more disobedi - says it will introduce a mildly progressive income tax in place with Kosova (which is Albanian-inhabited, but was seized ent”. There is more activity by young workers, even though of the flat-rate tax in force under the Democratic Party gov - by Serbia in 1913). But the US and the EU want to avoid com - they are usually not union members. ernment. The SP has also promised a free-at-the-point-use plications with Serbia and with Macedonia (the population of What have OKDE’s main activities been in Thessaloniki public health service, but will they introduce it? which is one-third Albanian) which would flow from reuni - over the last year? Spiros said that the main area had been Albania was the only country in Europe where German fication. The US ambassador is a big figure in Albanian pol - union activity. OKDE is active in the restaurant workers’ and Italian occupation armies were evicted during World itics, with his views attended to on all questions. union. In the last elections, the slate supported by OKDE got War Two by local forces alone, without any Allied interven - Hoxha’s Albania was the world’s only-ever atheist state, 100 votes. The slate supported by the KKE got 200 votes and with religious observance banned by law. Has that banning tion. From 1944 it was a Stalinist state, under Enver Hoxha. kept control, but OKDE’s 100 is more than the total number produced, in reaction, an upsurge of religiosity since then? Jealous of its autonomy, it first allied with Mao against “A little, but not much. For a while it was considered of votes cast in the union election a couple of years ago. Moscow, and then after 1976 declared China “revisionist” trendy among the youth to be religious, especially OKDE has also been active in the teachers’ union and among too. Catholic [Albania has been historically majority-Muslim, students. After Hoxha died in 1985, his successor Ramiz Alia started with a Catholic minority]. But now it’s mostly old people Pasok, the old social-democratic party, elected to govern - pushing towards integration in the world market, and from who go to church or mosque”. ment in October 2009 with 44% of the vote but now a junior 8-9 GREECE Discussing with greek socialists teachers to strike against sackings

Greek school teachers are set to strike from early Sep - tember even if the government “conscripts” them as it did in May, putting them under military discipline so that striking becomes legally equivalent to desertion from the army. The Greek government has said 2,122 teachers in techni - cal high schools will be suspended from their jobs. They will be put on 75% pay and in redeployment status for eight months, then sacked if they have not found new jobs. 50 out of 110 departments in technical high schools will be closed. The government has also said it will suspend another 8,000 public sector workers (1,500 teachers among them) between now and the end of September, the first round of 160,000 suspensions planned by the end of 2015. School caretakers’ jobs have been abolished across Greece; their work will be done by school principals or con - tracted out. The government plans to reevaluate school structures, cancel selected positions and make all workers reapply for the remaining jobs. A high school teachers’ strike was called off in May in the face of government threats. Since then, a new left-wing A display of okDe’s leaflets for cafe, bakery, and restaurant workers in thessaloniki leadership (Syriza and Antarsya) has been elected to the high-school teachers’ federation; it says it will strike from coalition partner to the conservative New Democracy and on the bus service is good; there are shuttered shops, and there September if even one teacher is suspended, and regard - just 7% in the opinion polls, is “finished”, said Spiros. It was are beggars, but no more than in British cities. This is not like less of military-mobilisation orders. never a party which came out of the workers’ movement like the Omonia district of Athens, which has plunged. But we There are about 80,000 teachers in Greek high schools, the British Labour Party or the German SPD. [It was founded know that one of the reasons why poverty is less visible in half of them union members. In Greece the “union” is the in 1974 by Andreas Papandreou, former deputy prime min - Thessaloniki is that things have got worse . In 2012 there were local organisation covering a workplace, or a few work - ister in a government of the liberal Centre Union]. It was, said large numbers of African and Asian migrants selling small places — for teachers, a group of schools covering several Spiros in a startling analogy, inspired more by the Ba’thists items on the streets of Thessaloniki, usually from sheets hundred or a thousand teachers. The broader organisation than by traditions of the workers’ movement. spread on the pavement. Now there are few: the cops have covering the whole sector is the “federation”, constituted On Thursday 18th and Friday 19th we met people from chased them away. by delegates from the local unions. other strands of the Greek left. When workers have huge pay cuts, or lose their jobs, the Primary school teachers have a separate (bigger) federa - The first was Dimitris Souftas of NAR, the biggest group in blocks of flats in which they live do not immediately turn into tion. Traditionally it follows the initiatives of the high the Antarsya coalition and one that aspires to a “communist slums. The workers’ clothes, when they go out onto the school teachers’ federation. refoundation in which all the communist sub-ideologies will streets, have not been instantly transformed into rags. But the In a discussion at their summer camp OKDE members have something to offer”. Dimitris has a job with the educa - working-class anger is there. stressed the importance of convening General Assemblies tional department of the union federation GSEE. Although On Saturday 20th we got the coach organised by OKDE to of the local teachers’ unions and arguing for them to elect his wage is only 5000 euros a year, he hasn’t been paid since go to its summer camp in western Greece. The coach trav - strike committees rather than leaving the dispute in the June 2011. How was he surviving? “From odd jobs”. elled along the Egnatia Odos, the main east-west highway of hands of the union officials. Greece, built between the 1990s and 2009. The highway is kokkino Weaknesses were identified. The new left-wing leader - named after the ancient Roman Via Egnatia, which ran from ship of the high school federation announces better deci - In the evening of Thursday 18th we met comrades from Constantinople west through Thessaloniki to the Adriatic. Kokkino, one of the Trotskyist groups in Syriza. sions than other federations, but has only limited capacity The journey showed us how sparsely populated the moun - to organise for them. Demonstrations at the end of the sum - Amalia, a member of the Left Platform in Syriza and a tainous hinterland of Greece is. mer term often had poor turn-outs. Some schools have low Kokkino sympathiser, works as an English teacher in a pri - The campsite in which OKDE had booked a section is right levels of union membership. The general level of political vate school. Vast numbers of Greek school students attend next to the beach, and OKDE had set up a drinks-and-snacks awareness and confidence among teachers is low. private schools in the afternoons and evenings, after going kiosk, a bookstall, an area with cafe-type tables, and an area Some OKDE teachers argued that teachers must aim for to state schools earlier in the day, particularly to improve for meetings. a wider strike of public sector workers and set the goal of their English. Amalia explained that everyone in Greek state Through the week, there were political sessions in the that strike as bringing down the government. “It is differ - schools studies English from the age of nine. Why, we asked, morning and the evening, followed later by films, music and ent if the government falls as a result of a movement” is the teaching of English in state schools considered so in - poetry. In the afternoon, people slept, played (many children [rather than just through an election]. adequate that the private schools thrive? The classes are too came), swam, played chess, read, relaxed. The sun was warm Others questioned both arguments. So there is a strike big, said Amalia. and bright without being oppressively hot, and the sea clear and the government falls? Then there is an election and a On Friday 19th we talked with Nicos Anastasiadis from and ideal for swimming. new government? Then a new strike to bring down the DEA, the bigger Trotskyist group in Syriza. Nicos is a maths The political sessions included: Turkey; Cyprus; the Greek new government? Then another election...? The strike de - teacher in a state school in a small town outside Thessaloniki. revolutionary socialist movement between the World Wars; mand should be for the reinstatement of the suspended We met Nicos at the Arch of Galerius, one of the sizeable the life and ideas of Pantelis Pouliopoulos; the struggle teachers. structures remaining in Thessaloniki from its time as an im - against fascism and war; the crisis of contemporary culture; A teacher-only strike could win that, and the willingness portant city in the Roman Empire. workshop sessions for students, for teachers, and for other of one section of workers to go ahead with an indefinite There were more posters plastered round the Arch, and workers to discuss OKDE activity in those respective fields; strike which looks like winning is what we need to start a elsewhere in Thessaloniki, and more political graffiti too, and presentations by two of the invited socialist groups from snowball for a general strike, after which the government than in July 2012. We had asked Amalia of Kokkino about other countries, one from AWL on “Third Camp” Trotsky - might indeed fall. that. Yes, she said, that is true. The left has grown only a bit ism and one from Lutte Ouvriere on the political situation in Against that, it was argued that “teachers are very over the last year, but there is “more will”. “Things are France and the PSA Aulnay dispute. clear that the government must fall, but equally clear People from an Albanian socialist group and from the harsher”. that teachers on their own can’t achieve that. The level French group L’Etincelle also attended. As in 2012, Thessaloniki does not at first sight look like a of consciousness may be low now, but it can make big city plunged into pauperism. The street cafes are bustling, leaps in a crisis.” • Much more at www.workersliberty.org/greece13 10 FEATURE the spirit of utopia and the art of healing

