Socialism in RCT

Exploiting the unemployed to line the pockets of big business

2012-02-09T20:53:00.000Z

The following is take from the socialist issue 704

The introduction of the government's flagship welfare service the Work Programme has been criticised recently in a National Audit Office (NAO) report.

The programme was rushed through in just 12 months starting in June 2011. Disgracefully the government paid £63 million in compensation to private companies to end New Labour's Flexible New Deal contracts early. Ten of these same companies also got the lucrative new contracts with the Work Programme. Providing support to those on benefit is big business and there are many multinationals trying to get their hands on the £5 billion budget.

The government propaganda concentrates on scapegoating individuals for not getting a job. Yet unemployment is at 2.65 million and the government's slashing of jobs and services in the public sector only makes it harder to find work.

The scramble for profits skews the way the private companies provide services. The NAO report acknowledges that providers cherry-pick the easier-to-place people into work and "park" individuals who face more barriers getting back into work.

This was highlighted by PCS-commissioned research in 2006 on third sector involvement in welfare provision. This government puts the emphasis and payment on results. It is not concerned with how providers achieve the targets, as long as they get people off benefit. Also, using the current economic crisis as an excuse, it is likely that the private sector providers will demand a relaxation of the targets they signed up to.

It is often difficult for the public to raise concerns with the quality of these companies' services. Many of them also have a bad track record in the treatment of their own employees, (see article below).

The NAO report recommends that the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) monitors the contracts more robustly. And it highlights some of the problems caused by privatisation. PCS members working in the DWP have a proven track record in providing the best support to help claimants back into work. So the work should be brought back in-house by staffing up jobcentres to provide good quality, individualised support for those on benefit, rather than pouring public money into the coffers of big business.

PCS will continue to campaign for our alternative to the government's attacks on the welfare state, as well as opposing all cuts.

Hard Times - but not for the 1%

2012-02-01T17:58:00.000Z

The following is taken from the socialist issue 702

Defend pensions, fight the cuts in jobs and pay

As the clouds of recession grow darker, practically every section of society feels the grim effects. Apart from one group - there are few signs of recession for the super-rich!

Worldwide, they are still prospering and trying to solve the economy's problems by attacking their workers. Bosses at the industrial giant Unilever are trying to savagely cut the pensions of their workforce in Britain. But workers are fighting back with strikes.

Pickets at Unilever's Purfleet factory told Socialist Party members why they're angry at their bosses. "Unilever is the 18th richest company in the world. Chief executive Paul Polman is on £54 million in pay and share options. He has a chauffeur and claimed £75,000 in travel expenses last year."

But, as the pickets concluded: "It's us that makes them their money!" - though it's us who suffer. The government attacks public sector workers' jobs and aims to slash benefits for the sick and disabled. Pension rights are under siege. Real wages fell 4.2% over the last year.

Now, the Resolution Foundation 'thinktank' predicts that the recession's effects will be long lasting. Looking at ten million families with incomes between £12,000 to £29,000 a year, it predicts, on the basis of sluggish growth rates, that such families' earnings might not return to pre-recession levels until at least 2020. But in this land of permanent pay freeze, again the super-rich will dodge the permafrost.

Most working class, middle class and young people are not prepared to accept this gloomy future offered by capitalism in decline. The rich, the owners of industry, finance and commerce, have declared war on us. As Unilever workers and many public sector trade unionists have already done, the unions need to fight.

The capitalist system of booms and slumps looks like being mainly slump for the next decade - unless you're part of the richest 1%. If you reject this bosses' future, join the Socialist Party, help build a working class-based opposition and help lay the basis for a socialist society.

The Struggle for International Socialism

2012-01-31T21:55:00.000Z

RCT Socialist Update no. 43

Worldwide, the capitalist system is dealing misery to ordinary working-class people.

But, also on a worldwide scale, the masses are beginning to fight back against the privileged elites whose system has brought poverty, economic disaster, war and oppression. Greek work ers have many times brought society to a standstill and revolutionaries in the Middle East and North Africa have toppled dictator after dictator. Latin American is awash with movements seeking to break out of the capitalist system that means misery for the money while a few prosper.

But how can these movements succeed in replacing today's system of exploitation with a more just form of society? How can the masses defeat all those reactionaries who line up on the side of privilege and oppose the movement? Come to the meeting and hear about the Committee for a Workers' International, the international organisation to which the socialist party is affiliated which is seeking to organise and coordinate the international movements and lead the working class to victory.in the meantime you can take a look at the website http://www.socialistworld.net/index.php

Come along to the meeting
Thursday 2nd February 7pm
Cardiff Bus Club (5 mins from Cardiff Central Station)

Pensions: the fight continues

2012-01-25T19:52:00.000Z

The following is taken from the February issue of Socialism Today.

Following the strike of two million public-sector workers in November, the fight to safeguard pensions hangs in the balance. Pitted against savage Con-Dem austerity is an angry and determined working class. Yet the leaders of some key unions and the TUC are doing all they can to sell-out the struggle. The role of left-wing unions, and rank-and-file bodies such as the National Shop Stewards Network, could not be more important. HANNAH SELL reports on this crucial stage of the battle.

IN 2011 THE British working class joined the ranks of world revolt against austerity. The year was peppered with historic events: the largest specifically working-class demonstration in British history on 26 March, 750,000 public-sector workers striking over pensions on 30 June (J30), and the magnificent two-million-strong 30 November strike (N30). Public backing for these events was overwhelming. On N30, a series of polls showed majority support for the strike: the BBC showed 61%, the Guardian 79%, the right-wing Daily Mail an incredible 90%. N30 also profoundly shook the government, with prime minister, David Cameron, having to retreat within 24 hours from calling it a "damp squib" to admitting it was "a big strike".

However, if 2011 showed the strengths of the workers’ movement in Britain it also graphically demonstrated its weaknesses. Following N30, the struggle against the attacks on pensions hangs in the balance, with the leadership of Unison, the biggest public-sector union, breaking the united front and accepting the government’s rotten proposals. Virtually everything – for local government and health workers – had been on offer before N30, when it was rejected by Unison.

Yet it is now being hailed as a breakthrough by the union’s general secretary, Dave Prentis, backed to the hilt by Brendan Barber and the leadership of the TUC. In fact, no central talks with government on pensions have even taken place since 2 November. The negotiations which led to this supposed breakthrough have been scheme-specific, discussing small details, not the broad parameters of public-sector workers’ pensions.

Despite this, given cover by the TUC leadership, before Christmas the government triumphantly announced that every union, apart from PCS civil servants, had signed up to its ‘heads of agreement’ on pensions. Since then, the leadership of the TUC has moved might and main to try to turn the government’s words into reality. At the same time, thousands of trade union activists have been working to keep their unions in the fight.

Finely poised

THE FINAL OUTCOME of this battle has not yet been decided, but the attempt to strangle the pensions dispute in the dark, without trade union members realising what was happening, has already been decisively defeated. The National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) has played an important role in this, not least by initiating a lobby of the TUC meeting which discussed the deal on 19 December. Even before Christmas, the reality was very different from that put forward by the government. Alongside PCS’s rejection of the proposals, the leaders of the education unions, NUT, NASUWT and UCU, had not accepted it, along with the prison officers’ union (POA), other civil service unions (FDA, Prospect), and the Northern Irish Public Sector Alliance.

Since Christmas, the NUT and NASUWT have gone further and rejected the proposals, as have the local government and health executives of the Unite general union. Trade unions representing around a million workers have so far refused to accept it. The Unison leadership agreed the offer against widespread opposition. But the Scottish Unison health committee has formally rejected it and, at the North West Unison local government meeting, only one of the 100 people present spoke in support of the leadership’s position.

However, the leadership of Unison, leaning on a lay bureaucracy at local level, is muddying the waters, desperately trying to disguise the fact that no significant concessions have been won. Meanwhile, the government has, as the Lib-Dem chief secretary to the treasury, Danny Alexander, put it, achieved all its "savings goals".

To try and conceal their capitulation, Prentis and co keep asserting that strikes on pensions could be held later on during these negotiations if needs be. This is true, but not on any of the key issues. Signing the heads of agreement means agreeing to the appalling terms of the current proposals on retirement age, career average schemes, accrual rates, the switch from calculations based on the retail price index to the consumer price index, and other issues. In addition, breaking the united front with other public-sector unions would make it more difficult for future Unison strike action on pensions to win.

The consequences of defeat… or victory

IF PRENTIS, BARBER and co succeed in derailing the pensions struggle it will be a bitter defeat for the workers’ movement. Comparisons are already been drawn with Black Friday in April 1921, when the leaders of the railway and transport unions broke the triple alliance and left the miners isolated. Indeed, a defeat of the pensions struggle would be another black day with serious consequences, not only for public-sector workers’ pensions but also for the working class as a whole. It would embolden the capitalist class and its representatives in government to escalate its austerity onslaught against the working class.

It would also encourage the government to seriously consider taking further measures against the rights of workers to organise in trade unions, targeting the most militant unions, notably PCS. This has already been mooted. During the parliamentary debate following Alexander’s December announcement on pensions, three Tory MPs and a Scottish National Party MP demanded to know what action would be taken against the PCS by the government and called for cuts to trade union facility time and the imposition of minimum turnouts in strike ballots. Alexander responded favourably to them all.

Another consequence could be that some of those who have looked to the unions and the working class to defeat the cuts could, temporarily and in frustration, turn to other roads. If more riots take place in 2012, following what would be perceived as a defeat for ‘union power’, the two would not be unconnected.

Nonetheless, a defeat on pensions would mean losing the first battle, not the war. Even after Black Friday, the working class regrouped. Five years later we saw the greatest strike in Britain’s history, the magnificent 1926 general strike. The profound nature of the capitalist crisis, and the resulting savagery of the government’s austerity measures, mean that general strikes of a similar character can be posed in the not-too-distant future regardless of the outcome of the current battle. In the short term, explosive struggles will take place, not least against the second round of local authority cuts in the coming months.

On the other hand, a victory on pensions would have an enormous effect by increasing the confidence of the working class. And a retreat on pensions would immeasurably damage the government, and could even lead to its fall. This is not because such a retreat would cost the government significant amounts of money. On the contrary, the sums are relatively small. The largest savings to be made – from the NHS pension scheme – are only £530 million in the first year. This is about the same amount as the government lost from its u-turn over privatising forests.

However, in 2011, pensions were the frontline between the organised working class and the government. If the Con-Dems retreat on this it will be a body blow to them. It is vital, therefore, that trade unionists do all they can to force their leaders to maintain the united front and to set the date for the next 24-hour co-ordinated strike, involving all the public-sector unions that have rejected the proposals. This task is urgent as the government is planning to impose a pensions deal from the start of April.

Pressure from below

TRADE UNIONISTS WILL be drawing conclusions about the role being played by Prentis, Barber and the rightwing of the movement. Britain has entered an era of bitter class battles, as the capitalist class attempts to solve the crisis in its system via a savage assault on workers’ living conditions. Under the impact of events, the different trends in the labour movement are beginning to be laid bare. In the frontline are the militant trade unions led by socialists, including PCS – in which the Socialist Party plays an important role – and also the rail and transport workers’ union, RMT.

At the other pole are the right-wing unions, epitomised by the leadership of Unison. These trade union leaders have no confidence in the possibility of fighting to defend their members’ interests. They were dragged, kicking and screaming, into supporting co-ordinated strike action. They opposed the J30 strike on pensions.

The day after, an anonymous trade union leader told the Guardian that the strike had been "a tactical error", adding: "PCS was warned that this was the wrong time and could backfire. A lot of other unions will feel frustrated with the PCS. Most unions will say today hasn’t helped". At the Unison service group meetings after the strike, Prentis argued against taking part in any co-ordinated action with the PCS. However, it was the very success of J30, and the resulting campaign by Unison members to take part in the next strike, which brought N30 about.

Right-wing union leaders were forced to support N30 because they were squeezed between the pressure from their members for action and the intransigence of the government. It is true that the government showered Prentis with praise. On 13 November, Tory cabinet minister, Francis Maude, called him a "very formidable, skilled, experienced negotiator who is going to drive a hard bargain and rightly. We appreciate that". The Financial Times correctly concluded: "Mr Maude plainly believes that Mr Prentis is a man with whom he can do business [but] has nothing but contempt for Mark Serwotka". However, while the government was happy to stroke Prentis’s ego, they were not prepared to give Unison members any concessions that would allow Prentis to avoid taking strike action over pensions.

Unlike the leadership of New Labour, even the most right-wing union leaders are susceptible to pressure from their members, whose dues ultimately pay their salaries. Particularly in the run up to Unison conference, Prentis made speeches which made him sound like a militant trade unionist, declaring that the struggle against pensions "won’t be the miners’ strike. We are going to win". He added that "one day of industrial action won’t change anyone’s mind in government", and that rolling strikes would be needed "over an indefinite period". In the face of an unyielding government, the leadership of Unison had no choice but to strike – and to strike in co-ordination with the other unions, including PCS.

Con-Dem onslaught intensifies

N30 WAS ONE of those days in history which have a profound effect on all those who participated. A new generation of workers took strike action for the first time. Many hundreds of thousands marched in some of the biggest demonstrations their local town, or even village, had ever seen. In Bristol, over 20,000 marched, more than 30,000 in Manchester. In smaller towns there were large demonstrations: 2,000 in Bournemouth, 4,000 in Torquay, 1,200 in Birkenhead, 1,000 in Hastings, 1,200 in Warrington. The list goes on. Public-sector workers tasted their own power.

The government was shaken by the power of the strike, but it did not retreat. It relied on one crucial weakness of the movement to try and defeat it – the cowardice of many of its leaders, who were also terrified by the movement they had called forth. The autumn spending review, announced by the chancellor George Osborne on 29 November, was greeted with banner headlines in the press: ‘Osborne Strikes First’. It was a deliberate attempt to cow trade unionists, above all their leaders. The message was that the capitalist crisis means there is no alternative to unending misery for the working class, that it is useless to fight back because you cannot win.

The spending review announced a series of further attacks. The number of public-sector jobs to be cut was raised by 300,000 to 710,000, and a two-year 1% cap on public-sector pay increases was announced. The already eye-watering £81 billion-worth of cuts to the public sector was to be increased by £30 billion. This was combined with a serious threat to the rights of the working class to organise in defence of its rights, along with the breakup of national pay bargaining and ending TUPE (rules which guarantee the pay and conditions of workers whose jobs are privatised). Cameron then stepped up the threat to trade unionists’ facility time.

Right-wing trade union leaders capitulated before this onslaught. The real reasons for their attitude to the pensions deal is that they believe that the government will force an even worse deal on them if they do not give in now. This was crudely summed up by the statement on 19 December of Christine McAnea, Unison’s head of health, that "this was always a damage limitation exercise". Hence the Unison leadership’s repeated pleading with trade unionists that this is the government’s ‘final offer’ – as if any employer ever puts forward an offer by declaring, ‘this isn’t our final offer; if you keep fighting we might give more’!

There is a comparison between the government’s approach today and that of David Lloyd George, prime minister in 1919, when he said to the union leaders threatening to strike: "If you carry out your threat and strike you will defeat us. But if you do so, have you weighed up the consequences?" He added that, if they beat the government, they would have to be prepared to take power and run society. The reaction of right-wing miners’ leader, Robert Smillie, was: "From that moment on we were beaten and we knew we were".

Rejecting the logic of the market

TODAY, THE IDEA of the working class taking power is not yet in the consciousness of broad sections of the working class, and is inconceivable to right-wing union leaders. Their lack of any political and economic alternative to the government’s policies is an important aspect of their cowardice. New Labour, the party that the biggest public-sector trade unions continue to fund, and whose capitalist leadership Barber, Prentis and co back to the hilt, would quake at the idea of coming to power as a result of a mass movement of the working class.

New Labour is wedded to the market, and has repeatedly made clear it would also carry out massive cuts, including in public-sector workers’ pensions, if it was in government. Such is the scale of the attacks that the working class will be forced to struggle against the Con-Dems cuts even without a clear alternative. Nonetheless, one of the most urgent tasks for the workers’ movement is for it to develop its own mass political voice, which stands against all cuts and puts a socialist alternative.

It is no coincidence that, in the main, it is socialist trade union leaders who have refused to accept the rotten pensions proposals. In the last 30 years, the majority of trade union leaders have moved far to the right, bowing more than ever before to the ‘logic of the market’. However, today and for the foreseeable future, that means taking away all the hard-won gains made by working-class people.

The capitalists and their political representatives can be forced to retreat on pensions, but only if they meet a determined mass movement which does not accept the logic of their system and puts forward an alternative to endless austerity. It is far from excluded that N30 alone would have been enough to force the government to retreat on pensions, provided that the leaders had been clear that this was only a beginning and that, if the government did not retreat, they would quickly call another 24-hour public-sector strike followed, if necessary, by 48-hour action including the involvement of private-sector workers.

Building fighting democratic unions

BREAKING THE UNITED front on pensions will lead, inevitably, not only to anger but to confusion and some demoralisation among a layer of Unison activists and other workers. These feelings will be intensified because the leadership of Unison has not fought a battle on any of the other attacks faced by their members, including massive job losses and wide-scale privatisation.

Some workers will leave Unison in disgust to join another union, or drop out of union membership. One of the reasons Prentis may get away with this in the short term is because, at this stage, most of the fresh layers who have participated in the strikes are not active in the union structures, which are not infrequently little more than shells. In some cases, therefore, union members’ initial reaction may be to walk away and look for other means of fighting back.

Nonetheless, Prentis will be punished by Unison members for his role. It is already clear that significant numbers of workers will set out to try and reverse the decision on pensions and to change their union leaderships. The campaign within Unison to demand special sectoral conferences to discuss the deal, and for a ballot to take place immediately, can gain real momentum in the coming weeks. It will be enormously fuelled if further co-ordinated action takes place by a significant number of unions still participating in the fight.

The importance of, and the potential to succeed in, building rank-and-file organisations within the trade unions, campaigning for fighting, democratic unions, is at its highest level in decades. The conference on 7 January, hosted by PCS Left Unity and bringing together over 500 trade union militants from across the public sector, demonstrated that potential, and also the importance of co-ordinating such bodies across the union movement. The pressure created by that conference contributed to Unite local government standing firm on pensions. The committee set up at the conference can now play a crucial role in co-ordinating the action of the unions that do hold the line.

Three years after the 1921 defeat, the Communist Party began to build the Minority Movement, a powerful rank-and-file trade union organisation. At its height, it represented almost one million of the most militant workers in Britain. Today, the NSSN has begun to group the most militant workplace representatives around it. Over the last 18 months, the NSSN has been able to act as an effective lever to help bring about the 26 March demonstration and the N30 strike, and has played a vital role in lobbying the TUC to demand the pensions struggle continues.

Whatever the outcome of the current stage of that struggle, there will be many tens of thousands of public-sector workers who can be won to the NSSN, as well as to the left organisations in the different unions, and to conduct a serious battle for fighting, democratic trade unions. This is essential preparation for the gigantic battles that will be take place over the coming years.

Stand up to Tory bullies

2012-01-24T19:47:00.001Z

The following is taken from the socialist issue 701

United action can stop Con-Dem attacks

Cameron's Con-Dem coalition wants workers to pay for the bosses' economic crisis. This millionaires' government wants to cut workers' jobs, pay and conditions such as pensions. In the public sector it also aims to slash many of the services that these workers provide.

But Cameron has a problem. People value most jobs done by public servants far more than they respect his 'posh boys' cabinet. So the government resorts to an old Tory trick, trying to belittle or demonise public servants.

Firstly, Cameron tried to bash the understaffed, underpaid job of nursing. He recently lectured nurses, telling them to "talk to patients at least once an hour" and insulted them by saying that "few nurses know that caring is their main job".

A London mental health nurse comments: "Cameron spoke about us improving care but how can this happen when he and his government are cutting the NHS budget, nurses are being sacked and our workload is massively increasing?

"Cameron's patronising tone made many nurses want to assign him to emptying bedpans permanently. His suggestion of introducing hourly rounds would increase paperwork and decrease our time for our patients.

"Nurses in trade unions will most certainly talk with our patients - as we already do. But we'll also unite with them and defeat Cameron's attacks on our NHS!"

Just days later, Tory education secretary Michael Gove announced plans to make it easier for so-called 'underperforming' teachers to be sacked. He was later backed up by the government's pet teaching inspection organisation Ofsted (see Ofsted: "requires improvement").

Martin Powell-Davies of the National Union of Teachers' national executive says that Gove's 'Bullies Charter' has nothing to do with improving education.

"Further teacher stress, even greater workload and further demoralisation will only make things worse. These plans are about bullying and intimidating teachers so we are too frightened to stand up for ourselves - and for education.

"The Con-Dem pensions attacks mean that many teachers will have to work on until 68 or even older, trying to keep up with the unrelenting pressure in our underfunded and over-monitored schools. Now Gove's making clear that, if you can't take the pace, you'll be sacked long before you reach your pension age."

"Teachers have to fight these plans - but we must also keep up the struggle on pensions. We must keep urgently talking with other unions about plans for further strike action against attacks on our pensions."

These crude Tory attacks are attempts to soften up the opposition to Con-Dem cutbacks. The best way for public sector workers to beat these cuts would start by repeating the united trade union fight of the brilliantly successful 30 November strike.

Annual General Meeting

2012-01-23T19:44:00.000Z

RCT Socialist Update no. 42

This week RCT Socialist Party will be hosting our Annual General Meeting (AGM) The purpose of which is to co-ordinate our campaigning work over the next 12 months. The current period is a busy one for socialists, with so much happening around us, from the battle against pensions, to the occupy movement and right through to campaigining against cuts to the NHS in this area. The only way we can be prepared to organise a much needed socialist alternative to all these problems is to prepare our campaigning work. We will be discussing such things as where to focus our resources, the upcoming local elections and many other issues.

Come along to the meeting all members and supporters are welcome to attend and participate in the discussion, or simply come along if there are some questions you would like to discuss. In the meantime you can read this short article entitled 'World Capitalism in Crisis' http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5540

Come along to the meeting
Wednesday 25th January, 7.15pm
Otley Arms, Treforest

What Marx and Engels really stood for

2012-01-16T20:18:00.000Z

RCT Socialist Update no. 41

As capitalism becomes more and more exposed as a system based of the greed and riches of a few at the expense, exploitation and misery of the masses, It is not uncommon for many people to look around for an alternative. In this background for the ideas of Karl Marx and is close collaborator Engels to be distorted out of all recognition.

Often the ideas are associated with the stalinist regimes of eastern Europe or Russia, but these were dictatorships which did not represent their true ideas, other charges often laid against the ideas of marxist is that it is against freedom of the individual or corrupt others say it will lead to economic decay, but all these allegations are false.

This week at our weekly branch meeting we wil be discussing this very topic, what were the real ideas of Marx and Engels and what do those ideas mean for todays world. Come along and participate in the discussion on how we can fight for a socialist world. You canread some articles about the ideas of marxism at the what is marxism website in the meantime. http://www.marxism.org.uk/

Come Along to the meeting.
Wednesday 18th January 7.15pm
Otley Arms Treforest

We say: NO WAY! Strike to defend pensions

2012-01-13T19:21:00.003Z

the following is take from the socialist issue 700

Con-Dems say: Pay more, work longer, get less

On Saturday 7 January Left Unity in the PCS civil service union hosted an emergency open organising meeting because our movement in defence of public sector pensions is at a critical point. It is vital that the momentum generated by the fantastic strike on 30 November (N30) is not lost.

The government tried to force the unions to sign up to a rotten deal before Christmas. Unfortunately the leaders of some unions indicated they wished to sign this 'heads of agreement' which proposed exactly what N30 had been against: paying more, working longer and getting less.

December's events meant that members were in danger of being tragically let down and everything possible is needed to be done to prevent this happening. However, a number of unions have joined PCS among the 'rejectionists', refusing to sign up.

Pensions have been fought for over generations. The Con-Dems' attacks mean all these gains could be lost. Our job is now to maintain the pressure, unite across unions and not let the gains of the biggest action since the 1926 general strike be lost.

Our message is clear - reject the offer and organise for further action.

The conference unanimously agreed a statement which concluded with the following bullet points:

The government's latest proposals on pensions must be rejected
Press the TUC to set a date for a second day of coordinated national industrial action. This action is escalated by involving more public sector unions and unions from the private sector fighting for fair pensions or provision
If the TUC does not call such action an urgent meeting is arranged by those unions prepared to consider continuing the campaign of industrial action against the pension deal
The left organisations in the trade unions establish a temporary coordinating committee with the aim of coordinating activity, including lobbies etc, and material. To campaign together across the unions to build opposition to the deal and to work toward further coordinated action

UNISON members unhappy at pensions proposals

2012-01-12T19:19:00.000Z

Concern at concessions to government

UNISON members in Wales have expressed their concern at agreements on pensions reached by the union leaders with the Con Dem government.

On November 30 two million workers struck for one day in the biggest strike in Britain since the 1970s. They were united around the core issues of refusing the government's demands to working longer, paying more and receiving less pensions. Just before Christmas UNISON and GMB leaders broke ranks and declared an outline "Heads of Agreement" with the government which conceded the main demands of the Con Dems to make public sector workers pay for the economic crisis.The 'cost ceiling' the government imposed as its target to cut money from public sector pensions has been achieved according to these proposals.

A UNISON member commented on the pensions summit organised by UNISON Cymru on January 9th:
"Unfortunately, the tone for the day was set before discussions even began, when UNISON officers started collecting in a statement circulated by a Service Group Executive member from Wales, Mark Evans, calling for rejection of the 'Heads of Agreement'. The chair for the day told us that this was because the views in the document were simply the opinions of an individual and not the position of UNISON, which we would be given to us during the course of the day. And there's me thinking that we're a member-led union and would determine our own position!

"N30 and the campaign to date was reviewed by UNISON's Head of Local Government for Wales, Dominic MacAskill. He stressed the historic nature of the action; 30+ unions working together, the numbers on demonstrations, support from the public and the 126% increase in recruitment from the announcement of the ballot to the day of strike action itself. The lesson he drew from this however was that 'we need to be realistic' and that 'we need a negotiated settlement'. We were told that we should therefore welcome the 'Heads of Agreement' as a 'significant advance'.

"A lot of the rest of the day dealt with technical questions on the various schemes. Although these were supposed to be factual sessions there was a clear steer from all the speakers towards suspending action and endorsing the 'heads of agreement'. One official echoed Tories like Boris Johnson when he said that there wasn't majority support for action because only 27% voted, clearly ignoring the huge support for the strike itself. A national official gave the briefing for Local Government and Civil Service. Both these sessions were based on Powerpoint presentations sent down from London only that morning.

