Politics | ukwatch.net

Stick a fork in him

JamieSW — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 11:01:41 +0000

Brown is finished. Let me say that again: Brown is finished. One more time: Brown is finished. I had an inkling this was coming when I saw Margaret Curran’s election message for Labour on the BBC – discoursing grimly on the unacceptable inequalities that made Glasgow East so poor, she insisted that the correct response was to ensure everyone had access to sports and ate healthily. Seriously, however, I doubt Curran had much to do with it. And she has every reason to feel disappointed. Labour was ahead in the polls, and there was a jumbo majority that the SNP had a tiny margin of time to erode. But the rate at which New Labour heartlands have been evaporating, turning over to any opposition that runs a half-decent campaign, has been nothing short of astonishing. And look, this turnout may have been down on the general election, but it’s actually quite decent for a bye-election. It looks like, alongside glum Labour voters sitting on their hands, there were quite a few motivated voters determined to smack the government.

And let’s look at what the Brown administration did to, er, assist its candidate in Glasgow East. They gave in to the City and the rich on tax evasion, declared a freeze on public spending, advertised for bids on the privatised delivery of welfare, and announced a ‘revolutionary’ shake-up of benefits for the unemployed and incapacitated that will treat both like criminals. Everybody knows by now that Glasgow East is an overwhelmingly working class constituency, with life expectancy in some areas lower than in Gaza. Unemployment is well above the national average: 10% for men over 25, 25% for women. It contains Shettleston, the most deprived area in Britain according to the UN. This is a place where even the Tory candidate was a trade union branch secretary. This is Labour turf, has been for generations, and it has stuck with Labour during the worst of the Blair years, through gritted teeth. A little bit of imagination should tell you something about the combination of fury and heartbreak that produced a 23% swing to an SNP candidate with no profile, no charisma and not much in the way of policy. Not only does the government have no solution for those squeezed by soaring food and fuel prices but to scrap the winter fuel allowance and abolish the 10p tax rate, they decide to go after those on benefits while allowing criminal companies to engage in tax evasion.

Commentators marvel at the government’s apparent determination to make itself unelectable. It was once the Tories doing that, with a succession of bland right-wing leaders talking ‘tough’ on crime or asylum. Let me tell you something – I’m reluctant to link to the Tories, but they are actually running a petition against Brown’s NHS cuts. They frame it in terms of inefficiency, of course, but in every other respect it looks like the kind of campaign one would see on a trade union website. The Tory strategy is unmistakeably to pitch for the slightly-left-of-New-Labour vote, and it may have some success. Now the government, aside from constantly attacking its own electoral base, frequently indulges in the right-wing populism that made the Tories look hateful and unelectable to many centre-right voters. (Not least of which, on Labour’s part, is the surreptitious Islamophobic poison about the liberal blogger Osama Saeed, the SNP’s candidate in Glasgow Central at the next election – a naked attempt to smear all SNP candidates by association with an “Islamic fundamentalist”). The story of the next election will probably be a continuation of the same: New Labour heartlands tumbling one after the others, as working class voters vent their fury about – well, take your pick from Post Office closures, privatisation, benefit cuts, public sector pay, tax breaks for the rich, the abolition of the ten pence tax rate, the abolition of the winter fuel allowance, soaring inequality, tuition fees, etc etc. So, the columnists wonder whether New Labour’s head has disappeared up Brown’s crack – surely, cabinet ministers with sense can see what’s being done? Surely, the backbenchers can understand that their careers are at risk? Why isn’t there a revolt? Well, there may be a revolt, but I suspect it would be a Blairite one aimed at removing an elephantine social misfit from a post that they would rather trust to Charles Clarke or Alan Milburn. There will not be a change of course. And the reason is simple: they are committed to this, they like doing what they’re doing, they think it’s sound economics and good politics. The Labour Party has spent twenty years talking itself into this happy little rut, and it no longer has the means to think that it might be good to get out.

All of which raises the question: what is to be done? My favourite kind of question as it happens. The left has to have a strategy for coping with the collapse of Labourism that doesn’t threaten to drag it down with the irreparable hulk. That can neither take the form of sectarian disengagement with Labour supporters, nor can it take the form of some ‘progressive alliance’ uniting the various fragments of the radical left, since a) it would not necessarily be more than the sum of its parts, b) it is not going to happen anyway, and c) even if it did, it would in practise be tied to the Labour Party. Both of the above solutions are tempting short-cuts, to be sure, especially when there appears to be a paucity of alternatives. But an alternative to Labourism cannot be built from above by a loose association of ‘ecosocialists’ and Eurocommunists who flee under the Labour umbrella when there is the slightest of sign of precipitation. It has to come from below, and to that extent it has to come from the ongoing revival of trade union militancy, particularly from the fightback against Brown’s government by the very working class who can no longer stand to vote for that shower. As these strike waves become more frequent and longer, as they are sure to do, the question that has dogged previous trade union conferences – why are we funding these bastards? – will return with force. The hardcore of Labour left hangers-on will have to look increasingly outward, toward alignments beyond the party that it is kicking them. Of course, no alternative that could conceivably be built would be a ‘pure’ working class movement, or from the old left. It would embrace all the diverse campaigns that the Left has thrown itself into, including defending council housing, defending asylum seekers, fighting the BNP, resisting the war, and so on.

I suppose it’s about time I mentioned the People Before Profit charter, which has got the support of Tony Benn, Jeremy Corbyn MP, John Pilger and others. The purpose of the charter is to formulate a set of demands and signposts for the way forward. It expresses some basic requirements that the left can agree on – no wage increases below the rate of inflation, tax businesses and the rich to fund welfare and public services (particularly impose a windfall tax on energy companies), repeal anti-union laws etc. It also commits to support for various essential campaigns such as Stop the War, Unite Against Fascism, Keep Our NHS Public, and so on. You can read it in full here [pdf], although I believe a separate website is being developed for this. And you can sign it by e-mailing your name and details to: peoplebeforeprofitcharter@googlemail.com.

Don't be fooled by the climate change bill.

JamieSW — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:20:42 +0000

For the past two years I have been fretting over a mystery. Though Labour seems to have done everything possible to ensure that it stays out of office, there remains a possibility that it might form another government at some point between now and 2050. This means that its climate change bill, which will become law in the autumn, could come back to haunt it. Despite its evident flaws, this is radical and unprecedented legislation. It imposes a legal obligation on future governments to cut carbon dioxide pollution by 60% or more by 2050, with binding interim targets every five years.

The government has some good climate policies. It also has some bleeding disastrous ones, which appear to commit the United Kingdom to high carbon pollution for the entire period covered by the bill. A future Labour government would find itself snared by its own current policies. Surely it wouldn’t be foolish enough to set such a trap for itself?

One policy alone seems to doom future governments to prosecution: the planned doubling of the capacity of the UK’s airports by 2030. Using the Department for Transport’s projections, I estimate that by 2050 aeroplanes will account for 91% of all the greenhouse gases the country should be producing. Under the less optimistic figures published by Defra, the environment department, the proportion rises to 258% 1.

Until now this hasn’t been a problem: the government has refused to include aircraft pollution in the 2050 target. But following an amendment in the Lords, the draft bill imposes a duty on the government either to include it or to explain to parliament why it hasn’t done so, within five years 2. The government claims that it might not be possible to add these gases to the UK’s carbon budget because, “in the absence of an internationally agreed methodology”, no one knows how to calculate what proportion of this pollution belongs to us 3.

It’s a knotty problem, isn’t it? If you were the government and you knew that 67% of the passengers using UK airports were residents of this country 4, could you work out what proportion of aircraft emissions should be counted in the UK’s carbon budget? No? Me neither. Wouldn’t know where to begin.

This ridiculous excuse can’t be sustained for much longer. At some point aircraft gases will have to be included in the carbon target. Throw in the government’s road-building programme and its intention to approve new coal-burning power plants and you can see that it has a problem.

The only factor now holding down carbon emissions is the price of energy. They fell by 2% last year, and the government admits that this “was largely explicable in terms of price relativities.” 5 In other words, it has again become cheaper to burn natural gas in power stations than to burn coal, while the cost of oil has encouraged people to drive less. The 2% reduction means that the UK’s carbon budget is now a grand total of 0.8% smaller than it was in 19976. The government can post a 16% cut in greenhouse gases since 1990 only because of the accidental reductions made during the dash for gas under the Tories and the sharp reduction in methane and nitrous oxide from rubbish dumps and industry. Neither of these cuts can be repeated.

But this doesn’t even begin to describe the government’s problem. Its new climate change report contains a tantalising figure. It is expressed in such a back-handed way that you have to perform half a dozen small calculations to discover what it means. The report boasts that even when emissions in countries exporting goods to the UK are taken into account, “the total annual reduction of UK greenhouse gas emissions since 1990 was around 240 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent [MtCO2eq] below business as usual”.7 The government says that “business as usual” would have led to an increase of 40% in emissions since 1990. This gives us a figure of 1079MtCO2eq8. Subtract 240 from 1079 and you get 839, or 187 MtCO2 eq above current emissions9. This means that instead of declining by 16% since 1990, as the government insists, the greenhouse gases for which the UK is responsible have risen by 9%.

