Simon Basketter | ukwatch.net

Notting Hill Carnival crackdown targets young black men

JamieSW — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 18:36:28 +0000

London’s Notting Hill Carnival is rightly hailed as a celebration of multi-ethnic Britain.

But it turned into a nightmare for hundreds of young black men as heavily armed police swooped on buses carrying them to the street party.

In a pre-planned operation, police boarded buses in the Oval area of south London to take off those who fitted their profile.

The first of dozens of partygoers were corralled into a side street next to the famous cricket ground from around 2pm onwards.

Hundreds of police, some carrying machine guns, sealed off the surrounding area and fingerprinted and searched the mainly teenagers inside the cordon.

Over the course of the afternoon the police raided bus after bus. By 7pm around 200 men, overwhelmingly black and some appearing to be as young as 13, were being held.

Teenagers walking on nearby streets weren’t safe either. One young man, who had been with a group of friends returning from a birthday party, told Socialist Worker that police had put him and his friends into the cordon.

He explained how they had been on the way to the park to play football when a police van screeched to a halt and officers piled out.

Outside the cordon Socialist Worker spoke to many people who had just been released and were now waiting, hoping their friends would emerge soon.

Handcuffed

While some were resigned, saying that this kind of policing had become the norm, others were incensed. “This is some Rodney King shit going on here,” said one, referring to the beating of a black man by police that led to the Los Angeles riot in 1992.

“The Feds [the police] had us up against the wall and some of us on the floor being handcuffed until they searched us. Then they just let us go because they know we hadn’t done anything wrong.”

By early evening parents were joining the crowds outside the cordon, arguing with police about why their children were being held, and angry that a trip to carnival should be the pretext for such a clampdown.

The police commandeered buses to take more than 100 young people to police stations – though only seven were charged with any offence.

For some who made it to carnival, things were only a little better. Outside Notting Hill tube station, among the diverse mix of tens of thousands of revellers, gangs of police swooped almost exclusively on young black males.

It was the first of many hurdles that they would face. In the 200 metres between the station and the road where carnival floats were parading there were five separate police lines.

Socialist Worker stood behind one line of police that formed a “control point”. There was no sign of the much publicised “knife arches” that were supposed to keep carnival safe – instead there was old fashioned stop and search.

We witnessed dozens of black males being searched. The only white men we saw being held were part of racially mixed groups.

One young black teenager told Socialist Worker that this was the fifth time the police had searched him this year. “I have even been stopped twice in one day,” he said.

Those who have responded to the tragedy of knife crime by calling for police crackdowns ought to take note. The criminalisation of a generation of black youth will undoubtedly lead to explosions of anger in the future, just as it did a generation ago with the riots that swept Britain’s inner cities.

Inflation: the poor pay More

Ellie Keen — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 21:47:57 +0000

The rising cost of living is leaving millions of workers in Britain in poverty. Spiralling food prices have pushed inflation to a 16-year high.

Rises in the cost of food jacked up the official Consumer Price Index by 0.3 percentage points last month to 3.3 percent.

The slightly more realistic Retail Price Index – which includes some housing and other costs such as council tax – has risen to 4.3 percent.

The underlying reason for this is the spiralling cost of essentials. For instance, vegetable price rises almost doubled from 3.8 percent in April to 7.2 percent last month.

A basic basket of a dozen essential items has soared by an average of 23 percent in the past year. For example, 12 eggs, which cost £2 last May, are now £2.92 – a 46 percent leap. The price of a bag of rice has increased by 93 percent.

A chicken costs £1.50 more than 12 months ago and bread is up 28 percent, butter 30 percent and milk 17 percent.

Food prices across the board have risen by 6.6 percent in the last year, with the cost of staple foods soaring even faster.

A typical family’s annual shopping bill has gone up by about £1,000 in the past year – that’s an extra £2.70 every day.

Figures also show gas and electricity were 11.2 percent more expensive last month than May 2007.

They are set to go up by as much as 40 percent this year. This is another harsh blow for those who are already struggling with the average bill of more than £1,000 a year.

The average price of a litre of unleaded petrol was £1.11 in May, up 16.8 percent in a year. Diesel was up 26 percent to £1.21.

However, the truth about soaring prices is being systematically distorted. The reality is that the rate of inflation for ordinary people is rising twice as fast as the official figures show.

Based on Office for National Statistics calculations, a family in the south west of England with a mortgage and two children faces an inflation rate of 6.5 percent.

If they live in London it’s 7.3 percent. Pensioners are enduring even tougher times. One estimate shows they struggle with a real inflation rate of over 9 percent.

Elderly people are hit hardest by inflation because they spend a larger proportion of their income than other groups on basic goods such as food and fuel.

The official inflation rate is calculated on a basket of 650 goods. Some of the goods used are somewhat removed from most people’s reality – chocolate biscuits were recently taken out of the basket and champagne added in.

The Office for National Statistics also added fees for stabling horses to the basket of goods in spring this year.

But the real problem is the weight given to different items. Utility bills are given similar importance to luxury goods, for instance.

That means that falling prices for flatscreen televisions effectively cancel out rising gas bills in the figures.

So for the affluent, prices might be falling. But the daily necessities that all of us are obliged to spend money on are subject to massive price rises.

Heathrow's Strange History of Evasion and Expansion

Ellie Keen — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

London’s Heathrow airport is an ever-expanding city state that sucks in workers in the pursuit of profit. It is the world’s busiest international airport and it grows constantly with an accumulation of land, wealth and pollution for the sake of commerce.

Heathrow is a 24-hour shopping centre with a captive audience. It is a fenced-in, steel and glass cathedral to the market, and keeps running because of low wages and exploitation.

Once a minute a plane flies over the heads of those living nearby. The flights are low and loud enough that conversation has to stop. Some two million people are affected by noise and pollution from the airport.

The airport handles 67.5 million passengers a year and is the biggest single-site employer in Britain. It currently directly employs some 72,000 people and supports perhaps another 100,000 jobs.

In the London suburbs of Southall and Hounslow, the small sweatshops that hid behind the high streets in the 1960s and 1970s were closed down.

But they were replaced by the multinational sweatshops of the airline caterers, and the overpriced coffee and food chains.

Heathrow’s workers have had to struggle hard to win decent living standards throughout the airport’s history. Asian workers had to struggle to even get jobs there.

The 1970s saw a period of militancy at the airport with a number of strikes, including a massive engineering strike in 1977 over pay, which won after two weeks.

That militancy still exists. Check-in staff walked out unofficially in July 2003 against new clocking on and off procedures.

After catering staff at the Gate Gourmet firm were sacked in 2005, thousands of workers across the airport walked out unofficially in their support.

Hub

British lobbyists and the bosses talk about the need for a “hub” airport to justify Heathrow’s existence.

Their business model assumes it is more efficient to put passengers on feeder flights in and out of a huge hub airport.

Federal Express developed this “hub-and spoke” model in the 1950s in the US. It found that it could move parcels more profitably from New York to Washington by flying them 1,000 miles from New York to Memphis and then 800 miles to Washington, rather than shipping them directly by road.

Passenger airlines all rushed to copy the model. It isn’t that efficient for parcels, never mind people or the planet. But it was profitable.

During the Second World War, the aviation industry saw Heathrow – then a small airfield surrounded by market gardens – as the ideal opportunity to make a profit.

The Tory aviation minister Harold Balfour agreed with them. But Balfour recognised that he would not persuade the cabinet to go for Heathrow unless he sold it to them as an airport essential to the war effort.

So the cabinet agreed to proposals for a military airport. The RAF never used Heathrow. The embryonic airline industry had got its way by deception.

Balfour had used a wartime emergency requisition order to avoid a lengthy and costly public inquiry.

He wrote, “Almost the last thing I did at the air ministry of any importance was to hijack for civil aviation the land on which London [Heathrow] airport stands under the noses of resistant ministerial colleagues. If hijack is too strong a term, I plead guilty to the lesser crime of deceiving a cabinet committee.”

As Heathrow was born so it has grown. The location of the airport itself, to the west of London, is irrational. The site is low lying, being 25 metres above sea level, and prone to fog.

Heathrow is the only main urban airport that lies on an east-west axis relative to the city it serves.

This is a problem because prevailing winds in much of the world blow from west to east. Runways have to be aligned in this direction and aircraft using Heathrow must take off and land over densely-populated parts of London.

The perversely sited central terminals can only be reached by tunnels. Their position was based on the presumption that there would never be a need for large car parks since airline passengers would be wealthy – and therefore they would be chauffeur-driven.

Yet at the same time the original plan for the airport envisaged extension to the north.

That would have involved demolishing the villages of Harmondsworth, Sipson and Harlington. After opposition the plans were abandoned in December 1952.

