Peoples Republic of Hove

Public debate on the Cuts in Brighton

2012-01-30T10:05:00.001Z

Thursday 2nd February
7.30pm
Friends Meeting House
Ship Street

Boycott Workfare

2012-01-27T21:21:00.001Z

News from Brighton Benefits Campaign

Saturday 28 January, meet 12 noon at Norfolk Square

Join us in saying NO to Workfare!

As most people tighten their belts, Poundland announced another year of record profits, raking in £31.7m – a whopping increase of 34% – in 2010/11, and boasting of their ability to compete in ‘turbulent economic conditions’.

The shameless scroungers who run Poundland already rely on the state to top up miserable wages with tax credits and housing benefit, rather than doing it themselves from their ever-increasing profits. Now they have leapt to gobble up another handout, in the form of free labour from the government’s workfare programmes.

Workfare does not lead to employment. In fact it does the very opposite. It is an assault on jobs, wages and conditions, and it affects ALL working people.

Brighton Benefits Campaign calls on Poundland to stop their reprehensible exploitation of the unemployed and the poor. We will continue to campaign against Poundland until they abandon the use of workfare and instead employ people to do the work they need on a proper wage.

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Unison leaders sell out pensions dispute

2012-01-12T01:26:00.001Z

It is a strange phenomenon in British trade unionism that when we are engaged in major national struggles we often send in people with no material interest in the outcome to negotiate for us. In the case of Unison, full-time officers whose pensions do not come from the public sector.

Sometimes, when committees made up of union members who are affected actually scrutinise the details, bad deals can start to unravel. So it proved with the Unite union, whose sectoral committees in health and local government rejected the “Heads of Agreement” which was negotiated just before Xmas. A similar thing happened in the teaching unions.

But it was not to be in the case of UNISON, whose main service committees on Tuesday all voted by convincing margins to accept the “deal”. This was despite a lively lobby of about a hundred activists organised by a number of London branches.

As Glenn Kelly, Bromley Branch Secretary, pointed out at the lobby, the “deal” still amounts to paying more, working longer (to 68 for many younger members) and getting pensions which could be worth 20% less for many members. Glenn also pointed out that Francis Maude and Danny Alexander were openly gloating that they had “settled” the dispute without any more money being put on the table. All that has been achieved is a delay in the imposition of increased contributions in the local government scheme only.

Speakers also pointed out that these committees had no mandate to accept proposals which fell far short of what members had demanded at the outset of the dispute.

There were reports of various shenanigans by the bureaucracy – such as unfounded claims that there was “no mood to fight” in certain regions, and blatant misrepresentation of the outcome of various meetings.

Whilst there is no doubt that this is a real setback, unions representing about a million of the workers who struck on 30th November have rejected the deal, and PCS General Secretary Mark Serwotka will propose at the TUC on Thursday that further action is announced.

In UNISON, left activists will campaign for a Special Conference to try to overturn Tuesday's decisions but it will be an uphill struggle. Tuesday's events reinforce the need for the left to mount a serious and united campaign to increase its influence in the union’s structures.

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Rebellion against pensions "deal" grows

2012-01-06T01:06:00.001Z

Yesterday it was announced that the Unite Health Sector Committee had voted unanimously to reject the Heads of Agreement. They join the PCS in saying no to a deal which gives the unions none of their main demands. In addition some 50 Unison NEC and Service Group Executive members, and branch activists have signed the statement below. Why we say ‘no deal’ on pensions “These agreements deliver the government’s key objectives in full, and do so with no new money since our November offer. These reforms will save the taxpayer tens of billions of pounds over the next few decades and significantly improve the long-term fiscal sustainability of this country.” Danny Alexander As UNISON representatives and ordinary members we do not believe that the “Heads Of Agreement” on public sector pensions form the basis for settling our dispute with the government over our future pensions. The agreements would ultimately deliver the government’s agenda of making public sector workers work longer, pay more and get less in our pensions. The key elements the government has wanted to impose remain intact:• Increased Employee Contributions• A Retirement Age rising in line with the State Pension Age to at least 68• Replacement of final salary with worse career average schemes• Pensions devalued by uprating them in line with the Consumer Price Index instead of Retail Price Index, cutting their value by 15% The agreement is based on the Treasury’s “final offer” issued on 2 November, which allows for negotiation on elements in each pension scheme but within a fixed “cost ceiling”. As Francis Maude has made clear “The cost ceiling has not changed. We have not put an extra penny on the table”. On 30 November we took part in the largest strike action in at least a generation, in an unprecedented display of unity across public sector unions. Dave Prentis rightly proclaimed it “an incredible success and one of the proudest moments of my career”. We believe it is a fundamental mistake only a few weeks later to allow the government to now play divide and rule. This can only make it easier for them to push through the cuts in our pensions as part of their wider austerity programme of real pay cuts and massive job losses, making working people pay the price for a crisis created by bankers’ greed. There is too much at stake to allow the Con Dems to pick off unions one at a time or to seek to isolate others as they are clearly attempting to do with the PCS. We therefore call on UNISON’s Service Group Executives to reject the “Heads of Agreement” and instead call for the resumption of further coordinated public sector strikes to defend decent pensions for all public sector workers. All signatories in personal capacity Diana LeachNational Executive CouncilHelen DaviesNational Executive CouncilJon RogersNational Executive Council & Branch Secretary Lambeth LG BranchBernie GallagherNational Executive Council & Branch Secretary Bolton Metropolitan BranchRoger BannisterNational Executive Council & Branch Secretary Knowsley LG BranchKaren ReissmannNational Executive Council & Health Service Group ExecutivePaul HolmesNational Executive Council, LG Service Group Executive & Branch Secretary KirkleesMax WatsonNational Executive Council & Higher Education Service Group ExecutiveJanet MaidenHealth Service Group Executive & Chair UCLHSandy NicollHigher Education Service Group Executive & Branch Secretary SOAS BranchMatthew RaineHigher Education Service Group Executive member (West midlands)David BussLocal Government Service Group ExecutiveDavid HughesLocal Government Service Group ExecutiveJane ArmitageLocal Government Service Group ExecutiveRichard BuckwellLocal Government Service Group Executive & Branch Sec Ashfield LG BranchSonya HowardLocal Government Service Group Executive & Branch Secretary Kensington & ChelseaLindsay WilliamsLocal Government Service Group Executive & Branch Secretary Portsmouth CityJohn McLoughlinLocal Government Service Group Executive & Branch Secretary Tower Hamlets LGMark Evans Local Government Service Group Executive & Branch Secretary Carmarthenshire CountyTerry ConwayCommunity Service Group ExecutiveAlex KnutsenBranch Secretary Brighton LG BranchGeorge BinetteBranch Secretary Camden LG BranchGavin MottBranch Secretary Hounslow LG BranchPaul CooneyBranch Secretary Huddersfield Healthcare BranchJim BoardBranch Secretary Doncaster LG BranchCaroline RidgwayCo-Branch Secretary, Manchester Community & Mental Health BranchBrian MulveyBranch Secretary Leeds LG BranchTony PhillipsBranch Secretary London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority BranchSuzannah FranklinBranch Secretary Plymouth NHS Trust Health BranchVik chichiBranch Secretary QMUL BranchPaul CouchmanBranch Secretary Surrey County BranchNaomi BainChair Birkbeck BranchAndy RichardsChair Brighton LG BranchNick RuffChair Kirklees LG BranchAlan DawChair Rotherham Health Branch.Barry WaldenCo Chair Camden LG BranchPhoebe WatkinsCo Chair Camden LG Branch & Greater London Regional Local GovtTim SnellerChair Southend LG BranchMick RyanAsst Branch Secretary Kirklees LG BranchAndy CunninghamAsst Branch Secretary Manchester Metropolitan University BranchMarshaJane ThompsonAsst Secretary Havering LG Branch & Gr. London Regional LG ExecutiveTony BarnsleyJoint Assistant Branch Secretary Sandwell General BranchMatthew ShephardPublicity Officer City and County of Swansea BranchDavid KerseyCommunications Officer Coventry LG BranchSam O'BrienCommunications Officer Rochdale UNISON LG BranchDave FellowsConvenor for School Support Staff East Sussex Area BranchSue BowesMembership Officer, Brighton & Hove LG branchSteve SquibbsBranch Convenor, Hampshire UNISONShirley FordBranch Equalities Officer South Tyneside LGEran CohenYoung Members Officer Homerton Hospital BranchShona McCullochYoung Members' Officer University of Sussex BranchLinda BurnipUnison retired member and Disabled People Against Cuts

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No sellout on pensions

2011-12-16T23:38:00.001Z

It appears that a full-scale sellout is on the cards in the pensions dispute. The leaders of the larger unions, Unison and GMB, want to sign up to "heads of agreement" with the Government despite the fact that we have won nothing of significance.

NUT, UCU and PCS are said to be outraged at this development.

This is being done in the run-up to the Xmas break with the leadership hoping that they can get this betrayal through with minimal resistance.

The statement below has been issued by a number of trade unionists. Please add your name.

A group of leading trade unionists have issued the following statement after reports of moves to end the present pensions dispute:

The government’s “final offer” is no improvement. There is no extra money on offer. The government still wants public sector workers to work longer, pay more and get less. They haven’t moved on core issues:

Fifty percent rise in pension contributions.
Normal pension age to rise to the state retirement age.
Retirement at 68 for those 34 and under.
Pensions indexed at CPI instead of RPI. A cut for all existing pensioners.
We agree with those union general secretaries who are against accepting this offer. We ask all union general secretaries – if it was right to strike against these proposals on 30 November how it can be right to accept them now? Ordinary trade union members have demonstrated their determination to resist these unfair and unnecessary changes; we call on our trade union leaders to reject the government's bullying tactics and reject this unacceptable offer.

Alex Kenny NUT Executive member (Inner London)

Andrew Baisley Camden NUT branch secretary

Dave Harvey NUT Executive member (Outer London)

Martin Powell-Davis NUT Executive member (Inner London)

Mark Campbell UCU Executive member

Liz Lawrence UCU Executive member

Sean Vernell UCU Executive member

Loraine Monk UCU Executive member

Christine Vie UCU Executive member

David Armstrong UCU Executive member

Guy Stoate UCU Executive member

Sign the statement here: http://bit.ly/sVyIla

View the signatories here: http://bit.ly/rJ8SGJ

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An enduring outrage

2011-12-14T07:50:00.001Z

URGENT ACTION NEEDED - NEW REPORT OF INHUMANE CONDITIONS IN CAMP FIVE ECHO

According to a new report in the Washington Post, British Resident Shaker Aamer is being held in abysmal and disgusting conditions in Camp Five Echo.
The steel cells are half the size of the cells in Camp Five. He does not have enough room to pray. The bright lights affect his eyes and the air conditioning is set to extreme cold. The squat toilet, set in the floor, is difficult to use. Shaker has described the cell to his US lawyer, Ramzi Kassem, as,.."decrepit, filthy and disgusting." Shaker is being held in solitary confinement, in his cell for 22 hours a day. This is his punishment for being "non-compliant." Shaker is known for speaking out against the abuses of human rights in Guantanamo. He has damaged his own health by using the only power he has against the system in enduring long periods on hunger strike. We know from Clive Stafford Smith's report of his meeting this November with Shaker in Guantanamo, that there are now real fears for Shaker's life due to his declining health and lack of medical treatment. Shaker's own letter, made public earlier this year, confirms this. We understand from Battersea MP for Shaker's family, Jane Ellison, that the UK Government is really listening, so the time for urgent is action is NOW.
Please write/email /phone/text to all your contacts to appeal for Shaker Aamer's immediate release to the UK from these inhumane conditions.

WRITE TO DAVID CAMERON, 10 DOWNING STREET, LONDON SW1A 2AG
FOREIGN SECRETARY,WILIAM HAGUE, THE FOREIGN OFFICE, KING CHARLES STREET, LONDON, SW1A 2AH
THE US EMBASSY , AMBASSADOR LOUS SUSMAN, 24 GROSVENOR SQUARE, LONDON W1A 1AE
PRESIDENT OBAMA,THE WHITE HOUSE,1600 PENNSYVANNIA AVENUE NW,WASHINGTON DC 20500 USA

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The Crisis in Housing

2011-12-07T23:14:00.001Z

Brighton Benefits campaign
PUBLIC MEETING

7.30PM on THURSDAY 8 DECEMBER

FRIENDS MEETING HOUSE, SHIP STREET BRIGHTON

ALL WELCOME

While David Cameron and his cabinet of millionaires live it up in their multiple luxurious mansions, they propose to hit those who have only one roof over their heads with an all-out assault on housing benefits and social housing.

The Government’s proposals include:

Housing benefit to private tenants paid only up to the lowest 30% of rents in an area, rather than 50% as they are paid currently;
Housing benefit levels not to increase in line with rents any more;
New council tenants to have only 2 years security of tenure and this will include successor tenants;
A resumption of Thatcher’s disastrous ‘right to buy’ policy, to sell off what council houses remain;
Mortgage interest payments have already been slashed by half and are time-limited after two years of being unemployed
The government seek to divide and rule by claiming that these cuts are being made against ‘scroungers’ who are out of work, in the interest of those in work. This is nonsense – in reality, 80% of those in receipt of housing benefits are in work. Most people need to claim housing benefit because of low wages.

According to the Chartered Institute of Housing, 750,000 people across the UK will lose their homes because of the cuts. They will throw households into spiralling debt and will ‘cleanse’ large areas of cities like Brighton of ordinary tenants on a low wage.

While the rich continue to rake in enormous bonuses and obscene profits, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has predicted that the living standards of ordinary people in the UK will decline until at least 2013/2014. But rather than changing course, the government has begun to crack down on those who oppose them. The families of those involved in August’s riots have been threatened with arbitrary evictions and other collective punishments, while the disgraceful Hove MP Mike Weatherley has led a campaign pressing for draconian new legislation against squatting, to further punish those who will be made homeless and to forestall effective opposition to the cuts.

We need to fight back now. Only a large, determined, and organised campaign can force the government back and defend our wages, living standards, and homes.

housing melm

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November 30th in Brighton

2011-12-03T21:44:00.001Z

Dave Hill writes.....

Brilliant stike action today nationally and locally in Brighton... around 6,000 to 10,000 strikers (depending police estimates or organisers' estimates) marched through Brighton and at the rally at the Level heard lots of speakers such as Phil Clarke (Secretary of Lewes, Eastbourne and Wealden NUT, Chair of Brighton Stop the Cuts Coalition, and TUSC activist), and Pip Tindall (Brighton Benefits Campaign, UNISON and Brighton Stop the Cuts Coalition activist, and TUSC candidate for the Westbourne Ward byelection on 22 December for the Brighton and Hove City Council Vacancy) address the crowd of many thousands.

The march was spurred on not only by anger at the ruling class attack on workers' wages, conditions, benefits and pensions, but also by the Chancellor of the Exchequer/ Finance Minister George Osbourne's class war financial statement in parliament of 29 Nov- not one penny taken from the pockets of the rich, billions taken from the pockets of the working class, especially from the poor...

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November 30th - photos and video

2011-11-30T23:02:00.001Z

A brilliant turnout. The unions reckon 10,000. The biggest march in Brighton for generations and solid strikes in many workplaces.

YouTube Video

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See you on the picket line...

2011-11-29T21:40:00.001Z

MASS STRIKE THIS WEDNESDAY JOIN THE PICKETS AND DEMONSTRATION.

THE MAIN DEMONSTRATION MEETS 11:45am, VICTORIA GARDENS, GRAND PARADE.

Please make sure you show your support for the massive strike action this Wednesday 30th November. This is not only a chance to defend public sector pensions but to stop a race to the bottom, for fair pensions for all and to expose the real scandal of lack of decent pensions provision in the private sector.

This huge show of strength will enable us to go on to stop the government’s slash and burn attacks on our public services, jobs and benefits.
Details of pickets you are welcome to attend to show support are below, as well as feeder march details.

THE MAIN DEMONSTRATION MEETS 11:45am, VICTORIA GARDENS, GRAND PARADE.

Please forward this email on, bring your friends and family and let’s make this the largest demonstration Brighton has ever seen!
Stop the Cuts needs people to volunteer to collect email addresses, collect donations and give out anti-cuts material on the day. Please email BrightonTradesCouncil@gmail.com if you can help.

Thanks

Main Pickets - If you do not have your own picket, you are welcome at these to show support

Hove Town Hall 7am
Brighton Town Hall 7am
Kings House Grand Ave 7am
Hollingdean Depot 5:30am
Job Centre Edward Street 7am
Brighton Uni Moulsecoomb Site 7am
Brighton Uni Falmer 7am
Brighton Uni Grand Parade 7am
Sussex Uni 7am
Jubilee Library 7:30am
City College 6am
Varndean College 7:45am

Feeder Marches
10:30am from Whitehawk Bus Garage, Hove Town Hall and Brighton University Moulsecoomb Site. These will collect other picketing workers as they make their way towards the:

MAIN MARCH WHICH FORMS UP 11:45AM VICTORIA GARDENS, GRAND PARADESee More

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Ex-Green candidate, Pip Tindall, stands against all cuts in Westbourne by-election

2011-11-27T22:59:00.001Z

Now a member of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), Pip Tindall is standing in the Westbourne by-election, due to take place on 22 December.

Pip, who is an NHS worker, trade unionist and welfare rights campaigner, stood as a Green Party candidate for East Brighton in the May 2011 local elections. She had signed the Brighton Stop the Cuts Coalition pledge to oppose all cuts and give a political voice to a mass campaign to have central funding reinstated for public services in Brighton and Hove.

When the Greens were elected and Pip saw they intended to administer, rather than fight, the Conservative and Liberal Democrat cuts, she and husband, Paul Tindall, left and joined the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition.

"The Green Party says it's opposed to cuts, but that’s just so much hot air if they won’t fight them when they get the chance. I was horrified when I realised that the Greens in Brighton intended to hand down the cost of the banking crisis to those least able to afford it - the public service users of Brighton and Hove.

The working class is being forced to pay for the bankers’ greed. We need an inclusive political voice to say ‘NO to all cuts’ which the Greens and ‘too far, too fast’ Labour can’t offer - only TUSC is proposing a serious alternative to slash and burn austerity."

During my election campaign I pledge to:
· Publicise the fact that public service cuts are wholly unnecessary and driven by political dogma;
· Publicise the fact that alternative and just sources of income are readily available to central Government to fund public services;
· Work for the anti-cuts vote to be maximised;
· Work proactively and vigorously with ward and city anti-cuts campaigns;
· Oppose all use of discrimination and division to promote a cuts agenda.

If elected I pledge to:
· Oppose and vote against any attempts to set Council budgets which will result in cuts to public services and local jobs or a worsening of terms and conditions for council staff;
· Oppose and vote against any attempts to cut or privatise individual public services;
· Oppose any above inflation increase in council tax and instead campaign for a progressive national tax system where the rich pay more;
· Propose an alternative ‘no-cuts’ budget which could involve use of reserves and/or council borrowing powers and a campaign against the government to replace the funding they are cutting from local government;
· Fully support industrial action taken by trade unions to defend their members’ jobs, terms and conditions from cuts;
· Use my position to argue against all cuts and support and publicise campaigns against privatisation and cuts in jobs, services or benefits.

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Pensions dispute and our lying Government

2011-11-27T21:20:00.001Z

Some things you need to know about the pensions strike.......

The pressure for these strikes has come from below - the membership has been waiting months for the Unison leadership to actually do something
No-one is striking on Wednesday because they've been "ordered to" by some union bureaucrat
Some people on strike do not have a pension! They are eligible to join the pension scheme, but in Brighton, many public sector workers have nothing left to contribute to their pension after they've paid their rent! And that's before any of the Government's changes kick in. They're going on strike because they've had enough...of service and job cuts, too much work and two years of pay freeze.
Cameron and co are not "relishing" the strike. They are terrified of the sight of millions of workers marching in the streets, and linking up with everyone else who is suffering from this Government. That's why they have been ready to use any lie, any trick, any subterfuge, every possible divide and rule tactic, to head it off. But it's not going to work........

All of last week, I have had a steady stream of council workers contacting me to join the union - "so that I can go on strike"

At every turn the Government has lied in order to try to derail and divert people's anger.

First of all they lied about the "affordability" of our pensions - this was famously debunked by Mark Serwotka's demolition of Francis Maude on Radio 4's Today programme. The cost of pensions is actually going down as a proportion of GDP
Then they claimed that the schemes themselves were in danger of financial collapse - demonstrable nonsense.
Finally, they have lied and spun their so-called "offer" - in fact no offer has been tabled for any of the schemes. The Government cannot even agree on what this "offer" is. The information they have posted on the Civil Service website faltly contradicts their own claims in the media.

Today a BBC Poll showed 61% in support of the strike. This rises to 67% among women, and to nearly 80% in the 18 to 24-year-old age group. This bears out that this will be strike of women and will also be solidly supported by people many years away from retirement age.

On Wednesday we have the opportunity to speak up for the 99%, whether or not they are public service workers, and to deliver a blow to this weak, unelected, unpopular illegitimate government.

The Land is Ours bounces back!

2011-11-27T20:44:00.001Z

Dave Bangs reports....

In early October the land rights organisation The Land Is Ours held its first gathering for a decade, attended by more than a hundred activists over a full weekend. This heart warming revival of a movement that has been in the doldrums for a long time covered much ground. There were workshops and speakers on the CAP (the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy), GM, Land Value Tax, affordable housing, the fight against mega farms, squatting, low impact smallholdings and homesteads and their problems, forests, the Planning and Localism Bill, Reclaim The Fields and direct action, and a good plenary with the beginnings of much wider debate.
The attendance was equally broad, with a majority of young people, many very experienced older people, and a good geographical spread. This geographical spread, however, did not extend to a balance between rural and urban folk, and urban land issues were scarcely – and often only tangentially – referred to.
Founded by George Monbiot and others, after the publication of his Land Reform Manifesto in 1995, The Land Is Ours attracted, in its first phase, a mixed milieu of rural homesteaders and aspirant low impact smallholders, new travellers, squatters and environmental activists. It held a series of land occupations on brown field and mostly urban sites which sometimes attracted large numbers and national publicity.
In 1995 Wisley Airfield was occupied. In 1996 an eco village was constructed on the derelict 13 acre Guiness site in Wandsworth, under the rubric of ‘Pure Genius’. In 1999 the 350th anniversary of the squatting of St George’s Hill, Surrey, by Gerard Winstanley and the diggers was commemorated by a mass encampment there, and in 2009 a derelict site at Kew Bridge was occupied and an eco village created that lasted for 10 months. The Land Is Ours in Sussex led a campaign of mass trespasses as part of the campaign in support of the right to roam provisions of Michael Meacher’s CROW (Countryside and Rights of Way) Bill. That became law in 2000.
In the past decade of doldrums the organisation has only survived because of the determination of a core group with a strong line of activity around the needs of back-to-the-land homesteaders, led by the redoubtable Simon Fairlie, arguing for sympathetic changes in planning law to accommodate their nuanced needs for new buildings and infrastructure, whilst opposing general capitalist sprawl. The very eclectic politics of their occasional journal The Land (densely written and wonderfully illustrated) has given us lead headlines such as “Welcome the Recession” and “Muscle Power – The Neglected Renewable Resource”. Other issues have celebrated Luddism and the Luddites, and argued for a revival of horse power in agriculture. It would all have been very recognisable to sandled arts and crafts movement ex-townies a century ago.
This strange pot pourri threw up the oddest contradictions at the gathering. The packed workshop on the housing crisis had a good many experienced activists within CFTs – Community Land Trusts – and was led by a passionate advocate of self-build, but only three voices (including my own) picked up the centrality of the issue of council housing. The workshop on fighting mega farms (such as the proposed Lincolnshire 8000 dairy cow unit) was led by “Tracey Worcester” alias, Tracey, Marchioness of Worcester, married to the Marquess of Worcester, son and heir of the Duke of Beaufort of Badminton, whose family own 51,000 acres, including large parts of the South Wales mining valleys. Her family estate has just trousered £280,000 from Swansea Council as a fee for permission to build a new footbridge across the River Tawe to access their new sports stadium. Only a few attendees knew who she was and no-one (not even me) challenged her presence.
And…get this…the one strategy workshop to so far report back on its recommendations made only three points, all variations on a proposal to make a yurt to take on campaigns. This, despite a history of long running and acrimonious dispute about who was looking after the last TLIO yurt, which probably contributed in a tiny way to the organisation’s earlier decline !!
It was not, though, to the discredit of the core organisers that the problems of horizontal organisation prevented the collation of any proper report backs from the workshops and the drafting of agreed positions at the gathering’s conclusion. They did a grand job.
And it would be much too easy to dismiss TLIO for its disparities and libertarianism. For what was even more striking was folk’s eagerness to listen to, and take on, new ideas. The contribution from the Labour Land Campaign arguing for a land Value Tax (LVT)was well received and provoked debate both at the plenary and on line, from folk who have plainly grappled with the issues and know their stuff. The workshops on the CAP and on GM were led by campaigners who have addressed these issues in both depth and breadth. The appeal (from myself) to take the simple step of affiliating to Defend Council Housing received whole-hearted applause.
Many from the milieu of alternative small holders – plus several conventional larger farmers – who attended were serious thinkers and activists for an alternative vision of farming and the countryside. Within just 15 miles of the gathering (near Lyme Regis) there are 40 members in a farmers’ cooperative to which local key TLIO activists belong. The farm visit to a neighbouring ‘alternative’ holding demonstrated an extraordinary diversity of crop and farm animal production, and value-adding activities, turning agri-business farm economics on its head and proving the productivity, sustainability and viability of even this small low-impact enterprise on land of only moderate fertility.
Way back in the late ‘90’s, after a particularly depressing TLIO gathering, which decided nothing and was attended by few except new travellers, Marion Shoard, the redoubtable land reform advocate (and author of ‘The Theft of the Countryside’ and This Land Is Our Land’, who can be counted as one of the founding influences on TLIO) confessed that she didn’t think that TLIO would ever be anything more than a ginger group, and that we needed to set up a new group to campaign for land reform. Yet TLIO has survived, and the objective need for land reform is greater than ever.
The number of committed socialists attending was difficult to assess because of the lack of coordinated reporting back and the lack of any descriptive attendance list, but there was a minority, for sure, as well as a much larger number who would be open to socialist ideas.
There is no other coordination that takes on the land question at this broad level in England. Via Campesina has a major resonance in some countries that still possess a peasantry, but England is not one of those. Attempts to create parallel organisations, like the anarchist inspired Reclaim The Fields, who have done some brave solidarity work in Rumania, are much too self-limiting ideologically to have much resonance. The Labour Land Campaign has the formal labour movement link, but is entirely Georgist (that is, committed to a land value tax as theorised by the radical but pro-capitalist Henry George). Other sectoral campaigns, like Stop GM, draw general conclusions about land rights but cannot become general campaigns.
Most of the current land-related issues we face have a defensive character at present…and there is no shortage of them…
The onslaught on council housing threatens the final destruction of this beleaguered sector, and related attacks on both private sector tenants and those of other social landlords are already bringing ever deeper immiseration.
The government and the EU are set to dismantle the blocks to the cultivation of GM products.
We have just seen the racist eviction of the Dale Farm travellers.
We have just seen a gigantic campaign against the privatisation of our public forests, yet the threat to them remains.
The campaign against the dismantling of post-war town and country planning (to benefit the big business house builders and other developers) is reaching similar proportions, at least in rural and near-rural areas, and…
The related attacks on the rural planning framework represented by the new wave of on shore corporate wind farm developments in culturally and ecologically sensitive landscapes – like central Wales – is also reaching mass proportions.
The combined local authority landed estate, both in county council smallholdings and amenity and conservation holdings, is deeply under threat, and the rate of privatisations is steeply rising.
All these issues require much wider coordinations to drive them through to victory. All of them pose wider political problems beyond the scope of their sectoral demands. How do we address the profound spatial inequalities caused by combined and unequal development, both on a local, national, continental and global level ? In the face of the global catastrophe of climate warming how do we argue for BOTH the defence of the environment and for the universal satisfaction of our basic needs, with life-changing improvements in our well-being ? How do we argue BOTH for an end to homelessness and poor housing AND for a stop on the encroachment of built development on core farming, wildlife-rich, and culturally important open land ?
The Land Is Ours has proved its resilience in addressing these issues, albeit with a limited and ruralistic emphasis. It is the task of us socialists to do what we can to make sure that the concerns of the great majority who live and work in towns and cities balance and reinforce the brave work those TLIO stalwarts have been doing.
We need to join with them.
LINKS
The Land is Ours:
Direct action for food growing land acquisition: www.reclaimthefields.org

Poyet pontificates.....unfortunately

2011-11-21T22:43:00.000Z

When the football team you are paid to manage starts to go into freefall through the league (having squandered a good start) it would seem sensible to concentrate on the job of putting things right...rather than wading into an issue of controversy about which you don't have all the facts, and appearing to trivialise the issue of racism.