When I finished this sum I sat still for quite a long time. The UK’s entire climate change programme is based on a statistical artefact. The only reason our pollution appears to have declined is that we have outsourced our emissions. A fair account of our carbon emissions would include those we import minus those we export: a balance that can only worsen in a post-industrial economy.

So how can the government reconcile its energy policies with future political hazard? Well the mystery has at last been solved. The key to the puzzle is found in a minor briefing note just published by Defra. It explains that, during the latest stage of the bill, the government “remov[ed] the quantified limit on the use of internationally traded credits in meeting the UK’s targets”10. In other words we could buy the entire cut from other countries.

Given that we are outsourcing some of our greenhouse gases, you might think it makes sense to outsource our carbon cuts as well. But there are three problems. The first is that we are exporting emissions that are difficult to address and importing, through carbon trading, the easiest and cheapest cuts.

The second is that while the emissions we export are certain and verifiable, the cuts we buy through carbon credits are often fraudulent. For example, as the writer Oliver Tickell documents, 96% of the carbon credits from hydroelectric dam construction were issued after construction had begun: the dams would have been built without the carbon market, so no additional cuts have been achieved11. Around 30% of all carbon credits comes from the sale of trifluoromethane cuts by Chinese and Indian companies making refrigeration gases. Many of them are still producing this pollutant only because they make so much money from cleaning it up: the carbon market pays them 47 times more for these cuts than the gas costs to remove12.

Behind these problems lurks a much greater one, which is mathematically impossible to resolve. You can trade your way out of trouble when the cut you are trying to achieve is a small one. But when the global cut required to prevent two degrees of warming is 60 or 80 or 90%, then every rich nation must reduce its emissions by roughly the same amount. Otherwise half the world would have to buy credits equivalent to 180% of the emissions produced by the other half.

The government will have to impose some kind of cap on carbon trading. But I bet it will be set high enough to cover any failures in domestic policy, as measured by the rigged accounting methods civil servants use. This means that successive governments will have no legal incentive to change their energy policies. The carbon trading provision torpedoes the useful content of the entire bill.

But at least the mystery has been solved, and it will no longer keep me awake at night. Now I can focus on the real nightmares.

1. The calculations are explained here: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/12/19/preparing-for-take-off/
2. Draft Climate Change Bill, as amended in public bill committee, part 29. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmbills/129/08129.11-17.html#D002b
3. Defra, 15th July 2008. Climate Change Bill: Update following House of Commons Committee Stage. http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechange/uk/legislation/pdf/080715-CC-Billupdate.pdf
4. Sally Cairns and Carey Newson, September 2006. Predict and Decide: aviation, climate change and UK policy. Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, p8.
http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/research/energy/downloads/predictanddecide.pdf
5. Defra, July 2008. UK Climate Change Programme. Annual Report to Parliament, July 2008, p17. http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechange/uk/ukccp/pdf/ukccp-ann-report-july08.pdf
6. The figure for 1997 was 548.1MtCO2. The provisional figure for 2007 is 543.7 MtCO2. See Table 2, Defra, July 2008, ibid.
7. Defra, July 2008. UK Climate Change Programme. Annual Report to Parliament, July 2008, p18. http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechange/uk/ukccp/pdf/ukccp-ann-report-july08.pdf
8. The 1990 figure was 770.8MtCO2eq. Table 2, Defra, July 2008, ibid.
9. The latest figure (2006) for all ggs is 652.3 MtCO2eq. Table 2, Defra, July 2008, ibid.
10. Defra, 15th July 2008, ibid.
11. Oliver Tickell, forthcoming. Kyoto2: how to manage the global greenhouse. Zed Books, London.
12. ibid.

Glasgow East by-election

JamieSW — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:00:17 +0000

Social problems and poverty

A by-election is being held today in the constituency of Glasgow East following the resignation of sitting Labour Member of Parliament David Marshall. The seat, which Marshall held with a majority of 13,507 in the 2005 General Election, is a traditional Labour stronghold.

The Scottish National Party (SNP), which wrested control over the devolved Scottish parliament from Labour in 2007, hopes to take advantage of Labour’s woes and win the seat in which it came a distant second only three years ago.

The seat covers most of the east end of Glasgow, from the Parkhead area east of the city centre to the outlying Easterhouse estate. It includes some of Britain’s most impoverished neighbourhoods, and has become synonymous with urban decay and ill health.

The official unemployment rate in Glasgow East is more than twice the national average of 5.2 percent. But in total, around half of the working-age population of the constituency are without work, many of them in receipt of invalidity or disability benefit.

A survey by the Campaign to End Child Poverty (CECP) looked at the extent of childhood poverty across the UK, where children have nearly twice as much chance of living in a household with relatively low income than a generation ago. It found that Glasgow had the worst level of child poverty in Scotland, with a citywide rate of more than 50 percent. Around 60 percent of children living in the Glasgow east end, Bridgeton and Queenslie neighbourhoods were found to be living below the breadline.

No official figures are compiled on the rate of childhood poverty on the parliamentary constituency level. However, statistics from the CEPC on children living in families without someone in work and surviving on benefits provide an indication.

The Glasgow East constituency has the joint-fifteenth highest rate of children living in workless households in Britain, tied with the seats of Wythenshaw and Sale East in Greater Manchester and Knowsley North and Sefton East on Merseyside.

With 40 percent of children in the constituency living in households without work, the figure for Glasgow East is twice the UK average and five times the rate found in the nearby suburban area of East Dunbartonshire.

According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the city has Scotland’s highest rate of people on out-of-work benefits, the highest rate of people with limiting long-term illnesses and drug addiction, the worst problems with overcrowded housing, and the highest concentration of pensioners living below the poverty line.

Half of the adults in the area have no educational qualifications, and more than half of all households do not own a car.

Glasgow also has the lowest life expectancy in Britain. Data for 2004-2006 puts life expectancy in the city at birth at 73.7 years (70.5 years for men, 77 years for women), based on current life expectancy trends. The best indicators for the Glasgow East constituency point to a figure of 69.3 years for men and 76.2 year for women. This falls even further in the most impoverished neighbourhoods, such as Calton, with male life expectancy at a staggering 53.9 years.

A 2002 survey, conducted using the United Nations rating system for life expectancy, unemployment, incomes and rates of illiteracy, put the Shettleston area of the constituency as the most deprived in Britain. Nearby Baillieston, also in Glasgow East, was ranked seventh.

Statistics from the National Health Service showed that the east end of Glasgow had the highest rate of alcohol-related hospital admissions in Scotland. At 1,505 per 100,000, the east end of Glasgow had a rate of admissions more than three times that of the neighbouring suburb of East Renfrewshire.

Comparable social devastation mars many inner cities across Britain. According to the Office of National Statistics, life expectancy in the north of England towns of Liverpool, Blackpool, Manchester and Hartlepool are very similar to those for Glasgow. Analogous phenomena can be observed in the most depressed areas of European and North American cities. In the US city of Detroit, which has been devastated by years of car plant and supplier closures, nearly half of all children live in poverty, with life expectancy rates in the city also likened to overall figures for some Third World countries.

The Gaza comparison

Such is the combined impact of these statistics that some extremely distorted comparisons have been made. Much attention has been paid in the media to comments by the SNP’s Westminster faction leader, Angus Robertson, claiming that the constituency has a lower life expectancy than the war-torn Gaza Strip.

This echoes comments frequently made by the middle class radical and pro-independence parties, Solidarity and the Scottish Socialist Party. These groups, which claim that Scottish separatism is progressive as it would free the country from “London rule,” have made comparisons between areas of Glasgow and Gaza or even Iraq under US-led military occupation.

At one level, these comments are preposterous. Nowhere in Glasgow can one find occupying troops, missile and helicopter assaults. The city is not walled-off, there are no floods of refugees fleeing for their lives. The sewerage system and electricity work fairly well. Glasgow is a wealthy, and in some areas pleasant city, in an advanced imperialist country.

The primary aim of such comparisons is to portray the international phenomenon of urban poverty amidst great wealth as the result of an oppressive relationship between England and Scotland. It is used an argument for Scottish independence. But an independent Scotland is increasingly viewed by sections of big business as a means of further demolishing social provision through slashing taxes, cutting welfare and enriching themselves from North Sea oil profits.

Betrayal of the Labour bureaucracies

The deep social problems of Glasgow, or any other major city, are a product of international economic processes within capitalism that have opened up a devastating assault on the social position of the working class. The poor social conditions in much of Glasgow are a direct result of more than three decades of continual attacks on the working class, and provide a damning indictment of the historic failure of Labour.

Under the watch of the trade unions and the Labour Party, which has controlled the local council for decades, virtually all of the city’s steelworks, shipyards and engineering plants, which once employed tens of thousands, have closed.