The air ministry committee wrote, “No government would be prepared to consider a project that involved razing to the three old world villages of Harmondsworth, Sipson and Harlington to the ground.”

The men from the ministry hadn’t envisaged New Labour. The government is expected to oversee the expansion of Heathrow that will see the destruction of those very same areas.

The high street in Harmondsworth will be split, and a graveyard bulldozed. Sipson will disappear. In total around 4,000 houses will have to be demolished or abandoned.

Some 700 of these were built after a 1952 government guarantee that even if Heathrow expanded, Sipson would remain untouched.

Villages

The government claims that anyone evicted from their home as a result of expansion will be fully compensated, though how is not yet clear.

The villages might be almost stereotypical, with listed buildings, old churches and the like. But the people who live in them are workers in the airport.

People who have worked in Heathrow for decades are heading up the protests against the new runway.

Those who keep Heathrow running are those who suffer most directly from the pollution it produces.

They are to be evicted, and their homes consumed by the airport they work in.

That is the logic of allowing business to take precedence over people and the planet.

The Bosses Want to Buy Politics Wholesale

Ellie Keen — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 01:48:34 +0000

When corruption stories emerge, they are usually presented as being about individual rotten apples. While a few together create a general atmosphere of sleaze, there is always the search for the specific bribe.

It is occasionally the case that one business boss may pay a politician for a specific favour. That in a sense is retail corruption. But most of the corruption around access to politicians is in fact wholesale.

Behind the brown envelopes stand a network of big businesses spending huge sums on lobbying for their interests. Lobbying is well organised corruption.

Lobbyists hate being called lobbyists. “Public affairs consultant”, “government relations adviser”, “political communications strategist” are the preferred respectable introductions in polite company.

It is a big business in itself. There are over 50 such firms dotted around in the streets around the House of Commons, with an estimated turnover of £10 million a year.

In addition, across the European Union (EU) there are some 15,000 people working as lobbyists over European legislation. A personal favourite is the European Public Affairs Consultancies Association (EPACA) whose sole purpose is to campaign against any attempt to get lobby companies to be more transparent.

Networking

Lobbyists joke that, “The way to a man’s ‘aye’ is through his stomach” and argue that there is indeed such a thing as a free lunch. The “old Labour” stalwart Aneurin Bevan described it as “gastronomic pimping”. Meetings, briefings and “networking” are all the preferred methods. Sometimes donations are involved and sometimes the willing politicians can be persuaded without money changing hands.

When the Tories were in power, the lobbyists tended to be linked to the Tories. After over a decade of a Labour government, the leading firms are staffed with people tied to the Labour Party.

Gordon Brown’s fundraiser Jon Mendelsohn has a career path that highlights the relationship between lobbyists and the parliament.

Mendelsohn was an adviser to Tony Blair from 1995 to 1997. After Labour’s 1997 election victory, Mendelsohn together with two other self-confessed Blairites set up the LLM Communications lobbying firm.

Then in August this year Mendelsohn was appointed as Labour’s director of general election resources.

When one is in power one gets friends in low places. The gangster Al Capone once called capitalism the “legitimate racket of the ruling class”.

In fact, corruption is the logical outcome of the way that society is organised. The business community is presented as just one lobby group of many that enter the political field as equals. In reality, they are economically vastly more powerful. Moreover, since payments are the way business is done, it is also the way business does politics.

Since capitalism is based on competition, this creates pressure on each company to develop strong relations with the state and to cut others out to gain advantage. Often the methods used are secretive and underhand, and lie on the border between legality and illegality.

For instance, in the gambling dens of the stock market, cheating at gambling is frowned upon. But insider trading – where traders use their privileged “insider” knowledge to gamble and sell – is profitable. One study of 172 mergers on the US stock exchange found that there was insider dealing in all of them.

There are different bosses who have different interests. That is one of the reasons corruption develops – the different interests of the competing bosses competing for access.

This means that while corruption is logical it is not always healthy for all bosses in the system. If one set of capitalists is more successful at influencing politics in their interest, inevitably others will do badly.

The real victims of all this are of course ordinary people. Neoliberalism normalises the fact that the unaccountable power of wealth and money is the deciding factor for everything. Donations scandals are a sign of how integrated Labour has become to the interests of the bosses.

Every free lunch, every networking opportunity means another city academy, or another cut in services, or another favour for the bosses.

Crisis

Often it is in periods of instability that corruption comes to the fore. At one level during periods of economic crisis the pressure for business to get an inside edge increases.

More fundamentally, changes in power and political crisis often bring the relations between politics and business to the foreground.

They reveal that a system built on exploitation, theft and competition will put the political system as much as everything else at the service of the market.

Corruption scandals can often blow over as the initial media frenzy dies down and politicians regain their posture. But they can also feed into people’s anger against the system. Across the world the crises sparked by corruption have mobilised people to bring down governments.

Labour’s latest scandals should not just be an example of their duplicity. It should be a spur to build a different sort of politics.

Housing: the Devil's in the Detail

eddie — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 13:18:56 +0000

Gordon Brown talks of housing as “one of the great causes of our time”. Last week his new government launched its “green paper” discussion document on the issue.

Jack Dromey, deputy general secretary of the Unite union, responded positively. “Gordon Brown has listened to the millions struggling to buy or rent a home,” he said.

But he added, “The green paper does not go far enough in putting right all past wrongs, when tenants were told to transfer from the council if they wanted desperately needed repairs and renovation.”

At the Defend Council Housing annual conference last month, Dromey warned that the “devil is in the detail” as far as housing policy is concerned. And indeed it is.

The overwhelming thrust of the government’s plans is to resolve the lack of decent housing by cajoling the private sector into building more houses for people to buy.

Brown has promised to boost the number of new homes built by 20 percent. This would mean an increase in the current target to 240,000 homes per year.

In terms of concrete plans, as opposed to paper targets, the figure is nearer 160,000. A recent survey found that only 18 percent of new housing developments could be classed as “good” or “very good”.

Some 53 percent were classed as “average”, while 29 percent were “poor quality”. But even “average” quality is not a good prospect for housing built on a flood plain – as the green paper actively encourages.

*Social homes*

Regardless of how many homes are built and what quality they are, the question is – who are the homes being built for? The average house in England and Wales costs around £210,000 – more than eight times the average salary.

Now we have the promise of some 70,000 more “affordable homes” by 2011, along with at least 50,000 new “social homes”. These will involve promoting “greater private sector involvement in social housing”.

But most of the “affordable” housing currently available is way beyond the reach of ordinary people. There are some suggestions for helping people get mortgages – but even for those who do manage to get into enough debt to buy a house, more problems await.

Since 1990, more than 500,000 homeowners have lost their homes because they were too poor to pay their mortgages. Some 12 percent of households are currently behind with their mortgage payments or are having difficulty meeting them.

The other key set of problems with Brown’s green paper concern the issue of planning. The government claims it is necessary to tackle the “structural inefficiencies” of the system by making it easier for planning permission to be granted to private housing developers.

But removing or downgrading controls over the release of land and over planning permission means handing over more power and influence to the bosses of the building trade.

The green paper proposes relaxing the planning process, with clear indications that the government intends to override local authority planning powers.

In contrast, proposals on encouraging the private sector to reveal the extent of their land banks are vague in the extreme, while promising that taxes on developers “will be kept to a minimum”.

Boosting the private sector and building more houses for sale are not the solution for the 1.6 million people on waiting lists for council housing – or for the millions more currently in inadequate or substandard housing.

The simple solution is build more council houses. Yet under Labour. council housing building has virtually ground to a halt. A grand total of 277 council houses were build nationally in 2006 – just four of them in London.

The green paper proposes that councils should deploy currently unused public land to build houses “in partnership” with the private sector. It does discuss reforms that would allow councils to retain income from tenants’ rents and the sales of council houses. It even alludes to allowing councils to build new council homes.

But this is all limited to “pilot schemes” – and even then councils must set up a “local authority company” for the scheme. This is yet another way of getting the private sector involved.

The paper unveils 14 pilot local housing companies to act as “master developers”. Local authorities will supply development land, while private and public sector partners will actually build the houses.

“We expect councils to undertake direct development only where it offers better value for money than other options,” says the paper.

“But where they choose to invest their own money in new supply, we think councils should be able to keep the income and capital returns from those additional new homes.”

Just in case there is any confusion, the green paper adds, “In most cases, we would expect models which offer access to private finance to provide better value for money.”

In sharp contrast to the situation for council houses, housing associations are promised a light regulatory touch. They will be allowed to monitor their own performance, rather than be subject to an external inspection regime.

The government is reluctant to encourage councils to build council housing since it claims such spending would be counted towards public sector borrowing figures.