Albion coach Gus Poyet has chosen such a course in the continuing argument over what Luis Suarez said to Patrice Evra a couple of weeks ago. Evra claims it was racist abuse. But according to Poyet, Evra is a "crybaby", who should just shrug it off and get on with the game. This in the same week that similarly dismissive comments from FIFA chief Sepp Blatter have been roundly condemned, most notably by many players who have spoken about how racism in the game has affected them.

Poyet seems to hold the view that abuse by one individual to another is not racist. Quite where he gets this idea from is not clear. It certainly is racist as fas as the law is concerned.

Football in this country has made huge strides in recent years in getting racism out of the game. Making excuses for it now is the last thing we need.

Get on with the job Gus, and listen to what players with real experience of racism are saying.

All out on N30

2011-11-07T09:11:00.001Z

Unison members have voted overwhelmingly for strike action on the 30th.

The vote was enough to startle the Government into trying to spin some kind of new offer. This after months of intransigence from them. It amounts to very little but is of course now being desperately talked up by the ConDems and their press friends. It will not stop the action on N30.

In a typical display of double standards, the ConDems expect us to call off action at a moments notice on the strength of a vague statement by Cameron with reference to the members. Yet they expect us to hold a full ballot when we want to strike.

Public sector pensions - myths and facts

The Coalition Government intends to slash the value of public sector pensions and make 3 million workers pay more, work longer and receive less. Over 20 Trade Unions are preparing to go on strike on 30th November to defend our retirement. Politicians, company directors and newspaper owners – all set to retire early on huge pensions – have spent the last few years spreading myths about pensions.
Please read this to see why you should support your local nurses, teachers, re- fuse collectors, council workers, lecturers, NHS and education support staff, job centre and civil services workers and many more.

MYTH No. 1 : Public sector pensions are gold-plated
FACT : The majority of public sector workers get less than £5,000 a year – £100 a week.
FACT : A quarter of civil servants get less than £2,000, or £40 per week.
FACT : In local government the average pension is around £4,000 a year. For women its only £ 2,600. The “average” is bumped up by a small minority of top earners
FACT : In the NHS, most retire on £4,000 or less, and most women less than £3,500 a year.

MYTH No. 2 : Public Sector Pensions are unaffordable.
FACT : All the Pension Schemes have a surplus (if closed today, the Local Government Scheme could still pay all its liabilities for the next 20 years).
FACT : The government's own report shows the cost of public sector pensions is DECREASING already and will continue to do so, even taking into account longer life expectancy.

MYTH No. 3 : People are living longer, busting the pensions budget
FACT : For most working people, life expectancy has risen by less than two years since the 1970s. Life expectancy for the average female hospital cleaner, for example, has not increased by one day since then!
FACT : Many people, especially manual workers, are still only predicted to live until the age of 65 – meaning they’re likely to die before they get any pension whatsoever.
FACT : The amount of wealth created in Britain doubled between 1976 and 2006. Life expectancy certainly didn't. Surely the people who helped create that wealth deserve a fair share in retirement.

MYTH No. 4 : Private sector pensions cost the taxpayer nothing
FACT: £39 Billion a year is handed out as “tax relief”on all pension payments. Most of this, 60%, goes to those in the top tax bracket A quarter, nearly
£10 Billion, goes to the top 1% of earners on over £150,000 a year!
If this subsidy was shared out properly, there would be enough for everybody to have a fair pension.

Join the Strike Pickets then Demonstration
11:45am Victoria Gardens 30th November
FAIR PENSIONS FOR ALL

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Feed the world without destroying the planet!

2011-10-28T18:30:00.001+01:00

A tour on food sovereignty could not be more pertinent as supermarket profits, food prices and world hunger are all rising. The response of both the British government institutions is call for more trade liberalisation – itself one of the major causes of the food crisis.

As ecosocialists we fight for food sovereignity, that is the right of those who produce food to determine agricultural practices free from interference from the multinationals or international institutions. That is how we feed the world without destroying the planet.

So the arrival of the Phillipina ecosocialist Maria Neri Pampilo with her practical experience of struggles for land reform and the development of ecologically sustainable food production gives a unique opportunity to explore these questions.

Maria Neri Pampilo

Socialist Resistance and Green Left are organising this tour with support from a number of other local hosts listed below;

November 10 Leeds: Socialist Resistance and Leeds Green Party with Maria Neri Pampilo , 7 pm, lecture theatre C.(Fourth floor) Rose Bowl, back of Leeds Civic Hall LS1 3HR

November 12 London Socialist Resistance and Green Left with Maria Neri Pampilo, Derek Wall (Green Left) Rehad Desai (South African climate activist), Pierre Rousset (NPA) and Terry Conway (Socialist Resistance) 10.-10.30 5pm, University of London union, Malet Street, WC1E 7HY

November 14 Brighton 7.30 at Friends Meeting House, Ship Street, Brighton BN1 1AF

November 15 Birmingham Socialist Resistance and Green Left 7pm, Tuesday 15th November, Committee Rooms 3 & 4, Council House, Birmingham, B3 3BD

November 17 Cambridge A Red/Green Forum, 7.15pm Friends meeting House, Jesus Lane, Cambridge CB5 8BA

November 19 Manchester hosted by Manchester Ecosocialists, Socialist Resistance and Green Left 11.30am, John Dalton Building Oxford Rd, Manchester Manchester M1 5GD with Maria Neri Pampilo, Derek Wall (Green Left)

November 20 Glasgow Hosted by Scottish Socialist Party further details to follow

November 21 Newcastle hosted by Newcastle University International Development Society, 6pm at Room 2.22 at the Old Library Building (Research Beehive), Newcastle University ( entrance from Queen Victoria Rd near and opposite RVI – also possible from Claremont Rd or Claremont Walk.

November 22 Wigan hosted by Wigan Green Socialists: further details to follow

November 25 Oxford 7.30pm , Oxford Town Hall St Aldate’s, 40 Pembroke Street, Oxford OX1 1BX

Seperate publicity material exists for each of the events – if you would like an electonic or paper copy of one or several of these contact us at contact@socialistresistance.org

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PFI - Argus misses the point - by about £44 million!

2011-10-23T23:01:00.000+01:00

Friday's Argus carried a paean for the wonders of the Private Finance Initiative written by one of its chief reporters, Tim Ridgeway. It is entitled "Why I quite like the results of PFI".

Ironic really, since I doubt that if the taxpayers of Brighton and Hove knew the truth, they would "quite like the results of PFI".

Strangely, much of Ridgeway's article makes an eloquent case against its own conclusions. I have seen this before - even PFI's most enthusiastic advocates cannot avoid what a huge financial con it is. He points out that private companies charge huge added interest which means that the total cost of a project far outweighs the initial construction cost. In the case of Jubilee Library - a £12m project ends up costing £63m. But they take refuge in the idea that, however costly it is, it delivers wonderful projects which we could not possibly afford in any other way.

But is that really true?

No, of course it isn't.

Before the Tories came up with PFI in 1992, projects like new schools, hospitals and libraries were financed by Government borrowing at preferential rates with full public control of how the money was spent, and no "profit" being made and sold on by various private capitalists.

Back to the Jubilee Library.....if this had been financed back in 2004 by traditional government borrowing at the then Bank of England base rate of 4.5%, it would have cost £19.7 million instead of the £63.8 million we will all have paid out to Aviva Plc by 2030.

Labour originally opposed PFI, but in Government they became addicted to it as a way of keeping what was really public spending off the public balance sheet. What a wonderful return for all the PFI companies on all those prawn canopes at New Labour conference receptions!

Ridgeway has one more argument up his sleeve. In return for all this largesse, we had the benefit of the "expertise" of these companies in building projects. Perhaps Ridgeway should ask the headteacher of Varndean and other Brighton schools what they think of the "expertise" of Jarvis Plc!

The Jubilee Library PFI alone is now costing the Council £3 million a year (the cost has gone up, now that we've actually paid off the building cost). That's £3 million which is not available for services which are facing massive cuts over the next 3 years, it is £3 million which is not available to secure the future of the Martlets Hospice day centre (closing down this week for lack of funds) for the next 15 years.

Still "quite liking" the results of PFI now?

No more PFI ripoffs, no cuts to disability benefits

2011-10-23T15:29:00.001+01:00

By complete coincidence two separate events converged on Jubilee Square yesterday. One was the Hardest Hit demo against cuts to benefits for disabled people. The other was organised by Unison to draw attention to the fact that the cost of building Jubilee Library has now been paid - but local taxpayers will still have find a total of £63 million pounds over the next 20 years to repay the Private Finance Initiative deal for a £12 million library.

Unison is calling for no more money to be paid to Aviva Plc and for it to be instead used to fund essential services which face cuts over the next three years.

The question remains - why are benefits for the most vulnerable people being theatened while money is poured into the coffers of a private company?

Pictures below

Unison banner

Cllr Stephanie Powell

Phil Clarke of Brighton Stop the Cuts Coalition

Atilla the Stockbroker

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We need a new left party - Come to the Socialist Resistance forum

2011-10-18T23:14:00.001+01:00

New parties of the left -
lessons for the UK

A Socialist Resistance forum

Monday 24th of October 7:30 PM

Duke of Wellington
Upper Gloucester Road
Brighton (Nr Brighton Station)

Social democratic parties, including the Labour Party in Britain, have shifted to the right across the continent and have fully embraced neo-liberalism. This has opened up political space to the left of social democracy which the radical left and revolutionary marxists have a duty to fill.

What is needed are broad pluralist parties of the left to restore independent working class representation.

In the context of the deepest economic and ecological crisis of capitalism in the post-war period and with continuing imperialist wars, the need for such parties is urgent.

Come and hear Fred Leplat of Socialist Resistance talk about our new book on the new parties of the left in Europe, the successes and the failures and the lessons for socialists in the UK.

A government of liars

2011-10-08T20:57:00.001+01:00

It has been said that there are lies, damn lies and Tory conference speeches.

This year they truly surpassed themselves.

We had the "cat" nonsense from Theresa May. For the record, no-one has gained the right to remain in this country on the basis of ownership of a cat, as May well knows. The story is old and has been comprehensively debunked.

But we also had lies and distortions from Cameron about people on sickness benefits.

He said

"It turns out that of the 1.3 million people who have put in a claim for the new sickness benefit in recent years. One million are either able to work, or stopped their claim before their medical assessment had been completed."

What he conveniently overlooked was the huge success rate of appeals against decisions to remove Employment and Support Allowance - 70% with representation. He also somehow forgot to mention that ESA is a short-term benefit for people off work because of illness who are either self-employed or get no sick pay from employers. It is entirely to be expected that people will leave the benefit before a medical assessment is made (it takes weeks to arrange) and in any case ESA pays no more than Jobseekers Allowance for the first 13 weeks of a claim.

For good measure Cameron also fed us the tired tabloid myths about adoptions being sabotaged by PC councils who won't allow cross-racial adoptions. Thus ignoring the very real complexities around adoption.

Still, what does the truth matter when you are grubbing for a cheap ovation at conference and pushing Middle England's outrage buttons?

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Europe Against Austerity Conference Report

2011-10-07T00:14:00.001+01:00

Fred Le Plat reports...

The Europe Against Austerity conference last Saturday was attended by 681 people including 150 from outside Britain. This happened the same weekend that two big demonstrations took place. On Saturday in Glasgow, there was the “People First” demonstration of 15,000 called by the Scottish TUC. On Sunday, 35,000 joined the demonstration in Manchester on Sunday outside the Tory Party conference which was called by the TUC and backed by the Coalition of Resistance and the Right to Work Campaign.

The Europe Against Austerity conference adopted a declaration agreeing to establish a network, to plan for a day of action against austerity next year, as well as to call on unions to organise a day of industrial action across Europe. The conference put on the agenda in Britain and across Europe the need for an audit (although that is not in the final declaration) and cancellation of the “illegitimate” debt. It also started a debate in Britain on the European Union and the euro, hopefully drawing it away from a simplistic “No to EU” position, and putting withdrawal from these capitalist institutions as a consequence of our campaign against austerity, rather than as a starting point.

It was a serious and sober event which recognised both the scale of the economic crisis and the tasks ahead in escalating the resistance against austerity. Olivier Besancenot for the NPA explained it starkly when saying “We have to find ways of coming together to build this social movement of the people in Europe….. And this isn’t a whim or just propaganda, working towards the first general strike in the history of Europe is a duty for political activists in the coming months.”

Olivier Besancenot

The breadth of representation was impressive as it encompassed most of the anti-neoliberal left (Die Linke, Sinn Fein, European Left Party) and a particularly strong anti-capitalist current (NPA, CADTM, Bloco). Major unions supported the conference such as UNITE, the NUT and the RMT from Britain, Solidaires from France, the teachers union OLME from Greece, and LAB fron the Basque country. There were also representatives of the CGTP of Portugal, COBAS of Italy and many others. Particularly noteworthy was El?bieta Fornalczyk of the Free TU “August 80″ representing Tesco workers who outlined the dramatic condition of women in Poland as mothers and workers. Sonia Mitralia of the CADTM in Greece also stressed how the crisis was hitting women harder.

This conference, as well as the demonstrations this weekend, is an excellent springboard for making the November 30 strike by over 20 trade-unions a massive success. We need to mobilise other sections of society not on strike about pensions, but who wish to fight to defend the welfare state. It is also important to mobilise from the conference for European-wide events such as the G20 on 1st November. Congratulations were sent in by many people. Those who travelled from far, such as the 12 CGT, FSU & SUD stewards from Le Havre in France, thought it was interesting and a necessary event for stepping up the resistance across Europe.

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“It's Our Library Now” PARTY !

2011-10-04T08:20:00.001+01:00

“It's Our Library Now” PARTY ! Saturday 22nd October, 11am- 1pm Outside Jubilee Library, Jubilee Street, Brighton

This month, Brighton & Hove Council will have finished paying the private developers the £11.9 Million cost of building the Jubilee Library.

It should be ours now!

Unfortunately, it is still owned by Norwich Union. Because it was built under the “Private Finance Initiative” , Norwich Union are expecting us to pay them over £2Million a year, soon to rise to £3Million a year for the next 18 years. Even though we've already paid them for it!!

No More Money for the Developers and Banks

If “we're all in it together” then the crisis should be paid for by those who can afford it first, not people in Brighton & Hove who rely on local schools,nurseries and hospitals now threatened by the cuts. Norwich Union's parent company “Aviva plc” boasts “ Operating profits in Europe up 21% to £525 million despite financial and economic difficulties in the eurozone”.

Why should local taxes rise to fund Aviva plc?

Why should low paid school meals staff & nursery workers lose pensions to fund Aviva plc?

Why should young people's services be cut to fund Aviva plc?

Break contracts with Multinationals, not the people who work for our city Brighton and Hove Unison invite everyone to our party,with a message to the council.

• Don't break contracts with your staff by cutting jobs and pension rights.
• Break the contract with the multinational PFI companies instead.
• No cuts to local services!

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Video from ATOS protest

2011-10-03T23:16:00.000+01:00

Brighton demo against ATOS

2011-09-30T20:45:00.001+01:00

Photos and video from the latest production of Dick Whittington and his Work Capability Assessment and the funeral procession in memory of the victims of ATOS.

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Africa demands climate justice Monday 10 October, Brighton

2011-09-30T09:37:00.001+01:00

More than ever before, rich industrialised countries are using the UN climate talks as an excuse to advance corporate interests. In the run up to the climate talks in Durban, South Africa, this December people across Africa and the world are demanding climate justice.

As part of our climate justice speaker tour, join us to hear Desmond D’Sa, coordinator of South Durban Community Environmental Alliance and Deborah Doane, World Development Movement director.

When: Monday 10 October, 7pm
Where: Brighthelm Centre, North Road, Brighton, BN1 1YD

Find out how you can take action against the UK’s unfair policies that are prioritising corporate profits via discredited institutions such as the World Bank. Not only will this fail to tackle climate change, but it will also deepen existing global inequalities.

Desmond D’Sa is coordinator of South Durban Community Environmental Alliance, which mobilises local people against industrial pollution. A veteran campaigner on local and global environmental justice issues, he’s centrally involved in organising the alternative civil society space during the UN talks. He will be speaking in Brighton, Bristol, London and Eastleigh.

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Day of action against the poverty pimps

2011-09-29T23:00:00.001+01:00

From Brighton Benefits Campaign

Friday 30th September – Churchill Square – 12 noon

Performance of Dick Whittington & His Work Capability Assessment – join in & shout at the computer!
Funeral procession for those who have died because of Atos. Wear black!
Leafleting & picket of Atos Healthcare testing centre in Upper North Street.

WHY TAKE ACTION AGAINST ATOS?

Atos Healthcare, a division of IT giant Atos Origin, is the private provider employed to administer the Work Capability Assessment for the Department of Work & Pensions, testing sick & disabled people who apply for benefit.

In 2005 Atos introduced a computer system to assess claimants’ incapacity to work. Almost immediately concerns were raised about assessments performed using the Logic Integrated Medical Assessment (LIMA) software. Advice agencies such as the CAB complained about the inflexibility & inaccuracy of the tests.

More recently the Harrington Report and the Work and Pensions Select Committee, found the Work Capability Assessment implemented by Atos Healthcare to be mechanistic and Atos’ ‘medical reports’ far too often did not reflect circumstances and discussions that had taken place during the assessments (Harrington Report, pp. 40-41).

A large number of those tested are told they are able to work, but many have the decision overturned on appeal. Yet even those who win their appeals are dragged back within a few months for another test. Small wonder that some have decided to commit suicide rather than continually go through this cat & mouse process. Seriously ill & even dying people have been called for assessment, & the recommendations of family doctors & specialists are apparently ignored.

In addition, twelve doctors working for Atos face being struck off for improper conduct, and other members of Atos’ staff are under investigation over allegations of obscene criticism of benefit claimants.

Over time sick & disabled people & their supporters have grown more militant & more vocal in their condemnations of Atos. In return Atos threatened legal action against the Internet hosting companies of three websites – ‘Carerwatch’, ‘After Atos’ and ‘Atos Register of Shame’, attempting to silence those claimants and their small organisations who have had the courage to speak up.

It’s time for a more human medical assessment & the abolition of Atos’s mechanised methods. Time for the dismissal of Atos and the return to a professional medical service, publicly run, and not for profits!

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Brighton 9 - State comes unstuck

2011-09-26T01:21:00.001+01:00

Two weeks and a hundred grand for some damaged dummies.

One of the best pieces of news this week was that the Prosecution case against the Brighton 9 has largely collapsed.

It was ruled that superglue on windows was not "criminal damage", although some of them were convicted of reckless damage to some mannequins.

UK Uncut has been a breath of fresh air in the anti-cuts movement. Their direct action has focussed attention on corporate tax dodging very effectively.

But chief dummy turns out to be Hove Tory MP Mike Weatherly, who denounces Caroline Lucas for giving evidence for the nine (like it's any of his business). Mike doesn't like direct action - apart from when he's doing it of course.

Come to the European Conference against Austerity!

2011-09-25T21:53:00.003+01:00

Saturday 1st October 2011
10am to 5pm
Camden Centre
Bidborough Street
London WC1H 9AU

WHY YOU SHOULD BE AT THE CONFERENCE

Those who were hoping that the summer would bring some relief to the crisis must be cruelly disappointed. Share values continue to fall and the Eurozone bail-outs are hitting the rocks. In Britain, the political and social crises roll on with the revelations about News International and the riots in August. The outlook for the ruling class is bleak as they have no solution, and the economies are teetering on the edge of a recession. We can expect more appeals that “we are all in it together” and that there is no alternative to a radical programme of austerity. As the crisis is international, so must be the response of all those who refuse to make the working class and society pay for this crisis.

That’s why the Europe Against Austerity conference in London on 1st October is so important. It will be the first event since the start of the crisis in 2008 where all those who want to oppose the attacks will meet. The conference will not only issue a declaration against the austerity programmes but plan a movement of resistance across Europe.

The Coalition of Resistance is hosting this conference jointly with the other organisations and individuals sponsoring the event. These include the European Left Party, Die Linke, Attac, CADTM, Union Syndicale Solidaires, Tony Benn, Ken Loach, Jeremy Corbyn MP, Caroline Lucas MP, Len McCluskey Unite, and Bob Crow RMT. Olivier Besancenot of the New Anticapitalist Party of France has also accepted an invitation to attend.

Agenda:
There will be plenaries and workshops on topics such as The Crisis and the Debt, Ending the War, Students and Youth Fighting for a Future, Women against Austerity, and Mobilising against Austerity. The information on agenda will be updated on the website.

Back on the blog!

2011-09-25T21:45:00.001+01:00

It's been way too long but I am determined to get this blog back up and running again after a rather sporadic service. Stand by..........

Imminent Victory in Libya – the struggle will continue

2011-09-08T23:34:00.001+01:00

*Socialist Resistance *celebrates the imminent victory of the Libyan rebellion through the recent advances. This has the potential not only to carry through the democratic liberation of Libya people but to be an
important boost for the rebellion in the whole region – not least in Syria where it has already had a major impact. The Libyan uprising from the start has been not only a genuine uprising of the of the Libyan masses but a
product of, and an integral part of, the wider rebellion in the Arab world which began, and continues to be centred in Egypt.

SR’s position from the outset has been full support for the Libyan uprising against the Gaddafi dictatorship and against the involvement of NATO. We
advocated instead the arming of the rebellion itself – preferably by the Arab regimes.

Our fears over NATO’s involvement have increased during this new phase of
the conflict as it has become clear that NATO has deepened its involvement at every level – which was an inevitable process. This has not just involved
the use of NATO air power against Gaddafi’s defences but the involvement of special forces on the ground from at least Britain and France and probably
the USA.

