Morning Star | ukwatch.net

Heroes with feet of clay

Simon Birritteri — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 14:40:09 +0000

ALISTAIR Darling would have us believe that government policies have had no effect on the current recession – it’s a global phenomenon over which we have no control.

At the same time, he tries to cheer us all up by meaningless statements such as “I’m confident we’ll get through it.”

Of course we’ll get through it. Economies always get through recessions, but the questions are, in what state we will be and who will pay for it.

The Chancellor and the Prime Minister pride themselves on having bailed out the banking system by heaving billions of pounds at it and running parts of it with a view to returning it to the class of adventurists who broke it in the first place.

The role of the banks ought to be to provide investment to businesses and to loan money to people for large purchases that they can’t afford to buy outright.

Instead, they have become money-printing operations, dedicated to maximising profits by loaning people more than they can afford at premium interest rates and by gambling on futures markets.

And even now that the government has advanced huge sums to the banks at low rates of interest, they are still restricting credit to small businesses and are crucifying homeowners.

Public ownership of the banks could provide the stability for a new economic and political approach that would see working people not only survive the recession but do so by building a society with different priorities than those cherished by the neoliberal fanatics at the head of all three major parties.

Today’s recession and the financial meltdown that signalled its onset were caused by reliance on market forces rather than government involvement to champion the public interest.

Banks seeking to return to profitability will want to sack large numbers of staff and repossess homes. Building corporations will mothball house-building plans until the housing market revives.

And the energy transnationals will be happy to continue screwing us all with their manipulated markets. If “we” get through this recession without mass unemployment, increased homelessness and winter carnage through hypothermia, we need a different approach.

The government has shown with the banks that it can afford to invest when it has the will to do so.

That will has to be expressed by putting building workers back in jobs to thaw out the frozen housing schemes and by initiating a state-funded council housing drive.

Public works, especially on Crossrail and new high-speed inter-city links, must be prioritised and there has to be immediate action to sequester energy company profits to assist people faced with unpayable fuel bills.

There must be no return to new Labour’s adoration of the stinking rich, exemplified by recent media publicity given to Peter Mandelson’s holiday haunts.

The costs of this crisis should be paid by those who helped create it and who enriched themselves in the good times. It’s time for an effective wealth tax and higher taxation on big business and the rich.

Now that the Establishment’s economic heroes have been shown to have feet of clay, it’s time for an alternative approach based on justice and co-operation rather than avarice.

Mandelson's Return - calculated to outrage

Alex Doherty — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 09:51:16 +0000

IT is difficult to imagine a Cabinet appointment more calculated to dismay or outrage Labour supporters than that of Peter Mandelson.

The mere fact that serial embarrassment David Blunkett describes it as a “masterstroke” says all that’s necessary of this third time unlucky triumph of hope over experience.

Mr Blunkett’s bases his assessment of the rehabilitation of the architect of spin and rumour on the joyous reality that “it is embracing someone who, in the past, had been seen as being very close to Tony Blair, so it’s an inclusive measure.”

Well, three cheers for that. The tiny, unrepresentative and increasingly loathed group that is new Labour is papering over the cracks in its unity.

At the same time, trade unionists, pensioners, peace campaigners, the homeless, low-paid workers and people facing unpayable energy bills will conclude that new Labour has even less to offer them.

Those denied the chance of buying a home or facing negative equity and repossession will remember Mr Mandelson’s own alternative mortgage arrangements – his secret large loan, interest free, from a Cabinet colleague.

That should have been that for his political career, but the patronage of Tony Blair meant his speedy return to Cabinet and, after another embarrassment, reincarnation as EU trade commissioner.

What does Gordon Brown expect Mr Mandelson to bring to his government?

Is he unaware of the overwhelming negative image that Mr Mandelson projects? He is seen as vain, duplicitous, divisive, self-seeking and unscrupulous and that’s by those willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

His return will recall the days when he briefed journalists on a regular basis against fellow ministers, including Mr Brown, while Mr Brown’s adviser Charlie Whelan responded in kind.

Is that the model of government that the PM would like to see return or does he believe that the crab has changed his spots?

When Mr Brown took over from Mr Blair last year, he briefly flattered to deceive, promising the catch-all quality of “change” and, more positively, an end to spin.

Change has been consigned to the dustbin and no-one could take seriously any pledge by a government that contains Mr Mandelson to finish with spin.

Indeed, the proof is there in his interview in this weekend’s New Statesman when he claims not to have given “a second’s thought” to a return to front-line politics after he discussed it with Mr Brown at Labour Party conference.

Tony Blair once said that his project of remaking the Labour Party would only be complete when the party had learned to love Peter Mandelson.

If he meant the 700,000 members that Labour boasted in 1997, that never happened and even today’s flimsy, abandoned shell of a party is deeply divided.

Despite that, Mr Mandelson is as bullish as ever, telling trade union leaders and those on the left of the party who want an end to the new Labour nightmare that they “prefer the comfort of opposition to the hard tasks of government.”

This appointment confirms new Labour’s determination to continue to reject the demands of working people and to rule in the interests of big business and the rich.

Batting for bankers

tim — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 21:32:12 +0000

Gordon Brown’s plan to “nationalise” Bradford & Bingley is simply a smaller-scale replica of the Bush administration’s bail-out of a banking sector bleeding to death from self-inflicted wounds.

The Prime Minister is batting for the bankers, intervening, with our cash, to ensure a resurgence of banking activity and private profits.

As with Northern Rock, over which government dithered for six months, transfixed by fear over the N word, Mr Brown is not opting for nationalisation to extend democratic control of the economy.

He plans to land us with £41 billion of shaky B&B mortgages, which no other bank is prepared to take off its hands, while selling the 200 high street B&B offices and savings business to other institutions.

This is in addition to the £20 billion plus interest that the government still has invested in Northern Rock.

These huge figures dwarf the costs associated with such proposals as a decent state pension, free prescriptions, abolition of student fees, provision of student grants, renationalisation of rail and utilities, which have all been rejected by new Labour on cost grounds.

As with imperialist wars, for which Mr Brown decreed that “whatever is necessary” would be found, new Labour has infinite funds to bail out the private sector and nothing but soft soap for measures to defend working-class living standards.