Even on its own terms, this is a false argument. Debt from PFI and PPP deals might not show up on the public accounts, but as the Metronet scandal on London Underground shows, the taxpayer ends up footing the bill anyway.

*Truth*

The truth is that keeping the figures on public sector borrowing artificially low is far more important to the government than really starting to solve the housing problem.

Pressure from campaigners has forced the government to talk about councils been involved in the process. But there is a danger that they will use talk of “social housing” rather than council housing to push through yet more privatisation.

The housing market is incapable of solving the housing crisis. Despite they hype and promises, the proposals in Gordon Brown’s paper are at best vague and at worst counterproductive.

We should demand that the “fourth option” of direct public investment in council housing be implemented in an explicit and unequivocal manner. We need an end to all housing privatisation, including semi-privatisations such as transfers to Almos.

Instead of handing over public land to the private sector, councils should be taking unused land from the private sector to build on.

And they should build council housing – publicly owned and democratically accountable – rather than tinkering with second rate substitutes such as “social housing” or “affordable housing”.

Finally the market madness in housing needs to be tackled head on, with an end to tax breaks for buy-to-let mortgages, increased taxations on second homes – and punitive taxation on speculators who buy homes and leave them empty in the hope of making a fast buck on rising property prices.

The New Vultures of Capitalism

eddie — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 12:28:17 +0000

Until this year the words “private equity” meant very little to most people. But now private equity companies are at the centre of a major row about how big business operates.

For hundreds of thousands of workers, private equity means asset stripping, job cuts, pensions robbed and rights denied.

An energetic campaign by trade unions means Gordon Brown is under pressure to regulate the private equity industry. Perhaps he will eventually tinker with the massive privileges such firms enjoy.

But it should not be forgotten that he was the very architect of their present pampered existence.

On 17 March 1998 Brown delivered his second budget. He said it would “advance the ambitions not just of the few but of the many”.

The government aimed to create “a tax system that makes all work pay, that encourages skills and rewards enterprise and entrepreneurship throughout the economy”.

Brown then introduced a tax break “for those who build up businesses or stake their own hard-earned money in them”.

Someone holding a business asset and selling it at a profit after ten years would pay just 10 percent tax on the gain.

Two years later, Brown gave a further concession. To benefit from the 10 percent rate, people would no longer have to hold on to an asset for ten years – the low rate would kick in after only four.

_Benefit_

In 2002, he reduced this to just two years. The people who benefited were private equity companies.

Over the past three years, private equity has emerged as a huge and powerful force. In 2006, the value of global private equity deals was nearly $750 billion (£380 billion) – five times the figure for 2003.

The British private equity industry is estimated to have invested more than £75 billion in businesses around the world. It has brought huge rewards for the bankers, lawyers and advisers who service it.

Of the 65 companies in the FTSE 350 that have been taken over since 2005, 27 went to private equity buyers.

Brown and the Labour Party are deeply grateful for the money from the tycoons that run these companies.

Last year for instance, William Bollinger, co-founder of Egerton Capital, gave £250,000 to the Labour Party. Jon Aisbitt, formerly a partner at Goldman Sachs, who now sits on the board of Man Group, gave £250,000.

Sir Ronald Cohen, who recently retired as head of Apax Partners and is an advisor to Brown, also gave £250,000. Nigel Doughty of another private equity group, Doughty Hanson, gave £250,000.

The consequences for workers have been disastrous.

Texas Pacific, one of the world’s largest private equity companies, was the owner of Gate Gourmet when the company sacked its workforce by megaphone.

At Bird’s Eye the closure of the Hull factory was announced a few months after a private equity takeover. Production was moved to Germany with the loss of 600 jobs.

_Little Chef_

When Little Chef was taken over many of its branches closed. The company’s land was sold and then leased back. When it was sold on, the new company was unable to pay the rents and it almost folded.

The AA was taken over by private equity companies in the autumn of 2004. The workforce was cut from 10,000 to 6,700. The working day was extended to 11 and a half hours and wages were cut in its call centres.

The employer boasts that productivity jumped 25 percent and profits doubled to £200 million. In February 2006, the owners borrowed £500 million to pay a special “profit” to shareholders.

Two weeks ago Brown said, “We will make sure there is justice and equity in the treatment of tax arrangements” for private equity.

As venture capitalist Nicholas Ferguson put it, executives in private equity firms pay a lower rate of tax than the people who clean their offices.

“I have not heard anyone give a clear explanation of why it is justified,” he said.

*‘I’m a greedy bastard’*

Jon Moulton is the head of venture capitalist Alchemy Partners. He said last week of a fellow venture capitalist resigning as chair of the British Venture Capitalist Association that he was a “thoroughly nice guy. Not hired for standing up to Socialist Worker types!”

Moulton is made of tougher stuff. He has said, “Making people redundant is not a nice thing to do to a human being, but nor is removing haemorrhoids – and sometimes that needs to be done.”

He is a “minor” supporter of the Tory party – he has donated about £50,000. He says, “I have to declare an interest.

“Fundamentally, I like really awful times as the collapse of the UK economy is ideal for me and my business.”

His profits from Alchemy are not disclosed but his estimated personal wealth is £172 million. He wrote an “abc” article to explain private equity excerpts include:

_C is for Carried Interest_

The percentage of the profit on a transaction that goes to the partners of the venture capitalist (VC) firm.

Known as “carry” as in “too much money to carry”.

_E is for Envy Ratio_

The ratio between how much money a management team makes and how many workers they make unemployed.

_G is for Greedy Bastards_

That’s management. And us.

_J is for Jersey_

Where many VC funds are domiciled. Because they like the weather.

_L is for Loadsa Money_

_P is for Profit and P45_

VCs seek to make one by handing out lots of the other.

_U is for Unions_

A VC’s greatest ally. Particularly helpful in restructuring dying businesses to meet the needs of the market economy.

We’re all capitalists now.

*Brown’s moneyman and envoy*

Sir Ronald Cohen, former executive chairperson of Apax Partners, Britain’s biggest venture capital company, is one of the most successful figures in the City.

Cohen is set to replace Lord Levy as Labour’s chief fundraiser when Brown becomes party leader. Cohen has given over £1.5 million to Labour.

Brown already employs Sir Ronald as a foreign policy adviser.

His Portland Trust is a foundation aimed at bringing peace to the Middle East by introducing neoliberalism.

He has been called “the father of British venture capital” – investing in dozens of firms before selling them on for multi-million pound profits.

In 1974, Cohen stood as the parliamentary candidate for the Liberal Party in Kensington North, and in 1979 he stood as its European candidate in London West.

In 1996 he switched allegiance to the Labour Party, becoming a supporter of Tony Blair.

He has homes in Notting Hill, west London, New York, and Mougins, near Cannes.

A long-standing friend and ally of Brown, Cohen was appointed by the chancellor in 2000 to chair a treasury social investment task force that encourages entrepreneurs in deprived inner city areas.

The same year Cohen was nominated for a knighthood by the treasury.

He is also a director of the International Institute of Strategic Studies – a Cold War thinktank.

Apax’s most successful investment was in the software company Autonomy. Apax sold its shares in the company in 2000 just before the dotcom crash, walking away with a profit of about £150 million on its £1.8 million investment.

*The tax and fees scam*

Some of Britain’s richest people have accumulated their fortunes through private equity.

Such funds can generate enormous payments for private equity partners who usually get “carried interest” – typically a 20 percent share of any profits from selling companies on.

It is this carried interest that is eligible for tax relief, which reduces their rate of tax from 40 percent to 10 percent.

The partners in private equity firms in practice only pay 5 percent tax on the “carried interest”. That’s not a tax dodge, but legal structured agreements with investors about how the rewards and costs of investments are shared out.

Brown may tighten this specific rules when he comes to office. If the tax law is changed as the business press suggests it will, it will hit just 30 people.

There are about 180 private equity partners operating in Britain. At least 150 of the 180 of them are “non-domicile” for tax purposes – so they pay ZERO tax in Britain.

The partners in private equity companies should be taxed to the hilt but taxing the actual profits of the companies should also be on the agenda. And Brown is unlikely to do that to his business backers.

_Buyout_

Charges associated with the private equity leveraged buyout, such as fees for completing the deal and annual management fees, are also loaded onto the acquired company’s accounts, not the private equity fund.

For example, had a private equity firm been successful in a £10 billion bid for Sainsbury’s, it is estimated the firm would have received from Sainsbury’s an immediate fee of £50 million (a 0.5 percent fee of £10 billion) simply for completing the acquisition, as well £30 million a year in management fees.

This is on top of the enormous fees the accountants and lawyers who oversee the deals make out of the process.

*What are private equity firms?*

A few years ago, private equity was a fringe activity that involved just a few rich people.