The recent offensive against Tripoli was planned in conjunction with NATO, which provided the intelligence and air support. Cameron and Sarkozy are already organising a conference on post-Gaddafi Libya in which oil contracts
will be the central subject. Libya has not only the seventh biggest oil reserves globally (with a trillion dollar a year capacity), but a scarce grade, suitable for aviation fuel.

NATO, or the Western powers operating through it, hope to hijack the revolution. In these circumstances it is urgent for the revolution to establish its political and military independence in the process of the transition of power and to end the involvement of NATO and the Western Powers as the new democratic regime is established. To this end we support the TNC’s call for genuine elections to a Constituent Assembly that will decide on Libya’s future constitution. However we call on the Transitional National Council (TNC) to stand by its earlier decisions of opposing any
NATO forces on the ground and therefore end all military intervention now, including the withdrawal of NATO military advisors.

To fill the political and administrative vacuum we support the formation of local committees and other structures separate from the Gaddafi state and for the maintenance of the armed people. No to the disarming of the people!
We favour the bringing to proper and fair trial those charged with war crimes and atrocities – no to vengeance killings.

We also call for the defence of and immediate funding of any social gains, welfare provision, national health service, etc against privatisations.

All the assets of Gaddafi’s regime held outside of Libya should be handed over to the revolutionary forces, without strings or conditions, so that
they can rebuild their country and meet the people’s needs. No to any "structural adjustment programmes" requiring privatisation and favourable
treatment for western corporations.

All oil and commercial contracts with the Gaddafi regime should be cancelled, and zero-interest credit should be given with no strings to the Transitional National Council.
There should be no imperialist forces in Libya nor the establishment of military bases.
The form of government in Libya is to be decided by the Libyan people, with no outside interference, and by means of a Constitutional Assembly elected
through universal suffrage and full democratic rights for all. Mass popular mobilisations of the Libyan people will be necessary to continue the
struggle for a society based on democracy and social justice, not private profit.

The fall of the Gaddafi regime is celebrated not only in Libya itself, but throughout the region because his dictatorship had all the normal trappings of a repressive regime. The existence of some elements of a welfare state in Libya no more made his rule defendable that the situation in Iraq under Saddam Hussein.

We call for the completion of the victory for the uprising, which is
underway and for, an end to the NATO intervention, and for the future of Libya to be determined by the Libyan people themselves free of pressure and exploitation by the Western powers.

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Kill the Bill

2011-09-05T22:00:00.001+01:00

Time to get Lansley worried.

I went out petitioning yesterday with Keep Our NHS Public and Stop the Cuts. Some 50 people showed up to help and within 3 hours we had gathered 2500 signatures against the innocuously-named Health and Social Care Bill. This is the legislation which will effectively hand NHS budgets to GP consortia and allow private companies to pick over our NHS.

It is always gratifying at an event like this when the people I don't know outnumber the people I do know, and this was certainly the case yesterday. This, and the sheer number of signatures, demonstrates the strength of feeling.

The Government has no mandate for these changes - the Tory manifesto said there would be no changes to the NHS. Shirley Williams' intervention at the weekend reveals the depth of the divisions in the coalition over Lansley's proposals.

Public pressure can stop the Tories in their tracks.

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Toady of the month

2011-08-31T12:20:00.001+01:00

Couldn't let August pass without highlighting this. Apparently Bullingdon Dave was leading the revolution!

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Abortion - the dishonesty of Dorries....and Field

2011-08-30T23:06:00.001+01:00

The anti-choice lobby don't give up do they?

Having failed to get changes through the front door in Parliamentary debate, they are now trying to sneak changes in through proposing "independent advice". The beauty of this is that this can brought in without even a Parliamentary debate.

Apparently, existing charities giving abortion advice, BPAS and Marie Stopes, have a "vested interest" in promoting abortion. Strangely, Dorries supports a Bill which will give a host of private companies a "vested interest" in healthcare but only in the field of abortion is this a problem.

But in any case, at the root of this campaign is s pernicious lie. BPAS and Marie Stopes are not-for-profit organisations. They have no vested interest in abortions. Contrast this with the organisations which Dorries and Field want to force women to turn to. A Guardian undercover investigation has revealed factually incorrect advice and scaremongering from the anti-abortion groups which Dorries wants to hand power to.

These changes are unlikely to stop many abortions but will delay them, to the detriment of the health and well-being of women. But since when has that ever bothered the anti-abortion bigots?

Hopefully now the cat is well and truly out of the bag, they can be forced to retreat again.

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Riots : the hypocrisy of ruling class "morality"

2011-08-17T19:22:00.001+01:00

One abiding image in the aftermath of the riots was that of Cameron glad-handing some firefighters who had worked all night trying to save homes and businesses. Cameron was quite happy to be getting a good photo-op and strangely there was apparently no mention of "gold-plated pensions" or "restrictive practices".

"Things got a bit out of hand. We smashed the place up and Boris set fire to the toilets"
Cameron recollects happy Bullingdon days.....

Since the riots we have seen the judicial system being used as a weapon of political vengeance. The nadir has been reached with 4-year jail sentences for posting a message on Facebook and criminal charges for organising a water fight on a Blackberry.

But there is no punishment for those other looters - the bankers, the corporate tax dodgers, the senior police officers who took "hospitality" in return for feeding information to the gutter press, the politicians who enriched themselves through "expenses". One of the most odious sights of that festival of sanctimonious moralising in the Commons last week was Hazel Blears, one of the chief offenders, clearly hoping that we had all forgotten.

This was summarised quite well (surprisingly) by Peter Oborne

We also have other sanctions being proposed - loss of council housing and of benefits - sanctions which will impact directly on the poorest in society, and any many cases will impact on people who had no part in any rioting. Tabloid editors who authorised the theft of the private messages of a murdered girl won't be losing their homes.

A fish rots from the head down. Time to get rid of this rotten government and the system of corruption and privilege which supports it.

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Interview with Tottenham activist Stafford Scott

2011-08-07T23:07:00.001+01:00

This interview gives some of the background to events in Tottenham. We don't get much background in the establishment media.

[This is a transcript of a live interview conducted on Sky News earlier today with Stafford Scott, a community activist in Tottenham.]

Martin Brunt: "Stafford Scott, you're a leading member the community. You were here last night and watched things develop. What's your view of why and how it happened?"
Stafford Scott: "The reason I believe that it happened is that police paid disregard to the feelings of the family of the young man that was killed on Thursday evening. Up until now they haven't come and helped them or advised them. They haven't met with any family liaison officers at all. We were absolutely disgusted by that, so we decided that we needed come to Tottenham police station, because they may not be aware that a murder has been committed.
"We know that if they were aware that a murder has been committed, then their process, their legislation, their guideline, says they have to set up and send out a family liaison officer. And because they didn't, we came to the station. We came to the station to have a peaceful demonstration, and it was largely peaceful. And what we explained to the police is that we wanted someone senior from the police service to come and explain to us what was happening.
"They kept on prevaricating. The most senior person they gave us was a chief inspector. We said that person wasn't senior enough - we wanted a senior ranking officer of superintendent or above. Eventually they sent for a superintendent, but by then it was too late. We'd told them: don't prevaricate, we wanted to hear what was happening so we could explain to the community what was taking place."
Martin Brunt: "You said 'by then it was too late'. But are you suggesting that's why the violence erupted as it did?"
Stafford Scott: "I'm telling you that had they dealt with us earlier in the day, we would have removed ourselves from this area, we would have gone back to Broadwater Farm. I specifically told a chief inspector that we didn't want to be out here when nightfall came, we wanted to take it back to the Farm. And I warned him that if he kept on prevaricating and forced us to stay till nighttime - because we were intent on staying until a senior officer came - then it would have to be on the police's head what happened."
Martin Brunt: "You're almost suggesting that no lessons have been learned since 1985, although a lot people today tell us here that this isn't the same as 1985. What's your view?"
Stafford Scott: "Those people who tell you it's not the same as 1985 were not here in 1985. This is absolutely the same as 1985. 1985 was sparked by the death of a black woman and the police trying to cover up that death. The police were trying to suggest that she died because of her weight.
"Today they're trying to cover up Mark's killing as well. We do not believe that Mark was bad enough or mad enough to come out of a car and want to shoot at armed police officers. Our evidence, our information, is telling us that the gun that was found there was actually found in a sock, meaning that it wasn't prepared for action. So we can't believe that anyone would think they were going to shoot at somebody through a sock - it's absolute craziness."
Martin Brunt: "Those are the kind of answers you're asking for. Do you not accept though that sometimes it's difficult to be precise within 48 hours about exactly what happened?"
Stafford Scott: "Let me be absolutely clear. This is the borough where we have seen the deaths of Mrs Cynthia Jarrett, Joy Gardner and Roger Sylvester. Roger Sylvester's inquest took about four years to be held. So we know that nothing happens quickly.
"But, by God, don't our parents deserve the same as any parent? It doesn't matter what people want to say Mark was, when you talk about the army on TV, or a death that's happened in Afghanistan, it always says that you're not going to name the person until their parents have been informed. In this case here, their parents are reading about everything in the newspaper, they're seeing it all on the media. Nobody from officialdom has gone to them and said to them, 'Your child was killed on Ferry Lane.' Nobody has done that."
Martin Brunt: "If that damage has been done, how do you repair that damage now? Because the great fear is that there will be violent scenes again tonight. What can be done in the next few hours?"
Stafford Scott: "I do not believe that there's going to be any violent scenes here tonight. What happened yesterday was a combustion, a spontaneous outburst, because people saw we've been here for four hours. Women were leading the demonstration. The women said, 'Look, four hours - our kids are now tired, we're going home.'
"When the guys saw the women leaving, that's when they said, 'Wow. We've been here for four hours and nothing's happened. Nothing's changed. They haven't come to speak to us.' And then when they saw some police cars, which for some reason were just parked up unmanned, that was like a red rag to a bull, and they just had a go.
"I think that (a) if the police had been more responsive to us as a community, we would have gone and it wouldn't have happened, and (b) if the police had been more responsive at the first onset of violence, it may not have happened.
"But people need to realise a lot of things have been said. It's not the same as 1985? In this community, for these kids, everything is the same as 1985. If you look at all the stats, they're all the same as 1985.
"How often they get stopped and searched has actually gone up. Unemployment against young people has actually gone up since 1985. Getting kicked out of school is the same or similarly high to 1985. Nothing has improved for the livelihoods of young black people who happen to find themselves growing up on estates like Broadwater Farm."

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Public meeting - Our NHS Is Not For Sale!

2011-07-24T16:04:00.001+01:00

Public meeting - Our NHS Is Not For Sale!
How we can Keep Our NHS Public
7pm Monday July 25
Friends Meeting House, Ship Street, Brighton

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=130767397007215
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=177272252337228

Health workers, patients and community campaigners are uniting on Monday evening for a meeting to discuss how we can stop the government from privatising our NHS. Everyone is welcome.

Speakers include Dr Ron Singer (Medical Practitioners Union president), Steve Bell (Unison Health NEC member) and Bronwen Handyside (Hackney Keep Our NHS Public). Information about the government's plans will be outlined along with how these changes will affect health workers and patients, and there will be an opportunity for everyone to contribute to the discussion about how we can keep our NHS public and get involved in the campaign.

The government is on the rocks. Along with a forced retreat over forest sell-offs and its shady connection with the News Of The World phone-hacking scandal, the ConDems have been trying to attempt to water-down their NHS 'reforms' under pressure from the huge weight of opposition to their plans - comprised of trade unions, health professionals and almost 500,000 public signatures on the 38 Degrees online petition - but they have still left the threat of privatisation embedded in its Health and Social Care Bill.

Only this week the government announced £1 billion worth of NHS services are set to be opened up to competition from private companies and charities, which will place profits and bank balances ahead of patient needs and care. The Southern Cross care home scandal demonstrates why leaving vital services in the hands of the private sector has the potential for disastrous consequences which will effect the most vulnerable and those most in need of public support.

The introduction of the market into health services and the opening up of our NHS to private providers is making people sick. The British Medical Association representing doctors has this week voted to begin a campaign against these changes and 38 Degrees has raised over £30,000 to challenge the legality of this attack on our health service. The government can be stopped and we can save our NHS.

Come along to our meeting on Monday to find out more...

For more information about the campaign, please visit:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Brighton-Keep-Our-NHS-Public/138197876255498

Or alternatively contact Peter on 07788 744120 or brightonkonhsp@gmail.com

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March to save our welfare state

2011-07-22T22:40:00.001+01:00

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News Corporation: crime, corruption and class rule

2011-07-18T00:31:00.002+01:00

Since Piers Mostyn wrote this article, we have had the news of the arrest of Rebekah Brooks and Met Police Chief Paul Stephenson. Where will it all end??

On Sunday, that bastion of scandal-mongering populist reaction, the News of the World (NOTW), departed this earth writes Piers Mostyn.

It was the country’s biggest selling Sunday paper and the paper that achieved the highest ever sales in the world. Two days later, after what a Guardian columnist described as “an uprising of MPs”, the Murdoch empire dropped its bid to take over BSkyB. It was a humiliating retreat for the world’s biggest media mogul.

Things looked very different before. Hilarious TV clips from last autumn show Tory London mayor Boris Johnson guffawing about how this is “a load of old codswallop got up by the Labour Party”, in response to a press query. More recently, as the unlikely spokesperson for anti-Murdoch militancy, the middle England romcom actor Hugh Grant archly put it, “the fact is that the prime minister and his wife, the leader of the opposition and his wife, members of the cabinet and shadow cabinet were all at [Murdoch’s] party on 16 June, sipping his Pimm’s and laughing at his jokes, and that’s a sad reflection on the people who run out country”.

One of those present as the oysters and champagne were served has commented, it now all seems like “an orgy at the end of the Roman empire”.

Very late in the day Labour’s Ed Miliband, wisely jumped ship – like a rat that can see the poop disappearing beneath the waves – and finally stated his opposition. This was quickly followed by the Lib Dems and finally the Tories.

However this course of events has shown that, but for Labour’s stalwart backing over the years, the Murdoch press in this country would never have been in the position of strength that it attained. And whilst the quintessential architect and product of this corrupt relationship was Tony Blair, his successors Gordon Brown (despite knowing that he too was a victim of hacking) and Miliband were content for it to continue.

What’s clear is that this “uprising of MPs” was not a vanguard action but more a case of being dragged screaming and kicking after years of knee-bending to corporate capital and its media fronts.

The Murdoch method, which is by no means exceptional, depended on a tactically sophisticated combination of flattery, bribery, blackmail and corruption to create a consensus across the political spectrum on the basis that no serious party could afford to cross swords with the News International press – for fear of vilification and harassment on the pages of the tabloids or at the very least the withdrawal of vital political support.

Of course many innocent people will have lost their jobs. And no doubt this victory will prove cosmetic as the “News of the Screws” is replaced by stable mate or rival. But the significance of the unfolding drama as a challenge to core power bastions for global and national corporate capitalism and its political servants should not be underestimated.

The story started six years ago with the jailing of the NOTW royal correspondent Goodson and private detective Mulcaire over the hacking of the phones of members of the Royal family. News International and police investigations, involving the seizure of 11,000 pages of Mulcaire’s notes and company emails led to quiet assurances that no one else was involved and there were no other victims.

But a growing trickle of celebrities couldn’t understand how papers were getting hold of very private information. This led to a second police investigation and the further reassurance that there was no evidence of any wrong doing. Not a view taken by James Murdoch as he then proceeded to authorise six-figure payoffs to some of these celebs.

The whole affair might have rested there, given the public’s difficulty in envisioning the rich as “victims”. Then in June it was revealed that Mulcaire had hacked into the mobile phone of Milly Dowler – the teenage victim of Levi Belfield just sentenced to life imprisonment for her abduction and killing – in the days after her disappearance. Worse still he deleted messages, causing false hope in the minds of her parents that she might be still alive and accessing the phone. This from a newspaper that carried as its badge of pride the militant support for victims, particularly children.

There followed a growing river of other allegations: including that the phones of relatives of victims of the 7/7 bombing had been hacked and those of soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Public revulsion was immediate.

Despite this Murdoch, incredibly, appointed Rebekah Brooks (editor of NOTW at the time of the Dowler hacking) to conduct an internal investigation – even as there were growing calls for her sacking. All party leaders and Cameron in particular, up to their necks in a web of close personal relationships with senior News International executives, were caught like rabbits in the headlights.

A breathtaking series of further revelations and developments followed on a daily basis: extending the scandal to other News International papers, The Sunday Times and the Sun; and involving allegations of “blagging” (using trickery to obtain personal information).

It has also turned out that the Surrey police were aware at the time of Milly Dowler’s disappearance that the NOTW had been hacking her phone but did nothing about it. This, information from NOTW that it had paid £100,000 to corrupt police officers for information and a well-established close history between the Metropolitan Police and the Murdoch press confirmed a general picture of police complicity and cover-up.

Assistant-Commissioner Andy Hayman, who ran the original investigation was simultaneously wining and dining with the executives of the company whose alleged criminality he was supposed to be looking into. Having exonerated them he then left the Met and got a job on a Murdoch paper. Even Tory MPs laughed and deride him as a “dodgy geezer” as he protested his innocence in front of a parliamentary committee that for years had swallowed this nonsense. The stench has become so over-powering that the only question is how it was kept under wraps for so long

The initial political focus has been on the criminal responsibility of individuals and how far up this stretched in the Murdoch empire. Once it became apparent that this brutal invasion into often highly vulnerable people’s lives was taking place on an industrial scale (thousands of phones are believed to have been hacked or at risk of it) and that this is likely to have happened across a number of publications over a period of years – actual knowledge of particular acts of criminality becomes largely irrelevant. There has to be executive responsibility. Front page exclusives were being generated and £100,000s being spent.

The other focus was Newscorp’s bid to take a controlling interest in BSkyB and the implications this has for pluralism in the media, particularly the news. Until a fortnight ago there was not a whiff of opposition from the political establishment and good money could be put on it sailing through.

Over the previous six years none of the main media outlets (except The Guardian which has led the fight) now obsessing over the scandal had the courage to follow the story to where it truly led. So much for a free press. The reason: not simply fear of Murdoch, but jealousy and the probable fact that they were all up to the same games.

There seems to be an inescapable argument for individual culpability of one sort or another at senior levels in the Newscorp. But more important is what all this says about the organisation as a whole.

News Corporation owns News International which runs the stable of papers at the heart of the scandal. It is a major global player with a multi-billion pound turnover. It was, as top plod Peter Clarke (admittedly one of those anxious to shift blame, given his responsibility for the original investigation) put it, “a major global organisation with access to the best legal advice, in my view deliberately trying to thwart a police investigation”. Having invested large sums and significant resources in crime, corruption and cover-up, it only began ‘fessing up when presented with its DNA on the bloodied knife. This tells you everything you need to know about its business, political, legal and moral perspectives.

Clearly there are no ethical boundaries. Hacking and blagging will only be part of the story. Remember Benjamin Pell (aka Benji the Binman, aka The Fleet Street Sewer Rat)? He spent the later part of the 1990s extracting secrets from people’s dustbins and selling them to papers – ending up with little more than a £20 fine. And does anyone believe that mobile phone call and cell site (showing location) data or CCTV images (council, police and private) have been immune from this type of theft and corruption, particularly given police access? The planting of evidence and fabrication of stories are also quite possible.

What has been exposed is not a rogue corporation or some immoral individuals. It is nothing less than the ruthless maximisation of profit at almost any cost, even in a commercial field so highly sensitive to public opinion. The veil has been taken off the underlying motor-force of all capitalism.

Hardly surprising that the media and the political establishment are running around like headless chickens. The entire capitalist class and its relationship to the state is implicated. How else explain Cameron’s eventual volte-face to kick in the teeth close personal friends of many years standing?

Potential consequences include a massive loss of public confidence not just in the such media corporations but in the private sector as a whole. In a period of austerity people will put up with a lot of hardship if they can be persuaded of two things: that “we are all in it together” (already under a lot of strain as public support for the June 30 strike showed) and that we can trust the main pillars of the social order to sort things out.

In laying bear the brutal and repugnant consequences of the profit motive, the scandal threatens to expose to ridicule all the many assurances we still receive (despite the crisis triggered by finance capitalism) that the private sector can be trusted to run public services. We are told that even when a problem arises the state is there sort it out and failing that self-regulation ensures that other private sector companies can be relied upon to tame the rogues in the pack.

Well that’s been proven to be a load of nonsense – police and parliamentary enquiries were either hopeless or cover-ups and everyone thinks the Press Complaints Commission should be renamed Poodles for Craven Capitulation. Gordon Brown’s attempt to blame the Cabinet Secretary for his failure to institute a judicial inquiry when he could have as Prime Minister, is just another example.

Coming at the same time that Southern Cross, a private company running care homes for 31,000 elderly people, has collapsed in disarray putting tens of thousands of the most vulnerable people in a great deal of anxiety and with the real risk of many fatalities if they have to be transferred – we have all learnt something very important about whether we can trust the private sector with those aspects of life that we most cherish.

That developments that led to this scandal are typical of normal capitalist operation, rather than exceptional is underlined by considering the longer term processes that produced them.

Although Murdoch’s operation has been going for well over four decades, it is since the 1980s that he has made a particular impact in this country. Having bought a succession of newspapers he used them as an ideological battering ram to front up the Thatcherite assault on the working class and the accompanying transformation of capitalism to a neo-liberal market model.

This involved a systematic vilification of oppressed groups through sexism, racism, homophobia and xenophobia. It relentlessly prayed on the increasing economic insecurity of working class people under the yoke of unemployment, “flexible working”, low wages and declining pensions focussing the resulting anxiety on a fear of crime, disorder and immigration and vilifying any radical oppositional political explanation.

The relentless campaign for more repressive laws in the name of “victim’s rights” and ridiculing the Human Rights Act – one result of which was Labour passing laws to create 3,000 new criminal offences – now appears deeply ironic when one considers the treatment meted out to victims by News International employees.

But at its centre was a union-bashing crusade at the heart of which was one of the mighty trade union struggles of the 1980s as News International transferred its operations to Wapping provoking a bitter and lengthy strike and pitched street battles with mounted police. The legacy of that defeat, coming after the miners strike, paved the way for two and a half decades of decline in union militancy, membership and organisation.

The absence of strong unions with an ethical code of conduct in the print room and at journalists’ desks also freed up editorial policy from any constraint. If there is any one measure that can help ensure there is no repeat of the crime and corruption that has been revealed it is the presence of strong ethically committed unions in a pluralistic, independent, publicly accountable media – all sorely missing at present.

The deepening influence of neo-liberal economics have played their own role. The past three decades has seen a growth in inequality and an increasing determination of value in money terms. Privatisation and the assault on the welfare state has seen not only an attack on ethical standards across all public sector professions but a gradual shift towards valuing everything in money terms rather than public benefit.

From top executives on massively inflated bonuses to the lowest paid trying to scrape a bare living there has been a dangerous slide towards a culture in which everyone is expected to have a price. Hardly surprising that there has been a mushrooming of prostitution and the return of below-minimum wage ‘slave labour” in domestic service. Hardly surprising that bank employees, civil servants, telecoms workers and police officers can be bought – either corrupted by the culture or simply desperate.

Alongside this there has been a massive growth in surveillance and “data farming”. In part this is an outgrowth of the digital and internet revolutions. But it has also become a new sector of the economy, with its own need to maximise returns. The collecting, storing and dissemination of this data has largely been sub-contracted to private companies. Its very existence has created a marketplace for secret information upon which a populist reactionary tabloid media with money to throw around has thrived. Phone hacking is but a minor extension of this process. The cutting of the odd corner.

And finally the process of privatisation has seen the delegation of core roles of the state to the private sector. This has gone well beyond the main utilities, public transport and so on. It has included the state’s monopoly on the use of force. There has been a massive growth in the private security industry to the point where over half a million are employed; the Iraq and Afghanistan wars saw the widespread deployment of private military organisations in a web of corruption as billions of pounds and dollars were doled out to buy off local leaders in the occupied countries.

This private security sector has seamless connections with the official sector represented by the police, armed forces and secret services, with the regular crossing over of personnel. A consistent feature of the NOTW scandal has been the presence not just of corrupt police, but ex-detectives working for private agencies and using their contacts.

A careful examination of the core activities revealed in this scandal shows that it simply replicates what MI5 and the anti-terrorist, special branch and serious crime sections of the police have been doing for decades with the full backing of government and parliament. Earlier this year police were exposed for using systematic deceit, gross invasion of privacy and entrapment as part of a long term infiltration of the environmental movement. Neo-liberalisation of the economy and privatisation has simply and naturally led to the transfer of these skills and operations to the private sector. Hardly surprising that NOTW journalist Mazher Mahmood (aka “The Fake Sheikh”) boasted in the final edition of the paper that he had “clocked up 250 successful prosecutions” through his use of undercover surveillance and entrapment.

Of course this cross-over between the dark arts of the secret state and the capitalist media is hardly new. The BBC famously had an MI5 office in its building to vet employees. And foreign correspondents in a variety of news organisations over the past century have doubled up as MI6 agents (as shown by Phillip Knightly in Truth: the First Casualty).

Media corporations have undoubtedly benefited from a trade off for their assistance to the imperialist state – an implicit understanding that their misdeeds would be overlooked.