While working people are expected to tighten their belts, accepting below-inflation pay rises and job losses – 20,000 of which are likely in Britain’s financial sector alone – the reckless profiteers in banking boardrooms are cosseted by cash hand-outs.

The PM played to the gallery at Labour Party conference, insisting on greater corporate responsibility and a curb on excessive pay-outs, which seduced some trade unionists into believing that a change of direction was in the offing.

Don’t be fooled. The details of his B&B nationalisation plan illustrate where his priorities lie.

He and Chancellor Alistair Darling claim that their ministerial experience means that they are best fitted to see us through this latest crisis of capitalism, but they reject the view that it has arisen largely as a result of their obsessions with reliance on market forces and minimal regulation.

The B&B collapse also marks the utter failure of building society demutualisation, with every single society that opted for conversion to a bank and engaged in a voracious profits campaign, based on borrowing cheaply on world markets to fund buy-to-let and overambitious 125 per cent mortgages, going belly up to be swallowed up by bigger banks or rescued by the government.

In contrast, Nationwide, which has remained a mutual, has thrived and been in a position to help smaller societies facing difficulty.
Surely a reality check is called for by government leaders rather than a suicidal steady-as-she-sinks complacency.

The government’s neoliberal strategy is a disaster. It has failed and there has to be a change of direction or the boardroom excesses of recent years will return to haunt us, as will today’s attempts to resolve the crisis at the expense of working people.

B&B should certainly be nationalised as an entity, prime assets as well as bouncing cheques, and this, together with Northern Rock, should form a national bank to offer probity and stability in contrast to the reckless greedfest of the private sector.

Deep sense of fairness?

tim — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 22:00:00 +0000

With the Labour Party conference and the Convention of the Left running concurrently, Manchester is going to be a city of contrasts for the next week.

And it started even before either conference had got fully under way, with the colourful and vociferous peace march on Saturday and the Unite rally on Sunday providing an inside and outside contrast which may well, in its own way, provide the pattern for the week.

While new Labour loyalists in the conference were desperately mounting a rearguard action to save the Prime Minister – and new Labour’s – bacon, and Mr Brown himself was doing a mea culpa on TV, admitting that mistakes have been made and pledging, like a naughty schoolboy, to do better next time, thousands of peace activists were on the streets outside the conference campaigning against new Labour’s biggest mistake, the Iraq war.

And as Unite the union joint general secretary Tony Woodley called on marchers to remember the “many thousands of innocent victims of the lunatics that have taken us to war,” one of the chief lunatics was being praised by Cabinet Office Minister Ed Miliband for his “deep sense of fairness.”

On Sunday, this deep sense of fairness was put centre-stage again, with furious public-sector workers demonstrating outside the conference against the below-inflation pay deals that are being thrust on them as a result of government policy, while that same deeply fair government is doing absolutely nothing to curb the swingeing power company price rises that are producing a profits bonanza for the privatised utilities.

Deep fairness again prompted Mr Brown to observe that the City’s bonus culture encouraged “excessive” risk-taking, but that it was difficult to regulate as bonuses were part of a global system.

It’s a bit difficult to work out what the difference is between speculators working for foreign-owned banks and factory workers employed by foreign-owned manufacturers or NHS privateers, but we are sure that deep fairness means there is a reason why one set should have their wages pegged and others not.

But we probably shouldn’t get carried away with blaming it all on poor Mr Brown.
After all, he is only doing what he is told by his masters in the banks, who have made it very clear that, if their mistakes are not covered by taxpayers’ money, then the entire global financial system will collapse.

Does the blame, then, lie with the global capitalists who are holding a financial gun to the otherwise good-hearted Prime Minister’s head?

Or is it that, lacking the courage to face them down, this country’s government is doing its best to preserve and underwrite the system that has brought the world’s most developed countries to the brink of ruin?

Perhaps there is a lesson here for the trade union movement on the exercise of industrial muscle.

But the movement cannot exercise the power that it has without the full-hearted support of the people of those countries who, at the moment, have swallowed the biggest lie in history, that there is no alternative to capitalism, warts and all.

Therein lies the lesson for the Convention of the Left. Unite and refute the big lie that is capitalism.

Or stay divided and stay powerless. The trade union movement needs the left and the left needs the trade unions. And everybody needs a movement united under the banner of defeating the money-men who have made the City their own and who easily control Labour governments that are utterly divorced from their working class.

Madness of the market

tim — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 15:51:18 +0000

Once again, capitalism has shown its cuddly, people-friendly face with the collapse of holiday giant XL Leisure Group.

Around 85,000 people stranded abroad, several hundred thousand advance bookings dishonoured, staff finding out that they didn’t have a job in mid-flight, over 1,700 jobs potentially vanishing and the Unite union not even being informed by the company that it was in trouble with its refinancing arrangements after a major bank pulled out on August 14.

And yet, in the full knowledge that it was, indeed, in trouble and desperately trying to arrange a bail-out, the companies in the group continued to take people’s cash and make bookings that there was precious little chance that they could honour.

Not that this implies any dishonesty or deliberately dodgy dealing by the companies. Far from it – at least in the terms of the market economy.

The logic of capitalism meant that they had to continue trying to trade their way out of trouble and that same market-oriented logic said that they could not allow any hint of trouble to become public knowledge because people would obviously then cease to book with the companies, thereby sealing their fate.

Indeed, as late as August 31, a company spokesman was saying that “the XL Leisure Group is experiencing strong trading, with bookings for 2009 already outperforming last year.”

But, as for the long-suffering passengers, they inevitably get the sticky end of the deal and, the less well off that they are, the stickier it becomes.

Granted, customers well off enough to book full package deals through travel agencies are covered by the CAA air travel organisers’ licensing scheme and will be offered repatriation flights or their money back if they have an advance booking.

And, if they booked by credit card, their card insurance should cover them.

But people not having credit cards to book with, or booking a flight only, because they could not afford the full package, will face an extra fee to get home.

And it’s not only the passengers. The staff have an even worse situation to deal with.

No jobs and an industry that is contracting by the day, with airlines such as Alitalia and Zoom either collapsing or in terminal decline and a resulting glut of unemployed staff on the jobs market.

So, who is to blame for this situation?

In 2004, the Times reported that a major British bank “is poised to become the largest oil trader in the City of London as banks rush to profit from the soaring oil price and booming oil speculation market.”