Now, it’s highly likely that your high street bank has lent shedloads of money to private equity and your pension fund has invested in them.

Some three million workers in Britain work for companies controlled by private equity.

Private equity buys, as cheaply as it can, a company. It borrows heavily to finance the purchase, and then uses the cashflow over, say, five years to pay off the loan, while also cutting costs ruthlessly.

Private equity does capitalism’s dirty business in the dark. A public company, quoted on the stock exchange, is a tiny bit accountable to a wide range of shareholders.

Some rules apply to how it’s run and what it discloses.

A private company has no such obligations. As with every neoliberal measure, Britain and the US are leading the way.

Up to 90 percent of the cost of acquisition is funded by debt and 10 percent by investment, which reverses the usual financial structure of firms.

If private equity targets a firm worth £10 million and thinks they can turn it into a firm worth £12 million, then that is a 20 percent return.

But if they can persuade banks to provide £9 million of the £10 million, then their return becomes 200 percent.

Private equity engages with workers on a “heads we win, tails you lose” basis. If a buyout goes well, private equity bosses receive huge returns.

The workers, if they are lucky, get to keep their jobs. If the company goes bust, the private equity company sells off the assets to pay the debts and the workers get nothing.

The scale of the operation is huge. One of the largest private equity companies Blackstone Group’s accounts came to light last week in the US as it offered itself to new investors.

_Billions_

Co-founder Peter Peterson stands to make $1.9 billion from the deal while chief executive Steve Schwarzman will pocket around $450 million and still retain a $7.7 billion stake.

What the current focus on private equity does is throw light on workings of our society. Other capitalist firms screw over their workers, sack people and steal their pensions.

Private equity is simply an attempt by the bosses to make as much money as possible out of the process with as little control as possible.

Private equity is not just the “unacceptable face of capitalism”, it’s what capitalism looks like in the raw. The companies’ methods bring to the fore the reality of the way this system works.

*Where’s my pension?*

Workers who contributed for decades to pension schemes now find themselves in poverty after private equity firms walked away from pension liabilities amounting to at least £2 billion, according to research by the GMB union.

British United Shoe Machinery (BUSM) was bought by Sir Ronald Cohen’s private equity firm Apax Partners in 1995. Bob Duncan, a member of the GMB, worked for BUSM for 36 years until its insolvency in 2000.

“I was a specialist engineer,” he says, “and worked a 38-hour week plus overtime, building shoe machines that sold all over the world. When I joined, the firm was thriving with about 6,000 workers.”

After the receiver came in, there was no money for redundancy payments. Bob reassured himself his pension, at least, was secure. But about three months later he heard that he would not be getting anywhere near it. He was expecting a core annual pension of £9,150.

He says, “I’ve clawed back just over half that now, but I’ve had to fight all the way to the European Court of Human Rights.”

At Turner & Newall, a private equity company took a controlling share of the parent company in the US and withheld funding for the British pension scheme. Following the insolvency of the British employer, the company’s assets were bought back (at a reduced price) by the same US private equity company.

The result is that the company continues as it did before private equity involvement but without the pension scheme.

The T&N pension fund’s unfunded liabilities are estimated at £875 million. The 40,000 workers received just 7p in the pound of their pension.

*Little illusions*

The private equity tycoons like to pretend that their business is all about helping companies and creating an entrepreneurial spirit.

The reality is that most private equity companies have nothing at all to do with business start-ups. Even when they do there should be little illusions in their worth.

In 2002, Sir Ronald Cohen was the inspiration behind Bridges Community Ventures. It had £20 million of government money matched by £20 million of private funds to “invigorate the poorest UK boroughs”.

Its most notable achievement was helping set up a price comparison website that was sold for £22 million to the company behind the Daily Mail.

It has handed over £8 million to its private sector investors from just three company sell-offs.

Then there is tycoon Sir Christopher Evans, the biotechnology millionaire, who invests in start-up companies and lent the Labour Party £1 million.

He was arrested last September by police investigating whether Labour gave out honours in exchange for loans to the party and later released without charge.

_© Copyright Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original and leave this notice in place._

Stop and Search

Alex Doherty — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 20:33:35 +0000

‘We have chosen as a society to put the civil liberties of the suspect, even if a foreign national, first. I happen to believe this is misguided and wrong. I believe this is a dangerous misjudgement.” So said Tony Blair in a parting shot at civil liberties before stepping down.

The British police already have the power to stop and search people. But they have no right to ask for their identity and movements. Blair and home secretary John Reid want to give the police the power to seize any documents and search people without reason.

The new power would give police an automatic right to stop and question anyone in Britain. It would be an extension of the Section 44 power currently in force as part of Labour’s “anti-terror” legislation. This is currently in force across the whole of London.

These proposals would mean a return to the hated “sus” laws (from “suspected”) that made it “illegal for a suspected person or reputed thief to frequent or loiter in a public place with intent to commit an arrestable offence”.

The law came from the 1824 Vagrancy Act, which was passed to stop destitute soldiers coming back from the Napoleonic wars begging on the streets.

The police could stop and search, and arrest, anyone on the basis of a suspicion that they might commit a crime.

People could be convicted on the testimony of the arresting officer. Most people stopped were never charged with any offence – the law was used as a form of physical and verbal harassment.

*Systematic*

The “sus” laws became a systematic method of racist harassment of black people by the police during the 1970s. African-Caribbean people were just 6 percent of London’s population. They accounted for 44 percent of those arrested under the “sus” law in the late 1970s.

In 1977, some 14,000 people were stopped and searched in Lewisham, south London, alone. Over 200 Special Patrol Group police – an elite unit – armed with pick-axe handles and Alsatian dogs, raided 60 black homes in the area. The police called it, “Operation PNH – Police Nigger Hunt”.

What changed the situation was resistance. On 10-11 April 1981 Brixton, in south London, rebelled. Police struggled to crush the uprising against racist brutality and poverty. Over 7,000 police officers did eventually regain control.

The police had launched a massive operation in Brixton four days before the riot. They poured in 100 extra plainclothes officers as part of “Operation Swamp 81”.

At the same time they were refusing to seriously investigate a fire in New Cross Road, a few miles away, which had killed 13 young black people three months before. In four days the police stopped 943 people in Brixton and arrested 118, over half of them black.

Then on Friday evening, 10 April, the police bundled Michael Bailey, a 19 year old black man who was bleeding from a stab wound, into a police car. No ambulance was called. A crowd gathered. The police car did not move.

So people freed him and the police attacked them. Running battles continued for hours. Plainclothes and uniformed police stepped up the repression the following day. They arrested a 28 year old black man who was waving at a friend in Atlantic Road.

“Black and white people went over to try and help, but in the end six policemen threw him in a van,” said an eyewitness. “By now everyone was angry.” Police steamed into the crowds of Saturday shoppers.

The Brixton riot was not an isolated incident. Twelve months earlier 2,000 people – two thirds black, one third white – had rioted in St Pauls, Bristol, after a police raid on a club. There were several minor clashes with the police in other areas within weeks.

They included a demonstration of skinheads in Sheffield, who ended up charging through the streets shouting, “Brixton, Brixton!” Then on

3 July police racism triggered riots in Southall, west London, and in Toxteth, Liverpool.

They spread over the next seven days to Moss Side in Manchester, Leicester, Handsworth in Birmingham, Brixton, Leeds, Bolton and scores of other places. Toxteth and Moss Side were on the scale of Brixton three months earlier. Liverpool’s black population was concentrated in Toxteth.

*Violence*

The 1981 riots drew the mass of white youth to identify with black people who were at the sharp end of police violence. A rioter called Jono told Socialist Worker after the Toxteth riot, “We hate the police. It’s easy as that, isn’t it? They come in and push us around. This isn’t black against white. How could it be? Look, we’re together.”

It is only when people have fought back against police racism that anyone in power has been forced to acknowledge it. The uprisings forced the Tory government to hold an inquiry headed by Lord Justice Scarman.

He declared that there was no institutional racism in the police, merely a few “rotten apples”. But the “sus” laws were abolished and replaced with powers under the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act (Pace).

Pace said officers needed “reasonable suspicion” that an offence had been committed. The law is still used to harass people with stop and search, but less than the “sus” laws Blair wants to bring back.

The 1999 Macpherson Report into the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence did recognise the “institutional racism”. The effect of Macpherson was a brief decline in the use of stop and search.

The “war on terror” has increased the number of stop and searches to over that of the pre-Macpherson level.

Draconian laws are brought in to give confidence to the police and to take confidence away from ordinary people.

In the 1970s, the racist drive from the top was against African-Caribbeans. Now another key focus of state racism is Islamophobia.

While African-Carribbeans still suffer intense harassment from the police, the harassment of Muslims has increased dramatically.