"Both presentations hailed substantial gains on the 'heads of agreement', which at best are temporary and in most cases are based on hopes rather than hard facts. For example, an NHS official welcomed the protection on contributions for members earning less than £26,558 but failed to point out that this is only for 2012 and that the government wants acceptance of 9.8% average pension contributions for 2012-14. Despite the mass of power point slides, the LGPS presentation in particular, was very hazy on details. By the way, nobody was able to explain when UNISON stopped calling for pensions based on final salary and started advocating average career earnings schemes as being more 'equality-proof'. It would be ludicrous to push CARE without details on accrual rates and revaluation etc.

"One point in the LGPS presentation in particular got members' backs up: 'Most members don't want more industrial action at this stage'. Of course no one wants to strike for the sake of it, but most workers understand that we have to fight to save our pensions and further strike action is necessary if we are to win. It was pointed out that members had understood on N30 that a single day wasn't going to win the campaign and had voted for action in the expectation of further escalated action. One branch has had two stewards' meetings since N30 (one today) and at both resolutions for further action on at least the same scale as November, were overwhelmingly passed. There is definitely no mood for selective action on the grounds of the division that would be caused and agreement that if there is to be future action then it should be national and united. The national official, said that he wouldn't have put that in if he had written the presentation himself but that statement is now part of an official UNISON statement sent to all LGPS branches in Wales. It was repeatedly stressed that this is not a deal and that the ballot remains live and that we can still take action months down the line.

"Lay members didn't really get an opportunity for input until the final session, on maintaining the campaign. For this we were broken into workshops and by now many people had already left. There was no enthusiasm for what is on offer. Practically nobody is buying the line that this is a significant advance - lay members understand that nothing has changed.

"I don't know if UNISON has learnt from previous regional pensions summits but the whole day was stage managed to ensure that the views of lay members were heard as little as possible.
"In a straw pole of my members it is clear that:

None of them are happy at this agreement
None of them were opposed to further action
More than one raised the possibility of leaving the union if this deal goes through because they've surrendered a day's pay for nothing
Several, without prompting, suggested the next action should be more protracted to have an impact on the employers."

A resolution has been passed in a number of branches to reject the agreement. UNITE in both Local Government and the NHS has rejected the deal.
However the Local Government and NHS Service Group Executives in UNISON have been persuaded to allow negotiations to go ahead around the principles agreed with the government. The leadership has argued that the ballots for strike action are still live and action can be restarted. UNISON branches need to make it clear that the union leadership that the must not budge on the core issues of the dispute and be prepared to resurrect action to defend pensions.

What has socialism got to do with it?

2012-01-09T17:52:00.001Z

RCT Socialist Update no. 40

The masses are angry and discontent with the response of governments, the assembly and council to the economic recession. It is clear that the response they have given is the response of the rich 1% of society, whilst public services, jobs and pensions are attacked in order to pay for this. It is clear to so many people that capitalism will always act in the interests of a rich minority. It is also clear that thinngs can-t go on in the way they have been and we must organsise to stop cuts in vital services.

The question then which comes to mind is. Is there an alternative, is it socialism, and what does it have to do with it now? We will be discussing this very question at our next weekly branch meeting. What role does the Socialist Party play. Come along to the meeting and ask any questions you like about how relevant the Socialist Party is to the current crisis and how we would change society. In the meantime you can read this short article, entiled "What has socialism got to do with it?" http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/11517

Come along to the meeting
Wednesday 7.15pm
Otley Arms, Treforest

A World in Turmoil

2012-01-08T21:37:00.000Z

The following is taken from the socialist issue 699

Time magazine paid a tribute to people power by choosing 'The Protester' as its Person of the Year. 2011 was certainly about protest but it was about a lot more as well.

It will go down in history as a year of revolution, social turmoil and the overthrow of dictatorships.
2012 promises to be no less convulsive as world capitalism reveals its incapacity to deal with the growing problems created by the worst economic crisis for 80 years.

We have witnessed the Middle Eastern and North African revolutions, which still endure, indicated by bloody conflicts in Cairo and elsewhere in late November, and then the elections in Egypt and Tunisia.

This was preceded by the overthrow of Ben Ali in Tunisia, Mubarak in Egypt, Gaddafi in Libya, and followed by Saleh in Yemen.

Nor have the mass movements and revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa finished their work; other governments in the region are likely to be toppled in the period opening up.

In Europe, the discredited Berlusconi in Italy, Papandreou in Greece, Zapatero in Spain, Socrates in Portugal and Cowen in southern Ireland have all been swept from power.

Europe can also face further upheavals which could lead to the early demise of current governments. In France President Sarkozy could be evicted from office through elections.

The revolutionary events in Greece as well as the mass strikes and protests in Spain and Portugal foreshadow this. New social explosions impend in Italy, Ireland, Britain and elsewhere.

Even the seemingly 'strongest' or up to now the 'least affected' European countries will not be immune from the radical if not revolutionary virus emanating from the so-called 'periphery' of southern Europe.

The US has also seen the sizeable 'Occupy' movement which has affected and drawn in sections of the trade unions.

The continuation of the deep crisis of world and European capitalism has provided the impulse for these events. This crisis has been enormously compounded by the 'sovereign debt' turmoil.

This in turn opens up the likelihood in Europe of national defaults and the collapse of the euro with all the grave consequences for European and world capitalism flowing from this.

World economy seizing up

Big business calls for cuts (Click to enlarge)

Among many workers there were, and still are, illusions that capitalism would be able to extricate itself: through state intervention, stimulus packages, etc.

These measures did have some effect in preventing an outright depression with mass unemployment along the lines of the 1930s; but they did not solve the underlying crisis.

Moreover, the switch from semi-Keynesian policies in the US, Britain and elsewhere to austerity programmes reinforced the recession, with depressionary features following in their wake; capitalism now finds itself in a cul-de-sac, with the reappearance of a credit crunch.

Larry Elliott in the Guardian accurately summed up the situation: "We now inhabit a world of the living dead: a eurozone that will not collapse but cannot be reformed; banks that are kept alive by gigantic quantities of electronically generated cash but do not lend; homeowners who are sitting in homes worth no more than they paid for them but are able to stay put because interest rates are so low and lenders have no desire to crystallise losses, and policy that is neither one thing nor the other." [5 December 2011.]

Zombie capitalism and zombie banks; what an alluring future our rulers have mapped out for us!
The European 'sovereign debt' crisis illustrates the catastrophic consequences for capitalism, not just in Europe but throughout the world, of the financial credit bubbles, which grew exponentially and involved massive injections of fictitious capital during the boom in the 'noughties'.

Hoarding

Capitalism is confronted with a big element of Keynes's 'liquidity trap' - a hoarding of assets and money, low interest rates, fear that deflation will persist, etc.

In consequence the capitalists are refusing to invest, are, in effect, on a 'strike of capital'. Creditors refuse to lend and borrowers - weighed down with leaden boots of debt - refuse to borrow more.

At the moment, the system is jammed and, given government and private indebtedness, that is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

All the economic institutions of world capitalism point to, at best, stagnation in the current economic situation - an 'L-shaped recovery' - with anaemic growth rates and even recession for the eurozone and Britain.

And it cannot be ruled out that the paralysis of the capitalists in the teeth of this crisis can lead to a depression.
China cannot provide the lifeline for rescuing ailing world capitalism. In 2008 when China faced a serious crisis, factories were closed and unemployment climbed exponentially.

Consequently, the Chinese elite feared massive 'social unrest', code for revolution. So they 'primed the pump' through a massive injection of credit, facilitated by the state banks that dominate the economy.

This resulted in annualised credit growth of 170%, probably the biggest 'economic stimulus' in world history.

The 'Occupy' movements

The ideological cement underpinning capitalism has also been severely undermined. Not only does capitalism confront its biggest economic crisis 'ever' (according to Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England), in its wake it has also faced a profound crisis of legitimacy.

This is reflected in the mass strikes of the working class but also in the worldwide 'Occupy' movement which spread to about 1,000 cities and all continents.

Despite its weaknesses - the Occupy move is not firmly based either ideologically or with deep roots and a presence in the organisations of the working class - it has nevertheless evoked widespread public sympathy including from working people.

This movement, unlike the anti-globalisation movement at the turn of the century, takes place against the background of a deep recession.

The 'Occupy' movement is the widest global movement since the collapse of Stalinism. It encompasses more of the world and is deeper than the previous anti-globalisation movement.

The highlighting of searing inequality against the background of mass impoverishment synonymous with 'modern' capitalism has evoked a powerful echo among broad sections of the population in Europe and the US.

An additional factor is that in this crisis it is not just the working class but also big sections of the middle class that have been affected - some of them quite severely.

In the US, for instance, average wages of manual workers - still referred to as 'middle class' by the capitalist media as a means of blunting growing class consciousness - are at the level of the 1950s in real terms; the religion of everlasting capitalist progress has been shattered.

The unrestrained piling up of wealth by the '1%' - perhaps the greatest concentration and centralisation of capital in history, foreseen by Marx - has fuelled the protests.

The most striking example is that of Bloomberg, the present mayor of New York, the 30th richest individual in the world - literally one in 230 million.

Yet on behalf of the '1%', through his police he has sought to repress the 'Occupy' movement in 'his' city.
The Financial Times (FT) casually admitted: "Top executives' pay rises 27-fold since 1988 [in Britain]... from £150,000 to £4 million"!

The panic in capitalist circles at this spectacle was summed up by the right-wing founder of the Independent newspaper in Britain, Andreas Whittam-Smith, who wrote recently: "Western nations are now ripe for revolution."

He did not suggest a real social revolution but rather a 'political revolution' aimed at renovating the system.
Yet the 'Occupy' movement does not seriously challenge capitalism; many of its leaders do not propose 'system change' but seek to 'mend a broken system'.

It has nevertheless assumed mass proportions in some countries - Spain, Greece and, to some extent, in the US.

Occupy represents a confused but necessary stage of political reawakening for a new generation. These movements hold out the hope, for those participating and those observing them, for seeking social and revolutionary conclusions.

The precondition for this, however, is the intervention of the labour movement and in particular Marxism, which, while being sympathetic and sensitive, argues against the 'non-political', anti-party stance of many who have been drawn into this movement.

Dilemma of the eurozone

The capitalists are completely at sea as to the fate of the euro and the eurozone, incapable of coming up with workable solutions.

Mervyn King summed up their dilemma: "I could not tell you what is likely to happen tomorrow never mind in a few months time."

The Socialist has argued that the euro and the eurozone, rather than leading to a more unified Europe will result in the opposite: splits, nationalism and all the 'evils' which the euro project, we were told, would banish forever.

The euro itself could collapse with either a voluntary or forced exit of a number of countries, beginning with Greece.

The price of remaining within the euro is a permanent savage austerity package and, at the end of this, national debt will still be 120% of gross domestic product (GDP).

Yet this is already the 'unacceptable' current level of Italian national debt, which forced big cuts and prompted the downfall of Berlusconi.

However, 'in' or 'out' of the EU, the same problems will be posed and the same attacks on living standards will be unleashed against the Greek people.

The reintroduction of the drachma could lead to the wholesale collapse of the banks and with this the destruction of savings - à la Argentina - as well as a devaluation of the new currency, which would be accompanied by a big rise in inflation.

The possibility of referenda for and against the euro and the eurozone could be posed both in the 17 countries within the eurozone and the additional ten countries 'outside'.

Even the revised treaty pushed by Sarkozy and German chancellor Angela Merkel - 'Merkozy' - began to unravel within days of its 'acceptance' by 26 of the 27 EU countries, excluding Britain.

There is a growing realisation that the new 'Stability Pact', with fines to be levied against transgressors, is a device for imposing a neoliberal corset on public spending, aiming to cut living standards further.

Moreover, it has not been sufficient to 'satisfy' the 'market', the bond vigilante crooks. Therefore the crisis continues with still the possibility of a complete collapse of the euro.

Continued membership of the EU is increasingly identified in the minds of the people with further ruthless cuts in living standards so, in some instances, the working class could be faced with voting to leave the EU.

In this situation, it is vital that a class and internationalist position is advanced, with clear opposition to capitalist nationalism, which is aimed at dividing working people on national, racial and ethnic lines.

However, in view of the bureaucratic centralist diktats of the EU, a legitimate feeling of national indignation can rise, as has been seen in Greece, and this can also develop in other countries.

Trotsky pointed out that it is the working class and its organisations who are the real champions of the 'nation', of which the majority is the working class and its allies.

Anti-worker

The idea that the EU was 'progressive' and would lead ineluctably towards a 'unified Europe' has been shattered with the onset of the economic crisis.

This was entertained not just by 'liberal' capitalists and pro-capitalist trade union leaders but even by some of a Marxist or even a Trotskyist persuasion.

But it has been severely undermined as the neoliberal character of the EU - with the imposition of anti-worker measures such as the Posted Workers Directive, the opening of the door for the acceptance of wages and conditions of the neo-colonial world - has become clear.

This view has been reinforced by what has been perceived, particularly in those countries at the receiving end, as a virtual colonial power inflicting misery and diktats on its 'subjects'.

In Greece, EU officials are installed - or are attempting to act - in the offices of the different ministries, thus ensuring the carrying out of the austerity programmes.

The same applies to the virtual 'coup' of the so-called 'non-political' Monti government in Italy following the eviction of Berlusconi from power.

This represents a new phase in Europe, reflecting as it does the depth and seriousness of the economic crisis, the severity of the attacks on the working class, its resistance to this and, consequently, the intensification of the class struggle.

Even in 'normal' periods of 'social peace', a veiled civil war takes place between the contending classes.
This, however, has taken a more direct and open form in the past period as the bosses have, in some instances, resorted to brutal measures against the rights and conditions of the working class, as is clearly the case in Greece.

The Greek workers are still ferociously resisting, reflected in the power workers' refusal to implement government-imposed measures which would have seen householders' electricity supply cut off if they had not paid the new property tax.

This is accompanied by a tremendous 'don't pay' campaign similar to the movement which defeated the poll tax and brought down Thatcher in the process.

In Britain, 300,000 public sector jobs have been lost since the Con-Dem government came to power and another 400,000 are planned to go.

Some of the anger has been deflected away from the government as councils make the cuts. Chris Giles of the FT wrote: "Although public sector job losses have far exceeded expectations so far, it has been local authorities doing ministers' dirty work." [FT, 15 December 2011.]

The promise of Osborne and Cameron that private-sector jobs would replace them, like the phoenix from the ashes, has been shown to be completely illusory; there are plenty of 'ashes' in the empty factories and a massive rise in unemployment, but no sign of the phoenix which has flown away to China and other 'growth areas', never to return!

Spain and Portugal on the brink

Also, with the advent of rightwing governments in Portugal and Spain, the working class can expect a huge worsening of their position through a deepening and extension of the austerity measures promised by the new rightwing Popular Party (PP) government of Rajoy in Spain and by the Portuguese centre-right coalition government, elected in June.

The Portuguese economy contracted from July to September 2011 for the fourth consecutive quarter, the worst performance of any of the 27 nations in the EU.

Significantly, soldiers and police, wearing civilian clothes, joined in the massive demonstrations and the general strike in November which brought the country to a complete standstill.

The new government in Spain, under ferocious pressure from the EU for even more cuts, will act quickly to introduce 'reforms', in reality massive counter-reforms.

The electoral victory of the PP led to a precipitous drop in shares the day after it was elected! This is tacit recognition that the Spanish workers and their organisations - despite the existence of mass unemployment - remain a formidable force to reckon with.

The PSOE government of Zapatero acted to restrain, to an extent, a full confrontation with the working class, because of its alleged 'socialist' pedigree, although in reality - as the indignados movement showed - it has moved so far to the right, it was seen as just another capitalist party.

Political abstentionism of the youth cannot be maintained in the teeth of the serious crisis confronting Spain and the urgency of seeking a viable solution.

Berlusconi goes

In Italy, a 'soft coup' by the right has replaced the discredited Berlusconi without a peep of protest from the 'left' political leaders.

They now display a fear of taking power as do the ex-social democrats in the rest of Europe. The devastating crisis - partially hidden by Berlusconi's long period in power - is now clearly visible.

Italy has also experienced a 'lost decade' of economic stagnation which has left it at the bottom of the world league table of growth. According to the IMF, "only Zimbabwe, Haiti and Eritrea have done worse"!

The general strike called by all the major unions on 12 December, a matter of days after the announcement of the new austerity package, is an indication of the anger that has exploded from below. It presages a new period of class struggle.

The initiative of well-known metalworkers' leader, Giorgio Cremaschi has gathered together hundreds of lefts under the title 'Cancel the Debt'.

Italy will therefore see the rekindling of its best revolutionary traditions in the coming period.

'Bonapartism'

At the same time, the danger to the workers' organisations in this period of class tensions - from the direction of the capitalist state - and the far right cannot be underestimated.

In the present crisis, forms of Bonapartism (dictatorship) - parliamentary Bonapartism in particular - can be resorted to by the capitalists when there is political deadlock, as there is to some extent in Greece and Italy.

Moreover, such measures can be threatened on a European scale as well as in nation states. The unelected EU commission - with the connivance of Merkel and Sarkozy - have resorted to Bonapartist diktats against 'miscreant' countries that are reluctant to swallow the austerity medicine. At this stage this is a very weak form of parliamentary Bonapartism.

However, it can be blown away once the situation that gave rise to it changes, particularly with an upswing in the class struggle, which is likely in a number of countries.

Also, in Greece, given the new bitter mood which has developed, the resistance of the working class will be resumed once the full impact of the austerity measures on top of the agonies that the Greek people have suffered in the past period are felt.

The far-right parties and organisations in Europe continue to occupy an important part of the political vacuum which has existed for some time now.

In fact, in some countries - France, the Netherlands and even in Greece - they have strengthened the position on the electoral field in particular.

The damage and mayhem they can inflict on the completely innocent was revealed in the Norwegian massacres in the summer by the racist right-wing madman Anders Breivik.

This was followed by the revelations in Germany of a cell of neo-Nazis which had carried out a series of murders over seven years and yet had never been detected by the police.

In Hungary, the neo-fascist Jobbik, in collusion with the ruling party Fidesz, parades in Nazi-like paramilitary uniforms.

The government has virtually outlawed effective opposition to them. And Cameron's Tories sit in a bloc with some of these creatures in the European parliament! These parties and organisations have to be countered whenever they raise their heads, but they do not yet represent, on a European level, a firm basis for rightwing reaction.

The Middle East and North Africa

The revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa and the 'Occupy' movement are highly symptomatic of the overall mood worldwide which is developing under the whip of this crisis.

They also presage coming mass movements in many countries not yet seriously affected politically, not just in Europe but throughout the world.

Tunisia and particularly Egypt have exercised a magnetic effect on the masses throughout the region and the world.

In the USA, they helped inspire the Wisconsin protests and the Egyptian flag flew over the 'Occupy' movement in Oakland and elsewhere.

However, as in all revolutions, particularly in the period after the overthrow of a dictatorship, illusions are generated in the masses that the main job has been completed.

Moreover, the liberal capitalists and the Islamists have tried to contain the revolution, together with the remnants of the old regime.

In the vacuum that existed under Mubarak and Ben Ali, as with other cases in history - Poland under Stalinism, in Iran under the Shah - religious forces, with roots among the masses, initially provided a pole of attraction around which the opposition to dictatorial regimes could mobilise.

Consequently, the Islamists were well placed to exploit the current elections in which they have received an estimated 36.6% of the votes counted in the first round.

In addition to this, the more fundamentalist expression of right-wing political Islam, the Salafists around al-Nour, linked to the more fundamentalist Wahhabi brand of Islam emanating from Saudi Arabia and the doctrine of Al Qaeda, seems to have done well.

They gained almost a quarter of the votes in the cities that had voted by 5 December and could probably register more than this in the countryside.

If they are allowed to form a government then the Brotherhood will come under serious examination. Unlike the Iranian revolution, when radical Islamic forces initially developed, the Brotherhood is politically conservative, accepting the free market, not favouring independent trade unions and rejecting 'extremist' brands of Islam in favour of the Turkish model of Erdogan, even borrowing the name of Turkey's ruling 'Freedom and Justice' party.

This is the favoured model for the 'moderate' Islamist forces throughout the region, including Ennahda, the party in Tunisia which emerged victorious in the recent elections there.

So great has been the disillusionment since the events of February that questions have arisen as to whether it was a real revolution in the first place.

In fact, in both Tunisia and in Egypt the masses moved independently or semi-independently against the dictatorships of Ben Ali and Mubarak.

They made the revolution but because of insufficient consciousness of their own power and the lack of a programme and mass parties to achieve this they did not complete the revolution in a social and economic sense.

Reaction was initially impotent in the fate of the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions. But it was given a chance to intervene by events in Bahrain and Libya.

In Libya, there was initially a genuine revolution of an incipient character in Benghazi in particular which was derailed by a counter-revolution in a 'democratic' form.

However, as the scale of bloodletting and reprisals - sometimes against completely innocent people including black-skinned Libyans and foreign workers, some of whom had lived in Libya for many years - has been revealed there is profound questioning as to whether 'democracy' or counter-revolution currently dominates.
The regime in Bahrain was saved by the intervention of the Saudi armed forces.

Britain

The onset of the crisis has profoundly affected Britain, disastrously reinforced by the election of the ConDem coalition government in 2010.

The British ruling class has allowed its manufacturing base to atrophy in favour of investment in financial services, which have now collapsed.

All the layers of fat built up to cushion British capitalism from economic storms have been eaten away. Its empire has gone and North Sea oil revenues have begun to run dry.

Unprecedented cuts in living standards have been implemented with more to come. The government admits that living standards in 2015 will be lower than they were in 2002; society will have stood still for over ten years! This will go down historically as a lost decade.

Unemployment has climbed to a new 17-year high, severely affecting the young, with over one million unemployed, while there are now 1.1 million jobless women, with more to follow in the dead-end of joblessness..

Even the police and clergy are worried that this situation will lead to repetitions of the riots in August.
Britain faces a situation it has not confronted for 80 years. The ConDem government's declaration of war against all the rights and conditions of the British working class is the greatest challenge since the period immediately prior to the 1926 general strike.

This explains the ferocious reaction of the mass of working people reflected in the huge demonstrations and strikes in 2011: 26 March, the biggest specifically working class demonstration in history; 30 June a partial public sector strike; and the mammoth 30 November strike.

The official leadership of the Trade Union Congress (TUC) was compelled to reflect this, which in turn arose from the presence from below within the trade unions of the National Shop Stewards Network playing a key role in this.

Young members of the Socialist Party and other activists in Youth Fight for Jobs have also conducted a heroic and energetic campaign against youth unemployment, including the new Jarrow march, as well as intervening in the aftermath of the riots in London to defend youth facilities, etc.

Conclusions

Clearly, we have arrived at a turning point in world history. The utter bankruptcy of capitalism is clear before the eyes of the world.

The capitalists - at least their representatives - openly confess their inability to solve the problems of humankind. Patchwork solutions, which are all that is on offer, are not enough.

This is revealed in the economy, in the social situation, with the increasing impoverishment of growing sections of the working masses, and also in the environment.

Any pretence of a 'green agenda' is being thrown overboard as capitalism scrambles for an economic lifeline to save its system. 'Growth' at any cost - which will remain illusory - is proclaimed by the Con-Dem government in Britain, even if this results in a rise of harmful emissions.

At the same time, the climate change conference in Durban ended with only a minimal agreement.
This reinforces our contention that capitalism will be incapable of saving the world from a catastrophic and potentially irreversible meltdown of the ice caps and the environment as a whole.

Only socialism can show a way out, opening an optimistic future for suffering humankind.

Building the fightback in 2012

2012-01-03T21:22:00.000Z

RCT Socialist Update no. 39

We can now look back at 2011 a year which held the biggest trade union demonstrations and strike action in British history, which saw the occupy movement around the globe, revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East and mass resistance right throughout Europe to bankers and capitalism. All of this however will soon be seen as just the opening act for th struggles which will unfold throughout 2012. There has never been more of a crucial time to become an activist within the Socialist Party.

Come along to our first branch meeting of the year when will be discussing this very issue, the prospects for 2012, how and where anger is likely to erupt and how the Socialist Party will be participating in these struggles.

The meeting will be
Wednesday 4th January, 7.15pm
Otley Arms, Treforest

Tories speak for the rich - not for us

2011-12-17T15:05:00.007Z

The following is taken from the socialist issue 697

* No to austerity

* Step up national coordinated strike action in January

* Build a new mass workers' party

Peter Taaffe, Socialist Party general secretary

N30: millions of public sector workers went on strike on 30 November 2011, photo Senan (Click to enlarge)

David Cameron was stoutly defending the 'nation'. This is what he claimed after he was humiliatingly defeated by 26 votes to one at the 9 December EU summit and withdrew from participating in discussions over a new EU treaty. Which nation?

Benjamin Disraeli spoke of 'two nations' in 19th century Britain. And Cameron and the Con-Dem coalition have done everything to recreate a similarly horrific, only worse, situation in 21st century Britain.

It was not the legions of unemployed - one million young people, one million women - nor the 200 people who will die each day this winter from cold and other preventable causes who have been helped or strengthened by Cameron's 'brave' stand.

Nor will it be the children and families mired in poverty, suffering cuts in benefits or living in catastrophic housing conditions that will be raised up by his actions.

Neither will it be the 700,000 public sector workers whose jobs will be destroyed at the end of chancellor Osborne's jobs butchery who will rejoice at the prime minister's Brussels posture.

No - it was the spivs, racketeers and banksters of the City of London in whose interests he was acting.
Nor could it be otherwise. Foreign policy is always a continuation of home policy. If his government blatantly acts for the rich, the powerful and the capitalists here, then why should it be any different abroad?

Derision

Workers from European countries protest against the European Union neoliberalism and austerity cuts, photo Paul Mattsson

The derision emanating from the ruling class and their mouthpieces - or at least significant sections of them - which followed the Brussels farce indicates that David Cameron does not, on this issue, even speak for all of them. How the mighty have fallen!

He is a representative of one of the strongest powers, British capitalism, the world has ever seen, which at one stage ruled, through its 'empire', one quarter of humankind.

Backed by a powerful industry - the 'workshop of the world' - historically, British imperialism was able to play off one European power against another, with the infamous 'balance of power' strategy of the British ruling class.

Its navy 'ruled the waves'. Now, through Cameron, the 'empire' is reduced, metaphorically speaking, to one man in a rowing boat in the English Channel at odds with the rest of the European powers!

The full consequences of the historical collapse of British capitalism, which the Socialist predicted, have been brought home.

It is signified by the decline of productive industry, manufacturing, etc in favour of 'services', financial services in particular.

It was Thatcher (and Cameron loudly proclaimed himself as one of 'Thatcher's children') who ruinously pursued this policy in the 1980s, continued by Blair and Brown through New Labour governments.
This is reflected in the fact that manufacturing industry is now no more than 12-13% of gross domestic product (GDP).

