Trotskyism, Corbyn and the Labour Party - public meeting

Tuesday 4th October, 7.30pm, 

YHA Bristol (Grain House), 14 Narrow Quay, BS1 4QA

The Jeremy Corbyn leadership campaign is once again inspiring thousands of people to get active in politics and stand up for the future they want. It has driven the right wing of the Labour party to distraction as they try every dirty trick to oust him and take control of the party back. 

Trotskyism has been thrown around as a dirty word in an attempt to smear some of their opponents. The name of Militant, (now the Socialist Party) a Trotskyist group expelled from Labour for being too left wing has been brought up and many slanders spread.

In this meeting we will discuss how Corbyn and his supporters can consolidate a political voice for the 99%, not the 1%. We also look at the real history of the Militant Tendency and what the Russian revolutionary socialist Leon Trotsky actually stood for.

Organised by Bristol Socialist Party and Bristol University and UWE Socialist Students groups. All welcome.

Crisis in the SWP: Socialist Party material

http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/keyword/Left_and_radical/SWP

http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/books_pamphlets/Socialism_and_Left_Unity_-_A_critique_of_the_Socialist_Workers_Party/1

Please see the above links for Socialist Party material on the current and previous crises inside the Socialist Workers Party of Britain including critiques of popular frontism, state-capitalism, a history of their method and ideas and chapters from Peter Taaffe's 2008 booklet - Socialism and Left Unity: A critique of the Socialist Workers Party

Nadine Dorries in I'm a Celebrity row - Dave Nellist talks about his time as an MP on a workers wage

Following the example of all genuine workers representatives, Tom Baldwin, Mayoral candidate in Bristol for the Trade Unionists & Socialists Coalition  has pledged to repudiate the huge salary and only except the average wage of a worker in Bristol.
See this from Coventry Socialist Party: http://www.coventrysocialists.co.uk/latestnews_82404.html

Rightwing Tory MP Nadine Dorries decision to take part in reality TV show ‘I’m a celebrity...Get me out of here’, which could see her being away from her job in the Commons for up to a month, has sparked controversy across the establishment media and within the Tory Party itself. It raises once again the role and duties of an sitting MP.

We have re-posted beblow an interview with Coventry Socialist Party member Dave Nellist. Dave was a ‘Militant’ supporting Labour MP in Coventry from 1983-92, who chose only to take a skilled factory workers wage, and a Socialist Party Councillor in Coventry from 1998-2012.

Dave Nellist Interview In Red Pepper

The recent scandal over MPs’ expenses and second jobs only seems to have confirmed the suspicion that ‘they’re all at it’. But when Dave Nellist was elected as Labour MP for Coventry South East he made a point of only taking the wage of an average worker. Now a Coventry city councillor and leading member of the Socialist Party, he spoke to Red Pepper about his experience in Westminster

You took the average worker’s wage as an MP – how much would that have been, roughly, in today’s terms?

It was an average skilled worker’s wage, which was always less than half an MP’s salary. For example, in 1989 MPs received £24,107 and the average skilled worker’s wage that year, calculated from figures from the engineering union’s Coventry district office, was £11,180 – so that was 46 per cent. An MP today is on £64,766 – 46 per cent of that would be £29,792. But the amount I would take today if re-elected would depend not on a percentage, but the actual average wages received by the people I represented.

What were your personal circumstances at the time? Were you married? Did you have kids? Were you conscious of making sacrifices?

My wife Jane and I were married in August 1984, during the miners’ strike. We held a social as part of the wedding celebration and charged an entry fee, which raised quite a bit for the local miners’ support fund!

For the first year we were married Jane still had her job in a department store in Sutton Coldfield. But a year later the first of our three children arrived and for the rest of my time as an MP we only had the one worker’s wage for myself, Jane and our family to live on.

I’d been unemployed before being elected in 1983, so living on a skilled worker’s wage was not a ‘sacrifice’. We had a holiday every year in Scotland or Wales, and we could manage a night out for a meal or to the theatre or the cinema in exactly the same way as any other couple with young children could. But we felt the same pressures with bills and other living expenses as the people I represented.

So I would say taking the ‘worker’s wage’ wasn’t so much making a sacrifice. If I had taken the full MP’s wage we would have been insulated against those day-to-day problems and the pressures that most people in Coventry felt. 

How did you divide your time between your constituency and Westminster?Did you need to keep up two houses? Did you take much in the way of expenses above and beyond your ‘worker’s wage’?

I usually dealt with constituency business on Monday morning, went to London Monday lunchtime, tried to come back Tuesday evening (late), more constituency business/meetings on Wednesday morning, then back to London at lunchtime, coming back to Coventry late Thursday night – unless there was any pressing business on Friday. Friday and the weekend would be spent on casework/meetings in the constituency or addressing public meetings elsewhere.

Although I managed to have a voting record usually in the top ten of Labour MPs, I addressed about 1,500 meetings over the nine years I was an MP. In the 1980s parliament often sat late into the night (or even through the night), so I rented a furnished flat in London. No moat or oak beams! Nor any claims for food!

I claimed the full ‘office costs’ allowance to employ research and secretarial assistance in the Commons and in the constituency. I also rented an office in Coventry to work from. I was receiving on average 200 letters a week. We had wards with 50 per cent male unemployment, and a huge amount of constituency casework. None of the office costs money came to me personally – it was used to pay wages, and for rent and equipment.

What did you think of your fellow MPs? Were they clearly ‘on the take’ in your day? Did having a comfortable salary make them out of touch?

A number of MPs had outside jobs – mainly, in those days, Tory MPs with directorships. One I remember, Geoffrey Rippon, who had been a minister in previous Tory governments, was the King of Company Directors. When I was there he was an MP, a QC, and the chairman or director of four dozen different companies. He had 50 jobs!

It always seemed to me to be the real reason why parliament sat in the afternoon and evening, so Tory MPs could make their real money in the mornings – or as Geoffrey Rippon apparently put it, ‘to earn a crust and go on drinking decent claret’. These days, of course, it’s ex-Labour ministers who are earning tens of thousands of pounds a year moonlighting. In my book it’s an even bigger crime than playing the expenses system to be an ex-‘Labour’ minister advising private companies on how to win contracts taking public services away, and getting paid perhaps two or three times an MP’s salary – on top of an MP’s salary!