“Sanatorium” is one of ten installations that make up the It seems right first of all to note Whitechapel Gallery’s art Whitechapel Gallery’s summer exhibition, “The Spirit of history purpose in recognising this resurgence in the art Utopia”. The title alludes to Ernst Bloch’s three volumes, world of a commitment to social critique. And that it has his - written in 1917. The exhibition is described as “a remarkable tory — both in terms of the Gallery’s own past and its place series of installations and events [which] engage us in play- in the history of the East End of London, and also in looking ful, provocative and creatively pragmatic models for social back to that earlier burst of utopianism that inspired Bloch’s change”. Here, Isobel Urquhart reviews “Sanatorium”. life work. We can also see in these art works expressions of a far In “Sanatorium”, Mexican artist Pedro Reyes creates a wider re-energised but febrile critique of the busted flush that mockup of a clinical setting, with six rooms offering a is capitalism, fuelled in part by the shock of the financial cri - different “therapy”, which is facilitated by volunteers in sis in 2008. white lab coats in the role of “therapists”. As with Occupy, the restlessness for change seems all over Visitors to the gallery can sample these game-like experi - the place ideologically and this is reflected in the fragmented ences by booking appointments and signing an indemnity way of taking responsibility for themselves as members of glimpses of utopia in the exhibition. For long decades, on the form stating that they know that it’s not a real hospital and communities and as beings capable of knowing (of knowing other hand, the left has mourned the apparent death of so - that the volunteers are not therapists. that they know and knowing that they don’t) in order to cre - cialism — as an idea, let alone as a viable political entity. All Activities range from reflectively curating a museum of ate a more democratic society. It is thus the participants who around us now, there is a renewed creativity and willingness your own lifetime, using a range of small objects, to dis - actually make the artwork: they provide the material, their to join in the social and political critique of capitalist society. cussing a burning question you have asked by rolling philo - own stories, the questions, and the discussions for the events. We see this not just in the cerebral world of politics or phi - sophical dice, to bashing seven bells out of a dummy that Just as in a Brechtian play, even though participants are losophy but also out in the everyday world: in popular strug - stands in for someone who has done you harm or inventing aware of the set up, that doesn’t prevent it from doing the gle and in the surge of imagination and creativity in music, your own relaxation techniques. trick. Participants decide to believe — temporarily — just as street art, spoken word events and performative artworks Reyes’ “Sanatorium” intends to respond to the fact that our when people agree to play a fantasy game or share a joke. that has accompanied — as art always does — the revolu - cities contain vast populations of unattended victims of de - consciousness tions, protests, riots, and rallies of recent years. pression, loneliness, neurosis, family violence, suicide, and In “The Spirit of Utopia” we see laid out before us the con - But let’s be realistic. A performative art installation in an other pathologies. “Sanatorium” proposes that there are bet - cerns and longings shared by many in today’s modern west - art gallery, even one as committed as the Whitechapel ter alternatives — but not political ones — to the pharmaceu - ern capitalist society. These include a better relationship with to including its local communities, is hardly where the tical profiteering that lies at the heart of how we currently the earth and its limited resources, a more peaceful world, a working class is going to go to have its consciousness tend to heal ourselves in modern urban society. world where it’s possible for people to have agency over their raised. It bills itself as a “test of sociatry”, a term glossed by Reyes lives, and the conflicts between time and money are resolved as “the science and art of healing society” and its utopian vi - For those with a more politicised view, attempts to heal a in favour of workers’ rights to work without precarity and sion is that the kinds of working structures proposed by moribund society may seem tiresomely beside the point and with time to enjoy life. “Sanatorium” might, if they became part of our ordinary way a contemptuous waste of people’s time and energy. What “Sanatorium” brings to the dreaminess of utopia is of life, address the stresses of urban living. Seen from a critique that places them within a petty-bour - perhaps then the affective — our desire for change and a bet - “Sanatorium” therefore is an imagined world in which geois ideology, Reyes’ ideas have little relevance for work - ter world, the euphoric excitement of the dream, and its therapy, a luxury few can afford, is deprofessionalised and ers or the activists reading this paper. Reyes becomes simply darker relationship to our sense of loss, shame, disappoint - shared out amongst ordinary people. In the better world one of “a bunch of dreamers who imagine that an art context ment, and other psychological manifestations: anxiety, de - imagined by Reyes, where his approach becomes something gives social significance to weak or wacky ideas”, and whose pression and despair. of a social franchise, we might all be opened up to our sur - “irresponsibility would be funny, if the problems addressed It is entirely correct that, a hundred years on from our plus capacity to help others. weren’t so pressing and so serious.”(Sarah Kent, ICA). century of disillusion with the utopian, artists can only The various activities draw on healing rituals from a wide It is then the lack of radicalism in some of the exhibits that reflect back to us broken dreams, fitful glimpses of that variety of traditions — sorcery, confession, cathartic therapy, leads Jonathan Jones, in an otherwise positive review in the spirit of utopia, that we must fit together as best we can. the consolations of philosophy, as well as emancipatory Guardian , to expostulate: “Where are the Marxists when you • “The Spirit of Utopia” is open until 5 September at the Frierian educational practices, and related theatre techniques need them?” Whitechapel Gallery. For more information, see in which gallery visitors participate as “spect-actors” as a So is there anything the political activist visiting the “Sana - whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/the-spirit-of-utopia torium” might gain, other than apoplexy or sniggering? cinema for socialism! clarence chrysostom, 1921-2013 On 5 August Workers’ Liberty Sheffield held a film showing of The Navigators, the Ken Loach film about railway privatisation written by Workers’ Liberty mem - By Bruce robinson ber Rob Dawber, who died of mesothelioma con - tracted from exposure to asbestos during his time as Clarence Chrysostom, who died on 5 July aged 92, was a track worker. one of last survivors of the early revolutionary period of the Sri Lankan Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP), one of The showing, which included food and drink, raised the few Trotskyist parties in history so far to win a mass £75 and featured a discussion about the fight for public following. ownership today. Workers’ Liberty Joining as a young man, he later sided with the revolution - branches in North ary minority when the leadership joined a bourgeois coali - East London and tion in 1964. He came to England shortly afterwards and, South London are after a very brief membership of Gerry Healy’s Socialist also planning an on - Labour League, joined the International Marxist Group, be - going series of film coming part of the pro-Labour party faction round Al clarence was a member of the Lssp in its revolutionary phase. showings. North Richardson in 1968-9. it was one of the few trotskyist parties in history so far to have East London’s next This faction later became the Chartist group in the Labour won a mass following. showing takes place Party, in which Clarence was active through the 1970s. Sub - sequently he was involved with the research and publication no longer existed, but at the same time had a sharp eye for the on Sunday 18 Au - foibles of the left, which he would discuss with an impish gust at Menard Hall, efforts of Socialist Platform and the Revolutionary History journal, and in Hampstead Labour Party. grin and a chuckle. One favourite topic was the twists and Galway Street, Lon - turns of the career of Ken Livingstone, whom he had known don EC1V 3SW. Clarence continued to attend the London circuit of left meetings and demos for as long as he was able. He retained in the early years of his rise. It begins at 3pm. As was pointed out at his funeral, Clarence was not a a wider interest in the revolutionary left in Britain and Sri Tickets, which in - star either as theoretician or organiser. He was, how - Lanka, corresponding with ex-LSSP comrades, particularly clude food and ever, in his personal qualities — lack of ego or concern Prins Rajasooriya. drink, are priced at for material advancement, generosity and solidarity — Though not in an organisation, Clarence was not dismis - £8/£4 (waged/un - as well as his solid, lifelong political commitment, the sive of those who were and one of the first questions he al - waged). sort of person who forms the bedrock of the revolution - ways asked me when I visited him was: “Have you got your ary movement. paper?” He perhaps identified with a generic Trotskyism that 11 FEATURE the tragedy of the Biafran war