Will Hutton in the Observer claims that 75% of GDP now comes from 'services'. But the financial sector is just 9% of the economy and in terms of employment accounts for less than manufacturing.

The financial sector is facing its biggest collapse since the onset of the crisis beginning in 2007-08.
It does not offer a lifeline to the generation of jobless and is unable to arrest the rise in unemployment, as manufacturing did in the past.

This is why Osborne and Cameron have urged the 'march of the makers', the renaissance of manufacturing industry.

Defending the City

Bankers are the real looters - Hackney - Tottenham demo after the riots, photo Paul Mattsson (Click to enlarge)

But Cameron has taken a stand in defence of the City, the finance sector, which threatens to further undermine Britain's failed manufacturing base. 40% of steel exports, for instance, go to Europe, which is still Britain's biggest export market.

And for what? To prevent, allegedly, the imposition of a 'transaction tax' - sometimes referred to as the 'Robin Hood' tax - which, even if it is implemented, will merely trim the fingernails of the hedge funds and speculators at whom it is aimed.

We have to remember these are the very people - the speculators, the banks, the bond traders - who helped to bring the world economy and Europe to its knees in the first place.

These criminals have been bailed out with our money, through the state, instead of being put on trial and jailed.

They then awarded themselves obscene bonuses - some of the banks' top chief executive officers' salaries have gone up by as much as 5,000%!

Cameron with the pitiful Liberal Democrats in tow, led by that Vicar of Bray Clegg - 'all things to all men' - and 'Saint' Vince Cable, wishes to protect them against this excessively minimal measure!

Yet this is not guaranteed to protect them against the competition of other rival financial centres in Europe such as Frankfurt and Paris.

Even the Sunday Times, which supports Cameron, has warned: "Never underestimate the vindictiveness of the protectionist instincts of our European partners."

Ollie Rehn, European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, has also warned that further regulation will apply to Britain's financial sector inside or outside of the new structures.

The fact that Britain is still in the 'single market' is not an insurance policy against Germany and France for instance, dubbed 'Merkozy', ganging up against British capitalism to ensure that the City is pushed out into the cold.

Cameron's claim that his refusal to ratify the new treaty will not lead to a refusal to invest by foreign multinationals in Britain is bogus.

The isolation of British capitalism flows from this. As capitalist commentators themselves have pointed out, when they consider investment in Europe, in Beijing or the US, they will be more reluctant to invest in this country if it is not involved in the 'consultative' process within Europe itself.

Not that working people should rely on the whims of capitalist magnates, whether in this country or abroad.
Capitalism worldwide is falling apart at the seams, with even its apologists warning of 'endless austerity'.

Cameron took his stand not for economic reasons but primarily because of the political pressures from within his own party.

The last general election gave a fillip to the Eurosceptic and often Thatcherite right wing of the Tory party.
This was reflected in the hugely significant revolt of 80 MPs against the government a few months ago.

Fear that going along with the rest of the EU would split the Tory party down the middle, and in the process lead to the shipwreck of the coalition, led to Cameron taking the stand he did.

It was for the same reason that the hapless Nick Clegg first of all supported Cameron and then came out against.

In fact, this issue of Europe has the potential for big splits in the two parties that form the coalition - the Tories and the Liberal Democrats - and could have repercussions within the Labour party as well.

The Europhile wing of the parliamentary Tory party is concerned that Cameron will take them out of the EU.
The pro-Europeans of the Liberal Democrats are equally incensed. Clegg was correctly described in the House of Commons by right-wing Tory Nadine Dorries as 'cowardly' for not turning up to Prime Minister's Questions on the Monday following the summit to 'face the music'.

New Labour's response

And what of Ed Miliband and New Labour's response? As Shakespeare's Macbeth said: "Full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing".

It has been just that, 'nothing'. Ed Miliband simply has nothing to say of any substance beyond accusing Cameron of not standing for the 'best interests of Britain'.

What Britain we may ask, as we have done of Cameron. If Miliband is in defence of anybody, it is the same City interests that evoke the support of Cameron as well.

We would defend most of the one million workers - not the highflying traders but the ordinary workers in the finance sector.

Their interests, as the catastrophes of RBS and Northern Rock showed, can only really be protected by nationalisation of the banks - but with workers' control and management.

We completely reject state capitalist methods of taking over the banks, keeping the same management that ruined them in the first place, accompanied by redundancies for many bank workers.

As with all issues the EU must be approached with the interests of working people central. Both in its original design and its practices today, it is a bosses' club.

It arose out of the contradictions of capitalism, specifically because of the inability of the productive forces - science, technique and the organisation of labour - to be further developed within the narrow limits of private ownership and the nation state.

Capitalism can never overcome this limit. They can share out the loot when the market is expanding. This is what happened with the launch of the euro but, as the Socialist predicted, once the boom became bust, the opposite has happened.

They are at each other's throats. This is what is unfolding before us, as each power jostles for supremacy.
German capitalism, represented by Angela Merkel, is the dominant power, with France in tow. It is using its economic prowess to put the rest of Europe on 'rations'.

With the departure of Cameron from the negotiations, the impression was given in Brussels that the other 26 countries had come up with a solution to the eurozone crisis around sovereign debt. Nothing of the kind was achieved.

'Merkozy' has not set up a mechanism for 'fiscal union' as they hinted at and some claimed. What is proposed is a new version of the broken Stability Pact, which limited budget deficits to 3% of GDP and total national debt to 60%.

This time, it will be the Stability Pact 'on steroids', with teeth, and the threat of fines of up to 0.25% of GDP if a country steps out of line!

It is, in effect, a brutal neoliberal straitjacket, which aims to prevent national governments from bending to popular will and increasing public spending.

It is another reason to oppose the capitalist EU, which is unreformable and seeks to attack and crush working people at every turn.

However, this political crisis in Britain gives the opportunity for the labour movement to raise all the crucial questions pertaining to the EU from a class point of view.

If this crisis persists, because of the inaction of New Labour and the trade union leaders who are refusing to speak with a clear class voice, then the dangers of nationalism can develop. Cameron and the Tories are toying with the idea of electorally capitalising on this.

We have had experience in the past - for instance, at the time of the Falklands War - of the way that the representatives of big business in the Tory party have used issues abroad in order to stoke up nationalism, which could redound to their benefit in elections.

In 1983, the Tories - with the help, it is true, of the traitors who broke from the Labour Party at that stage, when it was a workers' party at its base, the now defunct Social Democratic Party - called an election, using the new upsurge of 'national' pride following the victory in the Falklands War to climb back to power.
This was despite the previous unpopularity of the Tories and the existence of mass unemployment and deteriorating social conditions.

Poll results

The initial polls indicate that Cameron has about 62% support for his EU stance. It is possible that Cameron will attempt something similar to Thatcher in the present situation.

Witness the outpourings of support of the previous anti-Cameron Eurosceptic wing of the Tory party for him on his 'triumphal' return.

'Cameron played a blinder,' bellowed that towering intellectual Boris Johnson! On the evening after his return from Brussels, the Eurosceptics gathered at the Prime Minister's country retreat, Chequers, there to laud him as the reincarnation of the 'British bulldog'.

However, a snap election in the current conditions in Britain would be a risky enterprise for the Tories.
Cameron would not be able to limit the campaign to the issue of the EU as the questions of austerity, poverty and social deprivation would come to the fore.

In such a scenario, Cameron could face the same fate as former Tory prime minister Ted Heath, who called a snap election during the miners' strike of 1974 on the slogan 'Who rules Britain?' and was defeated.

The labour movement and the working class must have an answer which poses issues from a class point of view and in particular to cut across the dangers of nationalism.

The right may attempt to link Cameron's stance of standing up to 'Johnny Foreigner' to immigration, in order to prepare the ground for a possible early general election with the prospect of an outright victory of the Tories now a real possibility.

However, with the new grossly undemocratic arrangements that the Con-Dem coalition has put in place for five-year fixed parliamentary terms, there are some obstacles to facilitating early elections.

Unlike in the past when a vote of no-confidence in the Commons would almost automatically trigger an election, that is no longer the case.

The end of a five-year parliamentary term would obviously result in a general election. There are also two other ways in which this can happen before the end of the five-year term: if a motion of no confidence is passed and no alternative government can be found; or if the motion for an early general election is agreed either by at least two thirds of the house or without a division.

These arrangements were clearly designed to keep the vicious austerity coalition in power for five years, irrespective of the mass opposition increasingly demanding that they depart.

This is just one example of the anti-democratic semi-totalitarian methods which the capitalists internationally are resorting to in order to enforce their attacks against working people.

'Parliamentary Bonapartist' measures have seen unelected, so-called 'technocratic' governments installed in Greece and Italy.

In answer to this onslaught of increasingly undemocratic measures, labour movements internationally must adopt measures and tactics including the demand, in some cases, for referenda to stop them.

Ireland

In Ireland, the left, led by the Socialist Party and its parliamentary representatives like Joe Higgins, are demanding an immediate referendum on the EU treaty.

Yet British workers are denied the right to decide on this issue. As a very minimum the trade union movement should campaign for a referendum on the issues of our choosing - the class questions which are at the heart of the neoliberal agenda which is the 'modern' EU.

We do not want a referendum on issues framed by Cameron simply in relation to the proposed treaty in March, which in any case will not now be voted on, it seems, in Britain.

Referenda for the labour movement to oppose lock, stock and barrel the EU's Lisbon Treaty agenda - with its programme of privatisation, cuts in wages, etc - is a different proposition.

This must be closely linked to preparations and mobilisation of the trade unions for another one-day public sector general strike, including workers in the private sector. No time must be lost. Set the date now for early in the new year!

Another mass mobilisation against the attacks on pensions and linked to the brutal austerity package of Osborne in the autumn statement can help to cut across the plans of the Tory party to exploit their alleged new-found 'popularity' on the EU.

We need to reassert total opposition to the bosses' club of the EU. We must come together, not in a narrow nationalist fashion but with solidarity of workers and the labour movement on the international plane.

Down with the capitalist EU of mass unemployment and austerity!
For a workers' Europe, on the basis of a democratic socialist confederation of the continent
Down with the dictatorship of the capitalist markets and the bondholders
Cancel the debt
Nationalise the banks with workers' control and management

No sell-out on pensions - Fight until we win!

2011-12-16T17:37:00.000Z

Name the day for the next coordinated strike in January

30 June pensions strike: London demo, photo Senan (Click to enlarge)

On 15 December the TUC's Public Sector Liaison Group (PSLG) met for the first time since the magnificent 30 November public sector strike.
Disgracefully, Brendan Barber, general secretary of the TUC, argued that all of the trade unions should sign up to the government's latest 'heads of agreement' on pensions, which would then allow Francis Maude to announce before Christmas that the dispute has been settled. This was met with outrage by many of the public sector trade unions present.
Not one of the central demands of public sector workers has been met. All public sector workers are still being told to work longer, pay more and get less.
The teaching unions NUT and NASUWT reported that they had been offered no serious concessions by the government, as did the civil servants' union PCS, the Fire Brigades Union and representatives of workers in the NHS.
In local government the only concession is to delay the attacks on pensions until 2014, provided that local government unions promise to accept the pain without a fight when it comes.
Yet Dave Prentis - general secretary for Unison - the biggest union in health and local government - argued for accepting this rotten deal. Hundreds of thousands of Unison members who struck on 30 November will not agree.
30 November showed the potential power of the working class in Britain. We can force this weak, divided government to retreat, but only if the action is stepped up.
The leadership of the TUC and Unison were only forced to support N30 because of the pressure of rank and file trade unionists - now we need to do the same again.
At the PSLG, PCS demanded that the meeting name the day for the next day of national coordinated strike action.
In Scotland, Unison delegates have already unanimously proposed 25 January as the day of the next strike.
National Shop Stewards Network supporters need to pile on the pressure for the date of the next strike to be set before Christmas, and to take place in January.

We immediately need to:

Flood the TUC and Unison leaderships with letters, resolutions and petitions of protest demanding that they do not sell out the pensions struggle and immediately set the date for a strike in January in coordination with the other public sector unions.
Members of all other public sector unions to send letters, resolutions and petitions to their National Executives demanding that they set the date for a strike in January in coordination with the other unions.
Organise a mass lobby of the next meeting of the TUC, which is taking place in early January.

We will post more information as soon as possible.

Fighting the cuts after N30

2011-12-12T19:04:00.000Z

RCT Socialist Update no. 38

Last week we saw between 2 and 3 million public sector workers take strike action defend public sector pensions and the government were visibly shaken as the saw the working class move into action against their cuts agenda. This week saw private sector workers and Unilever take similiar strike action to defend their final salary pension schemes, displaying the myths of gold plated pensions in the public sector, whilst private sector workings carried on as normal.

With this heroic display of the strength and combativity of the organised working class came the question of everyones lips 'Where Next?' How can we finally defeat this government and how can we defend all public services which faces huge cuts in the false claim we are all in the together.

South East Wales Socialist Party will be hosting a public meeting on just that topic. Speakers will include John McInally the vice president of PCS (the civil service trade union) and socialist party member, as well as one of the striking electricians at Llandough hospital. Come along and join the discussion on the way forward in the battle against cuts and in defence of public services. In the meantime you can read this article about the strike day in Wales http://www.socialistpartywales.org.uk/news93.shtml

The meeting is at
Tuesday 13th 7pm

Cardiff Bus and Social Club, Tudor Street (5 minutes walk from central station)

Con-Dems pile on the misery - 'Enough is enough'

2011-12-11T15:14:00.000Z

The following is taken from the socialist issue 697

"We are the 99%" - that has been the rallying call of the year. Worldwide, 2011 will go down in history as a year when the poor, the oppressed, the working class - the majority in society - rose up and started to fight back.

In the Middle East, in North Africa, in Southern Europe and also here, in Britain, working class people have begun to demonstrate their potential power to change history.

30 November was the day when around two million public sector workers, members of 30 trade unions, took part in the biggest strike for over three decades. The majority had never taken strike action before, many had never expected to. But they see no other way of both defending pension rights and signalling to the government that they will not accept its plans to destroy public services.

There were massive demonstrations in cities, towns and even villages, with estimates of over 1,000 taking place. In most cases they were the biggest rallies to have taken place for many decades, if not ever. In Bristol over 20,000 marched, in Manchester more than 30,000. In smaller towns there were large demonstrations - 2,000 in Bournemouth, 4,000 in Truro, 1,200 in Birkenhead, 1,000 in Hastings, 1,200 in Warrington, the list goes on.

Many of the strikers were disgusted by the lies, insults and smears not only of Jeremy Clarkson but of the capitalist politicians and media as a whole. But these slurs had very little effect on public opinion. Even the online poll of the anti-strike Daily Mail showed 84% of people supporting the action. The Daily Mail, in its normal unbiased way, responded by quickly deleting the poll.

N30 - Millions strike back at Con-Dem government on 30 November 2011, photo Paul Mattsson (Click to enlarge)

Nor did the claims that the strike had been a flop have any real impact. On the contrary, even David "damp squib" Cameron was forced to accept it was "obviously a big strike". No wonder. Official Department of Education figures showed that 62% of schools were completely closed, 14% partially closed, and only 16% definitely open.

The NHS was also disrupted. For example, in London the Metropolitan Police, City of London Police and British Transport Police were all asked by the London Ambulance Service for help when it could not cope with demand.

Approximately 84% of PCS civil service union members joined the strike. Museums and courts were closed or severely disrupted. Only 20 out of the 1,200 staff in the Student Loans Company went into work. The Cabinet Office had its best supported strike ever.

The government claimed that only 18 of 900 job centres were closed. However, the big majority of those that opened were staffed only by management and could not offer a full service. Over 50% of job centres offered no service to the public at all.

At Heathrow more than 90% of PCS members were out. Queues at airports were only minimised because over 20,000 passengers had taken the airlines' offer to rebook their flights for free.

Whatever brave face the Con-Dems show in public, behind the scenes they were shaken by the massive display of 'people's power'.

In one day, 30 November (N30), trade unionists gave a powerful demonstration that - contrary to the government's propaganda - public sector workers are crucial to keeping the country running. N30 showed that if these workers withdraw their labour, they are capable of bringing the country to a halt.

The private sector as well as the public sector was affected in many ways - including the closing of the Metro and the Tyne Tunnel in the North East, the money lost by the airlines and, above all, by the millions of private sector workers who had to take the day off in order to care for their children.

That is not to say that N30 was 100% solid in every workplace. At national and local level some of the unions participating have not organised a serious struggle for decades. Union officials have in many cases become used to administering defeat rather than fighting to win. Inevitably, as a result, there were many workplaces with no real union organisation.

However, across the country there were reports of workers walking out and organising picket lines in such workplaces. This is a beginning of rebuilding the trade union movement in Britain. Unison membership applications have increased by 126% since the ballot result. The same will undoubtedly be true of the other unions that joined the strike.

Build the unions

N30 - Millions strike back at Con-Dem government on 30 November 2011, photo Paul Mattsson (Click to enlarge)

The task in workplaces which previously had weak or non-existent union structures is now to build fighting union branches and effective broad lefts, based around the new activists who flooded into action on N30.

This is not a task that can be left for months, or even for weeks. It is urgent. On 29 November, Tory chancellor George Osborne dramatically escalated the Con-Dems' war on the working class. As the headlines of two national dailies declared, Osborne 'struck first' when he stepped up the onslaught on the public sector and workers' rights.

Therefore the date for the next public sector strike needs to be set immediately and to take place before the end of January. All private sector trade unions with current disputes should also coordinate their action for that date.

The trade union movement needs to make it clear that, if the government doesn't retreat, it will then step up the action further with a 48-hour public sector strike.

Osborne's plans draw a picture of unrelenting misery. The number of public sector jobs to be cut has increased by 300,000 to 710,000. A two-year 1% cap on public sector pay increases is to be imposed, ie continuing the pay freeze; measures to make it easier to sack workers are to be introduced; and the increase in the retirement age from 66 to 67 is to be brought forward to 2026.

Working Tax Credits are to be cut back. Osborne announced that the misery of 'austerity Britain' would continue for a decade. The already eye-watering £81 billion worth of cuts to the public sector is to be increased by £30 billion.

This horror is combined with a serious threat to the rights of the working class to organise in defence of its rights. The break up of national pay bargaining, along with the increase in public sector job cuts, was tucked away in the Office for Budget Responsibility's (OBR) report. Osborne adopted the report by the OBR, an unelected quango, wholesale. This is an echo of the rule of the 'technocrats', the dictatorship of the markets, in Greece and Italy where unelected bankers have stepped in to force cuts through.

More attacks

N30 - Millions strike back at Con-Dem government on 30 November 2011, photo Paul Mattsson (Click to enlarge)

The break up of national pay bargaining, if it was to go through, would seriously undermine the strength of the trade unions in the public sector. Cameron has now added to this by stepping up the threat to trade unionists' facility time.

The OBR report also raised the ending of TUPE, which currently guarantees the pay, conditions and pensions of public sector workers whose jobs are privatised. For British capitalism, which lacks profitable fields of investment, privatisation of swathes of the public sector is a juicy and potentially profitable prize, provided that workers' pay and conditions are driven into the ground. Cameron is openly calling for privatisation of sections of the NHS.

The war that has been unleashed on the trade union movement is an attempt to petrify it. They hope that in face of this onslaught the trade unions will stop fighting back and accept a rotten deal on pensions. The Financial Times on 3 December suggested that if the trade unions are prepared to settle on pensions the government will make 'further concessions', guaranteeing the pension rights of privatised workers.

This 'concession', even if it materialised, would only be an agreement to withdraw one small part of the onslaught launched on Tuesday, in return for the unions swallowing the destruction of public sector workers' pensions.

The government has declared war and the only possible response is to escalate the action, both in defence of pension rights, but also broadening the struggle against the government's austerity onslaught, and in defence of the rights of the trade unions to organise effectively.

More misery

N30 - Millions strike back at Con-Dem government on 30 November 2011, photo Paul Mattsson (Click to enlarge)

Osborne's autumn statement has been quickly followed by a series of think tanks announcing that we face a 'decade of misery'. We have been told that our living standards will be lower in 2015 than they were in 2003. In a complete condemnation of capitalist Britain, 64% of people now believe that their children will be worse off than them. Inevitably, the economic misery capitalism offers is being used as a justification for further attacks on our living standards.

Outrageously, Lord Hutton, author of the attack on public sector pensions and still a Labour member of the House of Lords, has weighed in to argue that, given the economic crisis, the government is offering workers "a good deal" on pensions. Millions of workers, however, are drawing the opposite conclusion - that it is only by conducting a determined struggle that they stand any chance of defending their and their children's living standards.

Unfortunately, the right-wing trade union leaders are terrified of calling further national action. Unison's leadership have mooted 'smart action' - that is sectional action - as the next step. This would be a serious mistake. Sectional or regional action as a supplement to further national coordination action could be useful, but as a substitute it will demobilise and potentially divide the movement.

The struggle of local authority workers in Southampton is held up as an example of 'smart' action. In reality, while Southampton shows the determination of local authority workers to fight, it is a demonstration of the limitations of 'smart' action, not of its success.

On N30 millions of workers felt their collective power. At the same time the majority understood that the government would not retreat without further action. The right-wing trade union leaders only took part in N30 as a result of pressure from their members, who were frustrated that they had not been called out for the strike on 30 June. Now that so many trade unionists have had their confidence increased by taking strike action, it will be very difficult for the right-wing union leaders to avoid calling further coordinated action.

Further action

N30 - Millions strike back at Con-Dem government on 30 November 2011, photo Paul Mattsson (Click to enlarge)

Already Unison Scotland has voted unanimously for a further day of coordinated action on 25 January. The National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) has a vital role to play organising demands for further strike action through a major campaign to get petitions signed and resolutions passed through trade union branches and through lobbying the TUC.

Another crucial task is to put forward an alternative to the 'austerity capitalism' offered by all three main parties. The biggest trade unions which participated in N30 are affiliated to the Labour Party, and their members' money provides the majority of Labour's funding.

Ed Miliband, under pressure, did not give an outright condemnation of the strike as he did in June - but he made it clear that he did not support it. Instead he suggested that the unions "had fallen into the government's trap". Ed Balls, Labour shadow chancellor, has made clear that a Labour government would also slash public sector pensions.

It is now widely understood that the cuts have exacerbated the economic crisis as tax receipts have fallen and the number of benefit claimants increased. Even Osborne has had to tacitly recognise this by including some attempts to stimulate the economy in the autumn statement, alongside huge attacks.

But because Labour, like the Tories and Liberals, accepts the logic of the capitalist market, it accepts the 'necessity' of driving down workers' living standards. It is an indictment of Labour policies, of cuts 'less far and less fast', that more voters currently trust the Tories than the opposition on the economy. Although this can change as the crisis deepens and, in desperation, workers look for any outlet to defeat the government.

No to ALL cuts

Socialists, however, along with millions of workers, say NO! Working class people should refuse to pay for an economic crisis which was not of their making. Alongside an industrial struggle, we also need a political voice - otherwise workers are fighting with one hand tied behind their backs. We call on the trade unions to stop funding New Labour, and to begin to stand election candidates that say no to all cuts.

The PCS civil service union has proposed an immediate alternative to Osborne's £111 billion of cuts. It demands the collection of the massive £120 billion unpaid tax of big business which, if implemented, would negate the need for cuts. The Socialist Party and the whole labour movement support this demand.

However, the speed and depth of the present crisis of capitalism and its devastating effect on the lives of millions of workers in Britain and worldwide, poses sharply the issue not just of immediate measures that offer some relief for working people, but of more profound solutions, of 'system change'. This means outlining and fighting for a democratic socialist alternative.

It is no coincidence that in the wake of the strike Blairite Labour MP David Miliband, along with pro-Labour columnist Will Hutton and others, have written articles which attempt to dismiss Marxism and socialism as an alternative to the misery that capitalism offers.

The objective case for socialism has never been stronger; hence the rush to condemn it before it gains mass support. However, this will not work. Both Miliband brothers and Will Hutton can only offer a dream of good 'productive' capitalism rather than the 'bad' speculator-driven capitalism we have today. But this is a utopian dream.

The financiers and the manufacturers are completely intertwined and inseparable. British manufacturing companies gamble on the stock markets and have £60 billion hoarded in their vaults - refusing to invest in new equipment, factories or jobs - because it is not profitable for them to do so.

No amount of pleas from the Miliband brothers will change that. Only by taking the financial system, and the major corporations that dominate the economy, into democratic public ownership would it be possible to begin to fully utilise the science, technique and industry available in order to meet the needs of the majority.

Only the start

2011 has seen the biggest trade union demonstration for decades, possibly over 100 years, and now it has had the magnificent N30 strike. However, 2011 has only been the start. The stage is set for battles that will dwarf those we have seen this year. In the course of them there will be opportunities to win a new generation to socialism. There will also be opportunities to bring down the rotten Con-Dem coalition.

Osborne has made it clear that his government is set on a collision course with the working class. Thatcher did similar when she launched the poll tax, but it turned out to be her downfall thanks to the 18 million-strong army of non-payers, led by Militant (the Socialist Party's predecessor). Something like this can happen again.
Osborne and Cameron, with Clegg and Co in tow, are determined to talk tough in their battle with Britain's working class. However, this hides the reality that this is a weak and increasingly hated government. It can be brought down provided that the anger and determination shown on N30 is built on early in 2012.

Splits on the horizon?

It is clear from the autumn spending review that the Tories are preparing to drag the Liberals with them into a second 'austerity' government. However, the ranks of the Liberal Democrats have accepted wielding the knife in return for power for one term - but may balk at it carrying on indefinitely. In an attempt to appease his members, Nick Clegg has made a rhetorical attack on the excess pay of CEOs whose companies 'don't deliver'.

Meanwhile he continues to sit happily in a government which has presided over average pay increases of 49% for the directors of the FTSE 100 companies - which are only delivering pay squeezes and redundancies for their workforces.

However, as the cuts continue to mean terrible misery for millions - and particularly as the struggle against the cuts increases - there will be real possibilities for splits in the Lib Dems, as there will be for all the pro-big business parties.

The spectre of Europe is haunting the Tories. Around 40% of Britain's exports go to the eurozone, and its break up would mean a dramatic increase in the economic crisis worldwide and in Britain. As the price of trying to save the eurozone German capitalism is demanding the right to insist that every country in the eurozone carries out Con-Dem-style cuts policies. This, however, will require changes to the Lisbon Treaty, and already the Tory right are agitating for a referendum.

Socialists support the right of the people to vote on changes to the Treaty and oppose the strengthening of this axe-man's charter, just as the Socialist Party, the Socialist Party's sister organisation in Ireland, campaigned for a no vote in the two Irish referendums on the Lisbon Treaty.

