Left Turn

Millions protest as indefinite strike shakes Nigeria

2012-01-10T19:58:00.000Z

by Baba Aye, national chairperson of the Socialist Workers League in Abuja.

Nigeria arose on Monday as its workers began an indefinite general strike. The first day was a stunning success. Up to ten million people were out on the streets.

On 1 January Nigeria’s president Goodluck Jonathan abolished fuel subsidies. Most of Nigeria’s 160 million population live on less than 320 naira ($2) a day. But overnight petrol prices increased from 65 naira to 141 per litre. The country’s two main union federations called the strike. Their simple demand is the return of the subsidy. Only seven million people are in affiliated unions, but already the strike shows their strategic power. Nigeria’s economy ground to a halt. Factories, banks and offices were shut down. Shops and the plethora of informal services outlets across the country were closed.

In virtually every major city, except those in the north east which have been militarised under a state of emergency, millions of Nigerians took charge of the streets and neighbourhoods. But even in the militarised states, strike monitoring committees went around in buses to ensure that the strike was solid.

The trade union movement is the only countrywide democratic social force cutting across creed and ethnic identity. This working class action shows the possibility of another Nigeria where the 99 percent are no longer marginalised and dominated by capitalism.

Of course the ruling class did not just fold its hands. More than 20 demonstrators were wounded when state forces opened fire on strikers in Lagos, Kano, Gusau and Asaba. At least three were killed. The perpetrators in Lagos were identified by vigilant citizens who took the vehicle number of their police van, and broadcast this widely, using social networking media. To quell their anger the Lagos state governor has now ordered the arrest of the policemen involved.

Tensions were already obvious before the strike started. Spontaneous demonstrations swept through a dozen cities last week. In Kano protesters occupied the city centre—calling it Liberation Square—in their tens of thousands. There was no concern over creed or faith. Police brutally dispersed the protesters. But many among the junior ranks sympathise with the unfolding revolt. Around 300 police joined the protest march in Lagos on Tuesday of last week. The inspector general of police described them as “mutineers”.

Airspace, ports and borders are closed. Citizens have tried to stockpile food and water. Monday was a glorious day of rage, but it is just the beginning.

© Socialist Worker. You may republish if you include an active link to the original

Royal Mail workers walk out in Cornwall

2011-12-13T20:23:00.000Z

Workers at the mail centre in Truro in Cornwall walked out yesterday as they had not been paid. Every December, Royal Mail takes on workers on short-term contracts to help sort the unusually high volumes of mail. These are typically students or the long-term unemployed. In Truro, these workers were due to be paid at the end of last week. When they were not, they complained to management. As nothing has been done by yesterday (Monday), these casual workers decided to take unofficial action and walked out. The workers came back to work today, but told management they would walk out again tomorrow if they were not paid by the end of today.

This is an incredibly brave action from a group of casual workers who are not in the union and who could presumably be sacked. Then again, Royal Mail's recruitment procedure is so long winded and inefficient and the employment period so short that it is probably not in Royal Mail's interest to sack these workers. But it is a sign of the times we are living in that this group of workers had the confidence to go on strike. It is undoubtedly the case that these workers will have been inspired by the mass co-ordinated strikes that took place just a couple of weeks ago.

The action had a knock-on effect across Cornwall. Mail volumes in Penzance Delivery Office were well below were they would normally be at this time of year. Brian Eddy, the Communication Workers' Union (CWU) rep in Penzance said "we've had less than half the mail come in than we would usually get and that's because of the walkout in Truro".

Many postal workers in Penzance are concerned because they know they will be expected to deliver all the mail when it does come in, despite a shortage of staff. Management at the office confirmed that the budget for overtime is capped at 15 hours per week for the whole office. This is incredible in an office of 80 staff where on one day last week, some workers went over their time by as much as 3 hours in a single day. This is only set to get worse over the next two weeks.

It is also believed that the weather may have caused some mail to have been delayed. Much of the mail in the area is transported by aeroplane and it is thought some planes could not take off yesterday due to high winds.

It has also been confirmed that the office intends to continue to begin to plan a complete revision of the whole office which will include a complete replacement of the inward sorting frames, a re-organisation of the other sorting frames and every walking round and every driving round in the office will be torn up and re-written. This means every postal worker will be put on a delivery they have never done before, at once. And they intend to start this process at the very height of the busiest time of the year.

The issue of wages not being paid, or at least overtime not being paid in full, is one that affects every postal worker in Cornwall. Budgets are kept unrealistically low and managers are encouraged to not pay overtime, presumably in the hope that workers will either not notice or give up continually fighting for it. Postal workers are being bullied into working overtime and threatened with being given different, less good jobs if they refuse. In some cases workers are being bullied into doing overtime without being paid for it. Many workers have had enough and are talking about refusing to do overtime in the future. Most postal workers are proud of the job they do and do not want to fail to deliver all the mail. But many now feel that it is only by doing this that things will change and Royal Mail will employ the staff that is required. There is also a fear that senior management are preparing the ground for privatisation.

Postal workers should put pressure on their union reps to ballot the membership for strike action so that the CWU can join the next wave of mass co-ordinated strike action.

England rioters in their own words

2011-12-06T16:32:00.000Z

In August there were riots, first in Tottenham and then the rest of London and across England. At the time, politicians dismissed the riots as 'criminality pure and simple'. For the first time a study has been carried out by the London School of Economics and the Guardian newspaper which involves interviews with 270 rioters. Of those interviewed, 85% cited anger at policing practices as a key factor in why the violence happened. Other factors cited included anger at the government over cuts to benefits and the educational maintenance allowance (EMA). Many of the young people involved had been on protests against the tripling of university tuition fees and removal of EMA. The government argued that the rioting was to do with gang culture. However, the report reveals that for four days there was an effective truce between gangs as they were united in fighting with the police.

See the Newsnight story and hear from the rioters in their own words for the first time here.

Thousands join hands to protect West Cornwall Hospital

2011-12-03T14:46:00.000Z

Several thousand people met at St. John's Hall in Penzance, Cornwall at 11am this morning to join a demonstration against cuts to West Cornwall Hospital in the town. March organiser Alana Bates from Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance introduced Marna Blundy from West Cornwall Healthwatch and Andrew George MP who each made a short speech. The demonstration then marched up to the hospital and completely encircled it. At a signal from the organisers, everybody held hands, symbolically defending their hospital.

Estimates at the numbers involved ranged from 2000 to 5000, but whatever the true figure it was clearly a great demonstration of local people's concern at threats to the hospital. A ward containing half of all the medical beds at the hospital has been closed. The trust say it is just for the winter, but nurses at the hospital fear it will never re-open. There is also no doctor at night at the '24-hour' Casualty Department, meaning people have to travel to Treliske Hospital in Truro for treatment and, of course, families have much further to travel to visit relatives. One woman in her sixties had a fall in Penzance and was taken to Truro. She was discharged in the early hours of the morning and forced to take a taxi home. The cab driver dropped her at a cashpoint at 4:30 in the morning so she could get the cash to pay him.

Of course it is not just West Cornwall Hospital that is facing cuts. As a leaflet from Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance given out on the demo made clear,

"The Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust has been forced to make £20 million ‘savings’ because of the Tory-led government’s agenda of cuts and austerity. Nationally, according to the Royal College of Nursing, 56,058 posts are to go across the UK. This figure is up over 50% since seven months ago. These are not just cuts to 'back office' posts, as some would have us believe. Out of 41 Trusts in England almost half, 49%, of post losses were 'clinical', with a third (34%) being nursing posts (see http://frontlinefirst.rcn.org.uk/2011-cuts-report for more details). The government wants ordinary people to pay for an economic crisis created by the bankers, multinational companies and politicians. The government needs to be stopped and they can be. If you agree with us, join us."

Hands Off Our Hospital are meeting at 6pm on Monday 5 December at the Ritz in Queen's Street in Penzance. Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance are meeting at 7pm on Monday 12 December at the Crown pub at the bottom of Bread Street, also in Penzance. All are welcome to attend and get involved.

Fantastic turnout at 30 November strike rally and march in Cornwall

2011-11-30T20:39:00.003Z

Up and down the country schools, hospitals, council offices and other services have been affected today by the biggest wave of co-ordinated strike action for eighty-five years. The BBC estimate 80% of all schools were closed today. Between two and three million public sector workers, from more than thirty unions have gone on strike to defend their pensions from the outrageous attack the Tory-led governnment has launched. They want public sector workers to pay more into their pension schemes, work longer and receive less at the end. But public sector workers are not only striking for their pensions. They are also striking to defend their services from the vicious cuts agenda this government has unleashed.

There were marches and strike rallies in towns throughout the country. Many places have reported the biggest demonstrations in living memory. In Truro in Cornwall, a thousand people filled the Hall for Cornwall for a strike rally, leaving hundreds to wait outside. Speakers included a physiotherapist, a young woman teacher in the National Union of Teachers (NUT), the branch secretaries of the University and College Union (UCU) at Cornwall College and Cornwall University, Falmouth, a teacher in the National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT), Peter Cogbill from the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS) in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and Stuart Roden, a full-time organiser for the Unison Union.

However, the speech of the day was given by Alana Bates, a care worker and representing Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance. Alana spoke about how today's action was part of a global movement against cuts and austerity throughout Europe and the world. She spoke about Occupy Oakland and the way it called a general strike which shut down the fifth largest port in the United States. As a private sector worker herself, she exploded the myth that private sector workers do not support public sector workers in their fight. She called on the government to provide decent pensions for everyone and told the packed hall, to huge cheers, that she brought solidarity from all those workers that are not on strike today.

After the rally there was a march through the city that ended at the cathedral. An endless procession of cars honked their horns in support and pedestrians waved, cheered and shouted their support. As the march entered the square in front of the Cathedral, the organisers announced that the police were estimating 3000 people on the march. The square was a sea of banners and flags from GMB, Unite, Unison, NUT, NASUWT, ATL, UCU, PCS as well as many individual placards and banners from Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance, Right to Work, the Labour Party and Socialist Worker.

After a few more speeches the day came to an end. As people dispersed, the mood was extremely upbeat. Everyone present knew that something incredible and historic had happened that day. Of course this cannot be the end. There must be further strikes if the government is going to be forced into a retreat. And if the workers are to win, the action must escalate. There must be further strikes in the new year, and they must be for 48 hours next time. We also need more unions, such as the Communication Workers Union (CWU), Rail and Maritime Workers Union (RMT) and the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) involved next time. Ultimately we need to move to a position were workers are going on indefinite general strike. Our slogan must be "all out, stay out".

Hands Off Our Hospital! Stop All The Cuts!

2011-11-19T21:10:00.000Z

The 'Hands Off Our Hospital' campaign to stop the cuts to West Cornwall Hospital in Penzance is progressing well. Activists have been out in force on three consecutive Saturdays, leafletting and collecting thousands of signatures. The demonstration on 3 December is building momentum. As well as Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance, West Cornwall Healthwatch, Save Our NHS (Cornwall) and the Cornishman newspaper, all of whom were at the first meeting, the campaign is supported by the Mayors of Penzance and Hayle, many Penzance town councillors, Andrew George the local MP and many individuals. Many shops in the town are displaying the posters and much of the town has been leafletted door-to-door.

However, Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance has understood that if these and other cuts are to be stopped, there is a need to understand where these cuts are coming from and why they are happening. The Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust claims that the closing of the medical ward at West Cornwall Hospital is a clinical decision and not a financial one. They claim they need to move the beds to Treliske because of an expected rise in seasonal flu. If money is not a problem, why cannot they have extra beds at Treliske without them raiding the local hospital in Penzance? Of course this IS a financial decision and it has been forced on them because the Tory-led government is making the trust making £20 million of 'savings'. As a result hundreds of jobs are being axed and nurses that leave are not being replaced, making the workload for the already overworked nurses that remain even greater.

The way to stop these attacks is to combine the local campaign with a national movement in order to build a national focus that can inflict a defeat on the government. If the government is defeated over one attack, it will make it harder for them to carry out further attacks. The campaign with the biggest chance of success is that of co-ordinated strikes that began on 30 June and will strike again at the end of this month.

On 30 November up to 3 million trade unionists will be going on strike against this government's cuts agenda. This needs to be seen as a day for everyone to fight back and make their voices heard. Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance have organised, with the unions involved, a rally at the Hall for Cornwall in Truro at 10am, followed by a march to the Cathedral. Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance were out leafletting this afternoon in five towns, including Penzance (Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance) in order to try to get as many people as possible to come on the day, including from the Penwith area.

This day of co-ordinated strike action is not the end, however. This must be just the beginning of a campaign of protests, strikes and occupations that can stop all the cuts and bring the Tory-led government to its knees.

New campaign launched to save West Cornwall Hospital

2011-11-01T18:56:00.003Z

Around fifty people, representing three different local groups, a local councillor, the local newspaper and many ordinary local people discussed the loss of services at West Cornwall Hospital at a public meeting last night at the Ritz Community Centre in Queens Street in Penzance. The meeting agreed to launch a new campaign specifically to defend the hospital.

The meeting, organised by Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance followed a protest of about fifty protesters in Penzance on Saturday 22 October after the Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust announced it would be closing a medical ward at the West Cornwall Hospital at the same time that a refurbished ward is finally re-opened. This represents half of the medical beds. In less than two hours, more than a thousand concerned local people signed a petition calling on the Trust to keep West Cornwall Hospital running as a functioning hospital.

In a meeting held at the hospital earlier this month Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance members were told that the ward would reopen on 5 November. Members are now worried that this lack of 'clarity' will only worsen when, and if, the Trust achieves foundation status.

Anthony Matthews, from Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance said "The reaction from local people was just fantastic. They were queueing up to sign the petition. In fact we were a little bit swamped at first. People of all ages are worried about what the future holds. One young girl told me that she and her friends would chain themselves to the hospital if it was ever threatened with closure".

The trust claims that the ward is being closed so that another can be opened at Treliske Hospital in Truro to deal with higher need during the winter months. However, many feel that this is another step towards the downgrading of the hospital to a clinic.

Many fear having to make expensive and time consuming journeys to Truro for treatment, especially as there are issues around funding for public transport.

Alana Bates, from Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance said "With the Coalition Government's cuts to the NHS we are seeing ward closures across the country. We are determined to keep our local services. If this is not a finincial decision, as the Trust claims, then why can't we have a ward at West Cornwall and a ward at Treliske? We want a good, accessable local hospital for everyone. We will do all we can to show that people in West Cornwall feel strongly about the need for the hospital."

Last night's meeting, hosted by Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance also heard from representatives of West Cornwall Health Watch, Save Our NHS (Cornwall), Lib Dem councillor Mario Fonk and a reporter from the Cornishman. The meeting agreed to launch a new umbrella group 'Hands Off Our Hospital' and elected an organising committee which will meet next Monday. It was also decided that other campaign groups such as Health Initiative Cornwall and the The League Of Friends Of The West Cornwall Hospital will be approached to join the new group.

The meeting decided to organise an event on the 3 December called 'Join Hands to Save Our Hospital'. It will be assembling at St. John’s Hall at 11am and walking to the hospital where there will be an attempt to encircle it to demonstrate the need to protect the hospital from proposed cuts.

Every Saturday between now and then there will be a stall at the bottom of Causeway Head from 11am until 1pm where the general public will be leafletted and signatures will be collected on a petition. There will also be leafletting door-to-door. Everyone is encouraged to join in to help spread the news about the campaign. For more information contact Alana on 07530428246 or email pzanticuts@hotmail.co.uk

Pics: Peter Carter

We are the 99%

2011-10-19T20:17:00.000+01:00

The Occupy Wall Street movement, which rapidly spread to 150 cities across the US has now gone global. Last Saturday saw the biggest day of world-wide demonstrations since the 2003 demonstrations against the war in Iraq. From New York to Hong Kong, a million people were on the streets, in more than 950 cities in over eighty countries, occupying central banks and other symbols of the banking industry. Some of the biggest protests were in Spain where the 'Indignados' movement that inspired the US protesters is still going strong. Some of the most militant were in Italy where Berlusconi is pushing some of the harshest austerity measures in Europe.

Across Britain there were around twelve demonstrations, including the 3,000 strong demo at the London Stock Exchange. In London protesters have maintained a permanent occupation outside St Paul’s Cathedral. The protests are against corporate greed and the richest 1 percent in society. The movement’s size, breadth and vibrancy make them an important development for the fightback against capitalism. In London a section of the occupation of St Paul’s cathedral joined the demonstration of electricians at Blackfriars station this morning. Afterwards, a section of electricians marched to St Paul’s for a rally.

These protests express a growing sense that there is something fundamentally wrong with the world and that we can do something about it. Protesters call themselves the "99 percent" in contrast to the "1 percent" elite that accumulates power and wealth by robbing and exploiting the rest of us. The mass co-ordinated strikes planned for 30 November could really ignite the movement in Britain. We need to push for the biggest turnout in the ballots and for people to strike and join the rallies being held across Britain.

Meanwhile in Greece a 48-hour general strike, the latest of so many in Greece, got underway today with the rallies being reported as some of the biggest yet.

Athens 19/10/11

This is the key. Like in Tunisia and Egypt, the way to win is to combine a massive street protest movement with a wave of strikes. Together we can smash the austerity plans of the 1 percent. But we can also transform the world from one run for a handful of rich parasites to one we run for ourselves.

Plans for mass strikes on 30 November coming together in Cornwall

2011-10-13T10:22:00.001+01:00

On 30 November up to three million public sector workers could be on strike across Britain if all the ballots receive a 'yes' vote. The teachers' NUT, ATL and UCU unions, as well as the civil servants' PCS union all have live ballots and all went on strike on 30 June. They are set to be joined by around eleven other unions.

The ballot papers for around a million workers in Unison went out on Tuesday. If the ballot goes the way it is expected to, they will be out on strike in November too. The Unite and GMB unions are also set to ballot in the next few weeks. Len McCluskey, the general-secretary of the Unite union said recently, "we need coordinated industrial action. If you want to call that a general strike then so be it". Mark Serwotka, general-secretary of PCS said in Manchester, "we're on the edge of the biggest strike for 80 years. If [the government] carry on [attacking us] after 30 November we have to strike again and again until we win".

The other unions include EIS, the scottish teachers’ union, NAHT, the headteachers’ union, which has never before organised a strike in its 114-year history, NIPSA, public servants in Northern Ireland, Prospect, another civil service union, Chartered Society of Physiotherapy and the teachers' union NASUWT.

The strike is mostly about a dispute with the government over an attack on public sector pensions, although some unions are also in dispute over pay cuts and job losses too. The government claims the pension schemes are in crisis, but in fact changes made under the previous government have fixed these problems. It is simply about stealing money, which is after all deferred wages, from public sector workers to help pay off the deficit. These workers did not cause the deficit, of course, and the money could be found by collecting the tax that companies like Arcadia (Sir Phillip Green's company that owns Top Shop), Boots and Vodafone manage to avoid.

These pensions are not gold-plated either. The average public sector pension is around £5000 a year. The government also wants to raise the retirement age arguing people are living longer. But for manual workers, the average age which people reach has hardly changed in thirty years. Teachers cannot teach primary school children when they are in their mid to late sixties. Nurses cannot lift patients when they are in their mid to late sixties. Increasingly, we will see public sector workers, especially postal workers and refuse workers, die before they even reach retirement. Most importantly, workers in the private sector will not get a better deal if public sector pensions are slashed. It will only give the green light to private sector employers to make private pensions even worse.

Coming after the biggest trade union-organised demonstration in British history in March, the fantastic co-ordinated strike of 750,000 public sector workers in June and the demonstration at the Tory Party Conference two weeks ago, this will be the key event of the year. The momentum is on the side of ordinary people and the anger at the government and the desire to fight back is palpable among not just trade unionists, but most people in Britain today. As we see the last few nails being hammered into the coffin for the NHS in the House of Lords yesterday and the news that unemployment has risen again to 2.57 million, ordinary working people, and indeed many middle class people, feel the time has come for serious resistance to the Tory-led government's plans.

Everyone needs to see the 30 November as the key date to protest at this government's plans to make us pay for a crisis caused by banks and politicians. Whether it be someone who has lost their job, campaigners to save the NHS, disabled people being moved onto lower benefits or off benefits altogether or public sector workers being made to pay more into their pension, to work longer and to receive less at the end, we are all stronger if we unite the fights and make 30 November a massive success.

There have been three meetings in Cornwall in the last ten days that have started to organise plans for events here. On Monday 3 October, around eight trade unionists met to discuss the possibility of re-starting a Cornwall Trades Union Council. Despite the obvious advantages, there were a number of objections. The first key difficulty was that no individual in the room has the time nor the inclination to carry out the work necessary to set one up. The second point is that Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance (CACA), although not a solely trade union body, already provides a trade union forum and has strong trade union support. It was also mentioned that Cornish trade unions met last summer and agreed to set up an informal email-based network. It was decided not to proceed with a trades council at this time but to instead work to build a comprehensive network of trade union reps.

On Wednesday 5 October, Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance met with Stuart Roden and Chris Dayus, full-time Unison officials and Ian Williams, district secretary of the NUT in attendance. It was agreed that CACA, the NUT and (assuming their ballot returns a 'yes' vote) Unison will organise a joint march and rally in Truro on the day between around 10am and 12pm. There will also be a joint leaflet produced to mobilise trade unionists and the general public alike.

On Monday 10 October a meeting was held at the Unison offices in Truro with Frances O'Grady, deputy general-secretary of the TUC, Nigel Costley of South-West TUC, various trade union representatives and representatives of CACA. The meeting agreed to organise a march in Truro, assembling at Hendra field and proceeding to a rally at Hall for Cornwall. Both venues have been provisionally booked and contact has been made with the police regarding routing. It also agreed to produce a two-sided joint trade union and CACA leaflet to publicise a) the unions' pension case and b) a more broad-based anti-cuts reverse including the Truro march details when finalised and agreed. A series of stalls in five towns will be organised jointly by CACA and the trade unions, using a variety of leaflets, to build publicity and support. Unions will be asked to engage as many activists as possible. There will be a particular focus on the TUC's Action Saturday on 19 November. All agreed that trying to gain non-union, private sector and general public support was crucial and good media contacts are essential.

There will be a further meeting to work out many of the details at the CACA meeting on Wednesday 19 October at 7:30 p.m. at the Railway Club in Truro. This meeting will focus solely on plans for the 30 November and everyone that wants to fight the cuts is encouraged to come along. If you live in Penwith, it will also be discussed at the Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance meeting on Monday 17 October at 7pm at the Crown pub at the bottom of Bread Street in Penzance. Get involved and join the fight back!

Delegation from Cornwall join anti-Tory protest

2011-10-11T14:40:00.002+01:00

Members of Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance and Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance joined forces with members of Plymouth Fightback Against the Cuts and travelled up to Manchester in a coach organised by Plymouth Trades Council on 1 and 2 October. There they joined tens of thousands from all over the country to protest at the vicious cuts the Tory-led government are trying to impose on all of us.

On the coach it was clear that those making the trip were keen to both represent their areas and local groups on a national demonstration, but also to enjoy the solidarity of thousands of people marching together for the same cause and to bring that spirit back to Cornwall.

The demonstration on the first day of the Conservatives' conference was big, certainly much bigger than the one at Liberal Democrat Conference two weeks earlier. The police estimated 20,000 people and the BBC claimed 35,000, so it could have easily been more although Right to Work, who initiated the protest, reported around 40,000.

The demonstration assembled at eleven o'clock and there were already large delegations from the Unison and Unite unions present.

The demonstration did not set off for around two hours, a clear indication that it was a large demonstration. At around twelve o'clock we were joined by a feeder march from Salford.

Everyone cheered as the marchers joined the assembled demonstrators.

At about one o'clock the march set off. As it turned the corner it was possible to see another feeder march coming down the street. The demonstrators were from the Education Activist Network and they had orange flares and were chanting 'students and workers unite'.

As the students reached the police lines guarding the outside flank of the main demo, they just carried straight on causing confusion amongst the police. The police simply fell back and allowed the two marches to merge.

Seeing the students was a visible reminder of the radicalism and vibrancy of last year's student protests. Their enthusiasm made a welcome change from the whistling and chant-free atmosphere that had pervaded the previous two hours. Their slogan, combining student radicalism and the power workers have in the workplace offered a way to not just protest against, but to defeat the Tory-led government.

The demonstration contained many trade union banners from all over the North West and beyond. There were also a considerable number of banners from local anti-cuts groups, including from Cornwall.

The demonstration passed the conference centre itself. It was guarded by a phalanx of police, some with machine guns. A nearby building housed police snipers on its rooftop, presumably ready to shoot anyone attempting to storm the conference centre. The demonstration became very angry as it passed, with chants of 'Tories, tories, tories, out out out", "Tory scum" and so on.

The front of the demonstration entered the park where many trade union leaders and people from campaign groups were making speeches around two o'clock. An hour and a half later people were still entering the park.

The best speech was given by Mark Serwotka, the general-secretary of the PCS union. He made the point that we will see the biggest strike in Britain for eighty years on 30 November. He urged everyone to 'unite all our struggles' and to make 30 November the biggest success yet. He quoted his father saying "if you fight you can't guarantee you will always win, but if you don't fight, you lose every time". He went on to say "now's the time to fight, now's the time to defeat the government, well done for today, build the strikes in November".