However, the solution is the same – resistance from ordinary people, black and white, can help to defend our liberties.

............................................................

*Legislation has been used to increase attacks on black and Muslim people*

Labour deputy leader candidate Peter Hain has warned that Britain must take care that its anti-terror legislation does not alienate whole communities.

He said, “We’ve got to be very careful that we don’t create the domestic equivalent of Guantanamo Bay, which was an international abuse of human rights, and acted as a recruiting sergeant for dissidents and alienated Muslims and many other people across the world.”

However, he seems less bothered that the draconian law proposed by Tony Blair already exists in Northern Ireland, where he is secretary of state.

In February, even the Metropolitan Police Authority found that the police’s use of special anti-terror stop and search powers were doing “untold harm” to communities in London, particularly Muslims.

But the harassment of thousands of people goes far wider than that.

In 2004-5 there were 839,977 stop and searches recorded by the police under Section 1 of Pace. Overall African-Caribbean people are six times more likely to be searched than white people and Asians twice as likely.

Asian are 30 percent more likely than whites or African-Caribbeans to be searched under the terror legislation.

Overall there has been a gradual decline in the number of white people stopped and searched since 1997-8. For African-Caribbean and Asian people, the numbers of stop and searches are broadly similar to levels recorded ten years ago.

The police have recorded a 37 percent increase in what they call “suspicious reconnaissance” of potential targets in the first four months of 2007. As Socialist Worker reported last week, this means people being arrested for taking photographs of public buildings and tourist sites.

The police are also using their anti-terror stop and search powers for day to day duties.

The powers have quietly been introduced into Scotland Yard’s “safer neighbourhoods” programme, which allegedly targets anti-social behaviour, criminal damage and graffiti.

Whites Most Oppressed?

jo — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 20:50:26 +0000

Poor and marginalised people living in Britain have attracted some false friends in recent weeks. The rebranded Tories sent the highly unlikely radical Iain Duncan Smith MP off to look at education, and he came back with the conclusion that the education system lets down white working people.

The Telegraph waded in with a piece headlined White, Poor, Male And Doomed To Fail and the Economist shed crocodile tears with an article entitled Poor Whites: The Forgotten Underclass.

A tagline on the Economist piece summed up the story: Muslims and blacks get more attention. But poor whites are in a worse state.

The most basic point that those on the left should make is that this campaign is designed to bolster racism.

Politicians never say to workers, We want to divide you in order to make it easier to rule over you. Instead they try to persuade white workers to turn against black, Asian or Muslim workers, harnessing whatever arguments they feel are most persuasive.

In this case the establishment admits that some white people are doing extremely badly in an attempt to blunt the arguments of anti-racists.

The argument that multiculturalism has left poor white people behind follows hot on the heels of the claim, repeated endlessly in the press over the past year, that immigrants are cutting British workers wages. The Tories and right wing press are now spreading myths previously peddled only by the likes of the Nazi BNP.

Michael Collins, writing in the Sunday Times, launched a head-on attack on multiculturalism. The culture of political correctness and the widespread (and often accurate) view among many working class people that every other social and ethnic groups needs came above theirs when it came to government resources bred resentment, he wrote.

From the 1980s the multiculturalists formed part of a breed within civic bodies, keen to erase evidence of the local heritage of the white working class and emphasise the historical presence of every other creed and colour. Had all this been done to any other ethnic or social group, its problems would not have remained so hidden.

It is important to look at these arguments in detail. The Tories report said that only 17 percent of white working class boys managed to gain five or more A to C grades at GCSE level. This contrasts with the 19 percent recorded by black African-Caribbean boys from poor backgrounds, who are traditionally seen as the ethnic group with the worst educational achievement.

Now, how do you define working class or poor? The Economist study (the only one that gives details) uses people who are recipients of free school meals. This is a very bad description of working class.

Free school meals are available to children of parents who get income support, or income-based jobseekers allowance or child tax credit and your annual income is no more than £14,155 and you do not get working tax credit, guarantee element of state pension or if you receive support under part Vl of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999.

Such a definition leaves out the vast majority of workers. So the study is assuredly not of white working class people.

Secondly, the analyses never admit that the reach of poverty is far greater among Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, African-Caribbean people and other ethnic minorities than it is among whites.

A very good study produced by the TUC this year uses the following table:

Risk of being poor by ethnic group

Proportion of ethnic group who are poor (percent)

Pakistani/Bangladeshi 58%
Black non-Caribbean 47%
Black Caribbean 34%
Chinese or other ethnic group 42%
Mixed 34%
Indian 29%
All individuals 21%
White 19%

The fact that 19 percent of whites are so poor that they meet the criteria is a disgrace an indictment of New Labours record. But that figure is dwarfed by the figures for other groups. The report goes on to show:

Ethnic groups GCSE results, England and Wales

Proportion of ethnic group gaining five or more GCSE grades A* to C (percent)

Other Asian 64%
Indian 60%
Other 53%
White 52%
Bangladeshi 41%
Pakistani 40%
Black 36%

Overall, the vast majority of non-whites do worse than whites. Now revisit the arguments about comparing white children eligible for free school meals with ethnic minority children.

You are talking about some 12 percent of white pupils, and at least twice this proportion in each minority ethnic group received free school meals.

So the fact that the ethnic minority children eligible for free school meals may get slightly better results than the white children eligible for free school meals in no way cancels out the fact that white people, in general, will still do much better than black people.

If you really want to compare like with like, compare the poorest 12 percent of white children with the poorest 12 percent of ethnic minority children. Here you would find that the appalling results that the system delivers for white people are even worse for ethnic minorities.

One of the extraordinary facts that Duncan Smith did not mention is that whatever success black children now achieve is a result of lengthy struggles against the effects of the Tories racist and anti-working class policies.

In 1988, the year of the Tory Education Reform Act, black pupils were the most successful of the groups from manual backgrounds. Ten years later they were among the least successful.

These details are important. They explode the statistics that are dishonestly used to boost the notion that multiculturalism is holding back whites.

But it is also important not to get hung up on the figures what is centrally important here is for the left to challenge the attempts to divide and rule.

The very real misery that working class people face is not caused by immigration. It is a product of capitalism, and in particular the war of all against all encouraged by Margaret Thatcher and her Blairite imitators over the past 25 years.

In the 19th century, Karl Marx argued that the antagonism of English workers towards Irish immigrants was the secret by which the capitalist class maintains its power. Racism in the working class today serves the same role.

Even while they are pretending to champion the cause of white workers, the establishment dismisses them as chavs and binge drinkers, fit only for anti-social behaviour orders.

Of course, there is an interaction between race and class. Class is the key divide running through society. Generally pupils from wealthy families from all ethnic groups do better than their working class counterparts of whatever ethnic group.

So working class black African-Caribbean children find themselves alongside working class white and Pakistani pupils in the lower sets in the school system. Once children are placed in a lower set, it is more difficult for them to rise.

But there is also a racial bias against black pupils. Class divisions among black children are less pronounced than for white children because all black children face the detrimental effects of racism. Even middle class black or Asian children often do badly because of the ethnic penalty they face.

The real question is who do you trust to carry forward working class concerns for the vast majority of us white, Asian and black who are shut out by the present system.

Do you trust Tony Blair and his coterie of business-loving New Labourites? Do you trust David Cameron, product of Eton and Brasenose College, Oxford, member of the Bullingdon dining club and Whites gentlemens club, married to Samantha, daughter of Sir Reginald Sheffield, 8th baronet, and Viscountess Astor?

Or do you trust working people of whatever origin to come together to push for their own concerns rather than being divided one against another? On the answer to that question hangs much of the future.

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Get The Troops Out

jo — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 20:16:39 +0000

The arguments for maintaining the occupation of Iraq crumbled a little further this week.

Tony Blair admitted, in an interview with David Frost on Al Jazeera English, that Iraq was a disaster, before leaving the country for a photo opportunity with troops fighting his other war in Afghanistan.

Margaret Hodge also chose last week to launch an attack on the war, the most senior cabinet member yet to do so. She said that Iraq was Blairs big mistake.

Meanwhile, George Bush was hounded by huge anti?war demonstrations in Indonesia.

From the start, the war on Iraq was sold to a sceptical public through a series of lies in particular about weapons of mass destruction and Al Qaidas alleged links to Iraq.

Once these lies were exposed, the Bush administration adopted a series of new and equally dishonest mantras we are bringing democracy to Iraq, we are rebuilding Iraq, we are preventing civil war.

Rebuilding

Some in the anti?war movement, horrified by the sheer level of chaos and destruction, have accepted the need for foreign troops to remain to maintain order and help rebuild the country.

But the reality is that the situation will get worse each day the occupation continues.