Between 1978 and 1993, the city lost two thirds of its 107,515 manufacturing jobs. These have never been fully replaced by jobs in the service sector. To the extent they have, many are part-time and temporary and offer poverty-level wages. Many of the low-wage call centres that have located in the city over the past 15 years have closed or are shedding jobs, moving to take advantage of even more exploited labour in Asia and eastern Europe.

Large areas of former industrial sites closed during the 1970s and 1980s remain undeveloped. This is especially so in the east end of Glasgow, which has benefited less from Britain’s decade-long property boom and its attendant building activity than other parts of the city.

Heavy industry was once especially dominant. A couple of large retail parks today provide the main concentrations of employment within the constituency. One of these is the Parkhead Forge shopping centre, named after the site of what was once one of the largest metal works in Britain. Production at the forge was wound down for more than a decade with the complicity of the trade unions and Labour governments, until the works closed in 1975.

Several small community and health centres have been built, and there are a large number of recently built flats and houses, many of which are rented out by housing associations. There is a new college and a huge new shopping mall beside Easterhouse.

The constituency will host several events at the 2014 Commonwealth Games being held in Glasgow. A national indoor sports arena and velodrome complex is planned for the Parkhead area of the constituency, as well as an athletes’ village with 1,500 houses and apartments. But despite the fortune that the city’s building firms and service industries hope to make, only 300 units are scheduled to be turned into social housing after the games.

The area is also part of a £1.6 billion redevelopment project called the Clyde Gateway. This publicly and privately funded initiative aims to build 10,000 new housing units and 400,000 square metres of commercial property over two decades.

However, the scheme was initiated under conditions of a speculative boom in domestic and commercial property development, which is now coming to an end, casting uncertainty over whether the plans will be carried out.

In any case, such schemes cannot overcome decades of urban decline and the generalised assault on working class living standards, a process that can only intensify as the full implications of the global credit crunch become evident.

What does David Davis stand for? (Part 2)

JamieSW — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:52:56 +0000

This is the second of a two-part article examining the political history of Conservative MP David Davis, who resigned his parliamentary seat in protest at Labour’s terror legislation enabling 42 days’ detention without trial. Part one can be viewed here.

In concluding his speech on the campaign to abolish the National Dock Labour Scheme, the former director of Britain’s National Association of Port Employers, Nicholas Finney, explains:

“We knew that confrontation would be inevitable and when at last the government announced on the 5th April 1989 that they were going to repeal the dock labour scheme we knew we had won a famous victory. What we then had to do was put our plan of action into operation. We set out to achieve reform as fast as possible using a £35,000 redundancy payment provided by the government in its repeal bill, to break the strike and to shed labour. Under UK labour law you can actually dismiss workers lawfully providing you are not selective. If all workers are on strike you can say ‘either you come back to work or you are sacked.’ We were accused of ‘gangster tactics.’ Nevertheless, that was the threat and it certainly had a major effect on breaking the strike, because of the potential loss to the dockers of their £35,000 sterling redundancy payment.”

He then cites the accomplishments made after just one year:

“We had 9,221 dockers on April 5th 1989. In October 1990, there are less than 4,000 dockers left and many ports where there are no ex registered dockers at all. The restructuring of the labour force has been complete.”

He boasted that “We” had removed “all national agreements…all port agreements…all industry Conciliation and Arbitration procedures…developed entirely new work patterns, totally flexible shift patterns” and “introduced part time working/contracting out.”

“But,” he concludes, “I think the greatest of our achievements (and this is an achievement for the company as a whole) is that we destroyed for the foreseeable future the power of trade unions to hold the country to ransom by calling a national dock strike, which is so wrong for any democratically elected government. I think these achievements are worth learning from.”

There is not a word uttered by Finney from which Davis could legitimately attempt to distance himself. Whether he was one of the three MPs cited by Finney or not, he acted as “an influential voice in parliament” and as a member of the “influential political body,” the Centre for Policy Studies, to help wage the propaganda war against the dockers preceding the abolition of the National Docks Labour Scheme.

How David Davis wanted to criminalise strikes

David Davis next ventured into print for the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) in November 1989, with a pamphlet that went even further than his plans for the docks. Advocating a major assault on the democratic rights of working people, his objective was nothing less than to outlaw strikes altogether in vast areas of the British economy.

The CPS pamphlet, “The Power of the Pendulum” is subtitled, “Reducing strikes by ‘final offer’ arbitration.” In it, Davis writes of the “rumblings” that the government might face from a series of strikes in a “summer of discontent,” which were “symptoms of a dangerous factor in industrial relations—the great difficulty of reforming the state sector unions.”

By “reform,” Davis means preventing strikes. He complains that while strike activity was at its lowest level for 50 years in the private sector, public sector strikes had not declined to the same degree.

The need for “reform” was not mediated by privatisation, he argued, because the recently privatised companies still often enjoyed a large or monopolist position.

Between them, the “combined state sector and recently privatised monopolies…can effectively bring the country to a halt. They can impose vast losses on other people and other businesses. They employ six or seven million people, about a quarter of all employees; and for all these reasons their continued productivity is a proper cause of government concern.”

Davis’s solution is to make strikes illegal throughout this entire sector, while bringing in a system of compulsory arbitration. He favours what is termed “pendulum” arbitration. As opposed to conventional arbitration, where the arbiter decides on pay and conditions based on a consideration of the positions of management and unions—and usually decides a settlement somewhere in the middle ground, Davis wanted a decision backing either one or the other position. If they faced the “pendulum” swinging against them, he believed this would force the unions to make more “moderate” demands.

Davis makes clear that his call to illegalise strikes goes much further than legislation to prohibit strikes in what are usually described as essential services—a demand that has often been raised by the political right.

He writes, “It has been suggested, both in Parliament and outside, that essential services are the proper area for restriction of the strike weapon…. This paper addresses the issue from a slightly different angle, that of monopoly industries.”

Listing the scope of his proposal, he continues, “Water, obviously, qualifies as an essential service which is in effect a monopoly. So does the National Health Service. But what of gas, electricity, telephones and the postal service?... [T]his paper’s policy proposals are aimed at all monopoly suppliers, not just state sector or ‘essential services.’ ”

Davis rejects the right to strike

Civil liberties are often represented as individual rights that are inalienable to the citizen. But for working people, faced with the power of major corporations and the state, the preservation of individual democratic and civil liberties has always been bound up with the right to organise collectively in furtherance of common social and political interests.

The right to a decent standard of living meant challenging the tyranny of the owners of capital. It meant the right to organise in trade unions, to collectively bargain and to withdraw labour, if necessary through strike action. This in turn meant preventing not only the individual worker being victimised, but also the collective union body from being subject to attack by the employers or the state.

On the political front, the struggle for the right to vote led inexorably to the struggle to break the monopoly of the parties of big business. This meant, of necessity, to establish and fund a party that would represent working people.

This is the only way that civil liberties can be properly understood. But as far as Davis is concerned, these collective rights do not properly exist and can be done away with.

Davis always writes of the “right to strike” in quotation marks, arguing that “British law does not explicitly recognise a ‘right to strike.’ ”

Instead, he acknowledges only a “combination of immunities in civil and criminal law” that “render strikes a viable tactic for trade unions and workers under certain conditions” [emphasis added].

After briefly describing how in 1906 trade unions secured freedom from liability for losses occurred during strikes, he states that because of the damage they can inflict in monopolistic sectors this freedom from prosecution for liability should no longer hold.

He believes this should be the case not only regarding official strike action, but also when the union does not actively prevent unofficial wildcat action by effectively policing its members. Any no-strike legislation, he insists, “must be able to deal with this sort of difficulty: able to deter guerrilla action which is apparently (and often only apparently) leaderless…. We should recognise that a trade union is its membership. Therefore if it has the majority of the membership of the bargaining unit involved, and that bargaining unit takes disruptive action, then in the absence of effective action to put the matter right the union is guilty of a breach.”

He concludes, “Any union that breaks this constraint should face sequestration of its assets.”

To make the legislation even more far-reaching, he proposes that prosecutions “should recognise who is the real victim of such action; and allow customers of the service or industry to initiate the action for sequestration of assets.”

Thus, Davis wanted a situation in which any Tory party activist could initiate legal proceedings against a union taking strike action, paralysing or even bankrupting them.

David Davis—then and now

Davis and his defenders might argue that he no longer calls for these measures and, like the rest of the Tory Party, has suffered an acute attack of niceness. In reality, he does not make these issues his central concern because—as he argues in his only other CPS pamphlet, “Modern Conservatism,” written in 2005—the Tories have successfully dealt with “overweening union power.”

That is why he continues to hail Margaret Thatcher for having secured “our freedom from the threat of the Soviet Union” and “from socialism at home.”

Even in 1989, he was able to cite as examples that should be emulated the “single-union ‘no strike’ agreements,” and the industrial relations pursued by Japanese companies investing in Britain—which were signed with the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbers Union and Amalgamated Engineering Union, now part of Unite. He then noted that “more surprisingly, the GMB, TGWU and ISTC are also signatories to no-strike pendulum arbitration deals.”