The true story of the riot in Tottenham

2011-09-23T22:02:00.000+01:00

'Reel News', who describe themselves as 'an activist video collective' have produced a fantastic film explaining what really happened on the day the riots began in Tottenham. By interviewing the residents of the area, the group has produced a film that tells the real story without any of the mainstream media's bias, omissions, distortions or outright lies. We do not hear the pious words of politicians or the police repeated as fact, but eyewitness accounts from the residents of the area. We do not hear condemnation, but explanation.

This is an excellent example of independent media telling the true story sadly missing from mainstream reportage. Everyone should watch it.

TUC call mass strikes for Wednesday 30 November

2011-09-14T19:57:00.001+01:00

The TUC today saw union leader after union leader declare that they are calling on their members to strike over pensions on 30 November. These include Unison, Unite, GMB, FBU, NUT, NASUWT, PCS, UCU, EIS, UCAC, NIPSA, Prospect and FDA. There was a unanimous vote for resistance. A strike by three million workers is now on the cards - which would be the biggest single day of action since the 1926 General Strike. Coming after the student revolt last year, the 26 March demonstration, and the 30 June strikes, there is a real momentum about the fightback.

Confrontation on a grand scale is coming much more quickly with David Cameron than it did with Margaret Thatcher, and this will be a critical struggle. It is a titanic clash between organised workers and a government hell-bent on ramming through a massive assault on workers’ living standards and public services. This is a battle over pensions, but also over every aspect of the Tory assault. And we can win if workers use all their strength against this rotten government.

This changes everything. Every socialist, trade unionist and anti-cuts activists must be part of making sure the strikes happen, that they are built as broadly as possible, and that they are fought through to victory. Everyone should celebrate the calling of this tremendous action, and work with those union leaders who want to fight. However, there must also be a push to strengthen the rank and file of the trade unions for the future, to win the idea of “all out, stay out” and to win.

The co-ordinated strikes must be item 1, 2 and 3 on the agenda of every anti-cuts group, and everyone must throw themselves into winning the ballots that will now take place, to mobilise trade unionists on a broad basis, and to argue for unity against the Tories. This will include mass propaganda, and distributing leafets both inside and from the outside of workplaces. There must be a push to involve students to be part of the day. There must be a renewed effort to build the Manchester demonstration at the Tory conference on 2 October.

In Cornwall, the re-formation of a Trades Council could not have come at a better time. There is a meeting to re-launch a Cornwall Trades Council. It is in a room at the Brittannia pub in the corner of Truro Bus depot on Lemon Quay in Truro on Monday 3 October from 6.30 - 7.30pm. All trade union stewards, reps and activists should come to the meeting to discuss the fightback. There may also need to be other joint meetings of stewards and reps from the striking unions to discuss mobilisation for the strikes and demonstrations in each area on the day. These meetings can then set up a coordinating committee to build the action.

November mass strikes could involve millions

2011-09-11T15:33:00.000+01:00

The November strikes against the government’s attacks could now involve up to four million workers. There have not been strikes on this scale for decades. Next week’s TUC conference promises to be the most important for many years. It opens as the number of trade unions joining the call for a mass coordinated strike in November grows by the day.

Mark Serwotka of the PCS civil service workers’ union said, "We are moving to a strike potentially involving millions." The PCS, along with the NUT and ATL teachers unions and the UCU lecturers’ union, all have live ballots and are committed to strikes in the autumn.

Friday’s announcement that the NASUWT teachers’ union will now also ballot for a national strike this term means that another 250,000 teachers could join the battle. This is first time in a decade the union has balloted for national action. The Scottish teachers’ union, the EIS, is now set to ballot for an autumn strike, as are the head teachers in the NAHT and Welsh teachers in the UCAC.

The FBU firefighters’ union looks set to ballot. Prospect, the specialist civil service workers’ union, and the FDA senior civil servants union, both announced this week that they will ballot members unless the government backs off from its attack on pensions. It is thought the GMB will announce a ballot for three days of strikes in November, with one as a national strike to coordinate with other unions.

Unison the public sector union has put senior union activists on alert. The union is putting together the necessary meetings to approve going to ballot in local government and health sectors to join the autumn strikes. The government has pushed the trade union leaders who were willing to negotiate to the edge. When Dave Prentis, Unison general secretary, spoke to the Financial Times on Friday he talked of "when" the talks fail, not "if". "We are now planning for industrial action for when these talks break down," he said. When this happens, he added, "you’ll see strikes throughout all of the public sector, it will include strikes in our schools, our civil service, our fire brigade, our local government service, our health service".

The anger and bitterness that brought 750,000 workers out on the magnificent strike on 30 June this year has not gone away. Every trade unionist and activist faces a challenge. If the government’s attacks are going to be beaten, then workers need to be organised, to win the ballots and spread the fightback. With millions of workers joining the struggle there is the potential for the sort of mass workers’ resistance that can stop the Tories’ attacks.

Source

The NHS is not for sale

2011-09-09T20:08:00.002+01:00

The vote on the third reading of the Health and Social Care Bill resulted in a resounding 'yes'. Now the bill will go to the House of Lords. Rumours of the Liberal Democrat backbench rebellion were obviously hugely exaggerated. In the end only four Lib Dem MPs voted against the bill (Julian Huppert, Greg Mulholland, Andrew George and Adrian Sanders) with ten abstentions.

One of the those Lib Dem MPs that voted against the bill, Andrew George, held a meeting in Penzance in his constituency last week which attracted over two hundred people. The meeting was hosted by George himself and the platform also contained Dr Mark McCartney, on behalf of the British Medical Association and also a GP at Pensilva in South East Cornwall; Stuart Bonar, Parliamentary Officer of the Royal College of Midwives; and Dr Colin Philip, GP lead for the proposed Clinical Commissioning Group (Kernow Clinical Commissioning) which will take over from the local Primary Care Trust (PCT) when the Government’s policy is enacted. He is also a GP at the Stennack Surgery in St Ives.

Despite being dominated by the top table, with little opportunity for members of the public to speak, the meeting was encouraging given the turnout and the mood of the meeting. However, all the speakers were white men and all were riven with pessimism and political naivety. When asked if this was the end of the NHS, all speakers said it was not and one speaker laughed and said there is no way the Conservatives would privatise the NHS. Oh really?

Colin Leys, academic and co-author of The Plot Against the NHS, wrote an article for the Guardian yesterday. In it he explains how the government's ultimate aim is indeed to privatise the NHS. He says,

"The bill will end the NHS as a comprehensive service equally available to all. People with limited means will have a narrowing range of free services of declining quality, and will once again face long waits for elective care. Everyone else will go back to trying to find money for private insurance and private care. More and more NHS hospital beds will be occupied by private patients."

He goes on to say "What we are witnessing is the completion of a project begun some 25 years ago to restore healthcare to private enterprise. The key players have not been MPs but private healthcare companies and consultancies like McKinsey and KPMG." Indeed Lord Howe, a junior health minister in the Lords, told an independent sector conference that the NHS reforms present 'huge opportunities' for private companies. This echoes comments made by Mark Britnell, a senior adviser to David Cameron, back in May that there would be a chance to make huge profits from the NHS and that it will be transformed into a "state insurance provider, not a state deliverer" of care. According to the Guardian,

"Britnell, a former director of commissioning for the NHS, who is now head of health at the accountancy giant KPMG, was invited to join a group of senior health policy experts, described by the respected Health Service Journal as a "kitchen cabinet", in Downing Street earlier this month... In unguarded comments at a conference in New York organised by the private equity company Apax, Britnell claimed that the next two years in the UK would provide a "big opportunity" for the for-profit sector, and that the NHS would ultimately end up as a financier of care similar to an insurance company rather than a provider of hospitals and staff."

On Monday of this week Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance showed Michael Moore's film 'SiCKO' at the Ritz, Penzance. The film demonstrates the horror of the privatised healthcare system in America. It also contrasts it with the NHS and shows what a great system we have by comparison. Of course the film was made a few years ago and is now a demonstration of what we stand to lose. Thirty-two people watched the film and the discussion afterwards shows the level of bitterness and anger but also the level of awareness that exists amongst the public.

This is a battle that is not yet over. With the general level of anger that exists within society, once people realise just what these 'reforms' really mean there will be an explosion of anger once more. The next stop for the campaign against all the government's cuts and privatisation is the protest at the Tory Party Conference in October.

Seven days to save the National Health Service

2011-08-31T14:59:00.000+01:00

The Health and Social Care Bill is coming back to Parliament for its third reading next week with a vote expected on Wednesday 7 September. Even after the "listening exercise" the amended version on the bill is a major attack on the National Health Service (NHS) and will lead to increasing amounts of private practice within and outside the NHS. It will lead to increasing fragmentation of the service and to competition, rather than collaboration between health service providers. The reorganisation will cost a huge amount of tax-payers money at a point when we are repeatedly told there is no money available for basic services. Tax-payers money would be better spent on services to patients. The improvements to the NHS mentioned in the bill, such as increasing clinical involvement and providing a greater say for patients, can be done without any need for this expensive and destructive legislation, which opens the door for the eventual privatisation of the NHS.

According to campaigning website 38 Degrees, who have paid for independent legal advice,

"The Secretary of State’s legal duty to provide a health service will be scrapped. On top of that, a new “hands-off clause” removes the government's powers to oversee local consortia and guarantee the level of service wherever we live. We can expect increases in postcode lotteries – and less ways to hold the government to account if the service deteriorates.

"The NHS will almost certainly be subject to UK and EU competition law and the reach of procurement rules will extend across all NHS commissioners. Private health companies will be able to take new NHS commissioning groups to court if they don’t win contracts. Scarce public money could be tied up in legal wrangles instead of hospital beds. Meanwhile, the legislation lifts the cap on NHS hospitals filling beds with private patients."

The NHS remains a central plank of the Tory agenda, and the attacks on it are a source of anger for working class people all over the country. A defeat for the government over these proposals would give a massive boost to the campaign against their cuts, job losses and privatisation.

Unison and the TUC have put out a call to health union branches across to country to organise protests and vigils. In London, Unison and the TUC have called a candle-lit vigil at Parliament at 9.30pm on 7 September. The Health Worker Network, Keep Our NHS Public, Right to Work and Unite the Union are organising a demo at 6.30pm on 7 September to dovetail the TUC event and provide a chance for health workers to attend. It will march from St Thomas’ hospital on Westminster Bridge Road and march across the bridge to Parliament.

London Keep Our NHS Public is hosting an emergency London-wide mobilising meeting tonight at 7pm to co-ordinate building the demo. It is at Camden Town Hall. The London Health Worker Network will meet at 6pm in the same venue, and join the mobilising meeting at 7pm.

In Cornwall there is a 'debate' on the bill tonight at 7:30pm in St. John's Hall in Penzance hosted by Andrew George MP who is on the Health Select Committee. George's leaflet says "if the Bill is not changed for the better, he will vote against the government when the Commons debates it on 6th and 7th September". This is good news but we need to hold him to account and ensure he keeps his word.

On Friday 2 September Unison are arranging a stall in Redruth to let people know about the bill with a petition asking all MPs to vote against the bill. They are meeting in the car park at the back of Wilkinson's at 10:30am then going through onto Fore Street to catch the shoppers. They will probably stay until about 2:30pm.

On Monday 5 September there is a film showing of Michael Moore's film 'Sicko' (see trailer, left) hosted by Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance. It is at 6:30pm at the Ritz on Queens Street in Penzance. Although focusing on the American privatised healthcare system, and holding up the NHS as a positive example of a better system, the film demonstrates well what we might have here in a few years if the Tories get their way, and just what we stand to lose. There is a suggested donation of £2 and there is a bar available.

It is also not too late to email your MP calling on them to vote against the bill next week.

If the bill passes it could well be the end of the NHS as we know it. We have to fight and we have to win.

Fascism rears its ugly head

2011-08-18T21:05:00.000+01:00

Europe in the 1930s was afflicted with economic depression, massively high unemployment and fascist gangs on the streets. Today in Europe all these things are back although history never repeats itself exactly. Then, the political leaders encouraged fascist gangs to beat trade unionists and socialists off the streets and to help whip up racist hysteria to create scapegoats to divert attention away from their own failure to deal with economic crisis. In the end the politicians handed them power in two key countries: Italy and Germany. In Britain, Oswald Mosely's British Union of Fascists carried out its violent activities until they were stopped at the 'Battle of Cable Street' when "over 100,000 anti-Fascists of English, Irish, Jewish and Somali (amongst others) descent successfully prevented the fascists from marching through London's East End".

Today, there seems to be a concerted effort on the part of a section, or perhaps more than one section, of society to use recent events as an excuse to push forward a fascist agenda, this time using not anti-semitism but Islamophobia.

Of course New Labour used Islamophobia for much of their thirteen years in office to divert attention away from their own failings and to justify both their participation in US President George W. Bush's 'War on Terror' and their own attack on civil liberties. In 2006, Jack Straw caused a furore when he claimed muslim women wearing veils were to blame for Islamophobia. Now the Tory-led government is continuing and extending that strategy. On 5 February 2011 David Cameron made a speech attacking multiculturalism on the same day the 'English Defence League' (EDL) marched in Luton.

The British National Party (BNP) may be in disarray after disastrous election results, followed by further leaks and splits and an embarrassing leadership contest, but the EDL appears to be picking up more support. The EDL's activities have been followed by the Socialist Worker newspaper since its inception which states here,

"More and more the EDL behaves like a classic fascist organisation. It is trying to control the streets, intimidate opposition and terrorise Muslims. It has organised a series of violent demonstrations since its creation two years ago. EDL supporters have physically attacked mosques and Muslims’ homes, and more recently anti-racist meetings, trade union demonstrations and a Hindu temple. Nazis make up the core of the EDL leadership—despite its strenuous denials."

This is not just happening in Britain. Across Europe, fascist parties are becoming more popular. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders’ racist Freedom Party (PVV) is now the third largest in parliament with 24 seats. Islamophobia is central to Wilders’ electoral success. The Front Nationale in France has three seats in the European parliament and 118 seats on regional councils. Sweden’s fascist SD was elected to parliament for the first time in September last year with 20 seats. Hungary’s openly fascist Jobbik Party (“The Movement for a Better Hungary”) has a paramilitary wing. It has three MEPs. Jobbik cemented its position as Hungary’s third largest party in last year’s parliamentary elections when it secured 47 seats and 12.8 percent of the vote. Across eastern Europe we are witnessing the terrifying rise of Nazi skinheads and ultra-nationalists who attack minorities and anti-racists.

Only a few weeks ago Anders Behring Breivik carried out an atrocity which killed 76 people in Norway. Young people attending an event organised by Labour Youth were shot dead on the island of Utoya near the Norwegian capital Oslo when a man dressed in a police uniform opened fire. A car bomb killed seven people earlier the same day outside Norway’s main government building in central Oslo. Members of the ruling Labour Party were the targets in both cases.

Initially some of the media speculated that the attack had been carried out by Islamic fundamentalists. The Sun in particular claimed that it had been carried out by a Norwegian "homegrown al-Qaeda convert". In fact the massacre was carried out by Anders Behring Breivik, a Norwegian, Christian fascist with links to the EDL.

The leader of the EDL, one Tommy Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was then allowed to appear on the BBC's Newsnight programme, supposedly to answer claims about the links between Breivik and the EDL. In fact Jeremy Paxman, despite his reputation as a tough interviewer, allowed him to lie and misrepresent his position as well as allowing him to spew his hatred about muslims and to threaten that a similar attack could happen in Britain within five years. As writer and political commentator Richard Seymour has said, the BBC are helping to make the EDL's ideas seem normal, mainstream.

"This thug, this violent racist at the head of a gang of violent racists and Nazis, is being normalised. His ideas are being communicated to mass audiences without serious rebuttal or challenge, and are thus being normalised - and this is happening in a situation where the EDL and the BNP and all the thugs in their periphery should be languishing in utter disgrace."

During the recent riots in England, there were reports of racists using the unrest as an opportunity to carry out violent racist attacks. As the Guardian's Paul Lewis reported from the Hertford Road in North Enfield,

"It was only a minor skirmish, but a potentially bad sign for community relations. Police, who have flooded the streets, were quickly on the scene when about 70 men started chasing local youths. I wouldn't mention their ethnicity, but it seemed to be relevant. The men were white - in their 30s and 40s - and shouting that they wanted to get the "blacks" and "pakis". Lots of them seemed drunk. One man being held back by police shouted: "They're rats, they mugged my Auntie the other night."

"Jay Bradley, 30, a witness, told me: "What happened here? What I just saw - everyone from this area aren't gonna have any looting. What I saw was a couple of ethnic lads, if you can call them that, black lads, and they chased them away. A lot of it is alcohol - I don't think the kids were doing anything. They were just on bikes and in masks. But no-one around here is going to stand for any looting. What are we supposed to do. The Co-op is closed and we're running out of food.""

Whether or not these men were EDL members or supporters cannot be proven, although the BNP had traditionally had support in Enfield until a campaign against them in 2004 and although they avoided the borough in 2006, they stood a candidate in the area in 2010, but there seems little doubt the EDL "tried to take advantage of the looting".

In response to the riots themselves, amongst the reactionary backlash and incredibly harsh sentences comes an incredible outburst from well-know reactionary TV historian and cheerleader for the monarchy David Starkey. Starkey, on the BBC's Newsnight programme, began by defending Enoch Powell, went on to claim that many white people have become 'black' and then tried to demonstrate this by reading some 'West Indian patois'. Once again, the BBC allowed him to get away with what he was saying largely unchallenged. Nick Griffin, leader of the BNP has suggested on Twitter that he feels he could not have said it better himself. Seymour argues that either he was trying to insult those of whom he was speaking and give succour to the racists or he was trying to start a moral panic in which the boundaries of acceptability could be altered in a radical way. Either way, his outburst is clearly unacceptable and has resulted in hundreds of complaints and a huge discussion on Twitter.

One thing is sure, the EDL must be stopped. Now, in an apparent echo of the 'Battle of Cable Street', the EDL are planning to march through East London once again. The march through Tower Hamlets is designed to stoke racial tensions in an area of great ethnic diversity. The EDL tried to march there in June last year but cancelled their march at the last minute, describing it as a "suicide mission". An anti-EDL protest, organised by Unite Aganist Fascism (UAF) and East End United, went ahead drawing 5000 people. This time it seems the EDL march will go ahead. The anti-EDL march, again organised by UAF and East End United to "celebrate diversity and oppose the racist English Defence League in Tower Hamlets on 3 September", has been backed by two national unions, the CWU and the PCS as well as local union branches and community groups. Socialist Worker is reporting a large turnout is expected with over 30 coaches already booked.

The lesson from the 1930s is that fascism will only be thwarted by the mass mobilisation of working people. It was the working class that stopped the BUF in the 1930s and it is the working class that will stop the EDL today. There is no point calling on the government to ban the EDL. State bans do not work. Where the government have banned EDL marches, they have allowed them to have 'static protests' instead. Anti-EDL marches are then also banned allowing the police to attack the anti-fascists. The police also 'escort' the EDL to their assembly point, allowing them to march through towns chanting fascist slogans. A ban will not remove the social conditions racist ideas come from. That can only be achieved through a united, mass movement for change. They shall not pass.

'Cure' for the riots is worse than the 'disease'

2011-08-12T14:26:00.000+01:00

David Cameron called parts of Britain "not just broken, but sick". If this is indeed the case, his plans for a "cure" will only make the patient worse.

For a start, politicians of all hues have been saying the riots cause them to have concerns about people's 'morals'. They claim it is an ethical issue not a political one. Of course, the Tories have to say this because it would be political suicide to admit that their policies had anything to do with the riots, even though most people know they do. One might (possibly) have expected something better from Ed Miliband though. Instead there seems to be a competition over who can have the most reactionary policies. Blue Ed has thrown his lot in with the government by talking about the parents' need to take responsibility for their children rioting.

The idea that somehow we should blame parents for the rioting when our young people are fighting back against brutal police and a government that has taken away any chance they had of an education, a job, a future, is sickening. The leaders of Nottingham and Manchester councils have said they will use powers they have to evict any tenants in council housing or housing association properties that are convicted of rioting. If those convicted are children, the parents will be evicted too. They have also called for a change in the law to include private tenants and even owner/occupiers. This is incredible. The idea that making people (that already feel as though they have no stake in society) homeless will improve things is utterly ridiculous. It can only enflame the situation.

Harriet Harman, meanwhile, has called for hoods to be banned. David Cameron has announced that existing police powers to ban face masks will be extended. One has to ask, what do the politicians think the problem in society is? Do they think wearing hoods and face masks are the root of the problem?

There is also talk of banning some people's access to social media. As with the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt, it is not Twitter and Facebook that have made the uprisings happen, they have just made them a little bit easier. When the internet was shut down in Egypt, the revolution continued.

More worryingly, the police have been granted new powers. These include the ability to use plastic bullets and water cannon. Clearly, these powers will be kept in reserve and brought out in the future whether against more riots or against peaceful protests that the police either attack or provoke into violence. This could be the beginning of the end for 'policing by consent'. Of course many people have withdrawn their consent, if they ever gave it, but the government have clearly used these events as an excuse to give police powers they fear they will increasingly need if the government is to force through its unpopular programme of cuts and privatisation.

The only cuts that any politicians have called for to be reversed since the riots are the cuts to policing. The Tory Mayor of London, Boris Johnson and Labour leader, Ed Miliband have both called for cuts in police budgets to be scrapped. Once again, they have no interest in solving the root cause of the problem, only the symptoms. The idea that the solution to riots sparked by police brutality is to have more police to crackdown harder is incredible.

It will be interesting to see how they police demonstrations in the near future. Will they go in hard to appease the reactionary calls from politicians and certain sections of the media, thus risking an escalation of the situation? Or will they take a more softly-softly approach? Only time will tell but we may not have to wait long. There is a demonstration in Tottenham tommorow calling on the government to 'Give Our Kids a Future'. There is also the Notting Hill Carnival in a few weeks. The police had already begun an operation to arrest people they think might 'cause trouble' before the riots began.

Either way, in the longer-term the politicians need to listen to the young people in this country. They need to roll back their cuts agenda. If they do not, and it seems highly unlikely that they will, this unrest will happen again and next time it will be more political.

The riots in Britain are a genuine uprising

2011-08-11T16:36:00.001+01:00

The riots that started in London, but which have also spread to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and elsewhere are a genuine uprising. The same economic and political forces that caused young people to rise up in Tunisia and Egypt as well as Libya, Syria and across the Middle East and North Africa have also caused people to rise up in Greece, Spain and Britain.

The student revolts at the end of last year in Britain were the start. The biggest ever trade union-organised demonstration on 26 March and the mass strikes on 30 June and those to come in November are the way people in Britain have begun to fight back against austerity and cuts. This new wave of riots that began in Tottenham and have now spread to many urban areas of Britain are the continuation of this. We are not in a revolutionary situation in Britain at the moment. Nevertheless, we need to build a revolutionary movement against the ruling class. We need to unite the fights against racism, the police, the bankers, the rich, the Tories and the capitalist system itself.

The ruling class is in crisis. First people reacted angrily to the bank bailouts, seeing bankers as the enemy. Then we had the MPs expenses scandal which exposed the corruption at the heart of Westminster. Next came the Hackgate scandal that revealed the corrupt connections between media barons, top politicians and the police. Now these riots demonstrate how young people will not put up with any more racism and violence from the police or cuts from the government. Education Secretary Michael Gove was close to hysteria on Newsnight on Tuesday because Harriet Harman, whilst forced to condemn the rioting, nevertheless made some points about the cuts (see above). The Tories, especially neoconservatives like Gove, have to shutdown any attempt to link the rioting with the cuts because they know that if this view becomes widespread their days really will be numbered.

The riots are an expression of anger. They are a response to the violence that people are forced to live with every day, violence that flows from oppression, poverty and alienation. The state tries to discredit riots as the violence of a minority. That is because it is terrified of mass resistance to issues like rising poverty and ongoing police violence. Riots represent the rage people feel at the injustice of the system. As Martin Luther King put it, “Riots are the voice of the unheard”. Ordinary people, who feel invisible most of their lives, take to the streets and take centre stage. It is not about people smashing up their local area for no reason. It is about them expressing their anger, wherever they happen to be.

The violence of riots is minor compared to the violence the system inflicts on a daily basis, like the famine in Africa that is killing thousands of people and wars that slaughter millions. Riots often happen in the context of wider resistance, like during a general strike in Spain last year when police sparked riots because they tried to stop strikers picketing. Where there is a low level of collective organisation, and individuals are not connected to a wider movement, riots can rise and fall quickly. The initial burst of power is difficult to sustain, and can be trapped in confrontation with the state. That is why riots alone do not end oppression and exploitation. Riots worry the ruling class, but more is needed to truly scare them.

As the revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg said, “Where the chains of capitalism are forged, there they must be broken.” Collective power in the workplace enables the progress of a movement to be decided democratically and collectively. That is not the case in the midst of a riot, however liberating. But it would be a mistake to artificially counterpose strikes to riots and other forms of protest. The critical issue is how to fuse their anger, energy and defiance with the political consciousness and strategy of collective action.

The media has focused on young people looting from shops. But the real looters are the banks who have stolen £850 billion of our money and the politicians who are robbing us of our public services and taking away from many young people their Education Maintenance Allowance as well as their hope, dignity and life chances.