However, Cameron will be desperate to avoid a referendum and the issue, seemingly separate to the cuts but in fact connected, is likely to dramatically widen the fissures within the Tory party and between it and the Lib Dems.

Have you got comments on this article? Get in touch.

Email editors@socialistparty.org.uk or call 020 8988 8777

2011-12-05T20:29:00.000Z

RCT Socialist Update no. 37

In the last week we have seen the biggest strike action in Britain since 1926. With almost 3 million public sector workers out on strike it was a huge sign that working class people are no longer prepared to sit back and accept the dictates of the markets or the politicians who bow to every move by them. The burning anger was evident from the picket lines and the demonstrations in both Cardiff and Merthyr and from reports we have heard from right across the country. Socialist Party members were out in force on November 30th, many of them forming picket lines at there own workplaces with fellow trade union activists, whilst those members not working in the public sector, paid a visit to as many picket lines as possible before heading of to the march and rally in Cardiff. The highlight of the demonstration was hearing the improptu rally held by the National Shop Stewards Network at the begining of the demonstration.

Along with this strike action and the growing mood of anger towards the cuts agenda of the government we have seen the emergence of the Occupy Movement which has come to South Wales and has currently set up camp outside Transport House in Cardiff, with so many people there looking for an alternative model for society and actively looking towards the organisations of the working class, the trade unions for guidance.

The big question after the strike action of last week is 'What Next?' where do we go from here to effectively push back the governments assault on public services. Come along to the Socialist Party public meeting in Pontypridd to discuss this very issue, speakers wil include public sector workers who took strike on on November 30th. In the meantime you can watch this marvelous video from the Socialist Party covering events on that day. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hcvE0EPD2w

Come along to the meeting
Tuesday 7pm
Pontypridd Musuem

10,000 public sector jobs lost in Wales and counting…

2011-10-26T19:08:00.003+01:00

Welsh youth to join the Jarrow March For Jobs

Over 10,000 public sector jobs have been lost in Wales in the last year according to accountants PwC. And it will get a whole lot worse according to the Wales Audit Office (WAO) who expects 21,000 jobs to be lost by 2015. So far the cutbacks have been less severe in Wales than the rest of the UK, but that has merely delayed the worst of the cutbacks.

The Welsh government delayed the cuts until after the Assembly elections in May this year, but fully intend to make them bite this year and the next two years. Already 1,000 jobs have been lost in the Welsh government itself. The NHS, education and councils are currently shedding jobs like leaves from the trees outside the Assembly offices in Cathays Park.

The ConDem government’s claim that job losses in the public sector will be made up by job gains in the private sector are confounded when you look at the small print of the employment figures. There has been a small growth in the number of employees (although not enough to stop a sharp rise in unemployment) but only by a rise in part time and temporary jobs. So permanent employment has been replaced by underemployment and short term employment.

And public sector cuts will lead to workers’ jobs being lost in the private sector as well. PwC estimates that over 50,000 jobs will be lost in Wales in the public and private sectors as a result of the cuts.

The loss of jobs in the public sector is also putting enormous strain on the remaining workforce. In the NHS (where a colossal £570 million is being cut in Wales) workers are reporting that they are having to cover for the unfilled vacancies as workers leaving are not replaced.

The response of people in Wales to the cuts has already been angry but they have only just begun to bite. Thus far the Welsh Labour government has been able to shift the blame onto the shoulders of the ConDem government in Westminster who control the purse strings and cut the funding for public services in Wales. The Welsh government has shrugged its shoulders and said "What can we do?" before cutting services to the bone. But that can only last so long before the cuts become intolerable.

The Wales Audit Office points out that the cuts will be absolutely unprecedented. Spending on public services has never been cut more than two consecutive years. It will now be cut in real terms for five consecutive years. Real term funding will be cut by a massive 12.4% over that period.

The NHS in Wales will really suffer with health spending due to be cut by 6.2% in three years in real terms. At the moment health spending per head is slightly higher in Wales than the UK average. However compared to other areas with similar socio-economic characteristics like the North East of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland it is the lowest. The Welsh government proposes to cut it even further so that it falls even below the UK average.

The Welsh Labour government that pretends to stand in the tradition of the NHS's socialist founder, Aneurin Bevan, is attempting to force health spending to the lowest in the UK.

Revenue from the Welsh government to the councils will fall by £283 million by 2013 (a 7% cut). So basic council services will be cut and thousands of council jobs will go. Many council workers are being hit by a double whammy in Wales. As well as the cutting back of staffing levels and the extra workload heaped on the remaining workforce a substantial number are having their pay frozen and even cut by the job evaluation process taking place in Welsh councils.

In Rhondda Cynon Taff and Neath Port Talbot councils the workers have been hit with a triple whammy as these Labour-run councils have threatened their workers with wage cuts or get the sack. Some councils are attacking union organisation withdrawing facility time or other union facilities to try and prevent the unions from defending their members.

And according to the Wales Audit Office things would have been just as bad if Labour was in power in Westminster. Last year the WAO had calculated £1.5 billion cuts to the year 2013-14 based on the estimates of the outgoing Brown government’s planned cuts. The actual figure was virtually the same at £1.6 billion. In other words Labour’s cut to Welsh funding would have been as bad as the ConDems.

But while jobs are being massacred in Wales the youth are showing that a fightback is on the way. Next week a delegation from Youth Fight For Jobs are following up their hugely successful Merthyr to Cardiff march by joining the Youth Fight For Jobs Jarrow march to London. A dozen Youth Fight For Jobs activists from Wales will join the march as it moves towards its arrival in London on November 5th.

This will bring home the burning issue of youth unemployment, running at over 30% in Wales. It will up the ante as we prepare for the one day public sector strike planned for November 30th.

by Dave Reid

1,000 march on Cardiff Hardest Hit demo

2011-10-25T19:00:00.001+01:00

Tories welcomed by charities but not Remploy workers!

The turnout of 1,000 at the ‘Hardest Hit’ march and rally in Cardiff on October 22nd showed both the huge anger developing against the Tories’ proposals and potential to build a mass campaign against the attacks on the disabled. Disabled campaigners, trade unionists and the wider anti-cuts movement got a great reception in the city centre as they marched through, chanting “no ifs, no buts no disability cuts”.

But it also showed the weaknesses of cross party, cross class approach taken by many charities and politicians who claim to be the official leadership of the disability rights movement.

The march was inspiring in that a thousand disabled people, carers, trade unionists and anti-cuts campaigners turned out to march through Cardiff. The overwhelming majority of those that turned out would have been looking for a lead in the fight to defeat attacks on disability benefits and a plan of action to defend vital public services including the NHS and local authority services.

They would have been sadly disappointed listening to the official platform of speakers which consisted of directors and executives of charities and 3 Welsh Assembly Members. The AMs included, unbelievably, Mohammad Ashgar, Tory AM for South Wales East. This representative of the Tory originator of these cuts was allowed to speak, while Les Woodward, the national trade union convenor for Remploy - employing around 2,800 disabled workers and threatened with closure by the same Tory party of which Mr Ashgar is a Welsh representative – was refused on the grounds that he was “too political”. When large parts of the rally booed and heckled this representative of the party of the ruling class they were told to be quiet by the chair because the “support of all parties” is needed.

It took a comedian to introduce some sense to the platform, when actor and writer, Boyd Clack (Satellite City/High Hopes),told marchers that the lesson taught to him by his dad as a boy – “you can never trust a Tory” is as true today as it has ever been. But, he warned, that his father would be turning in his grave to see what the Labour Party he supported, has become. He warned disabled fighters to rely only on their own strength and not the support of politicians. He could have added that we should not rely on the support of charities which rely on government funding and will do all they can to argue for their own slice of a shrinking pie, while doing everything in their power to prevent political discussion.

Fortunately disabled campaigners do have allies they can rely on to fight all the way with them – public sector trade unionists, their families and the working class in general. This was the theme of the ‘alternative’ rally that Socialist Party members staged – that the struggle against the Welfare reform Bill and other attacks on the disabled can be defeated, as part of a campaign to oppose all public sector cuts.

Thanks to the Socialist Party, Les did get to address the crowd on the importance of fighting for Remploy and the thousands of disabled workers that it provides with the dignity of training, learning skills and earning a wage. He also exposed the shameful way that charities, including some of those participating in the ‘hardest hit’ campaigns, have colluded with the ConDem government’s plans to destroy Remploy. He was joined by other Socialist Party members, including Andrew Price from Cardiff Trades Council, whose message that the opposition to attacks on disability benefits and services needs to be linked to the strike action of public sector workers in November, was well received.
by Ronnie Job

Remploy workers vow to fight closures

2011-10-25T18:58:00.000+01:00

Defend disabled workers, defend jobs

Over 40 workers from the Remploy factories in Porth, Abertillery and Aberdare attended a public meeting along with 20 of their supporters to build the campaign to fight the Con-Dem government's closure programme.

In a lively meeting, Remploy workers spoke from the floor and showed their anger and their determination to fight. "They'll never get me to accept redundancy", said Jeff Hollinshead, plant convenor. "We don't own these jobs. They aren't ours to sell; we are just looking after them for those who come after us".

One worker said, "For a lot of people in this factory, this is more than just a job. It's their whole social life. Without this factory, they'd be lost".

Another explained that 95% of the 2,000 Remploy workers who lost their jobs in 2008 are still out of work. He said, "They want to replace a £21,000 a year job with a few hours stacking shelves in ASDA - and that would be for the lucky ones".

Les Woodward, national trade union convenor on the Remploy Consortium is based at the Swansea plant. He welcomed suggestions that the Welsh government could put procurement work into the Remploy factories. But he warned against any attempts to save the eight plants in Wales by sacrificing the other 46. "We can win this fight", he said, "but we need unity to do that".

Socialist Party members intend to build support through the anti-cuts Campaigns and the NSSN. They will discuss with members of PCS, Unison, the RMT and other unions the potential for campaigning for procurement in their sectors to go to Remploy plants. On 30 November, Remploy workers will be on the trade union demonstrations and all trade unionists need to give them their support.

by Mariam Kamish

Crisis in the Eurozone

2011-10-24T17:42:00.003+01:00

RCT Socialist Update no.36

As the world economic crisis deepens much of the focus has turned to the eurozone which is currently in chaos with no way out in sight. Yet this is not simply a problem for those countries within the Eurozone but a problem for many outside of it including Brtain. Whilst the political establishment look to making more and more cuts around eurozone nations in the hope of bringing economic stability, what is becoming more and more apparent is that it is only making things worse. In reality though on the basis of capitalism the only way forward is to brutually crush the living standards of workers all across Europe.

This week the Socialist Party will be holding a joint meeting of all our branches in South East Wales in which we will discuss the current state of the European economy and what effects it will have, more importantly we will discuss future developments in the economy but also the mounting resistance to this which is growing rapidly, particularly within Southern Europe but spreading outwards from there.

Come along to the discussion and find out more about the Socialist Party and our sister parties throughout Europe and join the discssion about the socialist alternative to this capitalist chaos. In the meantime you could read this short article about the Eurozone economy here http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5361

Come along to the meeting
Wednesday 7pm
Cardiff Bus and Social Club
Tudor Street, Cardiff (5 minutes walk from central station)

Mass movement needed to save our NHS

2011-10-23T17:28:00.000+01:00

The following is the editorial from the socialist issue 690

In the week in which the National Audit Office announced that 80% of hospitals in England are in financial trouble and almost 50 trusts are in crisis, the House of Lords passed the Con-Dems' Health and Social Care Bill. It will now go through the parliamentary committee stages, and could be passed into law next summer.

The NHS is the biggest reform ever won by the working class in Britain. Before it was established in 1948, working class people had to save, borrow or pawn their goods to be able to afford a GP. Thousands of people suffered and died unnecessarily.

The NHS was never fully publicly-owned and controlled, as GPs were allowed to continue private practice and the pharmaceutical industry remained in private hands. However, the establishment of the NHS utterly transformed the lives of all working class people.

But for more than 30 years the NHS has faced underinvestment and privatisation. The Tories introduced the 'internal market' and established Trusts outside of democratic control. Labour poured increased public funding into the coffers of private profiteers, through PFI (Private Finance Initiatives), Independent Treatment Centres and Foundation hospitals.

Con-Dem aims

The Con-Dems' bill aims to take these steps to their conclusion and end the NHS. As legal opinion has exposed (see www.dutytoprovide.net), the bill aims to remove the duty of the government to provide a national health service in England. As analyst Allyson Pollock has explained, it turns the NHS over to the global health market, for multinational companies to make enormous profits. A universal health service, free at the point of use, could disappear.

To try to prevent this dire scenario, thousands of people have participated in local demonstrations. Campaign groups such as Keep Our NHS Public exhorted people to lobby Lib Dem MPs and to "adopt a peer", in the hope of scuppering the bill.

Lobbying politicians can be an important component of any campaign. When faced with massive opposition, even the political representatives of big business can be forced to backtrack. This weak coalition government has already performed numerous u-turns, including their "pause" on NHS changes earlier this year.

However, at the 'Block the Bridge' event on 9 October, the day before the Lords began their deliberations, some in campaign group UK Uncut declared this was "our last chance to save the NHS". This is not true.

Ideological

It is understandable that there has been a sense of desperation as the bill has gone through the Commons and the Lords. However, while lobbying can force a u-turn on more minor questions, or on particular aspects of the NHS bill, to knock the government off course on the NHS altogether would require a much bigger movement. What is at stake for the representatives of the ruling class is a huge ideological and economic question: the opening up of the hundreds of billions of pounds in the NHS to private profit.

To defeat this requires a powerful mass movement that mobilises the anger at the destruction of the NHS. Such a movement should also call for an end to underfunding and privatisation, and for the rebuilding of the NHS as a fully public service under democratic control.

It would need, to start, a national demonstration called by the health trade unions. The authority of the trade unions was demonstrated on 26 March on the massive Trade Union Congress anti-cuts demo. This would be an important step in pulling together the local campaigns and building confidence.

Crucially, however, it would need the one and a half million people who work in the NHS to use their industrial might in strike action. If the power of workers in the health service was brought together with patients and communities, a movement would develop which could force the government into significant retreat. When linked up with other public sector workers in strike action against cuts, itself a step towards general strike action of all workers, it could cause this government to collapse.

Our health service

It was the power of the working class that won the NHS in the first place. Combative trade unions, formed through struggle towards the end of the nineteenth century, argued for state medical provision. This was followed by the formation of a new political party representing workers, the Labour Party. Trade union militancy led to the first national health act in 1911 bringing in health insurance. Then after the Second World War, mass movements of workers, determined not to go back to the deprivations of the 1930s, swept across Europe. The capitalists feared for their system. An election victory for the Labour Party allowed the introduction of the NHS.

Will this kind of movement happen now? It is one thing to pass a law through parliament; as the experience of the anti-poll tax campaign demonstrates, it is quite another to implement it. The poll tax was passed into law in 1989, but was defeated by a mass movement, led by the forerunner of the Socialist Party, in 1991. We should expect that when the effects of the NHS changes deepen, hospitals close and services are sold off hook, line and sinker, a big movement is likely to develop.

In 2006, when hospitals were suddenly forced to balance their budgets and big cuts were made, campaigns sprang up around the country and tens of thousands of people demonstrated. As the NHS attacks dig in, especially alongside equally savage cuts to other services, jobs, pay and benefits, we can expect a movement to rise up that could dwarf the 2006 campaigns.

Trade union action urgent

It is criminal that so far the health trade unions, held back by timid leadership, have done almost nothing to defend the NHS. Unite the Union has at least supported some of the protests. Up until now, Unison, the biggest health union, has not acted. This is a key reason for the feelings of despair amongst some NHS campaigners.

However, 30 November could change everything. For the first time since 1982, NHS staff are being balloted for national strike action. If built for vigorously, taking national strike action alongside millions of other public sector workers, the confidence of health workers could rocket. This in turn would give a huge boost to community campaigners who could start to see how a powerful national movement can be built and put pressure on the conservative union leadership.

A crucial factor in the winning of the NHS originally was the formation of a political party which could fight for that demand, and when in power, implement it. The Labour Party has long since ceased to be that party. While Labour has opposed the latest Con-Dem bill, the last Labour government increased the pace of privatisation in the NHS and paved the way for the Tories' latest steps. It is important that the campaign to save the NHS includes the demand for a new mass workers' party that will inscribe the demand for a fully-funded, democratically-controlled public national health service on its banner.

Cameron's big 'them and us' society

2011-10-17T17:43:00.002+01:00

The Following is taken from the socialist issue 689

There is huge support for the young people on the Jarrow March for Jobs who call for massive investment in a programme to create socially useful jobs. A recent YouGov poll found that 72% wanted to see government action to address youth unemployment.

Millions of public sector trade union members are filling in their ballots to vote for a strike against attacks on their pensions and to defend public services on 30 November. But all the Con-Dems have on offer is cuts, cuts and more cuts and misery.

While the bankers receive record bonuses for their role in the economic crisis and the number of billionaires increases, nurses and other public sector workers who provide vital services are being asked to work for free.

Tory leader David Cameron presented the 'Big Society' as empowering local communities, giving them choice and control over their services. The reality is the opposite. The Con-Dem government is attacking our public services, demanding more privatisation and cutbacks, for the benefit of big business.

For example, at Whipps Cross University Hospital Trust in Waltham Forest, north east London, all 3,400 staff are being urged to work for free.

Chief executive Cathy Geddes wrote to all staff asking them to "volunteer to sacrifice annual leave and/or perform additional unpaid sessional duties". The hospital, which is due to be merged with two other hospital trusts, is attempting to cut its £4.5 million deficit so that it can become a Foundation Trust, mandatory for all hospitals by 2015.

Many hospitals are stretched with a lot of staff already working overtime for free. As one Whipps Cross midwife said: "Many of us have already accumulated weeks of lieu days for all the unpaid overtime we do and there are no signs we'll ever get it."

It is an insult to these workers to suggest they should give up their pay while health trust chief executives enjoy an average salary of £158,800.

Hospitals already owe almost £270 million from emergency 'working capital loans' introduced in 2007 under the then New Labour government, which pioneered 'competition' (ie cuts and privatisation) in the NHS. Yet the Con-Dems are now cutting the health budget in real terms. Big businesses are lining up to take over NHS services, not to improve health care but to improve their profits.

Local authorities are also slashing services while appealing to volunteers to step in and pick up the slack. Libraries in London, Hampshire, Lancashire, Northamptonshire and Yorkshire are being threatened with closure or reduced opening hours unless local people are willing to work for free.

On the Isle of Wight, the Wight bus service has been cut completely and a new service has been set up with volunteer drivers.

Many people see through the Big Society smoke screen and are fighting against it. In many towns and cities, local anti-cuts groups have been protesting against cuts and closures.

A strong message needs to be sent to the government and local authorities that we will not stand by and watch these vicious attacks.

A mass movement against this government could stop it in its tracks. In workplaces and communities we need to build support for the 30 November strikes and to fight for properly, publicly funded services including decent jobs, pay and conditions for all.

Brtain heading for a showdown

2011-10-16T21:43:00.000+01:00

RCT Socialist Update no. 35

On the 30th of Novenmber pending ballot results it is likely that Brtain will see the biggest strike action since 1926 and the largest number of workers on strike in a single day. All of this because the government is intent on making working class people pay for the crisis of the rich and quite rightly ordinary people are not willing to lie back and take it.

One June 30th we saw the first co-ordinated public sector strike action of the governments attacks on public sector pensions with over 700,000 on strike, but November 30th is likely to be much larger with upto 3 or 4 million on strike. Along with this public support for the strike action is extremely high not just because of the battle over pensions but rather because this is seen by many as the frontline in the battle against all austerity measures.

November 30th will certainly go down in history as a turning point, and Socialist Party members will be heavily involved in picket lines and demonstrations on the day, but all this poses a much larger and more significant question. Where is Brtain going? How will the government respond, and what steps should we take next in the battle against cutbacks to pay for the crisis of the rich.

This week out our regular branch meeting we will have a discussion based around these topics, we will take a look at recent events and the prospects for the near future, not for the sake of it, but in order to best equip of for the unfolding situation so as to best place us for the fight for socialism. You can read a recent article from socialistworld.net on the subject here http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5283

Come along to the meeting
Wednesday 7.15pm
Otley Arms, Treforest

Welsh Draft Budget: more cuts

2011-10-11T17:13:00.000+01:00

Education, NHS, environment biggest losers as Welsh Labour passes on ConDem cuts

The Welsh Government's 2012-2013 Draft Budget, published today by Labour finance minister Jane Hutt, is the second one in a row to cut Welsh public services. 12.2% cuts to education, 3% cuts to the NHS and an average of 6% cuts to environment, housing, fire services and elsewhere across the public sector promise to make Welsh residents less healthy, less safe, and less financially secure over the coming year while hurting social mobility and wasting resources.

An 8.2% cut to higher education support calls into question how long the Welsh Government intend to keep their promise of lower tuition fees in Wales. The simple act of abolishing tuition fees in Wales for all students would likely save the Assembly money; but Education Minister Leighton Andrews' turn toward the market means that, like in Tory-run England, university students studying in Wales will pay more and get less once again. Funding to improve workers' literacy and numeracy has been cut in half, as has money for the poor to access post-16 education. Anticipating this slashing of support for education, students from half of Wales' universities have organised a demonstration and All-Wales Student Assembly against education cuts on the 21st and 22nd of October.

A 5% real-terms cut to local government will give councils across Wales an excuse to sack thousands more workers. While some trade union branches are already taking steps toward industrial action against the cuts, public-sector unions Unison and GMB can no longer make apologies for a Welsh government that takes its members' money and yet acts completely against those members' interests. A successful campaign by the FBU in 2010 turned back proposed fire service cuts in South Wales, but it is similarly clear that the Welsh Government will not relent unless decisively defeated.

A few Labour sops to the press are only intended as distractions. £288 million "added" to the NHS Wales budget is simply a slowing of £1 billion in cuts already proposed, and will quickly be destroyed by inflation which is running at 5%. An extra £1 million for the environment consists in reality of £4 million added to subsidise incineration, and £3 million cut from other areas to make up the difference. A new jobs fund will create at most 4,000 minimum wage jobs over three years -- a sticking plaster which won't even make up for the jobs lost as a result of the Assembly's other cuts.

Cuts to housing and homelessness support abandon Wales' most needy to an uncertain and harsh winter. Cuts to the Food Standards Agency just weeks after over a dozen cases of E. coli were traced to a Cardiff restaurant seem wilfully ignorant or even contemptuous.

In the whole budget there is only one winner: big business, which will receive £10 million in handouts through "enterprise zones", the aforementioned £4 million for incinerators and an additional £1.7 million through "encouraging innovation". Insurance giant Admiral, job-slashing military firm BAe and nuclear power are likely to be the greatest beneficiaries of government largess.

The government will claim, as Thatcher did twenty years ago, that "there is no alternative" to the cuts. The Socialist Party have always put forward a practical alternative, tested and proven in Liverpool Council in the 1980s: defy Cameron and Clegg, set a budget based on need and hand the bill to Westminster. If Labour in the Assembly put half the effort into such a fighting programme as they do into making excuses for implementing cuts, Wales would have all the money it needed to create jobs and build a sustainable, productive economy. Time and again they, alone and in partnership with Plaid Cymru, have failed to do so. Welsh Labour have written the budget of the Welsh Government; but we need a new, mass party, representing the interests of the working class of Wales, can write a genuine Welsh Budget.

by Edmund Schluessel

Miliband's fruitless dreams of a 'better capitalism'

2011-10-10T16:07:00.001+01:00

The following is the editorial from the socialist issue 688.

Ed Miliband has said very little since becoming leader of the Labour Party. Many working class people, struggling to make ends meet, would have hoped that he would set out a sympathetic agenda at the Labour Party conference.

But instead he announced that the next Labour government will only spend what it can afford and that we would have to 'live within our means'. He added that: "Most of the cuts implemented by the Con-Dems will not be reversed"!

Many would ask why they should support Labour and give them their vote if it just means the continuation of Con-Dem policies? For others, because there is currently no mass workers' party which puts forward a real alternative to the Con-Dem cuts, there is a hope against hope that Labour will be able to get rid of the Tories, and stop at least the worst of the cuts.

Even though Miliband never mouthed the word "socialism" at the conference, we were told by his supporters that socialism was "implicit" in his speech!

Martin Kettle wrote in the Guardian that Miliband's speech "adds up to an attempt to reclaim social democracy as Labour's core route-finding principle".

Miliband is looking towards a new, better capitalism. He implied that there are good and bad capitalists (producers and wealth creators are 'good' while predators and asset strippers are not).

Miliband claimed that his alternative is a kinder capitalism, one that is not so aggressive. He argues that it was neoliberalism that caused the current crisis and not capitalism as such. But in reality capitalism will always ensure that the wealthy will make profits at the expense of ordinary workers.

There can be no return to the period of social democracy after World War Two when there were uniquely high levels of productivity and growth and workers were able to win some reforms including the NHS. Today capitalism is in its most profound crisis since the 1930s. The capitalists have no real solution, and as a result are divided on the way forward, but there is agreement that it should be the working class that pays for the crisis.

There is no possibility of Miliband opposing this, as was confirmed by his reaction to the suggestion by most of the capitalist media that he had moved leftwards and wanted to attack predatory bankers. Had he actually done so it would have been popular with workers, but he spent the next day vigorously denying he had said any such thing!

Incredibly Miliband also spoke about 'good' and 'bad' social housing tenants. With a shortage of social housing he stressed that "choices have to be made". He argued that people in work should get priority for social housing, thereby punishing the unemployed and poor.

He also said that benefits were "too easy to come by for those who don't deserve them and too low for those who do". This approach will potentially create divisions among the working class and worsen the plight of the most vulnerable.

Public sector union PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka opposed this at a conference fringe meeting. He explained that this would lead to a "different kind of welfare state with working people getting priority over the unemployed." He pointed out cold facts like in Merthyr Tydfil there are 1,500 people on jobseeker's allowance chasing 39 vacancies!

Many families are already relying on food donations from charities to survive. One charity reports that the number of people that it donates food to has gone up from 41,000 to 61,500. This is the result of job losses, low pay and rising prices.

Unlike the Tories' rich donors, those unions who generously fund the Labour Party and were key in electing Miliband as Labour leader last year get little for their money. Miliband told the TUC conference that strikes are a 'mistake' and opposed the planned public sector strikes over pension attacks on 30 November.

Both Len McCluskey, general secretary of the Unite union and Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison gave support to Miliband. But Prentis received a standing ovation when he demanded that Labour should support the strikes if they went ahead.

Miliband even praised Margaret Thatcher for ending the 'closed shop' (where workers could only take up a job if they were in the union) and forcing trade unions to hold strike ballots before being able to take action.