The Biafran war began in July 1967 and ended with the sur- render of Biafra in January 1970. The Biafrans, in south east Nigeria, were fighting for independence; the Nigerian army was fighting to keep the state intact. Perhaps two million peo- ple died as a result of the war, the majority from malnutrition or disease. Mark Osborn looks at the events. I was born in 1961. And, like me, many people my age have two sets of black and white TV images in their heads. The first is of the US moon landing: “One small step for a man,” and Buzz Aldrin bouncing about. That was intensely exciting and impressive; I sat on the carpet in my pyjamas, eyes wide. The Americans are on the moon! The second is of black children with stick-thin legs and arms and swollen tummies. I had seen black children before — a black family had just moved into a house on my road in north Leeds. But the Biafran kids on the BBC news just did not look right, sat in the dirt, motionless, exaggerated skulls almost hairless. It was impossible not to stare, shocked. In 1968 I bundled up clothes for the Blue Peter appeal, to help buy a hospital truck for Nigeria-Biafra. Mum posted the brown paper parcel; so did a million other mums and dads. Above: map of southern nigeria. Biafra is the lighter area. Blue Peter presenter Valerie Singleton told us: “We’re not going to say who is right or wrong [Nigeria or Biafra]. All we powers, especially France. rich themselves by access to the central state. The census (on can say is that war is always wrong.” The British had been systematically intimidating, bullying, which regional vote allocation depended) was rigged; re - I know now what Val Singleton must have known then, and, if necessary, overthrowing local rulers. In 1892, for ex - gional elections in the west were also fixed to favour those but was unable to say: Nigeria was wrong. And more than ample, the Maxim gun, capable of firing 2,000 rounds in three politicians now in the Federal government in alliance with that, the people who had created the conditions for that war minutes, destroyed the Ijebu army at Yemoja River. northerners. In the last six months of 1965 two thousand peo - were the British — by the way they had constituted Nigeria, As Hilaire Belloc wrote: “Whatever happens we have got ple died in political violence in the west. the way they had run Nigeria and the way they had left Nige - /the Maxim Gun and they have not.” By 1966, Nigeria’s post-independence political structure ria independent in 1960. In the three decades after 1885, a series of complicated ad - had reached breaking point. In that year there were two By 1968, the British Labour government’s pro-Nigeria pol - ministrative and governmental reorganisations took place. coups. The first, in January, a “radical coup”, was led by Ma - icy, explicitly designed to serve big oil, was directly leading Modern Nigeria was founded in 1914 under Governor Fred - jors and junior officers — mainly Igbos from the south east. to the deaths of tens of thousands of children as they aided erick Lugard by formally bringing together the very different They stated: “Our enemies are the political profiteers, the and armed the incompetent and corrupt Nigerian military. Northern and Southern Protectorates, although the British swindlers, the men in high places that seek bribes and de - The story of Biafra is a scandal. But why study it? Partly maintained the regional differences. mand ten percent.” because without this history it is impossible to understand Nigeria brought together hundreds of different ethnic The prime minister, Tawafa Balewa, a northerner, was why modern Nigeria is like it is — why much of the north groups, with very different histories and traditions, with a killed, as were a number of other prominent politicians and lives under Sharia law; why the Nigerian military is so cor - Muslim/Christian, north/south divide. northern military figures. Although the coup failed, and the rupt; why Nigerian politics is set up so that gangs of politi - leaders surrendered in return for immunity, power fell into cians elbow each other aside in order to rob the people. inDirectLy the hands of the army. A government was formed by an Igbo The state of Nigeria was drawn together in stages by Lugard had adopted the model of British Indian policy army leader, Johnson Aguyi-Ironsi. British imperialism to maintain profitable conditions for for the Muslim north of Nigeria, where he interfered as Increasingly the northern elites came to see the January trade and exploitation by British capital, and to fend off other little as possible with the social structures and ruled in - coup as aimed at them, organised by the Igbos of the south directly through the local emirs. east and endangering their privileges. Ironsi attempted to As a concession he allowed Sharia law to co-exist along - centralise the state, provoking anti-Igbo riots in the north. nigeria 2013 side British law; he agreed with the Caliph that Christian mis - sionaries would be kept out. reBeLLion • nigeria has a population of 175 million. 50% are muslim; On 28 July 1966, a military rebellion broke out in the 40% christian. The British ruled Nigeria through the most reactionary local ruling class, in the most backward area of the country, north, and became a northern counter-coup. Ironsi was by accommodating to its backwardness. killed. The original aim of this coup’s leaders appears to • 63% are under 24 years of age; 112 million (70%) are have been northern secession from Nigeria. living in poverty; official unemployment is about 24%. In the south, however, Christian teachers brought educa - tion as well as religion. As literacy in the north stood at 2%, They were dissuaded by, among others, the British High • Life expectancy is 52. 39% of the population are illiterate. many southerners filled administrative roles in the north. Commissioner, Sir Francis Cummings-Bruce, who later Special areas in northern town such as Kano and Zaria (called claimed he had stopped the break-up by using his personal • there are 250 ethnic groups (the largest are: hausa and Sabon Gari) were reserved for non-Muslims, and especially links with the northern emirs, explaining: “We all shared a fulani 29%, yoruba 21% and igbo 18%); 500 languages are the Igbo from the south east. love of polo, and so of course we all met socially.” He later spoken. By independence, in October 1960, official politics was added, “I sometimes wonder whether I did the right thing, largely divided up by regional parties resting on ethnic bases. keeping Nigeria together.” • nigeria is ranked by transparency international at 139th Nigeria had a federal constitution with three regions each Anti-Igbo pogroms swept the north and thousands of (of 176 countries) dominated by one of the three largest of Nigeria’s ethnic Igbos were killed. A million Igbos fled to the south east. for corruption. since components (Hausa-Fulani, Yoruba, and Igbo). The North - The new military government, led by northerner Yakubu 1960 it is estimated ern Peoples’ Congress (NPC) dominated in the Hausa-Fulani Gowon, was not able or willing to end the murders. that $300 to areas and initially ruled with the National Council of Nige - The weak central military government then attempted to $400 billion has rians and Cameroons (NCNC), with a base in the south east. stabilise the political situation. An agreement was apparently been stolen by In the south west, with a Yoruba majority, the Action Group reached among the military for a very loose confederation, corrupt government party split (the leader of its “radical” wing was jailed), allow - where the Nigerian regions would have a great deal of officials. ing a section of its old leadership to link up with the NPC. power, with a weak central state. But Gowon pulled later Eskor Toyo, a leftist and trade unionist, commented that back from this agreement. • According to the the split in the Action Group was caused by the different On May 30 1967 the military head of the eastern region, world Bank, most of strategies of “Yoruba feudal and capitalist leaders”. One sec - Oxford-educated Odumegwu Ojukwu, with the authorisa - nigeria’s vast oil tion “wanted the Action Group to join the Federal govern - tion of a consultative assembly, announced that the region wealth is siphoned ment in order that the Yoruba Chiefs and businessmen might had left Nigeria and declared the formation of the Republic off by the richest 1% join the Federal ‘chop-chop’”, while the other “wanted to ex - of Biafra. of the population. nigerian oil workers on strike in pand to other regions and … grab the whole Federal ‘chop’.” The new state had a population of 14 million (65% Igbo) 2012 The ethnic polarisation got worse as the various elites Continued on page 12 scrambled among themselves for power and the ability to en - 12 FEATURE