Those of us in the anti-cuts movement and the labour movement, need to re-double our efforts to stop this government's cuts, privatisation and job losses, to stop making the ordinary people of this country pay for a crisis that was caused by the banks. We need to organise the biggest possible turnout at the Tory Party Conference in October and we need to support the trade unions in organising the biggest co-ordinated mass strike possible in November to bring down the government, stop the cuts and challenge the whole rotten system.

Condemn the police's violence and racism in Tottenham

2011-08-08T15:57:00.001+01:00

I was as shocked as anyone to see the rioting and buildings burning in Tottenham in North London overnight when I watched the news on Sunday morning. But in a way I was not surprised.

It all began when a young black man named Mark Duggan was shot dead by police on Thursday. The initial media reports said 'shots were fired' and Mr. Duggan 'died'. This implies, without actually stating, that the deceased may have shot first and this was almost certainly based on information given to the media by police. Subsequent reports stated that a bullet was lodged in an officer's radio, supporting the initial reports that the police were acting in self-defence. However it has since been revealed that the bullet was police issue and therefore not fired by Duggan. So far, no officers have even been suspended.

People in Tottenham were naturally outraged at the way this man had been effectively assassinated. I lived in Wood Green and Enfield for about six years until three years ago and went to the university campus that was then in Tottenham so I know the area well. There is a large African-Carribean community, a large Asian community of which many are muslims, a smaller African community as well as Eastern European, Turkish and Greek Cypriot communities. The BNP described Wood Green in one of its disgusting leaflets as a 'hell-hole' for the simple reason that they cannot stand the way so many communities live together side by side and with a great deal of integration.

The real source of tension is between young, mainly black, mainly men and the police who stop and search and generally harrass them on a daily basis. Rarely did a day go by when I did not see the police harrassing a group of young, black men for little more than being alive. It is also not the first time a black man has been killed by the police. Quite apart from the police shooting of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes in 2005, there have been 400 deaths in police custody over the last 10 years. Kingsley Burrell Brown died after 'dealings' with the police in March this year and Smiley Culture died, also in March after his house was raided by police. Indeed it was the killing of Cynthia Jarrett and resistance to police harrassment under the 'sus laws' that led to the Broadwater Farm riots in 1985. Roger Sylvester, also from Tottenham, died after eight police officers jumped on him and then 'restrained' him in 1999.

After the shooting of Mark Duggan on Thursday a protest march was organised for Saturday to call on the police to provide the family with the questions they needed to be answered. Around 200 people marched peacefully from Broadwater Farm to Tottenham police station. According to an online Socialist Worker article, "As they gathered on the steps of the police station they were promised that a senior police officer would address them and answer their questions. But this didn’t happen." Then, according to an eyewitness, a 16 year old girl approached police lines and was attacked by riot cops with batons. Naturally this was too much for many after the shock of previous days and the humiliation and frustation of previous years. It is important to make clear it was not only black people that were involved in the riot. They were black, white, Asian and Hassidic Jews.

Naturally the media, the police and politicians have been quick to condemn the rioters and to argue that it is nothing to do with the police shooting a young black man at point-blank range. But clearly this is exactly what it is about. That and the police brutality and racism I have already mentioned and the increasing inequality that exists across much of Britain but which is clear to see in urban areas like North London. Indeed some young people from Tottenham have complained at youth projects being closed down and increasing unemployment in the area as a direct result of the policies of the Tory-led government. They are right, Tottenham has the highest unemployment rate in London and eight out of the thirteen youth centres are closing.

As Nick Clegg returns form his holiday to take charge (the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the Home Secretary and the London Mayor were all out of the country on Saturday night) he may have reason to remember what he said to Sky News in April last year. He said there was "a really serious risk" of rioting in the streets should the Tories "slash and burn public services with a thin mandate". Indeed.

This is about the Tories trying to make working people, young people and the unemployed pay for an economic crisis we did not create. The uprising in Tottenham is part of the wave of revolt sweeping round the world: Tunisia, Egypt, Greece, Spain and now Tottenham. The student revolts and the mass strikes are our fightback against austerity and cuts and Tottenham must be seen as part of that. We need to turn this into a revolutionary movement against the ruling class. We need to unite the fights against racism, the police, the bankers, the rich, the Tories and the capitalist system itself. We need to get rid of this rotten government and continue the fight for a better world.

Attacks on Remploy threaten jobs and a vital service

2011-08-04T16:41:00.003+01:00

The coalition government has commissioned a report on the future of Remploy, a company that finds work for disabled people and employs disabled people in its factories. The Sayce Report has said that all 54 Remploy factories should be scrapped and the employment service should be privatised. The government has said it is 'minded to accept' the report and has launched a three month consultation ending on 17 October. If, as seems likely, the government accepts the recommendations of the report, this would not only threaten thousands of jobs but remove a vital service from disabled people both now and in the future.

Remploy began after the Second World War as a way of finding employment for disabled people. The Remploy website says,

"Remploy was established in April 1945 under the 1944 Disabled Persons (Employment) Act introduced by Ernest Bevin, the Minister for Labour. The first factory opened in 1946 at Bridgend in South Wales making furniture and violins. Many of the workers were disabled ex-miners but as the factory network grew, employment was provided for disabled people returning from the Second World War... Remploy's factory network manufactures products in a range of business sectors including school furniture, motor components and chemical, biological and nuclear protection suits for police and military. And latterly, as the UK manufacturing environment has changed, expansion into the service sector led to the creation of such businesses as front/back office outsourcing and electrical appliance re-cycling. Today, we remain one of the UK's largest employers of disabled people."

This is not the first time Remploy factories have come under attack. 29 factories were closed in March 2008. The GMB announced in February that Remploy workers had been granted a strike ballot and predict that implementation of the Sayce Report would lead to 2,500 job losses.

Liz Sayce, author of the report, works for a disabled people's charity, Radar, who are known to be against Remploy as a model for disabled people. The report argues that 'disabled people should be treated as part of the mainstream labour force and should no longer be employed in sheltered workshops' and that 'more people with disabilities could find jobs if existing funding for employment support was spent more efficiently'. Now it may or may not be the case that there are better models for getting disabled people into work, but the fact is this is a red herring. At a time when there are no jobs for able-bodied people and the government is making more public sector employees redundant, the idea that all, or even most, disabled people will find jobs is ludicrous.

The report also makes a big deal of saying that each employee is subsidised by £25,000. This is very misleading. This figure includes a proportion of all the company's 'central costs'. These workers do not get anything like this figure. It is clearly a propoganda point designed to turn public sympathy away from them at a time of 'austerity' when we are all told we have to make 'sacrifices'. The fact is, even from a cold, cynical, financial point of view it is very unlikely that the taxpayer would save any money by throwing these people on the scrapheap. Instead of being productive members of society, these people would be stuck at home on benefits. Without the support of their colleagues thay may also require further social care and health care with all the costs that implies.

This is part of a government agenda to use the economic crisis as an excuse to make a redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich via job losses, privatisation and cuts to the services working class people depend on. As in many other areas the government is picking on some of the most vulnerable people in society. This blog has mentioned before how the cuts are disproportionately affecting disabled people and this is just another example of that. Workers need to stick together and support each other; a victory for one really is a victory for all. If the Remploy workers defeat the government it will make it easier for us to defeat all the other attacks coming from the government.

Colin Grey is the GMB rep at Remploy in Penzance. He spoke about the difference Remploy makes to people's lives. He explained how Remploy works with the local Truro & Penwith College. A lecturer at the college came to them explaining how he has young disabled people at the college that he wanted to experience the world of work. He had tried every employer in the area to take these young people for just one day a week and not one single employer had agreed. In the end he turned to Remploy and they took them.

Colin explained that when the young people first arrived they had to be brought in a minibus. They shuffled in looking anxious and concerned were given work to do. At the end of the day they were taken home again in the minibus. Now, however, they make their own way to work on the bus, they come in laughing and joking, they help each other with their problems and their lives have been transformed. When it came to the end of term, the young people asked if they could still come in to work because they enjoyed it so much. The Remploy manager agreed. The parents have also told them what a difference it has made to their lives. All this is now under threat. If Remploy closes the next group of young people will have nowhere to go.

So what next? Colin Grey said the workers had been planning a campaign. They have a petition that they want people to sign and they want to raise awareness of the issue. They are also planning to set up a facebook group. However, they do not want to peak too soon. They want it to be a slow-burning campaign that builds up to a climax around 17 October when the government will be looking to make a decision.

At the last meeting of Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance on Tuesday night the group agreed unanimously to support the campaign. They passed the following statement of support:

"Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance abhors the proposed closure of Remploy which is an essential facility within our community to support vulnerable people. We support the employees of Remploy in any action they take against this proposal."

Then at the meeting of Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance on Wednesday (last night) the group also agreed unanimous support. They passed the following statement:

"Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance deplores the recommendations of the Sayce report that could lead to the closure of the Remploy factory in Penzance and others throughout the country. We unequivocally support the workers in the factory in their determination to retain their jobs and this valuable service. We pledge to offer whatever support we can provide to help them in their struggle."

Cornwall Disabled People Against Cuts have also been asked to draft a statement.

There is an important principle here which is that the campaign must be led by the Remploy workers themselves. It would be patronising for non-disabled people in an anti-cuts group to assume to tell the Remploy workers how they should run their campaign. Nevertheless, it is clear that when the campaign gets up and running there is already a great deal of support the Remploy workers can tap into.

Watch this space for an update on this campaign.

Unions begin to plan for mass strikes in the autumn

2011-08-02T14:30:00.002+01:00

The 30 June strikes were fantastic. Now a number of unions are preparing for further co-ordinated strikes, most likely in early November.

On 30 June the politicians asked, "how many schools are on strike?" The civil servants replied, "we don't know because so many civil servants are on strike." 95% of Metropolitan Police support staff were on strike. One in eight of those that took strike action also went to a strike rally and everyone at a strike rally was joyous and confident. The London rally was like an anti-capitalist demonstration. What we saw was the beginning of the process of rebuilding the idea of solidarity and not crossing picket lines. This time around it was not just postal workers that refused to cross picket lines but gas, electricity and water workers too.

Not so long ago the TUC was inviting David Cameron to speak at its congress and it looked as though they might not call strikes or a national demonstration at all. In the end they called the demonstration on 26 March and that, along with he inspiring sight of the student demonstrations gave a push to the labour movement. Workers started thinking ' if the students can do it, so can we'. On 26 March Mark Serwotka, General-Secretary of the PCS and others, started saying "today we march together, tomorrow we must strike together". Then, of course, came the marvellous co-ordinated strikes of 750,000 people on 30 June.

Cameron talks about bringing everyone down to a 'baseline'. If the Tories are allowed to get away with it it will be the biggest defeat for the working class in living memory. However, taking the whole class on at once is a very high risk strategy for the Tories and could lead to a generalised fightback.

It is becoming clear that the ruling class are scared. Thatcher's generation had the legacy of ruling class defeat from the 1970s. This generation does not have that. Danny Alexander, for example, is an idiot. By attacking Unison and Unite he has pushed them closer to our side.

However, we also have weaknesses on our side. Firstly, Ed Miliband and 'Blue Labour' are not on our side. Secondly, Brendan Barber of the TUC, the GMB, Unite and Unison do not really want a fight. The GMB even argued for the strikes to be called off. The government's plan is to make minor concessions to split them off from the more radical unions. Thirdly, there is a legacy of weakness within the trade unions that has existed since the defeats of the 1980s. There is still a level of fear about striking. There has been a relatively low level of strikes over the last few years and union membership has roughly halved since the 1970s. There has also been a decrease in the number of workplace shop stewards.

So how will the working class revive? It will probably explode like it did in the 1880s, the 1910s and 1970s. 7000 members have left the NASUWT, while 9000 have joined the NUT and 4000 have joined ATL. This is something we must encourage.

So what next? We must argue for more mass, co-ordinated strike action with more unions involved. Sectional strikes do not play to our strengths. A co-ordinated strike is a political strike which generalises and radicalises people. We need everyone together to beat the government. We need to broaden and deepen the strike movement by linking up struggles, always making strikes political by making it clear that it is against cuts and austerity as well as the specific issue that the strike has been called over.

Last week the government announced its plans for the teachers’, NHS workers’ and civil service workers’ pensions. The plans include hugely increased contributions, uprating at a lower rate for future pensions and an increased pension age. This is a huge attack on millions of workers and a snub to those trade union leaders that have agreed to three months of talks with the government on their pension schemes. The PCS, NUT, UCU and ATL unions are planning a further round of co-ordinated strike action in early November. The FBU may join them, as may the National Association of Head Teachers, the Welsh teachers’ UCAC union and the Association of School and College Leaders. The national leaderships of Unison, Unite and the GMB have opted for talks rather than joining with the other unions in November. However, the way the government is treating them is putting them under pressure to join the action at some point. There will be a huge discussion at the TUC congress in September about the best way to fight.

The radical left in Europe

2011-08-01T18:08:00.001+01:00

Alex Callinicos is an academic, editor of the International Socialism Journal and a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party in Britain. Below is a summary of his speech on the radical left in Europe at the Marxism Festival last month.

The defining issue in Europe today is austerity and resistance to it. The victories for the radical left are mixed. There has been the success of left reformism in Germany with Die Linke as well as anti-capitalist parties in Greece (Antarsya), Ireland (United Left Alliance) and France (New Anti-Capitalist Party). There have been moments of electoral advance in Greece and Ireland but set-backs in Portugal (Left Bloc).

There is an important relationship between the electoral struggle and the broader movement. Electoral struggle makes a difference but its main task is to help build broader movements of struggle outside parliament. The French party is in crisis because it cannot agree on a strategy for the Presidential elections. This is a reidiculous situation when the priority must be the wider struggle.

It is critical that the square movements in Spain and Greece are united with the strike movements or the square movement will burn itself out, as the student movement did in Britain. This fusion will not happen spontaneously but must be worked for.

Movements happen independently of socialists. Our role is not just to build them, or to join them, but to intervene in them in such a way as to ensure they can win.

Judith Orr, editor of Socialist Worker, then made the following comment.

Militant working class action is vital, not just to defeat the ruling class response to the crisis, but to fight back against the fascists, the politics of despair, which is a big issue in Britain, France and Greece.

Gerhard Mosler of Die Linke in Germnay said the strength of the left party in Germany is one reason why there is not a strong fascist presence in Germany.

Alex Callincos finished by saying it is important to fight for the integration of the electoral front with the other fronts. It is only one front and not the most important.

You can hear Alex Callinicos' speech here.

Cut bankers' pay, not public services

2011-07-31T09:55:00.001+01:00

Members of Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance met from 10am on Saturday morning outside the HSBC bank to protest against the recent news that bankers have awarded themselves £14billion in bonuses this year. This is despite receiving £850billion of public money to bail them out since the start of the economic crisis and the massive cuts to public services made to pay for it.

Protesters highlighted the fact that £14billion could pay for 140,000 nurses, 116,000 teachers, 120 new hospitals and 350 schools. Over 100 people signed a letter to the new CEO of Lloyds Bank, Antonio Horta-Osorio, who enjoys a salary of £1.06m, £4.5m in share options in his first year and bonuses of up to 300 per cent, demanding that top bankers pay be cut rather than public services. The outgoing CEO, Eric Daniels, received a £2.5million payout, more than half in bonuses.

Activists gave out more than a thousand leaflets in the form of £14billion notes to illustrate how the money could be better spent. The action was very well received by locals and holiday-makers alike, who expressed anger at the greed of the banks at a time of so-called austerity.

Alana Bates, from Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance said, “The government claim we are ‘all in it together’ but the actions of the banks show that the rich are not affected by the cuts and demonstrate a callous disregard for ordinary people. The government’s own Office for Budget Responsibility has reported that the richest 10% of the population have seen their share of Britain’s total income rise by 6%. This is disgraceful when the poorest and most vulnerable in society are suffering.”

Members of Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance will be meeting at 7pm on 2 August at the Crown pub at the bottom of Bread Street in Penzance to plan their next action. All are welcome.

The fightback against economic crisis in Ireland

2011-07-30T13:31:00.000+01:00

Richard Boyd Barrett is an MP (TD) for the United Left Alliance in Ireland and a member of People Before Profit and the Irish SWP. He spoke at the Marxism Festival at the beginning of the month.

Events in Egypt and Greece are coming here and it is not not a question of if, but when. We have to prepare for that urgently. We are facing a systemic, global crisis of a system that has gone cannibal. Capitalism's answer to the crisis is 'more of the same'. The crisis was caused by capital being concentrated in the hands of of a minority and their answer is more privatisation and concentrating profit in even fewer hands. Every day, their response makes the crisis worse. If you take money out of workers' pockets it will harm the economy.

This government wants to save the NHS by closing hospitals, to save education by robbing schools of the investment they need, to save jobs by sacking people.There will be resistance because people need to survive. Their solution will cause massive suffering and it just cannot work. Ireland's economic situation is even worse than Greece's.

So why are the Irish not fighting back? In 2008/9 they did fight back, there were massive demonstrations and strikes. Then the union leaders wound it down because there was a general election coming and they argued Fine Gael and Labour would reverse the situation. This demoralised people. In the election, Fine Fail were kicked out and within 24 hours Fine Gael had gone back on all its promises.

Next week [this was said on 3 July - Left Turn] the EU and IMF will arrive in Ireland demanding more cuts and austerity. As these attacks hit people they will have to resist because they cannot pay their bills. The United Left Alliance has been very successful and has propelled radical left ideas into the mainstream in Ireland. There are ten left-wingers against the cuts now in the Irish Parliament and this will help the movement outside parliament. However, speeches do not change the world, only mass resistance will.

You can hear Richard Boyd Barrett's speech here.

The anti-capitalist left in Greece

2011-07-29T09:55:00.000+01:00

Nikos Lountos is a writer and activist with the Socialist Workers Party in Greece and the anti-capitalist organisation Antarsya. He spoke on the anti-capitalist left in Greece at the Marxism Festival at the beginning of the month. This is what he said.

The first signs of working class resistance to to the crisis in Greece began about a year ago. We knew we must connect with people becoming radicalised by the movement. On one day, two million people either demonstrated, struck or occupied a square [the population of Greece is around 11 million - Left Turn]. We had Tahrir-style public occupations, working class strikes and workplace occupations. Public demonstrations give confidence to workers and strikes politicise those people involved. The anti-capitalist left has been crucial in calling for the government to default on its loans, to nationalise the banks and in occupying to save jobs.

Greece has two left parties in parliament, one of which is the Communist Party. Although it is a hard Stalinist party it has been crucial. The media tries to play the square movement off against the workers' movement, with some success as the Communist Party is hostile to the squares movement. However, the anti-capitalist left has stopped this division by being part of both movements. When the police tried to beat the occupiers out of the square it was people with the banners of the anti-capitalist left that went back in.

The movement politicises people and pushes more people towards the ideas of the left. In recent elections 20 councillors were elected for Antarsya.

In 2011 there were many fascist attacks on migrants in Greece and some argued the movement should not get involved. This is why it is so important for revolutionaries to be independent; we brought migrants to our demonstrations and defended them.

Discussions in the movements across Europe are homogenising. The events in the Middle East and North Africa have taught us not to give in to 'realism' in times of crisis. The challenge is to put the ideas of revolution into practice.

You can watch Nikos Lountos' speech here.

Resistance to austerity in Spain

2011-07-28T13:46:00.000+01:00

Jesus Castillo, an activivst from the Andalucian Workers Union and the Spanish sister party of the SWP, En Lucha, spoke at the Marxism Festival at the begining of the month. Below is a summary of what he said.

Revolutionary organisation collapsed in Spain in the 1980s leaving a small and divided left. The Social Democrat government attack the working class, privatising sevices and cutting public sector workers' pay. This is designed to help the economic crisis but in fact it is deepening it. There is currently 50% youth unemployment and 20% of the poplulation live in poverty.

In June there was a public sector strike in Spain, following a general strike in September last year. The trade union bureaucrats did not want more strikes, they wanted 'social peace'.

Everyone was surprised at the size of the demonstrations on 15 May that were called by a small, reformist group on the internet. In February, 7 people demonstrated in Seville. On 15 May, 5000 people demonstrated. Everything has now changed. People want the rich to pay for the crisis. The movement in Spain has been inspired by the revolts in France and Greece and the student movements in Britain and Italy. More than 100 squares were occupied.

Then at the beginning of June the movement moved from the squares to neighbourhood assemblies, organising protests and stopping evictions. People then began calling for another general strike.

The presidential elections are coming up and it looks like the right will get elected. If this happens, the movement for a general strike will get stronger. Some people are starting to talk about a Spanish revolution because no-one trusts the politicians any more.

We need to co-ordinate our fights internationally; this is the key for the future.

People in Spain have realised that they are not living in a democracy. One million people marched in Spain and it was not even mentioned in the rest of the European press. They might be able to ignore a wave, but not a tsunami, so lets organise a revolutionary tsunami.

You can watch Jesus Castillo's speech here.

People with disabilities in Cornwall fight back against the cuts

2011-07-27T20:04:00.001+01:00

The cuts, job losses and privatisation coming from the Tory-led government affect all of us. The government is attacking all sections of the working class, much of the middle class and even the army and police, all at the same time. Therefore it makes sense for us to unite the resistance to those attacks. The 26 March demonstration organised by the TUC and the 30 June co-ordinated strikes are just the beginning of what will become a mass movement against cuts. There will be protests at the conferences of the Lib Dems in September and the Tories in October and the unions are moving towards a further strike in November.

The cuts affect us all. But they disproportionately affect women, people from black and ethnic minorities and most of all people with disabilities.

If the government proposals come to fruition, non-means tested benefits like Incapacity Benefit will be abolished from April 2012 and the Disability Living Allowance will be abolished from 2013. There is already a system of strict policing of all benefit claims by privatised medical services known as Atos Healthcare, who view all disabled people as potential criminals. People with disabilities have been further hit by cuts to support services from local authorities, cuts to housing provision and the privatisation of the NHS.

As a recent article by Iain Ferguson in the International Socialism Journal points out: "Of the £80 billion a year cut from public spending since last June, £18 billion directly affects welfare, the biggest cut since the 1920s". He goes on,

"there are the planned cuts in welfare benefits, again specifically targeted at the poorest and most vulnerable. The biggest losers here will be people with disabilities. Currently 2.6 million people claim incapacity benefit, 40 percent of them on account of mental health problems. The government intends to move 1.5 million of them onto the new Employment Support Allowance (ESA), paid at a much lower rate, via a test of their capacity to work. If after a year on ESA they have still not found work, despite the “assistance” provided by private agencies such as the hated Atos Healthcare to which the government has outsourced this task, they will be moved onto Jobseeker’s Allowance of £65 a week. The coalition’s claim that this cut is justified by the increase in the number of people wrongly claiming disability benefits is refuted by research published in January 2011 by Richard Berthoud, a leading authority on benefits and welfare. According to Berthoud, “The general assumption that these are people with trivial conditions is not supported by the evidence. It is people with more severely disadvantaging conditions that have been more affected by the trend”."

Too many people with disabilities, it seems, are living in fear of coalition government cuts which threaten their independence, care and benefits.

If this were not enough people with disabilities are subjected to daily attacks in the media. Government ministers try to smear disabled people claiming their rights as welfare cheats or drug addicts.

Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC) was formed by a group of disabled people after the mass protests against cuts in Birmingham on 3 October 2010. 3 October saw the first mass protest against the austerity cuts and their impact on people with disabilities. It was known as 'The Disabled Peoples’ Protest'. The DPAC co-founders are the original Disabled Peoples’ Protest organisers.
DPAC describes itself as being,

"for everyone who believes that disabled people should have full human rights and equality. It is for everyone that refuses to accept that any country can destroy the lives of people just because they are or become disabled or sick. It is for everyone against government austerity measures which target the poor while leaving the wealthy unscathed. It is for everyone who refuses to stay silent about the injustices delivered by wealthy politicians on ordinary people and their lives."

A new group is meeting tonight for the first time in Truro, Cornwall. Cornwall DPAC are meeting at the Railway Club, next to Truro Railway Station tonight (Wednesday 27 July) at 6:30pm. There literature states,

"this group is for disabled people, their families, friends and carers that are affected in any way whatsoever by the government’s austerity cuts. If you would like a chance to show support for the disabled community and discover how the cuts will affect some of the more vulnerable members of society, then please come and say hello, and help our voice to be heard."

This is a very welcome development. It is vital that we mobilise every constituency against the cuts and unite them in a mass movement against this nasty yet weak Tory-led coalition government. This task is as important, if not more so, in a place like Cornwall in which many people already feel isolated and neglected, than anywhere. Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance supports Cornwall Disabled People Against Cuts and the two groups will, no doubt, be working together and with the unions over the coming months and years.

For more information, contact: cantical@gmx.co.uk

How can we beat the Con-Dems? (part two)

2011-07-26T18:25:00.001+01:00

Kevin Courtney, Deputy General-Secretary of the NUT, spoke at a meeting at the Marxism Festival a few weeks ago. See here for a summary of what he said. He was followed by Laura Miles from the National Executive Committee of the UCU and secretary of UCU Left. Her contribution is summarised below.

The key question facing us at the moment is about beating the Tories and after the strikes on 30 June this is really possible. 30 June has changed the political landscape. The organised working class is back. Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, tried to get mums to keep schools open and it failed miserably.