Why has all exploded now? Nothing new has actually happened. All that occurred is that a vast bank of highly incriminating information, in existence for years, has suddenly come to light.

The obvious cause of the delay is the British bourgeoisie’s traditional method of containing revolt, scandal and crisis – to suffocate it in an endless series of parliamentary and police inquiries, relying on the false veneer of trust in the “integrity” and “fairness” of these state institutions and particularly their “independence” from the interests of the soiled sections of the ruling class in question.

All anger and protest is diverted and diluted down the gloomy corridors of Scotland Yard and the House of Commons. Overlaying that is the cover up. It’s a tried and tested model that held firm for nearly four decades after Bloody Sunday, when troops massacred civilians in Derry 1971.

One obvious lesson is that the righting of wrongs will only effectively occur by the exercise of power independently from and outside of state apparatuses. Preferably in a mass and militant exercise in organised people power. The Egyptians have shown the way.

Nonetheless there must have been some trigger for the sudden outpouring. Why now? Why not last year or two years before? It would be glib and inaccurate to suggest that the previous week’s historic one day public sector strike by teachers, lecturers and civil servants was the cause. But in a sense the timing wasn’t simply coincidental.

Everything has changed since 2005-6, when the first glimmers of the hacking story emerged. The banking crisis has thrown the ruling class into disarray, leading in turn to a political crisis – not only because of deep divisions and the lack of strategy to deal with the economic crisis nationally, regionally and globally. It was quickly followed by the MPs expenses scandal and then an election in which none of the political parties got a majority mandate for it’s austerity policies and a coalition government was cobbled together to implement policies that had no electoral mandate.

This slide into a state of almost permanent political weakness and instability and on the part of the political elite was made possible by the earlier and still running crisis of confidence created by the debacle of successive military invasions, based on lies and at huge financial cost, from Iraq onwards.

But this has been met in the past 9 months by an upsurge of working class militancy – with the student protests, followed by half a million on the March 26 TUC demonstration against the cuts and then the successful 30 June strike. Meanwhile the past six months has also seen a mass revolt in the Arab world, mass struggles in Greece and Spain and major developments elsewhere.

Against this background the Wapping crooks and their friends in the police began to fall out. The outcome of the ruling class austerity offensive is looking far less sure. The traditional political mechanisms for ensuring ruling class political stability and hegemony have begun to weaken. No one wanted to be left still standing when the music stopped. So a mutual blame game has started.

A further lesson, therefore, is that if even the most powerful anti-union globalised capitalists can be confronted and rolled back – others can too. Many people have said that the anti-austerity movement badly needs a victory. Well, it may have been unexpected, but now it’s got one. With the political establishment weak, now is a good time to shake off the legacy of past defeats and fight back whilst it is on the back foot.

For action and information: Hacked off campaign: http://mediastandardstrust.org/mst-news/hacked-off-campaign-for-a-public-inquiry-into-phone-hacking/; stop Murdoch petition: http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_rupert_murdoch_3/; stop BskyB takeover petition: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/page/s/murdoch-deal-petition#petition; http://www.cpbf.org.uk/; www.nuj.org.uk/; www.nujleft.org.uk/

Different rules......

2011-07-13T21:45:00.001+01:00

I'm not about to add to the acres of print about Hackgate, but the abysmal performance of the Met's finest yesterday really did bring home the different moral plane the rich and powerful operate on-and expect to operate on.

This was most vividly illustrated by Andy Hayman - the man who wrote the book on injured indignation. This is the man who regularly took hospitality from an organisation he was supposed to be investigating, and later took up paid employment with it.

Here is an extract from the Guardian's list of the lunches, dinners, drinks, etc.

But..hey....we shouldn't infer anything sinister from this! Poor Andy got quite upset when an MP had the temerity to put the direct question - did you take bribes? It seems quite clear to me that he was well and truly in the pocket of News Internstional until his behaviour finally forced him from his post.

Another officer testifying yesterday complained that little could be done to investigate NI because it was a large organisation, had good lawyers and "wasn't very cooperative". I never realised the Met was so lacking in tenacity!

I wonder what the response would be if trade unionists, student fees protestors or Uncut activists used this defence.

Hackgate brings into sharp relief the way in which the British establishment, the press and state agents work hand in glove. A light has been shone into a netherworld where there is a different set of rules and standards to those which most of us are expected to follow.

It has been an educational experience for the people of this country....and there is more to come....

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Biggest trade union demonstration in decades in Brighton......and no visible sign of the Labour Party whatsoever

2011-07-01T00:46:00.000+01:00

Tweet of the day.....

"If you gave Ed Miliband the St Crispins Day speech from Henry V, he'd still manage to deliver it in the style of a particularly dull sat nav"

I never thought it could happen. Yesterday's march in Brighton attracted around 4000 people - teachers, civil servants, lecturers and people who just wanted to support them - and they got a massive reception from passers-by. It did not take long for Ed Miliband's decision to disown the strikes (not that they were "his" to begin with) to look like the crassest error of judgement since Callaghan's failure to call an election in October 1978.

The Greens, as ever, cleaned up at Labour's expense - the Council Leader and most of the Cabinet were on the demonstration and Caroline Lucas gave a rousing and unequivocal speech in support of the strikes at the rally in Hove Town Hall. I have been told that, per head of population, Brighton and Hove's march was the largest in the country.

Photo of Caroline Lucas speaking, and photos and video of the march below.

J30 - Join your nearest picket line, march and rally

2011-06-29T23:00:00.000+01:00

Brighton

Assemble 10.30 am at The Level

March to Hove Town Hall for rally at 12.30

Worthing

9.30am to 2pm

Rally and march from Steyne Gardens, Central Worthing

A message to Miliband

2011-06-29T22:49:00.002+01:00

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Alf Filer

2011-06-26T12:05:00.001+01:00

My friend and comrade Alf Filer has been tragically killed in a car accident last Thursday evening.

Alf had only moved to Sussex in the last year or so and had made his home in Worthing having previously lived in London. Alf was meant to be (semi) retiring to the south coast but, characteristically, that was never going to happen.

Alf was a committed socialist, anti-fascist and anti-Zionist. He campaigned locally and nationally against cuts (he was a prime mover in the formation of the Coalition of Resistance) and he organised against the EDL and the BNP, both here and in Brent and Harrow where he spent the greater part of his life.

Others have written tributes and appreciations from a perspective of having known him for a long time, but you did not need to know Alf for long to appreciate his passion for politics and campaigining. This is shown in the tributes which have been paid from activists in Sussex.

Alf was a member of Socialist Resistance, and he played an incredible part in revitalising us locally. He started a local blog and his main activity was to try to bring together the forces of the left in Worthing. Not, you might think, the most fertile of ground, but that sort of thing never deterred Alf. He was passionate about left unity, and was possible the most non-sectarian socialist I have ever known. He worked with and helped to bring together the different parts of the Worthing left into regular meetings. A meeting which he organised, on Ecosocialism, is happening this Tuesday. Everyone involved is of the view that this meeting must go ahead as a tribute to Alf.

Alf was serious about his politics - but he was also a joker. I shall miss, as much as anything, his wisecracks and his wind-ups.

A truly brilliant, dedicated and lovable man.

Below, Holly Smith, President of Brighton and Hove Trades Council, gives her own memories of Alf, and below that are links to other tributes from people who knew Alf longer for me.

I, along with many, many others, am saddened to hear of the death of Alf Filer. It feels like those of us in Brighton and the South East were only just getting to know him. After retiring as a lecturer he moved down to Worthing last year from London, and didn’t hesitate in getting involved in political activity down here.

The first time I met him was at a public meeting to oppose a local school becoming an academy. He had only just moved to the area and was keen to know about all the events and groups that existed down here so he could get stuck in.
The next time I met him was at an anti-cuts day school that we had organised. I chaired a workshop on cuts in Local Government and Alf spoke at length from the floor. I remember being impressed with his wide-ranging knowledge on a great variety of topics, and how articulate he was. This was also demonstrated in his blog, of which I was an avid reader - always looking forward to his intelligent analysis of local, national, and international events.

When I was challenging my trade union leadership over an issue a while ago, I was touched when Alf got in touch with me to offer his advice and support. We then got to talking about other issues, and how we could help each other. Alf and I were both outraged at the recent treatment by local Councils of Travellers and Gypsies in the region, finding it representative of the wider persecution they have been facing across Europe, and we had been in discussion about setting up a local support group for these communities, and together we started letter writing to the EU to ask them for an inquiry around the persecution that these communities faced, especially in Italian cities.

The last time I spoke to him he was incredibly enthusiastic about the recent re-launch of Worthing Trades Council, and he was urging me to attend the public meeting on eco-socialism he was arranging for next week.

Alf was Jewish, and committed to building solidarity between anti-Zionist Jews and Palestinians, and was also well known for his anti-fascist work. He was an intelligent, outspoken, driven, passionate, and warm man, and I very much regret that I only knew him for such a short time.
To borrow some words from another comrade who has written about him, “The best tribute we can pay to you is to keep the flame alight and the struggle for justice undimmed.”

Rest in peace comrade, you will be missed.

http://www.socialistunity.com/?p=8253

http://azvsas.blogspot.com/2011/06/alf-filer-jewish-anti-zionist-and.html

http://randompottins.blogspot.com/

A call to arms....and a nod towards the end of the witchunts as well!

2011-06-21T23:12:00.000+01:00

Even an old cynic like me finds it hard not to be very enthused by Dave Prentis's speech at Unison Conference today - and I've never voted for him!

There is no doubt that, with 750,000 workers striking on 30th June without Unison, Prentis had to do something to get the union back in the game, and some of his "awkward squad" credentials back as well! And Prentis did not win three Gen Sec elections by good majorities without knowing what buttons to press and when. But what we got was one of the most militant speeches from a trade union leader for many a year

Prentis set out the prospect of sustained industrial action to stop Cameron's pensions robbery, and made it clear that he was ready to lead a campaign to win the endorsement of the members for that action.

"To the people who say to me 'name the day', I say a day won't be enough!"

In offering support to the workers taking action on June 30th, Prentis said

"If the government fails to listen, to heed our warnings, to negotiate in good faith, I say, David Cameron, you ain't seen nothing yet. We will strike to defend our pensions. A campaign of strike action without precedent."

And his contempt for the leadership of the Labour Party could not have been more withering. The message was "get behind us or get out of the way". He directly addressed Ed Balls...."when we want your advice Ed, we'll ask for it". He went on to say that Unison money would only go to Labour candidates who were prepared to back the union.

But it was the less-reported stuff which was also important (thanks to Jon Rogers for the info). Prentis made a point of praising two named branch secretaries, Mike Tucker of Southampton and John Burgess of Barnet, both United Left supporters, for their work in their branches defending jobs and conditions. He also said (and the reference seemed clear) "there are no enemies in this hall". If that means an end to the use of punitive measures by bureaucrats to deal with political difference and dissent, which has plagued Unison for years, then that will be a major step forward.

I should not end without thanking the members of NUT, PCS, ATL and UCU. It is they who have administered the wake-up call which led to today's speech.

Unison members now need to turn Prentis's words into a reality.....and to make sure he doesn't go back on any of them.

Varndean Academy proposal - "literally written on the back of an envelope"!

2011-06-18T16:23:00.001+01:00

This was just one of the fascinating revelations at a packed meeting of Varndean School Against Academies on Friday evening. It came from David Richards, who resigned as a governor in order to fight the proposal to turn Varndean School into an academy.

He also told us that the proposal was never pre-announced on an agenda.

Judging by the massive turnout of parents, it will not be easy for the Head and a few Governors to force this through.

Other speakers included Nick Childs of NUT, Alisdair Smith of the Anti-Academies Alliance and Denise Knutsen of Unison, who expressed concerns about what academy status would do to the ethos of the school, and how it would affect other schools in the area and the services provided by the local education authority. Also there is the concern of a small group of governors being able to set the pay and conditions of the school workforce.

We also heard from students and the NUT rep at the school who told us that, incredibly, all discussion of the academy proposal is "banned"! I suspect that this is going to be strongly challenged at every opportunity!

Local MP Caroline Lucas pointed out that the ConDems were bent on the privatisation of education.

Gove thinks academies are popular with parents. Not on last nights evidence!

Athens General Strike

2011-06-18T00:08:00.001+01:00

Report from Dave Hill

The June 15 General Strike in Athens. Sintagma Square (Constitution Square, where the Parliament Building is). From Dave Hill on the Strike/ Demonstration in Athens, 11.30-4pm, 15 June 2011
(Dave Hill was living and working in Greece, at the University of Athens, and speaking at various meetings such as Antarsia, (far-left coalition) between March- June 2011).

12.01 pm Apergia means `Strike’
The official general strike is against IMF and EU demands for a further austerity budget, more actual pay cuts, privatisation, cuts in benefits.

12.21 pm Today's Greek General Strike 15 June 2011

Dave Hill with Kostas Skordoulis and other Antarsia comrades. Dave is a member of Socialist Resistance, Kostas is a member of OKDE. SR and OKDE are sister parties in the Fourth International, a Trotskyist international (known to some as the USFI, United Secretariat of the Fourth International). In Greece, OKDE is part of a far left coalition, Antarsia. Antarsia gains around 1 or 2% of the vote at elections. A slightly more moderate left organisation is Syriza, which gets between 5 and 10% of the vote. The largest socialist/ Marxist group in Greece is the KKE, the Greek Communist Party, which gains between 8% and 15% at elections.

The KKE had a separate rally/ meeting in Sintagma Square in the morning- and then dispersed. They have a strong base, in part related to their second world war role in the Resistance against the Nazis, and also their role in the Greek Civil War 1944-1949 between the Royalists (backed by Britain, the USA and the West) and the Communists 9backed by neighbouring Communist governments).

The KKE in its present phase are known by some Trotskyists as `Stalinist Reformists’.

12.33pm The (Greek) Socialist Workers Party (SWP) works closely with immigrant workers. `It's not immigrants who take our jobs it's the capitalist class’

The Antarsia and OKDE banners.

The government of PASOK are proposing a further cut in public sector salaries, and further pension cuts. Public sector workers have already had a pay cut of 20percent. Fears are that the threatened austerity measures will mean a further 30 per cent pay cut- actual pay cuts! Plus privatisation of electricity, water, telecommunications, ports, and increased taxes for example on tobacco, refreshments. Parliament is now surrounded, protected by the police of course. Also compulsory redundancies, there are threats to reduce the public sector workforce by 50 percent over three years.

13.51 Tear Gassed. Stings the eyes, makes you want to sneeze.. Dave Hill reporting live from Sintagma Square .. The IMF and EU are saying if you want the fifth instalment of the loan you have to carry out more austerity measures. The government of PASOK are proposing a further cut in public sector salaries, and further pension cuts.. Public sector workers have already had a pay cut of 20percent.. Fears are that the threatened austerity measures will mean further 30 per cent pay cut- actual pay cuts!..... Plus privatisation of electricity, water, telecommunications, ports,, and increased taxes for example on tobacco, refreshments.....

Parliament is now surrounded, protected by the police of course.

Protestors wear face cream to protect against effects of tear gas.

Jeezus, this teargas gets everywhere, eyes, nose, throat....this poster. In Sintagma Square, Parliament behind the poster.
`All for All’ in Spanish and in Greek.. Solidarity with the Spanish anticapitalist protesters.

Heard that the Greek PM is meeting the President this midday/ early afternoon. The Greek PM , Andreas Papandreaou, offered to resign to have a national unity government, to push through the austerity cuts. These cuts are the most savage threatened cuts against any working class in any advanced capitalist country. If the capitalist transnational class succeeds in Greece- if working class resistance is defeated, then governments throughout Europe will try to do the same. In Britain for example.

14.54 Sintagma Square. Police retreating. Both sides throwing missiles, some fires burning
Missiles, stones, cartons being thrown at the police after the crowd was tear gassed. In Greece it is often the first response of the police when faced with an angry crowd- to fire off tear gas. I saw police picking up missiles and hurling them back at the crowd.

Strike poster
TAXING THE RICH AND CUTTING THE WAGE AND THE SOCIAL WAGE (BENEFITS AND PUBLIC SERVICES) OF THE WORKING CLASS

Recent changes in taxation of the Rich in Britain

The super rich are subject to three main taxes other than income tax. These are corporation tax, a tax on company profits, capital gains tax is a tax on trading property and shares and Inheritance Tax paid when a person dies. If you have many millions you will mainly pay capital gains tax on buying and selling property and shares. The rate of corporation tax will also affect your returns because you will receive dividends from company profits.

Shortly after Mrs Thatcher came to power and for the majority of her term in office the top rate of tax on the super rich was 60%. This was reduced to 40% in the famous 1988 Lawson budget. When Blair came to office the top rate was still 40%. But after the business friendly Blair/Brown governments’ corporation tax had been significantly reduced and capital gains tax had been reduced to an amazing 18%. This is of course less than someone working for measly £6 an hour would pay. Part of the reason for the massive financial black hole which developed during the last Labour government was this massive cut in the taxation of the super rich.

The Condem government's shift of taxation onto ordinary working people is illustrated by the rise in VAT to 20% and the cuts in corporation tax. In several western countries the rate of corporation tax is between 40-50% whereas the government proposes to go to a rate of 24%.

The one small token in difference to this was the rise in capital gains tax under pressure from the Liberal Democrats. It was increased last year to 28% for higher rate taxpayers from Labour's 18%.’ (Thanks to Stuart Richardson for this).

The Rich Keep on getting Richer (from a forthcoming chapter by Dave Hill).
And yet the rich keep getting richer! Just to take three examples from Britain and from Ireland.
In Britain, the government's latest figures show that in the capital the top 10% of society had on average a wealth of £933,563 compared to the meagre £3,420
of the poorest 10% – a wealth multiple of 273.(from Danny Dorling, 2010a. See Ramesh, 2010. See also, Dorling, 2010b). This is the biggest differential since slavery!
Dorling also points out that “The 1,000 richest people in Britain became 30 percent richer in the last year. That’s a £77 billion rise in wealth—enough to wipe out around half the government’s budget deficit.” (Dorling, 2010).
And, as for Ireland, `The 300 richest people in Ireland are worth almost €57bn or more than the entire Libyan or Croatian economy. They've got much richer too, with close to €6.7bn added to their combined wealth over the last year’. No hard times for them! (The Independent, 2011).
Cuts for the Workers
In Greece, the PASOK (social democratic) government of George Papandreou has decided that civil servants- including teachers and university teachers- have had pay freezes or cuts up to 30 per cent; VAT has risen to 21 per cent and state-funded pensions are being reduced to reflect average lifetime earnings rather than final salaries. Also there is a wage freeze for three years, and in the public sector, 4 out of 5 workers who retire will not be replaced. In the private sector, massive wage cuts up to 25%. Unemployment benefits have been cut, and a poverty support scheme implemented in 2009 has been suspended. Drastic cuts in benefits for large families.
There are also plans to end collective bargaining and impose individualized contracts instead. The existing practice of extended very low paid or even unpaid internships has been legalized. Resorting to temporary workers is now permitted in the public sector. (See Toussaint, 2011. For detail on Britain, see Thornett, 2010)
And in Britain £7 billion in welfare cuts were announced in the October `Comprehensive Spending review’, in addition to the £11 billion presented in the summer. The attack on benefits is the most vicious in living memory- for example cuts in education benefits such as the EMA, cuts in Housing Benefit (subsidies for rents for the poor) which will force poor families out of their homes into cheaper areas, cuts in local government spending which will result in closures of thousands of libraries and support staff for the weak, the elderly, and services for children. Half a million public sector jobs- tax collectors, teachers, nurses, doctors, police, local government workers, lecturers, are to be axed by 2015 with an impact on a further half a million private sector jobs dependent on the public sector. Already, in March 2011, unemployment in Britain is the highest for 17 years. Funding to local councils will be cut by 25% over the same four-year period. University students will see their fees (and the resulting debt they are saddled with) shoot up. Public sector workers will have to pay more for their pensions, and all workers will have to work longer.
Public sector workers who still have jobs will be forced to pay 3% more in pension contributions on top of a pay freeze. Ultimately all workers will be forced to work longer before they can retire – a double whammy since you pay more in contributions and get less time to ‘enjoy’ your pension after retiring.
The Choice
So, are we to be explicit or complicit in our servile, or self-justified, acceptance of the currently exponentially expanding capitalist kleptocracy? Or do we take a principled stand and stand up for humanity and social justice, for the rather more fundamental economic justice and massive redistribution of wealth, income, power, life chances, and for a critical- and self-critical!- democratic socialist, anti-capitalist, future? That’s the choice! And that choice has to argued, organised, campaigned for. That’s where party comes in. Organisation to organise anger and opposition.
The 30 June 2011 strike of public sector unions in Britain will be building that anger, that opposition, that organisation.

Dave Hill 16 June 2011

The view from Syntagma Square!

2011-06-15T18:52:00.001+01:00

Pictures from Dave Hill.

The general strike in Greece.

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Travellin' and protestin' - Argus gets into a state!

2011-06-14T23:55:00.000+01:00

Excuse us..........

The Argus has got itself in a real lather about travellers and protest marches - two subjects which never asked to be conflated, but the Argus has obliged anyway!

I am going to concentrate in this article on political protest, which apparently, the Argus and the local Tories seem to regard as a new phenomenon which only goes on in Brighton and Hove. This despite the enormous local heritage of protest demonstrations, from the General Strike, to the anti-fascist protests against the blackshirts, the NF and the EDL, to the protests against the poll tax. Currently, protests against the government's economic policies are taking place in towns and cities across the country, not just here (in case you thought otherwise).

In fact, the only group who seem to have made a point of picking on Brighton for a march, despite most participants not actually living here, was the EDL....ahem...sorry...the "March for England" - although that did of course attract a fair bit of local "attention".

Recent protest marches and activities include a large march against the cuts, and most recently actions by the Brighton branch of UKUncut - activities which were positively received by local people. Until last weekend we had the Spanish Revolutionary camp, a few tents in Steine Gardens, which Councillor Geoffrey "I'll park my Jag where I like" Theobald has spent weeks trying to portray as the end of civilisation as we know it.

The Argus would have you believe that these activities are uniquely bearing down on Brighton and are the sole cause of businesses in the centre of town suffering. Funny..I would have thought that VAT hikes, wage cuts, benefit cuts and galloping inflation might have had something to do with it. Is it really credible that the brief appearance of some demonstrators could so completely gum up the wheels of commerce?

So what's at the root of all this? Well obviously alot of it is about the Tories trying to undermine the Green council administration. Councillor Ben Duncan recently stated that protest was welcome in Brighton - a harmless statement which has sent the Tories into a state of pretend apoplexy. At times like this (when they've just lost an election and face four years of wilderness), the mask of liberal respectability slips. They really don't like the idea of people actually using their democratic right to protest - a bit like Vince Cable upholding the right to strike just as long as there aren't any strikes.

The best antidote to this nonsense is to carry on protesting - and 30th June, when 750,000 public sector workers are on strike, will be an ideal opportunity.

Teachers - massive majority for action on pensions

2011-06-14T23:24:00.000+01:00

The NUT reported today a 92% majority for strike action and the "non-strike" ATL a majority of 83%. Civil service union PCS declare their result tomorrow.

Man in best pension scheme in the country thinks other people fighting for a decent retirement are "irresponsible".

Cut our pay? No way!

2011-06-14T00:48:00.001+01:00

On Monday, about 1000 council workers and hospital cleaners marched through Southampton.

The Council workers are striking against threatened cuts in pay and the imposition of new, inferior contracts of employment. The hospital workers are taking action to force their employer, a contractor called Medirest, to honour a pay agreement.

The City Council dispute is turning into a major test of the ConDems' ability to cut public spending and are a precursor to the coming attack on public sector pensions.

On 30th June, hundreds of thousands of public sector workers, teachers and civil servants, are striking for one day.

It is vital that all of the struggles are linked. At the moment local union branches are fighting in isolation, and the national action on the 30th does not include workers in local government and the health service.

It is also extremely important that links are made between the attacks on workers' jobs, pay and conditions, and the cuts in services. Unions need to work with local anti-cuts groups so that the bosses and the politicians cannot drive a wedge between workers and the local community.

The Southampton Council dispute is a major test of the ability of the government and their local proxies to get through the cuts and policies which will so fundamentally change public services - and not for the better!

It is in all our interests to support the resistance being put up by the workers in Southampton.

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Crawley taxpayers bankrolling Southampton Tories' union bashing

2011-06-09T00:35:00.002+01:00

The strike action by Unison and Unite members against Southampton City Council's massive attack on their pay and conditions has reached a critical phase.

So it was quite a surprise to hear on the BBC News tonight that Tory-controlled Crawley Borough Council has made a low-interest loan of £5 MILLION to its Tory friends at Southampton City Council. It was clearly a surprise to opposition councillors (who are asking a lot of questions), and to the council taxpayers of Crawley.

Given that the union action at Southampton is directed at the council's revenue-raising powers, Crawley Council's "loan" looks a lot like a donation to its strike fund!

Of course, if the workers at Crawley Council were to strike in sympathy with their colleagues in Southampton, this would be regarded as unlawful "secondary action".

Unison Branch Secretary Mike Tucker reports

On Monday 13 June, 70 UNISON / UNITE members working as street cleaners will start a 7 day strike. They will join 170 UNISON / UNITE members already on strike, 40 Parking Enforcement, 20 Itchen Bridge Toll Collectors and 110 Refuse Collectors. The 13th June will be the one day that all four sections will be on strike. Also on 13 June, 250 Cleaners working for Medirest at Southampton General Hospital start a 7 day strike.