Continued from page 11 gions so as to break up the northern bloc. locked, but still they fought. The northern political elite opposed an end to colonial rule, The Nigerian army had been greatly expanded, from across an area the size of Scotland. Biafra contained much of and when the issue was forced on them they demanded the 10,000 in 1966 to 250,000 in 1969. (The Biafran forces had also Nigeria’s vast oil reserves. three-region status quo continue. The British were happy that grown from 3,000 in 1967 to 30,000 at the end of the war.) At The Biafran flag was Marcus Garvey-inspired red, black, their friends in the north would continue to rule; the south the end of 1969 the Nigerian state launched a massive offen - and green stripes with a rising sun in the centre. Their an - accepted continued northern domination in order to be rid sive which cut Biafra in half. Ojukwu fled, and the Biafrans them was set to the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius’s Finlan - of the British. surrendered on 13 January 1970. dia (apparently chosen because of the Finns’ history of When the fighting started in 1967 the British Foreign Of - Although Gowon promised a just peace, the reality was resistance to foreign domination). The first verse went: fice was clear: “We have a great deal at stake in Nigeria. Shell different. Political parties based on ethnic groups were “Land of the rising sun, we love and cherish, beloved BP has sunk £250m in Nigeria. Other investments are worth banned. Igbos returning to pre-war homes often found oth - homeland of our brave heroes; we must defend our lives or £150-175m and we have an export trade worth £90m a year… ers in their property; the government felt no need to give we shall perish, The whole of our investments in Nigeria… will be at risk if Igbos who had fled for their lives their government jobs back. “We shall protect our hearth from all our foes; but if the we change our policy of support for the Federal government. In a deliberate blow aimed at the Igbo leadership and mid - price is death for all we hold dear, The French would be glad to pick up our oil concessions if dle class, pre-war Nigerian currency held by Igbos was not “Then let us die without a shed of fear.” they could.” The British policy was to back the people they recognised. Igbos were “compensated” with N£20, no matter The war began as Gowan’s forces moved into Biafra on 6 thought would win: the Nigerian army. how much was in their bank account. July, expecting an easy victory. Gowan described his mili - But the Labour government found itself under increasing The legacy of the Biafra war continues to haunt Nige - tary’s move as a “police action”. pressure. The Biafrans made a great deal of very effective ria, where the war is still not clearly, openly discussed. However the war lasted for 30 months, with the Biafrans propaganda during the war, and by 1968 the British press Nigeria remains a badly constituted state that has suf - showing great tenacity against great odds. Biafra took guns was carrying front-page horror stories and pictures of starv - fered staggeringly corrupt military governments from from the Eastern Bloc until the USSR sensed a political ad - ing children. A major killer of children was kwashiorkor — 1966-79 and 1983-98. The legacy of British rule is wide - vantage to backing Nigeria. Then the Biafrans were armed a protein deficiency which gave the starving Biafran children spread Islamist violence in the north, and vast poverty in by France, through Gabon. They also stole weapons from swollen bellies. an oil-rich country. those they were fighting against, and manufactured their However, Wilson’s concern was the Nigerian state’s block - own, including a formidable forerunner of the improvised ade, which included preventing Shell BP oil exports. Labour explosive device now common in guerrilla warfare. They im - Minister George Thomas was sent to Lagos to negotiate: “If more reading on Biafra provised an airforce, and landed planes in hidden jungle Gowon is helpful on oil, Mr. Thomas will offer a sale of anti- airstrips. aircraft guns.” In fact, Gowon refused to lift the blockade, but there was A country , by chinua Achebe (2012). this book Biafra was formally recognised by Gabon, Haiti, Ivory got the guns anyway. He also got British armoured cars and was published just before the author’s death, in march 2013. Coast, Tanzania, and Zambia. It was backed by France and military advisors. (The Russians gave Ilyushin bombers, Achebe is a famous author, best known for his first novel, Israel. The US remained neutral. By 1968, aid agencies were MIGs, and heavy artillery.) things fall Apart . he participated in the war as a Biafran air-lifting large amounts of food to starving people in Biafra. In 1969, with an election looming in the UK, Labour de - “cultural ambassador”. The Nigerian state had been constituted so that the north - cided a quick victory for the Federal state was the least em - ern population had a majority over the west and east com - barrassing option and increased arms supplies five-fold. half of A yellow sun , by chimamanda ngozi Adichie (2006). A bined. The north took the majority of seats in the parliament. In November 1969, John Lennon returned his OBE. Writing fantastic novel, soon to be released as a film. In the 1940s and 50s, the main centres of anti-colonial agi - to Harold Wilson he explained he was opposed to British tation were in the south, among Igbo and Yoruba peoples, support for the US in Vietnam and for the Nigerian state the Biafran war , by michael gould (2012). A history of the other minorities, and by their parties. One of their demands against Biafra. war. was that Nigeria be broken up into a larger number of re - By 1968 the Biafrans had lost their ports and were land - women in men’s skies?

Camila Bassi reviews Liz Millward’s Women in British Im- tivity and rationality. He also simply wage-labour). So, rather than asking what is gained, perial Airspace, 1922-1937 (2008, McGill-Queen's University recognises potential within the perhaps the real question is — what is lost? Actually, rather Press) centrality of the urban, meaning a lot I think. that a whole range of social inter - In the context of all that is solid melting into air, I cannot The period of 1922 to 1937 represented significant inter- actions converge. help but sense that the book would have been a richer ac - war development of gendered airspace within the For Lefebvre, all people have count had the dialectics of the struggles been fully explored. British Empire. the right to space, i.e. to access Three aspects of dialectical materialist thinking would have From 1922, when the International Commission on Air and participate fully in urban life, strengthened the study: firstly, looking for the interrelation - Navigation debated the place of women in commercial air - thus the constraints placed on ship between phenomena to other phenomena (past and space, to 1937, the year in which the female pilot Jean Batten this possibility by capitalism present, and including apparent opposites); secondly, see - completed her last long-distance record-breaking flight, the must be critiqued (Lefebvre, 1991; ing conditions (and relations) of existence in continual British Empire was at its peak, ruling about one-quarter of Shields, 1988). Lefebvre’s interest movement; and lastly, comprehending societal processes the world’s territory. Millward notes: lies in working out the spatial moving through contradictory tensions. Jean Batten “The interwar period was a window of possibility for strategies for social change and, Moreover, the book missed (or rather, seemed to bypass) many young white women in the British Empire. The First as such, his ideas resonate with the centrality of class and imperialism and its intersection World War had undermined powerful old certainties. the French Situationists (with their slogan of May 1968 “be - with gender, race, sexuality, and nationalism. I’ll end, be - Women who were determined to learn the lessons of the neath the pavement, the beach”) and Britain’s “Reclaim the fore any retort accuses me of crude economic determinism past turned to internationalism, pacifism, nationalism, and Streets” movement of the 1990s. and class reductionism, with the words of Engels (1890): fascism as they looked for ways to control the future.” “If somebody twists this into saying that the economic fac - Millward’s concern is with the contestations of female pi - feminist tor is the only determining one, he is transforming that lots in producing, defining, and accessing civilian airspace Millward concludes that notable female pilots modelled proposition into a meaningless, abstract, absurd phrase. during this time. What’s more, she is interested in how such achievement and “beat the men”, so, in effect, sup - “We make history ourselves, but first of all, under very struggles were bound up with different kinds of airspace: ported wider feminist struggles and proved that women definite assumptions and conditions…history is made in the private, the commercial, the imperial, the national, and were part of airspace. such a way that the final result always arises from conflicts the body; that in turn had their own relations of gender, Nonetheless, civilian airspace was naturalised as mascu - between individual wills, of which each in turn has been class, race, sexuality, nationalism, and imperialism. made what it is by a variety of particular conditions of life. line and had the potential to become abstract space. She “Thus, there are innumerable crisscrossing forces, an Like many geographers seeking a radical understanding ends: “‘To change life,’ writes Lefebvre, ‘we must first of space, Millward draws on the work of Henri Lefebvre, infinite series of parallelograms of forces which give change space’. Women pilots tried to do just that.” rise to one resultant — the historical event.” who wrote that “a revolution which does not produce a new Reflecting on the book as a whole, I wonder: what does space has not realized its full potential; indeed it has failed Millward gain from a poststructuralist feminist approach? References: in