In 2008, that same bank pulled the rug out from under XL because of financing associated with fuel. In other words, a major oil speculator shuts XL because the company can’t pay the price for fuel that the speculators have driven up.

And the bank’s partner in financing XL – a major Icelandic bank – acquired the still-profitable French and German XL subsidiaries on Friday morning after the rug-pulling exercise, in what can only be described as a perfect example of asset-stripping, although it would probably claim that it was saving what could be rescued from the stricken company.

But the fact remains that, if the company was stricken, it was the banks that did the striking.

Talk about having your cake and eating it.

It is difficult to imagine a better example of the amoral chaos of market capitalism or, for that matter, a better reason for social ownership of banks and big businesses generally.

No principles and no bottle

tim — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 14:16:24 +0000

Conspicuous by his absence in the running order at next week’s TUC in Brighton is, Yes, you’ve guessed it, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the man who will don his dinner jacket and go running to address City bankers at the drop of a fiver.

And it’s hardly surprising, given that he has been instrumental in betraying everything that the labour movement stands for ever since he took office.

His government’s decision to rule out cash handouts for households struggling with soaring fuel bills was rightly blasted by the trade unions on Friday as a “downright disgrace.”

And his abject surrender to the power companies over their obscene profiteering demonstrates why this newspaper has no time for a man whose treachery has long outweighed any good that he has ever done.

Mr Brown’s wittering on about “no short-term giveaways and gimmicks” does nothing to obscure the fact that he hasn’t had the bottle to take the power firms to task over their highway robbery of working people and has, instead, reneged on his government’s commitment to ease the burden of the increasing number of people who find themselves struggling in fuel poverty.

Talk about energy efficiency, “reducing bills not just temporarily, but permanently,” does nothing to disguise his rubber-stamping of the utilities’ distribution of vastly increased profits to shareholders at the expense of the consumers. And any such savings would be quickly absorbed as the companies continued to jack up prices without restraint.

The outrageous cheek of counterposing the need to make the country more fuel-efficient against the urgent necessity of controlling the privateers in their continued plundering of the nation has infuriated the trade unions and explains why Mr Brown has done a runner rather than face his critics in Brighton.

But face them he must at some time or another, since, without bringing the unions on board, his government doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of re-election.

But what on earth could he tell them?

That he doesn’t want to renationalise the utilities because it would offend his mates in the City and his colleagues in Brussels?

That the market mechanism is the best way of controlling prices, when it is clearly failing to do so?

That it is right that pensioners and the low paid should underwrite massively increased bonuses to shareholders while they are dying of cold or cutting their food budgets in order to do so?

Clearly, none of the answers above would serve.

And, equally clearly, Mr Brown has abandoned any hope of winning the next election for Labour.

It is unpleasantly obvious that new Labour has no answers, no principles and no intention of doing what is right for working people.

New Labour has nailed its colours to the mast of privateering, profiteering and blatant, unbridled capitalism.

It is no longer a question of merely challenging Mr Brown’s leadership of the Labour Party.

Brutally, Labour must remember its roots and honour its generations-long commitment to working people or it will disappear into the vaults of history as yet another failed project and will be replaced by an organisation of the working class which will honour its historic mission to defend and advance the interests of the poor, the oppressed and the exploited in a way that new Labour has no intention of doing.

Prisons- The Wrong Philosophy

tim — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 12:21:49 +0000

“Naive” is the kindest word that can be used to describe the decision by crime reduction charity Nacro to get into bed with private security contractor G4S to bid to run two prisons.

Nacro has a commendable record of opposing private prisons with their priority of producing profits and dividends for shareholders.

It has shared with other members of the Criminal Justice Alliance the view that prisons should not be used simply to lock away wrongdoers but should be part of process of turning people away from crime.

Indeed, there has been widespread agreement on the need to prioritise non-custodial sentences with service and supervision within the community taking the place of isolation and deprivation.

However, it is a giant step away from a general agreement on tackling crime that seeks to convince offenders to recognise their behaviour and to make amends for it to a willingness to be involved in a for-profits enterprise with G4S.

Nacro chief executive Paul Cavadino believes that, if reform charities are involved in the planning of a prison regime, prisons would be more likely to provide high-quality resettlement and rehabilitation.

Wrong, wrong, wrong! Private security contractors, whether G4S or any other company, will operate whichever regime shows the greater likelihood of generating profits for their shareholders.

Mr Cavadino’s mistake lies in believing that he and Nacro can isolate one part of the criminal justice system and engender a humanitarian regime.

But one look at the government’s approach, with its likely adoption of US-style Titan prisons, indicates that new Labour is pushing for profits to be the deciding factor, as it has done in the NHS and other public services.

Profits are prioritised on the basis of cutting down on expenditure, which is why privateers do not pay the same salaries or contribute to the same pension scheme as in publicly operated jails.

Is it likely that privatised prisons, in these same circumstances, would invest more heavily in rehabilitation, education and post-imprisonment supervision than the state sector?

You don’t get to rake in half-yearly profits of £175 million if you have been doing so.

The main problem with the Prison Service is that the government has not been prepared to invest in humane alternatives to the “lock ‘em up and throw the key away” approach favoured by right-wing tabloid newspapers.

It has adopted in reality the desperate and deceitful philosophy of former Tory home secretary Michael Howard, the absurd view that “prison works.”

If prison worked, we would not have the current high rates of recidivism, the widespread availability of class A drugs in jail, and the majority of prisoners having drugs or alcohol abuse problems.

Our prisons are overcrowded because the message coming from government is that more and more people should be locked up.

The government assures us that this illustrates its toughness.

It does no such thing. It is tougher for offenders to be compelled to confront what they have done and to be helped to find a better way of existence than reliance on crime.

Nacro will either be part of this tougher but more humane approach or it will fall for the privateers’ mantra that, if it brings in profits, it works.

Blindingly obvious

tim — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 11:47:36 +0000

Home Office Minister Tony McNulty is correct to point out that suggesting that economic recession could lead to an increase in petty crime, violence, racial abuse and far-right extremism was a “statement of the blindingly obvious.”

Unfortunately, the minister seems to assume that the recession is an act of God and the government powerless to influence matters.

While the international downturn in trade is a reality and the knock-on effects of the credit crisis detonated by the US subprime mortgage scandal undeniable, every country will undergo its own economic experience that is dependent on specific national characteristics.