The arguments were already old in 1899 when Rudyard Kipling wrote his poem The White Mans Burden in support of US colonisation of the Philippines. Similar lies were uttered by British and French politicians throughout the 19th century who sought to justify their continued presence in the colonies.

Just as in former colonial adventures, the US and Britain have sought to turn sections of the Iraqi population against each other. The longer the occupation of Iraq continues, the greater the chance that these divisions will spill over into civil war.

The Iraq occupation is tearing the country apart and making life hell for the population. An estimated 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion. Torture is widespread, and more than 14,000 people are detained. Over 300,000 people have fled their homes so far this year.

Over three years after the invasion, the national electricity grid can only deliver electricity to the capital for one hour out of every four. A Pentagon study estimated that about 25.9 percent of Iraqi children examined were stunted in their physical growth due to chronic malnutrition which is on the rise across Iraq.

The parallels with Vietnam are increasingly clear. When the Vietnam War turned bad for the US, there was talk of peace with honour. Today the search is on for an exit strategy that can salvage US prestige.

Instead of Vietnamisation the name given to the creation of local forces to do the work of the US we have talk of Iraqification.

Vietnam

At best, this would involve a long term reduction of US forces to 50,000 still 20,000 more than former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld hoped would remain in Iraq only months after the fall of Baghdad.

These troops would be pulled back into the enormous, permanent bases the US military has built in the region.

And any attempt to gradually withdraw troops will cause more horror. Just as in Vietnam, US troop levels cannot be slowly reduced in Iraq without increased use of air power.

The new US defence secretary Robert Gates, who replaced Rumsfeld earlier this month, laid out his thinking on phased withdrawal 18 months ago.

Some 60 years after the end of the Second World War, there are still American troops in Germany, he said.

Weve had troops in Korea for over 50 years. The British have had troops in Cyprus for 40 years. If you want to change history, you have to be prepared to stay as long as it takes to do the job.

As the elites of US and Britain begin to panic over the quagmire they have created for themselves in Iraq, the anti?war movement cannot afford be complacent over the need for the immediate withdrawal of troops.

The US is determined to remain in Iraq to maintain its power over the region and to control vital oil resources. The price paid will be more Iraqi deaths, and the deadly toll will continue to rise as long as US and British forces remain.

How US credibility has been shrivelled

A year ago former US secretary of state and war criminal Henry Kissinger issued a stark warning on the consequences of defeat in Iraq.

Defeat would shrivel US credibility around the world, he argued. Our leadership and the respect accorded to our views on other regional issues from Palestine to Iran would be weakened.

The confidence of other major countries China, Russia, Europe, Japan in Americas potential contribution would be diminished. The respite from military efforts would be brief before even greater crises descended on us.

He might have added that defeat for the worlds most powerful military machine would boost those fighting imperialism, corporate globalisation and attacks on human rights the world over.

Kissinger is a significant player in right wing US politics. He was secretary of state for republican president Richard Nixon, and helped develop the so called peace with honour strategy for withdrawing from South Vietnam in the wake of the last military defeat suffered by the US.

So it must have come as a shock to the neocons surrounding George Bush to hear Kissinger admit that exactly the kind of terrible defeat he described is now at hand.

Last weekend, he told the BBC, If you mean by military victory, an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I dont believe that is possible.

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Migrants And Wages

jo — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 21:58:59 +0000

Newspapers last week wanted us to panic about the 64,000 workers from eastern Europe who came to Britain last year. We are apparently supposed to be less concerned by the 68,000 people who came from Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa - and we are expected to ignore the thousands of people from Britain who left the country.

Such scare stories against eastern European migrants are based on racism - they attempt to divide workers in order to weaken them and exploit them more effectively.

But those bosses and politicians opposed to further immigration cannot openly declare that they are out to split the working class. So they phrase their opposition in terms which can have wider appeal, such as the claim that the arrival of immigrants holds down wages for workers already here.

If a Polish worker will work for £6 an hour on a building site, the argument goes, then the employer will not take on present workers at the present going rate of, say, £8 an hour. So wages fall.

Common sense?

Yet there is little basis for this common sense notion that wages are lowered by migration. Immigration is found to have, if anything, a positive effect on the wages of the existing population, says research based on four reports commissioned by the home office in 2003.

Using the most robust data source available, an increase in immigration of 1 percent of the non-migrant population leads to a nearly 2 percent increase in non-migrant wages... International evidence on this issue shows that migrants do not have large negative effects on either wages or unemployment of the domestic workforce.

The Economist magazine looked at the US situation earlier this year. None of the studies is decisive, but taken together they suggest that immigration, in the long run, has had only a small negative effect on the pay of Americas least skilled and even that is arguable, it argued. If Congress wants to reduce wage inequality, building border walls is a bad way of going about it.

Some studies even suggest that immigration is linked to rising wages for all workers. But there is no necessary causal connection between immigration and rising wages, just as there is none between immigration and falling wages.

In the 1930s there was virtually no immigration into Britain - yet there was mass unemployment and poverty. In the 1950s and 1960s British businessmen and government ministers (including racists such as Enoch Powell) actively recruited migrants from the Caribbean and the Indian subcontinent - yet workers wages rose throughout those decades.

In the 1980s under a Tory government the number of families living below the poverty line rose by 60 percent. Yet for most years during this decade, more people left the country than settled here - and in the other years net immigration was just a few thousand.

Immigrants tend to go to countries where there are jobs available and the economy is growing. In such situations there is a battle over the fruits of expansion. For example, the press often claims that immigrant workers have driven down wages in the construction industry by half. The reality is that wages across the construction industry are rising, even for the lowest paid.

There is a battle over wages in construction, but it is not due to migration. It stems from construction bosses trying to use unregulated workers (of whatever origin) and subcontracting work in order to avoid health and safety regulations and taxes.

Bosses will always pay as little in wages as they can, in order to boost their profits. Firms compete with one another for market share and profits. If a company can reduce its outgoings by bringing in workers who will do the job for lower wages, then it will do so.

But this is not the fault of immigrant workers - the bosses are to blame. Those who seek to strangle the supply of new labour are aiming at the wrong target. If the logic is to hold down the supply of workers, then why not move on to driving women out the workforce, or previous immigrants, or people who do not have British relatives going back six generations?

One factor that increases the likelihood of migrant workers earning lower wages is the very set of regulations used to control their migration.

Exploited

Even immigration controls that allegedly clamp down on abuse and exploitation of migrant labour can encourage workers who were already exploited to collude with their employers, to have a common interest with them in evading the authorities.

This is because people avoid reporting that their employer is beating them, or not giving them any money, because doing so increases the risk of them being deported. Introducing quotas simply encourages migrant workers to take low paid illegal jobs that arent counted as part of the quota.

The reality is that it is division among workers that drives down wages. If immigrant wages are held down by an anti-immigrant climate, it is easier for bosses to force down everyones wages.

The neoliberal dream of flexible labour markets is for a pool of workers that are instantly available - but also instantly sackable. Its not just about migrants, its about using the labour market to make as much profit as possible - although it is migrants who are more vulnerable to exploitation.

This is not some new phenomenon, but a fundamental feature of capitalism. Today workers face intensified attacks in the name of neoliberalism. This is characterised by attempts to raise profits through increased flexibility in all areas - flexibility for bosses to hire and fire workers, to obtain cheap labour, to grab cheap materials and to slash the welfare state.

The result for millions of workers in this country - and hundreds of millions across the globe - is flexploitation, casualisation and insecurity.

Such precarious existence was noted by Karl Marx, who analysed the existence of the reserve army of labour. This pool of insecure workers keeps costs down and can, in some circumstances, be used as a weapon against other workers.

Whenever there is unemployment or a potential source of new labour, there are too many workers. Not too many in terms of a decent society, but too many given the present punishing number of hours worked, the present priorities determined by capital, and the present level of welfare services.

This reserve army of labour can be used to hold down wages and to threaten workers who want to fight back. If you dont like it, theres someone we know who will do the job, is the bosses refrain.

The perpetual presence of a pool of workers - unemployed, working part-time but wanting full-time work, working in jobs that they know might be lost to outsourcing, or working in jobs that are especially sensitive to recessions - is central to the neoliberal project.

How the labour movement has dealt with immigration

The key question for socialists is the battle over the conditions of all workers in the labour movement. Historically the labour movement has shown two distinct attitudes to this question.

In particular, it has always been necessary to fight within the labour movement against the idea that immigrants are responsible for deteriorating conditions of workers.

In the 1890s in Britain, Jewish workers campaigned against the TUC because the unions claimed that they were lowering wages.

Jewish refugees were simultaneously accused of taking British workers jobs and of living on welfare - exactly the same racist mythology that we hear about migrant workers today.