(Terry Fields MP & Dave Nellist MP at Eric Heffers funeral. Photo Dave Sinclair)

How did other MPs react to the example set by yourself (and fellow left MPs Pat Wall and Terry Fields), proving that the job could (and perhaps should) be done on the average worker’s wage?

Although there were a number of honourable exceptions (Dennis Skinner’s and other Campaign Group MPs’ generous donations during the miners’ strike, for example), for many Labour MPs it wasn’t the socialist ideas we tried to champion in parliament that upset them the most, but the threat to them receiving their ‘due reward’.

Perhaps the most vivid example was the debate on MPs’ salaries and allowances shortly after the 1987 general election (MPs’ wage increases were never announced before elections, when they might upset voters). The debate started at 9pm and went on until past midnight, and yet every seat in the House was taken! The motion was for a 21.9 per cent rise in MPs’ salaries from £356 a week to £434 a week. That £80 a week rise was £3 more than the then take-home pay for a whole week for civil servants, upon whom the government had just imposed a 4.25 per cent pay award.

I organised the vote against. I prepared a speech, which I reckoned would take me 10-15 minutes to deliver. Because of interruptions, it actually took 38 minutes. I asked MPs to vote against the rise; but that if it were passed I asked Labour MPs to give at least 5 per cent of their new salaries to the Labour Party to prevent the proposed 40 redundancies that were due to take place at Labour headquarters.

Immediately after me, David Blunkett spoke and complained about me ‘lecturing colleagues on how much to give of their pay’. He said he tried ‘to do a good job, to learn how to do it better and to try to earn the rewards that I am paid’. The motion to increase MPs’ wages by 22 per cent went through by an 11 to one majority.

David Blunkett now apparently gets three times his MP’s salary (on top of his MP’s salary) in outside earnings from firms including A4e, which describes itself as ‘a leader in global public service reform’.

I rest my case.

Dave Nellist was MP for Coventry South East from 1983 until 1992

Southampton Labour councillors vote against cuts

By Southampton Socialist Party members

The stand taken by Coxford councillors Keith Morrell and Don Thomas to vote against the Labour council budget cuts and proposal to close Oaklands swimming pool has received enormous support from the local community and across the city. Importantly they have received the backing of local council trade unions.

It is now essential that this support is mobilised to maximize the pressure on the council, to reverse the cuts and save the pool. The council has reserves and borrowing power to raise the finance, after all millions were found to build the new Titanic museum!
No privatisation of Oaklands pool

It has been suggested that if the council hasn't got the money, the pool should be handed over to the community to run or a private provider found.

But then where would the money come from? The risk would be passed to the community and inevitably would mean going to the private sector that would end up running the pool for profit.

Private companies offer to run services not for the community but for profit. They do this by running down services, putting up charges and cutting staff and their pay and conditions.

Oaklands pool was built and paid for with public money and is an asset that should not be given away.Privatisation is no solution.
No need for cuts

The future of Oaklands pool is under threat because of the government cuts to council funding. The Con-Dems are cutting 25% of the money Southampton receives up to 2014, with further cuts promised.

But it is becoming clearer to everyone that the Con-Dem cuts are for the benefit of the super-rich, whose profits soar and who evade their taxes to the tune of over £120 billion.
Unite against all cuts

Everyone is being hit by cuts. Jobs, pay, pensions, benefits, schools, hospitals and social services.

A united campaign of the community, council workers and the trade unions must be built to oppose all cuts, redundancies and privatisation, to reverse the cuts and restore council workers' pay.

Such a mass campaign could put huge pressure on the majority Labour group not to implement cuts and to fight central government for the funding this city needs.
Support rebel councillors

Keith and Don now face disciplinary measures by Labour officials who want councillors to make cuts. Council trade unions must call on all councillors to join Keith and Don and oppose cuts.
Mass lobby against cuts

The next council meeting is on Wednesday 12 September. This will be an opportunity to mobilise mass support for the stand of the Coxford councillors and opposition to all cuts.

The Socialist Party gives full support to Keith and Don and will give support to any other Labour councillor who is prepared to join them.

The impact of their stand fully vindicates the election campaign of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) in opposing cuts. We must now ensure this campaign grows in support.

Another attempt to assassinate the legacy of Leon Trotsky?

Book review from: http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/13816/15-02-2012/another-attempt-to-assassinate-the-legacy-of-leon-trotsky

Condemnation of Leon Trotsky is well-trodden ground for so-called biographer Robert Service. Service was condemned by The American Historical Review (June 2011), which considered his 'biography' of Trotsky a complete distortion. This was anticipated by Socialist Party general secretary Peter Taaffe in a review in the Socialist (13 October 2009) where he took Service to task.

Here Peter reviews Service's latest offering, 'Spies & Commissars', in which the skulduggery of British spies like Sidney Reilly is used to spice up the same old false picture of the Bolshevik regime which followed the Russian revolution of 1917 - particularly of its leaders, Lenin and Trotsky. 

Service writes in the introduction to this heavy tome: "Lenin and Trotsky... were convinced that Europe was on the threshold of communist revolution and that it needed only a slight nudge from them to make all this happen."

It did not need a "slight nudge" but the workers of Europe needed to emulate their Russian brothers and sisters and take power out of the hands of the capitalists who, through the bloody carnage of World War One, had ruined Europe.

The Bolsheviks, by declaring a unilateral peace, began the process of ending the war. As to the international effect of the Russian Revolution, Service himself comments that "the Labour Party held a celebration of the revolutionary events at the Albert Hall. 10,000 people attended and Ramsay MacDonald [then Labour leader] was the main speaker...

"It was an occasion that nobody present would forget. The Romanovs were gone and freedom had arrived in Russia. There was talk of a brotherhood of the Russians and the British no longer poisoned by the existence of tsarist despotism." This was just one expression of the colossal enthusiasm and sympathy that the Russian revolution generated.

