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

Greece: Left has opportunity to stop austerity

Following the recent elections in Greece, which saw two out of three voters vote against pro-austerity parties and a big swing to left parties, Niall Mulholland spoke to Andros Payiatsos, from Xekinima (CWI in Greece).

From: http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5744

What do the election results represent?

The parliamentary election results in Greece were a political earthquake, a crushing repudiation of the pro-austerity parties and the ‘Troika’ (International Monetary Fund, European Union and European Central Bank). This follows years of austerity measures that have led to a collapse in living standards, 51% youth unemployment and mass poverty.

The outgoing government coalition parties suffered a massive collapse in support. The traditional conservative party, New Democracy, fell from just over 33% in 2009 to 18.85% (108 MPs, which includes the 50 seat bonus received by the first party, according to Greek electoral law). Pasok, the traditional social democratic party, crashed from 43.9 percent in the last elections to 13.18% (41 seats). In the past three decades, the combined vote of the two “ruling” parties varied between 75% and 85% of the vote. Laos, the small right wing party that joined New Democracy and Pasok in the austerity coalition for a few months, lost all its MPs.

The biggest gains went to the broad left, Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left), which rose from 4.6% to 16.78% (52 seats). The communist party (KKE) won 8.48% (26 MPs). The Democratic Left, which split from Syriza in 2010 on a more right wing path, but which also attacked austerity cuts, won 6.1%.

This major swing to the left by Greek voters shows the huge potential for a bold socialist alternative to the capitalist crisis and austerity cuts.

However, serving as a warning to the workers’ movement, the neo-fascist Golden Dawn, exploiting the anti-cuts mood and issues over immigration, picked up 6.97%. For the first time, this far right party entered parliament, with 21 MPs. The Independent Greeks, a recent right wing nationalist split from New Democracy, also entered parliament, with 10.6% (33 MPs).

While the election results revealed a polarisation along left and right lines, many workers and youth saw no viable alternative on offer and simply did not vote for any party. Abstention was much higher than predicted, at a record 35%, and ‘blank’ and invalid votes stood at 2.4%

Why did Syriza gain so many votes?

Syriza gained support over the last two weeks of the election campaign mainly by appealing for a ‘Left government’ against the Troika’s ‘memorandum’.

The supporters of Xekinima pioneered the call for a Left ‘united front’ and for a vote for the parties of the left, over the last months. Unlike Syriza leaders, Xekinima did not call for a ‘renegotiation’ of the crushing austerity measures, but for a Left government to carry out a programme to defend working people. This would include repudiating the debt, stopping all cuts, nationalising the main banks and industries, under democratic workers’ control and management, and fighting for a socialist Europe, as opposed to the bosses’ EU - breaking with the diktat of the Troika and capitalism, in general.

The other main forces on the Left in Greece, the communist party (KKE) and Antarsya (the Anti-capitalist Left Cooperation) both took a sectarian attitude and rejected Syriza’s ‘left unity’ proposal. Yet if the left had formed an electoral bloc, they would probably now be in a position to form a government! With millions of workers yearning for an anti-cuts left government, the KKE and Antarsya paid for their approach in the polls. Their votes remain virtually stagnant: the KKE rose by just 1% (under 19,000) to 8.48% (26 MPs) and Antarsya finished on 1.19%, with no MPs.

Can a new government be formed?

Under the Greek constitution, New Democracy, as the largest party, was given three days to try to form a new government. But its leader, Antonis Samaras, announced on Monday after just a few hours that his party had failed in its bid to create a “national salvation” government.

Given the unambiguous anti-austerity verdict of the electorate, no parties entering a coalition government can do so without at least pledging to renegotiate the ‘memorandum’ with the Troika.

The Troika may be prepared to re-negotiate over aspects of the memoranda and to make some minor concessions. But the Troika will not agree to end its central demands for huge debt repayments from Greece, which can only come at the cost of yet more enormous cuts to welfare, jobs and living standards. The question of Greek membership of the eurozone and even the EU will, most probably, quickly be placed on the agenda.

Greek politics is entering very stormy waters. The invitation to form a government fell to Syriza, the second biggest party. If it fails, the initiative goes to Pasok, and if that fails, to the Greek president, who can try to assemble a coalition.

The combined strength of the Syriza and the KKE, even together with the Democratic Left, in parliament is not enough to form a majority government and, to date, the KKE has refused to accept Syriza’s proposal.

Failure to form a new government would eventually lead to new elections. The ruling class has additional reasons to dread this prospect, as most probably it will lead to Syriza becoming the largest party.

What must the left do now?

Alexis Tsipras, the Syriza leader, said he will strive to form a “left-wing coalition” to reject the "barbaric" measures associated with the EU/IMF bailout deal.

Xekinima (CWI Greece) supports the call for a left government coalition but it must be a government fully committed to opposing all austerity cuts and the bosses’ EU, rejecting the debt repayments and carrying out pro-worker policies, not ‘renegotiating’ for ‘milder’ cuts and ‘more generous’ loan repayments, which still means a lowering of Greek living standards. The Syriza leadership must oppose any coalition or co-operation with the bosses’ parties, which would be a disastrous trap.

There is now a great opportunity for Syriza to publicly put forward a programme for a workers’ government. It is true that according to parliamentary arithmetic the left do not have enough MPs to form such a government. Furthermore, the KKE leadership has, so far, refused to co-operate with Syriza. But huge pressure needs to come from trade unionists, social movement activists and the rank and file of the KKE and Syriza, to insist that both parties reject sectarianism and any ‘cuts-lite’ policies based on ‘re-negotiated’ austerity. The workers’ movement activists want genuine left unity, preparing the ground to form a new left government in the near future.

A programme to unite Syriza and the KKE around opposition to all austerity measures and the EU diktats, for cancellation of the debt and nationalisation of the main banks and industries under democratic workers’ control and for socialist change, as the basis of a workers’ government, would win widespread support from the working class, youth and ruined middle class. It would inspire a resurgence of mass action in the workplaces and communities.

If an attempt is made to form yet another cuts-making coalition, based around Pasok and ND, the left and workers’ movement needs to organise mass opposition, including general strikes and workplace occupations, to stop such attempts, which have no mandate.

Last weekend’s election makes clear that a majority government of the left is possible. If new elections take place in June, the left parties will have a great opportunity to win a majority. This requires the left parties adopting socialist policies – a rejection of the debt repayments and a struggle to break with the bosses’ EU and the profit-system. It also means a strong united front of the left and workers’ movement against the threat of the neo-fascist and far right.

If the left fails to offer a viable socialist alternative, the far right can partially fill the space and grow, and the ruling class will also seek to deploy more authoritarian measures against the workers’ movement resisting cuts.