Those unions who fund the Labour Party will face increasing anger from their members about union money going to a party that won't support their strike to defend their pensions or commit to repealing the anti-trade union laws.

Miliband also called for "cooperation not conflict in the workplace". Yet trade unionists know that it is the bosses and management who have to be dragged to the table by the unions in order to negotiate.

The trade unions set up the Labour Party. They will need to pay a key role once again - in founding a new party that stands in the interests of the working class.

Come to Socialism 2011

2011-10-09T21:05:00.000+01:00

RCT Socialist Update no. 34

Socialism 2011 is fast approaching., it is an excellent event that no socialist, trade unionist or ani cuts campaigner will want to miss. The event is a weekend of discussion and debate hosted by the Socialist Party. With a range of discussions taking place over the course of the weekend the hardest decision every year is which sessions to attend as there are so many good sessions to choose from.

Some of the sessions include "What would a socialist democracy look like", "How can the masses of the Middle East win?", "What future for young people", "How can the anti-cuts movement win?", "20 years since the collapse of the USSR: proof that socialism doesn't work?" a debate with UKUncut and many more sessions.

As well as this there will be a Rally for Socialism on the saturday evening with speakers such as Peter Taaffe, general secretary of the Socialist Party, Clare Daly, Irish Socialist MP and activists from Egypt and Tunisia. Followed by the Party for Socialism.

This years event will start of with a bang as it coinsides with the arrival of the Youth FIght for Jobs Jarrow marchers at the end of the 5 week march from Jarrow in the north of England to London who will be met by 1000s of trade unionists, socialists and anti-cuts activists for a fantastic demonstration through trafalgar square.

Socialism 2011 takes place on the weekend of the 5th and 6th of November, there are a range of ticket options available depending ranging from single day tickets, weekend tickets and tickets including accomodation. For more details, including the full programme of events or any other quires and to book tickets and transport you can visit socialism2011.net or call us on 07931955007.

In preperation for the great event this week at our regular branch meeting wie will be hosting an open question and answer session on socalism and the Socialist Party, any questions you have or just want to come along and find out more, then come along and join the discussion.

Wednesday 12th October, 7.15pm
Otley Arms, Treforest.

Eurozone endgame

2011-10-05T16:42:00.005+01:00

The following is taken from the October edition of Socialism Today issue 152

After a year and a half, the Greek debt crisis is far from resolved. In fact, with Greece on the verge of a social explosion, a default and exit from the euro appears almost inevitable. The eurozone is threatened by an interlocking sovereign debt and banking crisis, compounded by near-zero growth. Capitalist leaders are in complete disarray. Competing national interests are a barrier to cooperative measures. LYNN WALSH analyses the latest twists and turns of the eurozone crisis.

ON 21 JULY, the eurozone leaders proclaimed at their summit that they had agreed on a package to stabilise the Greek debt crisis. This, they claimed, would avert the threat of a Greek default and precipitous exit from the euro. There would be a further €109 billion (following the 2010 €110bn package), while the role of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF – with proposed €440bn funds) would be extended to allow intervention to support governments and banks. There would, moreover, be a bond exchange that would involve a 21% ‘haircut’ for the holders of Greek bonds.

This package, however, was more a promise of future salvation than an immediate, practical solution. The whole deal is dependent on the approval of the 17 eurozone governments or parliaments, and this is not likely to happen until the end of September or the beginning of October. The 20% ‘haircut’ for Greek bonds will provide very minimal debt relief for the Greek government – Greek government bonds are already trading at less than 50% of their nominal value on the secondary bond markets. If the bond exchange goes through (it requires the agreement of 90% of the bondholders) it will be a good deal for the banks and a raw deal for the Greek people. In fact, it would require a ‘haircut’ of at least 50-60% to make any real difference to the debt mountain weighing down the Greek economy.

There is no guarantee whatsoever that all 17 governments will agree on an increase in the funds available to the EFSF or to increased powers of intervention. The eurozone leaders are reportedly arguing in tense, behind the scenes negotiations about where the EFSF funds will come from. Some leaders are proposing that they would mainly come from the European Central Bank (ECB). This would be, in effect, another form of ‘quantitative easing’, printing money in order to bail out governments and banks through the EFSF. This is strongly opposed both from within the ECB and by a number of governments, such as Germany and Netherlands, who see it as a road to escalating inflation. Regarding the €109 billion loans package, the government of Finland is demanding collateral (security) for its share of the loan. Other governments, such as Slovakia and Austria, are likely to make similar demands. These governments are demanding that a slice of government revenue or physical assets, such as land or buildings, should be allocated to them as security. This is reminiscent of the demands for reparations made on Germany after the first world war.

The wrangle over this new package demonstrates once again the way national interests stand in the way of common agreement. The 17-strong eurozone is an alliance of national states, not a confederation with a unified governing body.

Soon after the July summit, moreover, there were precipitous falls in the shares of major French banks, reflecting fears about the repercussions of a Greek default. At the same time, European banks were finding it increasingly difficult to borrow dollars from US banks to finance their current business. The ECB, which under Jean-Claude Trichet had been extremely reluctant to intervene, was forced to step in to offer unlimited dollar loans to eurozone banks. The ECB also started buying the bonds of the Italian and Spanish governments in order to prevent a precipitous rise in the borrowing costs of Italy and Spain.

Meanwhile, growth in all the major eurozone economies slowed to near zero, indicating a renewal of the recession that began at the end of 2007. The British economy also slipped into stagnation. This renewed slowdown is partly the result of fears about a sovereign debt meltdown and banking crisis, but more especially the result of austerity measures that have cut demand and reinforced the spiral of weak demand, falling investment, and rising unemployment. This in turn reduces government tax revenues, and actually leads to bigger deficits.

Piling the pressure on Greece

AT THE EUROZONE summit on 17 September, the troika – the European Council, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and ECB – who police the austerity measures imposed on Greece, postponed payment of the latest €8 billion loan due under the 2010 package on the grounds that Greece has not carried out sufficient cuts in state employment, spending, etc. Georgios Papandreou, the Greek prime minister, duly scurried back to Athens in order to carry out the troika’s orders.

The package of additional austerity measures includes a property tax, together with more public-sector job losses – on top of the plan to sack around 150,000 civil servants (20% of the total) by 2014 – and draconian wage cuts. If implemented, the accumulated measures will mean an economic and social catastrophe. The troika is "holding a knife to the throat of the Greek government", as one Greek minister put it, partly to enforce deeper and more rapid cuts and partly as a warning to other governments like Portugal and Ireland to keep to their austerity packages. This is a very dangerous game, however, and could detonate a political explosion in Greece, propelling the country towards default and exit from the euro.

Economically, there is no way these measures will provide a way out of the ever deepening slump. In fact, further austerity measures will only push the Greek economy even deeper into slump, pushing up the outstanding debt and making it even harder for Greece to pay it off. After falling 4.5% last year, GDP will fall by at least 5% this year (second-quarter growth was 7.3% down over last year). Unemployment is officially 16%, but more realistically is over 20% nationally (with over 900,000 unemployed). The northern region of western Macedonia, where an estimated 20% of small businesses have shut down during the recession, has an official unemployment rate of 22%. Health, education and other public services are collapsing. There is a process of social disintegration.

Angela Merkel and other eurozone leaders have repeatedly denied that they are seeking to provoke a default on Greece’s debt or force Greece out of the eurozone. Other leaders, however, appear to contradict this line. For instance, Wolfgang Schäuble, the German finance minister, has threatened that if Greece does not meet the conditions set by the troika, payments will stop (regardless of the fact that Greece urgently needs cash to pay its bills and refinance debts in October). "Then Greece has to see how it gets access to financial markets without help from the eurozone", said Schäuble. "That’s Greece’s problem".

The Netherlands prime minister, Mark Rutte, went even further: "Countries which are not prepared to be placed under administratorship can choose to use the possibility to leave the eurozone". (International Herald Tribune, 9 September)

It may be that some of the eurozone leaders are bluffing, and their statements are intended to maximise the austerity measures implemented in Greece. However, they are playing an extremely dangerous game. Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF, has recently warned about the rise of social tensions as a result of austerity measures. Massive strikes, demonstrations and other protests have continued unabated in Greece – and, at a certain point, will result in a social explosion.

Debt default and eurozone exit

PUSHING FOR EVEN greater austerity measures, eurozone leaders are ignoring the reality that Greece’s debts are absolutely unsustainable. While political leaders are repeatedly stating their determination to defend the eurozone and avoid a breakup, strategists closer to the investment banks and other financial institutions are quite clear that, sooner or later, there will be a Greek default. That would mean a Greek exit from the eurozone.

For instance, Nouriel Roubini, who has a far more realistic view than most commentators, argues that Greece will never resolve its debt problem within the straitjacket of the euro. In order to stimulate economic growth, the precondition of debt reduction, Greece would have to be able to devalue its currency in order to boost exports. Clearly, this would mean abandoning the euro and returning to the drachma. The drachma would undoubtedly sharply fall in value against the euro. This would enormously increase the foreign debt, in drachma values, of the Greek government, banks and businesses. In reality, Greece would (like Argentina in 2001) have to write off a significant part of these debts by revaluing the debt in drachma terms. Greece would undoubtedly become a pariah on financial markets, unable for a time to borrow from European and international banks. As in Argentina (comments Roubini), the situation would mean ‘bank holidays’ (denying or limiting savers access to their accounts) and capital controls to prevent a flight of capital out of the country.

Roubini argues that an orderly default and exit from the euro, although inevitably imposing extreme hardships on the Greek working class for a period, would be preferable to the "slow disorderly implosion of the Greek economy and society". He argues that there should be international, coordinated action to recapitalise the banks and other financial institutions suffering losses on their Greek loans. Moreover, international banks should step in to recapitalise the Greek banks, which would also suffer massive losses on Greek government bonds.

In theory, an approach along these lines, based on a coordinated, international intervention to mitigate the problem of unsustainable debt in Greece, would be preferable to blundering into an explosive collapse of the Greek economy and all the uncontrolled repercussions this would have in Europe and beyond. However, the capitalist markets do not function in an ‘orderly’ way, and recent events demonstrate the complete lack of policy coordination between the leaders of the advanced capitalist countries.

Default on the country’s debt and exit from the eurozone would not, in themselves, provide a solution for the working class of Greece. As in Argentina 1999-2002, the Greek ruling class would attempt to throw the burden of crisis onto working people. In time, the return to the drachma and devaluation would boost exports and possibly see a return to growth. In the short term, however, this would be on the basis of low wages, shortages of food, fuel and other essentials, and a degradation of public services.

To protect the interests of the working class it would be necessary to nationalise the banks and cancel the debt held by foreign big business and financial institutions, while protecting the savings of working people. It would also be necessary to take over the commanding heights of the economy (with minimum compensation on the basis of need) to ensure the supply of essential goods and services. Priority should be given to reconstructing public services such as health, education, etc. Control of the economy should be through bodies of democratically elected representatives from the trade unions, community organisations, and the wider public. On a capitalist basis there is no easy way out.
Eurozone banking crisis

THE EUROZONE SOVEREIGN debt crisis is interlinked with a Europe-wide banking crisis. In 2008, eurozone governments intervened to bail out a number of shaky banks. But they did not carry out the kind of large-scale recapitalisation of banks that took place in the US under the Troubled Asset Relief Programme. Only eight eurozone banks out of 91 failed the recent ‘stress tests’, a theoretical test to determine whether banks can withstand another financial crisis. The big investors and speculators, however, are not convinced that all the banks are healthy. In fact there was recently a leaked IMF report which said that eurozone banks need €273.2 billion of additional capital. Lagarde commented that the eurozone crisis was entering "a dangerous new phase" and called for part of the EFSF funds to be used to recapitalise banks. This provoked strong opposition, some from political leaders who object to EFSF funds being used to prop up banks, and some from the banks themselves which deny that they are in trouble.

Nevertheless, there are clear indications of a new crisis building up in the eurozone banking sector. For a start, banks are refusing to lend to one another, preferring to park their cash in the ECB, even if this earns them a lower interest rate. A more startling recent development is the fact that Siemens, the giant German engineering firm, has deposited almost half its cash reserves (€6bn) with the ECB, rather than with commercial banks. Eurozone banks have also had difficulty in securing dollar loans from US banks, vital funding to conduct their US and global business. The ECB was forced to step in and offer eurozone banks unlimited dollar funds on the basis of three-month loans (though this will cost the banks more than loans from the commercial money markets, which have begun to dry up).

In mid-August the focus turned to the French banks. A rumour circulated that Société Générale was in trouble, and there was a massive fall in its share price (with a 50-60% fall between June and September). Société Générale shares were worth €52.7 in February, while by early September they had fallen to €21.19. Société Générale holds €2 billion of Greek bonds, while BNP Paribas holds €4 billion and Crédit Agricole holds €800 million. Big investors and speculators fear that a Greek government default on its debts would precipitate a deep crisis for these three major French banks, which play a key role in the French economy. French government ministers assert that the fears about these banks are ‘irrational’. Any short-term liquidity problem (ie a shortage of funds to cover current business) would be covered by intervention by the ECB. They deny that there is a basic solvency problem, asserting that these banks have enough capital reserves to survive a Greek default and other shocks. French ministers have furiously rejected the idea that they are discussing plans to nationalise these banks. This is reminiscent of the position of Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling at the time of the Northern Rock bank crisis in 2007/08.

Lagarde, however, let the cat out of the bag. When she was previously French finance minister, she claimed there was no problem with the French banks. Since taking over as head of the IMF, however, she has called for a recapitalisation of the major French banks and other banks in trouble using the EFSF funds. There has been a furious reaction against this. On the one hand, any such bailout would confirm that these banks have a solvency problem, and could actually exacerbate their situation. On the other, existing shareholders are up in arms because a government bailout (which would involve the government buying shares in the banks) would effectively dilute the value of shares of existing shareholders.

Eurozone leaders’ disarray

UNDER THE IMPACT of the economic crisis there has been a sharpening of national tensions within the eurozone. There are also divisions within the leadership of the German government, the key power in the eurozone. Merkel has faced growing opposition from leaders of the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) and the Free Democratic Party (FDP), the Christian Democrats’ coalition partners. These leaders have been playing the euro-sceptic card, reflecting the growing opposition in Germany to bailing out Greece and other so-called peripheral states.

The lack of decisive action at eurozone summits shows that the eurozone leaders are in complete disarray. Each time they proclaim everything will be fine, Greece will not be allowed to default or be pushed out of the eurozone. The big investors in financial markets, however, do not take these reassurances seriously. Most of the strategists who speak for investment banks, etc, now believe that a Greek default is inevitable and will result in an exit from the eurozone.

The leadership of the ECB is also divided. While buying Greek, Portuguese and Irish government bonds in order to keep down interest rates for their respective governments, Trichet and other ECB leaders repeatedly stated that they were against large-scale intervention to support other eurozone governments. However, the speculation against bonds of the Italian and Spanish governments, which was forcing up their interest rates at the beginning of September, forced the ECB to intervene with large-scale purchases of these bonds. This provoked the resignation of the German representative, Jürgen Stark. There is now an intense battle between those ECB leaders who believe that an even bigger intervention is required. They argue that unlimited support for the bonds of threatened governments would stave off a sovereign debt crisis. However, other ECB leaders are still intransigently opposed to this kind of intervention. They believe that the ECB’s role should be strictly limited to monetary policy, ie setting interest rates and regulating the money supply.

There is also a growing difference between capitalist leaders over economic policy. The prevailing policy, upheld by Merkel and other eurozone leaders, is that ‘fiscal consolidation’ is imperative to reduce deficits. This means severe austerity policies. However, this has produced a new downturn in the European economy and, as Timothy Geithner, the US Treasury secretary, has warned, now threatens the whole global economy. The fall in government spending and massive cuts in public-sector jobs have set in motion a downward spiral: declining consumer spending, weak investment, higher unemployment, and a decline in tax revenues that can result in even bigger deficits.

The ultimate stress test

A WARNING WAS recently sounded by Lagarde. While advocating continued austerity for countries like Greece, she is – without naming names – calling on the major European economies to adopt short-term stimulus measures, while maintaining the aim of fiscal consolidation in the longer run. She warned: "A vicious circle [of weak growth and weak government balance sheets] is gaining momentum in Europe and the US". "Political dysfunction" was feeding policy indecision in a "dangerous new phase of the crisis". "Social strains", she warned, "are evident in many parts of the world, not just in the countries undergoing severe [fiscal] adjustment". (IMF, 15 September)

Since then, the IMF has published its latest economic outlook. This forecasts global growth for 2011 to be 4%, but warns that, unless there is concerted action to revamp economic policies, there is a strong possibility of growth falling below 2%. In the US and Europe, growth will certainly be under 2% and is likely to be virtually stagnant, while there is zero growth in Japan. But, as the Wall Street Journal comments (21 September): "It is unlikely that either the IMF or the G20 will manage to produce a cooperative plan of action this weekend, given the sharp political discord within the US and Europe".

However, it may be too late for the major capitalist economies to avoid a prolonged stagnation or a further downturn. The ruthless pressure on Greece to intensify the austerity measures can detonate an explosion in that country, which in turn would detonate a meltdown of the eurozone. It is hard to imagine that Greece could default on its debt and remain in the eurozone. That would undermine the credibility of the whole eurozone. In any case, the only way Greek capitalism could escape from its crisis would be through readopting the drachma and devaluation. And if Greece takes this path, why should others stick with the pain of eurozone austerity measures?

On the basis of the relatively strong growth of the world economy since 2000, the eurozone appeared to become a success. But the growth was based on huge volumes of debt, which are now at the heart of the current crisis. Since the financial meltdown and economic recession of 2007-09, the eurozone is being subjected to a severe stress test – from which it will not emerge intact. At a certain point it will break up; but how long the process will take and through what permutations it will twist and turn cannot be predicted. The eurozone has entered its endgame, only the moves and timescale are uncertain

Mass strikes can kick out Con-Dems

2011-10-04T15:09:00.003+01:00

The following is taken from the socialist issue 687

On 30 November, two to three million public sector workers will be on strike to defend their pensions. More workers will be out than on the first day of the 1926 general strike.

The NSSN is proud of the role that it's played in paving the way. On 11 September we lobbied the TUC Congress and held a rally under the slogan of a 24-hour public sector general strike. Over 700 shop stewards and trade unionists listened to leading union speakers such as Mark Serwotka of the PCS and Bob Crow of the RMT.

This government of millionaires can be defeated by coordinated strike action. Millions of workers striking together can stop the Con-Dems in their tracks. And if one day is not enough to force a u-turn, we must prepare for a two-day strike as the next stage of the escalating action.

In all the workplace meetings, shop stewards' committees and union branch committees, the message has to be hammered home that workers shouldn't pay the price for the bankers' crisis.

Workers have shown their determination to fight at every opportunity they've been given this year. Over 500,000 marched against the cuts in London on 26 March and over 750,000 civil servants, teachers and lecturers went on strike against the pension attacks on 30 June.

But the first job for 30 November is to win the strike ballots with an overwhelming vote. Meetings have to be organised in every workplace. Where there is more than one union, these could be joint meetings. Members of the PCS, NUT, UCU and ATL unions who were out on 30 June and have live strike mandates should be invited to speak. This can give confidence to the many workers who haven't been on strike before.

These can be supplemented by public meetings and rallies in towns and cities and on estates to draw in other working class people - young people and all those who suffer from and oppose the cuts, including private sector workers who also face job losses and pay and pension cuts.

The NSSN encourages all private sector workers involved in current disputes to consider coordinating their industrial action with the strike on 30 November. As Mark Serwotka said at the NSSN rally on 11 September: "Low-paid workers in the private sector are exploited by shareholders and executives, not by fellow low-paid workers in the public sector."

A victory for public sector workers on pensions, by forcing a retreat or even the downfall of this government, would raise the confidence to fight back.

What you can do:

If your union is balloting, you could organise a workplace meeting, if applicable jointly with other unions. This should form the basis for democratic control of the strike
You could organise a public meeting in your town or city with the unions in dispute or trades council, anti-cuts campaign or NSSN. Explain the need to prepare for further action if necessary
Plan a demonstration in your town or city on the day of the strike
All united - invite private sector workers, young people, unemployed, pensioners, etc to any public meetings, rallies and demonstrations

Socialism or Anarchy?

2011-10-04T00:07:00.000+01:00

RCT Socialist Update no. 33

As the economic crisis is ridden out comfortably by the rich whilst it is us ordinary people who are paying the price in the most savage of ways across the world. Capitalism as a system is being openly questioned and many are rightly coming to the conclusion that is it a thoroughly corrupt sysem run in the interests of the rich by exploited the majority of us.

The only questions which remains for so many people is what do we replace capitalism with. So many working class people are looking for alternatives and the most common are those of Socialism and of Anarchism. This week at our weekly branch meeting the discussion will focus on these distinct ideas what their similiarities are and what the differences are, but most importantly which of these ideas can be put into practice to produce an equal society.

Inevitably the discussion will reflect the view that socialism forward and the only viable replacement for capitalism. Come along and find out the reasons why or to ask any questions, if you disagree come along and argue you rpoint this us and join the discussion. In the meantime you can read this short article about Socialism vs. Anarchism here http://www.socialistparty.net/pub/pages/socialist014mar06/8.htm

Come along to the meeting
Wednesday 5th, 7.15pm
Otley Arms, Treforest

Socialism in the 21st Century

2011-09-27T18:00:00.000+01:00

RCT Socialist Update no. 32

Capitalism is in crisis, whilst the financial systems around the world a on the brink of collapse and every effort is made to save them by making ordinary people pay the price by slashing public services, education, pensions and benefits. It is more and more clear that capitalism isn't working. Not only is in not working but working class people around the world are the ones paying the price, whilst the rich carry on as normal.

For us to maintain public services and education, along with everything else we need to rid ourselves of the capitalist economy and replace it with socialism, the only system which can provide us all with decent living standards and end the dictatorship of the markets. The question on most peoples minds though is what would be different with socialism and how can we achieve it? You can also find out more here http://socialism.org.uk/

This Thursday Hannah Sell the deputy general secretary of the Socialist Party and author of 'Socialism in the 21st Century' will be speaking on these every topics and much more. Come along to the meeting to find out more about what socialism is, and how we can fight to stop the cutbacks we all face. There will be a discussion after Hannah speaks so you can ask any questions you may have.

Come along to the meeting
Thursday 7pm
Koko Gorrilaz, Cardiff (5 mins walk from Cathays train station)
If you are unsure where it is, give me a call on 07931955007 and I can meet you at Cathays train station.

Video: NSSN lobby of the TUC

2011-09-23T17:01:00.002+01:00

Below is a video of the recent Lobby of the TUC organised by the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) calling for a public sector general strike only days before several major trade unions announced ballots for strike action.

30 November - the fight of all our lives

2011-09-22T20:00:00.000+01:00

The following is the editorial of the socialist issue 686

The Financial Times, by replicating the model of government borrowing used by the Office for Budget Responsibility, suggests the structural deficit in 2011-12 is £12 billion higher than thought, a rise of 25%. To paraphrase the Verve: "The cuts don't work; they just make it worse".

Most people's experience and instinct tells them that government austerity measures are having a negative impact - be they the one million young people out of work, the one million women out of work, or the 50% of young black people out of work.

Those suffering cuts to benefits and much-needed services, the 10% of private sector renters who couldn't pay their rent on time this month, or those who face the threat of huge attacks on their pensions will also be clear that austerity measures are making things worse.

That is why the votes for ballots for strike action at this month's Trade Union Congress (TUC) are to be welcomed by every section of the working class, and by the middle class who are increasingly affected by the cuts.

The Conservative Party's trade union envoy, Richard Balfe, derided the ballot announcements as "nothing exceptional". While government ministers desperately attempt to play the plans down, it is clear that Wednesday 30 November could potentially be the biggest day of strike action in British history, at least in terms of the number of strikers, and bigger than any individual day of the mighty 1926 general strike.

This massive strike of up to four million workers could also be joined by tens of thousands of students in solidarity, and in protest at the vicious cuts to education combined with rising youth unemployment.

Cabinet minister Francis Maude, Tory education minister Michael Gove and other Con-Dem politicians did their utmost to undermine public support for the strike by 750,000 civil service and education workers on 30 June. But they failed.

Immediately after the 30 June strike polls showed opinion was evenly divided between those who supported the action and those who opposed it. Since then it has become increasingly clear that these are not short-term cuts and that everyone, apart from the super-rich will suffer.

Cabinet minister Sayeeda Warsi wrote in the Daily Star that "across Britain families are tightening belts... These are the people who will suffer the consequences of this strike action."

But these are the people who are suffering the consequences of government cuts and those carried out at local level by Tory, Liberal and Labour-led councils. And it is many of these people who will be on strike, including firefighters, hospital and ambulance workers, teachers and lecturers and school and college support staff, care workers, meals-on-wheels staff, prison officers, tax collectors and refuse collectors, street cleaners, cemetery workers and police support staff. There will be few families without at least one striker in their number.

The unions, including NUT, PCS, UCU, ATL, who were out on 30 June, and FBU, Unison, GMB, Unite, NIPSA, Prospect, NASUWT, NAHT, UCAC, and EIS have agreed to coordinate action around pensions. The government plans would see millions of public sector workers pay higher contributions, work longer and get less.

Warsi parroted the government's line from June in defence of the cuts: "The terms proposed are still great pension schemes, far better than almost anything in the private sector."

At the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) rally on the eve of the TUC, PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka explained that this was not a battle between public and private. "Low-paid private sector workers are exploited by shareholders and executives, not by fellow low-paid workers in the public sector."

A PCS press release said: "While this is a campaign of public sector unions, we are clear that we are not just fighting for our own members. We fundamentally reject the calls to equalise the misery, we want fair pensions for all, public and private alike."

As NSSN chair Rob Williams said: "Now the date has been named, trade unionists up and down the country will be pressuring their union leaderships to make sure that they're out on that day, and building for the action among their members in order to strike a devastating blow to this government's plans to make us pay for the fallout of a crisis of their system."

Fight all cuts

But the 30 November strike is also a mandate to build for action in all areas where working class people come together - in workplaces, in local campaigns and groups, in the local communities and on estates.

It must be made clear to young people in the schools, colleges and universities, and to those one million who are without work, education and training, that their place is in the labour movement and that solidarity with striking workers is in all of our interests.

The ballots will be on the issue of pensions but every effort must be made by trade unionists and campaigners to make it clear that this strike will form a crucial step in the battle against all cuts. Discussions and debates on a positive programme of demands for the anti-cuts and labour movement - as outlined in the previous issue of the Socialist - must be held.