To mark the day all 5 strikes are taking place, a joint UNISON / UNITE march is being held on 13 June, starting from 12.30 p.m. Hoglands Park, marching to the Civic Centre. Support from outside Southampton is more than welcome.

The Conservative controlled Council have called on UNISON to call off the action short of strike in Children's Social Care due to the effectiveness of not covering vacant posts, non-use of cars and working to contract. The Council is having to spend £40,000 a week on taxis in the Children's Contact Centre alone. UNISON members in Children's Social Care have reacted angrily at the suggestion and are determined to carry on with the industrial action. See our Branch web site for more information on the use of agency social workers. Also the web site of the Southern Daily Echo. No date has been fixed for talks with ACAS. The Council are now offering 16 June.

Our dispute is reaching a crucial stage. We need financial support, also support on our picket lines and at the demonstration on 13 June.

Best wishes

Mike Tucker
UNISON National Executive Council Member /
Branch Secretary
UNISON Southampton District Branch
e-mail: branchsecretary@soton-unison-office.org.uk or m.tucker@unison.co.uk

Joint UNISON / UNITE Demonstration
Monday 13 June
12.30 p.m. Hoglands Park
March to the Civic Centre for Rally

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PUBLIC MEETING ECO-SOCIALISM - NOT GLOBAL DESTRUCTION

2011-06-07T09:55:00.001+01:00

SPEAKER-DEREK WALL: GREEN LEFT, ENVIRONMENTALIST, SOCIALIST

TUESDAY 28TH JUNE

7.30-9.30 p.m.

FRIENDS MEETING PLACE, QUAKERS HALL, MILL ROAD, WEST WORTHING

Global warming, climate change, populations starving and indigenous peoples under attack.

The environment and the future of our planet is facing a crisis. Our economic system is in a state of collapse. Capitalism has failed internationally, with cuts in public services, austerity measures and unemployment affecting all of our living standards across the globe.

On June 30, joint industrial action by public sector workers represents a fight back against the Con Dem coalition. We are told that there is no alternative to their budget plans and we must simply accept it.

From Spain, Greece and the Middle East, people are saying there is an alternative which does not involve protecting bankers, dictators and corrupt politicians. The old solutions are being rejected in favour of international solutions based on people not profit and alternative environmental policies.

Come and hear the arguments and discuss the alternatives. Join us. All are welcomed.

Meeting organised by local eco-socialists .

Bookstalls from various groups will be available.

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Cable tries to play good cop at GMB Conference

2011-06-06T23:40:00.001+01:00

Vince Cable's message to the GMB could not have been clearer - "you can have the right to strike....just don't go using it."

He tried to position himself as a friend of the unions who really, really didn't want to be beastly to them. But if he had to it would be all their fault for being irresponsible enough to defend their members.

Most delegates were unconvinced, and some activists made their feelings clear both outside and inside the hall....

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Brighton Uncut in action to save the NHS

2011-05-29T00:14:00.001+01:00

Film and photos from Saturday's action. Well done to the organisers for their brilliant work!

YouTube Video

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Solidarity with Southampton City Council workers!

2011-05-24T22:35:00.000+01:00

“For ideological reasons we are going for
outsourcing, externalisation, privatisation, wherever possible”

Alec Samuels, Tory leader of Southampton City

Council, the Daily Echo, 17th October 2008

Workers at Southampton City Council, members of Unison and Unite, have this week started industrial action against cuts in pay and other terms and conditions which the Tory administration is attempting to impose.

The action has started with a week-long strike of the City refuse workers (see picture at the main depot yesterday morning). The strike is solid. Other forms of action include overtime bans and workers refusing to use their cars for council business. Further groups of workers will be taking strike action over the coming weeks.

The Council is trying force through its pay-cutting plans by sacking the entire workforce and re-engaging them on inferior terms. The wage cuts being proposed will mean staff losing up to 17% of their pay over 2 years. A worker earning just over £12,000 a year would see their pay cut by 8% over 2 years.

The council has been more than happy to lie to the people of Southampton about its own proposals and about the unions. It accuses them of intimidating workers when the intimidation is coming from them - accept a massive pay cut or face the sack!

In addition to the pay cuts the administration is trying to force through a package of service cuts amounting to £67 million over the next 4 years.

But some are doing OK - Council Chief Executive Alistair Neill, one of the architects of this chaos, continues to pull in a salary of £205,000.

This is an ideological attack by the right-wing Tory administration which would happily see Southampton City Council contract out just about any service that isn't nailed down - despite the fact that Suffolk County Council has recently abandoned similar plans because of huge local community opposition, and because they would have cost more and delivered nothing for local people.

It is imperative that this dispute is won by the workers - otherwise more public sector employers will be trying to do the same thing in councils, the civil service, higher education and the NHS.

For more information download the Unison/Unite flyer

How Green is our valley and at whose expense?

2011-05-24T00:24:00.001+01:00

“First They came...” - Pastor Martin Niemoller. Well we all know how that famous anti-fascist poem went but we also know that Romani people were slaughtered and victimized by the Nazis just as much as any other minority. Even today in Hungary and Italy, they face daily threats from both the authorities and fascist gangs. The harassment and racism against the Traveller community in this country has also been widely reported over the decades.

It is with extreme regret then that one of the first acts of the Brighton and Hove Greens, who claim that they offer a new approach to radical politics, reverted to the old ways of populism, racism and opportunism. This is a continuation of the old policies of both Labour and Tories. “No we are not racist, but not in our back yard!”

In expelling travellers’ families from Woolard Field, Falmer, the new Green administration joined a long line of councils up and down this country who say yes we would like to help but we do not have the space. Using so-called eco arguments, this has nothing to do with ecology. Woollard's Field is an urban fringe site with - no doubt - a population of Common Lizards and Slow-worms and other common disturbed land and scrub species. The issue for the Greens, though, is about getting the site free'd up for the builders to move in this summer. The critical issue is not about a conflict with threatened wildlife. Translocation of sensistive and protected species is standard practice nowadays. This is a complete failure of political will by the Greens in finding an alternative temporary encampment site.

Joseph Jones, from the Gypsy Council secretariat, said there was a lack of sites across the South East, with more than a thousand pitches needed.He said: "The idea of slow worms taking priority over people - it is amazing really to think animals take priority over people.

"But gypsies and travellers are the lowest on anyone's welfare agenda. They have the lowest health and education outcomes and have the most problems in achieving standards of human rights."

As we know, racism unfortunately takes many forms and in failing to ensure an alternative site that is both suitable and acceptable to the Travellers, makes this decision extremely worrying. Land sell offs being put before the needs of people is unacceptable. This is something we would expect from the previous Council not the Greens.

Questions need to be asked of :
Were representatives of the Travellers and their various organizations consulted or involved before ejecting the families?
What methods of communications were made with the Travellers or were the police and security just sent in ?
What alternative arrangements were made for the families?
What alternatives are being planned?

According to Amnesty International, the Roma community suffers massive discrimination throughout Europe. Denied their rights to housing, employment, healthcare and education, Roma are often victims of forced evictions, racist attacks and police ill-treatment. Living predominantly on the margins of society, Roma are among the most deprived communities in Europe. In some countries, they are prevented from obtaining citizenship and personal documents required for social insurance, health care and other benefits. Romani children are frequently unjustifiably placed in "special schools" where curtailed curricula limit their possibilities for fulfilling their potential.

Let us ensure that the “new” Brighton is not tainted with this breach of human rights. Are the Greens turning red or blue on this and other issues?

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Spain comes to Brighton!

2011-05-23T00:57:00.004+01:00

Today I joined a march of young Spanish people expressing their solidarity with the young workers demonstrating in their country.

They call for real democracy and oppose austerity and youth unemployment. Their fight is our fight!

More at http://spanishrevolutionbrighton.wordpress.com/

Video of the march

YouTube Video

Real Democracy Now Manifesto in English

We are ordinary people. We are like you: people, who get up every morning to study, work or find a job, people who have family and friends. People, who work hard every day to provide a better future for those around us.

Some of us consider ourselves progressive, others conservative. Some of us are believers, some not. Some of us have clearly defined ideologies, others are apolitical, but we are all concerned and angry about the political, economic, and social outlook which we see around us: corruption among politicians, businessmen, bankers, leaving us helpless, without a voice.

This situation has become normal, a daily suffering, without hope. But if we join forces, we can change it. It’s time to change things, time to build a better society together. Therefore, we strongly argue that:

The priorities of any advanced society must be equality, progress, solidarity, freedom of culture, sustainability and development, welfare and people’s happiness.

These are inalienable truths that we should abide by in our society: the right to housing, employment, culture, health, education, political participation, free personal development, and consumer rights for a healthy and happy life.

The current status of our government and economic system does not take care of these rights, and in many ways is an obstacle to human progress.

Democracy belongs to the people (demos = people, krátos = government) which means that government is made of every one of us. However, in Spain most of the political class does not even listen to us. Politicians should be bringing our voice to the institutions, facilitating the political participation of citizens through direct channels that provide the greatest benefit to the wider society, not to get rich and prosper at our expense, attending only to the dictatorship of major economic powers and holding them in power through a bipartidism headed by the immovable acronym PP & PSOE.

Lust for power and its accumulation in only a few; create inequality, tension and injustice, which leads to violence, which we reject. The obsolete and unnatural economic model fuels the social machinery in a growing spiral that consumes itself by enriching a few and sends into poverty the rest. Until the collapse.

The will and purpose of the current system is the accumulation of money, not regarding efficiency and the welfare of society. Wasting resources, destroying the planet, creating unemployment and unhappy consumers.

Citizens are the gears of a machine designed to enrich a minority which does not regard our needs. We are anonymous, but without us none of this would exist, because we move the world.

If as a society we learn to not trust our future to an abstract economy, which never returns benefits for the most, we can eliminate the abuse that we are all suffering.

We need an ethical revolution. Instead of placing money above human beings, we shall put it back to our service. We are people, not products. I am not a product of what I buy, why I buy and who I buy from.

For all of the above, I am outraged.

I think I can change it.

I think I can help.

I know that together we can.I think I can help.

I know that together we can.

Here you can see an album on Flickr with pictures of the Spanish Revolution Brighton!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrbishie/sets/72157626649620639/

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Benefit claimants and benefit workers - in it together!

2011-05-22T00:05:00.001+01:00

“It’s the mark of a civilised society to support people when they are in need, whether they are ill, disabled or unemployed. Welfare is there to provide a decent existence. Coming from the South Wales valleys and working in a DHSS office I saw the importance of the social security system before my eyes every day.”

Mark Serwotka

Living in Brighton gives local union activists a welcome opportunity to dip into the fringes of the trade union conferences which take place here. So last Thursday I went along to the PCS Conference fringe meeting on welfare reform.

It was quite refreshing, as a visitor with no accreditation, to just walk into the Brighton Centre off the street and browse the stalls and check out fringe meetings. Had it been Unison conference, some heavy would have been blocking my path and demanding to see my credentials - and no doubt check my name against an ever-lengthening list of "suspended" (read "witchunted") members who are not allowed in!

But I digress. The meeting was to launch the PCS' new pamphlet on welfare reform which is a very welcome addition to the debate. PCS is of course in a unique position on this issue, being the union which organises workers who deliver welfare benefits, many of whom are recipients of benefits themselves.

John McDonnell MP spoke powerfully about the "real suffering" he sees at his constituency surgery - people losing their jobs, suddenly having benefits removed, facing homelessness because the reductions in housing benefit mean that they cannot pay their rent. The wait for a council home in his constituency is 8 years.

Mark Serwotka spoke about the stresses on his members caused by working with the most deprived people facing even more benefit cuts. The pamphlet points out that admin assistants in the DWP are paid only just above the minimum wage, 50% of DWP staff earn less than £20,000 pa and 25% less than £15,000. This means of course that many of them receive the benefits they administer. Jobcentres are being closed all over the country and claimants forced to deal with call centres where staff have to put their hands up for a timed toilet break and get harrassed by management if they spend "too long" with a caller.

The pamphlet also points out that large amounts of benefit money are in effect subsidising low pay and high rents - the money is really going to employers who pay badly and private landlords who charge sky-high rents. Benefit costs could be slashed if we had a decent minimum wage and there was statutory control over rent levels.

In 2010 £16 billion in benefits were unclaimed. Only £5 billion is lost through the combined effects of error and fraud.

Linda Burnip of Disabled People Against Cuts also spoke very well about the problems faced by disabled people and carers. Disabled people on benefits are stigmatised and their rights to benefit constantly questioned. The tabloids lead the campaign to demonise them and soften up public opinion for cuts. Carers Allowance is a paltry £53 a week and only payable if your caring responsibilities are over 35 hours a week. Again, this represents a huge but largely hidden public subsidy to the costs of caring. The fraud rate in Disability Living Allowance is just 0.5%, and in the last 15 years, an estimated 500,000 people have had incapacity benefits wrongly removed by the state.

From the floor, Tony Greenstein of Brighton Unemployed Workers Centre, remarked on the fall in union membership and the drastic drop in the number if unemployed centres. He pointed out that claimants are workers too and the the organised trade union movement needed to recognise this.

This pamphlet tells a huge, largely untold, story. Read it now, and get everyone you know to read it too!

Spain - statement from Fourth International comrades

2011-05-21T14:54:00.002+01:00

Rebellion of the indignant. Notes from Barcelona’s Tahrir Square.

Josep Maria Antentas & Esther Vivas International Viewpoint

There is no doubt about it. The wind that has electrified the Arab world in recent months, the spirit of the repeated protests in Greece or the student struggles in Britain and Italy, the mobilizations against Sarkozy in France... has come to the Spanish State.

These are not then days of “business as usual”. The comfortable routines of our “market democracy”" and its electoral and media rituals have been abruptly altered by the unforeseen emergence in the street and public space of citizen mobilization. This “rebellion of the indignant” worries the political elites who are always discomfited when the people take democracy seriously... and decide to start practicing it for themselves.

Two years ago, when the crisis which broke out in September 2008 took on historic proportions, the “masters of the world” experienced a brief moment of panic, alarmed by the magnitude of a crisis they had not anticipated, through their lack of theoretical instruments with which to understand it, and feared a strong social reaction. Then came the empty claims of a “refoundation of capitalism” and false mea culpas that little by little evaporated, once the financial system was underpinned and in the absence of a social explosion.

The social reaction has been slow in coming. Since the outbreak of the crisis, social resistance has been weak. There has been a very large gap between the discrediting of the current economic model and its translation into collective action. Several factors explain this, in particular, fear, resignation before the current situation, scepticism with regard to trade unions, the absence of political and social reference points, and the penetration among wage earners of individualistic and consumerist values.

The current outbreak did not, however, start from scratch. Years of work on a small scale of alternative networks and movements, initiatives and resistance of more limited impact had kept the flame of contestation alive in this difficult period. The general strike of September 29m 2010 also opened a first breach, although the subsequent demobilization by the leaderships of the CCOO and UGT and the signing of the social pact closed the path of trade union mobilisation and furthered if possible, the discredit and lack of prestige of the biggest unions among combative youth and those who have launched the camps initiative.

Indignant!

“Indignation” so much the fashion through the pamphlet by Hessel [the former French resistance fighter Stéphane Hessel], is one of the ideas that define the protests which have started. Here there reappears in another form, the "Ya Basta!" of the Zapatistas in their uprising of January 1, 1994, then the first revolt against the "new world order" proclaimed by George Bush senior after the first Gulf War, the disintegration of the USSR and the fall of the Berlin wall.

“Indignation is a start. One is outraged, rises up and then one sees” said Daniel Bensaïd. Gradually, however, we have passed from discomfort to outrage and from that to this mobilization. We have a true “mobilized indignation”. From the earthquake of crisis, the tsunami of social mobilization develops.

To fight more than unease and indignation is required, we must also believe in the usefulness of collective action, that it is possible to overcome and that all that has gone before is not lost. For years the social movements in the Spanish State have essentially known defeats. The lack of victories which show the usefulness of social mobilization and increase the expectations of the possible weighed like a heavy slab on the slow initial reaction to the crisis.

Precisely at this point the great contribution of the revolutions in the Arab world to the ongoing protests has registered. They show that collective action is useful, that “Yes we can”. That is why they, as well as the less covered victory against the bankers and the political class in Iceland, have been a reference point from the beginning for the protesters and activists.

Along with the belief that "this is possible”, that things can be changed, loss of fear, in a time of crisis and difficulties, is another key factor. “Without fear” is precisely one of the slogans most heard these days. Fear still grips a large majority of workers and popular sectors and leads to passivity or xenophobic and unsympathetic reactions. But the 15M mobilization and the camps expanding like an oil slick are a powerful antidote to fear that threatens to dismantle the schemes of a ruling elite at the forefront of an increasingly delegitimized system.

The 15M movement and the camps have an important generational component. Each time a new cycle of struggles breaks out, a new generation of activists emerges, and “youth” as such acquire visibility and prominence. While this generational and youth component is essential, and is also expressed in some of the organized movements that have been visible lately like "Youth without future", it must be noted that the ongoing protest is not a generational movement. It is a movement of criticism of the current economic model and attempts to make workers pay for the crisis which is fundamentally weighted towards youth. The challenge is precisely that, as on so many occasions, the youth protest acts as a triggering factor and catalyst for a broader cycle of social struggles.

The spirit of anti-globalization returns

The dynamism, the spontaneity and the thrust of the current protests are the strongest since the emergence of the anti-globalization movement more than a decade ago. Emerging internationally in November 1999 at the protests in Seattle during the WTO Summit (although its antecedents go back to the Zapatista Chiapas uprising in 1994), the anti-globalization wave quickly came to the Spanish state. The consultation for the abolition of the foreign debt in March 2000 (held the same day as the general elections and banned in several cities by the Electoral Board) and the big mobilization for the summit in Prague in September 2000 against the World Bank and the IMF were the first signs of this, particularly in Catalonia. But the mass movement really arrived with the demonstrations against the World Bank Summit in Barcelona on June 22 and 24, 2001. Just ten years later we are witnessing the birth of a movement whose energy, enthusiasm and collective strength has not been seen since then. It will not, therefore, be a nostalgic tenth anniversary. Quite the contrary. We are going to celebrate it with the birth of a new movement.

The assemblies now in Plaza Catalunya (and, indeed, all the camps around the state beginning with that at Sol in Madrid) have given us priceless moments. The 15M and the camps are authentic "foundational struggles" and clear signs that we are witnessing a change in cycle and that the wind of rebellion is blowing again. Finally. A true “Tahrir generation” emerges, as did before a "Seattle generation” or a “Genoa generation”.

Through the “anti-globalization” impulse across the planet, following the official summits in Washington, Prague, Quebec, Goteborg, Genoa and Barcelona, thousands of people identified with these protests and a wide range of groups from around the globe had the feeling of being part of a movement, of the same "people", the "people of Seattle" or "Genoa", sharing common objectives and feeling part of the same struggle.

The current movement is also inspired by the most recent and important international reference points of struggle and victory. It can be situated in the wake of movements as diverse as the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia and the victory in Iceland, placing their mobilization in a general struggle against global capitalism and the servile political elite. In the Spanish state, the 15 M demonstrations and now the camps, in a simultaneous example of decentralization and coordination, generate a shared identity and symbolic membership of a community.

The anti-globalization movement had ithe international institutions, WTO, World Bank and IMF and multinational companies in its line of fire. Later, with the start of the "global war on terror" proclaimed by Bush junior, criticism of war and imperialist domination acquired centrality. The current movement places as its axis the criticism of a political class, whose complicity and servitude to the economic powers has been more exposed than ever. "We are not goods in the hands of politicians and bankers" read one of the main slogans of 15M. There is criticism of the political class and professional politics and criticism, not always well articulated and consistent, of the current economic model and financial powers. "Capitalism? Game over".

Towards the future

The future of the 15M initiated movement is unpredictable. In the short term the first challenge is to continue to build on the existing camps, set them up in cities where they do not yet exist and ensure they continue at least until Sunday May 22. May 21, the day of reflection, and May 22, election day, will be decisive. In these two days building the camps at a mass level is essential.

It is necessary to also consider new dates for mobilization, in the wake of 15M, to maintain the rhythm. The main challenge is to maintain this simultaneous dynamic of expansion and radicalization of the protest which we have experienced in the last few days. And in the case of Catalonia, look for synergies between the radicalism and desire for a change in the system expressed in 15M and the camps, with struggles against public expenditure cuts, particularly in health and education. The camp in Plaza Catalunya has already become a meeting point, a powerful magnet, for all the more dynamic sectors in struggle. It has become a meeting point for resistance and struggle, for building bridges, facilitating dialogue, and propelling future demonstrations. Establishing alliances between the protests under way among unorganized activists, and the alternative trade unionism, the neighbourhood movement, neighbourhood groups and so on, is the great challenge of the next few days.

“The revolution starts here...” was the claim yesterday at Plaza Catalunya. Well, at least a new cycle of struggles is beginning. So there is no doubt already that, more than a decade after the rise of the anti-globalization movement and two years after the outbreak of the crisis, social protest has come back to stay.

*Josep Maria Antentas is a member of the editorial board of the magazine Viento Sur, and a professor of sociology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Esther Vivas is a member of the Centre for Studies on Social Movements (CEMS) at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. She is also a member of the editorial board of Viento Sur.

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Worthing Solidarity Network supports Don't Cut Us Out

2011-05-15T23:02:00.001+01:00

WSN activists travelled across to Chichester yesterday morning to support another excellent hundreds-strong protest outside West Sussex County Council, organised by the Dont Cut Us Out campaign. DCUO had managed to get more than 20,000 signatures on a strongly-worded petition calling not only for an end to adult social care cuts, but for the money to be found by using WSCC's reserve and calling on the government to tax the banks who caused the crisis.

The protest was VERY noisy, angry and determined. Once inside the chamber, every Tory who spoke with barely-concealed contempt for the people affected and their supporters was heckled loudly from the public gallery. A Lib/Lab motion calling for a pause and echoing the call for use of county council reserves was derided by Tories as 'bad housekeeping' and putting at risk contingencies such as keeping the roads clear in case of snow! With private healthcare director and adult services cabinet member Peter Catchpole clearly having already made his decision, DCUO are considering the next moves for their high-profile campaign to stop David Cameron's local cronies ruining the lives of 4,000 of our county's most vulnerable people.

Cllr Peter Catchpole -certainly not a man of or for the people-surprising that he even has the time to make cuts, or does he do it with his eyes closed?

Originally a biochemist, Peter Catchpole worked as a senior executive in the NHS for over 30 years, 20 of these as a Chief Executive. He has also been a non-executive director/advisor for organisations in the not-for-profit, private and charity sectors. Peter's current portfolio consists of the following: Fellow of the Faculty of Health - teaching at the University of Brighton; Non-Executive Director of the Special Health Authority NHS Direct; and Chair of the Audit Committee. In the regulatory sector he is a member of the General Dental Council, Associate Member of the General Medical Council Fitness to Practice Committees, a lay member of the Nursing & Midwives Conduct and Competence Committee, a lay member of the British Association of Psychotherapy and Counselling Conduct Committee and in Clinical Governance, a Management Reviewer for the Healthcare Commission. He is also an Independent Health Care Consultant and business advisor to the independent health sector.

Peter is the Cabinet Member for Adults' Services

Committee membership
North Horsham County Local Committee

Outside bodies
Peter represents the County Council on the following organisations

Horsham Citizens' Advice Bureau Management Committee
South East Employers (Deputy Member)

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Public Sector Pay - statistical quackery posing as academic research..again

2011-05-15T18:52:00.001+01:00

At the beginning of this week the "thinktank" Policy Exchange mused about public sector pay. They claimed to have discovered, through rigorous research of course, that public sector workers are paid 40% more than private sector workers. Startled? Of course you are! Does this claim stand up to even a moment's serious scrutiny? Of course it doesn't! But maybe that's not the point.

This remarkable figure is derived from the simple measure of comparing the average hourly pay of the two sectors....yes really...it gets no more sophisticated than that. The PE "research" fails to actually compare like with like. No account is taken of the fact that the public sector workforce is on average more highly qualified with a greater proportion of skilled workers and professionals. No attempt is made to compare a job with anything approaching a similar job in each sector. As one commentator has observed, it's like comparing the pay of a neurosurgeon with that of a bartender and concluding that the neurosurgeon is overpaid!

Of course, in many cases no such comparison is possible, as some jobs are only done in the public sector and some only in the private sector, but PE don't even try.

If you take a job that is done in both sectors - teaching, the PE would have you belive that a teacher in the independent sector is earning 40% less than a teacher in the state sector. That's a pay differential of some ten to fifteen thousand a year. Is this credible? Would independent schools ever be able to attract any teachers with a pay gap that wide?

Local authority-employed cleaners, who earn barely more than the minimum wage, are earning 40% more than cleaners in the private sector? Would PE care to inform us which cleaning firms are breaking the law?

The Institute for Fiscal Studies says that the public sector "premium" is more like 6%, but even that is most likely due to the fact that gender discrimination in the public sector is being eliminated in the public sector to a much greater extent than in the private. There is also the fact that many of the lowest paid public sector staff have actually been contracted out to the private sector, which further distorts the figures.