And the level of the crisis that is already hitting Britain is conditioned by the pro-business policies pursued by new Labour.

Recession will not cause the problems itemised in the Home Office draft letter. There is already huge resentment in working-class areas across Britain that will be exacerbated by rising unemployment, mortgage defaults and a general depression of living standards.

Governments tend to appeal to the mythical Dunkirk spirit to ride the wave of hardships, but that is less likely when people can see clearly that there is no equality of sacrifice.

Indeed, new Labour has made a virtue of inequality, with Chancellor Alistair Darling simply the latest leading advocate to say that he is not perturbed by the prospect of hugely differing levels of income.

And this is not simply rhetoric. New Labour has presided over a widening gap in income and wealth more akin to Victorian norms than to a supposed modern democracy.

The revelation by the TUC PensionWatch survey that top bosses can retire on average annual pensions of £200,000, 25 times what the average worker will get and 50 times more than the basic state pension, illustrates a grotesquely divided society.

Employers and managers have, in recent years, launched a concerted drive against workers’ pension entitlements, while ensuring that their own are safeguarded.

The government has acquiesced in this process, lecturing workers about their own supposed fecklessness while running down the value of the state pension.

And its obsession with leaving economic priorities to be decided by the vagaries of the market has seen Britain’s manufacturing sector inexorably eroded, with over a million relatively well-paid jobs, complete with decent conditions and a pension, scrapped and replaced by a combination of McJobs and dead-end “training” schemes.

It has claimed that there isn’t the finance available to improve the state pension, take the railways back into public ownership or invest to defend manufacturing jobs.

But it has been able to find billions of pounds for overseas wars and £50 billion to bail out Northern Rock shareholders.

The government’s wars have not only been costly but have created a new enemy – international terrorism – which is used as an excuse to cut back human rights and to increase xenophobia.

This combination of crimes against working people makes new Labour unfitted to lecture anyone on the effects of recession. It is implicated up to its neck.

The only way to avoid the negative consequences in the Home Office letter is to fight back against the economic and social policies that cause them in the first place.

The answer is public

tim — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 16:27:04 +0000

Even the dogs in the street now know that something has to be done about the housing crisis, but the government is confused over what aspect of the crisis to concentrate on.

Its pronouncements have tended to prioritise the “need” to restore confidence in the housing market, which means stabilising the finances of lenders with cheap state loans.

This will do little to increase the number of mortgages being offered to first-time buyers or to assist overstretched homeowners hit hard by the rising cost of borrowing.

Banks and other financial institutions will use these cheap funds to ensure that directors and shareholders do not bear the brunt of the financial crisis.

The relevance of this approach to Britain’s real housing crisis oscillates between negligible and nil.

There are huge numbers of people who need decent accommodation but who are in a position neither to buy nor to rent privately.

The government has to draw a distinction between the financial crisis in the housing market, which was caused by the banks’ greed and reckless speculation, and the real housing crisis, which expresses itself in growing numbers of families and individuals being denied the right to a decent home.

New Labour ministers are too ready to accept the neoliberal argument that government should not involve itself in housing provision.

On the contrary, the housing crisis is so serious that it requires a response almost as determined as that needed after the second world war to overcome shortages and drive up housing standards.

The government-led, non-mandated retreat from public provision, ownership and management of housing has been a disaster.

Reliance on market forces in a situation of ever-growing demand has driven up house prices astronomically, reserved most local authority housing stock for those on benefits and driven low-paid and even average-income workers into the grasping arms of the private rented sector.

Government funding of new council homes, with a return to restriction of the right to buy, could make a real dent in homelessness and help to hold down runaway inflation in the housing market after the current slump.

It could also be used to enforce advanced environmental features to reduce pressure on energy and water resources. If the government restricts itself to bailing out the banks, it will fully deserve the contempt that it brings on itself.

Tough Talk and Failure

Ellie Keen — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 21:30:21 +0000

THE Criminal Justice Alliance systematic demolition of the government’s case for building three US-style huge Titan prisons ought to be grabbed as a lifeline by the government.

It could explain that, after consultation, it has concluded that they would be unnecessary.

And there is substantial evidence to defend such a position, from the superiority of smaller local prisons to the potential dangers to prisoners and staff and the strained relations between prisoners and their families denied regular access because of distance considerations.

Family relationships are not to be disregarded since they affect how prisoners prepare for their eventual release and reintegration into society.

Massive institutions, holding 2,500 prisoners, fully merit the Prison Officers Association description as “filing cabinets for people.”

Their justification is cost-based, with the implication of economies of scale, but their sheer size will encourage an ethos of control rather than rehabilitation.

The main problem in the way of Justice Secretary Jack Straw paying due heed to the alliance letter is that his department’s consultation document took for granted that Titan prisons would be built.

That is the fundamental question that has to be addressed first rather than the consequences of doing so.

The government’s apparently already decided position will be backed by advocates of the simplistic “bang ‘em up and throw away the key” approach that has been shown to be an unmitigated failure.

Record numbers of people are now held in jail, but seeking to stem that wasteful and pointless tide is not a government priority.

It prefers to play to the tabloid gallery by talking tough and imitating the Tories’ “prison works” philosophy of despair rather than opting for an approach that is not only more humane but is more effective in tackling recidivism and bringing down crime figures.

If banging people up for longer, making their prison conditions harder and making no preparations for their release did those things, there might be a case for such a harsh regime, but the opposite is the case.

Experience in Britain, as well as in the more enlightened societies of Scandinavia, shows that treating prisoners as human beings, helping them off drugs and alcohol dependency, assisting their personal development through education and training and providing support on release pays dividends for society.

It is not an easy or a cheap option, but neither is the supposed alternative of locking up offenders with thousands of others in an impersonal and anonymous human warehouse.

New Labour’s underlying failure in the field of criminal justice has been its contempt for professional expertise and its hunger for approval from right-wing media commentators.

It disregards the experience and accumulated wisdom of prison staff, probation officers, criminologists, prison reformers and experts on mental health and drug use, preferring the easy, dishonest rhetoric about putting the interests of victims before those of criminals.

Victims of crime are not helped by greater numbers of offenders being locked up and alienated from society. They, like the rest of us, would benefit from resources being invested in efforts to change offenders’ outlook and behaviour rather than being squandered on Titan prisons that will profit only building corporations and private prison operators.