The question of sharing out the work to create jobs without loss of pay; of investment in the creation of socially useful jobs, including of house-building and renovation, which would also address the problems of homelessness and overcrowding; of green jobs; and of nationalisation of the banks and big corporations must be raised and debated. In this way it can be made clear that success in this struggle will be of benefit to all.

Ed Miliband's speech at the TUC showed that he is definitely a one-trick pony. He repeated almost word for word his condemnation of June's strike: "While negotiations were going on, I do believe it was a mistake for strikes to happen. I continue to believe that. But what we need now is meaningful negotiation to prevent further confrontation over the autumn."

It is little wonder that only half of Labour voters can even imagine Miliband as prime minister. No party in parliament represents workers. Never has the need for the trade unions to take steps to build a new mass workers' party been more urgent.
At the TUC, PCS president Janice Godrich and others pointed out that the government is refusing to negotiate on the key issues. However it cannot be completely ruled out that the government may 'chuck another U-ey' and try to side-step the strike as it becomes clear how much momentum is building.

There may be attempts to divide the united action by building on hints made previously that the government may offer crumbs to the lowest paid. But small concessions, while welcome to workers who will benefit from them, must not deter the trade union leaders from continuing to build united action for 30 November and beyond.

The government and the bosses should fear this strike. The organised working class, in united action, will make the 'feral overclass' quake like nothing else can. This action will whet the appetites of millions of workers and youth to not just show their strength, but to change their conditions completely. In this battle ideas - increasingly including socialist ideas - will come to the fore.

On Tuesday 29 November George Osborne will give his autumn statement, undoubtedly arguing once again that ordinary people must pay, pay and pay again for the crisis. All our energy must be directed to making sure his words are drowned out by the roar of the working class in action on the following day.

We beat the poll tax, lessons for today

2011-09-21T15:13:00.000+01:00

RCT Socialist Update no. 31

Working class people are currently facing the biggest assault on our living standards since the 1930's. The ConDem government are intend on taking us all on at the same time, be it jobs, services, pensions or benefits we are all under attack. Whilst on the surface it paints a very bleak and real danger to us all the tory led government have shown they are not willing to learn from their own mistakes.
Two decades ago the tories made the mistake of taking on the entire working class together when they introduced the poll tax, and completely unfair tax which meant the rich were expected to only pay the small amount as the poorest people in society. But by taking us all on at the same time, working class people were united in their resitance and through local anti-poll tax groups organised a campaign where 18 million people refused to pay the tax and forced the government to repeal the tax and brought down Thatcher.

Whilst the situation today is not the same as it was then there are similiarites, whith local anti-cuts groups springing up all around the country in a similiar fashion to those past anti poll tax unions it is important for us as socialists to draw the lessons from the mass campaign of the past to ensure we can stop the cuts today.

We will be discussing this very issue at our weekly branch meeting. Come along and join the discussion, in the meantime, you can read this short article which gives some of the background but more crucially the relevance for today.http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/polltax/

Come along to the meeting

Wednesday, 7.15pm

Otley Arms, Treforest

What role does the Socialist Party play?

2011-09-11T18:40:00.006+01:00

RCT Socialist Update no. 31

In the last six months alone we have seen mass student demonstrations, the biggest ever trade union organised demonstration, revolutions across the middle east, mass movements throughout Europe emerge, mass movements in the United States. The crisis of Murchdochgate, the crisis of bankers bonus' and MP's expenses and a huge and ever growing list of austerity measures in Britain, Europe and the whole world.

The Socialist Party and our sister parties around the world have participated and led these movements, but it also rasies some really important questions, what is our role? What function should we play, and as a revolutionary party how do we operarate. We will be discussing all of these issues at our next weekly branch meeting. You can read this short online pamphlet for some background information on the role of the revolutionary party here http://marxism.org.uk/pack/party.html

Come along to the meeting

Wednesday 14th September 7.15pm

Otley Arms, Treforest

Bring the biggest companies into public ownership

2011-09-08T19:35:00.002+01:00

Hannah Sell, deputy General Secretary of the Socialist Party speaking on what one thing needs to change.

Who Broke Britain?

2011-09-07T17:19:00.002+01:00

The following is taken from the September edition of Socialism Today issue 151

On Thursday 4 August police shot dead Mark Duggan on the streets of Tottenham. Local outrage at the killing was the spark for what followed in north London but the conflagration – the most severe social disturbances in a generation – spread far and wide across English cities. SARAH SACHS-ELDRIDGE looks at the seven days in August that raise the question, in response to the establishment politician’s moral posturing: who broke Britain anyway?

AUGUST’S EXPLOSIVE EVENTS have exposed the reality of British capitalism: the enormous wealth gap, persistent racism, and the impact of the cuts, particularly on services such as fire-fighters and youth facilities. It has revealed a class society in crisis where all but the very rich are struggling and massive anger, boiling below the surface, can burst out at any time.

The rot starts with the pampered and corrupt millionaire government and the super-rich. While millions of working- and middle-class people struggle with ever increasing food and fuel bills and shrinking incomes, the richest 1,000 individuals in the UK have amassed a combined wealth of £396 billion. With that they could pay for chancellor George Osborne’s £81 billion of cuts nearly five times over. But the Con-Dems, like their counterparts across the world, are intent to gouge the cost of deficits, resulting from enormous bank bailouts, from working-class communities and families.

Departing for their summer break in July, the Con-Dems faced gathering storm clouds. The Murdochgate scandal has exposed corruption in the police and the big-business press. It leads directly to prime minister David Cameron through his association with former News of the World editors Rebekah Brooks, a personal friend and, particularly, Andy Coulson, another ‘friend’ and a former Cameron employee.

Images of furious fires and seemingly out of control crowds – social disturbances on a scale and ferocity unseen for a generation – sent a wave of shock, as well as fear through the country. But these events were not unpredictable. In mid-June many newspapers were talking about a summer of discontent. None had imagined such a sudden and fast-spreading outburst of rage from young people, normally invisible to the general public.

These events have been discussed and commented on in all corners of the world. Many have speculated on the impact on the Olympics, planned for 2012 in the very areas where rage erupted. Symptomatic of their lives, for most youth in the area, the Olympics have brought neither jobs nor the opportunity to partake in the sporting spectacle, given ticket prices and the need for a healthy bank account to even try.

The initial spark was the fatal police shooting of Mark Duggan in Tottenham, north London, on Thursday 4 August and the subsequent cover-up by the so-called Independent Police Complaints Commission. When hundreds protested outside Tottenham police station on the following Saturday their demands for justice were ignored. Frustration spilled over. Buildings were burnt and shops looted.

In Hackney, it was provocative and aggressive police stop-and-search action on 8 August that ignited the explosion of anger. These were complicated events, reflecting a multitude of issues. The characteristics of the outbursts varied from area to area. In Manchester and Birmingham, city centres were the focus. In London, it was areas local to those arrested. The Guardian’s analysis of ministry of justice data from the courts disproves the claims of Tory work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, that ‘outsiders’ and ‘organised gangs’ were largely to blame. Tory attempts to classify all involved as criminals aim to hide the fact that working-class young people have so much to be angry about.

It was that abundance of flammable material, a generation robbed of its future and treated like criminals, particularly young black people, that led to the rapid spreading of the eruptions of anger across England. This included growing anger over the number of deaths at the hands of the police. More than 300 deaths have taken place over ten years and not one officer has been charged. In Brixton, the hated ‘sus’ laws were a major source of resentment that contributed to the 1981 riots there.

Today, black people are 26 times more likely than white people to be stopped and searched under the provisions of the 1994 Criminal Justice and Public Order Act. That is a further condemnation of the police’s inability to act on the 1999 Macpherson inquiry into the murder of Stephen Lawrence which confirmed the existence of institutionalised police racism. In 2010, 48% of young black people were unemployed while the rate among white young people was 20%.

On the scrapheap

BUT, WHILE RACISM was a factor, certainly in the initial flare-up, it was not the major issue behind August’s outbreaks. Footage of stand-offs against the police involving black, white and Asian youth shows young people whose lives are boxed in by poverty and dogged by the police feeling that they could challenge those conditions. The Financial Times quoted a young person from Croydon: "Where are we supposed to go to meet? We just get pushed around wherever we go". He continued: if "they tell me where they want me to go where I can just hang out with my mates without a babysitter, I’ll go there". Now many are facing jail.

Joblessness is a key factor in this outburst of rage. The Guardian’s analysis backs this up: fewer than 9% of those charged in the special 24-hour courts are in full-time work or study. And August’s unemployment figures show a dramatic increase, with unemployment among women at Thatcher-era levels. On average, 1,200 joined the dole queue every day in July. For young people the outlook is devastating: one million have no jobs, 100,000 have been out of work for more than two years, and 36.7% of 16-17 year-olds are unemployed. Society has cast these young people onto the scrapheap and abandoned them.

Couple this with the looting of the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA), the skimpy, means-tested payments of up to £30 a week, which at least enabled many 16-18 year-olds to continue in education. A survey by the National Union of Students from 2008 found that around two-thirds of recipients would not be able to continue their studies without it. The Con-Dems’ scant replacement is tokenism. August has also seen the A-level results, with record high grades. What a criminal waste that, on the basis of cuts, 250,000 young people will be chasing 40,000 university places in ‘clearing’. University is increasingly being cut off to all but the rich, with average student debt estimated to be over £50,000 within a few years.

The looting of cheap supermarkets such as Aldi and Tesco for items like nappies and food reflects deep poverty. Clasford Stirling, a youth worker who runs the football club on the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham, points out that some young people "didn’t even bother covering their faces. They’re not trying to rob the banks, they’re going to Currys, they’re stealing trainers, they’re that poor that they’re risking going to jail for a flat screen television".

None of these conditions are new. But normally the frustration is vented within the confines of working-class areas, which can result in drug use and crime.

Hijacking the fightback

ON THE OTHER end of the spectrum, dragged back from their lavish holidays, the Tories have leapt on August’s explosions of anger as an excuse for ramping up repression and stepping up their anti-working class attacks. They hope that pointing the finger of blame at sections of ‘broken Britain’ will permanently undermine the struggle against cuts. Has the establishment politicians’ adage of ‘never letting a serious crisis to go to waste’ ever been more strenuously pursued?

Despite Osborne’s increasingly pathetic sounding assurances, the economic outlook is grim. As the cuts hit home, support for the Tory/Liberal brutal cuts agenda and confidence in the government’s economic policy is on the slide. On 4-5 August, a YouGov survey for the Sunday Times found that 35% had less confidence in the government’s economic strategy than in February. Over a quarter answered that there was no change, they still had no confidence in the strategy.

Initially, no one from the government was available to comment on the outpouring of rage on England’s streets. Deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, was the first minister to give up his holiday, but home secretary Theresa May launched the government line on 8 August: "No excuse for thuggery, for looters or violence", she said. TV news provided a terrifying, endless loop of raging fires in Hackney and Croydon as she appeared repeating the mantra.

May was intermingled with sound bites from Diane Abbott, a so-called Labour left MP, who demanded curfews, with no attempt to explain the conditions that led to the anger or the events that sparked its flare-up on the streets. Savage Con-Dem cuts, sitting atop decades of neo-liberal attacks that have seen wages stagnate and public services privatised, are the underlying factors.

But nothing can take away from the tragedy of the loss of life that has taken place, as well as the ruin of people’s homes and small businesses. The destructive acts that resulted in the deaths of six people must be condemned. Similarly, those that left over 100 people homeless and damaged shops, pubs, clubs and restaurants in 28 town centres. All must be re-housed by local councils, and small businesses compensated by the government immediately.

Forced to recall parliament for the second time this recess, Cameron, as The Economist put it, "aired his old trope of the ‘broken society’ but no new ideas". He talked of "pockets of society that are not just broken but frankly sick", and the causes of the riots as "criminality pure and simple". "Our security fightback must be matched by a social fightback", he said, ripping off the language of anti-cuts campaigners.

Support for repression?

THE QUESTION IS: will the Tories be successful in their attempt to hijack the ‘fightback’ and turn society against working people generally, and the most excluded and marginalised in particular. In the long run the answer is no. This is a fundamentally weak and unpopular government, facing an economic disaster. But widespread fear and shock led to a sense of insecurity. Hoping to ride this wave, the Tories have raised a variety of repressive measures, including water cannon. While sermonising against violence, Cameron has hypocritically recommended the use of rubber bullets for ‘riots’. Rubber bullets have been used in Northern Ireland since 1969 as a ‘deterrent’. In that time, 17 people including eight children have been killed by them.

Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), has clashed with the Tories over this. He has written that water cannon are "useless" apart from when aimed at "static crowds". Recent events in England were not organised political actions as those in Egypt earlier this year, which faced water cannon, tear gas and bullets from the regime. And right-wing politicians use the riot label loosely. Last December, Heidi Alexander, Labour MP for Lewisham East, referred to a protest at Lewisham town hall by trade unionists and local campaigners against £20 million of local government cuts as a riot and, disgracefully, riot police were called in by the Labour-led council.

In the short term, the Tories may find some support for a tough response: 216,180 people have signed the e-petition calling for "convicted London rioters" to lose all benefits. On the other hand, that is less than half of those who marched against cuts in jobs, services and benefits on 26 March, and a third of those who took collective strike action against attacks on public-sector pensions on 30 June.

The government response on the e-petition website explains how it plans to ramp up its existing attacks on benefits, such as considering "whether further sanctions can be imposed on the benefit entitlements of individuals who receive non-custodial sentences", and "increasing the level of fines which can be deducted from benefit entitlement". The Con-Dems are already in the process of removing housing and disability benefit from tens of thousands of people, threatening major increases in homelessness and spiralling poverty.

They have already agreed to mete out ‘collective punishment’ by evicting the families of anyone charged for ‘riot-related offences’. Tory-controlled Wandsworth council in south west London has already served notice on the mother of an 18-year-old charged with violent disorder and attempting to steal electronic goods.

A YouGov poll, conducted on 10 August, showed that 90% of British adults supported the use of water cannon, 78% were in favour of the use of tear gas, and a third agreed that police should be able to use plastic bullets against rioters. However, given their deep unpopularity, there has been no discernable increase in Tory support in the polls at this stage. Two Sun/YouGov surveys of voting intention on 8-9 August and 17-18 August showed support stubbornly stuck at 36%.

Not so clear cut

ANGER WAS DIRECTED at Con-Dem politicians who dared to take to the streets. Clegg was booed and heckled in Birmingham. London mayor, Boris Johnson, was unable to answer when asked how young people would get vital job-seeking support when Connexions advice services were shut down.

Within only a fortnight of the first events there is growing concern about the harsh sentences being handed down to the thousands arrested. Although the Tories deny that they have intervened, the heavy sentences are widely seen as a political response, and that crimes against property are particularly severely punished. Two young men have been given four years for failing to organise a riot – posting Facebook messages to which no-one responded – in their local town centres. This is the same length of sentence given for recent convictions for rape or, in one case, being part of a £10 million heroin supply network. The Socialist Party has called for the setting up of a democratically run inquiry into the riots involving elected representatives of trade unions and community organisations, that could also set the parameters on how the offences are dealt with, with the right to review sentences already imposed.

There has been disagreement among coalition politicians, even within the two parties. While the Tories have been banging the ‘law-and-order’ drum they have insisted that the cuts to the police go ahead. But Johnson, with London elections next year on his mind, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: "This is not a time to think about making substantial cuts in police numbers".

Working-class people in the areas affected have been frustrated by the lack of police presence to defend their homes and livelihoods. Even young people express frustration that the ‘service’ is not available to them when they require protection and help. Fundamentally, the police are a part of the state machine and act in its interest. They are widely hated for that role. We need police accountability through democratic control, with elected committees involving representatives of local people and trade unions.

While Clegg has generally marched in line with the Tories, some Lib Dems have been uneasy about the sentencing and about the moves to evict families. The Tories appear to be unmoved by their partners’ queasiness. They know, as does the dog on the street, that the Lib Dems are too broken to consider triggering a general election and have no option but to shut up. When asked by The Independent how the Tory right wing would react to Clegg’s proposals to conduct interviews to establish why anger erupted, one Tory minister replied: "Oh they don’t mind all that as long as they know the rioters are going to have their goolies chopped off".

Filmed amid the fires in Hackney, Abbott asked: "who is going to give jobs to people in these communities?" That’s the question that a lot of people in her borough of Hackney ask, where there were fewer than 500 job vacancies for more than 11,000 claimants. But her question also summed up a key part of the government’s line: placing the blame for unemployment and the problems working-class people face on families and individuals rather than on the millionaire Con-Dems and the rich and powerful people they represent.

Cameron talked about putting "rocket boosters" under the "clear ambition" to "turn around the lives of the 120,000 most troubled families in the country". This and his other big idea, the ‘Big Society’, are ideological justifications for cutting back on state provision of public services, that families should be responsible for their own welfare and suffer the consequences. He is echoing his guru, Margaret Thatcher, who famously claimed that ‘there is no such thing as society, just individuals and families’.

Duncan Smith has talked about investment in early years interventions. But the Con-Dems snatched away the baby element of the tax credits, the health in pregnancy grant, and cut back on Sure Start provision. To claim they intend to support poor and vulnerable families is sheer lies and hypocrisy. Instead, they are criminalising a generation of young people, locking up many with no previous record in overcrowded ‘colleges of crime’.

Capitalist values

SEEMINGLY WITHOUT IRONY, Cameron writes in The Daily Express: "There are deep problems in our society that have been growing for a long time: a decline in responsibility, a rise in selfishness, a growing sense that individual rights come before anything else". These are the very qualities that are promoted and respected in the capitalist society he defends.

Just a few minutes walk from Tottenham police station is Tottenham Hotspur football ground at White Hart Lane. Current manager, Harry Redknapp (previously the manager at Portsmouth FC), is a director of a housing company, Pierfront Development. Portsmouth council has a housing waiting list of 2,553 applicants, but this company has been allowed to flout legislation that demands all housing developments include cheaper social housing. Pierfront will pay less than a quarter of the funding for the agreed number of affordable housing units. Even a Lib Dem councillor had to describe it as "simply profit before people’s lives". This is just a small company on a small scale doing what major companies do on a major scale every day.

Even right-wing commentators like Peter Oborne in The Telegraph have condemned the "almost universal culture of selfishness and greed" among the super-rich, including expenses grabbing MPs. But he harks back to the ‘good old days’, saying that "the last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite". Of course capitalism, built on the wealth accumulated by slavery, is a brutal, bloody system that has always been based on the private ownership of wealth by the few and massive exploitation. What Oborne is referring to is the decades of neo-liberal policies in which today’s young people have spent all their lives.

‘Greed is good’ has been the motto. The state provision of services, jobs and utilities has been privatised in the interests of profit, resulting in cuts, insecurity and soaring prices. The share of wealth going to the working class has been slashed with tax concessions for the rich and virtual wage stagnation as trade union rights have been attacked.

Not only have the super-rich looted wages and public purses, they are hoarding their wealth, finding no profitable outlet for it. Instead of fulfilling their role in investing in production, providing jobs, the capitalists are buying gold, the only safe place for their riches, given the weakness of markets as cuts hit consumer spending.

As Karl Marx first explained, capitalism is an anarchic and chaotic system. In Britain, 2.5 million people have no job while an estimated £60 billion sits in British banks ‘waiting to be invested’ in new businesses, unspent because of ‘weak confidence’.

Mass civil disobedience

RIOTS, ALTHOUGH A chaotic and inchoate expression of protest, have not changed the world. Some on the left, such as the Socialist Workers Party, have written and spoken about looting "by poor working-class people" being a "deeply political act" (Socialist Worker, 13 August), that the looters were "expropriating the expropriators", effectively redistributing wealth. This makes a mockery of socialist ideas that a mass working-class struggle has the potential to replace the capitalist system with one in which the resources of society are democratically owned and controlled by the working class with a plan to meet the needs of all.

Unfortunately, given the ideological shift to the right by the mass social democratic parties and many trade union leaders over the last two decades, Marx’s ideas are not widely known and understood, especially among Blair’s children and Thatcher’s grandchildren, today’s young generation. The recent explosive events show despair and the absence of understanding the potential power of working-class people to, not just express anger at our conditions but to change them, including bringing down the government.

Most of those who raged against the police and looted shops were not born when the mighty anti-poll tax battle was won at the beginning of the 1990s. That movement, led by the Socialist Party’s predecessor, Militant, was fundamentally based on mass, organised ‘law-breaking’. Under the hated and unfair poll tax, every adult was charged the same rate, massively penalising working-class people. Huge numbers simply could not afford it. But having succeeded in defeating the heroic miners’ strike in 1984-85, Thatcher presumed that she could take on the entire working class at once, threatening brutal repression, prison and bailiffs to anyone who did not pay. But the movement she provoked ultimately removed her from power.

On the left and right there are claims that the riot at the end of the mass anti-poll tax demonstration in London in March 1990 was the key to the victory. That violence had been triggered when the police launched an all-out attack on the demo. But the movement’s victory was in fact achieved through organising democratic local, regional and national anti-poll tax federations that painstakingly built confidence in the tactic of non-payment. Eighteen million people refused to pay the poll tax on an organised basis. This made it unworkable. Although the tax was brought into law, within a couple of years it was removed from the statute books.

One aspect of the anti-poll tax movement was the organisation of ‘bailiff busting’ teams which, without Twitter or mobile phones, developed phone trees and networks to protect the homes of non-payers from Thatcher’s henchmen – the bailiffs in England and Wales, the sheriff officers in Scotland. Such organised defence of communities, with elected organising committees, provide a useful model for community self-defence.

The big question

IN 2006, CAMERON said: "Understanding the background, the reasons, the causes. It doesn’t mean excusing crime but it will help us tackle it". Needless to say, this approach is being ignored. Comedian Russell Brand, surprisingly wisely, pointed out: "I remember Cameron saying ‘hug a hoodie’ but I haven’t seen him doing it. Why would he? Hoodies don’t vote, they’ve realised it’s pointless, that whoever gets elected will just be a different shade of the ‘we don’t give a toss about you’ party".

The absence of a political voice for the working class has been a weakness of the anti-cuts movement and these events further emphasise that. David Lammy, Labour MP for Tottenham, has put himself around in the aftermath of the riots but neither he nor his party provide any alternative to the Con-Dems. Labour deputy leader Harriet Harman has muttered a little about the effects of the cuts to EMA on young people. They have argued, like Johnson, against police cuts. Fundamentally, however, New Labour supports the slashing of public spending. New Labour’s last chancellor, Alistair Darling, made a pre-general election promise to implement cuts worse than Thatcher’s. Building a new workers’ party is clearly an urgent task.

There was a well-written article on the publicfinances.co.uk website which pointed to many of the contributing factors behind August’s events. Disappointingly, it finished by asking: "The big question is, where to now?" The author was named as ‘Lewisham resident’ Heather Wakefield. Wakefield is also the head of the Local Government Service Group of the UK’s largest public service trade union, Unison, representing over 700,000 of the union’s 1.4 million members. Why isn’t she providing an answer to ‘the big question’. The conditions for further outbreaks of anger remain and a clear response from the trade union movement is required, not just passive commentary.

The August events can be seen, in some ways, as the second call for back-up from the youth to the TUC trade union leadership. In November and December 2010, tens of thousands of school, college and university students protested against education cuts. Breaking the consensus that the cuts were necessary they inspired millions to support them. But they faced demonization and brutal policing, including mass arrests and kettling. Shivering inside a freezing nine-hour police cordon, students asked where the trade unions were, how come they had not supported them and joined the demonstrations? The Socialist Party called on the TUC to organise a mass demo before Christmas to provide the angry young people with a channel for their anger, and link them with the wider struggle against public-sector cuts. This was delayed by five months, until 26 March. Then the summer came. A number of cuts had gone through – particularly for youth services, EMA, etc – and still nothing had been organised to follow up the March demo by the TUC leadership.

The trade unions must reach out to young people – workers, students and the unemployed. This requires a programme around which they can fight. The demands of Youth Fight for Jobs (YFJ), with the support of six national trade unions, can be very attractive: reopen and expand youth services; nationalise the banks and use the money to create jobs; government investment in house renovation and building to provide cheap social housing; no cuts in benefits and end lower youth rates. These must be combined with a defence campaign against the heavy-handed sentencing and ramping up of repression.

It is not the case that every young person will be won to such a campaign immediately. And it does not mean that there are not racist, sexist, individualistic and other poisonous ideas among them. Indeed, in the absence of an alternative being provided, in the context of deteriorating living conditions, those reactionary ideas can be nurtured under capitalism, and individual, nihilistic or terroristic tendencies can develop which harm working-class people and do not advance the struggle.

Tariq Jahan, the father of one of the young men killed in Birmingham, has been widely praised for his call for community unity, guarding against a racist backlash. Five thousand attended the rally in an area where people know the cost of ethnic tension. However, it is working-class unity and organised struggle that is required to not only guard against a fracturing of society but also to build a mass movement that takes society out of the hands of the greatest looters, those who ‘break society’, the capitalist class.

Gaddafi regime crumbles

2011-09-06T17:52:00.008+01:00

The following is taken from the website of the Committee for a Workers' International. The International socialist organisation to which the Socialist Party is affiliated.

No to foreign military intervention · Libyan workers, youth and poor must act independently of imperialism

After six long months of bloody, protracted struggle the overthrow of the dictatorial Gaddafi regime was greeted with rejoicing by large numbers of, but by no means all, Libyans. Another autocratic ruler, surrounded by his privileged family and cronies, has been overthrown. If this had been purely the result of struggle by the Libyan working masses it would have been widely acclaimed but the direct involvement of imperialism casts a dark shadow over the revolution’s future. The continuing battles in Tripoli and elsewhere indicate the instability of the current situation in Libya and also how the revolution that began there last February has, in many ways, been thrown off course.

Role of Nato

While many Libyans are celebrating, socialists have to be clear that, unlike the ousting of Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt, the way in which Gaddafi has been removed means that a victory for the Libyan people was also a success for imperialism. Without NATO acting as the rebels’ air force or the soldiers, weapons, organisation and training that NATO and some other countries like the feudal Qatar autocracy supplied, Tripoli would not have fallen to the rebels in the way that it has. Even the capture of the Bad al-Aziziya compound in central Tripoli was only achieved after a massive NATO aerial bombardment and an assault led by Qatari and other foreign special forces.

Now, despite their fears of exactly which way events in Libya will unfold, the imperialist powers are attempting to present Libya as a success for ‘liberal interventionism’, i.e. their right to intervene in other countries on ‘humanitarian’ or ‘democratic’ grounds. Of course, this was always hypocritical as ‘liberal interventionism’ does not apply to imperialism’s dictatorial friends and allies in Saudi Arabia, Yemen or elsewhere. The NATO powers hope that, after the disasters of Afghanistan and Iraq, they can win justification for further interventions in defence of their own interests.