Since 1989, the phenomenon of no-strike deals has proved to be only one manifestation of the transformation of the trade unions into an adjunct of corporate management. The imposition of no-strike legislation was not necessary, because trade unions hardly ever called a strike, ingratiating themselves with the employers during year after year of record low levels of industrial action.

Nevertheless, should the trade union bureaucracy prove unable to prevent an eruption of militant activity as a result of today’s worsening recession, Davis and the Tories, together with Labour, would not hesitate to impose the harshest sanctions they deem necessary. Even more likely, they will demand measures targeting anyone who leads an unofficial action outside the control of the trade unions.

It is not David Davis who has moved to the left, but the Labour “left” and erstwhile liberal milieu that have moved inexorably to the right. They have not met Davis on the political middle ground, or recruited him to the cause of civil liberties. Rather, they have ceded any claim to defend the basic democratic rights and essential social interests of the working class to the Tory party’s big business agenda. In the process, they have abandoned even the pretence of an independent political existence or purpose.

What does David Davis MP really stand for? (Part 1)

JamieSW — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:59:44 +0000

This is the first of a two-part article examining the political history of Conservative MP David Davis, who resigned his parliamentary seat in protest at Labour’s terror legislation enabling 42 days’ detention without trial. Part two will be published tomorrow.

Veteran Labour “left” Tony Benn, Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews, Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty and a plethora of liberal journalists from the Guardian and the Independent all hailed David Davis for leading a campaign in defence of civil liberties after his resignation triggered a by-election in Haltemprice and Howden.

The Socialist Equality Party stood Chris Talbot against this attempt to corral hostility to the Labour government behind Davis, advocating an independent socialist perspective to defend democratic rights. On the day of the vote, we explained, “The end product of allowing Davis to be identified as the leader of a supposedly non-partisan movement in defence of civil liberties is to maintain the exclusion of the working class from political life. At the very point where the necessity of breaking with Labour is becoming clear to millions of people, and when the most thoughtful layers are looking for a political alternative, workers are urged to either remain loyal to Labour despite everything or to back the Tories.”

Just what it means to lend credence to Davis’s pretensions to be a civil libertarian, and what the working class can expect from any government of which he is a part, is illustrated by his own writings.

Davis is hardly prolific when it comes to setting pen to paper. However, in the late 1980s, he did publish two pamphlets for the right-wing Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) that refute any and all claims he and his newfound allies might now make for him to be a guardian of democratic rights. They make clear that as far as working people were concerned, Davis’s aim was to deprive them of any possibility of mounting an independent defence of jobs, wages and conditions.

In the name of “allowing management to manage,” he sought to both utilise and extend the draconian anti-union laws enacted by his party leader and political idol Margaret Thatcher in order to outlaw strikes and bust any unions that defied the Tories’ sweeping privatisation programme and the “rationalisation” of industry and public services, at the expense of thousands of jobs.

As someone representing a constituency adjoining the seaport of Hull, Davis centred his attention initially on plans to deregulate Britain’s docks.

In 1988, the then MP for Boothferry, largely merged into Haltemprice and Howden in 1996, published a pamphlet for the CPS, entitled, “Clear the Decks: Abolish the National Dock Labour Scheme.”

The National Dock Labour Scheme (NDLS) was first introduced by the Labour government in 1947, in response to the rank-and-file wildcat dock strike of 1945. The strike was opposed by the Transport and General Workers Union (TGWU), and the government used troops to keep the ports open. It ended after six weeks when the striking dockers accepted an assurance from the TGWU leaders that they would negotiate a “Dockers’ Charter” with the government.

The NDLS promised an end to casual labour by giving dockers the legal right to minimum work, holidays, sick pay and pensions. It was administered by a National Dock Labour Board, made up of equal representation from unions and management, and also gave the unions a veto over dismissals and control over recruitment.

Registered dockers who were laid off by any of the 150 firms bound by the scheme had to be taken on by another firm or be paid compensation. By the time of Davis’s pamphlet, employers at the 60 British ports were all covered by the scheme.

Davis wanted an end to this situation. Above all, he sought the destruction of dual union-management control, the guaranteed employment rights for Registered Dock Workers (RDW) and other protections. He denounced these measures as “restrictive practices.”

The preamble in his pamphlet declared, “This paper demonstrates how unjust and ludicrous existing legislation is. If Britain is to seize fully the economic opportunities which will be offered by the Single European Act after 1992, the Dock Labour Scheme must be abolished. Legislation must be brought forward to end the Scheme; and steps be taken by the Government to secure the profitable expansion of Britain’s ports industry in order to meet the demands of a single European Market with 320 million consumers.”

Davis complains that a docker fired by an employer could not then be prevented from working elsewhere in the industry without the agreement of the Local Board. He cites as an extreme case one worker who was convicted of “smuggling” but continued to work on the docks. He lists various “abuses” such as “bobbing or welting”—setting too high a figure for workers needed for a particular job so some “bob-off” home—and “Ghosting”—enforcing a non-registered dockworker carrying out work on the docks to be monitored by an RDW.

All of this is used to portray the registered dockers as a group of corrupt time-wasters, who should be dealt with for the benefit of everyone else. What he actually wanted was to impose massive job cuts and greater levels of exploitation and thereby secure bigger profits for his corporate friends.

Strike-breaking and union-busting

One passage is revealing in that it explains how Davis saw the attack on the dockers as a continuation of the destruction of Britain’s mining industry, after the defeat of the 1984-1985 miners’ strike. He states, “Another difficulty which arises from the Scheme is that the port employers can be powerless to prevent political strikes.”

He gives as his example a July 9 strike in 1984 at Immingham that escalated to a national strike, when the British Steel Corporation used non-registered dockers to unload iron ore. “In light of the miners strike,” he writes, “it was important for British Steel that the work should continue.”

The national strike was to continue until July 21. Davis was incensed, as this was a rare example of an industrial action breaking the spirit, if not the letter, of Tory anti-union laws prohibiting so-called secondary action: “This example shows how the TGWU is able to manipulate the Scheme for its own political purposes, in this case giving support to the miners.”

Apart from this incident, the TGWU, like the rest of Britain’s unions, never did challenge the anti-union laws and bring out their members in solidarity with the striking miners—who were isolated and defeated. In contrast, Davis was prepared to do whatever was necessary to defeat both the miners and the dockers, using the legal powers of sequestration against the TGWU to possibly bankrupt and break the union that earlier had been employed against the National Union of Mineworkers.

Davis anticipated that the TGWU would call a strike should the government determine to abolish the NDLS. He stressed that the combined effect of the anti-union laws and the propaganda campaign he played a part in would isolate the dockers, noting that if a strike were to involve non-scheme ports then it would be illegal:

“If the TGWU is to have immunity from civil actions for damages resulting from a dock strike, it would have to be recognised by the law as a ‘trade dispute’...if the eventual decision went against the TGWU it would risk a large fine and the possible sequestration of all its assets if it persisted with a strike.”

He continues,

“The legislation, however, on trade unions and industrial disputes brought in by this Government, has laid down that a sympathy strike, by definition, cannot be ‘in contemplation, or furtherance of a trade dispute.’ Therefore if the non-Scheme workers were called out on strike in sympathy with the Scheme port RDWs, the employers in the non-Scheme ports would be able to obtain injunctions against the trade unions involved and damages for any losses incurred.”

The National Dock Labour Scheme was finally abolished in 1989, the year after the publication of Davis’s pamphlet.

A revealing speech

The dockers came out on strike in July of that year, but this was defeated without the need to implement Davis’s full agenda.

However, a speech delivered in Australia in 1990 by the former director of Britain’s National Association of Port Employers, Nicholas Finney OBE, vividly describes the nature of the campaign waged against the dockers in which Davis played such a prominent role.

Finney describes how the port employers prepared for the abolishing of the Scheme:

“When the confrontation came, a number of important factors made a difference to the outcome…

“We held two major conferences before we were sure the government was actually ready and these conferences were to try to persuade employers to plan in advance how they would go about setting new working patterns, how they would set about breaking down the demarcation lines, how they would go about setting new pay agreements, new manning levels, etc. Fundamentally and long before the government repealed the scheme, we took the decision that the employers were going to abandon all national and port pay bargaining.

“The campaign was conducted through parliament by using every possible parliamentary device. Early day motions, adjournment debates, etc. We had three MPs who really acted as our voice in Parliament. They did all the hard work, they talked to the other MPs, they introduced briefing materials into the House of Commons, and we made sure that they were always well supplied with appropriate material.