Patience has its limits

tim — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 19:23:19 +0000

In the recent history of the Irish peace process, a process which is still working itself out, it has always been Sinn Fein which was prepared to go the extra mile in the cause of advancing the process.

At the same time, the unionists, of whatever denomination, have been tardy in their responses and tried to hold things back, relying on the sympathies of Westminster to back them up in their desperate efforts to retard progress.

So it was in 2007, when the Sinn Fein leadership held its special ard fheis on whether or not republicans should give their full support to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).

Prior to that meeting, Gerry Adams and his colleagues put the case for endorsement of the PSNI to their supporters in the face of harsh criticism from groups of republicans opposed to the policing policy.

The traditional republican position held that support for any police force in Northern Ireland would be unacceptable, with endorsement of the police seen to represent the ultimate recognition of the British state’s dominance.

But the Sinn Fein leadership challenged that position and, at considerable risk to its own organisation, fought for and won a commitment to police reform.

Even though the Police (Northern Ireland) Bill of May 2000 had fallen well short of fully implementing its preferred option, that of disbanding the Royal Ulster Constabulary, in favour of its transformation into the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein pressed ahead in the cause of peace and national unity and carried its members, many with great reluctance, with it.

The St Andrews agreement of October 2006 had called on Sinn Fein to fully endorse the PSNI as a prerequisite for the return of devolved government to Northern Ireland and Sinn Fein delivered fully.

Which makes it all the more worrying that its leader in the Irish parliament Caoimhghin O Caolain has felt the need to warn supporters that his party’s patience should not be tested.

“If we are forced to conclude that change will not be forthcoming from the executive, we will have no option but to pull out our ministers and seek to put pressure where responsibility ultimately lies, which is on the British government in London,” he said.

“Our ministers are not in the executive to fill seats, to make careers or to be administrators.

Their mandate is to bring about lasting and fundamental change. That is why Sinn Fein put them there,” he continued.

Such a warning must be taken seriously, both in Westminster and in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

In the context of Sinn Fein’s unquestioned commitment to the peace process, it rings alarm bells that Gordon Brown’s government is not managing to rein in the prevaricators and equivocators in the Ulster Unionist Party.

Mr Brown and his minions in new Labour have a poor record in exerting any pressure whatsoever on their allies, be they in the US over Iraq and Iran or in the CBI over the British economy.

Should they show as little determination with the Ulster Unionists over their continued intransigence, the signs are not good for devolved government in Northern Ireland.

Sinn Fein has shown great forbearance and a huge commitment to peace in the country.

But no-one should believe that patience to be inexhaustible and, certainly, no-one can take the commitment of the unionists to continuing progress as an established fact in the absence of continued pressure.

Political epitaph

tim — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 18:45:25 +0000

Which genius dreamed up the idea of sending Gordon Brown off to Afghanistan to meet puppet president Hamid Karzai and to mimic Tony Blair’s previous media stunt of posing in brilliant white shirt surrounded by British soldiers?

President Karzai could only have been the answer to the question of what international leader’s grip on his job is more tenuous than our Prime Minister’s.

Commentators used to joke that his writ only ran as far as the outskirts of Kabul. This overstates his real influence.

The Afghan president continues to be guarded by US contractors because he distrusts his own armed forces and he is utterly dependent on NATO military power, which remains incapable of suppressing resistance to the occupation of Afghanistan.

Mr Brown’s lavish praise of British troops, likening them to Olympic heroes on a daily rather than a four-yearly basis, is unlikely to have endeared him to them, knowing, as they do, that he is responsible for placing them in the dangerous and unwinnable situation that faces them.

British troops were originally dispatched to Afghanistan in what was said to be a cross between a peacekeeping and a nation-rebuilding mission.

It has turned out to be an all-out war, especially since they were redeployed, at Pentagon insistence, to Helmand province, where resistance is fierce and where casualty levels have inexorably risen.

Despite this reality, the Prime Minister claims that “substantial progress” is being made against the Taliban and the proof for this is that the Afghan resistance is having to adopt tactics “more of a guerilla nature than head-on confrontation with our forces.”

How very unsporting. Wouldn’t it be so much better if the Afghans formed up into massed ranks to charge tanks and heavy machineguns or to present a clear target to the occupiers’ aerial power rather than using roadside bombs and suicide attacks.

The government’s advisers should have known that such guerilla tactics would be favoured in a long-lasting war of attrition, but new Labour put subservience to the White House before any concern for British troops, to say nothing of the Afghan civilian population, who are the real sufferers in this US imperial aggression.

Still, it’s an ill wind that blows no-one any good and the arms traffickers of BAE Systems aren’t doing too badly at all, thank you very much.

Our government’s slavish determination to support every Made in Washington war has meant a bonanza for the company’s private shareholders, with the latest contract to supply ammunition to our armed forces over the next 15 years weighing in at £3 billion.

That should guarantee plenty of bonuses and dividends for senior civil servants and new Labour ministers who jump on board after being deservedly turfed out at the next general election.

Armed Forces Minister Bob Ainsworth is delighted that this programme will ensure “a modernised, sustainable munitions industry which will support British jobs.”

What a pity that such concern for industry and jobs has never extended to the rest of Britain’s manufacturing sector, which new Labour has allowed to disintegrate without lifting a finger.

And it is this obsession with war and private profits that will be new Labour’s political epitaph.

Laughable rhetoric

tim — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 17:40:18 +0000

When an occupying military power knows that it has the backing of the most powerful global information outlets, it can indulge itself in the most laughable rhetoric.

And this was underlined in the wake of the killing of an Afghan woman and two children by rockets fired by British forces in Helmand province.

Although these civilian casualties were caused by troops who came from thousands of miles away to occupy the country, an International Security Assistance Force spokesman had the temerity to say: “The enemies of Afghanistan have yet again shown a complete disregard for the lives of the innocent who they claim to fight for.”

That is precisely what the Afghans who oppose imperialist occupation would say and with far greater reason.

Yet the pro-occupation international media continues to relay propaganda about Taliban forces launching attacks from among civilians, even though they would know that this would result in bloody responses from the occupying forces against their own families.

The allegation beggars belief, as does puppet governor Gulab Mangal’s comment that “support for the Taliban in Helmand is reducing.”