that it has not changed life itself, but has merely changed Such an approach emphasises the discursive and contingent Engels, F (1890) “Engels to J. Bloch”, Marxists Internet ideological superstructures, institutions or political appara - nature of all identities with particular focus on the construc - Archive, bit.ly/engels-bloch tuses”. tion of gendered subjectivities. This intersectional analysis Lefebvre, H (1991) The Production of Space (Translated by Millward concludes that post-war airspace had the poten - combines the cultural and economic features of gender, race, Don ald Nicholson-Smith), Oxford: Blackwell. tial to be what Lefebvre coined, capitalist “abstract space” sexuality, nationality, and class. Millward, L (2008) Women in British Imperial Airspace, par excellence, specifically, in its commodification, bureau - “Capitalism”, “imperialism’”and “class” are given wider 1922-1937 , Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s Univer - cratisation, and decorporealisation. definitional scope: capitalism and imperialism as social, cul - sity Press. In one sense it is a curious application of Lefebvre, given tural, political, and economic relations, and class as a cul - Shields, R (1988) “An English Précis of Henri Lefebvre’s La Lefebvre’s focus on the city. Lefebvre denounces capitalist tural construct (to include the economic but differing from Production De L’Espace ”, Working Paper, Department of urbanity for its drive to repress play and prioritise produc - Urban and Regional Studies, University of Sussex 13 FEATURE Assessing chavismo

Pablo Velasco continues his assessment of the legacy of Hugo Chávez by looking at some of the aspects of his government most lauded by the left. welfare spending

Probably the most common argument made by pro- Chávez supporters is that the extent of welfare spending makes Chavismo a social-democratic reformist project that socialists should support, albeit critically. The Chávez government prioritised the “missions”, pro - grammes in the areas of health (Barrio Adentro), education (Robinson, Ribas and Sucre) and food distribution (Mercal). According to official government figures poverty declined from 44% in 1998 to 27% in 2012 and the tendency is down - ward, while extreme poverty dropped from 17% to 7% for the same period. As well as meeting basic needs, these pro - grammes have given previously excluded communities some control over their lives. But building a school or putting more doctors into hospi - tals is not socialism. These welfare measures were a product of the peculiar mode of rule Chávez established in Venezuela. The missions are social interventions to shore up tioned as numerous and small-scale mechanisms that allow inally presented to the National Assembly in 2007 by the and develop political support for the government. They are the government to quickly distribute a portion of Venezuela’s Communist Party and was backed by Chávez. Although part of the state, directly funded by it and bound to its prior - oil wealth (ground-rent) to previously marginalised social some councils were created, they only became legally recog - ities. Principally, the missions are the main means by which groups”. Venezuela’s cooperative experiment “has sanc - nised in December 2010. oil rents are distributed directly to potential supporters. tioned the creation of cooperatives as a practically and ideo - Rachael Boothroyd, writing on the Venezuelanalysis web - Those employed by the missions often worked for the logically expedient solution to the problem of distributing site (27 July 2011) described the councils as “independent of Chávez movement in elections. rent, which, in its present form, does not pose a challenge to unions” and “organisations of popular power that allow The improvements should be put in perspective. Other rentier-capitalism other than by giving it another name and workers to participate in productive, administrative and Latin American states such as Chile, Uruguay and Costa Rica support base”. management processes in their places of work… a legal have also reduced poverty and inequality while improving As Marx pointed out in Capital , cooperatives do not offer mechanism through which the workers can play a ‘protago - child mortality and literacy, on a capitalist basis with bour - a mode of life somehow untainted by capital, but “naturally nistic role’ in dismantling ‘exploitative’ capitalist relations geois-democratic governments. The Venezuelan missions are reproduce in all cases, in their present organisation, all the and advance the project of workers’ control”. funded from the oil revenue — Barrio Adentro was possible defects of the existing system, and must reproduce them”. Chavista apologists such as Jorge Martín from the mis - because Cuba made available 20,000 health professionals and named International Marxist Tendency (4 August 2011) doctors in exchange for oil. community councils claimed that “tens of thousands of such councils have been But despite Venezuela’s energy resources, there are power Since 2006, the Chávez government has promoted the set up, on the initiative of workers from below, in factories, cuts. Workers face shortages of basic goods such as flour, proliferation of small neighbourhood bodies known as ministries and workplaces throughout the country”. eggs, sugar and even petrol. Recently there has been massive consejos comunales (community councils) representing He claimed that many such workers’ councils have been shortages of toilet paper. Just as with the Stalinist states in between 200 and 400 families. set up in state-owned companies, institutions, foundations Eastern Europe and in Cuba, the provision of basic goods The government provides each one with about $60,000 to and ministries, where workers see them “more as a tool to and welfare does not make the regime more progressive, par - undertake infrastructural and social projects. Around 30,000 fight against the state bureaucracy and for workers' control”. ticularly when it is in exchange for social acquiescence and consejos comunales have been formed, with many on the left The irony of workers’ councils being set up by a bourgeois political subordination. arguing that they represented a new form of participatory parliament and handed down to the workers seems to have democracy and showed the progressive nature of the admin - been lost – indicating how far they are from genuine workers’ cooperatives istration. councils that are established as a dual power in the teeth of Early on, the Chávez government began lauding the role By early 2010, several developments signalled the down - opposition from the existing state. of cooperatives. It backed companies for social produc - playing or phasing out of the community council pro - Martín admits that the councils have faced “extreme hos - tion (EPS), often in factories abandoned by their owners. gramme. The Organic Law of Community Councils passed in tility and harassment on the part of ministers, vice-ministers Before Chávez there were only 2,500 cooperatives in December 2009 required the community councils to make a and other state bureaucrats at all levels”. Venezuela. At their high point in 2004-06, there were appar - series of structural readjustments (a procedure referred to as Workers have been “sacked or harassed and persecuted, ently 200,000 cooperatives registered by the Venezuelan gov - “adecuación”) in order to retain their legal status. slandered, accused of counter-revolutionary activities “just ernment. As a result a large number of community councils failed to for attempting to set them up in places like Mision Madres The vast majority of cooperatives consist of about five reaffirm their legal status within the 180-day limit established del Barrio (a social programme for mothers in poor neigh - members (the minimum required by law), largely bound by by the law. bourhoods), at state-owned TV station Avila-TV, at the main family ties. Furthermore some members of cooperatives have For those consejos that survived and functioned, there are state-owned channel VTV and even at the Ministry of pocketed the start-up capital granted by the state or the ad - substantial criticisms. The community councils are financed Labour. vances on contracts received from the public sector. Other by the state as a quasi-local government-network without Another scandalous case is the harassment of promoters of cooperatives were fronts for existing private companies, any control over production. They do not have relationship the council at Fundacomunal, staffed by people coming from which took advantage of state-financed cooperative busi - with the labour movement, even with state-owned and co- the Frente Francisco Miranda revolutionary youth organisa - nesses as sources of non-unionised labour and cheap credit. managed factories. tion, and which is supposed to deal with the setting up of the The oversight agency SUNACOOP has taken legal proceed - The councils have been criticised for their failure to use communal councils. ings against several hundred cooperatives accused of misuse unionised labour for public works projects. Like the earlier Martín can at least perceive the Kafka-esque irony an in - of public funds. Currently around 70,000 are registered, sug - and also heralded Bolivarian Circles, these community coun - stitution designed to set up democratic community bodies gesting a dramatic decline in their functioning. cils represent the Bonapartist ethos of the “revolution”: an at - persecuting its own staff, although he fails to draw the req - The coops that have survived have not served as vehicles tempt to embed the state deep into civil society, to bypass uisite conclusions about the nature of Chavismo. of workers’ emancipation. Instead they have institutionalised potentially hostile local officials, and to administer patron - the informal economy. Taking strike action is difficult where age directly from the centre. psuv everyone is supposed to be a “partner”. Self-employment When the Chávez formed the United Socialist Party of means exemption from some labour laws. Coops have been Venezuela (PSUV) after he won the presidential election a cheap source of outsourcing for private firms, particularly in 2006, much of the left in Venezuela — including the “socialist workers’ councils” nominally Trotskyist left — decided to join it. to get around more combative permanently employed work - The latest attempt to give the Bolivarian movement the ers. Coops have also taken state contracts, displacing public veneer of radicalism are the so-called “Socialist Work - Such tactical decisions should flow from an assessment of sector unionised workers. ers’ Councils”. Thomas Purcell has argued convincingly that cooperatives The Special Law for Socialist Workers’ Councils was orig - and other experiments in the social economy “have func - Continued on page 14 14 FEATURE