A lot has happened in a short space of time. Following on from the series of protests across the country last year at council buildings when they passed 'cuts budgets' came the UCU/NUS demonstration on 10 November 2010. There were around 50,000 people on the march and a brilliant turnout at the protest at Tory Party headquarters in Millbank. This was then followed by a lobby of parliament and demonstration on 9 December. After that there were demonstrations in Manchester and London called by the UCU and the Education Activist Network. On 26 March of this year there was the demonstration in London organised by the TUC and now we have had co-ordinated strikes on 30 June.

This is not the end, however, we have a long way to go before we beat the Con-Dems and stop the cuts. It is not helped by 'Ed Milliscab' saying we were wrong to go on strike and that we were falling into the government's trap! On 18 September there will be a protest at the Liberal Democrat Conference in Birmingham and on 2 October there will be a protest at the Tory Party Conference in Manchester. We should mobilise people to attend those demonstrations, push our unions to 'name the day' of the next wave of strike action and argue for the slogan 'walk out, stay out'. We need to set-up local organising groups that involve anti-cuts groups and trade union branches.

There is everything to play for. There was almost unanimous support for a general strike at the UCU Conference. The potential prize for us is not a repeat of 30 June but bringing out also GMB, Unison and Unite and using this as a springboard for a general strike.

Laura Miles was followed by Caroline Johnson, Assisstant Branch Secretary of Birmingham Unison, whose branch were on strike on 30 June. She summed up her contribution as follows: We need leaders in every workplace. We need to rebuild working class organisation. We need reps in every workplace. Activists should get contact details from every picket line and use them to build networks of activists that can push the struggle forward.

There was then a series of contributions from the floor:
The first speaker responded to Kevin Courtney by saying that for most people it is not just about pensions but about cuts too. When Mary Bousted, General-Secretary of the ATL union attacked Ed Milliband and bankers at the Unite the Resistance rally in London, she got the biggest round of applause of the night.

Karen Reissman, a nurse and victimised trade unionist said do not think that Unison and other unions are simply rubbish and will not strike. Unison did not want to call a demonstration on 26 March but once they did they mobilised for it and got the biggest turnout of any union. Dave Prentis may not mean what he says, when he makes grand speeches about the greatest wave of strike action since the general strike of 1926, but he is creating a space where activists can make it hard for him to back down.

How can we beat the Con-Dems? (part one)

2011-07-25T14:13:00.006+01:00

Kevin Courtney, Deputy General-Secretary of the NUT, spoke at a meeting at the Marxism Festival a few weeks ago. Below is a summary of what he said.

The Con-Dem government have flawed economic policies: they are destroying the welfare state and cutting jobs when they should be investing and creating jobs to help the economy grow. But the key question is 'how do we stop the cuts, job losses and privatisation?', not 'How do we stop the Con-Dems?' because this might lead people to think voting Labour is the answer. Also, we must start from were people are at, and for most people, that is concern about their pay, pensions and so on.

We need to answer some specific questions around the issue of pensions such as 'Are public sector pensions unaffordable?' The 30 June strike has begun to answer qustions like this. Cameron said there is a form of pension 'apartheid' and uses this to remove people's rights. This is disgraceful. Actually the fight against apartheid in South Africa was about improving people's rights. Also, we must never forget that the Tories treated Mandela as a pariah and wore t-shirts at Henly Regatta saying 'Hang Nelson Mandela'.

Mass mobilisation really matters. More than 100,000 people were involved with demonstrations on 30 June and the teaching strikes alone were twice as big as in 2008. ACT, the secondary headteachers union are looking to ballot their members as well as the National Association of Head Teachers.

The Tories' policy is to freeze pay while inflation rises and increase pension contributions taking 13% out of six million public servants' spending power. This does not help the economy at all.

Sir Philip Green paid himself £1.2 billion in dividends in 2005. He then gave it all to his wife and she paid no tax because she is not registered as resident in Britain for tax purposes. He has now become a 'cuts adviser' for the government. We (the workers) are all in it together, but not with George Osborne.

See also 'How can we beat the Con-Dems? (part two)', a response to Kevin Courtney.

Make the bankers pay!

2011-07-22T17:50:00.000+01:00

Banks have been in the press this week because the Office for National Statistics have revealed that bankers have received £14bn in bonuses this year. This is a fact that should and will make people very angry.

At a time when the NHS and many of our schools are being privatised, people are facing pay freezes, redundancy or being moved on to lower benefits or off benefits altogether and there are cuts to almost every public service, this is an utter scandal. Ordinary working people are clearly being made to pay for the crisis caused by the banks, while the bankers continue to rake in the money. "We" are not "all in it together".

Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance are planning a campaign to highlight this obscenity. They will use the figure of £14 billion as a starting point for a leaflet, which will be a bank note with information on bankers' bonuses and tax evasion on one side. On the other will be the ‘alternative’ which will be how many nurses, teachers, fire engines, care homes, schools etc we could pay for with the £14 billion which has just been given to bankers.

On 30 July members and supporters of Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance will meet outside the HSBC bank at the bottom of Causeway Head in Penzance at 10am. They will give out ‘money’ (leaflets) from bags to passing people. They will hold up a banner to highlight the issue. They will then move down the street stopping outside Lloyds, Santander and Barclays. Other groups and individuals are welcome to join in.

I wish you Egypt

2011-07-21T13:58:00.000+01:00

Omar Barghouti, from the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) spoke to a meeting at the Marxism Festival recently. Below is a summary of his speech. Omar Barghouti is a Palestinian human rights activist, former resident of Egypt, and author of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS): The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights (Haymarket Books, 2011).

"Besiege the besiegers, there is no other way". Palestinians saw the Arab Spring as the beginning of the end of western fetters on the region. Arabs had been seen as "outside history" by Thomas Friedman and others until the revolutions that spread across the region. There is talk of 'normalisation' but there can be no 'normalisation' with Israel all the while it is a Zionist state. Palestinians were inspired by the arab revolutions. Suddenly victory in their own struggle seemed possible again. The Nakba protests, when hundreds of Palestinian refugees in Syria crossed the Golan Heights, were a direct result of the arab revolutions. US President Obama said he stood with an arab peddler. Well yes he did, but only after he had already won.

I Wish You Egypt: An open letter to people of conscience in the West
by Omar Barghouti

I wish you Egypt!

I wish you empowerment to resist; to fight for social and economic justice; to win your real freedom and equal rights.

I wish you the will and skill to break out of your carefully concealed prison walls. See, in our part of the world, prison walls and thick inviolable doors are all too overt, obvious, over-bearing, choking; this is why we remain restive, rebellious, agitated, and always in preparation for our day of freedom, of light, when we gather a critical mass of people power enough to cross all the hitherto categorical red lines. We can then smash the thick, cold ugly, rusty chains that have incarcerated our minds and bodies for all our lives like the overpowering stench of a rotting corpse in our claustrophobic prison cell.

Your prison cells, however, are quite different. The walls are well hidden lest they evoke your will to resist. There is no door to your prison cell, you may roam about "freely," never recognizing the much larger prison you are still confined to.

I wish you Egypt so you can decolonize your minds, for only then can you envision real liberty, real justice, real equality, and real dignity.

I wish you Egypt so you can tear apart the sheet with the multiple-choice question, "what do you want?", for all the answers you are given are dead wrong. Your only choice there seems to be between evil and a lesser one.

I wish you Egypt so you can, like the Tunisians, the Egyptians, the Libyans, the Bahrainis, the Yemenis, and certainly the Palestinians, shout "No! We do not want to select the least wrong answer. We want another choice altogether that is not on your damned list." Given the choice between slavery and death, we unequivocally opt for freedom and dignified life, no slavery, and no death.

I wish you Egypt so you can collectively, democratically, and responsibly re-build your societies; to reset the rules so as to serve the people, not savage capital and its banking arm; to end racism and all sorts of discrimination; to look after and be in harmony with the environment; to cut wars and war crimes, not jobs, benefits and public services; to invest in education and healthcare, not in fossil fuel and weapons research; to overthrow the repressive, tyrannical rule of multinationals; and to get the hell out of Afghanistan, Iraq, and everywhere else where under the guise of "spreading democracy" your self-righteous crusades have spread social and cultural disintegration, abject poverty and utter hopelessness.

I wish you Egypt so you can fulfill your countries' legal and moral obligations to help rebuild the ravished, de-developed economies and societies of your former, or current, colonies, so that their young men can find their own homelands viable, livable and lovable again, instead of risking death, or worse, on the high seas to reach your mirage-washed shores, giving up loved ones and a place they once called home. You see, they're "here" because you were there... and we all know what you did there!

I wish you Egypt so you can rekindle the spirit of the South African anti-apartheid struggle by holding Israel accountable to international law and universal principles of human rights, by adopting boycott, divestment and sanctions, called for by an overwhelming majority in Palestinian civil society. There is no more effective, non-violent way to end Israel's occupation, racial discrimination and decades-old denial of the UN-sanctioned right of Palestinian refugees to return.

Our oppression and yours are deeply interrelated and intertwined, it is never a zero-sum game! Our joint struggle for universal rights and freedoms is not merely a self gratifying slogan that we raise; rather, it is a fight for true emancipation and self determination, an idea whose time has vociferously arrived.

After Egypt, it is our time. It is time for Palestinian freedom and justice. It is time for all the people of this world, particularly the most exploited and downtrodden, to reassert our common humanity and reclaim control over our common destiny.

I wish you Egypt!

The Egyptian Revolution

2011-07-20T20:20:00.000+01:00

Wassim Wagdy is an Egyptian SWP member based in London. He went to Egypt when the revolution began and recently spoke at the Marxism Festival in London about his experiences. Below is a summary of what he said.

News of the Egyptian Revolution spread around the world instantaneously. The authorities In China had to block the word 'Egypt' from their search engines in case people in China learned too much about what was happening in Egypt and tried to copy them.

In strikes and on demonstrations people ask for things or even make demands but in a revolution people order things. The famous slogan that spread from Tunisia to Egypt and onwards could also be translated as "It is the people's will to bring down the regime".

In Tahrir Square people changed, "I have seen the seeds of a new humanity". The army wanted to encroach a few metres on the camp in Tahrir Square. Immediately people jumped in front of tanks and stopped them. They took turns for days and had long political discussions under tanks.

Twenty four hours a day people discussed revolutionary politics and what will happen after victory, for example to the police. One said, "they must stand in a line so people can refuse whoever they like". Another replied, "then we won't have any police". Then a third said "why can't the revolutionary committees become the police of the revolution?"

The regime threw everything at the people and the people won. That night was the first night that people were not tortured. Then the army came and thousands became millions. The people said "this square, this city, this land is ours". All the tanks wore the slogan, "down with the government".

"The people and the army are one hand", beacame the slogan. This meant the army could not fire on the people. After all, it is a conscript army of many poor people.

On 8 April, there were around twenty young uniformed officers in the square. The people in Tahrir Square protected the young officers and chanted, "down with the military council".

Then came the strike wave. The regime called them selfish. The strikers were calling for the minimum wage for all, more workers' control of production, re-nationaisation, better healthcare for all and better pay for health workers.

The military now want a "return to normality". But there is now a new normality. The revolution is deepening every day but opponents of the revolution are also standing together. The revolution cannot stand still, it must go forward or back. The regime have scapegoated Mubarak, other politicians and now business leaders.

We need a revolutionary party to lead the workers to a better human society for the whole world.

A number of people made comments after Wassim had finished speaking.

Judith Orr, editor of Socialist Worker, made the point that the 30 June strikes in Britain would not have been as good as they were without the revolution in Egypt. She spoke about how the most oppressed people in society felt able to take part in the revolution: street kids, women, young people. She also called on the British government to stop bombing Libya and to let the people make their own revolution. "You don't bomb civilians to protect civilians", she said.

Sameh Naguib, an Egyptian activist and academic, said the new slogan today in Tahrir Square is "down with the field-marshall".

Richard Boyd Barrett, an activist who was elected to the Irish Parliament in February, said capitalism and imperialism has turned cannibal. We destroy the health service in order to save it, we throw people out of work in order to save jobs. Five candidates from the newly-formed United Left Alliance were elected in February in Ireland. The Irish government are hysterically saying "we are not Greece, we are not Egypt", but people do make the connections. We must "lay siege to the siege".

Socialist Worker journalist Simon Assaf said for too long arabs have been described as backward and sectarian, but throughout the revolutions people have fought against sectarianism with chants such as, "christian, muslim, one hand".

The pamphlet 'The Egyptian Revolution' by Sameh Naguib is available from Bookmarks the Socialist Bookshop for just £3.

Bosses use jargon to mask their own failings

2011-07-20T12:11:00.000+01:00

Have you ever noticed how bosses use jargon to both mask their failings and highlight yours?

The Delivery Office Manager of a Royal Mail Delivery Office was asked why a sorting frame that he had re-organised had mail slots on the very top of the frame above head height contrary to health and safety procedures.

His response? "I am aware that it is non-compliant but it is D-Day and I had to act".

Translation: My boss insists I re-organise the frames by today but I have not taken, or do not have, the time to do the job properly, so you have to suffer because of my/my boss's incompetence.

When asked why, on another frame, addresses which had been in the correct order were now in the wrong order, the same manager replied, "we are having problems with sequencing".

Translation: I messed it up and put them in the wrong order. Sorry about that.

Cameron, News International and the Met: how deep is the rabbit hole?

2011-07-19T16:42:00.000+01:00

The phone hacking scandal is fast reaching epic proportions. After resigning as head of News International in Britain on Friday, Rebekah Brooks was arrested 'by appointment' by the police on Sunday. She was later released.

This was followed by the resignations of first Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson on Sunday and then Assisstant Commissioner John Yates on Monday. In his resignation speech, Stephenson made clear his anger at being criticised by Cameron for doing exactly what Cameron had himself done. The Metropolitan Police employed Neil Wallis, a former News of the World journalist, to improve their public relations. Wallis was arrested last Thursday. Cameron employed Andy Coulson, editor of the News of the World at the time of the phone hacking, as his Director of Communications after Coulson had resigned from the News of the World. Coulson subsequently resigned from that post too. It has been claimed by a number of journalists that Cameron was warned of Coulson's involvement in the scandal. Coulson was arrested on Friday 8 July.

Also on Monday the former News of the World journalist Shaun Hoare, who first made allegations of phone hacking against his former boss Andy Coulson, was found dead at his home in Watford. Police described his death as 'unexplained but not suspicious'. Hoare first told the New York Times that Coulson not only knew about the hacking but actively encouraged it. Only last week, Hoare told the New York Times that reporters could use police technology to locate people using their mobile phones. Hoare also said to the Guardian last week, "There's more to come. This is not going to go away." Of course his death at this time could be a coincidence but there are other possibilities. There are similarities between this case and the death of Dr. David Kelly who was due to reveal evidence about how the decision was made to take the country to war with Iraq in 2003.

Today reports have surfaced that Rebekah Brooks' husband's laptop had been found in a bin in a car park. He claimed he must have been busy and left the laptop.

Also today Rupert Murdoch and his son, James are appearing before the Home Affairs Select Committee. When answering questions, Rupert Murdoch appeared unable or unwilling to recall anything to do with the details of events leading to the scandal becoming public. Rebekah Brooks is due to give evidence later today.

This scandal has revealed the close relationships that exist between the police, the government and the media. The Metropolitan Police have recieved payments from the News of the World and Cameron has had countless meetings with Brooks and the Murdochs. If Cameron is found to have had knowledge of illegal activities ocurring at the News of the World, his position would seem untenable. The bookmaker Paddy Power are giving odds of 7/1 that Cameron will not last the year. Events are moving at an incredibly fast pace and one thing is for certain, this is not over yet.

"The people want to bring down the regime"

2011-07-19T14:28:00.000+01:00

Mohammed Tonsi, a participant in the Tunisian Revolution addressed a meeting at the Marxism Festival in London recently. Here is a summary of what he said.

"The people want to bring down the regime". This slogan began in Sidi Bouzid in Tunisia but it has been taken up by people fighting their governments across the region: in Egypt, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.

There was a general strike in Tunisia on 14 January. It was this that finally brought down Ben Ali. He was tricked by the army into going to Saudi Arabia by plane. The ruling class then tried to keep the ruling party in place.

So the new slogan was "Down with the torture of the people, down with the ruling party". Eight hours later another President was gone. The ruling party then formed 75% of the government. The protests continued until this government also fell. The next government had just 25% members of the ruling party. The protests still continued until this government fell. The next government had no-one from the old ruling party in it at all.

When Mubarak in Egypt fell, the people of Tunisia chanted, "The people want the liberation of Palestine".

Plans for further co-ordinated strikes laid in Cornwall

2011-07-17T14:06:00.000+01:00

Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance met on Wednesday 13 July to discuss the way forward for the anti-cuts and trade union movements in Cornwall after the 30 June strikes, the march and the rally on Lemon Quay in Cornwall.

Trudy Winterburn, branch secretary of the Cornwall, Devon and Somerset branch of the PCS spoke about how around 75% of workers in the relevant civil service workplaces are in the PCS union and yet 80% of workers went on strike on 30 June. Clearly this means some of those not in the union nevertheless went on strike. She also told the meeting that there were picket lines in most places and a very high turnout on the march and rally.

The meeting agreed that it was the best action the group has organised so far and has given the group a greater respect and credibility within the trade union movement in Cornwall.

There was then a dicussion about a resolution committing Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance to campaign within the trade union movement to get more unions involved with co-ordinated strike action, to get as many unions as possible to 'name the day' of the next one day general strike and to begin building the action now. It also resolved to get strikers to speak at union branch meetings of unions that have not yet taken strike action. The text of the motion is below.

This meeting notes:

1. The Con-Dem government is determined to slash pensions, cut jobs and break up and privatise the welfare state.

2. There has been a growing tide of resistance to the government. Last year tens of thousands of students marched and occupied their colleges against education cuts. That was followed by the biggest trade union demonstration the country has ever seen on 26 March.

3. The magnificent co-ordinated strikes on 30 June by members of the ATL, NUT, PCS and UCU.

4. Dave Prentis, the leader of Britain’s biggest union, Unison, argued for long-term, targeted industrial action which would “break the pay freeze, stop the jobs cull and send the coalition packing”.

5. Some unions are talking about calling a further one-day co-ordinated strike in the autumn.

This meeting believes:

1. The June 30 strikes were a major step forward for the trade union movement but we are going to need more and bigger strikes if we are going to beat the government’s cuts.

2. It is imperative that every union is encouraged to join the next joint action.

3. That although sectional and rolling strikes can have a place in the struggles against the cuts, our union movement is at its most powerful when we are marching and striking together.

This meeting resolves:

1. To campaign to get trade unions in Cornwall, starting with our affiliates, to support the call for a one day strike or appropriate industrial action in the autumn, to the name the day as soon as possible and to begin the process of campaigning and building for it now, starting with passing this motion at the next branch meeting or other appropriate meeting.

2. To campaign for trade unionists that were on strike on 30 June to be invited to meetings of unions that were not on strike to help spread solidarity and confidence.

There was a discussion about the protest called by Right to Work outside the Tory Party Conference on 2 October in Manchester. The question was raised as to whether the group might be able to send a coach of people from Cornwall with funding from the trade unions. Many felt this was an important protest for the group to get involved in although some had concerns that the cost of the coach might be better spent on local activity given the difficult state of the group's finances. Others felt that sending people to the demonstration might help to stimulate local activity. No definite decision was reached but Trudy agreed to contact the PCS, NUT and other trade unions about funding.

Finally there was a discussion about the founding meeting of Cornwall Disabled People Against Cuts scheduled for 27 July. It was agreed that organisers would not be too prescriptive but allow the attendees to decide how the group should operate and what should be its priorities. A call would go out to members to see if anyone that has any interest in disabilty issues might like to attend.

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (part two)

2011-07-14T18:29:00.001+01:00

Ghada Karmi, a Palestinian activist, writer and academic, spoke at the same meeting as Ilan Pappe. Below is a summary of what she said.

Ghada Karmi was herself ethnically cleansed in 1948, the year of the Palestinian Nakba, or catastrophe. Prior to 1948, Palestinians simply did not understand why the Zionist settlers thought it acceptable or just that they could arrive with a collective fantasy that the Palestinians' land should belong to these small numbers of people from Lithuania, Poland and so on. It just did not make any sense to them. They also could not understand why the British government supported the Zionists. Nevertheless Palestinians were initially very tolerant and helpful.

Palestinians only really began to understand the dangers the Zionist presence posed to them in the 1930s. There was a wave of protests but these were supressed by the British occupiers.

In 1948 Palestinians were evicted, displaced and killed in frighteningly large numbers. Whole towns were razed and place names were changed. Today street names or place names in Jerusalem and elsewhere might appear to be in both Hebrew and Arabic and in a sense they are. But it is actually simply the Hebrew name written in Hebrew and Arabic scripts.The zionists even appropriated the culture of Palestine. Today people talk about Israeli humus. But foods such as humus and falafel are Palestinian.

To this day, Palestinians cannot understand why Israel enjoys so much western support even after the massacres in Gaza and on the 'freedom flotilla'.

The movement in Britain must target this western support.

Jonathan Neale, an American activist and writer based in Britain, commented that if the arab working class get hold of the region's oil then the US may drop its support for Israel very quickly. There is then the possibility, after a short war, of a single state with jews and arabs living together in a democratic state.

John Rose, a British jewish activist, writer and academic commented that Ron Prosser, Israel's ambassador to Britain has complained recently that every time he speaks at a university in Britain he is confronted by an anti-Israel demonstration. This shows that public opinion in Britain is changing for the better.

Ghada Karmi closed by saying that there is a climate of fear and threat of intimidation around speaking out about Palestine. Nevertheless everyone should campaign, join a boycott group, start a group, contact their MP. The world will never be the same again after the arab revolutions and it is hopeful for the situation in Palestine but Israel should never be underestimated.

To buy 'Married to Another Man: Israel, the Palestinians, and the One State' or 'In Search of Fatima' by Ghada Karmi, 'Voices from the West Bank' by Chris Jones and Michael Lavalette or 'The Myths of Zionism' by John Rose see the Bookmarks website.

The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (part one)

2011-07-13T16:16:00.004+01:00

At a recent meeting in London the Israeli writer and academic Ilan Pappe, whose books include 'The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine' and 'A History of Modern Palestine' spoke about the continuing suffering of the Palestinian people and the prospects for change in the light of the revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa. Below is a summary of his speech.

There has been no signicicant change in the suffering of the Palestinians as a result of the 'Arab Spring'. However, the arab revolutions may change the facts on the ground. Will there be a Palestinian Revolution this year? Probably not, but then a lot of things have happened this year that were unexpected.

Ethnic cleansing is a strategy; it is ideological. It is more than just a policy for Zionists. Israel is sometimes described as a settler-colonialist state and sometimes as an apartheid state. Is Israel settler-colonialist? Yes, Zionism began as a colonialist movement but this does not explain Israel's policy towards Gaza today. Is Israel an apartheid state? In some ways it is but it does not attempt to exploit Palestinians in the same way that the white South African government exploited black South Africans. Rather Israel tries to exterminate Palestinians.

Zionism has elements that are unique to it. It does not just carry out ethnic cleansing, but a unique Zionist ethnic cleansing. Zionism tries to convince Israelis and the world that Palestine has an immigrant population, that is alien and strange. Furthermore it tries to pretend that Palestinians are usurpers of the land. This was clearly impossible for them between the founding of Zionism in 1882 and the declaration of the 'state of Israel' in 1948. Zionists knew very well that Palestine was not a 'land without people'. Up to 1937/8 this was an abstract concept. However, the rise of fascism in Europe and the realisation of the dangers of Zionism to Palestinians led to this being implemented as an actual policy.

In 1937 Zionists debated how to take as much land as possible with as few Palestinians as possible. In 1940 Zionists realised that the British would not achieve this for them so they began to plan the ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

Jewish supremacy, exclusivity and control dominates every area of society including the Communist Party. There are actually Communist Zionists with a lot of 'internalised existential angst'.

The 'Peace Process' is simply a cover to enable the ethnic cleansing to continue without too much criticism from other countries and this continues to this day. The ethnic cleansing continues in Hebron, Nazareth, Wadi Ara and other places.

The revolutions in the region give hope that things may change but it is still a very difficult situation. The best thing that people in the west can do is to support campaigns for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). They can also try to put pressure on their own governments to stop supporting Israel. People should challenge Israeli propaganda that claims Israel is a normal liberal democracy or that there can be a two-state solution. Israel must be countered with propaganda, activism and protest in the west. Secular and socialist forces should find a modern day solution to modern day problems. There is no excuse for ignorance in 2011.

To read books by Ilan Pappe visit the website of Bookmarks the Socialist Bookshop here. See also The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (part two) .

Where next after 30 June strikes? Can we get a general strike in Britain?

2011-07-12T12:56:00.001+01:00

750,000 public sector workers went on strike on 30 June in the biggest mass strike in Britain for a generation. But what comes next? What is the next step? Is a general strike like has been seen in Greece and Spain possible in Britain? And if so, how do we get there?

Dave Prentis, general-secretary of the Unison union and Len McCluskey, general-secretary of Unite, the two biggest trade unions in Britain are talking about the biggest wave of strikes for eighty years (the last general strike in Britain was in 1926). But the question remains, is this just rhetoric? The fact is, many members of those unions wanted to be on strike on 30 June and definitely want to be involved in the next wave of strikes. The leaders of those unions cannot talk about mass action and then not be seen to make it happen. Of course it is important that the rank-and-file members of the unions put pressure on their leaders too.

So far an unprecedented six unions have passed motions calling for a general strike at their national conferences. The 30 June proves that the Tories are losing the argument that strikes are unnecessary or premature. Everyone in the trade union movement is now talking about striking together.