What is really happening is that "think tanks" like Policy Exchange are in reality making a political attack on public sector workers. It's all about softening up public opinion to make workers in both sector easier to divide.

Epic fail.......

2011-05-14T18:25:00.001+01:00

Origin of the phrase "damp squib" (with thanks to Wikpedia)

"While most modern squibs used by professionals are insulated from moisture, older uninsulated squibs needed to be kept dry in order to ignite, thus a "damp squib" was literally one that failed to perform because it got wet. Often misheard as "damp squid", the phrase "damp squib" has since come into general use to mean anything that fails to meet expectations. The word "squib" has come to take on a similar meaning even when used alone, as a synonym for dud. Squids, on the other hand, are frequently damp, and therefore not useful in this simile."

Looks like the message of "it's all the fault of greedy poor people" didn't quite capture the public mood.......

The poison’d chalice

2011-05-09T01:15:00.001+01:00

Here, Green Party activist Andy Player discusses the lessons of the Green victory in Brighton and Hove. Since this was written it has emerged that the Greens will form a minority administration, Labour having come out against a coalition.

After defending 13 seats and winning 10 new ones, the Green party now has the largest group on Brighton & Hove city council. The Tories dropped from 26 to 18, Labour remained on 13 and the Lib Dems were wiped off the map.

Following on from the remarkable victory in Pavilion a year ago to the day, the Greens have made astonishing progress at a time when votes for smaller parties seems to be diminishing.

In many central Brighton seats the Greens had already replaced Labour as the progressive choice. The results in these wards were cemented by campaigning last year and large majorities increased on Thursday.

The push continued into the Labour suburbs with one seat being turned into three in Preston Park and two seats out of three taken in Hollingdean and Stanmer - with Labour deputy leader Pat Hawkes ousted.

Seats were taken from the Tories in previous Tory / Labour marginals like Goldsmid, but the shock results were in two ‘safe’ Tory wards – Central Hove and Withdean – where a Green candidate came from nowhere to top the poll.

The Greens’ relentless progress in Brighton & Hove should be of enormous interest to those on the left who believe that electoral politics play a part in the fight for a better world.

The Green party won their first council seat in 1996, adding two, then another three, and then another six at subsequent elections, plus a first Hove councillor in a by-election the year before Caroline Lucas won in Brighton Pavilion.

One lesson for the left is that the Greens in Brighton & Hove have achieved electoral success through consistent hard work. They have also built a significant layer of support amongst trade unionists and campaigners with their swift and unambiguous backing of the right causes.

The Greens in Brighton & Hove have a reputation for being honest, active and progressive. That is a breath of fresh air for many voters in this city.

Hard work and the right principles are one thing, but the crucial factor in surviving the current electoral squeeze of smaller parties is that voters believe the Greens can win. After last year’s result, that belief has mushroomed.

The Green party have now replaced Labour in most of their traditional areas and have become the opposition party in most Tory wards. Are we seeing the crumbling of Labourism - the Holy Grail for left-of-Labour electoral parties?

Some big challenges face the Brighton & Hove Green party councillors and the local party membership. The Green platform in these elections was to oppose cuts to services and to protect jobs. Taking over the council purse-strings in a time of savage cuts is not good timing for a progressive party, yet it is what the electorate demanded.

Tories, Labour and many on the left will be rubbing their hands and waiting for the new Green administration to ‘sell out’. To deliver on the local party’s manifesto is not going to be easy. But the local Green party has not got to where it is by being strategically naïve, vain or politically cowardly. We may have been handed the poisoned chalice, but no-one is forcing us to drink it.

“Vade retro Satana! Nunquam suade mihi vana! Sunt mala quae libas. Ipse venena bibas!” as Saint Benedict of Nursia once said.

Andy Player

6 May 2011.

The Left and the elections

2011-05-09T01:10:00.002+01:00

Socialist Resistance has published a preliminary assessment of the elections. It does not make very comfortable reading, but there's no point in beating around the bush! It is clear that in England the big winners were really the Tories, who did not get the hiding that Brendan Barber and Ed Miliband were promising us on 26th March. Labour made some inroads in their old northern heartlands but precious little anywhere else. The Lib Dems were severely and justly punished by the progressive end of their vote for their sellouts to the Tories and were of course the big losers.

In Scotland, Labour were annihilated by the SNP, who now have a working majority in the Scottish Parliament under an electoral system whose supposed main design feature was.....the impossibility of an SNP working majority! It will be fascinating to see how the issue of independence pans out. The smart money is on the SNP not rushing into an independence referendum, but waiting for Scottish public opinion to be softened up by a couple of years of being clobbered by Tory cuts emanating from London.

Labour's big problem is that they criticise Tory cuts but their own cuts are only a bit slower and only a bit smaller, while they talk about going for growth - pie in the sky in the current capitalist crisis we are facing. This, coupled with a leader whose charisma appears to have been surgically removed, do not make Labour a very appealing prospect.

As far as the far left is concerned, this was a dire election. Good socialist councillors were desperately thin on the ground to begin with, but Michael Lavalette lost his seat in Preston, as did one of the Respect councillors in Birmingham. The main left challenge came from Trade Unionists and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) standing on an anti-cuts platform. TUSC stood in four wards in Brighton and ran only 140 candidates across the country. This, along with some Respect candidates and the Socialist Labour Party in a few areas, amounted to the smallest left electoral challenge I can remember in years.

Alot of hard work was put in by TUSC activists but the results were disappointing. In Brighton and Hove, it was always going to be difficult with the Greens looking to take a large chunk of the left vote. But across the four wards TUSC totalled barely 700 votes.

It is clear to me that the "loose coalition" model of working just is not sufficient. We need a unified party to the left of New Labour - a party with proper democratic structures, and a real existence on the ground, something which SR has consistently argued for. But as long as the main left groups put building themselves above building that alternative, we will continue to fail in elections, however good our message is.

Some further comments....below from Sussex Socialist Resistance and above, a Green Party perspective.

Well done to the Greens with their electoral success. However entering into discussions with whom? Certainly not the Tories and Lib Dems. The employees, trade unions, service users, local community groups one assumes should be the people the new administration will be talking to, listening to and consulting with, involving them in the decisions that have to be made.

As far as the first challenge they will face is what to do with the budget and council cuts? If they reverse the present cuts and refuse to implement the Con Dem cuts being passed down by this failed coalition gov't then they will have all our support. If they refuse to carry out redundancies and protect workers' pensions then fine with us. There can be no compromises when it comes to workers living standards. Make the bankers pay, not council staff.

However if the Greens merely introduce a few cycle paths and carry on with " business as normal" type approach, based on pragmatism and short term gains then the honeymoon will be short lived. We do not expect this to happen, hopefully. The Green Party conference opposed cuts, with many of the new councillors taking that position and supporting the Coalition of Resistance anti-cuts campaign. Let us see Brighton and Hove now lead that fightback. They promise us new politics and we welcome eco-socialist policies.

The Greens can not do this on their own though and it will require a united front with those in the Labour Party, trade union movement and the Left to ensure the success of such a campaign. Those in the Labour Party who pinned their hopes on a New Labour victory based on cuts but over a slightly longer time period, will have to review where they stand. Milliband has left them high and dry.

The attacks on the democratic right to demonstrate in Brighton will no longer get an easy ride by the new councillors and this may make the Sussex police think twice about how they abuse their powers. It may also mean the EDL and their fascist friends will not in future find Brighton such an easy place to march through. Perhaps the police may not rush to use the Public Order Act . The Green Council should insist all charges are dropped against anti-fascists and anarchists who have recently been arrested.

TUSC candidates promoted Socialist policies in this election campaign and the struggle for Eco - Socialism continues. The anti-cuts campaign groups will expect the Greens to show a new approach in this.

As for the rest of the results of the council elections:

Lewes went Tory and Lib Dems lost seats.

BNP came last where ever they stood in Arun.

Labour candidates, Mike Faddon and Sue Marsh improved their vote in Worthing and opposed cuts.
The election may be over but the campaign against cuts and defending public services continues. The Con Dem coalition now has a huge crack in it, with Lib Dem's defeats all over the place. So much for betraying policies. Let this be a lesson to others and get on with the fightback. Public sector workers plan industrial action and we need to build support for these struggles.

Our right to protest - under attack!

2011-05-03T23:48:00.001+01:00

Consider the evidence -

In the last few weeks we have seen -

- Blatantly partisan policing in Brighton to protect the racist EDL whilst attempting to criminalise and demonise the anti-fascist groups trying to oppose them. This included the arrest of anti-fascist activists and the imposition of a "bail condition" banning them from Brighton!

- Saturation policing of this weekends May Day protest.

- Raids and arrests in Brighton and London late last week of people who MIGHT have been planning protests around the royal wedding.

- Numerous arrests of people in London on the day of the wedding for the smallest displays of dissent from the mood of national joy which we were all supposed to be feeling.

- The revelation that police have been compiling a secret intelligence file on local peace activist John Catt, although he has never been prosecuted for any offence. Catt is now taking legal action. The intelligence-gathering in this case resembled the tactics of the Stasi.

We have seen police tactics of selective arrests of leaders, filming and photographing of protestors, violent mass arrests such as that of the UKUncut occupation of Fortnum and Masons on 26 March, and kettling of demonstrations.

Today's verdict in the Tomlinson inquest gives us a chilling reminder of where this state violence can end.

We have also seen this approach coupled with a slick media strategy in which a compliant media simply soaks up the police side of the story. Locally the Argus simply regurgitates Sussex Police press releases with no attempt to investigate what is really going on.

All activists should be concerned about these developments.

There is no doubt that Britain is not (yet!) a police state in the sense that I would understand the term. We have seen ruling classes in many countries being prepared to engage in mass murder of their own people to cling to power. This is clearly not where we are in the UK.

But we should not just "be grateful" as some suggest. We need to be saying that we are not going to put up with it.

As someone once said......

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

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Labour and ConDems run away from debate on public services in Brighton

2011-04-27T01:02:00.004+01:00

This is really quite shameful - on the part of Labour especially.

The civil service union PCS had organised a hustings for council candidates this Thursday on the theme of protecting public services. This has now been cancelled. PCS explains below.

The Public and Commercial Services Union in Brighton has called off an organised 'hustings' for
candidates at the local elections as Labour, Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives have all
declined invitations to attend. The debate was due to take place on Thursday at the Friends meeting house in Ship Street

PCS has run a successful campaign over a number of years called 'Make your vote count' which
encourages people to use their vote in elections, to support public services and to oppose the far
right. However, in Brighton only the Green Party and the Trade union and Socialist Candidate were prepared to face the electorate and public sector workers. Both also have supported the Unions pledges in supporting public services.

Kevin Dale, Make your Vote Count Co-ordinator in Brighton said " We organised the hustings, as we have up and down the country , because we believe voters are entitled to hear what politicians think and we also felt it was an opportunity for parties to say what they stand for. All credit to TUSC and the Greens for being prepared to speak up for what they believe in but it seems Labour, the Lib Dems and Tories are running scared of the people they want to represent. Labour and the Lib Dems both declined invitations to attend and attempts to get a Conservative speaker also came to nothing. What are these parties scared of? Are their policies not up to scrutiny?

We have taken the decision not to go ahead with the meeting due mainly to the failure of Labour to debate issues particularly the cuts and public services, and we ask voters to support candidates in Brighton who have publicly backed our campaign and signed the our unions 5 Pledges to support public services, those being TUSC and the Greens."

Jason KitKat, Green party Councillor, who was due to speak said "I am disappointed that the other parties are not up for open and fair debate around the issues that effect the electorate. The Greens are willing to debate with any party as there are issues that need to be addressed."

Phil Clarke of the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition which is standing against all cuts said " The
cuts in council services are so severe that councillors need to make them central to this election.
Refusing to even debate the issues shows how weak labours anti-cuts credentials are. The people of Brighton need to look elsewhere at Trade unionists and Socialist against the cuts candidates to find people who have pledged to take on the government and vote against all cuts."

Why it is wrong to call for a NO vote on AV

2011-04-26T01:11:00.000+01:00

In this article for Socialist Resistance, Alan Thornett challenges some of the left thinking on the AV referendum.

The Tory-led, and heavily funded, campaign for a NO vote in the AV referendum appears to be winning the contest hands down. Cameron, with a total commitment to the corrupt FPTP system, is whipping Tory voters (in particular) into line with a series of dire predictions and downright lies about the consequences of AV which bear no factual relationship to the issues at hand.
They are wiping the floor with the lack-lustre, under-organised, and gimmick-ridden campaign for a YES vote led by the Labour leadership and the Lib Dems. Whilst Lib Dems are strongly behind a YES vote Labour are divided on it from top to bottom. Much of the Labour Left is also for a NO vote.
Unfortunately most of the far left are also supporting the NO campaign. Yet if the NO campaign wins it will be seen as a thumping endorsement of the current FPTP system which delivered outrageously undemocratic election results throughout the 20th century in defense of the two party system and which, in the event of a NO vote, will be set to continue doing so for the foreseeable future — and with a referendum decision behind it.
Under FPTP in the last election the Tories won just 36% of the vote which gave them a much higher proportion of MPs. In 2005 Labour polled just 35.2% of the votes cast but for this they got 55.1% of the seats in Parliament – way above their proportional entitlement. The Tories polled 30.7% of the vote and 32.3% of the seats – just above their proportional entitlement. The Lib Dems polled 22.1% of the vote and all they got for this was just 9.6% of seats – less than half of their proportional entitlement.
This meant that it took 26000 votes to elect a Labour MP, 44000 to elect a Tory MP, and a huge 96000 to elect a Liberal Democrat MP – nearly four times as many votes as those needed by a Labour MP. Such a system is scandalous and indefensible even before you consider the way it stacks the odds against small parties.
It also meant that around 70% of voters cast votes which make no difference what-so-ever to the outcome since they were in safe seats of one kind or another and the election is won or lost in a minority of marginal seats.
The latest far left organisation to adopt a NO vote stance is the SWP — see SW of April 16. In doing so they have recycled some of the most vacuous justifications.
The first is that a NO vote will “deepen the rifts in the coalition”. This is not only the wrong approach but it is problematic as a prediction. Whichever way the vote goes it will cause a crisis in the coalition. Whilst a NO vote would precipitate a crisis for the Lib Dems a YES vote would be totally unacceptable to a swathe of mind-dead Tory MPs, who see FPTP as akin to a religion, and who would blame Cameron for getting them into it.
The issue of AV, however, should not be judged on the conjuctural effect of the referendum on the establishment parties but whether it is an improvement (even a very small one as in this case) over the existing system and\or does it have the propensity to open the door to further reform towards a proportionate system which would deliver fair votes: i.e. a Parliament where the number of MPs for each party directly reflect the votes polled by each party?
A a vote for change would show that change was possible and pose the issue of further change, particularly since the most of those supporting it would want to go further, while a vote for FPTP would retrench the existing system
The second argument SW advances is that voting in bourgeois elections is not that important anyway. “Having a vote is better than not having a vote” SW argues and goes on, “The capitalist class can live with political democracy—the election of parliaments and governments—because the decisive levers of power are outside parliament.”
This seriously misunderstands the importance of the electoral field to the calls struggle under capitalism and understates the right of the working class to democracy under a bourgeois-democratic system. Bourgeois democracy is not workers democracy of course but the struggle for a democratic voting system under capitalism is a part of the struggle for socialism. It also downplays the struggles historically for the universal franchise (the Chartists and the women’s suffrage movement) — which were about democracy under a bourgeois system.
In Britain in the 20th century there were periods which were effectively elected dictatorships based on huge majorities in Parliament, yet these majorities bore little relationship to the support the parties enjoyed amongst the electorate. It is not in the interests of working class for such a system to continue.
AV of course will not resolve that because it is not a proportional system but a vote of confidence in FPTP will not resolve it either. It could set back change for another generation.
The SW article argues that AV will not strengthen the left — but this is not true. It would at least allow voters to express their genuine preferences without the pressure to vote tactically and allows small parties to stand without fear of splitting the vote. It therefore benefits small parties as against FPTP at the constituency level. This does not mean it would be easier for small parties to get into Westminster, only PR can do that, but it would at least give small parties a more representative vote at constituency level which would increase their credibility in elections.
It would ensure that all MPs are elected on the basis of majority support (at present only a third of them achieve this and would undermine, least to some extent, the safe seats which FPTP provides for Labour and the Tories which disenfranchises swathes of voters at every election.
SW argues that: “Many European countries have more progressive voting systems than in Britain. Portugal has PR—but workers still face savage cuts.” Of course no one is arguing that the voting system can replace the class struggle. But it should be remembered that the left is strongly represented in the Portuguese parliament, including the far left, and that would not be the case under FPTP.
The SW article even uses the London mayoral election as a negative example of AV, arguing that it was still a contest between the two main parties. This may be true, given the electoral relationship of forces, but it least allowed the voters to vote both for their preferred candidate as well as voting against the worst main contender — which in this case was the Tories. FPTP would be far worse for the London mayoral elections.
The far left needs to think again on this issue.

Alan Thornett

EDL blocked and harried in Brighton

2011-04-24T22:36:00.001+01:00

YouTube Video

The video above shows the EDL being chased around Brighton by anti-fascists today-and the photos give some idea of the massive and oppressive police operation (involving 5 forces) - oppressive, that is, towards the anti-fascist contingent. To the EDL, they could not have been more accommodating, even to the extent of facilitating a further drinking session for them after their march had ended, rather than just getting them out of the city as soon as possible.

Extensive use was made of the notorious Section 14 of the Public Order Act to try to intimidate anti fascists - it didn't work, and we were able to block Queens Road for over an hour. There were however a number of random arrests of activists.

Among the positives of the day -

- the "respectable" veneer of March for England was well and truly stripped away. This was without question an EDL march.

- different anti-fascist groups worked well together.

- although numbers were less than we would have liked, it was really encouraging to see the hostility towards the EDL from ordinary locals.

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Oppose racism. Celebrate multiculturalism

2011-04-18T09:20:00.003+01:00

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Quiz your candidates!

2011-04-18T08:53:00.001+01:00

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Anti-cuts Dayschool - Brighton

2011-04-13T23:26:00.001+01:00

It is good that anti-cuts activists are getting together across Sussex, sharing experiances, making links and building the fightback. Saturday was just a day in Brighton at the anti-cuts day school, organised by Brighton Stop The Cuts Coalition. Discussions on a range of issues took place amongst activists and this must be welcomed. They plan another event which deserves supporting. It is not about setting up yet another committee but about strengthening the links, listening, talking and learning from each other.

Last year, the Lib Dems pledged not to increase tuition fees and quickly renaged on this, quick to jump into office with the Tories. Today, they promise to oppose Lansley's NHS bill. We do not trust them at all as they have been part of an unelected coalition, implementing the most savage attacks on working people, youth, students and the weakest in society. This year has shown one thing, working people must look to their own and the labour and trade union movement to oppose the Con Dem class attack. We expect Cleg and Cameron to defend the bankers. They created this crises and we are not going to pay for it.

Over half a million marched in London against the austerity measures on March 26th. This was the biggest trade union march since the 1970's. Industrial action in the public sector against pay cuts, attacks on public services, pensions and jobs can be expected over the coming period. Local community groups are fighting to defend their local schools, hospitals, playgroups and community centres. Benefit claiments and those dependant on diasability and income support are facing a horrendous and nightmarish future. We have to be able to show that there is an alternative to these cuts and the fightback has started.

In the meantime, the fascists and racists attempt to divide working people with their vile scapegoating message. In Brighton and elsewhere we will not be intimidated and there is a united response across the whole of our multi-cultural, multi-racial and multi-religious society against them. The BNP/ EDL and others have nothing to offer but hatred and bigotry. They will not pass.

A-star anti-cuts day school unites South East activists -report.
http://brightontradescouncil.blogspot.com/2011/04/star-anti-cuts-day-school-unites-south.html

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Come to the Anti-Cuts Dayschool this Saturday!

2011-04-06T23:11:00.000+01:00

Brighton TUSC to fight the cuts at the ballot box!

2011-04-06T22:07:00.001+01:00

From: Brighton Trade Unionists and Socialists Against Cuts

http://brightontusc.blogspot.com

The people have a real choice, a real alternative to vote for at the ballot box.

"There will be anger on the streets as people realise that the same people who created the UK financial crisis are still living in the lap of luxury while the rest of us are told to take the hit."

While the filthy rich attempt to escape any punishment for causing the economic crash that is being piled upon the innocent working class with job losses and vicious cuts to our public services, the words of Trade Unionists and Socialist Against Cuts (TUSC) supporter Bob Crow are turning into action.

On March 26 hundreds of thousands of trade unionists, socialists, pensioners, the unemployed, students and young people raised London in a giant demonstration with one voice calling for an alternative to this government's unjustified cuts agenda. And with May's local elections looming, anti-cuts campaigners have now launched a counter-attack at the ballot box to offer ordinary people the chance to vote for an opportunity to see justice rightfully served upon those who continue to steal our wealth we create through our work in private and public services, to fight for that wealth for the benefit of the millions instead of the billionaires.

With the Tories and Lib Dems leading the attack on our livelihoods and communities, the cowardly Labour Party once again turns its back on ordinary working people and the poor by allowing ideologically driven cuts budgets to lash out of council chambers across the country into the laps of our society's most vulnerable, the growing army of the abandoned unemployed and lowest paid.

In Brighton the Labour Party abstained in the recent budget vote allowing the Tories to continue with £23 million of cuts to children's services, housing services and transport all relied upon by ordinary people.

The Greens have no idea how to defend working people. They attempted to offer their own amendments and voted against the Tories budget, but have stated that they can see no alternative to making cuts if they are elected.

TUSC must show that councillors do have a choice, that they should set 'needs' budgets and demand the extra money that is currently being avoided in taxes owed by the rich or in bankers' bonuses, a figure approximately £120 billion each year – enough to wipe out the country's deficit in one go. In 1984, by following this strategy, the Militant-led Liverpool Labour Party council won £60 million from Thatcher's Tory government that was stronger than the current Con-Dem coalition.

The Trade Unionists and Socialist Against Cuts (TUSC) coalition of candidates and activists includes members from the Brighton Stop the Cuts Coalition campaigners, the RMT trade union, Brighton Hove & District Trades Union Council, Brighton & Hove Unemployed Workers Centre, leading Defend Council Housing activists, the Socialist Party, the Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Resistance, along with hundreds of individuals determined to resist these attacks and build a genuine political voice for ordinary working class people.

TUSC is calling for anyone who is opposed to the cuts to support our socialist anti-cuts platform as candidates people can vote for in their community, who will resist all attempts to cut and privatise everything organised working people have fought so hard for in the past.

TUSC is standing working class anti-cuts candidates in Hollingdean and Stanmer, East Brighton, Moulsecoomb and Bevendean and Hanover wards.

Ward: Hollingdean and Stanmer
Candidates: Phil Clarke, Tony Greenstein and Dave Hill
Phil Clarke:
Phil is a local teacher and trade union activist who has been at the forefront of defending jobs and building the Brighton Stop the Cuts Coalition.
As a Hollingdean resident Phil has been part of campaigns to stop the sell-off our council houses
and has stood alongside the unemployed workers centre’s Tony Greenstein in previous elections.
“Locally Labour allowed the Tories to pass a massive cuts budget - they think cuts should be carried out but slower. The Hollingdean Green candidates have admitted they will have to
vote through cuts if they lead the council. We need councillors who will vote against ALL cuts and support our unions defending jobs.”

Tony Greenstein:
Tony has been an advisor and co-ordinator at the Unemployed Workers Centre in Hollingdean for over a decade.
As a member of Unison, Tony has been vital in providing help for both workers and the unemployed in fighting the attacks on our hard won welfare support services, along with building the Brighton Stop the Cuts Coalition in the local community.

Dave Hill:
Dave Hill is a trade union activist and university professor. He represented Stanmer ward for 10 years and served as governor of Coldean schools and of the University of Sussex. He has been active in supporting the victimised Sussex Six and students and staff at the universities fighting against redundancies.
Dave Hill is a former East Sussex Labour group leader, a former Brighton councillor and P
parliamentary candidate, who left Labour after 44 years disgusted by the way the party has turned against the working class and by its cuts policies. In 2010 he ran for parliament in Brighton for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition.
Brought up in poverty in Brighton, he founded the Brighton Campaign for Nursery Education and has fought all his life for the equality for working people, and against sexism, homophobia, and racism.

Ward: Moulsecoomb and Bevendean
Candidate: Dave Bangs
Dave Bangs is a gardener and ex-care worker. He co-led Defend Council Housing's successful campaign to stop council housing privatisation in Brighton.
Dave says: “We need a massive programme of new council housing, and we need rent controls and security of tenure to help students and all private tenants. I support making public transport free and creating a million green jobs to help stop disastrous climate change.”
Dave co-founded Keep Our Forests Public to stop privatisation of our forests. He co-led the successful campaigns to stop the privatisation of both Brighton and Worthing's council-owned downland.
Dave is a lifelong green activist and was a member of the Labour Party for 20 years until New Labour took over.
“All the other parties will vote for cuts budgets rather than fight unjust laws.”

Ward: East Brighton
Candidate: Bill North
Bill North is a local teacher and an active UCU member. He has been a pillar of the local labour movement in his role as current Brighton, Hove and District Trades Union Council general secretary.
Bill has been fighting the attacks to our jobs, public services and rights for decades, having been instrumental in the work of local anti-poll tax federation in the early 1990s to playing a guiding role in the creation of the Brighton Stop the Cuts Coalition uniting all those fighting the cuts agendas of the other parties.