Lenin is described as a "killjoy" during his return to Russia in February 1917 and "less than gracious to the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries" because he told the truth. He correctly called on the working class to place no trust in the coalition government involving some workers' leaders - the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries - with the 'liberal' capitalists.

Marxists adopt the same position today in placing no trust in the governments which have arisen on the backs of the revolution in Tunisia or Egypt. Instead, we call on the masses to build their own independent organisations if they are to make a 'second revolution', a social revolution, which is the only way to satisfy their demands and consolidate the revolution.

Childishly, Service describes Trotsky and Lenin as "exceptional troublemakers". As if a revolution - demanding an understanding of the process of revolution at each stage and the political slogans and action which flow from this - could be led by mere "troublemakers"!

Yet Service allows himself to admit that, in the words of one observer, "Lenin and Trotsky are merely the spokesmen of the workers."

....

Read the rest of the review here

A man who helped to melt the Iron Lady

Full obituary taken from website of Coventry Socialist Party -  http://www.coventrysocialists.co.uk 

Rob Windsor – Socialist fighter, comrade, friend

25 years ago a young lad walked into one of Dave Nellist’s campaign rooms. He wanted to get involved.

At that time Rob Windsor was built like a ‘human stick insect’ and worked helping the homeless. His cheerful, humorous and humble manner didn’t hide the steely determination within to fight the injustices of capitalist society.

He had concluded that society must be fundamentally changed to improve working people’s conditions. He had seen what Militant supporters had done in Coventry and nationwide and having checked we were serious, decidedhe would join us. Clearly a working class lad himself you could tell he was bright and meant business.

His job with Coventry Churches Housing was put in jeopardy when he supported our campaign to Save Whitley Hospital, the campaign that convinced him to join us.

It was no accident (having been fostered as a child) that he worked to help the homeless and most downtrodden and he passionately fought the abandonment by capitalist society of hundreds of thousands of people. At 18 he went to London and ran a 900 bed homeless hostel and did soup runs while living in a Notting Hill squat. He was an expert on housing and ran an inspired campaign against Council House privatisation, denouncing it in a well used pamphlet, with the aid of Nicholas Parsons’ photo, as the “Sale of the Century”

Rob became a leader of the anti poll tax campaign and later a Socialist councillor in St Michaels, Coventry. He would help others often to his own detriment, so much so that many of the ‘rough rogues and vagabonds’ from Coventry’s working class estates who joined the Anti Poll Tax campaign ran around ‘mothering’ him. But after being encouraged to eat, Rob developed a much fuller figure in later life! His body shape changed, but his passion to change society surged on. But now that is lost to us and working people have lost one of their true champions.

No-one who heard him could forget his wonderful and vivid way of explaining events and ideas. Almost like radio can, he could make the mind conjure up pictures. He was one of the best ‘ranters’ we’ve known, whose use of humour always made ideas accessible to people. Many comrades say they never tired of hearing him speak.

The Anti Poll Tax campaign revealed his huge talents. He gave up his job to focus on it. One day he went away with the hundreds of pages of Poll Tax legislation. 2 days later he returned with a summary of what it was and how to fight it in a mere ten page campaigning pamphlet, and not a word of it was ever found wanting.

Rob inspired many an anti Poll Tax meeting and the mass non-payment campaign. Others of us who rushed around to address one packed meeting after another would worry what could happen to people who refused to pay the tax. We would consult Rob who always had the legal answer, and always right!

He was a tiger defending the non-paying army. He baffled magistrates around the country and drove them to distraction. There was little as entertaining as Rob entangling them! And he taught others how to do it. Court after court was clogged up. He bamboozled, beat and chased off bailiffs as he cut a swathe across the Midlands. A famous headline “Mr Windsor beats Mrs Windsor” reported how Rob beat off thousands of wage attachments in the Courts.

Thatcher said the Poll Tax was “her flagship”, Rob always said it would be her Titanic and he was a significant part in beating Thatcher (who he always called the ‘tin woman’).

But he didn’t stop there. He fought on to change the system itself. To his last he still led that fight and it is as good a measure of the man as his brilliant leadership of the anti Poll tax unions, that he advanced Marxist ideas in a period of political retreat including in difficult environments like the Council chamber.

In the early 90’s capitalism appeared to have triumphed. Within months of beating the Poll Tax, Rob faced expulsion from the Labour Party. His opposition to the Poll Tax proving he was a ‘Militant’! The Labour Party was moving to the right and abandoning any talk of Socialism. It was embracing the market that has brought us to the dire economic position we face today.

But while many were abandoning socialism and Marxism, Rob fought on to help establish the support and organisation we have today that will advance the struggle for change.

 It is the greatest compliment to say that when he became a councillor he was utterly politically reliable and down the line. He explained and advanced our ideas unflinchingly, be it in the Council House or anywhere else. His honesty and grasp of issues always shone through. And anyone under attack could rely on Rob on their side. From school-students on strike or pickets at Wapping (where he got an object personal lesson in the brutality of the state) or travelling to support Vestas workers on the Isle of Wight or to speak in support of Tommy Sheridan in Glasgow.

He was ‘a politician’, not because he wanted to be one, but because he knew we had to fight back. He could analyse issues in seconds, he was brilliant, but with no pretentions.

Rob lived for his politics but also loved walking hills (returning to supply many of us with oatcakes) and he’d planned to combine walking with visiting branches of the Socialist Party to speak. It is so hard to grasp that this won’t happen, that at only 47 he is lost to so many people who appreciated him.

But we’ll have to work to make up for it, and as Rob did many times, rededicate ourselves to the fight he carried so well and try to find people with the strengths and talents to advance ideas in the way he did.

The liver transplant in December had promised to renew Rob’s life, and as he was now ‘more comfortable in his skin’ the best of him was still to come. But complications arose and after 5 weeks struggle they could not be resisted. His surgeon said how hard he fought for life. That’s because he valued it and wanted everyone to have the chance to do so.

Isla loses a husband and we lose a brother. He was collaborative person, a human being who by his work inspired us and was inspired by those he fought alongside.