“We talked to influential political bodies (like your own) such as the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Centre for Policy Studies, the No 10 Policy Unit, the Aims of Industry. We made sure that those people who really had influence in government were fully committed and would themselves talk to a wide range of people. It was too serious an issue to just leave to transport or employment ministers. We knew that it would be a Cabinet decision; we knew we had to get people like the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Foreign Secretary on our side. So we used every political body which had influence. We also used the press and media. We constantly searched out and supplied the media with anti-docker stories, headlines such as ‘welcome return even if the man’s a thief’ or ‘ghosts who keep vanishing’; ‘twenty things you never knew about fiddling dockers,’ ‘they can’t be fired.’ These headlines were all designed to make it easier for the dockers to be isolated. By the time government acted every national newspaper at one time or another had published an editorial calling for the government to end the dock labour scheme.

“We had a Times columnist write headlines like ‘dock ages on the docks,’ ‘queer seaside customs,’ ‘legalised extortion racket,’ ‘time to end it,’ ‘block those dock rip offs.’ We also encouraged radio and television to do documentary programmes on the docks scandal.

“We commissioned economic studies. One particularly important economic study (and perhaps it is worth thinking of using in the Australian scenario) was to try and prove that by getting rid of the dock labour scheme, you actually create many more jobs than you lose. Getting rid of the restrictions on the waterfront meant a whole new world in ‘investment opportunity.’ We sought two benefits from this approach. One, to make it much more difficult for the Labour Party and for the unions to argue against repeal, and secondly to make sure we could drive a wedge home to isolate dockers and describe them as a selfish, small group of workers who were actually stopping people from gaining jobs in unemployment black spots which frequently were in under-developed city dock areas which had been derelict for many years.”

To be continued

'My son was killed by a knife but he was failed by the system'

JamieSW — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 13:15:10 +0000

Leon Francis was just 24 years old when he was fatally stabbed in December last year. He was a bright young man, adored by his family and treasured by his friends. Yet life had not been easy for Leon. He was excluded from his Birmingham school aged 15, and without proper help he drifted into crime and then a prison sentence. On release, Leon was determined to turn his life around and plan a future away from crime.

But every effort Leon made to do this was met with failure or contempt by the very bodies that were supposed to help him. Following Leon’s death some of the press chose to demonise him. This week Jackie Ranger, Leon’s mother, speaks to Socialist Worker to set the story straight.

My eldest child Leon was only 24 when he was stabbed to death in December last year. Our family and friends are still devastated at his untimely death, but we are campaigning for justice for Leon, and to make sure that his name is not discredited.

We want him to be remembered for the person he was. Sadly Leon’s story is indicative of the destructive paths that some of our young people find themselves trapped on.

My son was no angel. He made some mistakes throughout his short life, but it is important to know that 2007 had been a year of reflection and transition for him.

He realised that he had to change and he kept trying to turn his life around right until the day that he died.

Leon brought joy and laughter throughout his life and was a popular young man with a potentially bright future ahead of him.

He was extremely loyal to his family and friends and greatly valued his close relationships. His troubles began when he was permanently excluded from school aged 15. Sadly it was a downward spiral from there.

Exclusion

Inadequate post exclusion support contributed to the choices that Leon made. He blindly entered a life of crime and went to prison for five years for attempted armed robbery.

To this day I question if Leon really understood the seriousness of the offence that he committed and the consequences it would have on his life – he was after all still a child at the time.

Leon’s imprisonment was an extremely traumatic period for all his family, but more so for Leon himself.

He often tried to mask the pain of the injustice he felt at being excluded from school, and subsequently excluded from society.

As a parent it was important that I did not allow him to minimise his responsibility for what he had done, while acknowledging the way social factors contributed to his predicament.

Leon himself understood he had done wrong and was remorseful. During his sentence Leon was transferred between prisons more than 15 times.

He was also placed in some difficult situations – a poignant and most insensitive ordeal was being jailed on the same wing as the man who killed his fiancée’s brother.

Nonetheless, Leon remained extremely resilient, striving to remain positive about the future.

While incarcerated he gained some qualifications and was determined to lead a more productive life after his release in 2006.

Due to the nature of his offence, and the political climate around “gangs” at the time, Leon was released with extremely strict conditions about where he could go and what he could do which impacted on his human rights.

In April 2007 he was wounded after being shot in the head while in his “exclusion zone”.

He reluctantly offered the police information about the incident and was assured he would be treated like a victim, but instead he was sent back to prison.

This led to an irretrievable loss of trust in the police. When he was released again in August 2007, Leon fought to maintain his focus of rehabilitation.

He was on the verge of beginning a new life outside Birmingham and had secured a place on a BTEC music technology course.

Leon was excited about his fiancée’s pregnancy and the thought of becoming a father. He was looking forward to 2008 with an increasing sense of maturity – he had everything to live for!

However he became increasingly concerned that his efforts appeared not to be taken seriously by those responsible for assisting his rehabilitation.

He was sick of the differential treatment and outcomes for people of African heritage in education and the criminal justice system.

A series of incidents in October last year meant Leon was in breach of his residency conditions, and as a result he went on the run.

His family urged him to give himself up, but Leon was adamant that he would never go back to prison.

On 27 December 2007 Leon was fatally stabbed.

Quite rightly there is national uproar when the victims of knife crime are innocent. However, when the victim is involved in a gang or caught up in violence it is a different story.

The press demonises them, and their families are further victimised, humiliated and treated with disrespect.

There is no opportunity to present an accurate picture of their loved one.

Yet my pain is no less than the mothers of “innocent” victims. My son is also dead. My family have the same feelings of grief, sorrow, regret and frustration that the family of all other victims share.

Leon was also somebody’s son, somebody’s fiancé, somebody’s father, somebody’s brother and somebody’s friend.

He was my child and I love him and miss him dearly. He was my friend, my confidant, and my heartbeat.

Statistics about exclusions, violence and black deaths belie human tragedies, and Leon is yet another tragic victim that can all too easily be forgotten.

However, both his life and his death emphasise the drastic and urgent need for more preventative, innovative and timely measures to be developed for all young people who have been excluded from school or who are subject to anti-social behaviour measures.

Myths

We should not fall for the myths of poor parenting, absent fathers, family breakdown or demonise our youth like the media often does.

Instead we must try to understand the complex reality of young people’s struggles and provide them with proactive support and an earned second chance. That is their right!

I want to reach out to all the families, and especially the mothers, who have lost someone to gun, gang or knife crime – particularly those who have been made to feel ashamed that their child was involved in a gang, and it is said that they only ever did terrible things.

Now our children are dead, and there is little sensitivity towards us. We have to stop demonising people and look behind the myths that stop us from acting to change things.

Leon left us with a beacon of hope, his beautiful daughter Princess who was born five months after his death. She symbolises life, youth, opportunity, hope and light.

Break with the US war drive

Ellie Keen — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 23:10:58 +0000

This autumn marks the seventh anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan, by British and US troops, and next March will be the sixth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

Both wars have now lasted longer than all theatres of operation of World War II. The total death toll in Iraq hovers at around three quarters of a million, with two million people living in internal exile, and 2.5 million in external exile, mainly in Syria and Jordan.

The total death toll in Afghanistan is not known but runs into many thousands, and both wars have been accompanied by an abuse of international law on a grand scale, through the use of illegal imprisonment, extraordinary rendition, deception of allied governments, and of course the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, where the US president has personally intervened to enable water boarding torture to continue.

Britain has been the most loyal cheerleader for the US in both these countries, and therefore makes us culpable in the disasters that have followed. The total of the war, so far as Britain is concerned, runs into £1 billion according to answers to parliamentary questions I have asked.

The past six years have also seen a huge increase in concerns about international politics and peace, and this led to the first ever global demonstration for peace in 2003 and continuing pressure on the British and US governments.

Tony Blair lost office as a result of the war, and George Bush leaves in disgrace in a few months time. That pressure for peace in the US, where over 4,000 families are grieving for their lost sons and daughters in Iraq, forced Congress to vote for the immediate withdrawal of all US troops, a decision subsequently vetoed by President Bush. This pressure also forced both Democrat candidates Clinton and Obama to declare opposition to the war, and support for a withdrawal from Iraq strategy. This strategy, whilst on the face of it highly commendable, is deeply flawed by the Bush administration plan to withdraw the troops but leave behind a large number of virtually sovereign US bases. The US press are touting the figure of 50, which would undermine any claims of Iraqi independence.

Clinton and Obama have both said the real war is in Afghanistan and indeed the pressure from the military establishments on both sides of the Atlantic are for some kind of reduction in direct military involvement in Iraq, in order to shift the emphasis eastwards, where they believe the real war is taking place.

Afghanistan has shown that the opposition is based on a search for national identity, and whilst the Taliban, who are a far from unified force, are leading the battle, there is clearly a political agenda that the occupying powers must contend with. The Taliban tactics have now switched to guerrilla war. The number of NATO forces are continually increasing, and the death roll rising. The fighting has spilt over into Pakistan, and the Pakistan army has shown itself to be unwilling to intervene in any conflict in the Pashtun areas of the borderlands with Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, back in London, our own Ministry of Defence talks grandly of a 30 year strategy. These two wars have cost billions, taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and have made the world more dangerous and less secure. The only people who have profited to date have been the arms manufacturers and supply companies, as well as the burgeoning industry of private security firms that are acting more like mercenaries every day.