Ward: Hanover
Candidate: Jon Redford
Jon Redford is an organiser for the Socialist Party, originally from Crowborough. He is standing for the Trade Unionists and Socialists Against Cuts for two reasons. First, the massive cuts agenda that faces every working and middle-class person in Britain - the cost of a crisis we did not cause while the culprits laugh all the way to the bank. Second, the lack of a fightback from any of the other main parties who either agree with the cuts or are failing to wage a serious fightback against them.
The cuts will devastate local communities and Brighton and Hove will be no exception. As a councillor Jon will campaign against every single cut to living and working conditions and push to build the strength of the anti-cuts movement with a fighting strategy to defeat the cuts and the coalition government.

Ends

For more information please call Jon on 07894 716095 or Peter on 07788 744120 or email peterdanielknight@hotmail.co.uk
Alternatively, please visit http://brightontusc.blogspot.com or http://www.tusc.org.uk

Thank you.

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Calling all UNISON members - NEC elections - VOTE FOR THE LEFT!

2011-04-06T01:05:00.001+01:00

If you are a member of UNISON then look out for these names on the ballot papers

For a fighting democratic union
NEC CANDIDATES 2011

NATIONAL Black Members
Female seats April Ashley and Bola George
Male seat Hugo Pierre

National young members
Kieran Grogan

REGIONAL SEATS
Eastern region
Male seat Martin Booth

East Midlands region
Female seat Jean Thorpe Sharon Vasselin
Male seat Richard Buckwell

Greater London region
Female seats Marshajane Thompson and Helen Davies
Male seat Jon Rogers
Reserved seat Emilse Ocampo Medina

Northern region
Female seat Hannah Walter
Male seat Dave Walkden

North West region
General seat Tony Wilson
Female seats Bernie Gallagher and Karen Reissmann
Male seat Roger Bannister
Reserved seat Sophie Smith Rudge
Scotland region
Male seat Duncan Smith

South East region
Female seats Diana Leach
Emma Macbeth
Male seat Mike Tucker

South West region
Male seat Nigel Behan

West Midlands region
General Seat Clive Shakespeare
Female Seat. Vez Kirkpatric

Yorkshire & Humberside region
General Mike Forster
Female seats Angie Wallor Helen Jenner
Male seat Jim Board
Reserved seat Victoria Perrin

SERVICE GROUP SEATS
Health Care service group
Female seats Kate Ahrens and Shona Greig
Male seat Len Hockey
General seat John Malcolm

Higher Education service group
Female seat Carole Hanson
General seat Max Watson

Local Government service group
Female seats kathy Smith and Phoebe Watkins
Male seat Paul Couchman
General seat Paul Holmes

Water Enviroment Transport
General Seat John Jones
Community
General seat Alec McFadden

Energy
General seat Dave Kuivala

EDL tries to disrupt anti-fascist meeting in Brighton.....and fails miserably

2011-04-06T00:52:00.000+01:00

"I was born in an insulated, monocultural environment and it never did me any harm....."

About 30 EDL yobs attacked a Unite Against Fascism meeting at the Friends Meeting House on Tuesday evening, but they failed to even get past the front door.

The meeting was titled In Defence of Multiculturalism in the wake of Cameron's disgraceful remarks a couple of months ago. Among the speakers were Martin Smith of the UAF Steering Committee and Chris Whitwell of Friends Families and Travellers.

Some good points were made - chiefly that Cameron made the remarks in a desperate attempt to divide communities and divert attention from his government's slash and burn policies. Questions were asked about Cameron's right to pronounce that "multiculturalism had failed" given his own monocultural upbringing (unless one includes the drinking culture of the Bullingdon Club!).

I spoke from the Stop the Cuts Coalition, and it was a positive move that the links were made by UAF between the crisis and the rise of far right politics.

The EDL thugs were seen off and the police arrived shortly after. Incredibly, their verdict was that we had provoked the trouble! Another bizarre interpretation of events by, arguably, Britain's oddest police force.

We finished our meeting, so denying the EDL any claim to have broken it up, and then we left together.

THEY DID NOT PASS!

The march

2011-03-27T23:41:00.002+01:00

It really was huge. 250,000 is clearly an underestimate. It took four and a half hours to pass a given point. I could have gone home and come back again on the train and simply rejoined the march at the beginning again!

It was obviously a trade union demonstration but not everyone was trade unionist. It was a demonstration about the public sector but clearly not everyone was a public sector worker.

For sheer diversity it surpassed even the great ant-war demo of 2003.

I did not get to hear many speeches (along with thousands of others!). Not sure I missed much. Milliband was roundly heckled - we want no cuts, not slow cuts!

Most of the demonstrators will have got home before even being aware that there had been any violence but that hasn't stopped the media from making it the defining characteristic of the day. The thing to most criticise the "black bloc" for is the way in which they provide the police with a ready-made excuse to come down hard on any direct action. I wonder if bothers the BB that most people seem to think they are riddled with state agents provocateur. In the public mind, even the non-violent direct action of UKUncut gets pigeonholed with "the violent minority". Mission accomplished!

It is not clear what the TUC's plan is from here but it is clear that a demo - even this one - will not be enough to knock the ConDems off course.

And if they don't come with some ideas, it is clear that there are others who will not waiting around to do something.

Video and photos available here....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUCt13Q64Fw&feature=youtube_gdata_player

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Photos from yesterday's amazing march!

2011-03-27T10:21:00.001+01:00

Report to follow

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Forest lovers celebrate first victory in a long campaign against public forest privatisation

2011-03-23T23:42:00.001Z

Report from Dave Bangs

Exactly 100 people enjoyed a 'grand day out' of celebration, discussion and forest rambling to mark the government's climb-down from its proposal for the total privatisation of the English Forestry Commission's estates, and to steel ourselves for a long year of campaigning against job and funding cuts and backtracking on the no-sales pledge by the government.

People came from Seaford, Eastbourne, Lewes and Hastings, as well as from Brighton, and a contingent from Red Rope, the socialist walking and climbing network, came down from London. Supporters from 38 Degrees and from Save Our Woods, the new on-line campaigning organisations, joined the event and filmed it !!

Kate Ashbrook, General Secretary of the Open Spaces Society, and Tony Whitbread, Director of the Sussex Wildlife Trust, spoke at the rally, with Dave Bangs, KOFP's co-founder.

Tony stressed the way that the Forestry Commission managed their woodland 'multi-functionally' to provide a range of 'ecosystem services' - from supporting and enhancing wildlife in as naturalistic settings as possible, to access and recreation, and local climate amelioration, flood risk reduction and water resource management. He argued that the substantial size (one in fifty acres, nationally) and diversity of the public forest estate was necessary to deliver these services. The Forestry Commisson, he said, was very different nowadays from the past, when they had been forced to confine themselves to the simple planting of serried ranks of conifers.

Kate said that although the government now has no immediate plans to sell the estate, it may starve it of cash by severely reducing the Forestry Commission’s budget, which could put the management and protection of these wonderful woodlands at risk. She saw a great opportunity in the government's appointment of the new 'Independent Panel on Forestry Policy' (which reports in the autumn) for us to press for a statutory right of public access to ALL woodland, whether private or public, such as already exists for mountains, moors, heaths, downs, and commons under the CROW Act (Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000). The new Panel's terms of reference oblige them to give consideration to just such public benefits.

Dave argued that the members of the government's new Independent Panel had a majority of representatives of organisations that had a conflict of interest with the Panel's independance because they represented landowning conservation NGO's or private landowning interests that stood to gain by 'cherry-picking' the Forestry Commission's estates. Not a single representative of the array of forest defence organisations or of the Forestry Commission's trade unions was on the Panel. The government's climb-down on privatisation was because of the huge grassroots campaign of opposition, he said, and the conservation NGO's had "not so much as lifted a finger to support our campaign", quoting Jonathan Porritt, the environmental campaigner.

After the rally we walked up through the Forest to its northern part, where a partnership of the Sussex Wildlife Trust and the Forestry Commission is overseeing the creation of a large area of 'wood pasture' grazed by the Trust's white park cattle, to enhance the wildlife interest of the Forest.

Tony then led us to a high viewpoint on Fore Down, looking over Lullington Heath National Nature Reserve, where he explained the management and enhancement opportunities for Friston Forest and its neighbouring downland.

It was a grand, exhilarating, and hopeful day.

Squatting - Weatherley and Caulfield blaming the victim...as usual

2011-03-22T19:37:00.000Z

This week the scale of the housing benefit cuts in Brighton and Hove from next month was laid bare for all to see.

The maximum benefit for a room in shared accommodation is being cut by over £5pw, the 1 bedroom rate by nearly £7pw, the 2-bedroom rate by £17pw and the 3-bedroom rate by £25pw.

Already, landlords are refusing to let to single persons aged 25 to 35, in anticipation of massive cuts to housing benefit for that group planned for April NEXT year.

We also know that over the last year the number of people kicked out of private rented accommodation by landlords rose by 34%.

You would have thought that, with this looming crisis in housing, our political representatives would be urgently applying pressure to the government to change course.

But no.

Hove MP Mike Weatherley, cheered on by City Council housing chair Maria Caulfield, thinks it a more urgent priority to........criminalise squatting!

He proclaims that his "campaign" is close to "victory", now that he apparently has the ear of Kenneth Clarke.

Squatting has a long and noble tradition in Brighton and Hove, as part of the battle for the rights of tenants against the exploitative slum landlords who used to hold such a monopoly on local housing. No doubt if anyone mentioned the name "Harry Cowley" to Weatherley and Caulfield, it would sail right over their heads!

No doubt, some modern squatters don't help the cause by their behaviour and I don't doubt that some squatters are not in genuine housing need, but the coming crisis will force increasing numbers of people to seek drastic solutions to their problems.

I wonder if Weatherley has ever spent any time questioning the fact that large numbers of buildings stand empty for years. In Hastings the Council has just taken the step of compulsory purchase orders on six empty, rotting properties so that they can be brought back into use as homes. Is Weatherley putting pressure on Brighton and Hove Council to do the same?

Or maybe he knows that by exploiting popular myths and prejudices around squatters he can conveniently distract attention from the growing housing crisis.

A war to save civilians is killing civilians

2011-03-21T00:16:00.002Z

Stop the War Coalition has just issued a further statement on the No Fly Zone. The US, France, UK and other Governments turn a blind eye to humanitarianism and democracy in the Yemen, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, occupied Palestine and elsewhere but pinpoint Libya and now also Syria. Why? Do they really care about the people of Libya? No, this is about oil, power and putting a break on revolution in the region.

Whilst opposing the Gaddafi regime, we are equally opposed to the reactionary despots in the region who are busy killing their own people and denying the same human rights they claim they are now fighting for by military intervention.

And what will follow this intervention? Will the same allies be just as slow in asserting democratic rights in a "new Libya" under their control. Haven't we seen enough in Iraq, Afghanistan. Gaza and recent events in the Yemen and Bahrain?

The No Fly Zone is not about protecting people but about oil, profits and control. Cameron has his war at a time when he is least popular at home and is busy implementing the most savage attacks on the living standards of working people. On the verge of the biggest demo London is likely to see against the Con Dem cuts he is playing the war card. A trick out of Thatcher's book with the Falklands. No doubt he and his press aides will try to also suggest the TUC demo on the 26th March is not in the interest of the people of Benghazi as it is unpatriotic. The best way to help the struggles in the Middle East is to oppose our own warmongers at home.

Stop The War Coalition statement
Britain and the USA have bombed Libya with more than one hundred Tomahawk
cruise missiles. These are not precision guided weapons but weapons of mass destruction that will create many civilian casualties in Libya.

The United Nations resolution authorising a no-fly zone begins as it will continue, with a full-scale military attack on the country.

Stop the War condemns this barbarous attack which will result, not in protecting the people of Libya, but in enslaving them under the domination of the West. We know only too well the death and destruction that imperialism has brought to the peoples of the region.

LOCAL STOP THE WAR GROUPS

We are asking all local Stop the War groups around the country to call protests in their area. If you would like to be involved in local protests where you live, contact your nearest Stop the War group: SEE http://bit.ly/dRSlpl

A leaflet putting the case for non-intervention and a petition, initiated by Tony Benn, John Pilger and others, are both available to download for printing, here:

LEAFLET: http://tinyurl.com/6henp2l

PETITION: http://tinyurl.com/6z9lk2x

Marching in Brighton to Keep the Post Public and to save public services

2011-03-20T13:07:00.001Z

About 300 people marched through Brighton yesterday as part of a campaign by CWU to stop the privatisation of the post. The march was supported by the Brighton Stop the Cuts Coalition and turned into a broad protest against cuts.

Speakers at the rally afterwards included -
Billy Hayes - General Secretary of the CWU
Dave Ward - Deputy General Secretary
Phil Clarke - Stop the Cuts Coalition
Caroline Lucas MP
Pip Tindall - Brighton Benefits Campaign

Labour speakers got a cool reception, with many people wondering why they were so against post privatisation now, when it had actually been their idea!

A selection of photos here and more at
http://www.flickr.com/photos/48609197@N04/sets/72157626181610981/

Phil Clarke

Billy Hayes

Dave Ward

News from the front line

2011-03-11T09:02:00.001Z

Hi all,

Another busy few weeks coming up, make sure you get down to the demo on the 19th if you can, relax with a ramble on the 20th and of course get up to London for the big one on the 26th! Lots of planning to do at the delegates meeting so make sure your group/organisation is sending someone...

Phil

Upcoming Events

16th March Full Delegates Meeting 7:30pm King and Queen Marlborough Place. Make sure your organisation is represented.

19th March Brighton March For Public Services - Organised by Keep the Post Public 12:30pm the Level. This is a great way to build up for the 26th and to support a campaign in the forefront of defending public services. No to Privatisation! http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=183138505063902

20th March Celebrate no forest sell-off! Rally and ramble - Defend Forestry Commission Jobs 12pm Meet Exceat car park Friston Forest, located off the Litlington Road, near the junction of A259, by the Seven Sisters Country Park Visitor Centre. Bring lunch for a picnic! http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=195826733775908

26th March TUC March for the Alternative - Coaches going from St Peters Church 8:30am email your union or the trades council for seats.
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=103589769723918 Flyer attached

5th April UAF meeting In Defence of Multiculturalism Friends Meeting House 7pm

9th April Stop the Cuts Day School 10am Falmer House Sussex Uni

13th April Open Trades Council Meeting - Defend Public Sector Pensions 8pm King and Queen, Marlborough Place - Open to all trade union members to co-ordinate and plan the battle to defend pensions.

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Brighton March for Public Services 19th March

2011-03-09T23:26:00.001Z

The Stop the Cuts Coalition is supporting the event below as part of a campaign to defend all public services. Please come along and invite your friends and family.

It will be a great way to build for a big turn out on the TUC demo the next week. - Email brightontradescouncil@gmail.com for coach info.

ROYAL MAIL NOT FOR SALE!

Join the KEEP THE POST PUBLIC COALITION and protest against Royal Mail Privatisation, Cuts In Public Services ,NHS, Education,Housing,Benefits...

SAY

NO TO PRIVATISATION

NO TO CUTS

NO TO THE CON-DEMS

ALL WELCOME

Saturday 19th March

12.30 Assemble The Level, Union Rd Brighton

13.15 March through Brighton returning to The Level for a rally with guest speakers and music

VOLUNTEERS REQUIRED TO HELP OUT AS STEWARDS, INTERESTED? PLEASE GET IN TOUCH

More info

Richard Jones 07931682996

David Chivers 07941874745

John Soanes (Hastings) 07990733047

keepthepostpublic@virginmedia.com

Reflections on the Council Budget and the wider fight

2011-03-05T22:33:00.000Z

So, in the end, the Greens voted against the budget, despite the fact that they got all their amendments into it, and Labour abstained. This meant that the Tories' own proposals for £25m of cuts (or 2 bankers' bonuses) were in essence carried.

Although it was on the face of it positive that the Greens voted against the budget, they clearly had no real strategy for what they were then going to do, other than ultimately vote for a cuts budget, with maybe some further tinkerings, in a week or so's time.

Unlike many areas, the council unions in Brighton and Hove have for the moment staved off compulsory redundancies, but several services, mainly for children and young people, have been cut. And the battle to save jobs is far from over.

What is lacking from the "left" parties represented on councils is a perspective of fighting back against the government by refusing to set cuts budgets, and linking up with council workers and local people to fight against attempts by unelected officers or commissioners to implement the cuts.

We have a weak, divided coalition government - on the day the BHCC budget was set the Lib Dems were being humiliated in Barnsley - and we need a fighting party ready to carry that fight to a government which lacks any democratic legitimacy.

Clearly working people cannot rely on existing left parties to do that, but we are still a long way away from forming the kind of broad, anti-capitalist, pluralistic party that we need - TUSC is better than nothing but (apart from the anti-capitalist bit) it is not that party.
The other side of the coin is the continued inertia of most of the trade union leaderships in the face of unprecedented attacks on the public sector. In local government, aside from the massive job losses up and down the country, there is a second year of pay freeze coupled with a massive hike in pension contributions and a likely reduction in pension benefits. We also face the prospect of large-scale privatisation - they call it "intelligent commissioning" in Brighton and Hove.

Similar can be expected in the civil service, and thousands of jobs are under threat in the supposedly "protected" NHS. All the TUC has come up with have is a demonstration through London - the planning for which started around the time British Summer Time ended last year and will finally be happening in the weekend it comes back! It will happening after most of the decisions we ought to be fighting have already been taken. We must build that demonstration and ensure that it is massive but it must be a beginning not an end.

Also inadequate is the gesture politics of abstract calls for a general strike. The trade unions do not even have the semblance of a strategy for any degree of co-ordinated action, let alone a general strike. We need to start at the bottom and work up.

The most important thing to do in the localities is to continue to build the local anti-cuts campaigns on the broadest possible basis, involving the local trade union movement and as many local groups and individuals as possible.

Pictures and video from the Budget Council meeting

2011-03-04T01:09:00.001Z

A number of Green/Labour amendments to the Budget were passed but the budget was passed largely intact with its £24 million of cuts - because Labour decided to abstain rather than join the Greens in voting it down - shame! Although the Greens were ready to vote the budget down last night, it is not clear what they would ultimately have done when it came back again to a subsequent meeting.

Cuts....don't vote for them. Don't implement them!

2011-03-02T19:11:00.001Z

As I write Labour and the Greens have published their "alternative budgets" for Brighton and Hove City Council. There are some positives in there - not blowing a million on removing a cycle lane and not making a gimmicky 1% cut in council tax, and putting some of the money into services. But it is really about moving some money about - it is not going to stop £26 million of cuts.

Although Labour and Green councillors talk about opposing cuts (well a bit, in the case of Labour), in reality they won't VOTE against them.

The Green Party councillors unfortunately buy into the notion that they cannot resist. Both Bill Randall and Jason Kitcat say they "have to" set a "balanced budget".

Essentially this is because the Greens and Labour do not have a perspective of building a national movement linking up with service users and council workers to refuse to implement cuts being imposed by a weak coalition government which has no democratic mandate for what they are doing.

Instead these councillors see their role as "social workers" making the best of things, trying to mitigate the worst effects.

What are they going to do when the ConDems come back for more....and more...?

The picture above shows the Wisconsin workers occupying the state Capitol - what an inspiration. But even the Democrat members of the State Legislature there are taking more direct action than most English councillors who identify themselves as on the left. They have left the state so that they cannot be forced to attend meetings to make them quorate so that Walker's cuts and union busting get voted through.

The "left" councillors here are not being asked to leave Brighton - just to put their money where their mouths are.

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Permanent Revolution in the Arab world

2011-02-26T17:17:00.001Z

The International Committee of the Fourth International at its annual meeting in late February 2011 unanimously adopted the following statement.

1. The extraordinary victory of the Egyptian people against Mubarak steps up the historical range of the Tunisian revolution that cut down the Ben Ali regime. In just a few days, the shock wave of these popular victories extended to the entire Arab region and beyond that, influencing the class struggle across the world. Demonstrations, strikes, assemblies, self-defence committees, mobilizations of trade unions, high-school pupils, democratic associations clashed with absolute determination against state apparatuses, most particularly the police. Millions of Tunisians and Egyptians came into activity to bring down the dictators, and continue to mobilize to keep control of their revolutions.

2. This is a process of permanent revolution, which combines social, democratic, national sovereignty dimensions, and is spreading internationally. The effects of the world economic crisis, combined with savage oppression and the shameless corruption of the dictatorships, brought together the most disadvantaged popular layers, the organized working class and the middle classes, young people and old, women and men. The Tunisian and Egyptian masses could no longer accept economic systems that marginalized them. As in many neighbouring countries, integration with capitalist globalization led to economic growth that did not create employment but rather an unprecedented concentration of wealth, an unequal development of the country and a general degradation of living and working conditions.

One of the main reasons for these revolutions has been the explosion of food prices in the last few years. The rapid process of climate change has led to the current world food crisis, particularly in countries like Tunisia. The economic liberalization imposed by the IMF, WTO and the EU has led to increased casualization of workers, drastic cuts in public services and mass unemployment particularly hitting young graduates. With the additional closing of the borders of the European Union to the possibilities of emigration, and the contraction of the labour market in the Gulf States, any prospect of escaping poverty has disappeared.

At the same time there was a drastic smothering of freedoms and democratic rights by police states which imposed generalized social control. The fact that the parliamentary representatives of the “opposition” parties were tolerated by the Tunisian and Egyptian dictatorships only as phantoms while civil associations were reduced to shells or prevented from functioning led to an impossibility of countervailing powers. This created a situation where, between the dictatorships and the populations, there was only the figure of an autocratic leader and a devoted and savage repressive apparatus. And the gangster-style functioning of the clans in power completed their delegitimization.

Lastly, these two regimes were characterized by their collaboration with the Zionist Israeli state, which exasperated their populations, who identify with the sufferings of the Palestinian people, even more.

Faced with all these injustices, strikes and social explosions had multiplied in recent years, allowing an accumulation of experience without however managing to break down the wall of fear for the majority of the populations. This wall was submerged in a few weeks, and in spite of the very many victims, the Tunisian people, then with their example in mind the Egyptian people, carried out an uninterrupted fight until the departure of the dictators Ben Ali and Mubarak.

3. With these victories, the people of the Arab area show their immense dignity, through their irruption onto the political scene of democracy and class struggle, no longer locked in the deathly alternative (or combination) of autocracies or Islamism in which they had been trapped for thirty years. The popular classes and, in first place, the working class of this region have won the means of asserting all democratic freedoms, women to assert their rights and equality with men. The workers have won the means of fighting back on a much higher level against the neoliberal programmes of overexploitation, and to profoundly destabilize the means by which both American and European imperialist maintain their hold on the region, articulated in the State of Israel. The Israeli regime, and all currents within it, made no mistake when it demanded Western support for the dictators up to the very end.

The revolutions in the Arab region show the potential for social emancipation of all mass struggles against injustice. The active role of women in these mobilizations is an unmistakable sign. It makes it possible to combat the racist and Islamophobic campaigns on the so-called “clash of civilizations” that try to make us believe that the mobilization of Arabic-Muslim peoples paves the way to fundamentalism.

This dynamic will have effects in the whole world. It has already immediately in Jordan, with Yemen, with Bahrain, in Syria, in Libya, in Algeria, with Morocco and in Mauritania, even if one cannot foretell the exact rhythm and in which order the regimes will fall, given that each struggle has its own specificities. Especially in Libya where the regime has attacked the population with military jets and helicopters and already killed more than 500 people there is a rapid escalation of the situation, which demands our full solidarity.

These revolutions create new more favourable conditions for the struggle of the Palestinians, a struggle that the Fourth International encourages and supports. The Egyptian revolution puts concretely onto the agenda an end to that crime against humanity known as the blockade of Gaza. Faced with this, the response of the Zionist state could become harsher and more brutal. Mobilizations to stop this should be stepped up.

The dynamic of these revolutions encourages also the fights against the dictatorships in Iran and as far as China, where the oppositions take as a starting point methods of coordination used in Tunisia and Egypt, like the use of social networks. It will inevitably encourage the mobilizations of migrant communities from the Arab region, who are overexploited and oppressed in the advanced capitalist countries. More than ever we have to stand shoulder to shoulder with these populations.

But these processes could have still more global consequences in the same imperialist countries where the workers and the young people clash more and more massively with austerity plans, without finding the way of success: they show that a revolution from the bottom up is possible in the 21st century, that it can cut down an apparently impregnable political regime and win conquests that appeared inaccessible as recently as yesterday!

4. The gains of these processes are certainly fragile in both Tunisia and Egypt, but essential for what follows. Being based on recent popular experiences, and the longstanding implantation of the radical left in the trade unions, self-organization developed massively when it was necessary for demonstrators and the inhabitants of popular districts to protect themselves from police exactions and the regimes’ militias, in Tunisia de Sidi Bouzid to the popular quarters of the big cities and the Kasbah in Tunis; in Egypt from Tahrir Square in Cairo to the popular districts of Suez, Mansourah or Alexandria. Unimaginable scenes a few days before, Muslims and Copts mutually protected their prayers; blue-collar workers and young Net surfers, women and clerics, writers and taxi drivers stood side by side at the points attacked by the henchmen of Mubarak. The people succeeded in destabilizing the army while systematically trying to fraternize with the soldiers.