He is a huge loss to the Socialist Party. But we stand taller because of our association with him.

We’ll work to compensate for this loss as Rob would want, and as we make advances in the future we wish he was with us to share in it. He deserves to be there.

Coventry Socialist Party will continue the work that Rob Windsor committed his entire adult life to - the struggle for a socialist future.

Excellent coverage of Jarrow March 2011 in Mirror

Jarrow March 2011: Kevin Maguire on the road for historic repeat

by Kevin Maguire, Daily Mirror 3/10/2011
Read more: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/columnists/maguire/2011/10/03/jarrow-march-2011-kevin-maguire-on-the-road-for-historic-repeat-115875-23462922/#ixzz1ZhtA9yQa

THE 330-mile walk for work from Tyneside to London is history repeating itself for James Allison. The retired labourer was a young boy when he skipped alongside his dad, also called James, one of the marchers on the 1936 Jarrow Crusade. He was also there, 75 years on, to watch a group of young people leave town in the footsteps of the most famous protest trek of them all.

“I was going along, holding my dad’s hand,” he recalled. “And one of the others grumbled that I was putting them out of step.”

Now 84, Mr Allison went on: “It was terrible in the 1930s during the Depression. Everybody was out of work up here, you had no money and you were always hungry.

“I went to school in my bare feet and drank out of a jam jar – you couldn’t pour in hot water or it’d crack. If you had a chair, you had to sell it before you got help from the unemployment board.”

Nobody claims the jobless are as badly off today as the means-tested destitute of 1930s Depression Britain. Half of a poverty-stricken Jarrow was out of work and struggling to stave off malnutrition. Yet there are signs the great British public is stirring. As the procession makes its way round town, with a brass band near the front, shoppers applaud, bus drivers toot their horns and lunchtime drinkers spill out of the pub to watch. Ordinary people are increasingly resentful of the unjust austerity of Tory Cameronomics.

One in every 10 workers in North East England is dumped on the dole. Youth unemployment at just over one in five is at a record national high. The dreams of young people are destroyed by education cuts and £9,000 university fees. Insecurity is terrorising workers; plummeting living standards the curse of a growing number of families. Those in work, such as the cleaners on the minimum wage at Tyneside’s Metro, risk losing their paid meal breaks.

Yet at this week’s Tory conference in Manchester, our Government of millionaires will blame the jobless for their plight. A big stick will be waved at the jobless while big tax cuts are dangled before the wealthy. Lizi Gray, the great granddaughter of another of the original marchers, will walk parts of the route between studying at college. The 17-year-old, from nearby Gateshead, explained: “If you go to university you’ll be saddled with a huge debt that you might never be able to pay it off.

“Is that what we want? Britain’s getting unfairer, more unequal. It doesn’t have to be like that. This march is about an alternative.”

About 30 marchers will cover all or most of the miles, compared with the 200 three-quarters of a century ago. Unemployed chef Rhys Harris, from Pontypridd, South Wales, intends to take a few days off to watch Cardiff play Burnley in the fourth round of the Carling Cup.

I’m pretty sure that didn’t happen in 1936.

Trainers and blue T-shirts have replaced hobnail boots and oilskins. The elderly may also be amused to learn they will take five weeks compared with the four weeks of the originals. Indeed, I heard the first jokey, “Are we nearly there yet?” in the very first mile.

The route, however, is broadly similar to that followed in the year of Edward VIII’s abdication. Last night the marchers were due to reach Durham and then on to London by way of Harrogate, Sheffield, Leicester, Coventry, Northampton and Luton before a rally in Trafalgar Square on Saturday, November 5.

Youth Fight for Jobs, the group behind the trek, is an offshoot of the Socialist Party, formerly part of the Militant Tendency, which Neil Kinnock devoted much energy in the 1980s to expelling from the Labour Party. Half a dozen unions including the biggest, Unite, PCS civil servants and RMT rail workers back the march.

On Saturday, I addressed a rally alongside trade unionists to send the walkers on their way on Saturday. Dave Nellist, the ex-Labour MP kicked out over his Militant links, has lost none of his combative rhetoric. Now a Socialist Party councillor in Coventry, he warned that smashing windows and rioting will achieve nothing. Even Mr Cameron may agree with that sentiment – if not Mr Nellist’s call for revolutionary action to overthrow the Tories.

Having grown up on South Tyneside, I can attest to the hold the Jarrow Crusade has on the town. It’s as much a part of the North East’s identity as the soaring Angel of the North or the magnificent Tyne Bridge. Local lad Stephen Hepburn, Jarrow’s Labour MP, was inspired as a kid by tales of the marchers. In 2001, on the 65th anniversary of the Crusade, he unveiled “The Spirit of Jarrow” statue to honour the marchers.

It’s outside Morrisons – not a spot art snobs would pick. But it guarantees a daily audience for Hepburn’s predecessor “Red Ellen” Wilkinson, two banner-carrying marchers and a couple of kids running alongside.

“We’ve massive local pride in the Jarrow Crusade,” Hepburn told me. “But it’s more than a piece of history. It’s a warning about what the Tories will do, turning their backs on the unemployed. And a rallying cry to good people everywhere to stand up and be counted.”

History has repeated itself too for pensioner Emma Madsen. Back in 1936, when she was a jobless teenager, she stood near Jarrow Town Hall to cheer the leaving marchers.

Fast forward to 2011 and the former barmaid was in Jarrow Park, curious to see this group. “Everybody was much poorer than today,” she remembered. “But good luck to them. At least they’re having a go.”

Then, with a twinkle in her eyes, she showed Jarrow’s true grit. “I might have gone with them if I had the legs,” she said. “As it is, I’d have just slowed them up.”

I’m not so sure, although she is 94.