The real long term winners are the oil companies, who were expelled from Iraq more than three decades ago, and are now proposing to re-enter and cream off the profits of record high oil prices at the expense of the Iraqi people.

The millions who opposed the war in 2003 still feel angry, misled and unrepresented by the British political system. The Labour Party has been the most damaged by the war in Iraq. It is past time that the government learned the lesson and set a specific and absolute timetable to withdraw from both countries, with a promotion of politics rather than mass destruction as a way forward for peoples in both countries.

Crime and punishment in the neoliberal twilight

JamieSW — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 19:10:11 +0000

Last year it was gun crime, this year it is knife crime, and next year it will be blunt object crime. There is hardly a day that passes without a headline about another young man who has been stabbed, usually in south London. And this is not to be dismissed. It is a serious issue. Regardless of the overall statistics, which show violent crime to be quite low compared to, say, the early 1990s, the problem is concentrated in a number of run-down working class areas and the risk is experienced in an elevated way there. And while it is true that people generally overestimate their own chances of being subject to violent crime, an artefact of a politically-driven campaign to frighten and demoralise people, in some areas and for some population groups the risk is very real. Yet, to have the issue serialised as a tabloid shriek-fest is possibly the least appropriate way to address the problem. Joan Smith pointed out the other day that serious and ongoing violent crime against women isn’t receiving this treatment (apparently she has forgotten that misogynistic violence is only a media topic if Muslims are involved). Endemic violence against children by authority figures is also generally ignored.

Nonetheless, this being the topic du jour, and quite a serious one, what is the cause of it? One hears from pundits that young black men in particular are prone to violence because they exist in a survivalist subculture that values macho behaviour and endorses violence (blame Fifty Cent again). One also hears that they often come from ‘broken homes’ (those ‘deadbeat dads’ and ‘absent black fathers’) and thus don’t form a strong identification with social norms. Various associated explanations – drugs, ‘gang culture’ etc – are posited with equal gravity. I simply take it as obvious that these kinds of explanations, more often than not, are about scapegoating population groups deemed in the ruling culture to be somehow ‘alien’ and a problem in and of themselves. Moreover, these explanations are incoherent. There are those who have listened to the So Solid Crew without blasting someone’s head off. There are those who have bought and even sold drugs without knifing someone to death. And some people from single parent families are perfectly average human beings who don’t carry knives with them. Again, the fact that these explanations neither explain nor cohere is not strictly relevant, since their purpose is to create an overriding impression of menace and disorder. A problem whose boundaries are not defined by race is given a racist twist in such analyses. It is the ‘New Barbarism’ thesis transplanted into New Cross and Stockwell. Even where it isn’t explicitly racist, it is doggedly reactionary, as when commentators recycle Blair’s old speeches on ‘respect’ and its putative breakdown. Can’t we just go back to the 1930s, when everyone knew their place and the kids could get a clip round the ear from a disgruntled bobby if they misbehaved?

The scholarly research points to alternative conclusions, with radical policy implications. For example, one recent study by Fajnzylber et al on the causes of violent crime took a trans-national analysis of various trends and found one outstanding factor: income inequality raises violent crime rates dramatically. This is backed up by earlier research. Related factors such as educational inequality, and ‘ethnic polarisation’ (racism in the society) contribute as well, while the rate of such crimes fluctuates with the economic cycle (much of violent crime being property-related). The dry statistics point to a reality that is palpable for anyone who lives in London, where all of these social ills co-exist, and where inequality of all kinds is glaringly apparent. It is not so surprising that there are a relatively small number of extremely damaged individuals who, as Yuri Prasad argues, “see little value in human life – neither theirs, nor anyone else’s”.

What about drugs? Andrew Resignato at Florida State University has summed up a wealth of literature on this topic, and concludes that there is in fact scarce data to support the thesis of a positive correlation between drug use and violent crime. On the contrary, there is a much stronger correlation between the enforcement of drug laws and violent crime. Drug users who do have to support the cost of their habit (inflated by dint of its control by criminal cartels) through crime tend to opt for non-violent means. On the other hand, the more investment in policing to control the sumptuary habits of the poor, the more likely there is to be violent crime. This is unsurprising. Create an illicit capitalist economy in the hands of extra-legal cartels embroiled in competition with one another, with that competition delegated down to those lowest in the hierarchy, and you get a great deal of violence in the process. I strongly suspect that states which impose drug laws are well aware of this, and that their function is to facilitate a strongly interventionist police force with ready-made pretexts for detaining and imprisoning people considered dysfunctional to the society’s requirements. It keeps ‘problem’ populations, generally the urban poor, under tight surveillance. It criminalises them before they have necessarily even broken the law.

If talking tough and ratcheting up repression, with heavily policed schools and widely used stop-and-search applied in a racist fashion, worked, then American cities would be the safest in the world. Yet this is exactly what New Labour, and the Tories after them, will continue to do. Can we even take them seriously when they claim to want to deal with the problem? Is it not obvious that the periodic episodes of hysteria on what are chronic problems are opportunistic attempts to expand the state’s repressive capacities? Isn’t this just what we have seen in other fields, such as ‘anti-terror’ legislation, whose dystopian precepts were being driven through parliament by New Labour well before 9/11 or 7/7? We now have a criminal justice system with an extraordinary scope for control, with such disgraceful policies as curfews and ASBOs, in which non-criminal behaviour becomes the subject of sanction. Given that crime rates are not soaring, given that the risks that people face of encountering violence have not substantially altered, the most likely explanation is that as the neoliberal era enters its most decadent phase, states are attempting to manage the adverse social by-products of the descent with an iron fist.

And next year, when they’ve got round to blunt object crime, the newspapers and politicians will pretend that it’s all new again, that we’ve never been here before, and that whatever repression is in place isn’t enough.

Union Militancy and New Labour

JamieSW — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 22:28:27 +0000

This week’s big two-day public sector strikes (detailed coverage with pics and on-scene reports here) is to be followed up by further local actions by PCS workers. There are picket lines by the Coastguard and Home Office employees across the country today. A nationwide three-day strike is now planned for Autumn. Passport workers in Northern Ireland have just voted for strike action as well. Employers are predictably talking down the success of the strike, saying only 100,000 turned out, but they protest too much. As Socialist Worker points out, the BBC regional correspondent reported 70,000 on strike in Yorkshire and Humberside alone.

Much as one may wish that strike actions were not so brief and the period between them so long, there is evidently something bigger percolating away here. The rate at which public sector workers are opting to fight the government is not just a manifestation of reviving industrial militancy in the most unionised sectors of the economy. It is poison for the government’s electoral chances, who are now positioning themselves as the class enemy of some of their key constituents. Yet New Labour is so wedded to this policy that it is trying to defend a heartland Glasgow seat with a mountainous but threatened majority with a candidate who will not say a single word of criticism about the policy, preferring to rely on contrived prolier-than-thou credentials. Clearly, the SNP would have to fight a serious battle to take the seat, but the difficulty for New Labour is that its voters won’t turn out to match their standing in the polls. The union leadership is evidently still hoping to force a change of policy with this rank-and-file pressure as an added bargaining lever. They know the governing party is short of cash and will be tapping them for it, just as surely as they know they will provide it unless the members force a decisive break with Labour. Despite the calamitous state of would-be alternatives for the time being, the scale of the government’s attack on workers is likely to intensify moves in that direction. Absent a viable national alternative, funding may well tend to be distributed in a more fragmented fashion with some even going to the Liberals (yech, can you imagine?).

The opposition, despite its venomous hostility to trade unions, is keeping relatively quiet about this. In fact, it is bigging itself up as the party of the poor. Not only that, but when David Cameron made his lousy statement about absentee black fathers, he got the backing of a selection of ‘community leaders’ (how I hate that phrase and everything it implies), who said that the Tories were more progressive on social investment than Labour. This probably doesn’t forebode an upsurge of working class conservatism as in 1979. After all, the Tories are concealing their agenda, not aggressively propounding it as the way forward. But with every passing day and every new action by the government, which has never seen a bungled attempt at right-wing ‘populism’ that it didn’t like, it becomes more and more obvious that Labour voters are going to stay at home in droves, repelled by the government and unafraid of the Tories. New Labour is about to discover the true meaning of the phrase ‘things can only get better’.

The crisis fuels discontent

JamieSW — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:12:53 +0000

Where did it all go wrong for Gordon Brown? Was it his failure to call a general election last October? Was it the attempt to impose a pay freeze? Was it the vote in parliament to extend detention without trial to 42 days? Just one year into Brown’s premiership a recent Gallup poll showed Labour’s popularity at its lowest ebb of support since Gallup first asked people to declare their voting intention in 1943. The government is in a crisis that appears out of control and the central issue that is derailing Brown is the economic crisis.