Resistance to occupation in the entire south and east of Afghanistan has escalated in recent years and the steady increase in British military casualties illustrates this.

The British troops sent to Afghanistan have been lied to over their role.

They are in an unwinnable conflict and are kept there as tokens of new Labour’s subservience to the White House.

They should be brought home immediately, leaving the Afghan people to work out their future without outside interference.

US stooge

Outgoing Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf has always been a loyal toady of US imperialism and his resignation will suit Washington as much as it does the general himself.

Gen Musharraf’s expectation is that his stepping down will short-circuit the growing public clamour for his impeachment, while the US will hope for no in-depth investigation of the dirty alliance it foisted on him.

That means that the role of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence in setting up the Taliban in the early 1990s will not be investigated.
Nor will the activities of the ISI during his time as Pakistani military commander.

It will also mean that Washington’s support for the general, especially since 2001 when he executed a political back-flip to join the White House “war on terror,” will not be subject to inquiry.

Gen Musharraf has all along been susceptible to US power, which is why he dropped the Taliban and was passive in the face of US bombing raids on Pakistani tribal areas abutting the border with Afghanistan.

Despite this influence and its constant rhetoric about democracy, freedom and the rule of law, the Bush administration was unbothered by the general’s political dictatorship and his assaults on the judiciary.

Washington’s readiness to see him stand down only came about when it could see the scale of opposition building up against him and the dictatorship.

Development of democracy in Pakistan will depend on the level to which political forces are able to resist US tutelage and assert popular sovereignty.

Fixation on the market

tim — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 21:14:22 +0000

The dreadful figures on the soaring rate of house repossessions give added emphasis to the decision of the Bank of England monetary policy committee to maintain interest rates at 5 per cent.

This was a decision that hit hard the struggling mortgage payers in the interests of controlling inflation which, it should be pointed out, is none of the mortgage-payers’ fault but can be attributed largely to fuel profiteering, speculation, oil and gas company super-profits and the resulting transport cost rises which affect almost every commodity.

It also brings into sharp focus the Financial Services Authority warning to lenders earlier this week that specialist mortgage firms are “too ready” to take court action against borrowers.

But these are not the only factors which have affected and damaged the 18,900 families who have lost their homes in the first six months of this year or the 45,000 whom the Council of Mortgage Lenders forecast will fall victim throughout the full year.

The real elephant in the room is, as seems to be increasingly the case, the policies of a government which point-blank refuses to abandon its fixation with the market and take real measures to solve a housing crisis which is totally of its own making.

Throughout the life of this Labour government, it has steadfastly refused to reverse its disastrous policies on council housing, attempting to drive a wedge between councils and their tenants with so-called arm’s-length management organisations, bribes to force occupants to relinquish their status as council tenants in favour of housing associations, reinforcing the ring-fencing of councils’ housing revenue accounts and blocking any attempt by councils to pick up their former role as the premier suppliers of social housing in this country.

This has led to a dearth of affordable housing at the lower end of the housing market, driving hard-up families into mortgage deals that they cannot afford, simply because there is little or no alternative except an over-priced and insecure private rented sector.

This, in turn, increases the scarcity of houses for sale at the bottom end of the market yet again and thus drives up the prices, overheating the housing market and making housing ever more expensive and ever less affordable, until such time as lenders get panicky as they see their borrowers becoming over-extended and start pulling in credit availability, causing the so-called credit crunch which then makes mortgages even more expensive.

Yes, of course, greedy mortgage lenders carry a portion of blame, lending even to those who clearly can’t afford it on the basis of trousering their commission and moving onto the next victim, leaving the families in their wake with a headache which gets worse as the bank tries to halt inflation by hitting those on the bottom of the heap.

But the majority of the blame must rest with a government which, for purely right-wing ideological reasons, will not countenance the public supply of anything be it health, housing or transport.

And it is the same government which handed over interest-rate setting to the bankers, in the certain knowledge that bankers’ solutions rarely benefit the low-paid. This government should be squeezing the profiteers in the oil and power supply industry until the pips squeak. Instead, it chooses to be an audience on the spectacle of bankers squeezing the poor, while it does its best to make the problems worse by ensuring that the low-paid remain exactly that.

A surprise to no-one

tim — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 21:40:15 +0000

What a surprise it was to all concerned for a memo drawn up by Tony Blair last September to suddenly see the light of day during David Miliband’s leadership campaign that dares not speak its name, wasn’t it?

Only to those who still believe in fairies living in their back garden is the answer.

It surely beggars belief that many people prominent in the Labour Party, including a number dumped from office earlier for not being up to scratch, are engaged in a media-encouraged game to mount a palace coup.

And on what basis? Nothing but image. A smiling, youthful, confident new Labourite rather than a brooding, stale, indecisive new Labourite.

The major problem with this unimaginative formulation is that it ignores the real basis for the government’s inexorable electoral decline, which is the label that both men hold in common – new Labour.

The label’s promise of novelty, honesty and modernisation took the day in 1997, but it is now tainted and despised.

Labour jettisoned 2 million votes in 2001 and 2 million more in 2005. It lost ground in the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly, English local and London mayor elections and its by-election record is dismal.

Labour Party membership, which stood at over 400,000 in 1997, is now just over 150,000, with many local organisations utterly moribund.

Neither electoral decline nor popular discontent set in with the coronation of Gordon Brown last summer. They were in full swing already, which is why voters and party members wanted Tony Blair out.

Mr Blair’s suddenly revealed memo rewrites history by claiming that his once loved but now despised new Labour twin had “dissed our own record” – how so very roots – and “junked” the Blair government policy agenda.

In reality, the new leader’s failure was to have suggested criticism and hinted at change before falling back in line and carrying out the same old tired and unpopular war and privatisation policies.

The initial suggestion of an expansion of council housebuilding was dumped. The hint of withdrawal from Iraq likewise.

And, in the absence of any positive policies to put before the people, the Prime Minister lost his nerve over calling the election that he had already told the trade union movement to prepare for and has since evoked the image of a dead man walking.

And what is the political answer of the Miliband camp to this spectacle? Shoe-horn in Tony Blair Mark 2 and give long-time council tenants a lump sum to use as a deposit to buy private accommodation.

Such poverty of imagination belittles the severity of Britain’s housing shortage and confirms new Labour’s inability to think outside the straitjacket of private-sector solutions.