It is important to remember that every strike builds later co-ordinated strikes. We should support every strike no matter how local. The 26 March demonstration raised the idea of "we marched together, now we must strike together" and the slogan that was used was "call a general strike". The slogan may have seemed abstract or unachievable at the time but just three months later it seems more than likely. Now we must demand that the unions 'name the day' of the next co-ordinated strikes so we can get in behind them as quickly as possible. If they call a day (and some Unison activists have mentioned 4 October as a possibility), our slogan should be "all out, stay out".

Some people will say this is overly ambitious but we must understand that things are very different in Britain now than they have been for years. Despite what we are told Britain has a long and radical tradition of strikes. The first general strike anywhere in the world took place in Britain in 1842 involving nearly half a million workers.Then there was the Chartists, the Great Unrest and the General Strike of 1926. This may have failed but that is because despite making very left-wing speeches, the trade union leaders did not prepare for the coming battle. Despite this the strikes were fantastically solid, there were action committees and the defence groups actually beat the police off the streets! But ultimately the bureaucrats, even very left-wing ones, could not break with reformism. Also the Communist Party failed to put the argument for rank-and-file action if the leaders let the movement down. In the 1970s, strikes were known as the 'British disease'.

It is also important to remember that the movements in France and Greece also took a long time to get to where they are now. At first the protests were not very good and the left and the rank-and-file had to argue hard for co-ordinated strike action.

In Britain, the idea of class organisation is back. So we must use both official channels and unofficial ones to push union leaders to 'name the day'. We must put pressure on those unions that are stalling, especially Unison and Unite. We must also argue for big mobilisations for the protests at the Lib Dem and Tory Party Conferences in Birmingham and Manchester at the end of September and the beginning of October. Activists must take the initiative and call demonstrations when the trade union leaders do not. We must raise the slogan "all out together, stay out together".

30 June: stories and experiences

2011-07-11T15:17:00.000+01:00

At a recent meeting to discuss the strikes and rallies across Britain on 30 June lots of people had great stories to tell. Here are just a few of them:

At Birmingham Council there were ninety pickets on the picket line. Members of other trade unions refused to cross the picket, thus taking illegal, unofficial strike action. In one small workplace in Birmingham there was just one worker on strike that formed a picket 'line' with a branch officer. The first person to come along cheered when he saw the picket line and told them that he had worked there for 25 years and had never been on strike. This was his last day and he would be spending it on strike. As the morning progressed every other worker one by one refused to cross the picket line. The age of solidarity is back. This shows how things have changed in Britain. We need to link workplaces together and bring back flying pickets.

The rank-and-file membership of the British Medical Association (BMA), not usually known for their radicalism, have overthrown the leadership's attempts to end their opposition to the Health and Social Care Bill. The BMA voted for strike action over pensions with 78% in favour.

There were 30,000 strikers at a demonstration in London on 30 June but strangely there were no mounted police. Was this a change in strategy from the Metropolitan Police? No, the workers that prepare the horses for the police to use refused to do so out of solidarity with those on strike.

The Prospect civil service union, who are generally much more conservative than the PCS, recently passed a motion at their conference unanimously calling on the union to call co-ordinated strike action with the PCS.

There are many lessons from all of this, one being that workers are beginning to feel the weight of thirty years of defeats lift from their shoulders as they re-discover solidarity and unofficial action en masse. Another is that we should not just write off the big unions like Unison and Unite and assume they will not strike. If we fight both within and without those unions, putting pressure on the leaderships we can expect to see them coming on board with mass co-ordinated strike action.

We need to argue in our anti-cuts groups and our unions for arranging transport to the protest at the Tory Party Conference in Manchester in October now and to pass motions calling on the unions to 'name the day' for the next day of strike action and raise the idea of mass co-ordinated strike action in October.

The News of the World is no more [updated]

2011-07-09T23:32:00.004+01:00

It seems the News of the World will print its last edition tomorrow in the wake of the phone hacking scandal. Where this puts the News Corp. bid to take over the rest of BSkyB will not be known for a few weeks [update 13 July 2011: News Corp. has withdrawn its bid for BSkyB ahead of a debate in Parliament calling on it to do just that].

It seems the News of the World paid £100,000 in bribes to Metropolitan Police officers to hide the fact that it was hacking the phones of the families of murder victims. With the real risk that the police might be forced to to get involved, and the takeover deal might be stopped altogether, bosses at Murdoch's media empire seem to have decided to sacrifice the newspaper in order to save themselves. They also appear to have destroyed evidence in advance of any kind of raid.

Richard Seymour argues that this is symptomatic of a wider crisis of the British media and the establishment as a whole. He describes it as perhaps 'the best thing that happened to the media in years.'

It is certainly true that Murdoch's newspapers have been key to supporting the wars in the middle east and perform a similar role in relation to the cuts now. Murdoch shores up the establishment and is a powerful instrument for trying to make working class people believe that we should pay for the economic crisis. His publications are consistently anti-worker, anti-trade union and seek to divide the working class on lines of race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, disabilities and so on.

A defeat for him is a victory for us and a defeat for the British government and indeed the Labour Party too. Cameron is weakened and the scandal exposes the political connections which exist at the top of society and which are used against us: the media, the government, big business and the police.

Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance launch website

2011-07-08T21:17:00.002+01:00

Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance have just launched their Twitter page @PenwithAntiCuts and their website http://penwithanticutsalliance.wordpress.com/

Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance is a group of ordinary people from the far west of Cornwall that campaigns against the cuts, privatisation and job losses we face both from the government and Cornwall Council. We are non-party political but have members from various parties and none. We have workers, trade unionists, unemployed people and retired people within our group. We come from a variety of walks of life.

The government says we must pay off the debt, that has resulted from giving £1.4 trillion pounds of our money to the banks, in five years but our national debt was greater in proportion to our gross national product in 1948 when the National Health Service was created and now it is being used as an excuse to destroy that same health service. Comparisons to credit card debt are meaningless.

Even if we do agree that we need to pay off the deficit, £120 billion in tax is either evaded (fraud), avoided (loopholes) or not collected (the last government sacked workers in HMRC, the government department that is reponsible for collecting taxes) each year according to an independent report comissioned by the PCS civil servants union. This equates to three-quarters of the deficit. If Corporation Tax (on businesses) was returned to the level it was at in the 1980s (when Maggie Thatcher was Prime Minister!) that would cover the rest of it. There would be no need to make one single cut. We could also stop invading other people’s countries and not replace Trident, our redundant, outdated nuclear weapons system (which will cost around £20 billion).

Instead we are seeing our health system privatised and starved of funds (£20 billion ‘efficiency savings’ or cuts), comprehensive education broken up and privatised (academies) and thousands of people losing their jobs, suffering a pay freeze, having their pensions raided or being moved onto lower benefits or off benefits altogether.

Locally, the Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust is having to find savings of around £20 million. They are cutting 400 posts at the Treliske Hospital in Truro including ‘frontline’ clinical staff such as nurses. Already nurses that have left are not being replaced. This means already overworked nurses are having to work even harder. Some nurses are working 12.5 hour shifts with just one 15 minute break. In Penzance, the West Cornwall Hospital has lost half of its medical beds, supposedly for six months, but many are sceptical if they will ever return. Close to half of all schools in Cornwall have also applied for academy status calling into question the viability of the local education authority. And Cornwall Council have cut 40% of the ‘Supporting People’ budget which exists to help the elderly and the homeless, despite government assurances that it should not be cut (through clever accounting).

In short, the government wants ordinary people to pay for an economic crisis created by the bankers, multinational companies and politicians.

This is a nasty vicious government and they need to be stopped. They are also a weak government and they can be stopped.

The biggest trade union organised demonstration in British history (between 500,000 and 750,000 people) and the fantastic strikes on 30 June when 750,000 public sector workers walked out and 100,000 took part in rallies is a great start. Now we need to go further and stop the government in its tracks and maybe bring them down.

Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance (http://cornwallanticutsalliance.wordpress.com/) has taken up the challenge across Cornwall and Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance is active in the Penwith area around Penzance, St. Ives and Hayle in the far west of Cornwall. We have organised a protest and petition hand-in to local MP Andrew George over the health and social care bill, taken people to the march organised by Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance to the strike rally on 30 June and organised a protest and birthday celebration at West Cornwall Hospital on the occasion of the 63rd birthday of the NHS.

Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance meet every other Wednesday at 7pm in the Crown pub at the bottom of Bread Street in Penzance. For more info, or to join, email pzanticuts@hotmail.co.uk, leave a message on the facebook group page or a comment on the website.

Cut the cake, not the NHS

2011-07-05T15:39:00.002+01:00

Around twenty-five people joined a birthday celebration and protest outside West Cornwall Hospital in Penzance, Cornwall today called by Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance. Today is the National Health Service's 63rd birthday and many people are concerned that it will not see its 64th in its current form. The action, like many across Britain today, was called to celebrate the NHS and its hard-working staff and to defend it from the attacks it currently faces from Health Secretary Andrew Lansley's Health and Social Care Bill. Even in its altered form the bill increases the ability of private companies to make profit out of healthcare and is moving the NHS closer to the system of healthcare insurance found in many countries including in America.

From midday today local people assembled outside the hospital with a banner that read 'Save Our NHS:

Stop the Cuts'. There was also a cake that had been supplied, free of charge, by a local baker which read "Save our NHS, Happy Birthday, Celebrating 63 years, 1948-2011. After the protest the cake was taken inside the hospital and presented to the matron to give out to all the members of staff at the hospital. She accepted the cake and said she would give it out to staff.

A nurse told protestors, in confidence, that there is a lot of intimidation at the hospital and so it would be impossible for her or anyone she knows to join the celebration/protest. Despite this however, several members of staff said they supported what we were doing and would have joined us if they had felt able to. The hospital has had one ward containing 28 surgical beds closed, apparently for six months. However, there is much speculation as to whether or not the ward will open after the six months are over or indeed at all.

At Treliske Hospital in Truro, members of staff stood outside the hospital during their lunchbreak today and held hands to show them symbollically protecting the hospital from the attacks it faces from the government. The £20 billion efficiency savings the government is insisting the NHS finds but which should not affect 'frontline staff' is having a devastating effect on the hospital. The Royal Cornwall Hospital Trust which has to make around £20 million savings is cutting 400 posts, some of which are clinical posts such as nurses. Already staff are reporting that nurses that have left are not being replaced, meaning that already overworked nurses are now having to work even harder.

Both actions have already been reported on Pirate FM and Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance will be meeting tomorrow night at 7pm at the Crown pub at the bottom of Bread Street in Penzance to discuss the next steps in its campaign.

30 June: fantastic march and strike rally in Truro, Cornwall

2011-07-01T09:48:00.002+01:00

Over 150 people assembled at Pydar House in Truro from 10am on Thursday 30 June for a march against cuts, privatisation and job losses called by Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance. Pydar House is home to Atos Origin, the company that helps to force people with disabilities off disability benefits and onto the lower unemployment benefit. The demonstrators marched down Pydar Street, through the town and into Lemon Quay. Marchers waved placards and banners including from the teachers' NUT and ATL unions, Falmouth University UCU, PCS Revenue and Customs Cornwall, Devon and Somerset Branch, Cornwall FBU, GMB and Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance. The protestors chanted "no ifs, no buts, no public service cuts" as passing cars honked their horns and people came out of shops to watch, cheer and give the thumbs-up.

As the march made its way into Lemon Quay it was cheered by around 400 strikers that had assembled at a rally organised by the NUT. The members of NUT, ATL, UCU and PCS trade unions were on strike over government attacks on their pensions and to prevent damaging attacks on the services they provide. Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance members and supporters then joined the rally to demonstrate their support for the strikes and to make it a day of resistance to all the attacks on ordinary people including to the National Health Service, people with disabilities and the homeless. Members of the newly-formed Cornwall Disabled People Against Cuts were also present.

Speakers at the rally included representatives of all the striking unions as well as from Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance, Unison and the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Alana Bates, Campaigns Officer for Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance congratulated the striking unions on their action and went on to say "people should unite against the cuts and today is the start of that. Nobody voted for these policies yet the Tories are dismantling and selling off the welfare state. We are not on the side of the banks and the millionaires in government, we are on the side of ordinary people who are fighting to defend living standards for all of us".

Keith Shilson, march organiser for Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance said "it was a fantastic day. The level of support for the march demonstrates that most people don't buy the government's rhetoric that tries to demonise the strikers. Most ordinary people understand that the strikers are fighting for all of us and give them their full support. The government is trying to make ordinary people pay for the crisis that was caused by the banks and today we said, in very clear terms, that we will not allow that to happen".

30 June: live reports from the picket lines and rallies

2011-06-29T21:04:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow 750,000 trade unionists are on strike across the country and thousands more are supporting them by visiting the picket lines and attending strike rallies in cities and towns up and down the country. For rolling coverage of the day's events see here.

This is a massive step forward for the movement against cuts in this country. In the autumn we are likely to see members of the four unions taking national action tomorrow, NUT, UCU, ATL and PCS striking again, potentially alongside the likes of CWU, FBU, Unison and even Unite. This is the kind of united fightback we need to stop the government in its tracks and even bring it crashing down.

Workers in Greece have staged a 48-hour general strike to coincide with a vote in the Greek parliament which agreed a further bailout package with more strings attached and more cuts and hardship for people in that country. Workers in Britain are no different from those in Greece. If they can do it so can we. Lets escalate the action and let the leaderships of all the main parties know that we will not allow them to make us pay for their crisis.

Marxism 2011: a festival of resistance

2011-06-26T22:08:00.000+01:00

There is an event that takes place every year and is a must-see for every anti-war, anti-racist and anti-cuts activist. It is Marxism 2011 (see here).

Crisis and austerity have exposed the insanity of our global system. Our rulers have handed trillions of pounds to banks while billions of people across the planet face hunger, poverty, climate catastrophes and war. Despite unprecedented wealth and technology we are told capitalism can provide even less for us than before. But a world in crisis breeds an ideological crisis. Austerity has generated resistance. Revolution has shaken the Arab world. Students have shaken the Con-Dems.

Millions are fighting back, questioning this crazy system and looking for alternatives. Marxism 2011 will bring thousands of people together from every continent and every arena of struggle to discuss, debate and organise resistance. With over 200 workshops, panels, film showings and rallies it is the biggest event of its kind in Britain and one of the biggest in the world.

Marxism brings together speakers such as Kamal Abu Aita, President, Egyptian tax collectors’ union; Tariq Ali, novelist, journalist, historian, campaigner; Omar Barghouti, founding member, Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel; Tony Benn, veteran campaigner; Alex Callinicos, author Bonfire of Illusions; Kevin Courtney, Deputy General Secretary, NUT; Merlin Emmanuel, Smiley Culture Campaign; Ben Fine, author Marx’s Capital; John Bellamy Foster, author The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth; Paul Gilroy, author There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack; Billy Hayes, General secretary, CWU; Ronnie Kasrils, former leader of ANC’s armed wing; and Charlie Kimber, SWP national secretary.

Set in the heart of Bloomsbury, Central London, close to several tube and mainline stations, these venues should provide for an even better festival than before. Marxism takes place in Friends Meeting House and the Unversity College London. Marxism hosts a free creche and offers free accomodation for those coming from outside London.

For any activists, Marxism 2011 is an event that is not to be missed.

Marxism begins on Thursday 30 June at 3:45pm and runs until Monday 4 July. For more information see http://www.marxismfestival.org.uk/index.html

Academies: the final chapter

2011-06-25T20:43:00.001+01:00

The following email was received on 22 June in reply to the letter sent to the governors of Ludgvan CP School (see here). This was five days after the email was sent and five days after the final day of the 'consultation'.

Thank you for the comments in your email of 17th June. The Governors took note of the points you raised and these were discussed fully at their meeting.

The consultation period is now closed and we thank you once again for your interest.

The Governing Body

The following day, parents of children at the school were informed by letter that the governors had voted the previous night and thus taken the decision to apply for academy status.

30 June: one week to go

2011-06-24T20:35:00.000+01:00

With just one week to go until around three-quarters of a million public sector workers go on strike around the country (see here) and with thousands set to join picket lines and strike rallies in solidarity, the stakes on both sides are getting higher.

Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison, who are not on strike this time around, spoke at his union's annual conference this week, saying "we stand firmly behind our brothers and sisters from PCS, UCU, NUT and ATL on 30 June... Their fight is our fight". He also told conference delegates to "prepare for action" in the autumn.

Meanwhile much of the media has joined in on the side of the government. The Sun described next week's co-ordinated strike action as a "summer of hate" while the Daily Mail parrotted the ridiculous claim about "gold-plated public sector pensions". The Guardian referred to strikes as "primeval". Even Labour's Ed Balls described trade unionists taking strike action as falling into the government's "trap".

The truth is, neither the media nor opposition politicians would even be discussing the attacks on public sector workers were it not for the threat of mass strikes.

As well as the four unions on national strike, council workers in Doncaster and Southampton and workers on London Underground will also join the day of strikes. Prison officers have also chosen that day to stage a lunch-time walkout. Around the country anti-cuts groups will join picket lines and strike rallies.

In Cornwall, preparations for the joint union rally are being finalised. Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance have organised a 'feeder march' from Pydar House, Pydar Street, Truro to the union rally on Lemon Quay. The march will set off at 10:30am. There will also be groups meeting at Penzance Station at 9:20am and a coach from St. Austell. The firefighters' FBU, postal workers' CWU, general workers' GMB and council and health workers' Unison have all urged their off-duty members to show solidarity with those on strike by joining the rally in Lemon Quay. The unions and political parties are all urged to join the march with their banners to show the strength of support for those on strike and to turn it into a day of rage against the government for all their attacks on public services.

This is only the beginning. This day must be a success to keep the momentum going. But the real test for both sides will be in the autumn when many more workers are set to strike against this nasty and vindictive government. The coalition is weak and has already shown its propensity to u-turn. It is vital that we make the most of the current mood amongst the working class and forge it into a weapon with which to strike at the heart of this cutters' coalition.

Lets make the NHS' birthday go off with a bang

2011-06-20T21:27:00.001+01:00

It looks increasingly likely that the Tories and Liberal Democrats, having agreed “reforms” to the Health Bill acceptable to both, will rush the bill through before parliament goes to its summer recess on 19 July. Despite Liberal Democrat claims that they have saved the NHS, the bill is still set to bring in GP commissioning, and fundamentally undermine the basis of a publicly funded, publicly accountable health service run not for profit, by opening up the NHS to private sector vultures. This gives us very little time to mobilise mass opposition on the streets.

We need to crank up the pressure on the TUC and the health unions to flex their muscle and call and mobilise for a national demonstration on the day the bill goes to parliament. There are calls for a London-wide protest on 5 July, the 63rd birthday of the NHS, and a day the TUC has already marked for action over the NHS.

In Cornwall, staff at Treliske Hospital are planning an action outside the hospital on their lunch break on that day. They will hold hands around the outside of the building to symbolically show they are protecting the NHS. They also plan to cut a cake. Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance have also planned to organise a 'birthday party' for the NHS. They will make cakes in the shape of the letters N, H and S which will be carved up and given out. Save Our NHS (Cornwall), 'Just Desserts', an anti-cuts group in North Cornwall and Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance also plan similar events. Steps will be taken over the next couple of weeks to co-ordinate these ideas.

There are also calls for the TUC to call a national demo and lobby of parliament when the bill goes to parliament.

We need to push the unions to act, as well as raising these arguments within the anti-cuts movement and get commitment from organisations to join these initiatives and build for them.

Academies: An open letter to the Ludgvan CP School governors

2011-06-18T20:05:00.002+01:00

As part of a long-running series of posts about academies and a campaign against attempts to convert a primary school in Ludgvan near Penzance in Cornwall to academy status (see here), here is a letter that was sent to the school governors as part of the 'consultation period'. The reply will published if and when it is received (see here).

Dear Ludgvan CP School governors,

I am a parent of a child that is due to start at your school in September. However, I was saddened and dismayed to learn that you have decided to turn the school into an academy. As we are still in the 'consultation period' I would be grateful if you could answer my questions.

First, can you explain to me why I was not contacted directly about this? Surely as a parent of two children who may well have a connection with the school for the next nine years I have as much, if not more, right to be informed than a parent of a child already at the school and potentially leaving this year and, as such, not directly affected?

Second, can you explain why, in your initial letter to parents, there was no mention of the consultation period?

Third, why were parents only told of the 'consultation' meeting shortly before it was held, making it very difficult for parents to arrange childcare? Why were parents not texted as they are for everything else? Why was it held at such an inconvenient time (ie neither straight after school nor later in the evening when more parents would be home form work)? Why did the school not provide a creche for those parents that could not find childcare at such short notice? Why was such little information provided to parents both before and at the meeting? Why were parents told the lawyer was present to provide 'independent legal advice' when the lawyer in question works for a company that provides (arguably highly biased) legal advice to schools that want to become academies? Why was the second meeting held during a 'coffee morning', at a time when parents who work or have other childcare arrangements would find impossible to make? Why did the school refuse to hold another meeting, during the consultation period, at a time that parents could manage, in which a representative of the school and a representative of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) could have put forward their arguments and parents could have asked questions. This would have allowed parents to be fully informed of both sides of the argument. You would then have had a genuine reflection of the views of parents and a mandate to either apply to become an academy or not. Did the school refuse because it was worried that if parents heard an alternative viewpoint to their own, they would agree with the representative of the NUT?

If I were a cynical person I would think the school did not want parents to be informed or consulted. The argument that 'outsiders' should not be involved is laughable. The NUT represents teachers in schools up and down the country and is better placed than anyone to understand the issues and how they will impact on staff and students. The idea that some parents are making the issue 'political', or that governors are somehow 'transcending' politics is, frankly, insulting. The government's plans to break-up comprehensive education, which was based on the idea that there should be a good school for every child, and to replace it with a system of schools run by competing, private companies is about as political, or ideological, as it is possible to be. You are either complicit in the government's agenda or naive in the extreme.

Fourth, why were parents told that the school was just considering the idea of becoming an academy when it was already far down the route and had already held two meetings with staff to discuss how they would be affected when they were transferred to the new private company? Is it possible that the school never had any intention of genuine consultation with parents?

Fifth, why did the school attempt to smear those parents that did attempt to obtain information from a source other than the school? Why did it claim that the information that was given to parents was out of date, even though this is blantantly false (it was published in April 2011). Why did it claim it only applied to the 'old style' academies, even though it knew this to be untrue? Why did it send a letter, on more than one occasion, to a parent asking him not to speak to teachers about the issue? Surely a parent has the right to speak to a teacher about how changes to the school will affect his child, or do you think not? Surely a teacher has a right to speak to parents or anyone else about how changes to the school will affect them as members of staff, or do you disagree? Were you concerned that, upon hearing an alternative viewpoint to your own, teachers might oppose your plans? Why were parents sent a letter apologising that parents were 'subjected to leafletting'? Why use such emotive language? Did any parents really feel intimdated by being handed some information on a piece of paper or by being asked politely if they would like to sign a statement?

Sixth, as I have already said, the idea of academy schools is to break-up the current system of education in which parents have some democratic control over the education their children receive via the local education authority. The plan is to replace this with a system of education in which competing, private companies provide education on the cheap in order to profit from it. It is a model that the government is attempting to introduce into the healthcare system and they are being forced to think again because the general public and healthcare professionals alike do not want it. It is also a model that was used in social care around ten years ago. Banks and investment companies bought up care homes previously run by the local authority. Then private equity firms moved in, buying up the firms, such as in the example of Southern Cross. The private equity company, in this case Blackstone, put the assets into another company and then leased them back to Southern Cross. They then put up the rents and sold the property arm for more money than they had paid for Southern Cross in the first place. As the banking crisis erupted, the property market crashed making loans secured on care homes look shaky. Southern Cross, Britain's largest care homes firm is now bankrupt. Four Seasons, the second biggest is also close to bankruptcy. They are now demanding taxpayer-funded bailouts. The bosses will walk away with a nice pension and the vulnerable people they were supposed to care for and the workers will be the ones that suffer. This is potentially the future for the education system. Does this seem like a good idea to you?

You need not take my word for it. Pat McGoven, the Headteacher of Helston College, at a meeting in Falmouth on 21 March, spoke eloquently about how much schools depend on the local education authority (LEA) and how becoming an academy is not so much about parents, children and teachers being 'free' of state control, but being under the control of private companies. He explained that many of the supposed benefits from becoming an academy can be done anyway. He said that he would never allow his school to become an academy because he does not have the right to sell off what is an assest for the local community both now and into the future. Have you spoken to him about the issue? I suggest that you do.

Fowey School announced to staff last month that it will not now be seeking academy status. This is because the government have told academies that they will be responsible for all redundancy payments, whereas previously they had been told they would only be responsible for the 'academy' years and the local authority would pick up the rest of the bill. Were you aware of this?

Newquay Tretherras School, which became an academy last year, announced a fortnight ago that it would be selling off land at the back of the school to Tesco. School bosses claimed 'this is the only way to fund the future of education at Tretherras for the next 50 years' (see here). Did you know about this?