Liverpool Socialist Party: Statement on Liverpool Riots

From: http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/12516


Liverpool & District Socialist Party is appalled at the current rioting which has resulted in the destruction of working peoples' homes, workplaces, and the community facilities and shops they rely on.
We recognise that there are those who are using theriots to engage in criminal activity and this is to be condemned. In condemning the wanton destruction we believe that the conditions for the initial disturbances have been created by mass unemployment, social deprivation and the massive cuts which have been imposed by the Con-Dem government and implemented by local authorities.
We believe that further riots are possible unless radical socialist measures are implemented. The systematic destruction of jobs, services and communities prepared this over two decades, since the Liverpool 47 socialist councillors were undemocratically forced out of office.
The "yobs" and "thugs" ultimately responsible are the main parties' politicians and their cronies the bankers and developers.
One-third of Liverpool's children are in households with no-one working. Almost 6,000 16-24 year-olds are on Job Seekers' Allowance.
Young people have seen their EMA college grant scrapped, costs for bus travel rocket, university fees raised to £9,000, and the Connexions youth careers service slashed to the bone amidst mass unemployment and dozens of applicants each chasing one of a handful of jobs.
The council should immediately reverse this year's £5.5 million (28%) cut to youth services, cancel the £5.05 million cut they intend next year, and reverse and cancel the £6.658 million cut to library and leisure services.
Connexions suffered a £2.1 million cut this year by Merseyside local authorities. This irresponsible action must be immediately reversed in full.
We call on the Liverpool City Council to organise a democratic discussion with the residents, community groups, trade unionists and young people of the areas affected, to draw up a plan of increased and sufficient public services.
This must include youth services and job creation. Both emergency and planned measures should be implemented by the council through borrowing and using reserves.
Rioting is the other uglier face of the L1 glitter ['Liverpool One' is a new large retail development]. While city centre and prestige projects are flaunted by the authorities and employers, our communities and youth are neglected.
High-skill well-paid jobs were replaced by service sector drudgery - low-paid or even unpaid. The council's so-called "apprenticeships" are an inadequate drop in the ocean.
We need job creation on a much larger scale, led by the council and on trade union rates of pay. We need training schemes to lead to real jobs not back to the dole.
Added to this are the colossal ongoing cuts being proposed by the council: £91 million this year, £50 million next year and a similar sum the year after that.
These must be reversed now.
The Labour group must demand that the Con-Dem millionaire government returns the £millions they have stolen from our city!
We are holding a public meeting next week to discuss how these policies should be implemented. The meeting is on Tuesday 16th August, 7.30pm, The Casa pub (downstairs), 29 Hope Street, L1 9BQ.
The whole situation is unacceptable. This autumn we are joining young people from across Liverpool and around the country to recreate the 1930s' most famous political protest, in a 280-mile "Youth March for Jobs" from Jarrow to London organised by campaign group Youth Fight for Jobs at www.youthfightforjobs.com .

Labour Party- condemned for condemning strike

"The Labour Party died on Thursday." This was how one letter to the Guardian on 1 July, the day after the biggest strike action in decades, summed up the feelings of millions about Labour leader Ed Miliband's condemnation of the strikes.
To add insult to injury Miliband, having condemned thestrike, was then photographed in parliament laughing over a cup of tea with Cameron and Clegg, while the pickets stood outside.
In reality, the Labour Party, as a vehicle for the interests of the working class, died long ago. Under Blair the party was transformed from a capitalist workers' party - with a capitalist leadership but a working class base that could influence the party via its democratic structures - into a capitalist party.
However, Miliband's statement has brought the pro-capitalist reality of New Labour home to millions. Another letter to the Guardian on 1 July drew the conclusion that many others will also be pondering: "Surely it is time for a new party to represent workers and hold true to the values many of us thought Labour was supposed to represent."
The death of political parties is being widely predicted by capitalist commentators. The real reason for their shrinking membership, however, was mentioned as an aside by Anthony King in the Financial Times (2 July): "differences among the main parties have narrowed, sometimes to vanishing point. Few socialist parties exist any longer, and only the tiniest fringe parties talk the language of political struggle."
King went on to say that the continued decline of party memberships is inevitable. In the past, he states, politics was a matter of "warfare... between classes, nations, races and religious denominations" but in Europe today, he says, this is no longer true.

Class war

It is true that the differences between the establishment political parties has narrowed to vanishing point, but the gap between them and the views of the majority of the population has never been wider.
If King was to ask any public sector worker in Britain, or benefit claimant, or library user, or student if political "warfare" was a thing of the past they would be able to tell him about the vicious class war being conducted by this government against them.
King concludes: "Who in 2011 would dream of christening... a party 'the Labour Party'? The very idea is anachronistic". Given the recent history of the Labour Party in cutting and privatising services and opposing strikes it is very unlikely anyone would give a new workers' party that name, but a mass party that stood for the majority - for the working class, the poor, the young - would, far from being "anachronistic", be enormously popular.
The Socialist Party participates in the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC www.tusc.org.uk) an electoral alliance involving leading militant trade unionists from the RMT, PCS and NUT.
TUSC plays an important role, enabling trade unionists, community campaigners and socialists to stand candidates against the pro-austerity consensus of the capitalist parties.
For the Socialist Party TUSC is also part of a campaign, which we have waged for well over a decade, for the trade unions to stop funding Labour and to begin to build a new party that stands in the interests of working class people. Both the objective need and potential for such a party has never been greater than it is today.
At the 30 June London strike rally Mary Bousted, the general secretary of the ATL, the most 'moderate' union to take part in the strike, attacked the Labour leadership which is "laughingly called an opposition". She called on trade unionists to 'do it for themselves' (see pages 8 and 9), receiving the biggest cheer of the whole rally.
If any platform speaker had argued for trade unionists to do it for themselves - by striking but also by standing in elections on a clear anti-cuts programme, it would have had a huge response.

Break the Link

None of the unions that went on strike on 30 June are affiliated to the Labour Party. This year's PCS conference agreed that, within the next twelve months, a full membership ballot would be held "to decide whether the union could stand or support candidates in national elections".
If that ballot is passed it will be a major step forward for the trade union movement and would open the possibility of a trade union based electoral alternative on a wider scale.
It is true that the leaders of some of the Labour-affiliated trade unions, particularly Len McCluskey, general secretary of Unite, have argued for a major campaign to reclaim the Labour Party, rather than founding a new party.
Mistakenly there were hopes that Ed Miliband's leadership would represent a step in this direction. On the contrary, as we warned, Miliband's leadership is a continuation of New Labour.
For the trade unions to reclaim Labour would require a mass influx of trade unionists into the party. We don't think that this can be achieved: the main response of trade unionists to Miliband's condemnation of the strike is not to join the Labour Party to change it but to turn away from the Labour Party in disgust. We argue for Unite to stop funding New Labour and to begin to build a new party.