New Labour’s dead-end private-is-best policies ought to have been debated last year against the labour movement priorities offered by John McDonnell, whose campaign was stifled by trade union concerns to avoid a leadership contest.

The fruits of that conservative approach are readily apparent now – a government that remains unpopular and refuses to consider another political direction.

That remains the key. Without a new direction, Labour is sunk and deserves to be. The question is, are the unions prepared to take remedial action?

Merchants of death

tim — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 11:44:53 +0000

BAE Systems shareholders will be delighted by the company’s 14 per cent rise in net profits – a cool £586 million – in the first six months of this year.

As the company itself puts it so poetically, its Land and Armaments unit “continues to benefit from operational requirements in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Well, bully for the company and its shareholders who can sit back and wait for the profits from war to land in their laps, while British troops and the civilian populations of both Iraq and Afghanistan count the cost in death, destruction and injury.

All in all, it’s not been a bad week for the merchants of death, with the Law Lords having ruled on Wednesday that normal rules on investigating bribery and corruption do not apply to the arms industry or to its partners in the venal autocracy of Saudi Arabia.

Britain’s arms-trafficking industry already enjoys a privileged position over the rest of our country’s manufacturing sector.

The government guarantees, through its export credit and guarantee department, payment for contracts tied up with some of the most dictatorial and unstable regimes in the world.

And when criticism erupts from either peace campaigners or civil libertarians, Cabinet ministers launch into a long diatribe about the contribution that arms sales make to the economy and to employment in the vital export-oriented engineering sector.

What they do not explain is why this industry needs feather-bedding rather than, say, cars, shipbuilding, rail rolling stock, motor bikes, steel or a raft of other sectors that have been allowed to decline, become extinct or be bought up at knockdown prices by competitors in other countries.

In each case, government – it doesn’t really matter of what stripe since their responses have been uniform – has simply cited the inexorable power of market forces.

But market forces do not seem to apply to an industry that is geared to annihilation rather than peaceful development.

Trade unions will, of course, welcome the ongoing employment of their members, even though the numbers in the arms industry are in steady decline.

Unions are also correct to insist on the preservation of collectives of highly skilled engineering workers and the maintenance of existing research and development teams.

But it is a perversion of their skills and training that they should be restricted to production in the cause of death rather than life.

We do not have to go back to the example of the Lucas shop stewards committee three decades ago to understand that the skills of arms industry engineers can be put to better civil use.

The Scottish TUC and Scottish CND have done excellent work together in identifying alternative projects relating to tidal power and other renewable energy possibilities to take the place of the ridiculously expensive and dangerous Trident submarine white elephant.

There is no reason why the government could not give its blessing to similar initiatives across Britain.

The main reason that it does not do so is its servile attitude to the US, which demands backing for its various criminal overseas wars and insists on a war-based economic model.

Reversing that militaristic approach would help the cause of international peace and Britain’s economic position.

An Example to Others

Ellie Keen — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 22:59:00 +0000

Parading with our trade union banners at Tolpuddle and enjoying the music, speeches and stalls on offer is fun for all the family. But Tolpuddle is not a monument to an ancient historical period. It is of sharp relevance to the present.

The judge told the six comrades that they were being transported to a New South Wales penal colony “not for anything they had done but as an example to others.”

He understood that the law is not neutral in industrial relations and that, as long as capitalism exists, its political representatives will seek to skew the legal balance in favour of those who own the means of production and against those who sell their labour power.

In the early 1970s, conspiracy laws were used, after a successful national pay strike, to fit up building workers at Shrewsbury, with six of them being sent to jail.

The late Des Warren, who served his three-year stretch in full, told the court that the only conspiracy had been between the government and the building employers.

Their victimisation too had been intended as an example to others.

He pointed out that the employers, “by their contempt of the laws governing safety regulations, are guilty of causing the deaths and maiming of workers, yet they are not dealt with by the courts.”

That struggle continues with a campaign for a public inquiry into the political conspiracy against the pickets.

Gordon Brown and his new Labour acolytes are fond of reiterating that there can be no return to the 1970s, as though this was some kind of nightmare era.

At that time, trade union membership stood at 13 million and 82 per cent of workers were covered by collective agreements. Today, membership is 6.8 million and collective agreements cover only a third of the workforce.

The Tory governments that held sway from 1979 until 1997 brought in no fewer than nine measures of anti-union legislation, weakening the ability of workers to defend their pay and conditions.

Labour has failed, during the past 11 years, to repeal this body of discriminatory laws. It has championed less regulation for business but not for trade unions.

And the party set up by the trade unions over a century ago continues to take the side of the employers in industrial disputes.

Gate Gourmet workers ought to have been working for British Airways, but privatised BA contracted out cleaning and catering, so that, when other BA workers walked out in solidarity with Gate Gourmet staff, they and their union were threatened with legal action.

Trade unions are due to raise the question of union rights at Labour’s forthcoming national policy forum at Warwick. Legalisation of solidarity action should be their core demand.

How can the unions continue to throw money at a party that forces their members to fight with their hands tied against employers for their basic rights?

How many more trade unionists must be victimised as an example to others?

Contempt for unions

JamieSW — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:58:32 +0000

IT is no secret that Business Secretary John Hutton was a Tory when he was at university. The only question is whether he has ever changed his politics.

Everyone knows that government ministers don’t commission a report unless they can be reasonably sure what conclusions it is likely to draw.

Putting DeAnne Julius, a former Bank of England monetary policy committee member, an ex-director of vulture capitalist conglomerate Serco and current director of BP and Roche, in charge of the commission makes it a pretty safe bet that the principle of publicly owned and operated services is not likely to be high up on the list of recommendations.

Not that this was a surprise. The fact that Mr Hutton announced this commission at last December’s CBI public services forum spoke volumes for the intent behind it.

It was intended to signal further opportunities for big business to dine out at the public expense and the subsequent invitations to, among others, Cap Gemini Consulting, Logica, Spire Healthcare, Babcock, KPMG and Serco conjured up images of troughs and slavering pigs.

The Julius commission’s priority is corporate profit, so it is axiomatic that she urges the government to open up even more public services to privatisation.

It is not enough that 6 per cent of the economy that was previously in the public sector is now part of the profits mainline for these dividend junkies.