Seventh, it has not been made clear to me that you are fully aware of the implications of what you are about to undertake. It is my concern that it is in fact you who are making a political decision and not one based on what is in the best interests of staff and pupils. Will there be any redundancies at the school? How will this be funded? Will you be pulling out of national bargaining arrangements for teachers' pay and conditions? How will you retain good, well-motivated staff if they are paid less than teachers in other schools in other parts of the country and indeed county? Can you provide me with a detailed list of precisely what the school will be responsible for once it has become an academy that it is not currently? Who will comission the services that you will need to 'buy in'? Will you be putting extra responsibilities on existing members of staff and if so will they be paid more for this? Or will you be employing additional staff? How will this be funded? Services bought from private sources will tend to be more expensive than those bought through the LEA; how can you justify this given that it will ultimately mean less money to provide less services? One local authority charges academies a higher rate for services. How can you guarantee the same will not happen in Cornwall? You say that finance is not your primary concern as the school does not have financial difficulties. If this is the case, why the indecent haste to become an academy this year? Why not wait until next year? The funding system for academies from the following year has not yet been announced; how can you, in all conscience, go into a system when you have no idea how it will be funded? Is this not an argument for waiting to see what will happen? If a school within the LEA system has a fire or a flood, the LEA will step in and ensure children's education does not suffer. Under the academy system the school is on its own. How will you ensure children's education continues in the event of an emergency whilst you are waiting on an insurance company to pay out (which as we all know can take many months)? If the school gets into financial difficulties, what is to stop it going bankrupt? The government has said it will not bail out failing GP consortia or failing universities; it is highly unlikely that it will bail out failing academies either. Do you accept that as a small school, Ludgvan is more likely to fail as an academy than other, bigger schools? How can you guarantee that the school will not be bought by one of the 'Edubusinesses' such as E-Act, Edison or ARK, a group of hedge fund managers? Academies have more control over the curriculum; how will you ensure that you are teaching subjects that are appropriate and that parents want you to be teaching? How do I know that the next headteacher will not believe in 'creationism' for example and will not decide that should be taught in the school. You say that you want to set up an 'ethos group'. This sounds wonderful but who determines who is on the group? One parent that expressed interest was told at the 'consultation' meeting that she would not be 'suitable' to be on the group. Is the school not making political decisions based upon its view of the parents and their political views? Is this not discriminatory? Should all parents not be given the oportunity to contribute? Academies have control over admissions and have the power to select. How can you guarantee you will not adopt an admissions policy that disadvantages children from poorer backgrounds?

As I say, I am a parent of a child that is due to start at your school in September. I was not told of your intention to become an academy, I received no letter or other communication. I could not attend the first meeting because of childcare and I could not attend the second meeting because of work. I only found out about the meetings and this email address by chance and it seems you only told any parents, other than those at the first meeting, about the email address and the consultation period because you were forced to by parents that announced it in their leaflet. You then denounced those parents in a letter to all parents. It also seems that you only held the second meeting because you were under pressure from parents. If this is the disregard you have for the views of parents in what is supposed to be a consultation period it suggests you will take our views into consideration even less once the school has become an academy. I find this genuinely shocking.

Despite this I call on you to think again. You have clearly not thought this through. The way you have attempted to shut down debate demonstrates that you are very worried that if parents and staff knew the full facts they would be opposed to the plans. If you go ahead with the plans to become an academy there may not be a problem in the next few years. However I feel sure that at some point in the future you will either be making staff redundant, changing their pay or conditions, something will be sold off, or something unpalatable will be taught at the school. At that point it will be the children that will suffer and you, as governors, are responsible for ensuring that does not happen.

I look forward to receiving your reply.

30 June: two weeks to go and the ballot results are in!

2011-06-17T13:51:00.004+01:00

See also 30 June: just three weeks to go.

The industrial fightback has begun. On 30 June over 800,000 civil servants, teachers and lecturers are set to strike. The strike votes are very impressive. The ATL teachers’ union, which has not voted to strike since 1979, delivered an impressive 83 percent vote for action. The NUT received a whopping 92 percent vote to strike, and the PCS 61 percent. Doncaster Unison members voted by 63.6 percent to strike, and they too will be out on 30 June (see here). Council workers in Southampton, belonging to both Unite and Unison, are also set to walk out on 30 June. It also now looks likely that London tube workers will strike on that day in support of two of their sacked reps. If that wasn’t enough, prison guards belonging to the POA union are due to walk out for two hours on 30 June to demand the right to strike!

All this takes place as Greek workers strike and lay siege to their parliament, Spain is set to see huge protests this weekend, and the Arab Spring rolls on. The media have finally woken up to the fact that 30 June is going to be big and that further action is likely. However, the government and the employers are now going on the offensive using the argument that only a minority of union members voted in the strike ballots and threatening to bring in even more draconian anti-union laws. It is important that their arguments are taken on but the best response is to make sure 30 June is as big and vibrant as possible. It has to be a day of rage against the government’s austerity plans. There is no time to lose; we have to get organised now.

The next two weeks must be used to ensure that the strike and solidarity action is as broad and strong as possible. Workers in the unions due to strike need to campaign to make their strikes as solid as possible. Mass meetings should be called and strike bulletins should be produced to inform members about the strike and activities on the day. Anti-cuts groups and students should hold meetings to plan their solidarity action.

Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance met on Wednesday with an impressive array of trade unionists present. This included Ian Williams, divisional secretary of Cornwall and Isles of Scilly NUT; Reuben Wallace, a local NUT secretary; John Parker-Rees a UCU rep. at the Tremough campus of the Combined Universities in Cornwall (CUC) connected to Exeter University; David Guiterman, an ATL rep.; Gill Allen from the Unison Local Government Branch Committee; Trudy Winterburn, a PCS branch secretary; Tony Lorton, CWU Cornwall Amal Branch Chair; Stuart Pulley, an FBU branch rep.; and two Unison regional officers, Chris Gayas and Stuart Roden.

The meeting discussed plans for the day. The NUT have organised a strike rally in Lemon Quay in Truro from 10:30am. All other unions and anti-cuts groups are invited to speak at the rally. Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance have organised a feeder march from Pydar House, Pydar Street from 10:30am. PCS are putting on a coach from St. Austell that other trade unionists and others are able to get on. John Parker-Rees from the UCU will try to organise a samba band and circus performers as well as someone from the journalism course to be a joint press officer for the day. The CWU and FBU will send out a message to all members for all off work members to get to the rally. The trade unions will all bring their banners on the day. Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance will have a stall at the rally with membership forms and a new leaflet and poster to give out.

There was an impressive sense that the unions understood that the attack on their members was a collective attack on the public sector as a whole and that their response must be a collective one also. Many of the trade unionists wanted to have a much greater involvement with Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance in the future. There was also an understanding that this was just the beginning and that there would be more strike action in the autumn.

Ian Williams from the NUT explained that his union had voted for discontinuous action meaning there could be rolling action in the autumn with different areas of the country coming out on different days. Chris Gayas, the Unison Regional Officer said she would be 'very surprised' if the union did not ballot its membership on the issue of pensions in the autumn and that she would know more after Unison's annual conference in Manchester next week. Tony Lorton of the CWU said the issue of the closure of two mail centres in London was likely to escalate in the near future. John Parker-Rees of the UCU said they had also voted for action short of a strike and that this may be the way his union would go as a 'death by a thousand cuts' may be more painful than a one-day strike. Stuart Pulley of the FBU said his union was currently carrying out a survey of its members and if it looked like there was a mood for strike action thay would be ballotted in the autumn.

All this comes as the government is feeling the pressure of resistance. The Daily Telegraph reported this week that “David Cameron prepares to retreat on four key fronts. The government was last night preparing to retreat on four fronts — the NHS, welfare, refuse collection and foreign student numbers.” This overplays the extent of the u-turns, but it reflects well the feeling of uncertainty and division in the Tories, let alone the Coalition, as they try to ram through such massive attacks. And it shows Cameron and his friends are vulnerable.

Meanwhile the knives are out for Ed Miliband. The Blairites are attacking him, but there are also strong voices on the left of the party who are angry at his lack of action over the NHS, cuts and job losses. Dave Prentis (perhaps with an eye on the approaching Unison conference) gave an interview with the Independent On Sunday where he attacked Miliband for “failing to stand up for the NHS” and “suggested the Labour leader can no longer count on his union's automatic support”. Under attack Miliband is reported to be about to make a speech where he will disgustingly equate greedy bankers with “benefit cheats”. This is the road to disaster. A National Audit Office report from July 2010 estimates that “benefit fraud” costs £1.5 billion a year. Tax avoidance and evasion costs £120 billion a year. Furthermore “benefit fraud” is overwhelmingly about desperate poor people trying to survive. Bankers’ greed is about the rich luxuriating in the wealth they have robbed from us. “Benefit cheats” get jail: bankers get peerages.

Internationally, Yemen and Syria are in revolt, Greece is on the verge of a social explosion (with this week’s general strike adding to the “square occupations”), and the Japanese government has been forced to admit that the effects of the nuclear meltdown were far greater than claimed.

We need to push for further coordinated action in early autumn. Some in the PCS are putting forward 4 or 6 October as possible dates for this. Already the PCS, NUT and CWU have indicated that they want to strike again in the autumn. This is exerting real pressure on the bigger unions. Dave Prentis, the general secretary of Unison, warned the government on Tuesday that if it did not back down it would see “massive industrial unrest”. He added that “it will not be one day of action—it will be long-term industrial action.” We have to turn his words into action. If the pressure continues to build and we see the big three, Unison, the GMB and Unite join the action, 4.5 million could be out on strike. We need more coordinated strikes in the autumn, and we need to urge Unison, GMB and Unite to join the fight.

Academies: part three

2011-06-14T20:19:00.002+01:00

See also Academies: Selling our children's future, Academies: an update and Academies, Free Schools and Gove's dastardly masterplan.

Campaigning parents of children at Ludgvan CP School, which is looking to become an academy by September, have been trying to organise another meeting at which parents can hear both sides of the argument. The idea was to have the headteacher, Helen McFarlane, put the arguments in favour of the school becoming an academy, and Ian Williams, divisional representative for Cornwall NUT (teaching union) putting the arguments against. Parents would then be able to ask questions and make a decision based on the facts and not simply by putting blind faith in the headteacher.

The headteacher initially gave parents a flat 'no' when asked for another meeting. Parents received a letter from the headteacher 'apologising' because parents had been 'subjected to leafletting' outside the school gate from other parents. One parent was sent a letter on two seperate occasions requesting that he direct his 'queries' only to the headteacher because he asked his children's teachers what they thought about the academy status and pointed out how it might affect staff terms and conditions.

A couple of parents initiated a petition calling for a second meeting but it was immediately obvious that it was going to be a struggle. Hostility was beginning to creep into discussions at the school gate from some parents. Other parents agreed that the school was not being open with them but felt powerless to do anything to stop the process.

In the end, the governors were embarrassed into agreeing another discussion during a 'coffee morning' this morning. The meeting was not very well attended, hardly surprising given the difficulty of attending a morning meeting for many parents. A number of parents spoke against the proposal and one suggested putting the decision off for a year or two, a suggestion that was rejected out of hand.

The governors say 'no decision has been made' but it is clear to many that the decision was taken in principle some time ago. The staff have been brought on board and have had at least two meetings about transferring to the new private limited company. Some parents are intransigently supporting and some are against while the mass of parents in between feel they do not really have the information to make an informed decision, which is exactly what the headteacher wants. Many parents feel it has been a sham 'consultation' and nothing they could have done would have changed the governors' minds.

However, there was nothing automatic about this. In Islington in North London, there is a great campaign being run by the NUT, pupils and parents to defeat plans to turn three primary schools into a chain of academies (see here). At the recent conference of the Anti-Academies Alliance there were many examples of successful campaigns against academies (see here).

Locally, Fowey School announced to staff last month that it will not now be seeking academy status. According to the NUT, this is because the government have told academies that they will be responsible for all redundancy payments, whereas previously they had been told they would only be responsible for the 'academy' years and the local authority would pick up the rest of the bill.

However, it is undoubtedly true that it is very difficult for parents to stop a school going to academy status without the teachers' support and preferably by taking strike action. Also, although nationally only 0.5% of schools have applied for academy status, in Cornwall it is more like 40 or 50%. Many school governors are taking the view that the local education authority cannot be sustained in Cornwall and so it is a matter of when, not if, the school becomes an academy. They argue that if there is likely to be less money around for those that transfer later it is better to transfer now. But of course this is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Newquay Tretherras School, which became an academy last year, announced a fortnight ago that it would be selling off land at the back of the school to Tesco. School bosses claimed 'this is the only way to fund the future of education at Tretherras for the next 50 years' (see here). The fact is that there should be a good local school for every child. We should not be bringing market forces into the education of children. Ultimately the government wants to wash its hands of providing an education system, not to mention a health service, and to make all schools privately funded. Each school must then sink or swim according to its balance sheet. Profit will become the motivation for those running our schools not providing a good quality education. They must be stopped.

30 June: just three weeks to go

2011-06-09T14:34:00.003+01:00

The potential mass, co-ordinated strike action of up to 800,000 trade unionists on 30 June has been discussed a number of times on this blog (see here for the most recent example).

It is clear that this is not just another date in the anti-cuts diary but is the best example so far of an opportunity to turn widespread anger against the coalition government's attacks on working class people into a generalised movement of practical resistance. We have also discussed here before how the Egyptian people toppled their tyrannical and dictatorial leader (see here). The demonstrations gave confidence to people to collectively resist the regime but it was the entrance of the working class, organised as workers, through strike action that finally toppled Mubarak.

In Britain, after the TUC-organised demonstration on March 26, the strikes on 30 June will put workers’ resistance centre stage. Vince Cable’s speech to the GMB conference had a clear message to the union leaders – thanks to those of who you who are holding down strikes, but if this changes then there may well be even more anti-union laws. This bullying blackmail needs to be confronted head on – and it can be.

Every day brings more evidence of the effect of the cuts and the way the bosses are using the crisis to reshape society – from the 40,000 extra Royal Mail job losses to the scandal of the Southern Cross care homes.

Equally this week has shown the potential for a rise in the global revolutionary challenge. In Yemen protesters have celebrated the fall of the third dictator since the start of the Arab revolutions. But there are clearly many battles still to fight.

In Cornwall, there were two meetings last night that have helped to move things forward. In Truro, Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance members met and discussed plans for 30 June. There will be a trade union special meeting of the group on 15 June to co-ordinate action on the day. NUT, ATL, UCU, PCS and Unison have confirmed so far. The FBU and CWU are also expected to attend.

The NUT have organised a rally in Lemon Quay from 10:30am on the day and Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance are organising a feeder march for all those not striking to both show their support for the strikers but also to turn it into a day of rage against the government's cuts and privatisation. The march is assembling at Pydar House on Pydar Street in Truro, also at 10:30am. The group will be leafletting in the town for the next three Saturdays and there are also plans to poster and to leaflet workplaces, colleges and schools.

In Penzance, Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance members met and also discussed the day of co-ordinated strikes. The group agreed to produce its own leaflet and to do stalls on the two Saturdays before the march as well as on Quay Fair Day. A poster will be produced to mobilise people from Penwith and there will be a Penzance meeting point for those that wish to go as a group.

We need to be at the heart of fighting to make the 30 June a carnival of resistance for all those who face the Tory onslaught. The 30 June is the bridge to wider action in the autumn, when potentially Unison, CWU, FBU and others could also be calling strike action. We need to win every worker, every student, every campaigner to see the importance of that date and get in behind building the strikes, rallies and protests.

See also 30 June: two weeks to go and the ballot results are in!

Conservative MP questioned over NHS plans

2011-06-06T19:16:00.000+01:00

Around 25 people met in Tesco's car park in Camborne at 1:15pm on Saturday to join a March and lobby of George Eustice over the future of the National Health Service. Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance members had held a stall in the town in the morning where people were queuing up to sign the Save Our NHS (Cornwall) petition. The march went from Tesco's, through the town chanting 'save our NHS' and 'no ifs, no buts, no health service cuts'. Shoppers cheered and waved as the march progressed through the town and car after car sounded their horn.

As the protest arrived at the constituency office of Camborne MP George Eustice, he was meeting his last surgery case of the day. One of his staff invited the whole protest into a large room that had pots of paint and broken urinals and old chairs scattered about. However some protestors elected to stay outside and every couple of minutes a car or bus would honk its horn and the protestors would cheer.

After a while George Eustice appeared and he was presented with the Save Our NHS (Cornwall) petition with over 6000 signatures on it and a disc with the nearly 400,000 signatures on the 38 Degrees petition. The protestors asked him a number of questions. Jane Bernal, herself a doctor within the NHS, argued that "what is needed is good quality health care for everyone, in the public, not the private sector. We are worried that large companies will take over the more profitable NHS functions and leave NHS hospitals to manage the most complex and ill patients without the full range of supporting services. In the present financial climate competition would be on price."

Mr Eustice said that competition could be a good thing and was sure that we would want our GP to be able to send us to a different hospital, if one had let him down last time. One petitioner had actually asked her GP. "I spent 7 years training to be a doctor. If I had wanted to be an accountant I'd have done different training" she was told. Mr Eustice said that before the election doctors had been asking for more control over commissioning and suggested that the BMA supported the reforms, which it does not. What they actually said was "The Health and Social Care Bill should be withdrawn or at least undergo major changes", not exactly support. Mr Eustice kept mentioning doctors when he in fact meant GPs. Hospital doctors and nurses, under the coalition's original plans, will be excluded from the commissioning process. As one retired nurse reminded Mr Eustice when people are using the health services it is the nurses who are really important to them.

Most worryingly Mr Eustice seemed wholly unaware of the issues at Southern Cross where the Government will have to spend millions of pounds of taxpayers money to provide a care service for thousands of old people in care homes who have been let down by a failing private company. Nor did he mention Winterbourne View, the private hospital that so shockingly failed to protect vulnerable people with learning disabilities from horrifying abuse.

The main reassurance that Mr Eustice was able to offer was that there is now a pause and the government are thinking again. That is true but it is has been forced on them by trade unions, campaigning groups and the general public. The coalition government's original plan was to steam-roller the destructive Health and Social Care Bill through Parliament and now they have been forced to think again. We need to keep up the pressure on them until they ditch this nasty policy.

The true scale of the cuts and the fight to stop them

2011-06-02T20:54:00.001+01:00

Cuts
Of the £80 billion a year cut from public spending since last June, £18 billion directly affects welfare, the biggest cut since the 1920s. Few areas, including education, are left unaffected. The cuts fall into two main categories: those that directly affect people’s incomes and those that affect the services they rely on. Included in the first category is the decision to link benefits and taxes to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which excludes housing costs and council tax, instead of the currently used Retail Price Index, which does include these factors. Since the CPI underestimates the real cost of living for most working class people, it is, as the IFS points out, “effectively an across the board cut to all benefits received by working-age adults”, and as such, a direct assault on the living standards of the poorest people in Britain.

On top of this there are the planned cuts in welfare benefits, again specifically targeted at the poorest and most vulnerable. The biggest losers here will be people with disabilities. Currently 2.6 million people claim incapacity benefit, 40 percent of them on account of mental health problems. The government intends to move 1.5 million of them onto the new Employment Support Allowance (ESA), paid at a much lower rate, via a test of their capacity to work. If after a year on ESA they have still not found work, despite the “assistance” provided by private agencies such as the hated Atos Healthcare to which the government has outsourced this task, they will be moved onto Jobseeker’s Allowance of £65 a week.
Cuts in housing benefit will also have a massive impact on the poor, projected to amount to £1.8 billion by 2014. According to the government’s own survey, the changes will mean that more than three quarters of a million households will lose an average of £9 a week while bigger families will lose an average of £74 a week. Nor will the changes only affect unemployed people. Some 680,000 working households also claim housing benefit, 14 percent of the total housing benefit caseload. As housing charity Shelter’s chief executive Campbell Robb pointed out, such losses represent “huge amounts” to some of the poorest people in Britain.
Finally, there are the cuts to local authority spending. Research commissioned by the TUC has shown that Britain’s poorest 10 percent will be hit 13 times harder by cuts to services than the richest 10 percent. The research shows that the bottom tenth of the population, who depend much more on publicly provided services, will suffer reductions in services equivalent to 20 percent of their household income, while the richest tenth will lose the equivalent of just 1.5 percent through cuts that the government plans to implement by 2013. Across the income distribution, the poorer the household, the more they will lose.

Privatisating welfare
The restructuring of welfare services will involve a massive extension of privatisation. Involving the private sector in the provision of public services is, of course, hardly new. The Public/Private Partnerships promoted by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were a barely-disguised version of the Private Finance Initiative first introduced by the Conservative governments of the 1990s. What is different this time round, however, is the sheer scale of the proposed privatisations. The proposals of the Browne Report, most of which have been accepted by the government, will essentially transform the nature and role of English universities. As Stefan Collini has argued, what Browne is proposing is that “we should no longer think of higher education as the provision of a public good, articulated through educational judgment and largely financed by public funds… Instead, we should think of it as a lightly regulated market in which consumer demand, in the form of student choice, is sovereign in determining what is offered by service providers (ie universities)”.

Similarly, health minister Andrew Lansley’s bill to place NHS commissioning in the hands of GP practices, which will be required to purchase services from “any willing provider”, will take privatisation of the NHS to new depths. As columnist Polly Toynbee has argued, the introduction of unfettered price competition at a time when the NHS is already experiencing cuts of 4 percent “will leave the NHS open to challenge and undercutting from any private company offering temporary loss-leaders. The destabilising effect on financially fragile hospitals will be devastating”.

Privatising everything
The White Paper on welfare reform will mean that no area of the public sector, other than the security services and courts, will be safe from privatisation. According to David Cameron, writing in the Daily Telegraph: “This is a transformation: instead of having to justify why it makes sense to introduce competition in some public services, as we are now doing with schools and in the NHS, the state will have to justify why it should ever operate a monopoly”. Everything, in other words, will be up for grabs. Councils, like GP practices, will be forced to accept tenders from the lowest bidders, on past experience likely to be multinationals such as Cordia, Capita and Serco, as long as they promise to “protect quality”. In reality, not only will quality of service be one of the first victims of these changes as private firms and charities compete to cut costs and drive down the wages and conditions of their staff, but so too will local democracy. For once these commercial contracts are in place, neither councils nor local people will have any control over them, making a mockery of the Tories’ much-vaunted concern for “localism” and “empowering communities”.

The Big Society
Both localism and empowered communities are, of course, key elements of the rhetoric of the Big Society, the ideological framework within which much of this change is taking place. The main reason for the failure of the Big Society is that, despite Cameron’s protests to the contrary, most people see it simply as a big con and a cover for the cuts. That does not mean the coalition will drop the idea. The emphasis on “localism and “shifting responsibility” from the state to communities and individuals is likely to remain a central theme of coalition social policy, reflected for example in the social care policy of personalisation, a policy pioneered by New Labour involving the promotion of direct payments and individual budgets as an alternative to state-provided services. This is because there is a serious ideological intent behind the rhetoric of the Big Society. Under the veil of attacking “welfare dependency”, the coalition is seeking to engineer a “culture shift” whereby people no longer look to the state when they become unemployed, ill, disabled or old but rely instead on family, friends and an often mythical “community”. In that sense, it’s an attempt to turn the clock back to the period before the welfare state, to the days when the minutes of Victorian charities such as the Charity Organisation Society in London could record that “when an applicant is truly starving he may be given a piece of bread if he eats it in the presence of the giver”.

The balance of forces
Whether the government can succeed in this objective is, of course, a whole other question. In part, this will depend on the strength and determination of the coalition, in part on the forces of opposition ranged against it. In relation to the first aspect, there is growing concern on the right about the coalition’s apparent willingness to retreat at the first hint of opposition, examples including the government's humiliating climbdowns over the proposed privatisations of Britain’s forests and the Blood Service. Clearly, unlike Margaret Thatcher’s, this is a government which is for turning.

In relation to the second aspect, given that for more than a decade Blair and Brown encouraged greater private sector involvement in public services, introduced welfare to work policies and in 2010 made it clear that if elected they would also implement massive cuts, the response of the New Labour leadership to the biggest assault on welfare since the Second World War has been predictably defensive and pitiful. Shadow secretary for work and pensions Liam Byrne, for example, welcomed Ian Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms as “sensible”, complaining only that the coalition wasn’t doing enough to create new jobs. Despite that, the absence of a credible left alternative means that the Labour Party will benefit both electorally and in terms of membership at the growing popular anger at the coalition’s attacks.

It is that growing popular anger, however, rather than the feeble response of the Labour front bench, that is causing most concern to the ruling class. As the British Social Attitudes Survey Series has shown year after year, whatever their deficiencies, the welfare state and the NHS in particular hold a special place in the affections and folk memory of the British working class. Cameron and Clegg have launched a full-frontal assault on every aspect of that welfare state. Hence the concern expressed by one leading Tory: “When I heard that we were starting on health reform, I knew how Hitler’s generals felt when they heard he was invading Russia”.

They have cause to be worried. The coalition’s attempts to shift the costs of the banking crisis onto the poorest sections of British society, and in the process divide and scapegoat those who depend on welfare benefits, have already provoked resistance. They have revitalised the disability movement and have led to the creation of militant new organisations such as Disabled People against Cuts and the Black Triangle Campaign, both of which have shown a willingness to engage in direct action. There have been huge protests in defence of education that have united school, college and university students and staff. There have been militant protests outside town halls across much of Britain and the beginnings of a revival of organisation among health workers. The energy and militancy of these struggles stand in marked contrast to the cowardice and passivity of much of the leadership of the official trade union movement, despite the fantastic 500,000-strong TUC-organised demonstration in London on March 26. But there is still everything to play for. The next big test will come on June 30 when up to 800,000 trade unionists across the country could be taking co-ordinated strike action. This must be just the prelude to a much bigger wave of mass strikes in the autumn when NUT, ATL, UCU and PCS unions could be joined by unions such as CWU, FBU, Unite and Unison, possibly leading to a general strike.