Continued from page 13 Even Chávez’s pan-Latin American appeals were really much more about buying influence with oil revenue than in - the class nature of the party, something conspicuously ab - ternational solidarity. The proliferation of aid masked deals sent from “entryists” such as Marea Socialista. with Caribbean countries, with Bolivia, Argentina and above Sadly even critical thinkers on the international left also all Cuba that use oil-rents to procure political support. lost their bearings on this question. George Ciccariello-Maher Chávez propped up the decrepit Castro regime in Cuba to argued in the Historical Materialism journal in 2011: “Inter - the tune of $7bn a year, in return for Cuban military, politi - nally, the PSUV is a battleground, a microcosm of the process cal and technical support. as a whole. In other words, the fight needs to be brought to This gave the Castro brothers a breathing space, keeping the PSUV, or it will become simply another corrupt patron - the country in their iron grip, which barely allows the free - age-machine. From the beginning, there have been popular dom to use the internet, never mind the freedom to organ - victories and popular defeats within the PSUV, but it is too ise, to publish and to form a genuine workers’ movement early to tell whether the battle is one that can be won. But by independent of the state. abandoning the battlefield altogether, it will certainly be Chávez made grotesque apologies for Mugabe, Qaddafi, lost.” Assad and other despots. The perversity of expressing sup - In his recent book, We Created Chávez: A People's History port for the reactionary Iranian president Ahmadinejad was of the Venezuelan Revolution , Ciccariello-Maher argues that not lost on Iranian car workers or the countless others suffer - the left “must attempt to grapple with the fact that the vast ing oppression in Iran. It epitomised the anti-working class majority of such militants — those who deeply despise cor - essence of Chávez’s international diplomacy. In 2009 Chávez ruption, bureaucracy and even the state itself… are still was lauded by much of the left after he called for the form - Chavistas, at least for the time being”. ing a Fifth International. This is a miserable argument, which if it were followed These efforts were stillborn after it became clear that par - would have meant the permanent subordination of the work - ticipants would include the governing Peronist party in Ar - ers’ movement to bourgeois and other forces throughout his - gentina, the misnamed Communist Party of China and tory, since “the masses” and even “the militants” often do new president Nicolás Maduro Mugabe’s Zanu-PF. Such a conglomeration is about as far not start out on their own road. from a workers’ international or even a force for democracy In a world where bourgeois politics dominates, and the rul - as it is possible to conceive. Chávez excelled at absconding ing ideas of the epoch are those of the ruling bourgeois class, “There was even one picture of a very overweight woman with the language of the left and using it for his own pur - simply accommodating to the existing level of consciousness in a g-string that represented the opposition, as compared to poses. The truly sad thing about much of the left is the man - of some workers means putting off indefinitely the process of a petite woman as Chavista”. ner in which it fell for rhetoric, instead of looking at the independent working class political representation. Fernandez argues that these sexualised and racialised im - reality. Like other aspects of Chavismo lauded by its international ages are part of a broader culture in Venezuela where homo - fellow-travellers, the PSUV is the product of Chávez’s Bona - phobia, racism and sexism are strong. where is venezuela going under maduro? partist project, a bourgeois party impervious to the demo - In the same publication, Roland Denis argued that in The narrow victory of Nicolás Maduro in the Venezuelan cratic wishes of workers. Venezuela, “the women’s movement does not exist”. Al - presidential election in April should trigger serious re - It is the ruling party of a ruling state bureaucracy with no though there is are feminist currents with journals and mag - flection on the left about the limits of Chavismo without real democratic mechanisms through which rank-and-file azines that make important theoretical interventions, he says Chávez. members can direct policy, little internal debate and no work - “there is nothing that constitutes a movement, that recog - Maduro won 50.7% of the vote against right-wing neolib - ing class identity other than the fact that large numbers of in - nises itself as such, and that is conscious of the historic op - eral opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, who got 49.1%. dividual workers have apparently joined it. pression of women. There is nothing approaching a popular Chavista cheerleaders such as the Venezuela Solidarity Cam - Several of the PSUV’s vice-presidents are ministers, while women’s movement”. Denis was a member of the National paign were saying only days before the result that Maduro the governors and mayors promote their own slates in inter - Assembly in the early 2000s. He recalled the attempt to in - had a double digit lead over Capriles. Turnout was still high nal elections. troduce a law legalising abortion, which was struck down — at 78%. There can be few excuses. As Venezuelan activist Roland Denis put it: “The Party is including by the vast majority of the Chavista women in the Chávez defeated Capriles 55%-44% in October 2012 and an apparatus with neither logic nor political efficiency. It is assembly. He believes that “it is impossible to pass such a his PSUV trounced them in 20 of 23 state governor races in totally lacking in ideological, organisational, and mobilisa - law in the contemporary Venezuelan context”. Similarly, December 2012. Maduro would have expected to gain a tional coherence. The Party does not have the capacity to do “homophobia in Venezuela is extreme” and “open violence strong sympathy vote after Chávez’s death in March. He was anything. It is simply an electoral machine, in which there against transgendered people continues unabated”. the comandante’s anointed successor, served as his vice-pres - are internal battles for access to power within the bureau - It is evident that for the rhetoric, the Bolivarian revolution ident and had effectively been running the government for cratic-corporatist state… has not seen the qualitative leap forward on equality that fol - months. He had the vast weight of the state machinery as “A whole variety of formerly-autonomous social spaces, at lowed for example the Russian revolution, or even the pe - well as the PSUV party apparatus behind him. Yet he the levels of workers, the peasantry, and so on, have become riod after 1968. scrapped home by the narrowest of margins. subsumed within the Party. Between 2004 and today, the The civic-military alliance at the heart of Chávez’s Bona - consolidation of this bureaucratic corporatist state has ad - internationalism? partist project remains intact, but is likely to fracture in the vanced forcefully, in no small part as a consequence of the Chávez became famous across the globe for his attacks absence of its figurehead. In March, Maduro made a speech PSUV.” on George Bush, and his “smell of sulphur” speech was hours before announcing his Chávez’s death, in which he The Bonapartist nature of the party is summed up by the a spectacular piece of political theatre. spoke as the head of a “political-military revolutionary com - role of Diosdado Cabello, the head of the National Assem - Chávez’s anti-American rhetoric was undoubtedly fuelled mand”. bly, a former military officer who participated in the 1992 He was flanked by the cabinet, Chavistas state governors coup attempt with Chávez. by US government interference in the Venezuela, including backing for the opposition coup, the lock-out and various and senior military leaders. Rafael Ramírez, head of PDVSA In November 2008, Cabello lost the election for governor of was in charge of voter mobilisation for the Maduro cam - Miranda state. He was so unpopular with PSUV members NGOs. However Chávez did not tear up the longstanding economic ties between the two states. paign. The defence minister, Admiral Diego Molero Belavia that he was not even elected to its leadership. But Chávez ap - said the mission of the armed forces was to “put Maduro in pointed him a vice president of the party. In October 2012 In truth, Chávez was not a consistent anti-imperialist, in - deed he was no anti-imperialist at all, unless the term is man - the presidency”. But there is rivalry between Maduro (repre - Cabello (still vice-president of the PSUV) announced to the senting the civic side) and Diosdado Cabello, representing