Blame

The official trade union movement repeatedly blamed immigrant workers for growing levels of unemployment within the British economy.

From 1892 onwards the TUC called for a complete halt to immigration. In London, dockers leader Ben Tillett told migrant workers, Yes, you are our brothers, and we will do our duty by you. But we wish you had not come.

But the left was able to shape the debate. Strikes by Jewish tailors in Leeds showed the potential that existed for building united working class opposition, not only to racist agitation, but also to the growing offensive against working class living standards.

As part of that campaign the workers launched, at a meeting addressed by Eleanor Marx, a pamphlet which argued that low wages in the textile industry were not caused by Jewish tailors, but were the product of a systematic drive by textile bosses to accumulate profits.

In a similar way, at the end of the Second World War thousands of Polish workers were brought in to Britain to work in the mines.

Quotas

There was opposition from the right of the labour movement, which argued that there had to be quotas of Polish miners, and Poles should be sacked if there were British workers to do the job.

In contrast, the left agitated over the issue of cutting the working week - and won. The miners, alongside the Polish workers, achieved a five-day working week.

Fortunately today unions such as the T&G and GMB are mobilising to recruit and organise the new migrant workers from eastern Europe.

What we need is a struggle by the labour movement to improve all our conditions and wages - a fight against the ravages of both neoliberalism and racism.

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Organising for Fighting Unions

jo — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 20:12:39 +0000

The Organising for Fighting Unions conference on Saturday 11 November will see hundreds of activists debate the future of the labour movement.

The Respect initiated conference will discuss defending public services from the governments assaults and political representation for trade unionists.

Among the speakers at the conference are RMT general secretary Bob Crow, PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka, John McDonnell MP, George Galloway MP, FBU general secretary Matt Wrack, and John Hendy QC.

Socialist Worker spoke to some union activists about what they hope to get from the conference.

According to Kevin Courtney, secretary of Camden NUT teachers union and a member of the NUT executive, We all face issues that we are fighting separately. I want to see a coming together of unions to fight them together.

In particular, we need public sector union unity. We are all fighting privatisation. We could, for instance, mobilise in huge numbers in defence of the health service.

It is also important that we have a political fightback. We all have our bits of industrial action, but we also need a political response.

At my union branch meeting last week, we discussed globalisation. At one level it may seem abstract, but then you go on to discuss the drive to performance related pay and other issues in the job. What seems a long way away comes closer to home.

The policies we are fighting against are part of a political drive for more globalisation.

There is some sort of an awakening over these issues and making these links, but we need to be pushing them further. The Organising for Fighting Unions conference can play that important role.

Richard Buckwell, secretary of Ashfield trades council in the East Midlands, said, The unions that make up my trades council are looking for somewhere to organise a fightback. There is a feeling that we have been led up to the top of the hill only to be led back down a few too many times.

Political funds

Im hoping that the conference can recreate the effectiveness of rank and file conferences of the 1970s, but for the current period.

I work in local government and the issue of pensions is still there. We missed a chance in the pensions strike at the beginning of the year. We need to talk about how we can rebuild that potential.

In the last few weeks, it has been good that some of the union leaders are at least putting some demands on Labour. But people have lost confidence in them.

The conference can be the beginning of getting people to think about strategies for winning.

Niaz Faiz, the chair of Defra PCS civil service workers union race equality forum, told Socialist Worker, Im coming along to the conference with three other delegates from my PCS union branch. The key thing for us at the minute is that we need to reverse the drive to privatisation.

We need public services, run by public servants in the interests of the public.

When you look at what the government is doing to the NHS and what they just did to NHS Logistics, unions need to think about where they spend their money.

We need political funds, but I would argue money shouldnt be going to Labour.

If you think about the recent Manchester protest, you can bring people together.

We need to use the Organising for Fighting Unions conference as a launch pad to mobilise people against privatisation and for union rights.

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Monster Haunting Europe

jo — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 20:09:41 +0000

At the end of last year, Irish workers took to the streets in their thousands to defend the rights of workers who had been outsourced. Irish Ferries had, in the spirit of the proposed Bolkestein Directive, replaced 453 workers with low paid migrant workers.

The draft directive on liberalisation of services is known by the name of its author, former European Union (EU) commissioner Frits Bolkestein, a one time head of Shell Oil and a right wing Dutch politician. Across Europe it has become known as the Frankenstein directive.

The European TUC has said the directive will speed up deregulation, seriously erode workers rights and protection, and damage the supply of essential services to European citizens.

The directives supporters claim it will ensure a single market in services. The European Commission wants to sweep away all systems of national industrial regulation. It argues that different regulations are a barrier for service providers moving from one country to another.

For years pro-European politicians have promised a social Europe, arguing that integration would mean harmonising social standards upwards, eventually aligning all member states with those having the highest levels of worker protection, wages and benefits.

But successive British governments both Labour and Conservative have sought to block all such efforts.

Central to the Bolkestein Directive is the country of origin principle. This is based on an existing EU rule stating that goods produced in an EU country can be sold in any other EU country.

Under Bolkestein, this rule would also apply to services. Services sold abroad would be subject to the rules of their country of origin. This means that companies in France or Germany, for example, could hire services from Poland or Slovakia, who are often paid lower wages and subject to less rigorous labour laws.

Roughly speaking, the principle means that the rules of the country in which a company is based, not the country in which it operates, apply. The obvious result will be that enterprising corporations will relocate their headquarters in countries where labour laws are weakest.

The text of the Bolkestein Directive makes it quite clear that the thrust is towards bringing standards down to the lowest levels. To illustrate the merits of his directive, Bolkestein told a French audience that he would be delighted to import a Polish electrician, since it was hard to find one for his vacation home in northern France.

The local members of the electricians trade union responded by demonstrating and cutting off the electricity to Bolkesteins holiday home.

The directive also sets up what it calls freedom of establishment. This means that if a company or individual is able to provide a service in one EU country, they should be able to provide it easily in any other EU country.

So, after filling in one form, it should be possible for a dentist, a vet, or any individual or company that provides a service to set up anywhere in the EU. However, because there is no uniformity of standards for services in Europe, standards could decline as companies cut corners to increase their profits.

The directive also includes plans to abolish fixed minimum prices and prohibitions on sales below cost. That would throw the door wide open to the most predatory forms of competition between multinational corporations. They would be able to aggressively conquer new markets by delivering supplies at prices below cost to drive out the competition.

The directive puts the regulation of privatised companies in the hands of the European Commission.

The philosophy at the core of the Bolkestein Directive is the most vicious form of neo-liberalism, as practised by the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The directive bears a striking resemblance to the WTOs the General Agreement on Trade and Services (Gats), which seeks to enforce the liberalisation of all services on a world scale.

Opposition

Across Europe there has been massive opposition to the Bolkestein Directive. That opposition has forced the EU to back down over some minor parts of the directive. It is likely that some environmental regulations and health and safety rules will be excluded from the directive but the main thrust of the neo-liberal assault remains.

Bolkesteins replacement as EU commissioner, Charlie McCreevy, has described the directive as flawed. But he is a committed neo-liberal and is pushing ahead with the directive.

There are protests planned at the European parliament on 14 February when it will be debating and voting on the draft directive.

This directive will permit every firm delivering services to move freely within EU borders, the Dutch Socialist MEP Kartika Liotard told Socialist Worker. What is dangerous is the so called country of origin principle the country where the company is registered will be the legal reference for its future operations.

Big multinationals can move to a country with less restrictive rules and settle there, and the other EU countries have to accept the legislation of that country when the company is operating.

As parliamentarians we are working to exclude the biggest number of services from the directive. It is important that civil society strongly opposes the law.

We need a strong united battle of citizens and unions against the idea of privatised public service. And in the future money from taxes should not be used to finance wars, but to increase services to citizens.

EU commissioner Peter Mandelson has bitterly attacked trade unionists and NGOs opposed to the directive. They want to retain the right to lobby for protectionist rules on a national basis so that they can continue to charge high prices to consumers and lead a cosy life, he said, adding that the European Commission should not retreat in the face of illegitimate pressures.

Marco Bersani from the Attac Italy group, which campaigns against neo-liberalism, said, The directive is the most radical and most comprehensive attack to date on welfare states within the EU. Workers will not have any more basic guarantees.

Firms can do everything that is allowed by the lowest labour legislation, simply by moving to a country with less social rights. There will be no social guarantees any more if we do not resist it.

Now it is time for a strong campaign against liberalisation and privatisation of social services. If we want a different social model for Europe then we need to stop Bolkestein altogether.

Jack OConnor, general president of Irelands Siptu trade union, told Socialist Worker, The Irish Ferries dispute provides a dramatic warning of the kind of onslaught we face on workers pay and conditions if the proposed EU services directive goes through.