The weakness of the coalition on the one hand and the willingness of millions of working class people on the other to fight, if given a lead, to defend a welfare system that offers them and their families at least some protection against the hazards of life under capitalism mean that Cameron and Clegg’s attempt to privatise welfare may yet prove to be their poll tax, the rock on which the coalition founders.

This is based on an article in International Socialism journal by Iain Ferguson. Read it here.

Links getting stronger as unions build for 30 June strikes

2011-06-01T15:10:00.002+01:00

See also Lets make 30 June a day of resistance.

There is now less than a month until the mass co-ordinated strikes on 30 June. If the NUT, PCS and ATL ballots are successful they will join UCU members in the biggest strike against the Tories so far. More than 800,000 workers could be out in defence of pensions and they could be joined by council workers in Birmingham and Doncaster (who are balloting against job cuts) and London postal workers.

This is not just another day in the diary. In the wake of the 26 March TUC protests the strikes on 30 June will put workers resistance centre stage. A powerful strike can combine with the dynamism of the anti-cuts and student movements to create a real challenge to Cameron and Clegg. The need for united action in the face of the cuts is becoming clearer as the days go by. The call for 30 June to be more than just a strike day, for it to be our “day of rage” against the coalition government is gaining more and more support.

The UCU Congress this weekend was animated by this spirit. Every new “post 92” university and further education college, with some 80,000 UCU members will be on strike. Despite moves by UCU leaders that mean strikes are unlikely in the old “pre-92” Universities on 30 June, story after story emerged from activists at the conference about the growing links between the UCU, NUT, PCS and ATL on the ground with plans for local rallies and demonstrations. UCU activists talked of the need to make links with students, pensioners, anti-cuts campaigners and disability rights groups to involve them on picket lines and at protests. The UCU has added its name to the growing list of unions, including CWU, PCS, NUT and NUJ who have now voted to call on the TUC to organise a General Strike across the public sector to stop the government attacks.

"We marched together now we must strike together" is becoming the common sense of the movement. But it will take an enormous fight to turn words and conference motions into reality. We need to be at the heart of fighting to make the 30 June a carnival of resistance for all those who face the Tory onslaught. The 30 June is the bridge to wider action in the autumn. We need to win every worker, every student, every campaigner to see the importance of that date and get in behind building the strikes.

See also 30 June: just three weeks to go

Afghanistan: The truth behind Obama's "progress"

2011-06-01T14:44:00.002+01:00

President Obama told the British Parliament on 25 May that the US/Nato forces were "preparing to turn a corner" and the Taliban's momentum had been "broken". However, since then, facts on the ground have exposed the reality.

The day after Obama's speech, eight US troops were killed, the highest daily figure for four years. The next day, two British soldiers were killed. The father of one of the them, asked whether the death of his son had been a price worth paying. To which a serving soldier on leave from Afghanistan wrote emphatically, no. On 28 May, a suicide attack in a supposedly "secure" province left at least six dead, including the commander of the northern Afghanistan police force and two German soldiers, and seriously wounded Nato General Markus Knaeip, commander of foreign troops in northern Afghanistan.

Not to be outdone when it comes to killing, on the same day, Nato airstrikes on two villages killed 32 civilians, including 17 children and five women. Such was the outrage at yet more "collateral damage" that even the US puppet President Karzai felt compelled to issue a "final warning" to Nato that these attacks had to stop.

By every measurement this war is catastrophic, for the Afghan people and the occupying forces alike. The war has now lasted longer than World War I and World War II combined and is the longest war in US history. 2011 will be the most violent year since the invasion ten years ago. It is clearly far from over, with the British commander in Afghanistan, Lt Gen James Bucknall, being the latest of a stream of military figures in the US and British military calling for an extension of the 2015 deadline for withdrawing all foreign forces, as promised by Obama and David Cameron.

The reason is obvious, the planned "exit strategy" of training the Afghan police and army to administer a proxy occupation for the US and its allies currently looks hopeless. This is confirmed by the latest report showing the security forces have been deeply infiltrated by the Taliban and other resistance forces, with a dramatic increase in the number of Afghan soldiers or policemen turning their weapons on western troops or facilitating attacks by insurgents.

We need to continue to press our government to end this war immediately.

Campaigners continue the fight to save the NHS

2011-05-31T14:08:00.000+01:00

Around twenty people were out in Truro city centre on Saturday campaigning against the coalition government's Health and Social Care Bill. Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance and Save Our NHS (Cornwall) had originally organised a protest march to the surgery of local Tory MP Sarah Newton to hand in a petition but she insisted that only one person could come to her surgery and that if she was to accept the petition, it must be at her office outside the city rather than in the full glare of the public and media gaze.

Rather than accept Newton's attempt to avoid the publicity, activists used the occasion to collect more signatures and now have over 6000 from Cornwall alone. The national Save Our NHS petition has over 400,000 signatures. Despite the MPs stipulations, Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance members are determined to ensure that she will receive the petition in a time a place suitable to her constituents. Trying to make political capital out of attacking those that are trying to defend the services that she and her government are destroying is a very dangerous game. It may well backfire on her.

The next protest will be on the 4 June in Camborne. There will be a march and lobby of Conservative MP George Eustice. Assemble at Tesco car-park at 1:15pm.

For more see Conservatives sink to new low.

Cuts cost lives

2011-05-28T20:36:00.001+01:00

The Tory-led government is getting itself in such a mess over its NHS 'reforms'. First they were forced to 'pause' the Health and Social Care Bill in parliament after the Liberal Democrats apalling results in the local elections where they lost over 700 council seats in England alone.

Then there were splits in the government with Nick Clegg contradicting his Tory colleagues by claiming that the bill would be delayed by six months.

Now Andrew Lansley has been forced into an embarrassing u-turn after a report by his own Department of Health has shown that people have died as a result of his decision to cut the funding for public health campaigns.

Those of us in the anti-cuts movement need to press home our advantage while the government is on the back foot and defeat these proposals to privatise our health service. If we can defeat them on this, we can defeat them on every other one of their rotten policies until we bring this nasty rotten government down.

Academies: an update

2011-05-26T14:06:00.005+01:00

See also Academies: Selling our children's future.

Academies are funded directly by the government and operate outside of local authority control. The government describes them as independent state-funded schools. Essentially, academies have more freedom than other state schools over their finances, the curriculum, and teachers' pay and conditions.

In Ludgvan, just outside Penzance in Cornwall, the local primary school are looking to become an academy. Last night there was a consultation meeting with parents, also attended by the governors and some teachers. Around 30 parents were present at the meeting along with the governors and the headteacher Helen McFarlane. The school apear to be portraying this as nothing but a wonderful opportunity for the school to manage its affairs independent of local authority control. The headteacher cited the example of a pupil that required a translator, which took a while for the local authority to organise. She claimed that if the school had been an academy it could have arranged it straight away. However there is no way of independently verifying this. The problem may have been finding an appropriate person, for example.

Parents were told that the school would be run as a business and would have to set up as a ‘limited company’. The funding which is coming from the government is secure for this year, but the funding formula is being changed next year. How will this affect the school's funds?

Governors were asked what would happen if the school got into financial difficulty or, like so many businesses over the past 3 years, it went into administration. Parents were told that is was their belief that the government would want to bail the school out as they are promoting academies and want them to work. However, this is no guarantee that money would be there to help the school. Because the school has done so well with its budgets up to now is no guarantee that it will succeed under these new circumstances with new financial responsibilities it did not have before. The Government wants to create a market in education and therefore it is unlikely it will bail out “failing” schools.

Several parents voiced concerns over private companies coming in to fund the school. Questions are: what would these companies want in return for funding the school and what would happen if they went bankrupt? At a time of global financial crisis where so many companies have struggled, bringing the market into the education system opens us up to massive risks, especially as a small school. Any business needs to plan in case of financial difficulties and governors are offering little reassurance that the funds will be there. If government funds prove to be insufficient, the school could be pushed into bringing in private companies to fund it, whether they like it or not.

There is also the risk of unforeseen events, such as fire or floods. Parents were told in such an event the academy school’s insurance would cover the cost. However, insurance companies are not quick to pay up or get a job done. Parents are still waiting for insurance to cover the fire damage to equipment in Penlee Park in Penzance after two months. Under the local authority, pupils would be found alternative accommodation immediately and would not lose teaching time. That would not happen as an academy.

Parents were told last night that the consultation period lasts until 17 June. They were told that it would not be advisable for the governors to go ahead if there was significant opposition from parents. Therefore, there is a chance for parents to research this and put their views to the governors who will make the final decision at the end of June. This is a very big issue that carries great risks. Parents, teachers and governors have a duty to make sure it is the right decision for the school and the children. Parents can email comments to: comments@ludgvan.cornwall.sch.uk

However, the divisional secretary of Cornwall And Isles of Scilly NUT (teaching union) has stated that Ludgvan's application is quite far advanced, suggesting that this has been planned for some time. The letter telling parents about the meeting suggests it is just an idea they are considering. Some parents are concerned that the decision has effectively already been made and the consultation is simply cosmetic. Parents need to ask searching questions and make sure that every eventuality has been thought about and planned for. They need concrete guarantees about funding.

See also Academies: part three.

Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance gets off to a great start

2011-05-26T12:54:00.000+01:00

Around twenty people packed in to the snug at the back of the Crown pub at the bottom of Bread Street in Penzance, Cornwall last night to officially form the Penwith Anti-Cuts Alliance. The group was originally going to be called the Penzance Anti-Cuts Alliance but so many people came from the surrounding area that the meeting decided to expand the remit of the group. People came from Gulval, St.Ives, Carbis Bay, St. Just and Sennen as well as Penzance itself. There were individuals from the Green Party, the Labour Party, Mebyon Kernow (cornish nationalists) and the Socialist Workers Party as well as many people in no party. Unison, PCS and CWU trade union members were also present.

Many people were very angry at the coalition government's attacks on ordinary people and, in particular, the elderly, disabled, sick and vulnerable. People talked about how this government is continuing the agenda of Thatcher's government, but taking it further and more quickly. Many people spoke eloquently of their disgust at government policies and said that the level of anger amongst ordinary people in the area meant that there was much we could do to campaign against the policies of the government. People were angry that banks and bankers had caused the crisis and were still getting their profits and bonuses while ordinary people were paying a heavy price for bankers' and politicians' mistakes. And some spoke of the shocking fact that £120 billion in tax is either evaded, avoided or uncollected every year. This amounts to three-quarters of the deficit.

Cornelius Olivier, Chair of the Constituency Labour Party, spoke about the break-up of the National Health Service (NHS) in Cornwall and how local hospitals and community nursing was being outsourced to a 'community interest company'.

Tim Andrewes, a Green Party councillor in St. Ives spoke about the crisis in the building of new social housing, the changes to how housing benefit is paid and the impact this will have on local people.

Suzy Messenger, who works for a community development trust, spoke about the scandal of people being moved off disability benefit and on to job seekers allowance in order for the government to save money despite those individuals being unable to work.

The meeting discussed the current NHS campaign and it was felt that we could write a letter, calling on Andrew George MP to vote against the Health and Social Care Bill and try to get it signed by as many local general practitioners as possible.

The meeting also decided to produce a newsletter which we would distribute door-to-door as well as on a stall in the town, possibly on a Saturday.

Finally, the meeting discussed the day of co-ordinated action on 30 June. It was decided to approach local trade union representatives about the possiblity of a lunch-time rally on the day in which we could demonstrate our support.

It was agreed that the group would be a branch of Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance and all the membership forms available for that organisation were eagerly taken and most were filled out and handed back in immediately. There was a collection that amounted to around £50 and it was agreed that the next meeting would be at the same time and place in two weeks time, Wednesday 8 June.

Conservatives sink to new low

2011-05-24T11:02:00.001+01:00

Conservative MP for Truro and Falmouth, Sarah Newton, has plummed the depths with her latest trick. She has attempted to avoid a protest and petition hand-in at her surgery by cancelling or moving the surgery and pretending she doesn't have an appointment with the secretary of the protest group.

Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance have been running a campaign against the Health and Social Care Bill and £20 billion 'efficiency savings' for the last few weeks. It began with a protest in Truro on Saturday 14 May (see here and here) at which around 60 people marched from the Royal Cornwall Hospital to Lemon Quay in Truro for a protest and mass petitioning. Following on from this plans have been made to hand the petition in to many of the MPs around Cornwall.

The first march and lobby toook place last Friday. Around 40 campaigners and members of the public marched from West Cornwall Hospital in Penzance, through the town, to the surgery of local Liberal Democrat MP Andrew George. George claims to be against the bill and as such 'welcomed' the protest. However he was clearly concerned at the numbers and relative militancy of the protestors (see here and here).

The second march and lobby is planned for this coming Saturday 28 May. The march is assembling at 12pm outside Wetherspoons on Lemon Quay in Truro. The appointment has been booked for a month. However, Sarah Newton, the MP to be lobbied, has apparently realised that this could look bad for her. If protestors gave Andrew George a hard time, she must be thinking, what on earth will she face, and what effect will the publicity have on local opinion?

To that effect she has released a press release making ridiculous and spurious allegations (read it here). She claims that the group are "target[ing] Truro Library" and that the protest will "severely disrupt library staff and library users". Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance never had any intention of disrupting the library. The reason for marching there was that Newton's office said that is were her surgery would be when the appointment was made. She goes on to say "no-one from the Anti-Cuts Alliance thought to contact my office to arrange a time and place for the petition to be handed to me", which is, frankly, a rather pathetic lie.

Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance have responded with their own press release (read it here), describing Newton's comments as "outlandish and deeply misleading". It goes on

"Chris Gibson, Cornwall Anti-Cuts secretary, said “Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance made an appointment through Sarah Newton’s secretary a month ago, which was to meet with at her surgery in the Medium Room at Truro Library at 1.30pm on Saturday 28th May. Sarah Newton was clearly informed of the purpose of the meeting – the deep concern at the current health bill which will result in the scrapping of Primary Care Trusts, as well as intense local anger regarding the savage cuts taking place in front line services at Treliske Hospital. As the Secretary of the Cornwall Anti Cuts Alliance, formed to protect the ordinary people of Cornwall from the harshest cuts in over 80 years imposed by the Coalition government, which Sarah Newton explicitly supports, Sarah Newton’s denial of such an appointment is deeply contemptuous of the legitimate concerns of her constituents."

"Josiah Mortimer, a Cornwall Anti-Cuts campaigner and Youth Representative on Truro Community Library Board, said “Sarah Newton’s refusal to meet with pro-NHS constituents this weekend seems like pure scrutiny-dodging when nearly 400,000 people have signed a petition against the NHS reforms, including over 5000 in Cornwall. Truro Library is by no means being targeted, as she claims, by Saturday’s planned peaceful march and petition-hand in which had arranged to meet her there. In fact, Cornwall Anti Cuts Alliance campaigns to save the very library services her coalition government is demolishing through savage local government cuts.”

"Chris Gibson also said “We would ask that Sarah Newton corrects her press release which stated that campaigners planned to ‘target Truro Library’. Her coalition government is pushing through cuts which will see hundreds of libraries closed – it is her who is targeting libraries and ordinary people like us who use and rely on them.”

Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance will continue their campaign against the government’s deeply unpopular NHS changes."

It remains to be seen how this will be resolved but there are many who feel the protest should go ahead. The pressure on Sarah Newton should be increased to make sure she does not get away with avoiding difficult questions from constituents rightly angry that her party in government are destroying the services upon which they rely. To try and turn it around to make it look as though the protestors are threatening services is pathetic and she must be exposed as the deciever she undoubtedly is.

The next protest is scheduled for 4 June in Camborne. There will be a march and lobby of Conservative MP George Eustice. Assemble at Tesco car-park at 1:15pm.

See also Campaigners continue the fight to save the NHS.

Academies: Selling our children's future

2011-05-23T15:13:00.003+01:00

There is a campaign beginning in Ludgvan just outside Penzance in Cornwall against plans to turn the community primary school into an Academy. The government's ideological commitment to Academies have been discussed on this blog before. The Academy system is an attack on education in this country. It is an attempt to destroy a democratic, planned, state education system and replace it with a two tier, market driven collection of independent schools at the mercy of education companies driven by profit. Only 1,000 schools have applied to become Academies this year out of 20,000 primary and secondary schools, and as the financial bribes begin to fall, we can expect less to want to take this dangerous step.

Currently most schools work as part of the Local Authority. This is led by elected councillors. At the moment most schools are run by a head teacher working with a group of school governors, some of whom are appointed by the Local Authority, others are elected by parents or staff. Whatever its weaknesses, this system has many benefits not least the fact that governors and councillors are elected. Their decisions can be, and have been, challenged at elections.

Will there be more money for our children’s education if the school becomes an academy?
The government has confirmed that academy status should not give schools a financial advantage. The school will be allocated its share of the money that is currently held by the local authority to make provision across all schools for pupils with a whole range of special needs, pupil support, education welfare and school transport. Once the money is allocated to the school, it will have to provide those important services previously provided by the local authority. It may find, if, for example, it has a significant number of pupils with special needs, that it has insufficient funds to match the provision previously provided by the local authority. It is likely that we will be told that the school will get extra funding by becoming an academy. Any financial advantage will be for one year only as the government will be introducing a completely new funding formula for schools in 2012. And what about the costs of all these support services that were previously provided by the local authority and for which the academy will now be liable? And what about the safety net provided by the local authority, for example, in the event of a fire or a flood (as happens to too many schools each year). As things are, your local authority would find you new accommodation and sort things out – if your school is an academy you would be on your own in these circumstances.

Will becoming an academy mean that educational standards will be raised?
There is no evidence that being an academy school raises standards. Academy schools have no better record of educational achievement than any other type of school. Some have a far worse record. Academy schools do not have to abide by the terms and conditions agreements set up for teachers and teaching staff by the Local Authority. That means teachers may see their terms and conditions deteriorate and demoralised teachers may mean educational standards will be lowered.

Who will run the Academies?
Existing Academy chains, and Edubusinesses are lining up to take over our schools. Two examples: The biggest Academy chain in England is ULT. The government told them they could have no more Academies after Ofsted failed their 2 Academies in Sheffield. In 2002 Edison USA was caught in the stock market meltdown, with its shares plummeting from over $21 to under $1. The company solved this by selling off its books, computers, lab equipment and musical instruments! Edison are already running schools in England.

Any parents of children at this school are strongly advised to attend the meeting the school has organised. It is a chance to find out what it will mean for each child’s education and to ask questions. It is in the school hall this Wednesday (25 May) at 6:15pm.

Campaigning parents will be leafletting all the parents tomorrow and encouraging them to attend the meeting. If the governors do not back down as a result of this meeting a petition will be organised and possibly a public meeting with teachers and the NASUWT union.

For more on this campaign see Academies: an update.

Liberal Democrat MP feels the heat on NHS plans

2011-05-22T20:30:00.005+01:00

On Friday around 40 people joined a march from West Cornwall Hospital in Penzance to the surgery office of local Liberal Democrat MP Andrew George. There campaigners lobbied him on the Health and Social Care bill which proposes to re-organise the National Health Service to allow private companies to make a profit out of healthcare.

Andrew George, who sits on the Health Select Committee, was asked if he would vote against the bill. He replied he would, if it remained unchanged. He said “unless the Government widens responsibility for the local management and commissioning of the NHS to a broader group of clinicians and community representatives rather than merely GPs and that they withdraw proposals for the wholesale marketisation of the NHS then the Health Bill will be dead in the water”.

He was also asked if he would resign from the Liberal Democrats if the bill was passed. He replied it was not a ‘party political issue’ and not relevant to the lobby of the NHS. But many of those present disagreed.

Before the last general election the Liberal Democrats positioned themselves as a progressive party who believed in closing tax loopholes, not renewing the Trident nuclear weapons system, access for all to higher education and a fairer, more equal society.

Privatising and cutting the NHS, making the less well off pay for the economic crisis with the loss of their public services whilst the rich still evade billions of pounds of tax is not progressive. It is a Tory policy which will lead us back to a Dickensian nightmare where those who cannot afford healthcare will either have to rely on charity or not get any care.

At the last general election the majority of people voted for parties to the left of the Conservatives (as the Lib Dems posed themselves as being) but because the Lib Dems have entered into a coalition with the Tories our society will become less fair, less inclusive and will be run for the benefit of the rich and big business.

If the Lib Dems fail to see that we do not wish to live in a Tory nightmare (and that is the reason the Lib Dems did so disastrously at the recent local elections and in the referendum) MPs like Andrew George will lose their seats. It is time for them to stand up to the Conservatives and speak out for the people who voted for them. Otherwise they will not vote for them again.

Plans for 30 June coming together in Cornwall

2011-05-21T20:35:00.002+01:00

The National Union Of Teachers (NUT) in Cornwall organised a meeting on Thursday 19 May to discuss their ballot for strike action on the issue of pensions and possible joint activity on 30 June. The meeting was open to the other balloting unions and there were teacher members of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) present.

The meeting was an opportunity for the union to argue in favour of voting 'yes' in the ballot and the overwhelming majority of the teachers in the room were in favour. The national NUT speaker said a number of things including:

1. The NUT and ATL ballots are looking 'likely' to return yes votes.

2. The ballot is for 'discontinuous action' meaning further action in the autumn is very likely.

3. Head teachers may also ballot. Although it will be too late for them to strike on the 30 June, they may join in the next wave in the autumn. Also, they are very supportive of the teachers' action and in many schools they will 'turn a blind eye', meaning there could be school closures.

4. The National Association of Schoolmaster/Union of Women Teachers (NASUWT) are saying they may also ballot in the autumn.

5. The TUC-sponsored discussions with the government over pensions are a 'charade'.

After the meeting he also said 'off the record' that Unison General-Secretary Dave Prentis is very angry at NUT for balloting now before the end of the talks because 'his members will be saying other public sector unions are going on strike, why aren't we?'

Ian Williams, divisional secretary for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly NUT (who spoke at a recent public meeting organised by Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance) said he has booked Lemon Quay for a rally on 30 June from 10:30am - 12:00pm. He said he expected all the other striking unions to be involved and he would welcome support from other unions or groups and they could also speak at the rally. Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance members present asked if he would be in favour of the idea of bringing people to the rally with placards saying things like 'Parents support teachers' and 'Students support lecturers' and so on and he said he would. The national NUT speaker suggested some sort of children's entertainment so parents and pupils could come along. NUT are producing a leaflet to explain the dispute to parents and they will be doing stalls in Truro a couple of Saturday's before 30 June.

This would be a great opportunity. Anti-cuts activists could organise a feeder march of service users and campaigners to the rally in Lemon Quay possibly arriving 10 or 15 mins after the trade unionists have been told to assemble as a visible demonstration of support from the public.

As previously mentioned on this blog (see here), 30 June must be seen as an opportunity for a day of resistance to the coalition government's attacks on public services bringing demonstrating protestors together with striking trade unionists to strike a blow at the heart of the government.

See also Links getting stronger as unions build for 30 June strikes

Class Wars: The Working Class Strike Back

2011-05-18T15:00:00.000+01:00

There is an argument that has become common sense in mainstream society over the last thirty years, that has also been taken up by much of the left. It is that working class power, so visible in the great upsurge of working class militancy during the early 1970s, has been fundamentally, perhaps fatally, eroded with the decline of manufacturing and the rise of globalisation. As a result it has been accepted that the unions too are in a largely irreversible spiral of decline, ever more marginal to British political life. Alongside this is the belief that the battle of ideas in society has largely been lost by the left. So, for example, Tony Blair's hold over the Labour Party was based on the widespread acceptance that Labour could no longer win elections on a programme of redistributing wealth and control over market forces.

However, since the huge trade union-organised anti-cuts demonstration of 26 March, class is still the clear dividing line in British society. The protest was the second biggest demonstration in British history, after the February 2003 anti-war march. But more importanly it was visibly the organised working class on the move. It was the unions that called the demonstration, organised it and marched together in vast contingents of Unison, PCS, UCU, GMB, Unite members and the whole range of the union movement.

Yet despite the real defeats the working class movement suffered at the hands of the Thatcher government in the 1980s the reality is that workers still have immense power, their basic organisation remains intact and the dominant set of ideas inside workers' heads is still shaped by the post-war social democratic settlement established by the Labour government of 1945. It is certainly true that manufacturing has been in relative decline as a percentage of the economy over the last four decades, but overall output has risen. In 2007 British manufacturing output reached an all-time high, and Britain is the world's sixth largest manufacturer. This means that, though the manufacturing workforce is considerably smaller today, each worker in manufacturing is producing much more and is potentially more powerful than 40 years ago.

We have also witnessed a transformation of white collar work over the same period. Jobs like teaching, civil service and local government have been subject to the same routinisation and control that governs a factory production line. Where once these were relatively privileged jobs, they have now been "proletarianised". This reality underlies the unionisation of these sectors - a fact reflected in their huge presence on the TUC march. This process is continuing. University academics were not part of the labour movement en masse 30 years ago. Now visiting the picket lines of striking higher education lecturers in the UCU the week before the TUC march was no different from visiting a PCS or Unison picket line.