Serious campaign

Nonetheless, a serious campaign to reclaim New Labour by affiliated trade unions would be a huge step forward on the current policy of the majority of the union leaders of clinging to the coat-tails of the Labour leadership.
Such a campaign would have to demand that Labour adopts a socialist programme. Key demands would include the repeal of all the anti-trade union laws and opposition to all cuts in public services, not just in words but in action.
It would be necessary to demand that Labour councils stop wielding the axe and instead 'take the Liverpool road', that is to follow the example of Liverpool City Council in the 1980s; refusing to implement cuts and mobilising the workforce and population in a mass campaign in their support.
It would also be necessary to demand that the pro-capitalist leaders be expelled from the party. Linked to this would be the rebuilding of democracy within the Labour Party, which is currently non-existent at national level.
The trade unions, the main funders of New Labour, no longer even have the right to move motions at the toothless annual conference. Yet Miliband is threatening to get rid of even the few tiny remnants of workers' democracy that still exist, including the election of the shadow cabinet.
We do not think that a campaign to reclaim New Labour could succeed. However, we are not inflexible; were it to be effective we would turn towards such a development.
Equally, if we are proved correct, the affiliated trade unions would need to draw the conclusion that New Labour could not be reclaimed and join with those workers who are fighting for the formation of a new party.
Such a party, in contrast to the shrinking membership of all the capitalist parties, would grow rapidly.

http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/12340/06-07-2011/labour-condemned-for-condemning-strike

Irish history and socialism

Article written in 2008 by the late Peter Hadden (1950-2010)


Death on the rock of Gibraltar - 20 years since SAS killing of three IRA volunteers

It is twenty years since the execution style killing by the SAS of three IRA members in Gibraltar. In Northern Ireland these deaths sparked a brief but particularly bloody upsurge in violence. Over the next thirteen days a series of attacks involving the army, the IRA and loyalist paramilitaries left a further eight people dead and 68 injured. Two of these incidents will be vividly remembered by those who were around at the time, if only because they were captured live by TV cameras on the scene.

One was the attack by lone loyalist gunman, Michael Stone, on mourners attending the funerals of the Gibraltar victims, which left three mourners dead and scores injured. The image shown repeatedly on that day’s news bulletins of Stone fleeing through West Belfast’s Milltown cemetery towards the M1 motorway, attempting to hold off a chasing crowd with pistol shots and grenades, provided a stark illustration of the brutal reality of the Northern Ireland Troubles.

So did the footage taken three days later on the Andersonstown Road at the funeral of one of those killed by Stone in Milltown. This was of two plain-clothes British soldiers, who had driven aggressively into the funeral procession, being dragged by the crowd from their car, one brandishing a handgun. Shortly after this, they were handed over to the IRA who took them to waste ground behind nearby shops and shot them.

Today, twenty years on, Sinn Fein put a huge effort into organising a series of high profile events to commemorate the Gibraltar killings. There were rallies and a large public meeting in West Belfast. A special 12-page commemorative supplement on the killings and their bloody aftermath was produced and distributed through doors in Catholic areas of the city.

Public controversy soon developed over these commemorations, especially over the proposal to host a celebration of the life of Mairead Farrell, one of the three shot by the SAS in Gibraltar, in the Long Gallery in Parliament Buildings at Stormont. This produced a predictable knee jerk reaction from the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), who announced an event to celebrate the role of the SAS to be held in the same venue and at the same time. In the end, neither party got their way - new rules were rushed through in haste to make it more difficult to book the Long Gallery - and Sinn Fein went ahead with a low key meeting on Mairead Farrell’s life in their own offices at Stormont....

Twenty years on, the real lesson of all that happened at Gibraltar and after is the need to build a fighting socialist alternative to sectarianism and capitalism so that the energies of another generation are not wasted on ideas and methods that can never succeed.

Read the full article - http://www.socialistparty.net/theory/494-death-on-the-rock-of-gibraltar-20-years-since-sas-killing-of-three-ira-volunteers

30 years after the 1981 Brixton riots

After this riot in the Stokes Croft area of Bristol last night, please see this account of events 30 years ago this April that had its precedent in St. Pauls, Bristol. It is recounted by CLARE DOYLE who participated in the events. Clare was dubbed ’Red Clare’ in the right-wing press at the time for her participation and socialist politics (and red hair!). Today the conditions for new ’Brixtons’ are being prepared. The Con-Dem government, like that of Thatcher, has adopted a programme of vicious cuts in jobs and services. Last year saw the first actual fall in living standards in Britain since the recession of three decades ago. Unemployment is rising. There are almost one million young people without jobs in Britain.

On Friday 10 April 1981 a heavy-handed police incident in Railton Road, Brixton, sparked an explosion of pent-up anger that engulfed the area for days. Psyched-up police in full riot gear, many of them openly racist, went into battle with local residents, mostly black. Pelted with bricks, stones and petrol bombs, the police were forced to retreat, some with their riot shields on fire. An angry crowd surged through the central shopping area. Two pubs were burned out, other buildings wrecked, shops had their windows smashed in and their contents were strewn across the pavements.

300 police were injured as well as hundreds of their opponents, many of them too scared to seek medical help in the hospitals. Hundreds were being arrested and summarily charged with ’rioting’ and ’looting’. The most intimidating noise and sight was that of the ’Nightsun’ helicopter with its searchlight and infra-red camera peering into housing estates and side streets, on the hunt for new victims to put in the police cells.

By the Sunday afternoon, however, an eerie calm had descended on the centre of Brixton. The police had set up blockades around the area with the help of massive reinforcements bussed in from outside - a total of 7,445 policemen had been mobilised for the operation. But a traffic-free and police-free zone now existed, stretching from the west of the Town Hall down to the notorious Brixton police station (whose windows had also been smashed in!).