Despite the involvement of large numbers of Libyans in the fighting and the mass arming of the population, there are not, so far, any signs of Libyan workers, youth and poor establishing their own independent rule over society. In fact, in a manner reminiscent of the collapse of the Stalinist regimes twenty years ago, imperialism has taken advantage of a spontaneous movement that knew what it was against but had no clear programme of its own.

Unfortunately, this overthrow of a dictator has not had the same character as the revolutions in Tunisia or Egypt, or even of the early days of the uprising in Benghazi when popular committees were established and briefly were the power in that city. Tragically, Gaddafi’s ousting was not simply the result of a popular mass movement, like in Tunisia and Egypt, forcing the dictator out. The momentum of the Libyan revolution’s early days was lost and, unlike Tunis or Cairo, Tripoli did not see one mass protest after another and strikes undermining the regime.

This was not simply due to the Gaddafi regime’s brutal repression of the mid-February protests; repression has not immediately stopped the repeated demonstrations in Syria.

The Libyan regime’s brutal reaction was not accidental; Gaddafi and his coterie feared the mass movements which were then developing in North Africa. As we explained in March: “Gaddafi’s first reaction to this year’s dramatic revolutionary events was to side with the dictatorial, corrupt autocrats. Just after Ben Ali fled from Tunisia, Gaddafi told Tunisians that they had ‘suffered a great loss’ because ‘there is none better than Ben Ali to govern’. Perhaps revealing how he viewed his own future, Gaddafi added that he had hoped that Ben Ali would rule ‘for life’.” [‘Stop the bombing – No to foreign intervention!’ 23 March, 2011.]

The Transitional National Council

Gaddafi, learning from the overthrow of Ben Ali and Mubarak, launched a counter-offensive against Benghazi and other centres of the revolution. These were certainly threatened but could have been defended by mass popular defence alongside a revolutionary appeal to workers, youth and the poor in the rest of Libya. But the self-appointed leadership of the uprising would not do such a thing. Dominated by a combination of defectors from the regime and openly pro-imperialist elements, the Transitional National Council (TNC), pushing aside the initial popular mood against any foreign intervention, looked to the imperialist powers and semi-feudal Arab states for support.

The main imperialist powers seized this opportunity to step in, justifying their intervention on ‘humanitarian’ grounds to save lives. But these same powers adopted a mild approach to the Syrian regime’s repression and maintained a virtual silence on the brutality of their close ally, the Bahraini regime. This simply confirmed that the Libyan intervention was based on a cynical calculation. Some imperialist leaders, like Sarkozy in France, sought to gain advantages for themselves, but their general aims were to establish a more reliable, pro-imperialist regime in Libya, seize a more lucrative share of Libya’s oil and gas wealth and, above all, intervene to seek to control the revolutions sweeping North Africa and the Middle East.

This intervention by the big imperialist powers, mainly the US, Britain and France, changed the situation as they attempted to establish a client opposition leadership. Under the false flag of protecting civilians, their aircraft carried out over 20,000 attacks on more than 4,000 targets in Libya.

NATO’s intervention allowed Gaddafi to rally support against what some Libyans saw as an attempt by the US, Britain, France, and others to regain control over Libya’s assets. Against this, there can be no doubt that widespread illusions were created that NATO was acting in the interests of the anti-Gaddafi revolution, an illusion that the major capitalist powers are now using as they attempt to control developments in Libya and secure the country for further exploitation.

No alternative to Nato’s intervention?

This is why the idea that the UN decision to intervene and NATO’s actions could be supported was to accept the derailing of the Libyan revolution. The idea that there was ‘no alternative’ to NATO was already disproved in the magnificent Egyptian movement that led to Mubarak’s ousting. The imperialist powers intervened for their own reasons not in the interests of the Libyan working masses and youth. Any failure to explain this as, for example, the small British AWL grouping did when it initially uncritically supported NATO’s role in the fighting in Tripoli, politically disarms the workers’ movement, leaving it unable to warn of imperialism’s intentions. The AWL has consistently supported NATO’s bombing and it now seeks to justify this by claiming the organisation of workers will be “easier” now after Gaddafi’s overthrow, something which it is not at all certain to be the case (see also: The ‘no-fly zone’, the Left and the ‘Third Camp’). In reality this is a rationalisation of their view, shameful for a self-proclaimed left organisation, that the military assault by the imperialist NATO alliance had to be supported as Libyan workers and youth had no chance on their own of defending themselves or defeating Gaddafi.

But what will happen now is not clear. The current situation indicates that there are elements, whether for political or tribal reasons, who are continuing to fight against the TNC. At the same time, there is no real unity amongst the main elements that fought Gaddafi. The population is also becoming heavily armed. This poses the possibility, even if the current battles end, of further fighting in the future, including tribal, national or religious conflicts.

Partly in view of this, we now see, alongside the start of a scramble for contracts, the main imperialist countries stepping up their intervention, including increasing talk of a ‘stabilisation force’.

Diverted revolution

However, at this time there is undoubtedly some support within Libya for NATO’s actions but this will not last. While obviously NATO has been planning for Gaddafi’s overthrow, including learning from what are now seen as the ‘mistakes’ made in Afghanistan and Iraq after the initial military victories, events will not necessarily go the way the imperialists hope. Although the combination of Libya’s small population and its oil and gas wealth will allow at least some rebuilding and social concessions, they will not automatically resolve all the issues now coming to the surface in Libya including potential regional and tribal tensions. There are also questions over the position of the Berber minority, about 10% of the population, and those who continue to support Gaddafi or, at least, oppose foreign intervention.

The very fluid situation that has now developed is, to a great extent, a result of the way in which the revolution has been diverted from a developing mass movement, with its own organisations, debates and policies, into a purely military struggle under NATO tutelage.

Currently, the self-appointed TNC is attempting, with NATO help, to impose itself on the situation. But there is no guarantee that it can, in reality, do this. The TNC is currently largely a fiction. For a time, it appointed a ‘government’, but that was dissolved after the still unexplained 28 July ‘arrest’ and subsequent killing of Younes, Gaddafi’s former interior minister who became the TNC’s top military commander. Jibril, who is still being presented as the ‘head of government’ has generally been out of the country because “he fears for his own safety in Benghazi” [The Times, London, 23 August, 2011.] If "prime minister" Jibril does not feel safe in Benghazi, up to now the TNC’s main base, it is understandable that the TNC leaders hesitated over when to move to Tripoli.

The TNC itself, as we commented before, was “simply relying on a combination of NATO air power and the masses’ desire for change to secure victory”. [‘Defend the revolution! No to imperialist intervention!’ 30 March, 2011.] The TNC, based in the east, clearly lacked standing in the west, as was shown by the fighters in Misrata who rejected its authority. Whether it can now build its position and, if so, for how long, are open questions.

Alongside a Libyan national consciousness that especially developed over the last decades, many regional, tribal and clan loyalties remain despite the country now being heavily urbanised. Added to that is the position of the Berber minority, who played a crucial role in the battles against Gaddafi’s forces in the south-west and in the advance on Tripoli.

Libya itself is a relatively new creation, having been initially formed by Italy in the 1930s and again, this time under US pressure, in the late 1940s. A decline in the feeling of being ‘Libyan’ alongside a growth of regional and tribal tensions, or the development of fundamentalist Islamic forces, could pose the possibility of a break-up of Libya, even of a Somali or Yemen style development. Tribal tensions could develop as a result of any lengthy fighting if Gaddafi is able to follow the example of one of his heroes, Omar Mukhtar and the armed resistance to the Italian take over and occupation after 1911. However, against this there is the fact that one of the motive forces in the movement against Gaddafi, the young people who reacted against the stifling effect of a corrupt dictatorship, saw themselves as Libyan.

No trust in NATO, build an independent workers’ movement

For the Libyan masses, especially the youth, workers and poor, this revolution was for an end to oppression and the stifling, corrupt regime, and for higher living standards. But despite any immediate oil-funded concessions and rebuilding, these aims will, in the long run, come into conflict with the reality of the crisis-ridden capitalist economy. A new world recession would hit Libya in the same way as in the 1980s when its gross domestic product collapsed by over 40% as the oil price fell.

But to prevent the danger of a new collapse of the economy and to block the asset stripping of the country, a break with capitalism is required. The TNC is obviously not going to do this; on the contrary it is dominated by pro-capitalist elements.

From the beginning of the anti-Gaddafi uprising we argued: “What have been missing are independent organisations of Libyan workers and youth that could give a clear direction to the revolution in order to win democratic rights, end corruption and secure for the mass of Libyans democratic control over, and benefit from, the country’s resources.” [‘Stop the bombing – No to foreign intervention!’ 23 March, 2011.]

A programme for the Libyan revolution that will genuinely benefit the mass of the population would be based on winning and defending real democratic rights, an end to corruption and privilege, the safeguarding and further development of the social gains made since the discovery of oil, opposition to any form of re-colonisation and for a democratically controlled, publicly-owned economy planned to use the country’s resources for the future benefit of the mass of the people.

This is why Libyan workers and youth should have no illusions in NATO or put any trust in the TNC which is, in essence, tied to imperialism. This tie-up was illustrated in the TNC’s draft Libyan constitution, first published by the British foreign ministry, which declares that “the interests and rights of foreign nationals and companies will be protected”. But neither the TNC nor any other government based on capitalism will be able to meet the aspirations of the population in this period of world economic instability or prevent the development of a new exploitative elite.

The creation of an independent movement of Libyan and migrant workers, poor and youth that could rely on its own action and struggles to implement such a real revolutionary transformation of the country is the only way to thwart the imperialists’ plans, end dictatorship and transform the lives of the mass of the people.

To achieve these goals such a movement would need to defend all democratic rights, be against the privatisation of Libya’s assets, demand the withdrawal of all foreign military forces and oppose all foreign military intervention, demand the democratic election of a Constituent Assembly and, above all, reject participation in any government based on capitalism. Instead it would strive for a government of representatives of the workers and poor based upon democratic structures in the workplaces and communities.

The dangers facing Libya now is that the combination of imperialist domination over the new government and the absence of a movement of the workers and poor leads to the possibility of regionalist, tribal or religious conflicts.

However, as Tunisia and Egypt have shown, the mass overthrow of dictators is not the end of a revolution as the working masses strive to achieve their demands and aspirations. Although developments in Libya have taken a very different course, the demands of the masses have not gone away and in the struggle to win them lies the possible of building a socialist movement that can truly transform the country.

Unlike with Mubarak, Gaddafi’s overthrow has had a mixed response in the rest of the Middle East. Partly this is because he was seen by many as ‘anti-imperialist’ but mainly because of NATO’s role. The contrast between NATO intervening in Libya while doing nothing to stop Israeli attacks on Gaza and being allies of the Saudi and other dictatorships is clear to many. But a workers’ movement in Libya, Tunisia or Egypt that challenged both the old order and imperialism would receive a wide echo, offering the possibility of revolutions that open the way to a socialist future.

An encounter with Crhris Bryant MP

2011-09-05T17:50:00.001+01:00

On the 2^nd of September Chris Bryant (MP for the Rhondda) was in Tonypandy handing out leaflets on the police cuts. One of his councillors handed me one of these leaflets and I looked on the back of it and noticed it was labour. I turned back around and saw Chris Bryant; I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to confront him about the cuts that have been brutally taking place on the NHS especially in the mental health department. After all, his party (Labour) voted to cut the NHS budget in Wales!

I told him about my mother’s situation saying that she has had 3 appointments cancelled on her by the mental health clinic and that she has to wait until January for an appointment and that I didn’tt think this is fair on people with mental health illnesses when the government are making all these cuts.

When I told him this his reply was that they are not making any cuts on the health board and no cuts have been made on the NHS. I asked if they can explain why they are then closing St Tydfil’s psychiatric hospital and cutting out 9 beds at the Royal Glamorgan psychiatric unit and turning people away. I also said that my mum went to a general mental health board meeting in Ystrad sport and leisure centre, and they even said the government was making cuts even the secretary at the mental health clinic said you (labour party/ Welsh government) were making cuts so he cannot be say that he has no responsibilty when his party are the ones implementing these cuts and instead of fighting against them, he denies it is happening!

I asked why it is that the two general hospitals in the area (Royal Glamorgan and Prince Charles) will be merged into one hospital, effectively closing a whole hospital and why it is that the Health Board have announced £100m worth of cuts, if they aren’t making any cuts? Needless to say Chris Bryant was unable to answer these points.

Once he saw us setting up our Socialist Party stall on the cuts to the health service in the area he soon packed up and left he tried to fob me off by saying there was no cuts but with the experience that we encountered with Chris Bryant and the Westminster in my opinion I think he is a liar and a disgrace to say that this wasn’t the case.

by Elizabeth Saint

Mass action can stop the cuts

2011-09-04T13:17:00.001+01:00

The following is taken from the socialist issue 683

The trickle of cuts and sackings in the public sector has turned into a flood and the mood in my workplace has become one of frustration, worry and anger.

Anger at what? "Oh, it's just everything," said a school caretaker at a branch committee of Unison in Waltham Forest recently. We were trying to stick to the item on the agenda, (the lack of a pay offer by the employer) but people kept interrupting to speak on other problems. Pensions, redundancies, cuts to our sick leave entitlement, cuts to our annual leave, cuts to our unsociable hours payments... the list goes on and on.

Trying to stick to the one thing that is making people angry has become increasingly difficult. That is why it is precisely the right time for the TUC to summon its support (which is over six million strong) and give that anger a focus and a direction, namely to generalise the issues and stop the government's austerity programme.

Last year a mini-bus of trade unionists from our area travelled up to the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) lobby of the TUC in Manchester. Then the NSSN demanded a national demo against cuts, as a first step. The giant demonstration on 26 March of over half a million was vindication to all of us who participated in that lobby.

The 26 March protest showed the strength of feeling of opposition to this government and their cuts agenda but we can all say it simply was not enough. Since 26 March the establishment has been rocked by scandals and crisis, there have been plenty of opportunities for the TUC to step forward and give a lead.

After 26 March, a feeling ranging from despair to frustration and anger could almost be tasted in the air.

On 30 June, Unison members looked on enviously as 750,000 teachers and civil service workers took strike action against attacks on pensions.

I think it was only Newsnight presenters and the blinkered rich who were surprised by the explosion of anger on the streets in August. Anyone who works in the public sector or lives in a poor area could have told you that frustration at deteriorating conditions was rising.

We are asking for the TUC to call a 24-hour public sector strike against the cuts. This would put the TUC in the frame as a major progressive force in society.

All those young people who don't even know that it exists could make the link between their generalised outrage and our fury at this rotten and unfair system. It would channel the anger, raise the spirits and unify all the small and large issues bubbling away in our workplaces and our communities. That's why this year, like last year I'll be going on the lobby on 11 September.

I urge all those people who are fighting and campaigning to come too. Right now there is anger about 'everything' and we need 'everyone' to get involved.

Lobby the TUC on 11 September

Rally at Friends Meeting House, Euston Road, London NWI - 1.30pm (nearest tubes: Euston, Euston Square)
Speakers include Bob Crow, RMT union general secretary and Mark Serwotka, PCS union general secretary.
Rally followed by short march to lobby the TUC conference at Congress House, Great Russell Street, London WC1 to call for one-day public sector strike.

For details of transport to the lobby from Wales- phone Rob 07541145108

Libya: What do socialists say?

2011-09-03T17:58:00.001+01:00

RCT Socialist Update no. 30

The fall of the Gaddafi regime has been all of the news, as the National Transitional Council (NTC) is set to take power, backed to the hilt by the major western powers the question for socialists is what will this mean for the Libyan masses, unfortunately the answer to that question is that in the hands of the NTC and that will be on offer is much more of the same.

This week at our weekly branch meeting we will be discussing the recent events in Libya in contrast to those marvelous events in Egypt and ask the question, how can the Libyan masses take power for themselves and brake with the destructive capitalist system and how can the revolution which took place in Egypt be taken forward rather than backwards towards liberation. We will be discussing all of these issues and offering a socialist alternative. You can read some background information on the recent events in Libya here http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5249

We will also here a report from some of our members who attended an anti-racist demonstration to counter a demonstration planned by the racist English Defence League and discuss our final plans for the NSSN organised lobby of the TUC on September 11th.

Come along to the meeting.
Wednesday 7th September, 7.15pm
Otley Arms, Treforest

How do we combat fascism

2011-08-30T15:59:00.000+01:00

RCT Socialist Update no. 29

In recent years we have seen the rise of neo-fascists like Nick Griffin along with his far right racist BNP who now have two MEP's. More recently we have seen the tragic bombing and shootings which took place in Norway and carried about by an individual with connections and sympathies with fascism. In recent years the BNP and many of their european counterparts had made significant ground by tapping into the ex labour or other social democratic heartlands as those parties have turned dramatically to the right.

This week at our weekly branch meeting we will be discussing the subject of fascism, exactly what it is and how it is able to grow by taking peoples rightful grievances, such as unemployment and twisting it into a hate filled ideology that others no solutions. Most importantly we will discuss how we can stop fascism movements in their tracks, drawing on the lessions of history. You can read some background to the discussion here http://yre.org.uk/about.html

We will also be discussing our preperations to join the National Ship Stewards Network (NSSN) lobby of the TUC on September 11th including the details of a coach from South Wales to London for the event.

Come along to the meeting
Wednesday 31st, 7.15pm
Otley Arms, Treforest

Tell the TUC - call a 24-hour public sector general strike!

2011-08-24T17:12:00.002+01:00

´The following is taken from the socialist issue 682

"If these attacks on our jobs, services and livelihoods go through there will be riots on the streets". Anti-cuts campaigners will have lost count of how many times they have warned politicians of all parties of this since last year's general election.

I went to the council budget-setting meeting in Brixton this spring when Lambeth's Labour-led council passed over £70 million worth of cuts in a side room behind police lines after protesters had occupied the council chamber. Last week in those very streets - some of the poorest in the country - the riots came to Brixton. The question is now posed, what next?

For working class people, while the anger and frustration is understandable, the riots are a blind alley. Cameron is trying to jump on the violence and looting as justification for even more hardline measures which will be used against organised protests in future. They hope 'law and order' debates will distract us from fighting the cuts. Cameron and Co are really terrified of organised resistance, particularly on a mass basis.

Now is the time for the organised trade union movement to act as a powerful alternative force. Who else will? New Labour is compromised by its agreement with the cuts and its echoing of Cameron's hypocritical moralising. In the Evening Standard, ex-Blairite Charles Clarke called for "proper policing to be put above civil liberties"!

TUC leader Brendan Barber warned of riots in 2009 but has not so far thrown the full weight of the TUC behind coordinating mass working class resistance. If the union movement of still over six million takes decisive action against the attacks of this government of millionaires, it could inspire all those who are both angry and frightened at the moment.

Anyone who has watched the incredible movements of workers and young people throughout the world this year from Egypt to Greece and to Israel/Palestine can see the positive effect of a mass movement of strikes and demonstrations.

The mass demonstration on 26 March of well over half a million in London shook the Con-Dems and resulted in their wobble on their NHS privatisation plans.

The strikes on 30 June against the attacks on public sector pensions mobilised 750,000 workers and has posed the prospect of millions joining the strike action in the autumn. A 24-hour public sector general strike would not only heap pressure on the government on pensions, it would show everyone that there is a powerful alternative force that can fight for ordinary people. But a failure to act, particularly by the TUC and the biggest unions could let this creaking coalition off the hook.

On Sunday 11 September, the NSSN is organising a lobby of this year's TUC conference in London to increase the pressure for all unions across the public sector to coordinate strike action. We will be meeting at the Friends Meeting House in Euston for a rally to hear speakers like Mark Serwotka and Bob Crow - general secretaries of the civil service union PCS and the transport union RMT respectively as well as rank and file workers and young people facing the worst of the cuts.

Help us build a massive rally of workers and anti-cuts fighters, young and old, to send a clear united message to the union leaders - it's time to give a positive fighting lead to defeat this government.

Sunday 11 September

Assemble 1.30pm, Friends Meeting House, Euston Road, London NW1. After the rally, march to lobby the TUC

For details of transport to the lobby from your area, email: info@shopstewards.net

Youth Fight for Jobs public meeting today!

2011-08-23T11:57:00.001+01:00

This evening at 7.30pm in Riverside Community Centre (5 minutes walk from Cardiff Central station) Youth Fight for Jobs will be hosting a public meeting on the current situation facing young people. You can RSVP to the event via Facebook and you can also join the facebook group for Youth Fight for Jobs Wales.

Here is what Youth Fight for Jobs have to say about the event.

"The latest riots in Britain have sparked a wave of media attention. A lot of questions have been raised about what has happened to Britain's young people. Were these riots a result of bad schooling? Broken families? Light sentences for anti-social behaviour? With the government cutting jobs and youth services all over Britain the Youth Fight For Jobs campaign say it's no wonder young people have reacted in this way. However only... a day before the riots the Youth Fight For Jobs campaign organised a successful march from Merthyr Tydfil to Cardiff in protest against the appalling levels of youth unemployment. Unlike the rioting the protest gained a huge amount of public support and didn't result in any criminal damage.

The Youth Fight For Jobs campaign is therefore calling a public meeting in Cardiff for anyone who wishes to voice their views on the riots and contribute to the campaign to ensure that we can reach out to those young people tempted towards taking violent action to vent their frustrations. We believe that organised action is the way forward. Come along and bring friends and family too!"

The Socialist Party fully backs the campaign and many young members of the Socialist Party will be in attendance and we encourage others to come along as well.

What does the Socialist Party stand for?

2011-08-22T21:55:00.001+01:00

RCT Socialist Update no. 28

All throughout the world there is an economic crisis caused by the greed of the rich, yet without exception in every country it is ordinary working class and young people who are being made to pay the price, with cuts in services, jobs benefits and education. At the same time the richest in society are laughing all the way to the very banks who caused this crisis with bonus' in the billions.

All the main political parties agree with this! They all except the logic than in order to maintain this very system ordinary working class people should be made to pay the price.Such an unfair and grotesque system has made many people question its very existence and agree it needs to be replaced with something else, many people have looked towards the ideas of socialism for a viable and fair alternative.

This week at our regular branch meeting we will be hosting a question and answer session on that very subject, What is Socialism and more to the point What does the Socialist Party stand for? Come along hear the discussion, and particupate! If you have any questions you would like to ask come along and here is your chance.

Young Members of the Socialist Party will also be participating in the Youth Fight for Jobs (Wales) public meeting on Tuesday you can find the details here

Come along to the weekly meeting
Wednesday 24th, 7.15pm
Otley Arms Treforest

Who are the CWI?

2011-08-18T15:13:00.004+01:00

The CWI stands for the Committee for a Workers' International and is an international socialist organisation to which the Socialist Party is affiliated. With members in over 46 countries spanning all continents. You can visit the website of the CWI socialistworld.net for more information.

At the recent CWI school a video was produced which shows just a glimpse of the work and scope of the various parties affiliated to the international. We have posted the video below as it is inspirational to see the various struggles our sister parites are engaged in throughout the world.

At the CWI summer school there were several discussions on world events and below we have posted links to reports on those discussions

Revolution and Counter-revolution in North Africa and the Middle East
World capitalist crisis
Greece in turmoil
Economic, social and political crisis maturing together in Europe
China on the verge of social explosion
The Spanish revolution and the lessons for today

Youth Fight for Jobs (Wales) Press release

2011-08-17T13:48:00.000+01:00

Below we have reproduced a press release sent out by Youth Fight for Jobs (YFJ) in Wales.

Youth Fight for Jobs Press Release

Contact: Glyn Matthews 07931 955007 hellorockview1@hotmail.com

For immediate use Tuesday, 15 August

18:00

After the march from Merthyr to Cardiff, Youth Fight for Jobs continue to fight against youth unemployment

After completing the Merthyr to Cardiff march against the levels of youth unemployment in Wales, and also against the comments of Iain Duncan Smith, the members of Youth Fight for Jobs reflect on the march itself, and look at the riots as an example of anger that young people have against the current system.

Whilst riots are regrettable, they are, under the current circumstances, inevitable. Young people feel like they have been left on the scrap-heap. Left with no prospects and seeing their youth centres being cut all around, young people are revolting.

We see the politicians in Westminster condemning the riots without talking about the root of the riots themselves. To prevent future scenes, we must look at the root problem and solve it, instead of ignoring the demands of young people.

Youth Fight for Jobs are a group that are essential to young people. Young people need a voice, a voice that is loud enough to get their opinions aired and listened to by the inactive politicians that govern this country.

As many young people are nervously awaiting their A level results, universities across Britain have already declared themselves full, leaving potentially thousands of young people with nowhere to go. With no university places and no jobs, what is left for young people? These are issues that Youth Fight for Jobs is addressing in their fight against the current state of affairs.

Youth Fight for Jobs will be holding a day of action on A levels results day, which is Thursday, the 18^th of August. The day of action will commence at 12pm and will begin on Queen Street, Cardiff. Youth Fight for jobs are also holding a public meeting on Tuesday, the 30^th of August at Riverside Community Centre, Cardiff. The meeting will begin at 7:30pm and will discuss the aftermath of the riots, the cuts to job, services and education and how young people can organise and fight against the cuts,

Contact Glyn Matthews 07931 955007 for further details.

Video: Youth March for Jobs

2011-08-16T15:00:00.005+01:00

Below we have posted two videos from the Youth March for Jobs from Merthyr to Cardiff. The first video is a speech by Jaime Davies, one of the march organisers at the opening rally in Merthyr. The second a speech by Socialist Party Wales Secretary, Dave Reid who spoke at the rally in Cardiff. You can also view several other videos of the march here

As inner cities erupt - A mass workers' movement is needed to defeat the government

2011-08-15T15:38:00.004+01:00

"The scenes of despair and explosions of anger like those of 1981 will be back on our streets.
"Deprived areas of major cities - if not the central areas, then the 'banlieus' or outskirts as in France - will be the scene of new conflagrations."

This is the warning that the Socialist Party gave just four months ago, in our article on the anniversary of the Brixton riots. This morning thousands of people have woken up to the devastation of their communities.

Today is a tragedy for the small shopkeepers whose businesses have been looted or set alight, the workers whose cars have been burnt out, and perhaps worst of all for those who have seen their homes go up in smoke.

Firefighters have faced horrendous problems trying to fight the fires in the midst of the riots.

The current outbursts of street anger are the biggest Britain has seen since the mid-1980s. Belatedly government ministers have dragged themselves back from their holidays in order to try and 'restore order'.
Parliament has been recalled for Thursday, but so far the only response of the capitalist politicians has been to shriek about "the mob", "criminals" and "mindless violence".

Workers living in the communities affected are inevitably angry at the destruction that has taken place, but will also be enraged by the government's attempts to absolve itself of responsibility for the situation.