media the party’s candidates for governor in the upcoming gled to mean only opposition to the US. Chávez did more than make allies with despots, he made friends with some of the military wing. election who had been selected by the method of “coopta - Chavismo has sunk deep roots into Venezuelan society cion”, much like the Catholic Church chooses its popes. the other big imperialist and sub-imperialist powers across the globe, providing them with political cover, material aid and is unlikely to be ejected swiftly. As long as the oil money and commercial trade. funds the social programmes, the Chavistas will retain a wide equality According to the Financial Times (7 March 2013) after base of support. They have probably overcome the worst of Another measure of the limits of Chávez’s Bolivarian vi - Washington imposed a weapons embargo on Venezuela in the recent economic downturn – though of course further ex - sion is the limited impact on fighting oppression and 2006, Chávez stepped up orders for Russian arms. Russia has ternal shocks could upset their plans and they have to come domination in Venezuelan society. supplied about $5bn worth of armaments to Venezuela and to terms with immediate shortages as well as long term struc - The Chavistas argue that women are strongly involved in has orders for about the same amount again. tural problems with the Venezuelan economy. The Chavistas the missions in the barrios and that the opposition uses ex - Similarly, the Financial Times (8 March 2013) claims that are likely to seek to accommodate sections of the opposition treme racist, sexist and homophobic language and imagery in the state-owned China Development Bank has agreed to lend – or at least placate some of its supporters. its publications, which is true. However so do pro-Chávez Venezuela $32.5bn since 2008, or around half the loans the However Chavismo as a project is over. Chavismo is likely publications. country received during that period. Almost all these loans to decompose into either a more orthodox bourgeois force or In the Historical Materialism discussion, Sujatha Fernan - are backed by sales contracts for crude oil — apparently a rather meaner military one. The job of Marxists remains un - dez highlighted caricatures of former US Secretary of State around 300,000 barrels a day. flinching criticism of Chavismo, as the prerequisite for the Condoleezza Rice in the pro-Chávez dailies, ridiculing her Shipments of oil to China by PDVSA have increased nearly re-emergence of organised labour as a factor in Venezuelan politics. African features. She also pointed to the recall referendum- ten times since 2006 and the country now sells around 19% of Cleansing the international left of illusions in Chávez campaign in 2004, when “the pro-Chávez side would use its oil output to China, which has become Venezuela’s sec - is part of that task. Without such decontamination, the highly sexualised portraits of women in bikinis to promote ond biggest trading partner after the US. From Beijing’s per - road to working class self-emancipation will remain their cause. spective, Venezuela is now its seventh-biggest supplier of oil. blocked. 15 REPORTS RMT to fight 12.5% budget cut east midlands By ollie moore funding announced in duced a special joint bul - George Osborne’s Compre - letin for the dispute. It ar - The Rail, Maritime, and hensive Spending Review. gues: “As workers, trains Transport workers union RMT has made it crystal withdrawing our labour is (RMT) is planning a Lon - clear that those cuts will be the most powerful weapon don-wide labour move - resisted by this union with we have to stop our bosses action ment and community all means at our disposal, from doing things which campaign against a including industrial action. will harm workers’ liveli - 12.5% cut in central gov - “The news that millions hoods and passengers’ has ernment funding to of passengers are to be put safety. Transport for London, at risk through plans to “The union position in announced in George Os - throw the guards off Lon - this dispute should be non- borne’s June spending transport infrastructure de - cuts, London Overground don Overground trains on negotiable: not one single impact review. teriorate. It will bring about has already announced a north London routes has cut. Management have al - A policy passed by the attacks on working condi - plan to cut 130 guards’ jobs already sent shockwaves ready tried to shift the By an east union’s General Grades tions and jobs, at a time and move to “Driver Only through transport services goalposts by drawing din - midlands trains Committee said: “We are when London needs more Operation” on its trains. and is clearly a foretaste of stinctions between compul - already seeing attempts to employment opportunities, RMT began ballots of its what is to come. sory and voluntary driver make cuts — for example, not fewer. It will be work - guard members for strikes “We can expect many redundancies. Tubeworker London Underground ing-class communities, and and action short of strikes more of these attacks on and Off The Rails believe From 20 July, on-train ticket office closures, the those who should be able on 31 July, with the ballots jobs and safety as TFL slash that job cuts have to be op - and platform staff removal of guards on Lon - to rely on public transport due to close on 15 August. hundreds of millions from posed, however manage - working for East Mid - — such as elderly and dis - A union statement said: their budget at Govern - ment tries to make them. lands Trains. have re - don Overground, the sale “RMT members on abled people and those “The fight to defend 130 ment behest. They will be fused to work rest days of significant Transport for London Overground who can not afford private safety-critical guards’ jobs met with the fiercest possi - and overtime and are London property, and should convene a strike funding cuts to the LT Mu - transport — who will lose on London Overground ble resistance from RMT as working to rule. This out the most.” will be centre stage in we link up the groups of committee to oversee the seum. dispute and decide what has caused numerous “This further savage cut It plans a demonstration RMT’s overall battle to de - workers in the firing line.” train delays and can - on 8 October, when Parlia - fend jobs and safety on tactics and strategies are will see transport services Tubeworker and Off The cellations, particularly ment reopens, and to pro - London’s transport serv - Rails , Workers’ Liberty in - necessary to beat the pared, fares rise, improve - bosses.” on Sunday 28 July. ment works scrapped, mote a “Workers’ and ices. RMT recognises that dustrial bulletins for Lon - The two to one result safety standards compro - Passengers’ Plan” as a posi - this lethal proposals has don Underground and mised, and the capital’s tive alternative to cuts. been brought about as re - mainline railway workers • Download the bulletin: in the ballot for action Under the pressure of sult of the 12.5% cut in TfL respectively, have pro - bit.ly/tw-otr short of strike is a wel - come reversal of previ - ous failures to respond Johnson to force to management attacks. us fast food workers The dispute is due to a breakdown in industrial strike again relations which covers through fire cuts several issues. One of American cities were hit by another wave of these was rostering dur - fast food workers’ strikes on 29 July. (FBU) has called the cuts ing the shutdown of employees at mcDonalds, wendy’s, Burger “an affront to democracy”. Nottingham station for king, pizza hut, and other chains continued Ian Lehair, FBU Execu - five weeks worth of their fight for a $15 per hour minimum tive member for London, long- planned engineer - wage. said: “The cuts are danger - ing work. most fast food workers currently earn ous and wrong, and this is A few days before the around half that amount, which they say is devastating news for Lon - start of the work, bosses nowhere near enough to live on. doners, with lives across tried to impose an emer - the campaign has already involved the capital being put at risk gency roster on a lot of several strikes, as well as community by the mayor’s reckless staff, claiming it was part protests. By Darren Bedford cuts. of their T&Cs. It isn’t: “[Boris] Johnson has sim - but maintaining that po - London Mayor Boris ply ignored the evidence, sition is a desperate at - Johnson has overruled and his cuts will mean tempt to cover up EMT’s the city’s Fire Authority to slower response times for woeful negligence in not force through potentially four million Londoners.” making any serious ef - One million on zero hours The FBU is also gearing devastating cuts to the fort to come to a similar capital’s fire service. up for national strikes on arrangement with these attacks to firefighters’ pen - By Jonny west of Personnel and Develop - 10 stations, 14 engines, staff like they did ment says that its survey of sion provision. A strike bal - months before with train and 552 jobs will go as part lot began on 18 July, and New surveys have re - 1,000, if projected across drivers (who are now housing of a cuts plan aimed at sav - runs until 29 August. vealed that the number of the whole country, sug - ing nearly £30 million. working normally). workers on “zero-hours” gests a figure four times Several local Fire Author - Going on past his - workers Johnson is making the cuts ities have caused contro - contracts (that is, who that amount. unilaterally, despite the tory, management work as and when their McDonalds, which first versy by announcing must have thought strike Authority having voted schemes to train volunteers employer tells them to, introduced zero-hours con - against them. they could ignore rather than for a set num - tracts in 1974, says that 90% to provide fire cover in everybody else. Imag - 94% of respondents to