Trade union membership stands at around 6.5 million, or just over one in four workers. This is of course sharply down from a peak of over 13 million in the late 1970s, a fall largely explained by the loss of unionised jobs in manufacturing, rather than workers leaving unions. The unions remain overwhelmingly the biggest voluntary organisations in Britain (though there is, of course, little place for them in Cameron's "Big Society"). And their potential reach is greater than the overall membership figure suggests, with nearly half of all workers in a workplace where a union is present.

Private sector union membership is much lower than in the public sector. Trade union density (the proportion of workers in a union) is around 15 percent in the private sector compared to 56 percent in the public sector. The unions are present in nine out of ten public sector workplaces but only three out of ten private sector ones. But the picture in the private sector is more complicated and contains some important strengths that point to the potential for a fightback. The low overall level of private sector unionisation masks some very significant concentrations of union implantation in key industries. So union density reaches 40 to 60 percent, even as high as 75 percent, in electricity, gas, water supply, transport, storage and communications. And key manufacturing sectors like engineering, the car industry and food production retain significant levels of union membership.

In launching an onslaught on the public sector the government is attacking the biggest concentration of union membership, but unlike Thatcher's attacks on the working class (until the introduction of the poll tax provoked opposition on such a scale that it drove her from office), the current Tory-led attack is across the whole working class at once. The potential for a generalised fightback is real, and if it turns into reality it is likely to win widespread sympathy from workers in the private sector. A serious strike movement can both directly draw in the private sector and inspire workers there to start raising their own demands.

Since at least the late 1990s a rising level of political anger and ideological generalisation has thrown up a series of mass movements: over anti-capitalism, climate change and most significantly in opposition to the war in Iraq. But these have not been matched by the level of economic struggle, with strike figures for the decade 2000-2009 averaging just 692,000 days of strikes per year, slightly up from the 1990s but a fraction of the levels of the 1980s, let alone the 1970s. The government's attempt to significantly accelerate the assault on the post-war settlement that has been taking place over the last three decades is now producing a serious clash with the prevailing levels of working class consciousness and organisation. This raises the possibility of driving the generalised political anger in society into the economic struggle.

Since the autumn there has been a rising arc of protests against the cuts. It is a bridge that can take the political and ideological radicalisation into the economic struggle. The sense of confidence it gave workers who felt they were no longer isolated in the face of the Tories' assaults has shifted the balance of forces inside the unions, at least for now, in favour of those who want to fight. Mark Serwotka of the PCS, echoed by Len McCluskey of Unite have argued for coordinated strikes by unions against the cuts as the next step in the campaign.

We have to argue for national action, coordinated wherever possible, inside our unions while also delivering local action whenever we can. Alongside this socialists need to be fighting to develop resistance to every cutback in local services and attack on the NHS. We need to develop a "culture of resistance" that feeds into the workplace and can create networks of solidarity with any groups of workers that fight back. Mass strikes can break the coalition's austerity drive, destroy their political will and raise the spectre of a revival of working class militancy. Their nightmare must be our ambition.

This post is based on an article by Mark L. Thomas. See here for the full article.

Cornwall NHS protest well received

2011-05-15T19:13:00.006+01:00

Around 60 people marched from Treliske Hospital to Lemon Quay in Truro yesterday (Saturday) to protest against the cuts at the hospital and to protest against the government's Health and Social Care bill which is currently ‘paused’ in Parliament due to opposition from health professionals and the public.

The demonstration was joined by some workers from the hospital and some members of the general public who have not been in contact with the group before. There were members of the UCU, NUT and Unison trade unions. People brought their children too. Liberal Democrat MP Andrew George came to meet the demonstration and speak to marchers. He said he welcomed the protest and explained that it is part of a growing movement across the country to oppose the privatisation plans in the Health and Social Care bill. He is on the Health Select Committee currently looking at the bill and has been speaking out against the plans for some time. He said if there weren't very significant changes to the bill he would vote against it when it goes to the House of Commons.

Howard Newlove from Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance made an excellent speech reminding everyone that the plans for the health service are part of the Government's larger plan to cut back on public services and to hand them over to private companies to make a profit. Marilyn Middlemiss from Save Our NHS (Cornwall) said we had to keep fighting for the NHS or we will lose it. Local BBC 'Spotlight' TV came to cover the protest and followed it all the way into town. There was also a reporter from the West Briton present.

The demonstration helped to lift people's mood, especially with the support from people driving past the march. Drivers were honking it nearly all the way; people were even beeping who were driving in the opposite direction. Marchers were confident enough to go through the town, and were encouraged all the way by the public. One man joined in for a bit and was shouting 'make the bankers pay.'

Members of the NUT and UCU unions took part. They will be holding a meeting this Thursday to discuss joint strike action on 30 June against attacks on public sector pensions. What was achieved yesterday is only the very beginning of the campaign but already awareness has been raised and contacts are being made everywhere. This can feed into making June 30 a stronger fight back and that will give hope and confidence to those who are demoralised. Just doing a protest march won't stop the cuts, but it can energise people and make them feel they are not alone.

When the march reached the Quay nearly everyone who went past was signing the Save Our NHS petition, and over the previous week there had been an amazing response with the petition at Treliske Hospital, West Cornwall Hospital and in Penzance town centre. How is it possible to build resistance and get more beeping people out of their cars and onto the street? It is a long process. But there is reason to be hopeful. The coalition is very shaky, the government don't have a mandate for what they are doing, health professionals are opposed to the bill, and the GP in charge of the 'listening exercise' which is being conducted while the bill is being paused, has said the reforms are unworkable.

This is a fight that can be won, and that would definitely give people the confidence to fight the other cuts. It is very positive that some action has been achieved, the press coverage should be good and it attracted attention and got a VERY positive response.

30 June mass strike becoming a reality

2011-05-13T20:07:00.003+01:00

This blog has already discussed the need for a day of resistance against cuts and austerity on 30 June (see here). This is getting closer. In many parts of the country there are joint union meetings to discuss action on the day. In Truro there is a meeting next Thursday that has been organised by the NUT but is open to the other striking unions and observers from Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance will attend.

Close to 1 million workers could be part of a mass strike on 30th June. Next week PCS conference will vote on beginning to ballot for 30th June strikes, NUT and ATL begin ballots next week, UCU have already returned a vote for strikes.

In the NUJ there are several groups of workers who could join action on the 30th. NUJ conference in April almost unanimously passed a motion calling on their NEC to pressure the TUC to call a general strike. Votes for strike action have come from members in Newsquest in North of England, Newsquest South London begins balloting on Monday, and all BBC journalists nationally are set to begin a ballot for strike action (although the start date for the ballot has not been announced).

The CWU executive is backing a motion to its conference calling for a general strike. They are also putting in their own motion calling for a national strike ballot (which would most likely be for action in October) unless Royal Mail delivers on a number of key issues. They could also start balloting all of London Royal Mail workers in early June, and today a ballot of London mail centres and Rathbone Place started. This result will be announced at conference (22-26th May).

These are very significant shifts within the trade union movement in Britain, but there is still everything to play for. The movement must be at the heart of pushing to get dates for ballots where this still has to become concrete, directing any possible disputes towards action on 30th June, building huge YES votes, and fighting to make the day of our mass strike, the 30th June, a day of wide-spread united resistance.

For more on the details of plans in Cornwall see here.

Privatisation, cuts and job losses in the NHS

2011-05-11T21:30:00.001+01:00

Cuts
The department of health says this year’s NHS budget is ‘ring fenced’, that is not subject to cuts but it has to make £20 billion of ‘efficiency savings’. However, Monitor, the regulator of NHS trusts in England warns this is an underestimate. It says health bosses must now slash their spending by 7% a year not the 4% previously expected. The nurses’ RCN union has identified almost 40,000 NHS posts across Britain that face being lost – up from the 27,000 it reported in November. That figure could now go much higher.

Hull and East Yorkshire NHS Trust last week admitted it would be cutting 300 beds (or 20% of the total) and closing 10 wards in an attempt to save £95 million by 2015. Patients across Britain are being denied new hips, weight loss operations and even cancer treatment due to the cuts. NHS waiting times have reached their highest level in England for three years. In February, nearly 15% of hospital in-patients waited more than 18 weeks for treatment, the highest level since 2008, according to the King’s Fund. The proportion of patients waiting more than four hours in A&E was at its highest level for five years. Yet 18 out of 26 NHS finance directors questioned said they were uncertain they can meet the government’s ‘savings’ target. Many admitted they plan to attack the terms and conditions of health workers. In addition to the three year pay freeze already implemented, they now want to end annual incremental pay increases.

The Health and Social Care Bill
This is currently ‘paused’ on its journey through parliament as a result of the outcry from health workers and the public. The bill would give private healthcare multinationals the right to make profit out of the health service. The job of handling 80% of the NHS budget will be given to GP consortia when they take over the job of ‘commissioning healthcare’ from the primary care trusts. However, the likelihood is that this work will be ‘outsourced’ and will also end up in the hands of healthcare multinationals. They will also run services that compete against those provided by the NHS in a bid to undercut them.

What health professionals say
Dr Mark Porter, chairman of the doctors’ BMA union has said that privatisation plans could “turn the clock back to the 1930s”—when the poor could rarely afford healthcare and were forced to rely on charity. He lambasted health secretary Andrew Lansley’s health and social care bill, saying the plans could result in the closure of hospitals and see some patients denied care by private providers because they are too expensive to treat.

Local cuts
At Treliske Hospital, the work equivalent of 400 posts are to be cut, which could mean up to double that number in workers being sacked. Staff already work under immense pressure due to increasing workloads. The 5000 staff members have been told by the trust’s board that operating costs have to be cut by £26 million in the next financial year and there must be savings of £19 million. There is an unconfirmed rumour that the doctor-led cover for the casualty unit (currently day and evening) is to be removed at West Cornwall Hospital in Penzance.

Resistance
There will be protests around the country against the health secretary’s plans for the NHS including a major protest in London on Tuesday 17 May. There is a protest at Treliske Hospital on Saturday 14 May at 1pm. There will then be a march to Lemon Quay for a vigil with Save Our NHS (Cornwall) at 2pm. There is a lobby of local MP Andrew George meeting at West Cornwall Hospital in Penzance at 9:45am on Friday 20 May. There is a meeting of Penzance Anti-Cuts Alliance at the Crown pub at the bottom of Bread Street at 7pm on Wednesday 25 May. Everyone is welcome to come along and discuss what can be done to campaign against privatisation, cuts and job losses in the NHS as well as in our schools, Cornwall Council, children’s services, Royal Mail and so on.

Conclusion
When the NHS was founded in 1948 the national debt was almost 240% of GDP (it is currently around 50%). Tory spending cuts are a class attack, making the working class pay for a crisis created by bankers and politicians. The bankers are still getting massive payouts. The capitalist system went into recession, freezing the financial system and hurling millions into unemployment. Governments across the world stepped in to hand thousands of billions to bankers. In Britain they received £1.4 trillion. Now the bills for the crisis are being paid—not by those who caused the mess, but by its victims.

Thrown on the dole by the recession? Now you must get less. Disabled or sick? Now you must be hounded by assessment teams and driven on to lower benefits. Working on an average wage? Now you must abandon hope of a decent pension and see your pay frozen or cut. Rents will rise, but council tenants also face being thrown out of their homes if they pass an income threshold handed down by a cabinet of millionaires. Not only will colleges be cut, but education will be driven towards what business leaders want taught. There’s privatisation of the Royal Mail and of the core of the NHS. There are academies and other elite schools instead of comprehensives. And there’s a relentless ideological assault to define who are—and who are not—the “deserving poor”.

Labour is right to point out that the cuts threaten a new recession. It is economic lunacy that when cuts deepen a downturn, it leads to calls for more cuts. But these attacks cannot be opposed by an argument based on what is best for the bosses’ economy. This is not a technical matter of economic policies, it is a political choice. It is about the Tories’ ideological embrace of class war. We must embrace it too – from our side. The ruling class across Europe is watching carefully for the outcome—learning from one another, and urging each other on. Workers must do the same.

We need the biggest possible support for every protest, every lobby and every group of workers who strike, especially on 30 June when PCS, NUT, UCU, ATL and others may be striking together.

Climate Change: Is Nuclear Power the Answer?

2011-05-10T22:13:00.000+01:00

The massive earthquake and tsunami that devastated much of Japan in March and the resulting major nuclear accident at the Fukishima power station has once again brought the question of climate change and whether or not nuclear power is the answer to the fore. The government has for some time been talking about building a new generation of nuclear power plants. The green movement has long been united in opposing nuclear power. However recently well-known and influential environmentalist George Monbiot, writing in the Guardian has said not only that he supports the building of new nuclear power stations, but that he is more convinced after Fukishima than he was before. He also attacks anti-nuclear campaigners in the article, claiming there is no proof to support the claim that radiation is dangerous. What is the truth of his claims? Does the science support his arguments? What should our position be?

The disaster at Fukishima is now ranked at the same level as the disaster at Chernobyl in Ukraine where a reactor exploded in 1986 releasing 400 times more radioactive material than the Hiroshima bomb. Workers dealing with the fire, explosions and leaks suffered cancers and illness from radiation and their death rate from cancer is three times that of the rest of the population. 34,000 clean-up workers are thought to have died. In total 500,000 people are thought to have died as a result of the Chernobyl disaster and another 1.5 million have been affected. In neighbouring Belarus, which was 'down wind' of the disaster, 1000 children die from thyroid cancer every year. So the long term consequences for Japan's economy, health, agriculture and industry are massive.

Climate Change: the facts
There has always been climate change but now it is as a result of human activity. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, we have been burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas which release greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases are not all bad. If we did not have enough greenhouse gases the earth would be too cold to support life. However, if we have to much greenhouse gas the earth begins to heat up. At the current rate scientists predict global temperatures to rise by between 2 and 5˚C this century. A rise of more than 2˚C will mean more flooding, less food production, greater incidence of disease and more extinctions of both animals and plants. There is an urgent need to reduce global emissions of greenhouse gases produced by burning fossil fuels but in fact it is increasing.

The nuclear industry lies and the truth
The nuclear industry tell us nuclear power is safe and environmentally friendly. Indeed they say nuclear power generation is the only way to produce low carbon electricity. This is not true. Numerous disasters prove that nuclear power is not safe, not just Fukishima and Chernobyl but also the Three Mile Island disaster in America in 1979, the fire at Windscale (later renamed Sellafield to counter bad publicity) in Britain in 1957 and countless other smaller incidents and accidents. Nuclear power is also a net producer of greenhouse gases if the whole process is taken into account, as it of course must be. In fact every stage of the process releases greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The mining of uranium, the building of reactors and the storage of waste products. Indeed there is no long term solution to the problem of radioactive waste. As if that were not reason enough to abandon the idea of nuclear power, it is also very costly and is entirely reliant on government subsidies. In 1990/91 the UK government imposed a levy on fossil fuels amounting to £1,175 million. Of this 99% went to fund nuclear power stations and 1% went to renewable energy.

So if nuclear power is not safe, environmentally friendly, nor economical why is the government planning to build new nuclear power stations rather than investing in renewables?
Put simply, nuclear power is big business. There is a lot of money to made out of the industry because of the subsidies. Indeed there are also subsidies for fossil fuels and even arms trading. In America, which is responsible for 25% of global carbon dioxide emissions, politicians’ election campaigns, both Democrat and Republican, are funded by the fossil fuel industry. Massive profits are made by the oil industry, the car and rubber industries that depend on oil and the coal mining industry and this makes these powerful corporations an important lobby. The nuclear industry is also tied up with nuclear weapons. Indeed the first nuclear reactors in the UK were built to produce plutonium for weapons. The generation of electricity was merely a by-product.

Climate Change: The Solution
The solution is to phase out nuclear power and to spend the vast quantities of money currently spent on nuclear on renewable energy, such as wind power, wave power, tidal power and solar power, plus co-generation (heat is a by-product of electricity generation and can be used to heat nearby buildings thus reducing the demand for electricity). Compulsory energy efficiency schemes should be introduced for big business to reduce their demand for electricity. Finally we should support the Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union Group's campaign for one million climate jobs in order to expand public transport (the second biggest cause of carbon dioxide emissions after energy production), increase sources of renewable energy, carry out energy improvements to buildings, offices and houses and to reduce emissions. This must be done by continuing to build a mass movement that can challenge the priorities of capitalist system.

Monbiot
Monbiot has recently claimed in the Guardian that anti-nuclear campaigners have made “wild” assertions about the dangers of radiation that have no scientific backing. In fact there is an abundance of scientific research showing significant links between radiation exposure and cancers, Down’s syndrome, kidney and liver damage, and other serious diseases. George Monbiot may say there is no proof that radiation causes illness and deformity. But there is evidence that exposure is linked to those illnesses and deformities. And there is certainly no proof that low doses are safe. The nuclear industry claims the risks are low. But why should we take any risks? A risk of developing cancer, however “low”, is not acceptable. It can seem preposterous that environmentalists like Monbiot are vigorously campaigning for nuclear power. But there is a logic to his position. Monbiot doesn’t think that we can meet our energy needs by a combination of green, renewable energy sources and increased energy efficiency. And he believes that any sort of radical change will be very difficult to win. Because he accepts these limits, he has become an advocate for one of the system’s worst aspects. Socialists have a different vision. We are fighting for a world that is sustainable and run by ordinary people.

Conclusion
Capitalism doesn’t care about the natural world or the majority of the world’s population. Building nuclear power plants in areas of high population density and earthquake zones is proof of this. So we must build a movement that challenges the interests of big business and the priorities of capitalism. There is no contradiction between this and the labour movement or the fight against cuts and austerity. We need to learn the lessons from the revolutionary wave in North Africa and the Middle East. The struggle against nuclear power is part of the struggle for a better world.

The Fight Against Cuts Comes to Penzance

2011-05-07T14:19:00.002+01:00

Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance is spreading to more and more parts of Cornwall. Initially primarily based in Truro and the west of Cornwall, a new group has started operating in Liskeard in the South-East of the county that wants to make links with the group. Similarly in North Cornwall a new group has made links with the county-wide organisation. Now there is a move for Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance to set-up branches in local areas in its traditional heartlands. First up is Penzance. Activists were out in the town today (Saturday) campaigning against the cuts in the National Health Service and the plans in the coaltion government's Health and Social Care Bill to effectively privatise the NHS. Shoppers were invited to vote in the 'People's Referendum' on the question 'Should we let private companies make a profit out of our NHS?' and to sign the petition initiated by the group 'Save Our NHS (Cornwall)'.

There was a very good response and many people were interested in getting involved with the group. The next action is a lobby of local LibDem MP Andrew George. on Friday 20 May from 9:45am. There will be a march from West Cornwall Hospital to Andrew George's surgery to hand in the national petition collected by the website 38 Degrees with 700,000 signatures and the local petition initiated by Save Our NHS (Cornwall) with 5000 signatures. Although Andrew George says he is opposed to the bill, there is a need to put pressure on him to make sure he sticks to his word and votes against it when it comes back to the House of Commons. The launch meeting of Penzance Anti-Cuts Alliance is at the Crown pub at the bottom of Bread Street in Penzance at 7pm on Wednesday 25 May.

Meanwhile Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance activists were also out in force in Truro today campaining on the NHS. There will be a demonstration at Treliske Hospital next Saturday 14 May at 1pm to demonstrate support for the hospital workers and to oppose the cuts which will cost jobs and endanger lives. There will then be a march to Lemon Quay where Save Our NHS (Cornwall) will be staging a rally. They will be collecting signatures and rising awareness of the implications of the Health and Social Care Bill.

Lets make 30 June a day of resistance

2011-05-04T20:50:00.001+01:00

Workers’ spending power is set to drop for the fourth year running, the first time this has happened since the 1870s. The working class is being asked to pay the price for the crisis of the ruling class. However, workers opposition to the cuts is growing, putting pressure on the trade unions to act.

The NUT teachers' union, the PCS civil service workers' union and the ATL teachers' and lecturers' union have each decided to ballot their members over the issue of pensions. This opens the possibility of mass co-ordinated strike action on 30 June. The UCU college lecturers’ union has already struck over pensions and will no doubt do so again. Unite members at the MoD and even in health could be involved too. UCU members in the “old” universities could also strike again on 24 May over their USS pension scheme. Thousands of NUJ members at the BBC are being balloted over compulsory redundancies at the World service. NUJ members could also strike on 30 June.

Following on from the half a million plus strong TUC protest on 26 March, organised workers are now at the centre of resistance. If the ballots go the right way and 30 June goes ahead then there will be further pressure on the “big battalions” of Unison, Unite and the GMB to move. A sign of the pressure that already exists on the trade union leaders was the statement from Unison’s general secretary Dave Prentis statement this weekend that “unless this government changes direction it is heading for industrial turmoil on a massive scale...Unison will ballot 1 million of its members to strike to defend their pensions”.

There is a big difference between such statements and action. It will take a real fight by activists to win the ballots and make 30 June happen. But the idea of mass co-ordinated action, even a British General strike, is moving from the realms of sloganeering to reality. All anti-cuts activists have to take up an argument about the centrality of 30 June across the whole movement. This is not just another date in the anti-cuts calendar. This is the key date in developing the kind of fightback that can win.

We need a fightback in every part of the country on 30 June, including in Cornwall. There will be picket lines across the county if every school, college, the university and every PCS work place is out on strike. Anti-cuts activists should try to visit picket lines on the day but more than this we need to make it a day of resistance for everyone and get others involved. Could we get community groups, student groups, pensioners groups and so on to push for action of some kind on the day? Could parents be involved joining teachers outside schools? Could students occupy their university or college in support of their striking lecturers? Could we get delegations to picket lines from trade unions, anti-cuts activists with banners and placards and visit all the pickets in a local area? Could we organise a lunch time protest, demo and rally?

In the meantime we could leaflet civil service workplaces and colleges and try to contact local union reps. We could initiate or help call together mobilising meetings for activists to pull together the widest numbers of people who can build for the day and make sure we make the most of this fantastic opportunity.
In the colleges and the university we could try to organise joint mobilising meetings with students and involving other campus unions.

In Egypt, the demonstrations were the start of the process. But it was the strike movement amongst the working class that spelled doom for their tyrannical leader. Our movement may not be on the same scale as the one in Egypt but the lesson that we need to learn if we want to bring down our tyrannical government is that to win we need the organised workers to move. We need to see the 30 June as having the potential to land a serious blow on the coalition's plans and to make it, if not a day of rage, then certainly a day of resistance.

For more on this see 30 June mass strike becoming a reality.

Cornwall discusses fightback against cuts

2011-04-28T23:29:00.000+01:00

Around fifty people came to the first public meeting of the Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance tonight in the Hall for Cornwall, Truro. The meeting drew people from all over Cornwall, from Penzance in the west to Rame, near Liskeard in the South-East, there were trade unionists, members of voluntary groups, retired people and concerned service users.

Steve Ryan, from the PCS spoke about the appalling situation in which £120 million in tax is either evaded or avoided and yet the department which would collect that tax is itself subject to cuts.

Josiah Mortimer, a student from Truro College spoke about how the group had been set-up by students in December as a result of their campaign against tuition fees and said he and other students would support the idea of a general strike.

Ian Williams from the NUT spoke about how there are attempts to co-ordinate strike action between the PCS, UCU, NUT and the ATL on 30 June and how this would put pressure on a weak government.

There were also speakers from UCU, GMB, Save Our NHS (Cornwall), the Volunteer Sector Forum, a student from Exeter University (Tremough Campus) and Rame Against the Cuts.

Speakers from the floor talked about the fact that nurses at Treliske Hospital may go on strike, the need for a new political party, the campaign to create a million climate jobs, and the need to build a mass movement to both defeat the government and make it impossible for any other government to make cuts.

The meeting passed a resolution to condemn the cuts, to campaign against them, to urge the government to instead crack down on tax evasion and avoidance and to call on the government to stop the privatisation of our public services.

The next meeting of the group is on Wednesday 4 May at the Railway Club, next to Truro Railway Station at 6:30pm.

Cornwall local press cover anti-cuts stories

2011-04-01T21:03:00.000+01:00

The Lizard Peninsula

Two issues that have been raised on this blog have made it into local Cornish media of late. The first concerns the threat of closure to Mullion Youth and Community Centre. This centre also provides nursery care for under 5s and is the only such centre on the whole of the Lizard peninsula.

In this article, it is made clear that this is a vital service for the local community that many people rely on, which is being provided by a charity because the council do not provide these services. The meeting discussed the possibility of new avenues of funding to avert a crisis within the charity. Rather than step in to offer even temporary council funding or help to explore other funding avenues, the Tory councillor simply suggested 'table top' sales or a disco. This is not a serious source of funding for an organisation of this sort.

The councillor said she found some comments made at the meeting 'offensive' despite everyone who attended the meeting going out of their way to be civil. Sadly we have since discovered that "Mullion Youth and Community Centre is closing it's doors today and going into administration. Children, young people, families and parents left with nothing."

The council should be ashamed of themselves.

The Cornwall Anti-Cuts Alliance is currenly looking into what can be done to galvanise support across the area to change this appaling state of affairs.

The second issue we raised here was the threat of cuts to Sure Start Children's Centres in Penzance. In this article, which made the front page of the Cornishman, there is a commitment not to close any buildings, but staff will be reduced. Indeed this has already happened and groups have been cancelled or changed as a result. We won't have heard the last of this campaign and will have to be vigilant.