Unfortunately, New Labour's response has been essentially the same as that of the Tories. Ed Miliband has simply called the riots "disgraceful criminal behaviour" and has demanded that David Cameron orders "the strongest possible police response".

Diane Abbot, MP for Hackney North and historically on the left of the Labour Party, has called for a curfew to be considered.

The leadership of New Labour has done nothing to point out the reasons why
young people are rioting. This is not surprising.

Mass unemployment, cuts in public services and police harassment and stop and search all grew when New Labour was in power. Despite all the capitalist politicians' attempts to ignore reality, it is no coincidence that Britain is burning in August 2011 - it flows from the social conditions faced by a generation of young people in the inner cities.

During the 1980s disturbances, the then Tory government decried those on the streets as "hooligans". Now that those riots are a distant memory, Edwina Currie and other Tories are willing to recognise that the rioters had the legitimate grievances of mass unemployment and police prejudice, but claim everything is different today.

In reality nothing fundamental has changed for youth in inner city areas.

The present events are a cry of rage and despair by members of a generation that has been thrown on the scrapheap. They are not race riots, but involve poor young people, living in the inner-cities, from every ethnic background.

Mare Street, Hackney, 8.8.11, photo Paul Mattsson (Click to enlarge)

Angry and deprived

The motives of those involved vary, but they centre on a single theme, summed up by one woman interviewed on the Today radio four programme: "I am not a thief but I am angry.

"What have we got? - nothing." Unlike her, others had taken part in order to loot shops. Electrical goods and sportswear shops were targeted in many areas, but so were supermarkets.

In Tottenham, Aldi was emptied, in Lewisham, Morrisons. It was not only 'luxury' goods, but the most basic necessities of life that people were queuing up to take.

What does it say about Britain, an 'advanced' capitalist country, that so many people are desperate enough, and unconcerned enough about the consequences, to take part in mass looting of shops? Young people with a job worth having, and prospects for a future, do not generally take part in such actions.

But in Britain today there are almost a million unemployed young people who have been effectively told they have no prospects for the future. As the world's stock markets tumble, the feeling that capitalism offers no prospects for the 'lost generation' is inevitably growing.

Already, across London youth unemployment is 23%, in inner city areas it is far higher.

Hackney and Tower Hamlets have the highest youth unemployment in the country, with Tottenham not far behind. These young people live a very few miles from the millionaires and billionaires of the City of London, yet have little prospect of earning the minimum wage, never mind getting a decent job.

The real looters are the city financiers who have made billions from gambling on the world's stock markets and looting the economy of whole countries, driving entire populations - as in Greece - into dire poverty.

Is it any wonder, in a society that encourages private entrepreneurs to make a profit by any means necessary, that unemployed youth decide to try and obtain a few goods by whatever means they can?

Tottenham buildings burning, 6.8.11, photo Paul Mattsson (Click to enlarge)

Ethnic minorities

While the riots are not 'race riots', and involve young people from all ethnic groups, it is true that many are black. The capitalist politicians try to dismiss the idea that racism still exists in Britain today, but that is simply not true.

All ethnic minorities in Britain still earn less, on average, than white people, with differences amongst men ranging from earning an average of 10% less for Chinese men, to 27% less for Bangladeshi men.

Even those ethnic minority communities with very high levels of higher education qualifications still suffer worse pay. All ethnic minorities have higher than average rates of poverty.

Rates of poverty are highest for Bangladeshis, Pakistanis and black Africans, reaching nearly two thirds for Bangladeshis.

At the same time ethnic minorities are barely represented as the managers and employers of big companies. None of the 98 high court judges come from ethnic minorities, and only four of the 563 circuit judges.
Less than 1% of the army come from ethnic minorities. There are pathetically few black and Asian MPs.
British capitalism has proved itself incapable of qualitatively improving the living conditions of all but a tiny minority of black and Asian people.

Anger at police harassment is a major factor in the explosion that has taken place. In Tottenham the spark was anger at the police shooting of Mark Duggan.

The Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has already had to admit that, despite police claims that Mark Duggan had fired at them first, the bullet embedded in a police radio was actually police issue.
People in Tottenham are right to have no faith in the IPCC to carry out an independent investigation. The trade union movement must demand a genuinely independent inquiry, made up of elected representatives from the local trade unions, community organisations and especially the youth.

A similar enquiry is needed into the riots that have taken place and their causes. Many of those interviewed taking part in the riots across the country express fury at the endless police stop and searches that they face.
From 2005 to 2009 police searches of Asian people increased 84% and black people by 51%. Now the state wants to go even further using 'Section 60' to extend their powers to stop and search without grounds for suspicion.

Peaceful protests have taken place on these issues, but nothing has changed, leading to a feeling that 'more' is needed. In Tottenham the family and friends of Mark Duggan had marched to the police station and waited in vain for hours for a senior officer to address them.

This was not an isolated occurrence. One young man in Tottenham told NBC: "You wouldn't be talking to me now if we didn't riot, would you? Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press.
"Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you."

Riot police in Hackney, 8.8.11, photo Paul Mattsson (Click to enlarge)

Cuts in services

Mass unemployment and police harassment have created an explosive situation. For many, the final straw has been the taking away of the few crumbs which were designed to at least ameliorate the effects of mass youth unemployment.

The government has abolished the EMA grant, despite mass protests, which had at least made it possible for working class young people to attend college.

Despite endless demands on young people to 'better themselves' and 'get an education' the one concrete measure that made it possible to get an education has now been taken away.

In addition, the raising of university tuition fees to £9,000 a year has deterred many working class youth from considering the avenue of higher education.

Other government cuts in already overstretched public services, implemented by Labour as well as Tory and Liberal councils, have also contributed to the situation.

Rather than defend their local communities and refuse to implement the cuts, as the Socialist Party demands and Liverpool City Council did in the 1980s - every single Labour council has slashed public services.

In Tottenham the youth service has been cut by 75%. Nationally, Connexions, the service that provided careers and benefits advice for young people, has been destroyed.

Many local authorities now provide no advice service at all for young people. Yet this is only the first year of cuts; councils plan to implement far more in the coming years.

The government is now trying to dismiss any link between cuts and the riots, yet just weeks before the general election, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg warned that Tory cuts would lead to riots.

It is a sign of the extreme short-sightedness of the current government that it has encouraged cuts in the services which provided an element of 'social control' by the government over young people.

The relatively small sums saved by the cuts will now have to spent ten times over in dealing with the consequences of the riots. In the wake of the riots, community campaigns to demand immediate reopening of all closed youth facilities and of Connexions, funded by central government, could force the government to reverse these cuts.

Hackney, 8.8.11, photo Paul Mattsson (Click to enlarge)

Rioting- no solution

However, rioting is not the means to defeat the government, but, on the contrary, only damages the communities in which working-class people live, and gives the capitalist class an excuse to increase the repressive apparatus of the state.

The Socialist Party does not agree with those on the left who condone the riots, such as the Socialist Workers Party, whose posters in the areas affected by riots declare them to be a step from 'riot to revolution'.
The present disturbances are an indication of blind rage against the system. Undoubtedly, some of the young people involved will have taken inspiration from the revolutions that have overthrown dictatorships in the Middle East, and the movement of the squares in Greece and Spain.

However, these movements were of a very different character to the riots. While each country has had different characteristics, all the occupations of the squares - from Spain to Egypt - were relatively disciplined mass protests which both opposed and largely prevented acts of violence against local shops etc.

This is one reason that, while all the movements largely began with young people, they were able to reach out to, and win the support of the wider population.

By contrast, while the riots have received huge media coverage, they are allowing the capitalist media and the government to further demonise young people, and to potentially divide the struggle against the government.
However, the government can only be defeated by building a mass, united movement of all those under attack from it. The organised working class in the trade unions have the key role to play.

In Egypt it was when the working class organised general strike action that Mubarak was finally defeated. Historically in Britain, Thatcher's poll tax was not defeated, as some on the left claim, as a result of the March 1990 riot, but because of an organised mass campaign of non payment, involving 18 million people.

Trade union action

This year in Britain, the day that has frightened the government most was 30 June, when 750,000 public sector workers took strike action. Unfortunately, however, on 30 June it was only around one fifth of public sector workers who were called out by the trade union leaders to take strike action.

The leaders of the biggest public sector unions argued against participating, despite widespread demands for action from their members. The failure of the leadership of the trade union movement in Britain to lead a serious struggle to defeat all the cuts is a central reason why the riots have erupted.

Riot police in Hackney, 8.8.11, photo Paul Mattsson (Click to enlarge)

Brendan Barber, general secretary of the TUC, warned that the cuts would lead to riots, but has not been prepared to take the action that could have prevented them.

If, as we demanded, the TUC had conducted a serious battle to defeat the government, mobilising its seven million members, the government could have been forced from office by now.

If the TUC had called a national demonstration against cuts in October last year, mobilised for joint action with the students in November, and called a one-day public sector strike, it would have mobilised huge popular support, and would have been able to act as a pole of attraction for the most oppressed sections of young people.

Having delayed, the TUC needs to act decisively now. It should immediately call a national trade union demonstration to oppose all cuts and demand a future for young people.

This should be a step towards the next day of coordinated strike action in the autumn, which this time should involve all 4 million public sector workers, and be combined with a one-day strike of school, college and university students.

A trade union demonstration needs to show clearly that the trade unions stand together with young people. The widespread trade union support for Youth Fight for Jobs (YFJ), and its Jarrow March against youth unemployment in the autumn, is one important means to demonstrate this.

However, it is also important the demonstration is called around clear demands. These should include the immediate reinstatement of EMA and abolition of university tuition fees.

It should also oppose any attempts by the government to use the riots in order to increase harassment of young people.

On the contrary it should demand the withdrawal of the stop and search laws being used to harass young people, and clearly oppose any attempts to increase the repressive apparatus of the state; Teresa May previously made clear she would like to bring water cannon and teargas to Britain, and the immediate use of rubber bullets is being considered.

If this is done it will be used in the future against workers and student demonstrations, just as police brutality was used against the students last year.

The trade union movement should also call for control of the police to be placed under the auspices of democratically elected local police committees.

The explosion of anger on Britain's streets is above all a condemnation of capitalism, and its inability to offer the next generation even the measly standard of living that workers have had in the last twenty years.

The trade union movement needs to act to show it is on the side of young people, but to be fully effective this needs to be linked to the struggle to develop a new mass party for workers and youth which stands for a socialist society.

Only by taking the big corporations that dominate Britain's economy into democratic public ownership would it be possible to begin to provide a real future for young people.

Capitalism is incapable of providing even the basics - a decent job, a home, an education - to the next generation. Democratic socialism would mean production could be planned to meet the needs of all and not for profits of a few.

The Socialist Party demands:

An independent trade union-led inquiry into the death of Mark Duggan and into the causes of and policing of the riots. Scrap the IPCC. We need police accountability through democratic control by local people.
End stop and search. No to section 60.
For control of the police to be placed under the auspices of democratically elected local committees involving representatives from trade unions, councils, tenants associations, and community organisations.
For the government to immediately cover the uninsured losses and repairs of all small businesses and homeowners affected by the riots.
For councils to immediately re-house those who lost their homes in the riots. For investment in social house building and renovation, creating jobs and improving health.
For the immediate reversal of the closure of local youth and Connexions services. Funding from central government to pay for it.
No to all cuts in jobs and public services. Free education and training for all. Reinstate EMA and abolish tuition fees. We demand huge public investment in job creation and services.
Build a mass campaign to fight for these demands but also to fight for socialist change in the way society is run, with democratic planning of how we use the wealth and resources of society - under working class control and management, not that of the millionaires.

Struggles across Europe

2011-08-15T00:13:00.000+01:00

RCT Socialist Update no. 27

As the capitalist crisis is engulfing to world, where government after government is attempting to make working class people pay for the ciris caused by the rich, we have also witnessed mass movements develop against this. From North Africa and the Middle East to Wisconsin in the United States. Closer to home in Europe we have also seen mass movements develop in particular that of the 'Indignatos' in Spain and the 'engraged' in Greece but along side this movements in many other Europe nations including here in Britain such as the March 26th demonstration of 700,000 trade unionists. All this as well as a crisis within the Eurozone.

As socialists with sister parties around the world it is important for us to understand these developments and to learn lessons from these events. This week at our regular branch meeting we will be discussing the unfolding struggles throughout Europe. You can read some background on the topic here http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5212

At the meeting we will also be discussing our future plans within Youth Fight for Jobs after the highly successful march from Merthyr to Cardiff.

Come along to the meeting
Wednesday 17th August 7.15pm
Otley Arms, Treforest

Unite to fight all cuts

2011-08-12T19:50:00.002+01:00

The following is taken from the socialist issue 681

"We can't afford a pay cut or losing our increments. People are beginning to see what they've lost and for some its £1,000. We are being prepared for privatisation and don't want it. The Tories are living on another planet and Labour are no different. The country is crying out for change."

These were some of the views of refuse workers back out on strike in Southampton after the council imposed new contracts on 11 July which meant massive cuts in pay.

In a significant escalation of the dispute they are being joined in a one-day strike by the entire social care department of over 450 workers.

50 social workers in the Adoption, Fostering and ARC Children's Centre will continue strike action for a week. Social workers are angry that after they signed their new contracts, the council attempted to bribe a select few with a £1,400 one-off payment.

Pressure is mounting on the council, some streets have not had bins collected for over nine weeks with public support for the strike still strong.

Selective action throughout the dispute has been well supported. To ensure these cuts are reversed this action should be bought together in a council wide one-day strike and linked up to all local authorities fighting cuts.
Southampton Tory council is undoubtedly getting national backing from the Con-Dem government for its stand. In response Unison and Unite should call a national demonstration in Southampton.

This dispute is an attack on national terms and conditions and should be met with national action. The growing number of local authority disputes and the support for Southampton from branches around the country shows the potential for this exists.

Elsewhere in the city, other cuts are coming with 433 Southampton NHS admin workers facing redundancy.
Workers at the BBC in Southampton came out on strike on 1 August against redundancies. Medirest hospital cleaners are continuing their fight for unpaid wages and sick pay. Locked out workers from the massive Fawley oil refinery are continuing their battle.

With cuts facing the public sector countrywide and a squeeze on private sector workers too there is an urgent need to bring these battles together into a national campaign that could defeat the Con-Dem plans.

Anger is growing, support for the Con-Dem cuts is falling. It is urgent that trade unionists seize the time and prepare for a one-day public/private sector general strike to defend jobs, services, pay and pensions.

Lobby the TUC!

National Shop Stewards Network lobby of the TUC on 11 September

For a 24-hour public sector general strike

The 30 June strikes were a fantastic start. We need the whole public sector out in the autumn.

Opening rally at Friends Meeting House 1.30-3.30pm, 173-177 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BJ. Speakers include RMT general secretary Bob Crow and PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka. Then march to the TUC at Congress House.

Socialist Party member on the radio

2011-08-11T17:37:00.005+01:00

RCT Socialist Party member appeared in the studio on the radio wales phone-in show on Monday 8th August, speaking on behalf of Youth Fight for Jobs. The show is available on the BBC iplayer and available to view for the next week.

Click on the link here to listen

Youth Fight For Jobs march for jobs ends in Cardiff

2011-08-10T18:18:00.006+01:00

The march of Youth Fight For Jobs Wales ended today in Cardiff to a terrific reception. The marchers, footsore and hoarse, were applauded into Queen Street in Cardiff where a rally was held by the Nye Bevan statue. Then more than 100 people, with the PCS union prominent, marched through the city centre to Caradog job centre which is threatened with closure by the Tories. People leaned out of pub windows shouting their support.

17 young people have marched from Merthyr to protest against the scandal of youth unemployment. Tory DWP secretary, Iain Duncan Smith had criticised the unemployed of Merthyr for not just getting on a bus to Cardiff. But as the marchers explained, for every job in the job centres in Cardiff there are nine unemployed Cardiffians - there are not enough jobs anywhere. And the situation is so bad in Merthyr the equivalent figure is 84 for every job!

So the Youth Fight For Jobs march set out from Merthyr on Thursday. Rhys Harrison, one of the organisers asked "why is it that every student on a loan and every young person looking for work is a scrounger, but every banker with a golden handshake and gigantic bonus is a legend?" It was raining as the march began, but the sun came out as it reached the edge of Merthyr. The marchers paused briefly at the Hoover factory which ended production in 2009 adding over 300 workers to the dole queue, before heading to Troedyrhiw and then Merthyr Vale, Treharris and Cilfynydd. The first day ended in Pontypridd where the marchers camped out overnight.

Setting out in Merthyr

On the second day the march delayed leaving Pontypridd job centre, making a detour to show its support for the struggle of REMPLOY workers in the Rhondda valley who were occupying the Porth factory for 48 hours as part of their action to defend their plant against government plans to close it. At a meeting outside the plant Youth fight For Jobs and REMPLOY workers pledged support for each other's campaign. The march continued their progress by marching through Porth before heading back to Pontypridd to continue the march.

The march continued through Treforest, Rhydyfelin, Hawthorn (where the marchers were kindly supplied with free hot dogs), Nantgarw, Taffs Well and Tongwynlais before arriving at the Conservative HQ in Whitchurch where a young Tory boy in a suit was waiting to receive a letter of protest. Local young people joined in the protest at the Tories' policies.

Day three continued with the march from Whitchurch into the city centre to a great reception, a number of trade unions and a battery of TV cameras. The march had firmly put the issue of youth unemployment on the agenda in Wales. So much for lazy young people!

Join us!

As one of the march organisers, Jaime Davies, a young shop worker from Caerphilly, said "We will not be oppressed by capitalist society. We march for our future."

The campaign continues with the build up for the Jarrow march to London which begins on October 1st. You can join in here

UK Riots: Youth demand a future. What do socialists say?

2011-08-09T19:16:00.000+01:00

RCT Socialist Update no. 26

Over the last few days with no sign of ending with have seen riots errupt around London and spreading across other parts of Britain with no end in sight. It is important for us a socialists to discuss these events in order to understand them. Whilst there have been awful instances where working class people have lost their homes it is also clear that the is a mass outburst of anger from working class and young people who can see that their future has been stolen from them and at the same time that the top of society has been shown to be thoroughly corrupt. The government, the banks, the media and the police. The task of socialists is to direct this genuine anger into an organised form which united we can bring this government down together.

We will be discussing this issue at our weekly branch meeting on Wednesday come along and discuss the issues and ask any questions if you have any. You can RSVP to the facebook event. There is a good article about the Tottenham riots on saturday on the Socialist Party website here .http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/12498/08-08-2011/tottenham-riots-fatal-police-shooting-sparks-eruption-of-protest-amp-anger. You can also listen to Socialist Party member Glyn Matthews speaking on Radio Wales about the riots of Radio Wales here http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b012s1p6/The_Radio_Wales_PhoneIn_08_08_2011/ it starts about 3 minutes in.

We will also be reporting on the fantastic Youth March for jobs from Merthyr to Cardiff which took place last week from Thursday to Saturday. You can a report of that here http://www.socialistpartywales.org.uk/news74.shtml

Come along to the meeting
Wednesday 10th August 7.15pm
Otley Arms, Treforest

What the frack?

2011-08-02T15:02:00.000+01:00

Hydraulic Fracturing or “fracking” is a technique for extracting gas from deep within shale rock and coal beds. It looks set to become big oil’s newest gold rush and, as usual, their desperation for profit makes them blind to the environmental costs of their folly.

The process of fracking involves using high pressure to inject massive volumes of water, plus sand and chemicals into dense rock formations. This breaks the rock and natural gas is released and captured. The basic technique has existed for several decades but recent advances in technology have made it possible to frack the gas out of deeper and denser rock.

Gas and oil companies are looking to buy or lease land in countries throughout the globe where they can exploit this gas. However, the pace at which this land grab is taking place is out of keeping with the continuously emerging evidence that fracking is unacceptably environmentally destructive.

In the recent film “Gasland”, about fracking in the US, there is a scene where a resident living near where the practice is taking place sets the water from their kitchen tap on fire. It’s a stark and symbolic illustration of how dangerous and destructive fracking is.

The water can be set alight because a nearby aquifer has been so contaminated by chemicals which have escaped during the fracking process.

The main issue with water though, is that it takes billions of gallons of it to carry out the process of fracking. If the process begins to extend throughout the globe, hundreds of billions of gallons of water will effectively be wasted on a dangerous and unsustainable process because it suits the interests of some of the most powerful companies in the world.

What we need, is not to indulge the folly and greed of the oil companies who will do anything to get further profit out of the ground, but to invest in clean, safe and sustainable energy that can provide for people’s needs and protect the environment.

Written by Socialist Party Australia - our Australian sister party

Celebrating 100 blog updates

2011-08-01T15:04:00.001+01:00

Today we celebrate the first 100 posts on this blog since it was launched. We thought we would mark the occassion by reminding everyone where we can be found on the internet.

We have a facebook page RCT Socialists

Find us on Twitter @RCTSocialists

A youtube channel here

A podcast channel here

We upload various PDFs here

You can also contact us by e-mail, or by contacting us on 07931955007

you can also take a look at the Socialist Party and Socialist Party Wales websites.

Most importantly though, get in touch with us to get involved with our campaigning work. We hold weekly meetings generally Wednesdays at 7pm in the Otley Arms in Treforest, but check the calender on the right hand side to check for meeting details.

75th Anniversary of the Spanish civil war

2011-07-31T14:13:00.001+01:00

RCT Socialist Update no. 25

This month marks the 75th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War which included revolutionary movements of republicans, including socialists who fought against the rise of General Franco and of fascism in Spain. A couragous battle not just fought by the Spanish working class by from all around the world in the form of International Brigades, who rightly saw this not as a a civil war but as a class war fought in the interests of the entire working class.

Ultimately Franco was able to take control of Spain but despite this the heroism and bravery of the working class masses who resisted this can not be matched and the legacy is full of lessons of how socialists should organise today and the false tactics of forginf alliance with so called 'progressive capitalists' To mark the 75th anniversarywe will be discussing the Spanish Civil War at our weekly branch meeting. Come along and discuss the events with us and feel free to ask any questions. You can read more about it here http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5201

We will also be discussing our final preperations for the Youth Fight for Jobs march from Merthyr to Cardiff which starts the next day. You can visit the facebook group for the march for more information http://www.facebook.com/groups/121580154593194/?ap=1

Come along to the meeting
Wednesday 3rd August,
Otley Arms, Treforest.
7.15pm

Norway: Right-wing terrorist kills 76 at youth camp

2011-07-30T14:57:00.001+01:00

How should the labour movement respond?

Right-wing extremist Anders Behring Breivik's horrific massacre at the camping island of Utøya outside on Friday is unique in its cruelty, with 76 dead and many wounded, and several more still missing.

A further seven were killed in Breivik's car bomb attack in the capital Oslo. Today, shock and grief dominate, while many questions need answers.

What is behind the right-wing terrorism? How should the labour movement and socialists respond?

For nearly ten years, the terrorist Anders Behring Breivik planned his deed, combining methods from two of his right-wing predecessors, the Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh and those who carried out the school massacre in Columbine.

Like McVeigh, he built a huge bomb. As the school shooters did, he pursued his victims in cold blood.

The terrorist attack in Oslo was designed to get maximum attention. The bomb turned the streets and neighbourhoods around the government buildings at Youngstorget to ruins.

There is talk now that the prime minister's skyscraper might be demolished. Seven people were killed, but police are still searching if there are additional victims.
Terrorist

All Norway's police resources were called to the centre of Oslo, while the terrorist went to his primary objective, the social-democratic youth (AUF) camp on the small island of Utøya.

He pretended to be a heavily armed policeman, tasked with protecting the island from attack. On arrival, he ran cold-blooded executions for one and a half hours, shouting 'you should all die', interspersed with cheers.

While Breivik drove to the camp in a half an hour, it took the police an hour and a half to arrive. Once they were out on the island the terrorist immediately surrendered.

A few hours before the attack, Anders Behring Breivik emailed a 1,500 pages-long right-wing manifesto to selected recipients, and posted a film on youtube.

The manifesto also contains a diary that began back in 2002. The manifesto's two main headings indicate his targets: "1. The Rise of Cultural Marxism"; "2. Islamic colonization".

Breivik hated Marxism, internationalism and Islam, and confessed immediately, although he did not admit that his deeds were criminal. On the internet he described himself as conservative, rather than a Nazi or neo-liberal.

He is a practicing Christian, was a Freemason and, in the years 1999-2006, was active in the racist Progress Party, the country's second-largest party until recently.

He has announced his admiration for the Dutch Islamophobe Geert Wilders and tried to start a Norwegian branch of the notorious English Defence League.
Nazi

He was also active on the Swedish Nazi website nordisk. The social-democratic Labour Party in government and the AUF, which for Breivik represented the labour movement, were the targets of his terrorist attack.

Therefore, there is all the more reason for the trade unions, socialists and left-wing organisations to discuss and take initiatives. Conservative politicians and commentators do not know what to say, limiting themselves to empty phrases about democracy and defending Norway.

They wanted everyone to look in another direction. In Sweden, both the racist Sweden Democrats' press secretary and the front page of the Dagbladet newspaper, as well as political commentator Henrik Brors in Dagens Nyheter, quickly 'identified' Islamists as responsible for the attacks.

Now the establishment media and politicians only talk about extremism in general, avoiding a discussion on Breivik's right-wing agenda. Dagens Nyheter's editorial page (Sunday, July 24) downgraded the Oslo attack by equating it with the imagined threat from left-wing extremism.
Socialists oppose terrorism

In fact, both Breivik and Al-Qaeda are right-wingers; against the labour movement, socialists, democratic rights and women's rights. Socialists, however, are opposed to terrorism from both these groups, as well as the state terror carried out by US imperialism and its allies, including Sweden and Norway.

The terrorist attacks last Friday are just as shocking for Norway as September 11 in the United States and the murder of Olof Palme was in Sweden. In Norway, solidarity with the victims was expressed immediately when boat owners, risking their own lives, saved those who were swimming from Utøya.

Mountains of flowers have been placed outside the social-democratic premises and churches. There is the potential for a growing number of workers and youth who will want to get actively involved.

Terrorism is essentially a product of society. The former, stable, welfare-based societies in Norway and Sweden have been eroded with widening gaps and new injustices.

Without the option of fighting workers' organisations there is room for racists and right-wing extremists to single out scapegoats. Racists, Nazis, and Christian fundamentalists blame the workers, socialists and immigrants.

Establishment politicians pave the way by harsh treatment of refugees and the undermining of solidarity with the attacks on the sick, the unemployed and so on.

To take away the breeding ground for terrorist attacks requires an active, campaigning labour movement internationally. It is necessary to combat terrorism, war, capitalist globalisation and racism.

This must start now, with the mobilisation of workers and young people in mass protest and action against terrorism, and offering a socialist alternative.

written by Per-Åke Westerlund, Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna (our sister party in Sweden)