There was an almost festive atmosphere as the people of Brixton - white as well as black - wandered around to see the damage and discuss the significance of the events. They were joined by a growing number of sightseers and well-wishers.

Tories and police

Not so well-received were the Tory Home Secretary, Willie Whitelaw, and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, David McNee, as they attempted a walk-about to assess the situation. Their talk of "outsiders" fomenting the violence did not wash.

Michael Heseltine, then Tory defence secretary, also visited Brixton (and later Toxteth in Liverpool where riots also took place) with a mandate to find solutions.

But he told reporters that not one extra pound of public spending would be provided by Thatcher’s government. In contrast in 1984, mass action by workers in Liverpool forced the same Tory government to concede millions of pounds to the defiant Labour council, led by the Militant Tendency, the fore-runner of the Socialist Party.

The anger that had exploded in Brixton had deep roots. It was born of years of police harassment and outright brutality on top of decades of neglect and deprivation in terms of jobs, housing and social facilities. The previous April, there had been ’riots’ or mass disturbances in the St Paul’s area of Bristol, another run-down and predominantly black community blighted by unemployment and poverty.

The hated ’Sus’ laws, which gave police powers to stop and search merely on ’suspicion’, were being used against black youth far more than white. Raids on factories and homes with the aim of deporting immigrant workers were a daily occurrence.

Resentment smouldered in the black communities of south London over a number of recent racist incidents. 13 young black party-goers were killed in a fire in Deptford on the night of 18 January 1981. The police had done little or nothing to find anyone responsible for what was obviously a racially motivated attack.

Unemployment amongst black youth had reached over 50% nationally; it was rising four times faster than amongst white youth. There were 27 school-leavers for every job vacancy in Lambeth. 12,000 people were registered as unemployed at the Brixton dole office in April 1981.

A generation of black youth saw themselves already thrown on the scrap heap. Thatcher’s policies were obviously going to do nothing to improve their lot; in fact, they were guaranteed to make things worse.

In Liverpool, where the Toxteth ’riots’ took place, the Liberals, under David Alton, had built not one house, whereas when Labour, under the leadership of Militant, came into power, 5,000 homes were built!

Thatcher

In Brixton, the Railton Road area had been due for redevelopment since 1928 and with Thatcher’s housing policy, there would now be no prospect of new homes replacing the slums. She was the real criminal, not those she blamed for inflaming the situation in the inner-city areas.

On the very Saturday of the escalation of clashes with the police in Brixton (April 11), the LPYS and Militant had organised a mock trial of Thatcher in nearby Stockwell Hall. The charges against the prime minister were: "Obtaining votes under false pretences; bribery and corruption; fraud; GBH (grievous bodily harm); murder"!

As the police were battening down the hatches in the area, two socialists who had been putting up posters had been arrested and then the organisers of the court-room farce were ordered to bring it to an end! Tension in the area was mounting by the minute.

It was no surprise when Brixton went up in flames that weekend. But as one local man commented, the only surprise was that it had not happened earlier!

On a BBC 4 discussion ’commemorating’ 30 years since the Brixton events, police spoke openly about the racism that was rampant in the force. One of them recounted how, during the various police operations in the area, police officers, himself included, would attack Rastafarians with dreadlocks and literally pull their hair out from the roots. Back in the police station they would pin up the ’dreads’ as trophies.

Once the April flare-up began, the LPYS and Militant supporters moved into action. They did not consider burning and looting as the way to combat the policies of Thatcher, but they understood what was behind the rage that was unleashed.

They talked to people involved in the battles, to people in local community organisations and in the Labour Party about what could be done, firstly to combat the police rampage and stop the mass arrests, and, secondly to channel this anger into a political fight against the class politics of Thatcher and her government.

They worked rapidly to organise a mass meeting at the Town Hall for the earliest possible date. They got out a leaflet giving their explanation of what had happened and why, and also formulating a programme of demands to express the needs of the hour.

Young socialists

Teams of young (and not so young) socialists went onto the streets. They distributed 30,000 of the rapidly printed leaflets in a meticulously organised door-to-door operation, covering every household in the immediate area.

They went to bus garages, fire stations, hospitals, post office and council depots, factories, local government offices, a milk yard and rail depots to explain the case and seek support. Within two days they had 1,000 signatures on a petition. They put up posters and chalked on the pavements to advertise the public meeting.

By the evening of Wednesday 15 April, 600 agitated, angry and excited people were piling into the Town Hall meeting room to hear and be heard. A resolution to send to Thatcher and her government had been drawn up. It declared that: "the responsibility for the riots in Brixton rests with the police... Also responsible are the Tories and the class they represent, whose system - being run purely for the rich - has pushed unemployment up to three million and bred poverty and slum housing".

It included demands for the immediate withdrawal of the massive police presence from the area, release of all those arrested and dropping of all charges, democratic street committees to defend the areas, an end to stop and search, the disbandment of the hated Special Patrol Group (constantly operating mass swoops in the area), an urgent labour movement inquiry and the "release of funds from central government to be put back into the community".

As the meeting began, someone stood up to insist on an amendment to the very first phrase of the resolution. Instead of "This meeting declares", it should read, "We the people of Brixton, declare..."! That was agreed with a roar of approval. The confidence and enthusiasm of the meeting was palpable.

Many young people signed up to come to an LPYS meeting. Within the next two days 100 were visited and phoned. 45 came to the meeting that weekend.

Benefit gig

Little more than a month later, there were 700 youth packed into a benefit gig, also at the Town Hall, with a bar and a popular band called Aswad playing. The group UB40, along with MPs and many local organisations, including the trades council made contributions towards a fund for assisting the hundreds of arrested people being dragged through the courts.

The Labour Committee for the Defence of Brixton (LCDB) was rapidly set up, involving local black residents’ representatives, shop stewards, councillors, lawyers and Labour Party members.