This crisis is not confined to the boardrooms of big companies and the financial markets. This is a crisis that affects every single household in Britain. Rocketing price increases have become the topic of conversation on every bus, in every workplace and college. When basic foods go up by 12 or 14 percent everyone but the very rich feels it. One Daily Mirror front page stated: “Cost of living up 11.6 percent… Mirror index shock increase: food up 15 percent; transport up 16 percent; utilities up 13 percent.”

The housing market, which once fuelled the boom, is now helping to precipitate the crisis. Repossessions have doubled in the last year, house prices are falling but at the same time people’s mortgage payments are actually rising as fixed payment deals expire and interest rates rise. The Guardian financial pages reported that there has been a 60 percent fall in people buying new build houses in the last year.

Rising fuel, food and transport prices are causing misery for millions. But how has the government got into this mess? Only a few years ago Brown was boasting that his economic policies had got rid of the boom and slump cycle.

This is not an economic crisis confined to Britain: it is a world economic crisis creating instability across the globe. Capitalist crisis links the teaching assistant in Bradford who can’t pay her gas bill with the woman who joins food riots in Senegal. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation states that the world’s poorest countries could see their annual food import basket cost four times as much as it did in 2000. According to the World Bank, food riots have already hit more than 30 countries in the past year.

There have been major strikes and protests across the world, including South Korea, Egypt, Spain and France. Last year right wing ideologue Nicolas Sarkozy won the French presidential election. He was being hailed as the new Margaret Thatcher, but one year later his plans to break the French unions and privatise industries lie in tatters as strikes and protests have shaken his government. The rejection of the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland is further evidence of increasing resistance to the political establishment and its neoliberal priorities.

This crisis and the resistance to it are not only creating a crisis of political legitimacy for mainstream parties but also creating the conditions in which many people begin to question the very nature of capitalism.

It is important to understand that Britain is not immune to this process. The struggle may not be as bitter and deep as some countries, but nonetheless it is growing and creating massive problems for the government. Many media pundits are already warning of a “summer of discontent”. The detonator for this panic was the victory of tanker drivers employed indirectly by Shell. This small group of workers organised a militant strike that forced the bosses to concede a 14 percent pay rise over two years. The strike showed the willingness of private sector workers both to join the pay revolt and to give solidarity, even if it meant breaking the law.

This victory is also being used as a benchmark for other workers. In fact, the Financial Times expressed the growing concern of bosses that so many inflation busting deals are part of two and three year deals linked to the Retail Price Index, which a year or two ago employers clearly believed was a safe bet to stay low. But it reported that four out of five deals over 4 percent were not linked to the RPI and so have been won by unions. “Mr Darling and John Hutton, the business secretary, argued last week that the Shell settlement was a one-off. But other recent deals include Drax Power, which in April agreed a 7 percent pay rise for 600 workers [plus a £1,500 lump sum], forming the second year of a two year deal. Babcock Engineering recently agreed a 7.6 per cent increase with 500 workers. Barclays has implemented a 5 per cent pay increase for 55,000 workers at the bank, as the first leg of a three year RPI-linked deal”.

This wage fight is continuing to escalate. As Socialist Review went to press half a million local government workers in Unison voted to strike over their pay. The action planned for July has the potential to intensify the wage fight, and unlike previous strikes this involves a Labour affiliated union. This will take place alongside action by other unions.

The PCS civil service workers’ union passed a motion that is likely to lead to a national ballot over pay and other issues in September. The NUT teachers’ union conference backed a ballot for further strikes as a follow up to the stunningly successful multi-union strikes on 24 April, which drew new layers of militant workers into the movement.

Pay cuts

The CWU postal conference supported a strike ballot over pensions, mail centre closures and defence of the post office network – and the leadership responded positively to calls for a mass demonstration at the Labour Party conference.

The fury over pay cuts – and the fact that those cuts are driven centrally by Gordon Brown – combines with a wider disillusion with Labour to produce an unprecedented questioning of the unions’ links with the party. At almost every conference the issue of whether (or at least to what extent) to continue supporting Labour was raised openly.

The firefighters’ FBU union broke from Labour in 2004 after the government had behaved so aggressively against the union during its national strike. At last year’s conference some delegates called for renewed affiliation to Labour. This time there were only a handful of votes against the decision to remain separate from the party.

The GMB union voted overwhelmingly to remove funding from up to 35 Labour MPs who had not measured up to a union assessment of their “value for money”. GMB leader Paul Kenny dryly remarked, “We’ve examined the records of MPs both at local level and national level and many are doing a fantastic job, but there are a number who seem at times to be embarrassed by their relationship with the union. We don’t want to embarrass them by giving them union money.”

Kenny also told the conference, “We are going to consider our affiliation levels to ensure they represent the realistic level of support within the union for the party.”

At the CWU, motions to disaffiliate from Labour or to democratise the political fund were defeated heavily. But this was largely because the leadership had supported an emergency motion which said that unless the government had sharply changed its policies towards privatisation and the running of Royal Mail by March 2009 “then the CWU membership will be balloted on whether they believe the union should fund the Labour Party at the next general election”.

Speaker after speaker (including several Labour members) spoke to underline that this was the party’s “last chance”. Setting this deadline defeated those who wanted an immediate change in the relationship with Labour. But it is now a ticking time bomb that could explode and cause serious damage to the party.

Even at Unison, where the leadership worked hard to prevent a discussion about Labour, the issue was forced on to the agenda. Towards the end of the conference the delegates have a chance to vote for motions they think should be shunted up the order paper. This year every region of the union decided that the priority was a motion on having a review of the union’s political fund and support for Labour. In the event it was defeated, but only very narrowly.

Earlier, Unison general secretary Dave Prentis had to declare that the pay deal in the NHS (which the union leadership had pushed) would have to be renegotiated if inflation continues to rise. He warned Brown, “It’s time for the government to raise our people up, or our people will bring Gordon down.”

The background to the conferences is a collapse in support for Labour among its core supporters and a widening sense of opposition to the system – challenging neoliberalism is now common currency among trade unionists. For example, the NUT and UCU conferences both agreed to campaign against military recruitment in schools and colleges, and the question of how best to build opposition to the fascist BNP was discussed at every conference.

The bitterness about Labour was underlined by an opinion poll commissioned by Unison just before its conference which showed Labour’s traditional supporters deserting the party in their droves. Almost half of those who have regularly voted Labour at past elections now say they are less likely to vote Labour than they were in 2005. In addition, 51 percent of the general public say they are less likely to vote Labour than they were at the last general election compared to 4 percent who say they are more likely.

Who could have believed that the man who replaced Tony Blair would have managed to drive Labour support down so far and so quickly, by his handling of the economic crisis? Bank of England governor Mervyn King made it clear that things are only going to get worse when he said, “Rising fuel, gas, electricity and food prices mean that average real take-home pay will stagnate this year. It will not be an easy time, and I know that some families will find it particularly difficult.” A new study by accountants Grant Thornton reported that official figures show that income inequality under Labour so far is already higher on average than it was under Thatcher.

One thing is certain. As with any economic crisis in history the government and bosses want workers to pay the price. This has sometimes been successful in the past. Attacks on conditions and financial hardship in times of crisis can have the effect of subduing class struggle. But such attacks can also lead to people questioning the system and fighting back. Such periods of instability polarise society, as we are seeing now. But polarisation does not necessarily mean that people move to the left. The election results for the BNP and the rise in anti-immigration sentiments are proof of this, and a warning. Polarisation is exactly what the word means – a move away from the centre of politics.

The government is on the rocks. Millions of workers want to see a serious battle to defend living standards, to take action for affordable housing, to halt the spread of privatisation and to defend secure jobs. What socialists do and how they react to events will make a difference. The left has already played a major role in shaping the pay revolt as it has developed. The anger felt by ordinary members in unions like the PCS, NUT and UCU found expression in the lead given from the unions’ leading bodies.

This in turn has increased the pressure on Labour affiliated unions like Unison to move. The left has won an argument over the idea of joint action and turned it into a reality. Socialists have to continue to place themselves at the centre of the moves for action and unity across the unions. That means pushing for joint action where we can and supporting initiatives like Public Services Not Private Profit, Organising for Fighting Unions and the National Shop Stewards Network that attempt to build unity between trade unionists nationally and in the localities.

The left also needs to be able to raise a political as well as an industrial response to the crisis. We need to popularise a set of demands that activists from different political backgrounds, or none, can rally round. And we have to continue to raise the urgent need for political alternatives to New Labour, no matter how difficult they are to construct. This year’s union conferences with the increasing attacks by New Labour make this project more important than ever.

Nothing is more important

JamieSW — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:03:38 +0000

There is a tangible shift occurring in British politics. Gone are the days of traditional class politics, when the working class voted en masse for Labour and the more privileged for the Conservatives. A new force is emerging, which will, if left unchecked, prove disastrous for both Labour and the left in general.

Magnus Marsdal’s article talks about the changing politics of Norway and finds comparisons with the rest of western Europe. It is a phenomenon that is also taking place in Britain, albeit a few years later than in some other countries.