The dictators fled, the leaderships of the parties in power were forced out under the pressure of the mobilizations, and the popular mobilizations continue. In Tunisia, the most corrupt leaders are being prosecuted, the funds and the goods of the RCD have been seized, and its buildings have become peoples’ houses. Most political prisoners have been released. Though they have not been dismantled, the police apparatuses of the two countries are disorganized. The ministry employees are starting to exert control on their leaders, like those in the Tunisian Ministry for Foreign Affairs who forced the resignation of their minister who had praised the French Foreign Minister Alliot-Marie. Many Tunisian governors, mayors and public officials have had to resign. The Tunisian masses are even demanding the departure of the newly-arrived French ambassador after his antagonistic statement! Many temporary employees in the civil service have been given permanent posts; the capital of the most corrupted enterprise leaders of Tunisia has been nationalized. In Egypt, these processes are also underway. Civil servants have obtained pay rises of 15%; many workers’ strikes are developing in spite of the threats of the new regime.

5. Of course, the dominant classes did not remain inert and will be increasingly active faced with the revolutionary processes. In Tunisia, the “neutrality” of the army and the departure of Ben Ali were counterbalanced by the maintenance in power of his Prime Minister Ghannouchi and many leaders of the RCD, which was to be legitimated by the arrival in the government of several opposition parties and major trade union UGTT. The refusal of this and the popular mobilization imposed a second government where only the Prime Minister remains among the executives of the RCD. But the new regimes is advised by executives of French imperialism, and it is putting all its energy to convincing, alongside the Tunisian capitalists and the army, the workers to resume work “like before”. It would be a question of closing a parenthesis… while simply announcing general elections in 6 months.

In Egypt, it is the army that is directly ensuring the “transition”, with the menacing Suleiman as Minister of the Interior, a proven torturer, friend of Israel and agent of the CIA of public notoriety. There too, the people are called upon to be reasonable, to allow the continuation of tourism and foreign investments, with the promise of elections in a few months… and threats of a resumption of repression.

The Sarkozy and Berlusconi governments, which did not see what was coming and made matters worse in their support to the bitter end for Ben Ali, are at the forefront of the European Union in now requesting the revival of business and a return to police blockings of migrants. The Obama administration is much more flexible: not having foreseen controlled the movement in Egypt, it pretends to overlap with it. But its close links with the army command weighs as a permanent threat on the Egyptian revolutionary process, and will require keeping the Palestinian border in Gaza closed. Above all the international institutions will demand guarantees concerning the traffic in the Suez canal and respect of the fundamentals of modern capitalism: payment of the national debt, however iniquitous; respect of total opening to foreign capital and products, continuing deregulation.

6. In this process, the whole system has to be eradicated in order to establish all democratic rights and freedoms: right to free speech, right to strike, right to demonstrate, pluralism of associations, trade unions and parties, liquidation of the presidential institution and introduction of a revolutionary provisional government. Today the opening of a process of free elections for a constituent assembly is necessary.

In order for this not to be halted by a new regime of the oligarchies, this process must be based on the organization of the popular committees, coordinations and councils that emerged in the population. In this process, the anticapitalists will defend the key demands of a programme breaking with imperialism and capitalist logic: satisfaction of the vital needs of the popular classes – bread, wages, jobs; reorganization of the economy on the basis of fundamental social needs, free and adequate public services (schools, health), women’s rights, broadening social protection for unemployment, health and retirement, radical land reform, socialization of the banks and key sectors of the economy, cancellation of the debt, national and popular sovereignty. This programme of a government that would be at the service of the workers and the population is proposed in Tunisia by the League of the Workers’ Left (Ligue de la Gauche Ouvrière). This is a component of the 14th of January Front which brings together the left forces rejecting the Ghannouchi government and fighting for all democratic freedoms, a Constituent Assembly and the satisfaction of fundamental needs. This programme is also defended in Egypt by the regroupment of revolutionaries that is in process.

7. The Tunisian and Egyptian peoples, and all the people of the Arab region still need our solidarity in the fight for democratic freedoms. They need even more our mobilization to loosen the grip of imperialism: non payment of the foreign debts of the former regimes, restitution of the goods and financial assets of the dictators, protection of the national sovereignty of the people against the pressures of international capitalism; cancelling of the international agreements signed by the former regime in the military, security and migration sectors. Revolutionaries throughout the world also have the essential task of making all possible links with the trade unions, people’s organizations and associations and anticapitalist organizations of these countries, to help with the consolidation of the revolutionary processes in progress, and to support the self-organization of the people concerned. The revolution underway in the Arab region is our combat!

We already support the following initiatives:

the appeal of the Assembly of Social Movement meeting at the World Social Forum in Dakar for a worldwide of solidarity with the revolution in the Arab region on the 20th March of (anniversary of the invasion of Iraq in 2003);

the conference of revolutionary organizations in the Arab region in Tunis called by the LGO from 25th to 27th March;

the Mediterranean anti-capitalist conference called by the NPA which will take place in Marseilles on the 7th and 8th of May.

Amsterdam

22nd February 2011

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Days of Rage......and it's not over yet!

2011-02-26T16:35:00.002Z

People march on Gadaffi after Friday prayers

Around 50 people attended an inspiring meeting in Brighton last night to hear about the Middle East insurrections. Well done to the UCU for organising it at short notice.

There were eyewitness reports from Tahrir Square in Cairo from Egyptian student Hanna Elsisi, and John Rees from Stop the War. We also heard from Libyan activist Abubaker Deghayes about the dreadful actions of a dying regime in Tripoli and about the Libyan Embassy demonstrations in London. Abubaker reported that Gadaffi's mercenaries were turning anti-aircraft guns on protesters.

One of the most important messages that we heard was the revolution in Egypt was not over, and that the uprisings were spreading. People are continuing to occupy Tahrir Square to demand the complete sweeping away of the old regime and for reforms. We also heard of protests in Bahrain, Morocco, Iraq, Iran and even Saudi Arabia. Martin Evans, a writer on Algeria, spoke about the fight of people in that repressed country against one of the most oppressive of the regimes.

People in Egypt have formed committees to runs services and keep society running, belying the myth that Arabs cannot rule for themselves without "strongmen" to tell them what to do. John Rees told us a good trick for recharging a mobile phone while occupying Tahrir Square - it involves taking the front off a lamp post!

Links were made with the struggles in this country against tuition fees and cuts, and with the strikers in Wisconsin. People are losing their fear!

The forest sell-off is stopped...but there's still much to fight for!

2011-02-23T22:09:00.000Z

Dave Bangs writes......

WE’VE WON !!
The privatization of the entire Forestry Commission estate has been cancelled, and the legal powers for this massive disposal – 2% of England - have been dropped from the Public Bodies Bill.

WE’VE GOT WHAT WE WANTED…OR HAVE WE ??
The Forestry Commission must still go ahead with shedding about 40% of their English employee’s jobs. That means all the forest management plans will be in chaos. The Forest Research part of the Commission – doing crucial work to tackle plant disease, monitor climate change and promote timber productivity - faces 25 % cuts. East Sussex forests could be run from Thetford, Suffolk, and their already bare-bones staff of five slashed.
The Commission may have to sell 15% of the estate in the autumn, if the government demands it. Their DEFRA grant will still be slashed…and the panel of experts appointed by the government to pontificate over the future of our forests will include representatives of the same conservation NGOs who failed to campaign against the privatization, and partially endorsed it, as well as forest industry reps. Both groups are united in their potential interest in cherry-picking our public forests.

WE HAVE ONE OF THE BEST NATIONAL FOREST SERVICES IN THE WORLD
It harvests trees 150% more efficiently than the private sector and produces 60% of our home grown timber on only 18% of our woodland. It cherishes a vast range of ancient woodlands, whilst planting new urban fringe and brownfield community forests.
The Forestry Commission’s South East Region – from the Chilterns to Kent – own or lease 98 woodlands, ranging from the old royal forest of Alice Holt, to Bedgebury National Pinetum, and large downland beech forests. Most of these woodlands are ancient, with carpets of bluebells and a rich wildlife. The Commission plan to restore all their ancient woodlands to their former glory.
ALL OF THESE WOODS REMAIN AT THREAT OF PIECEMEAL PRIVATISATION
The proposed privatization of our national forests stirred public anger to boiling point. Opposition groups formed all across the country. The 38 Degrees on-line petition has over half a million signatures.

WE NEED TO KEEP THE CAMPAIGN GOING

WHAT WE STAND FOR
1. A positive role for an expanded state national forest service and public forest estate in delivering a range of public benefits. No land sales. No job cuts. No funding cuts.
2. Opposition to all conservation NGO acquisitions of privatized FC land. We will seek the compliance of the NGO's with this boycott position

3. If there is to be a public consultation we want it be grass roots-led. There should be representation from trade unions and grass roots forest defence organizations on any government advisory panel, and its meetings should be in public. There should be no representation on any advisory panel for organizations who stand to benefit from Forestry Commission disposals.
4. We need democracy in the Commission's management. There should be public and staff representation at district, regional, and national level in Forestry Commission decision making.

Western leaders and their contempt for Arab peoples

2011-02-23T00:10:00.002Z

Cameron's been in Cairo doing business as usual this week. How fitting that a week after the Egyptian people throw off the shackles of the dictator, all Cameron and his team of "businessmen" want to do is sell some more weapons to the new management.

Like....that's what Middle East really needs is more weapons......

The popular western stereotype of Arabs as that of backward extremists incapable of democratic and progressive governance. The reality is somewhat different of course. Many Arab states had democratic and secular governments in the recent past (Kassem in Iraq and Mossadegh in Iran spring to mind). But such governments were overthrown with the help of the West, which has always preferred to deal with dictators, religious extremists and feudal monarchs in that part of the world all the better to safeguard their "interests".

Those days are at an end. The genie is out of the bottle.

And hopefully, as austerity measures bite in the West, the workers of the West will watch....and learn....

Rally - Revolution in the Middle East
Friday 25th February
6.00pm
Brighton University, Pavilion Parade (opp Pavilion)

Speakers
John Rees (witness of events in Egypt)
Abubaker Deghayes (Libyan refugee)
Martin Evans

The fat cat conundrum

2011-02-16T23:47:00.001Z

Eric Pickles has high-earning council chiefs in his sights. Interestingly for a supposed "localist", he is very keen to lay down the law to local authorities on this one.

Even to the extent of getting his facts utterly wrong. Like muddling up the pay levels of the heads of the FTSE 200 companies with those of Council chief execs!

Of course, council workers and their unions have been drawing attention to the high pay of council chief executives long before the likes of Pickles found it politically expedient to do so. In fact it might be interesting to check how much Pickles was prepared to pay bosses to implement his cutting and privatising agenda at Bradford Council all those years ago.

But make no mistake - this is all about diverting attention away from the massacre of local services and jobs. Nothing to do with any sudden concern about municipal fat-cattery.

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Paying for your own tax cut - Tories plumb new depths of cynicism with an electioneering con-job of a budget

2011-02-15T22:44:00.002Z

So the Tories have engineered a council tax "cut" of 1% - about a pound a month on a Band D property.

Don't let it change your life!

They know this is a one-off - it cannot be replicated in the next couple of years at least. But of more interest is how this tax cut is actually being financed. Councils qualify for a grant to the value of a 2.5% increase in council tax - if they agree to freeze council tax. So effectively the freeze on council tax is being financed through the money of the same taxpayers who are supposed to "benefit" from it. The money is coming from rises in VAT and cuts in tax credits and benefits.

A version of the Great Money Trick that the late Robert Tressell could never have dreamed of!

The actual 1% cut is being financed partly through massive cuts in childrens's services and adult social care - £5.5 and £6.1 million respectively - and they are also finding money to cut the cost of parking permits by 5% (big deal). They are also proposing to spend £1.1 million on removing - yes removing - two cycle lanes.

The £12.62 a year is little use to individuals, but it adds up to a million pounds - think what that could do.

This budget was certainly a major disappointment given the tiresome game of now-you-see-it-now-you-don't both the unions and opposition councillors had to endure from the Administration as meeting after meeting had to be cancelled last week while the Tories dithered over whether it was ready or not.

Hopefully, given the balance of forces on the Council, some of this nonsense can be stopped at the Council meeting on 3rd March

Defend multiculturalism. Oppose attacks on mosques

2011-02-15T21:41:00.001Z

Mid Sussex Unite Against Fascism and other Sussex UAF groups are circulating the following statement, in response to the recent attack on the Mid Sussex Mosque, and David Cameron's speech attacking multiculturalism.

We would like trades unionists, political figures, community leaders and others to consider putting their name to it.

If you are willing to do so, please respond to uafmidsussex@googlemail.com with letting us know how you would like your name to appear - ie do you want us to include: title, political party, union, or other group, whether you are responding in a personal capacity.
MidSussex UAF

In a recent speech David Cameron claimed multi-culturalism had failed, he sought to scapegoat Muslims, and brand them as extremists.

Even more shamefully he delivered that speech on the same day as the racist organisation the English Defence League (EDL) was marching through Luton, spreading its message of hate against the town’s Muslim population.

The torching of the Mid-Sussex mosque on Sunday night shows the dangerous results of Cameron’s rhetoric. If the Prime Minister uses hateful language about Muslims, then it is no surprise others target the Muslim community in their own ways.

For the vast majority of people who live in Sussex our multicultural society brings us only benefits, and when the Mosque was opened in Haywards Heath, just a few months ago, it was greeted as a great development. The hard work of the Mid Sussex Islamic Society, in turning an empty ex-scout hut into a place of worship is an important and welcome addition to the area.

As the young men suspected of the attack on the Mosque are still awaiting trial we can only wait to discover their motives.

But Mosques and Muslims should not be targets for anyone, and when leading politicians scapegoat people for their faith or race it is just a nasty ploy to distract people from the very real attack we face, that upon our public services, and quality of life brought about by ideologically motivated cuts.

When the result is attacks like the one on Mid-Sussex Mosque, we must all stand against racists and racist rhetoric.
We live in a multicultural society, and we celebrate that and it makes us strong.

Mid sussex Unite Against Fascism can be contacted by emailing:

uafmidsussex@googlemail.com

Also visit the Unite Against Fascism website to sign out petition opposing Cameron’s attack on multi-culturalism: http://www.uaf.org.uk/

Solidarity with Egyptian workers!

2011-02-11T09:02:00.003Z

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Holier-than-thou secularists

2011-02-06T22:24:00.002Z

I would describe myself as a moderate secularist. I have no religious faith, but I recognise the civilising influence which people of faith have brought to the world at some points...and the less benign influence they have had at others. I don't indulge in the lazy thinking that responsibility for all of the world's ills and conflicts can be laid at the door of religion, any more than I think that it is totally blameless.

So....maybe it's me, but isn't the "secularist movement" just a little bit of a disappointment?

It is the case with every movement (and the Left is certainly no exception) that wishes to be taken seriously needs to state clearly what is for as well at what it is against. Secularists in thsi country seem to spend alot of time attacking religions (one in particular....no prizes....), but alot less time saying what secularism stands for.

I'm starting to agree with Jeremy Hardy, who posed the very apposite question, "If you could only listen to one specch, would you rather it be one by Martin Luther King........or Richard bloody Dawkins?"

Statement from the youth of the Tahrir Square sit-in

2011-02-06T21:55:00.000Z

We the protesters who are currently in the sit-in at Tahrir (liberation) square in Cairo since January 25, 2011 strongly condemn the brutal attack carried out by the governing National Democratic Party's (NDP) mercenaries at our location on Wednesday February 2, under the guise of "rally" in support of President Mubarak. This attack continues on Thursday February 3. We regret that some young people have joined these thugs and criminals, whom the NDP is accustomed to hire during elections, to march them off after spreading several falsehoods circulated by the regime media about us and our goals. These goals that aim at changing the political system to a one that guarantees freedom, dignity and social justice to all citizens are also the goals of the youth. Therefore we want to clarify the following.

Firstly, we are a group of young Muslim and Christian Egyptians; the overwhelming majority of us does not belong to political parties and have no previous political activism. Our movement involves elderly and children, peasants, workers, professionals, students and pensioners. Our movement cannot be classified as "paid for" or "directed by" a limited few because it attracted millions who responded to its emblem of removing the regime. People joined us last Tuesday in Cairo and other governorates in a scene that witnessed no one case of violence, property assault or harassment to anyone.

Secondly , our movement is accused of being funded from abroad, supported by the United States, as being instigated by Hamas, as under the leadership of the president of the National Assembly for change (Mohamed El-Baradie) and last but not least, as directed by the Muslim Brotherhood. Many accusations like these prove to be false. Protesters are all Egyptians who have clear and specific national objectives. Protesters have no weapons or foreign equipment as claimed by instigators. The broad positive response by the people to our movement's goals reveals that these are the goals of the Egyptian masses in general, not any internal or external faction or entity.

Thirdly , the regime and its paid media falsely blame us, young demonstrators, for the tension and instability in the streets of Egypt in recent days and therefore for damaging our nation's interests and security. Our answer to them is: It is not the peaceful protesters who released the criminal offenders from prison to the unguarded streets to practice looting and plundering. It is not the peaceful protesters who have imposed a curfew starting at 3 o'clock PM. It is not the peaceful protesters who have stopped the work in banks, bakeries and gas stations. When protesters organized its one-million demonstration it came up in the most magnificent and organized form and ended peacefully. It is not the protestors who killed 300 people some with live ammunition, and wounding more than 2,000 people in the last few days.

Fourthly, President Mubarak came out on Tuesday to announce that he will not be nominated in the upcoming presidential election and that he will modify two articles in the Constitution, and engage in dialogue with the opposition. However the State media has attacked us when we refused his "concession" and decided to go on with our movement. Our demand that Mubark steps down immediately is not a personal matter, but we have clear reasons for it which include:

His promise of not to run again is not new. He has promised when he came to power in 1981 that he will not run for more than two periods but he continued for more than 30 years.

His speech did not put any collateral for not nominating his son "Gamal", who remains until the moment a member of the ruling party, and can stand for election that will not be under judicial supervision since he ignored any referring to the amendment of article 88 of the Constitution.

He also considered our movement a "plot directed by a force" that works against the interests of the nation as if responding to the demands of the public is a "shame" or "humiliation".

As regards to his promise of conducting a dialogue with the opposition, we know how many times over the past years the regime claimed this and ended up with enforcing the narrow interests of the Mubarak State and the few people who control it.

And the events of Wednesday proved our stand is vindicated. While the President was giving his promises, the leaders of his regime were organizing (along with paid thugs and wanted criminals equipped with swords, knives and Molotov bombs) a brutal attack plot against us in Tahrir square. Those thugs and criminals were accompanied by the NDP members who fired machine guns on unarmed protesters who were trapped on the square ground, killing at least 7 and wounding hundreds of us critically. This was done in order to end our peaceful national popular movement and preserve the status quo. Our movement is Egyptian - Our movement is legitimate- Our movement is continuing

The youth of Tahrir Square sit-in, February 3, 2011 at 11:30am

Hollingdean's against the cuts

2011-01-27T08:28:00.001Z

Nearly 50 people gathered at Hollingdean Community Centre on Thursday night at the invitation of Brighton Stop the Cuts Coalition. It was an excellent turnout on a cold, wet night.

What was striking was the number of stories from ordinary people about how the cuts are already affecting people. We heard from people being messed about the benefits system, being messed about by employers, how cuts in young peoples' services are making life increasingly difficult for teachers.

There were good speeches from Phil Clarke of the Stop the Cuts Coalition, Dave Russell GMB shop steward at the depot, and Tony Greenstein of Brighton Unemployed Centre.

There will regular meetings to build a local anti-cuts campaign.

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Failing Grayling gets rough reception....and Freud's a no-show!

2011-01-25T22:42:00.001Z

Homophobic DWP Minister Chris Grayling, who thinks it's ok to refuse services to people on grounds of their sexuality, got a hot reception from a hastily-assembled group of protestors in Brighton today.

Grayling thought it would be fun to visit the local Jobcentre to meet claimants whose benefits he's cutting, before going to City College to meet students whose EMA he has just abolished.

I guess you have to admire the sheer nerve of some people.....

A couple of police officers were present at the Jobcentre, but sadly they seemed unwilling to question Mr Grayling about his expenses claims - £100,000 for a central London flat though his constituency home is less than 17 miles away.

Meanwhile the commonsense light has reportedly finally flickered into life at the Council. Lord Freud will not now be visiting the housing benefit office on Wednesday, after it became clear that he really wouldn't be very welcome in an office which has just been told that 20 posts are going as a result of his policies.

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Fraudulent Freud is visiting Brighton

2011-01-24T00:13:00.001Z

Lord David Freud, the welfare cutting gun-for-hire of successive governments, is gracing us with his presence this Wednesday (26th January). The government minister is apparently visiting the council at the invitation of Cllr Maria Caulfield, who recently took it upon herself to "welcome" the Government's (Freud's) changes to housing benefit - changes that will leave 12,000 households in Brighton and Hove worse off. Many of the people affected are in work but will see cuts in their income as a result of cuts in benefits and tax credits.

He is visiting the housing benefit office just a couple of weeks after staff there were told of cuts to the service totalling £1.3 million over the next four years and the loss of 20 posts this year alone.

Freud first came to prominence in the dying days of the New Labour Government when the Work and Pensions Secretary, James Purnell, got him to write a report about disability benefits. But now he's the Tories' man.

His work for Purnell was characterised by a quite amazing degree of ignorance about how the benefits he was meant to looking at actually work, perhaps to be expected from a merchant banker who had little previous contact with the benefits system. Among the errors which littered his report to Purnell was the claim that people's own GPs assessed them for Incapacity Benefit, when in fact it has long been the case that medical personnel from companies contracted by the DWP do this work.

He also claimed, with no foundation whatsoever, that "7% of IB claimants are on the 'black economy'" and promised that he would end their "free lunch". In fact, official measures of IB fraud put the level of fraud at 0.5% and falling.

The Child Poverty Action Group remarked
"Freud confesses to having known nothing about the benefits system, thinking it too complicated to understand. He clearly spent most of the 3 weeks writing and researching his welfare reform report playing around with financial models on the back of an envelope instead. The result is a proposal to hand over £167 billion of tax payers' money to private companies with incentives to keep as much as they can. But while the private companies get the cash, he wants more powers to cut benefits to families kept from work by disability."

Notwithstanding the fact that, had Freud's "report" been a school project it would have got a "Fail", he became part of New Labour's trusted inner circle on benefit reform before jumping ship after the election.

If any benefit claimants would like to provide Lord Freud with some education about the reality of life on benefits, he'll be arriving at Brighton Town Hall at 9.30am.

NSSN Conference - a classic wasted opportunity

2011-01-23T18:54:00.000Z

This has already been commented upon by Collective Resistance, but as one who was there I can provide a first-hand account of the whole disheartening experience. Some of the background is in my earlier post.

As one delegate (in one of the better speeches) pointed out, the trade union movement in this country is catastrophically underprepared for the onslaught the ConDems want to unleash upon our jobs, our terms and conditions and the public services we work in and/or use. About 27% of the working population is in a union. In the "strong" public sector, union density is barely more than half; in the private sector it plummets to about 15%. Trade union struggle is at an all-time low with worker resistance the exception not the norm, and shop steward numbers continue to decline.

In this area, while we were chewing the fat in a school assembly hall in Camden, jobs were going in the Brighton-based British Bookshops group (with more likely when the whole operation goes belly-up in the coming weeks), and yet another tranche of redundancies at the already battered Edwards Engineering in Crawley and Shoreham.

In this situation there is a crying need for a rank-and-file shop stewards movement to build the resistance which most of the union leaderships are failing to provide. We need a network which can support union reps at workplace level and give them the confidence to build trade unionism and build struggle.

Instead what we got was the Socialist Party deciding that what really mattered at this juncture was the formation of yet another national anti-cuts movement built in their own image.

And it really is in their own image....in fact....drop the word "image". It's them...pure and simple....no-one else! They've managed to drive everyone.....everyone....else out of the NSSN leadership. Way to go comrades!

This had to be justified by arguing that there was no other anti-cuts movement with the "correct" politics - in a battle where no real enemy exists, it is necessary to create one. So we had speech after speech denouncing the Coalition of Resistance (a genuine broad movement) for holding positions it does not hold, and in some cases just making stuff up about how CoR is "soft" on Labour, and doesn't oppose all cuts. Strange that...when I was at CoR National Council last week, an amendment to the Founding Statement calling on councillors not to vote for or implement cuts was passed without dissent.

Among some of the statements which rankled was Tony Mulhearn's moaning about about "people taking their ball home if they don't get their way". Well yes Tony, if the whole defence, most of the midfield and both wingers do that then maybe there are some "management issues" that need sorting! We had Linda Taafe declaring "NSSN was here first". Here first as a shop stewards movement, Linda, not the anti-cuts movement. And there was Dave Nellist, claiming that the SP's opponents "lacked shopfloor experience". Flamin' cheek! How could he possibly know?

One of the saddest aspects of this is that SP members would be a real asset to a broad anti-cuts movement, but sectarian advantage seems more important to them. The classic disease of the British far left.

One can only hope that they will rejoin the broad movement from which they currently seem to have separated themselves.