Among them were Bob Lee, secretary of the PNP black socialist youth organisation, Tony Saunois, then on Labour’s National Executive Committee from the LPYS, Anne Beales, chair of the London region of the LPYS, local solicitor, Mike Fisher, and two members of Militant’s editorial board who lived in the area - Lynn Walsh and myself.

The LCDB came out immediately against the government’s proposal for a police inquiry into the Brixton events to be led by Lord Scarman. Why? Firstly, it was precisely that - a police inquiry! Secondly, it was set up by the Tories who were the ones to blame for all the problems that caused the ’riots’. Thirdly, no one giving evidence to the inquiry would be sure not to find themselves incriminated and under arrest!

Lord Scarman had the dubious record of heading a 1969 ’Tribunal of Inquiry’ into the ’disturbances’ in Northern Ireland without putting forward any solution.

The LCDB called for a totally independent labour movement inquiry as a launch pad for a socialist campaign to solve the major social problems behind the outbreaks of violence.

Although the 1974-79 Labour governments had moved decisively from reform to counter-reform, with attempts at restraining wages and attacking the hard-won gains of the working class, now that the Tories were in power, the Labour Party was under pressure to shift to the left.

On its NEC, the LPYS representative pushed for a national demonstration against Tory policies and rising unemployment. Instead, they organised demonstrations around the country, which turned out to be massive.

Lambeth

In Lambeth, as well as many other working class strongholds, unlike today, the local Labour Parties were still relatively combative and socialist, at least in name. Labour councillors and MPs responded favourably to the efforts of the Lambeth LPYS and sent money and support to the LCDB. The London Labour Party Executive circulated the LCDB material, as did the district offices of the NUPE, TGWU and AUEW trade unions.

The most important task of socialists at that time was to expose the real causes of the uprising in Brixton. They demanded radical changes in policing practice as well as an end to the Thatcher government. They also campaigned for a Labour government on a socialist programme to take its place - something unthinkable today!

Socialists warned that, unless the cuts and attacks on public spending were reversed and the harassment of black and Asian communities by the police was stopped, there would be more flare-ups - in Brixton and in other inner-city deprived areas.

In early July, while tens of thousands of activists were marching in Cardiff on one of the Labour Party protests against unemployment, the Liverpool area of Toxteth exploded, then Salford, then Bristol again and Birmingham and 20 or so other towns and cities across Britain.

Militant

Militant received a sudden flurry of publicity in the press and on TV when ’Red Clare’ appeared in Toxteth at the time of the violent clashes there. We used this opportunity to explain who the real culprits were - Thatcher and the Tories. We did not condone, but understood the actions of the harassed and desperate youth of these deprived areas of Britain.

Towards the end of July, Brixton kicked off again. Police decided to raid eleven households in the Railton Road area on the pretext that they were where Molotov cocktails had been manufactured and stored.

They wrecked people’s homes and terrified whole families. A new uprising was in the making.

The Labour Committee for the Defence of Brixton was still busy with the work of taking evidence from victims of the April conflagration and monitoring the level of police activity in the area. It moved into action immediately - condemning the action of the police thugs and demanding compensation for all those affected by the raids.

The events of 1981 - the levels of police violence and racism that were revealed and the ’findings’ of the Scarman Inquiry - led to the stepping up of attempts to introduce ’community policing’.

Militant and the LPYS took the idea further, calling for democratic control over the police and policing and the right of the police to organise in unions and to strike.

In the year before the Brixton explosion, a mood was developing for the TUC trade union leadership to call a general strike against the Tories and their austerity programme. This was eventually watered down into a ’day of action’.

Similar demands are developing today and a similar reluctance to take action is displayed on the part of the TUC leaders. If they do not move into action, the scenes of despair and explosions of anger like those of 1981 will be back on our streets. Deprived areas of major cities - if not the central areas, then the ’banlieus’ or outskirts as in France - will be the scene of new conflagrations.

Looking at the dramatic events of 30 years ago is a timely reminder of just how vital it is to forge a united workers’ struggle to end unemployment and poverty. Trade union action and the building of a mass party of workers with a socialist programme, including mass job creation, are now the only way ahead for avoiding riots and mindless destruction.

Socialism is less heard of today than in 1981 but the struggle for nationalisation of the commanding heights of the economy and democratic planning to solve the major problems in society is more urgent than ever.

Socialist Party meeting: How to defeat the cuts - Tomorrow 8th March 7.30pm

How to defeat the cuts: Lessons from the Liverpool Struggle

Tuesday 8th March 2011

7.30pm

Cheltenham Road Library, Bristol, BS6 5QX

On 26 March 2011 the British working class rose from its knees and took to the streets in an immense show of strength. The massive TUC demonstration against public spending cuts was well over half a million strong, possibly 700,000 or more. It will have a shattering affect on the farcical unity of the weak Con-Dem coalition and has boosted the confidence of millions of ordinary people. But most importantly it has led people to ask – what next? Where do we go from here? What will it take to defeat the cuts?
The Socialist Party has a fighting strategy - co-ordinated public sector strike action as a step towards generalised strike action if the government doesn't back down, and for local councils, especially Labour, to repudiate cuts and vote against them. If councillors are not prepared to fight then they should make way for those that will. That is why Tom Baldwin will look to the lessons of the Liverpool councillors of 1983-1987, who united the city on a programme of ‘No to All Cuts’ and forced concessions from the hated Thatcher government. All are welcome.

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=109749745774005

Liverpool and the Militant councillors - Lessons for how to fight the cuts

I would urge you to watch part one of the excellent film - Socialism on Trial - the production values have much to ask to for, but the content is second to none and has never been more relevant than now, as millions of ordinary people look for a way forward after yesterday's marvellous demonstration. Nowadays the Labour party has no democratic structures for socialists and trade unionists to effectively argue for fighting policies, but the message to Labour councillors is the same - fight all cuts, and if you are not prepared to, then make way for those that are. If you would like to learn more about this, come along to the Bristol Socialist Party public meeting on Tuesday 29th March, 7.30pm at Cheltenham Road Library, which will be a talk on the lesson of the Liverpool councillors and the relevance for fighting the cuts today.