the event of a strike. Qualified ber of hours each week) of its UK staff have no fixed 150 workers at One public consultation around ine their surprise when could be as high as one hours. Housing Group firefighters have 12 weeks’ they heard the ballot Unite has launched a the cuts opposed them, training, but strike break - million. struck from 24 July result! campaign against zero- with hundreds attending ing volunteers may get less The Office of National to 26 July in a bid to hours contracts. Other local meetings and demon - than three weeks before Statistics puts the figure at stop pay cuts of up unions, like the University strations. Around 1,000 being sent out to tackle • For more on East Mid - 250,000 for 2012 — an in - to £8,000. and College Union (UCU), firefighters and supporters blazes. lands, see the latest issue crease of 50,000 from the have existing campaigns marched on 18 July to de - FBU officials have of Off The Rails : previous year’s statistics — • More: bit.ly/ohg- mand the cuts plan be against the practice in slammed the plan as “ab - workersliberty.org/ but the Chartered Institute strike shelved. solutely crazy”. their particular industries. offtherails The Fire Brigades Union egypt nears tipping point s&o wlorikdersa’ Libreirtty y By gerry Bates to offer Egypt’s poor (13% official unemployment, Five weeks after the 3 30% among youth) any re - July coup, Egypt looks lief during its year in near another tipping power. Local strikes map the point. The army is trying to On 3 July the army, fol - coopt the left. Kamal Abu lowing huge protests Eita, who was leader of against Egypt’s Islamist the Real Estate and Tax president Mohammed Authority Employees’ Morsi, ousted the Islamist Union (one of the most way for postal workers government and installed important independent a new administration of trade unions under its choice. Mubarak) and president 110 Royal Mail workers at There is, however, a real The Brotherhood has of the new Egyptian Fed - Bridgwater Delivery Office “countryside factor”, in chosen not to steer to - eration of Independent in Somerset are in dispute that middle-class people in wards civil war as Alge - Trade Unions, has been with their local manage- villages can be won round ria’s Islamists did when made Minister of Man - ment over issues including to supporting even unoffi - that country’s army can - power. management bullying and cial industrial action out of celled elections in 1992 to Nabil Fahmy, the in - breaking agreements. The sympathy for what Royal stop the Islamists win - terim foreign minister, official dispute has already Mail represents for them, ning. But it is keeping up has reversed the policy included five days of but those alliances have to mass street protests. announced by the Broth - strikes. be formed around a na - Dozens of Brotherhood erhood government A national conference of tional strike, not by linking protesters were killed shortly before its down - CWU postal workers reps up with Tory councillors or soon after the coup, but fall, of active support for has voted to call a national Ukip. the Islamists remain un - Sunni-Islamist opposition ballot for strikes against the The union is in my view daunted. The army threat - militias in Syria. “I can tell privatisation of Royal Mail, neglecting some basic ens to clear the protests you frankly from now on no later than September groundwork for the cam - by whatever means neces - that there is no intention 2013. paign in the labour move - sary, but hesitates at the for jihad in Syria” (FT 21 Dave Chapple is the ment. I’m the Bridgwater bloodbath necessary to do July). Communication Workers Trades Union Council sec - that. But the new govern - Union (CWU) shop stew- retary, and we’ve not re - On 5 August the ment has reinstated the ard in Bridgwater, Branch ceived a single leaflet or Guardian reported that: old regime’s political and Chair of Bristol and District piece of correspondence “Egypt’s military leaders religious police units, dis - CWU, and an editor of from the CWU nationally are understood to have of - banded in March 2011. Trade Union Solidarity Every Bridgwater striker a political struggle against promoting the campaign. fered to include the Mus - On 5 July it closed the magazine. has had a payout of £100, Royal Mail privatisation The political culture in lim Brotherhood in a Rafah crossing which con - Dave spoke to Solidarity and it’s a huge boost to and struggles at workplace the union is at a very low political process that gives nects Gaza to the outside to give his personal views morale to see the notice level on issues like man - level: this is partly because the vanquished move - world. It has since re - on the local and national board at work plastered agement bullying and ha - political education and po - ment three ministerial opened it, four hours a disputes. with messages of support. rassment, which will litical committees solely posts in a unity govern - day in place of the previ - Our last pub meeting on inevitably increase if pri - concern themselves with ment and frees some ous nine. The economic Royal Mail is digging in Sunday 4 August had 75 vatisation goes through. Labour Party matters. Na - members from prison. impact in Gaza is heavy. locally. We had a dozen workers attending. We tionally, tiny concessions [Six Brotherhood officials, According to Die Zeit scabs being picked up at voted for the next 10 days nAtionAL strike from the Labour Party are including two top leaders, (17 July), the 3 July coup a secret rendezvous and of strikes, with only one The union leadership is hailed as triumphs. There’s are due to be brought to was followed by a leap in bussed in through picket opposing, so we are still pushing a national strike, no political education, and court on 25 August on prices on the Cairo stock lines in the back of a very strong. probably for mid-Sep- the union leadership effec - charges of murder and in - exchange, and the return blacked-out transit van: Bullying and harassment tember, and the reps’ tively has a monopoly on citement]... However, the to Egypt, with their pathetic! by just about all our Bridg - conference unanimously politics within the union. Egyptian military and the money, of many Egyptian For the bosses, the dis - water managers continues endorsed that idea. They command a level of presidency later denied plutocrats who had stayed abroad under the pute is now quite clearly to be a massive issue and Building and spreading trust and confidence that that talks had taken Morsi regime. The UAE, about breaking the CWU in one that connects our dis - local disputes is a key part they don’t deserve. place”. Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait Bridgwater. That’s why fi - pute with so many other of the build up to that, and There’s a lot to play for US and EU envoys are nancial support is crucial. workplaces within and right now! Bridgwater is have sent billions in aid. the stewards, officers, and trying to cook up a com - The decisive question We’re upping the ante without Royal Mail. We very much leading the way activists involved in those promise. remains: will Egypt’s too: we’ve asked for 10 fur - feel we are taking a lead at the moment. disputes need to organise The army leaders and new workers’ move - ther strike days, which is a and making a stand. Our strike, and other together to provide the the government they in - ment be able to use this doubling of the length of It’s becoming symbolic local struggles, can be backbone for a national stalled still enjoy political period of flux and rela - action we’ve taken previ - for the situation nationally, built on and connected to strike. credit from the backlash tive openness to build ously. We’ll strike from because Bridgwater is the galvanise the national Most national disputes against the regime of the itself and assert itself as Saturday 10 to Monday 12 workplace leading the dispute. we’ve had over the past 30 Muslim Brotherhood, a an independent political August, then Saturday 17 fightback against the issues • Financial solidarity with years have ended, in my (cautious) clerical-fascist force, against the Is - to Monday 19 August, then that are faced across the the Bridgwater strike is vi - personal opinion, in sell movement which tight - lamists, the army, and six days in September start - country. It’s spreading in tally important. Please outs or shoddy and unnec - ened repression, squeezed the plutocrats. ing Monday 2nd. It’s the the west of England – there essary compromises, so make cheques out to: workers’ rights, and failed longest local official CWU are strikes due at our that coordination of mili - “Bridgwater Trades Union dispute in many years. branch delivery offices in tant branches, and militant Council” and send to: Dave Fundraising has had a Fishponds and Weston- stewards from weaker Chapple, 1 Blake Place, huge impact on morale. super-Mare on Saturday 10 branches might be an es - Bridgwater, Somerset, TA6 We’ve raised £23,000 in and Saturday 17 August, sential counterweight to 5AU. To contact Dave di - two weeks, including with seven workplaces in the national leaders in any rectly with messages of £15,000 from our own and around Plymouth also national strike. support, ring 0777 6304 276 branch, Bristol and District balloting for strikes, as well The campaign against or email davechapple@ Amalgamated. There was a as the whole of Cornwall, privatisation has to have a btinternet.com. great bucket collection of which has historically been working-class focus. The • This interview is £1,400 at the union’s two- a weaker area. abridged from a longer ver - idea of working with To - the pro-morsi demonstrations continue day reps’ conference on 31 The disputes are about ries, the Countryside Al - sion, which appears online July and 1 August. filling in the gaps between liance or Ukip is mistaken. at bit.ly/bridgwater