The scale of the threat to employment standards is still not widely appreciated, although it is no exaggeration to say that it is one of the most important issues to come before the EU institutions in the last 20 years.

As it stands the directive serves the socially divisive agenda of driving down employment standards in whole sectors of the labour force in pursuit of cheapness rather than competitiveness.

It is critically important that civil society rejects the law of the jungle and asserts the principle that in one of the richest countries in the world we dont need our infrastructure to be built, our goods transported, or our services provided by paying people slave wages.

Even if it was accepted and existing legislation to protect workers rights member states was excluded from the directive, it would offer little reassurance to workers here, because most of our labour standards are determined by collective agreements.

In December Irish workers forced Irish Ferries to implement minimum labour standards. In November 50,000 Italian trade unionists marched against Bolkestein. This sort of action is what can turn back the neo-liberal agenda in Europe.

What is the Bolkestein Directive?

The directive will remove all barriers to cross-border provision of services in the European Union (EU).
It will reduce member states control over working practices, open the door for companies to bypass labour and environmental standards, impose barriers to state regulation, and put private pressure on public services.

The directive includes all activities in the service sector. It treats all service industries in the same way regardless of whether they are essential services or not.
The freedom of establishment and country of origin principles will undermine regulation of the labour market in the service sector. They will generate a downwards spiral as companies re-establish themselves in other countries in order to avoid labour standards

The directive will mean governments have to justify any existing regulation of the service sector, and give the European Commission a veto on new regulations.
Supporters of the directive claim that health services are excluded. But if the directive comes into force, it will be impossible to impose any of the following on providers of health services: compulsory minimum or maximum prices for medicines and fees, minimum standards for staff or quality standards relating to care.

Belfast's Real Divide

Sat, 08 Oct 2005 14:46:48 +0000

A pipe bomb exploded at the home of a Catholic couple and their three year old boy in Ballymoney, County Antrim, last week. Steel fragments burst through the window destroying their living room.

Fortunately, the family was asleep upstairs and escaped unhurt. But the message of the attack was clear Loyalist paramilitaries are attempting to drive the family off a predominantly Protestant estate. Another day of peace in Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland has suffered a summer of such attacks on Catholic homes, churches and schools. Catholics in north Belfast have suffered 358 sectarian attacks so far this year. This comes on top of a running feud among Loyalist paramilitaries and rioting breaking out across Protestant areas of Belfast last month.

The worst rioting was concentrated in the areas of the city with the highest fatality rate during the Troubles. These are areas that had suffered the most from the war and gained the least from the peace. And far from coincidentally, they are all areas of severe poverty.

*The new Catholics?*

The problem is that politicians and the paramilitaries are trying to convince working class Protestants that they are the new Catholics, says James, a Protestant community worker in West Belfast.

Its rubbish were just all poor. Were living in the poorest part of Northern Ireland, the poorest part of Britain and people are fed up. It says a lot about Northern Ireland that the increase in the minimum wage meant 50,000 people got a pay rise.

The DUP (Ian Paisleys Democratic Unionist Party) is making a fuss over how many Catholics are on the library board. Im more bothered about why so few people get a decent education.

Northern Ireland still uses the selective grammar school system that was largely replaced by comprehensive education in Britain in the 1970s. Students sit an exam called the 11 plus, with the minority that pass it being creamed off into grammar schools.

James notes that in practice this system effectively excludes working class children from grammar schools. Schools round here dont even bother teaching the 11 plus, never mind kids failing the exam, he says. This is borne out by the figures in the Protestant Shankill area less than 2 percent of students sit the 11 plus.

The politics of Blame the Catholics works, because there is a real anger bubbling under the surface, he adds.

The rumours rumble on, that Catholics are buying houses using money from the Northern Bank robbery, or that Catholics are buying houses just so they can object to the routes of Orange marches. Of course, there is no proof for any of this stuff.

So the political vacuum is filled with violence. The loyalist paramilitaries are at a loss, and when they arent turning on each other, they go back to what they know. The best way for these guys to assert their authority is to kick the Catholics.

*Angry*

John, another Protestant community worker, points out, All the papers since the riot have been talking about why are poor Protestants angry? Well, weve been angry for years its just that they didnt notice. Protestants used be able to get jobs in industry. Even as that declined, they could get jobs in the security industry. But all that is going too.

Some 38,000 people used to be directly employed in Northern Irelands security forces and prison service. In 2001, this sector accounted for some 34 percent of male Protestant public sector workers.

Whats worrying is where this all goes, says John. What gets around is that were losing out which suggests that we had something to lose in the first place. I dont want to be watching repeats of the same thing year in and year out.

Neil, a postal worker in North Belfast, feels much the same way. Sectarianism hasnt gone away you know, he says. This summer felt like every other summer awful. There were lots of attacks that didnt make the headlines. While the politicians are playing their games, we are left where we always are.

People are complaining that the Catholics are being all triumphalist but whats an Orange march if it isnt triumphalist? On the riots there was a combination of attacking the cops because they are the new Catholic police force, together with the fact that people on my estate have always hated the cops.

But the real bitterness is just going into a dead end. I dont think the paramilitaries have anything useful to say, but do any of the politicians? There are a lot of issues we should be rioting about but having Orange marches isnt one of them.

*Segregated estates*

Some 90 percent of social housing estates in Northern Ireland are segregated. And the poorer you are the more likely your estate is to be segregated. There are 17 segregation walls in Belfast seven of them have been built since the start of the peace process.

The Short Strand in East Belfast is a long established Catholic enclave with a wall more or less completely round it. There are 800 homes in the area, housing 2,500 people, some 1,000 of whom are under 25. Unemployment is over 40 percent, and across Northern Ireland Catholics are still more likely to be unemployed than Protestants.

Mary is a nurse who lives in the Short Strand. Everything is very expensive for our kids in the Short Strand and the rest of East Belfast, she says. So they just hang out, because they dont have money.

All the hotels and calls centres are on the doorstep, but we cant get jobs there. People then exploit that as a Protestant-Catholic thing. But the real problem is the class thing and the money thing.

The whole point of the peace process was to get equality. We need a leisure centre. Theres one five minutes walk awaybut we cant use it because it is in a Protestant area.

Our kids dont feel they are part of a community, and that contributes to the high rate of suicides and the like. But the Protestant young ones are just as badly off. Everyone is frustrated because the hopes of the peace process have not materialised.

We are very much still a divided society, and all the old fears remain. It affects our access to basic amenities. When theres trouble people cant even get to the post office safely. And even when theres no trouble, the divide is a barrier to normal life.

*The same problems*

I feel it most for the young people. Youd almost think that nothing much has changed over the past 30 years, because young people are still facing the same problems their parents faced.

Aside from all the problems caused by disadvantage, our two communities havent really moved any closer to one another. I grew up with all the hatred being directed at me, either by the Protestants or the Brits, and there are times when it makes you feel bitter. But what scares me more is that my children are growing up in the same old divided society.

Sean, her son, is an unemployed teenager. Its just dead here, he says. All the big fancy areas get all the money. Were not a fancy areaso we dont get money. And so youre hanging around on corners, waiting for riots.

On the Catholic Falls Road, however, there is more optimism. I think the IRA decommissioning will move things along, Ciaran, a local community worker, told Socialist Worker. I think it forces everything forward.

But there is a generational divide, he adds. My father just mumbles about Bombay Street, he says, referring an the area of West Belfast where Catholics families were burnt out of by Loyalists at the start of the Troubles.

The problem is we are all sat waiting for Paisely to die. Instead we should be realising that everyones life in Northern Ireland is made worse by the divisions. We need to be attacking poverty and sectarianism now, not waiting for the return of Stormont.

*Refusal*

There is an growing sense of cynicism about Northern Ireland politics from both Protestants and Catholics. Since the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, the number of people who dont support a political party has more than doubled from 12 percent to 26 percent.

Some 37 percent of people support neither Unionist nor Nationalist parties. One constant figure is that a third of the people refuse to describe themselves as Unionist or Nationalist.

I think the majority of people are fed up with the whole process, the political to-ing and fro-ing of the politicians, says Conor, a Belfast student. Young people turn away from what they see as politics but at the same time most people are against the war in Iraq.

People are angry about things like the introduction of water charges, but the peace process leaves them cold. People come together on the anti-war protests, or against the G8, in a way that cuts against all the attempts to pull us apart.

The Good Friday Agreement was supposed to bring politicians from the main parties together in a new deal for peace. But there was, and still is, a huge gap between the aspirations of working class people for peace and the aims of the sectarian politicians.

On both sides, its those at the bottom of the pile that are left behind. But the new movements offer an opportunity to lift our aspirations above the sectarian divide.