The British National Party (BNP) was formed in 1982 out of an earlier split within the National Front and for many years it languished on the fringes of politics. In 1999 Nick Griffin became its leader and his more political and media savvy approach enabled the party to exploit rising racial tensions in Oldham, Burnley and Bradford in the summer of 2001. Since then, against a backdrop of rising Islamophobia, a growing eastern-European migrant workforce and New Labour’s fixation with Middle England, the party has risen steadily. It now has 55 councillors and last month secured a seat on the London Assembly.

And all this in a period of supposed economic success.

The BNP has long been dismissed as a cranky fascist party, made up of thugs, criminals and Nazis. While it is true that the leadership has its ideological roots in fascism, it is time we had a better explanation for the party’s rise and appeal.

Society in Britain, like much of the industrialised world, has become dislocated over the past few decades. Globalisation and the increasing dominance of international finance and corporations have shifted power far away from local communities. This, coupled with the loss of empire, Britain’s changing place in the world and even the possible break-up of the United Kingdom have all challenged the identity of many, particularly those towards the bottom of the economic ladder, who naturally are more concerned about change.

Politically, there has also been the growing divorce between the political parties and their electorates. The preoccupation with a small number of voters in a few key marginals has resulted in New Labour echoing the whims and prejudices of a mythical Middle England. Class has been removed as an economic and political category in Westminster discourse. Labour’s traditional voters feel ignored, taken for granted and even abandoned. At the same time, the Tories have for decades ceased to offer a real opposition in many traditional Labour areas, leaving a dangerous vacuum.

In 1968 US sociologist Don Warren described the emergence of the ‘middle American radical’ to explain the rise of right-wing presidential candidate George Wallace. He saw a radicalised group of voters, drawn largely from the skilled working class, who opposed the political and economic elites while simultaneously despising those who they regarded as undeserving poor. A white identity emerged that had no political articulation.

A similar phenomenon is occurring in today’s Britain. The Labour Party too often fails to articulate the concerns of large swathes of its traditional working class supporters. Over the past 20 years turnout has slumped in Labour heartlands. Suddenly, as the BNP has emerged as a political force, many are now turning out to vote for them. Towns like Stoke-on-Trent reflect this change. Only a few years ago Labour held every seat on the council. Today, it holds just 16 out of 60, with the BNP close behind with nine. The local ethnic minority population is comparatively small, suggesting that voters are flocking to the BNP for some far more fundamental reasons.

Nor is there much comfort for parties to the left of Labour. It is easy to blame New Labour for the rise of the BNP but few have questioned why the far-left parties fail to attract significant support from white working-class voters. If anything, the far-left vote has actually shrunk since 1997 and the occasional successes of Respect or the Greens have been based on specific ethnic minority communities or middle-class liberals.

Race is a prism through which many voters view their world but it is not the underlying issue. That is why immigration minister Liam Byrne’s attempts to quicken the introduction of the Australian points system will ultimately fail to deal with the political problem. He might hope to appease voters’ concerns over immigration but unfortunately he, like many others, is misunderstanding the rise of the BNP.

Britain might have been slower to see the emergence of a major far-right party than elsewhere but this could change very quickly. Next year’s European elections, contested under proportional representation, will give the BNP its greatest chance to break into the mainstream.

The rise of the BNP is not a passing phenomena. We must now debate new strategies for organisation and policy, counter- organise on the ground and deal with the material issues that lie behind its popular support. Nothing is more important for this movement.

Jon Cruddas is the Labour MP for Dagenham. Nick Lowles is editor of Searchlight magazine

Gordon Brown's tough talk won't stop knives

JamieSW — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 20:37:37 +0000

It seems that in the last week the entire political establishment has jumped on the issue of knife crime.

Gordon Brown used his monthly press conference on Monday of this week to announce his new get-tough approach. There are to be tough “community payback” schemes, tough plans to deal with “problem families”, and tough curfews for the under-16s.

But beneath all this robust language it is clear that none of our politicians have a clue as to how to reduce the number of young people carrying knifes, only the vague hope that by talking tough they can prevent their political rivals from outflanking them.

Brown’s community payback scheme is one such example.

Here those convicted of carrying, but not using, a knife will be forced to undertake up to 300 hours of work over 50 days.

“Communities… should have a role in deciding what they should do,” says Brown. “Cleaning up parks or scrubbing graffiti, and what time they should do it, such as cleaning the streets on Friday and Saturday night.”

The overwhelming majority of young people who carry knifes do so out of an acute sense of fear that unless they are armed, they may become the next victim of a stabbing. Some are scared for their lives every time they leave their house.

Does Brown really believe that people in such a situation will be deterred by this scheme?

Is it the case that the very small number of people who have become so alienated from the society that they see little value in human life – neither theirs, nor anyone else’s – will now think twice before reaching for a blade?

Surely even New Labour knows this is rubbish.

Programmes

Brown is attempting to lay the blame for knife crime at the feet of the families of the 110,000 children he claims have been found guilty of anti-social behaviour.

“I think all of us recognise that the first responsibility where a child is in trouble or in danger of getting into trouble rests with the parent,” he argues.

Now up to 20,000 of those families could face “parenting action” programmes, and even removal to residential accommodation for retraining.

Those that refuse the scheme could find themselves evicted from social housing and their children taken into care.

How making families homeless, turfing their belongings out in the street, and then sending their kids to a care home will make the situation better is anyone’s guess.

Nevertheless the idea does have a specific ideological purpose. It says social problems in our communities are the result of personal and family failure, rather than being connected to any wider concerns.

If knife crime is the product of families that are out of control, then there need be no discussion of other issues, like the levels of exclusion from schools, unemployment rates, crap jobs and lack of apprenticeships. There need not be any understanding about the way many working class young people feel completely undervalued and under siege.

Above all it means that the state can absolve itself from any responsibility for providing real remedies to the situation.

By accepting such a right wing agenda on crime, Brown has given credibility to David Cameron’s talk of a “broken society”.

Failed

He has allowed the Tories to suggest that some problems may not stem only from failed individuals but from a society whose values have failed – an idea that can masquerade as both left and right wing.

But we cannot afford to allow the right to dominate the debate over crime.

Many people rightly feel that anti-social behaviour and violence grow when the idea of community is undermined. This notion of community rests on the idea that we are not just atomised individuals, but people capable of collective action.

Struggles to improve our estates, build community centres and challenge the way our education system is developing as a test factory have the potential to unite people in ways that no mainstream politician seems capable of.

But the success of such campaigns is dependent upon rejecting the idea that young people are the problem and that a crackdown is the answer.

Saudis had ‘advance information’ on BAE case

Ellie Keen — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:11:15 +0000

THE Saudi governments seemed to have advance knowledge of the probability of Britain halting a bribery investigation before the official decision was taken, the former British ambassador to Riyadh revealed this week.

The disclosure appeared in evidence submitted to court by the Serious Fraud Office, as the House of Lords heard its appeal against a High Court ruling that it acted unlawfully in ending the inquiry against BAE Systems, who allegedly bribed Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia with £1 billion.

Lawyers for the SFO told the court that fraud office director Robert Wardle stopped the investigation in December 2006 because he believed that Saudi Arabia would cut off counter-terrorism co-operation with Britain, putting national security at risk.

Jonathan Sumption QC, for the SFO, said Mr Wardle only became aware of the full scale of the “threat” after receiving a minute in December 2006 from then Prime Minister Tony Blair, together with information from Government departments, warning of an “immediate risk of collapse in UK/Saudi security, intelligence and diplomatic co-operation”. Six days later he announced the investigation had been stopped.

But according to evidence presented by the Foreign Office, then British ambassador to Saudi Arabia Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles wrote three months earlier that he had discussed the SFO case with an unnamed senior Saudi government representative, who was “more optimistic about the SFO enquiry than seemed justified on the facts available to me”, and “always gave the impression that he had his own information”. The representative suggested the inquiry could be stopped on public interest grounds.

Lawyers for Campaign Against Arms Trade and Corner House Research, who are opposing the appeal, attacked the SFO and the Government for claiming that they had not broken international law in dropping the inquiry. Government documents disclosed last year revealed that the Saudi threats were considered so grave that the inquiry would have been stopped even if that breached Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s anti-bribery convention.

Article 5 of the convention bars states from allowing economic interests or foreign relations to influence bribery investigations.

Dinah Rose QC, for the campaigners, said it was illogical for the Government to “maintain the position ‘We acted in accordance with Article 5’ while saying, ‘You can’t consider that [in court] because we would’ve acted the same way if it was a breach’.”

The Attorney-General, who advised the SFO and Mr Blair, had misinterpreted the convention, Ms Rose said, adding: “If the decision maker has misunderstood the legal effect of the instrument he’s purporting to take into account, then his decision is flawed.” The SFO’s lawyers deny all wrongdoing and insist that Mr Wardle’s decision was rational and informed. The judgment is expected this autumn.