As long as there is the capacity for privateers to milk the public purse, this parasitic sector will expand to take it up.

Mr Hutton borrows the overused and threadbare line of Tony Blair that “what matters to the public is not who provides but how well a service is provided,” as though government actions are dictated by pragmatism rather than dogma.

But, in fact, there is no practical assessment taking place. The government opts for private as a matter of course.

And Ms Julius does the same, referring to “clear benefits” to taxpayers in hiving off public services to the privateers.

If cutting costs and enabling private profits are the sole criteria, privatisation obviously makes sense, but it omits the key questions of value for money and quality of services.

So confident are the trade unions of the superiority of public over private that, at TUC congress and Labour Party conferences, they have successfully proposed in-depth examination of private finance initiatives and their comparison with government-financed schemes.

New Labour has refused to proceed with these evaluations because, as with Ms Julius’s commission, it knows the answer already.

Most bizarrely, in light of the tidal wave of fury expressed by trade unions, Mr Hutton claims that “the ideological battle over using private and third-sector providers is over.”

By this he means among the circles in which he moves and to which he listens and that doesn’t include trade unionists.

No-one should imagine that Mr Hutton is a maverick out of step with Gordon Brown. They are in step with each other and they couldn’t give a toss about the unions.

The point at issue is what the unions are prepared to do about a party that holds them and their members in contempt.

Support and strength

tim — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 18:10:09 +0000

Unite general secretary Derek Simpson hit the nail on the head in arguing: “If people feel that they can get the kind of support and strength that they need from a union, I don’t think they mind what you call it.”

Trade unions exist to do a basic job – to defend workers’ pay and conditions.

They can and do take on other responsibilities and fringe benefits – everything from credit cards to concessionary insurance rates; but securing the best price for members’ labour power and safeguarding their health, safety and workplace respect is always the priority.

If Unite members are convinced that merging with the large north American union USW will assist them in that task, they will jump at the opportunity.

And, certainly, at a time when a relatively small number of transnational corporations are dominating global production, anything that minimises the prospect of national trade unions accepting the “reality” of a race to the bottom to price members into a job is welcome.

These corporations must be laughing all the way to the bank to see unions in one country after another agreeing to cut corporate costs; basic pay, fringe benefits, overtime rates etc – in a bid to persuade them not to relocate overseas.

If international union mergers can ensure a co-ordinated principled approach, they can only be positive.

However, there are two major phenomena that will work to undermine the principles of internationalism and working class solidarity.

One is the existence of stultifying anti-trade union legislation, especially in Britain and the US, and the other is trade unions’ poverty of ambition.

Solidarity action is specifically outlawed in the US and Britain, forcing workers in struggle to fight employers with one hand behind their backs.

Employers can ship in scabs from elsewhere in the country or from overseas. They can act in concert to undermine industrial action.

But woe betide any set of workers who act out of natural decency to try to tilt the balance of power in favour of members of their own union who are out on strike.

Think back to the efforts by workers at Heathrow airport who showed solidarity with the Gate Gourmet strikers and the storm of rage generated by employers, the media and the Labour government.

New Labour is now on the bones of its backside, abandoned by increasing numbers of its once generous boardroom donors and sinking into debt-laden oblivion.

Unions are ready and willing to bail Labour out, but they still seem to accept that Labour is only electable if it pursues Tory-style policies and gives up on any demands for real justice.

And previous union leaders who have copped the ermine, such as Baroness Prosser, are the most strident in rejecting the case for trade union freedom and for close Labour-union links.

The ability of a merged Unite-USW international union to punch its weight and to affect salaries, conditions and investment policies on a global basis will be enhanced by the capacity of its constituent parts to operate freely and effectively on their home turf.

A trade union freedom Bill in Britain is not only a prerequisite for effective international trade union solidarity but for domestic social justice too.

Neoliberal Offensive

Ellie Keen — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

European TUC general secretary John Monks urges “European legislators,” in light of the most recent outrageous ruling by the European Court of Justice, to revise the posting of workers directive to clarify and safeguard its original meaning.

If he is referring to the European Parliament, then he is barking up the wrong tree.

Legislators are representatives who initiate laws and the European Parliament does not have this power.

Its role is to revise draft legislation proposed by the unelected and unaccountable EU commission and, once a directive is finalised and issued by the commission, it is up to the European Court of Justice to rule on disputes arising from its operation.

Unlike any other court, the European Court of Justice has a mandate to remove obstacles to the operation of a free market within the EU and to promote ever-closer union within the bloc.

And it has been single-minded in doing so in its judgements handed down in response to employers’ demands to prioritise their right to make profits over trade unionists’ right to defend their living standards.

The latest scandalous rejection of workers’ rights is in response to a complaint by the EU commission against Luxembourg for insisting that national legislation on maximum and minimum working periods, minimum paid holidays, minimum rates of pay, health and safety, non-discrimination and so on should apply to posted workers is unreasonable and an additional burden on foreign service providers.

The Luxembourg case follows hot on the heels of the Laval, Viking and Rüffert cases, which undermined individual states’ protective legislation in the name of free provision of cross-border services.

The Laval case involved a Latvian construction company working on a school in the Swedish town of Vaxholm, which refused to sign a collective agreement and provoked trade union action to isolate the site.

The European Court of Justice ruled that, important though the right to take industrial action is, it is trumped by the right to trade freely.

The Rüffert case involved a Polish firm winning a contract in Germany and refusing to comply with wage rates agreed between the Lower Saxony government and the German building workers’ union.

The European Court of Justice ruling was that freedom to trade took precedence over collectively agreements.

The Viking case was about the owners of Finnish-flagged ferry Rosella deciding to register it in Estonia, thereby annulling the collective agreement with the Finnish seafarers’ union.

Once again, the European Court of Justice ruled in favour of the employer.

Even to those slow on the uptake, it must dawn that there is a pattern developing here and it is a pattern that points to a race to the bottom – acceptance of the worst pay and conditions as the norm across the EU.

This fits in with the neoliberal policies adopted across the continent and backed by all governments, whether nominally conservative or social-democratic.

It dovetails completely with the attacks on the welfare state, pensions provisions, the 35-hour week and other progressive conditions.

Overturning this employer offensive will not be won through EU institutions but by campaigns in all member states demanding non-implementation of these vicious anti-working class rulings.