No to the Cuts in Newham

Next June I think, will be my tenth year as a resident in the great London Borough of Newham, and it really is a great and wonderful place to live, so diverse, rich and cosmopolitan in benevolence and impartiality; that is extended to all races and to all creeds by its citizens as if by habit.

Last night I attended a meeting called to consider the distressful and disgraceful cuts being planed by the Con Dem coalition; cuts that we have read and heard so much about since the general election, and next week, if you didn’t already know, the Chancellor George Osborn will announce through the guise of inter-departmental spending review, were their swinging axe will fall.

We already have a pretty good idea what they plan, or at least those of us who take an interest in the political butcherly of these servants of the ruling class.

In this post it isn’t my intension to go into the finer details of the impending cuts, but to briefly report on last nights meeting which took place in a really lovely Community Centre in Forest Gate, which is just down the road from where I live in Canning Town.

As has always been my own practice over the years; I tend to arrive for a meeting early and sometimes up to an hour early; this helps me get a feel for a particular place and I can spend some quite time in mental meditation; considering what is to be deliberated and turned over, in this case the cuts and how they will impact on the people of Newham and what can we do about them.

The meeting was held at Durning Hall Community Centre in Forest Gate, and I have to say what a lovely facility is the Community Centre, when I arrived having never been there before, I was taken back by the warmth and the ambiance of atmosphere. It was buzzing with activity, a real hub of the community if ever I saw one. It has a community café, a second hand book-stall and children were happily participating in versus activates, I met one young lady and her dad who were attending tap-dancing classes, just a wonderful place and the most impressive Community Centre I had ever had the absolute joy to visit!”

Anyhow, the meeting was attended by about 40 or so people, the majority I would say were old hands and community activists, professional and voluntary. There was a sprinkling of committed trade unionists able to see the full picture, and of course the usual types that one anticipates to encounter at such an event, of start a revolution, that’s members of the SWP and the Socialist Party, the latter being what was better known as the Militant Tendency back in the day.

It really is not my intension to be sectarian because the cuts affect them as much as anyone else, and besides some of them made good contributions providing clarity at times. However having been involved in many campaigns over the years, from the Anti-Nazi-League, Poll Tax and so on. I like many have good and bad experiences of the way some so-called revolutionary organisations operate, and for my part will endeavour to make sure that every voice is heard and listened to, that the fight is not about paper sales or recruiting members to their respective organisations, having said that Sarah Ruiz and Kevin Blowe should be congratulated on organising the meeting, they are not associated or at least to my knowledge to any of the above organisations. Kevin runs the excellent blog Random Blowe and has posted his own report which you can read here.

Well the thing is a line has now been drawn in the sand in Newham, and my feeling is this campaign will go from strength to strength if we all pull together, this is our time it is our communities that are being attacked; they want to destroy the welfare that our grandparents fought for, and the services that were hard-won now need to be defended and improved, and furthermore we need to do this above all else, for our children!”


More about the cuts and Newham tomorrow!"                            

Labour Representation (2)

There can be no misunderstanding or doubting the early determination of pioneering trade unionists, associated with Labour Representation. We should always stop to appreciate their commitment driven in the face of a barbaric, evil and exploitative Victorian owning and controlling class.

For only a few decades in the 19th century did British manufactured goods dominated world trade. Most mass manufactured items were produced more efficiently and competitively in Britain than elsewhere. She also had the commercial, financial and political power to edge out rivals at home and abroad. In some industries, most notably textiles, massive changes took place in technology and in the organisation of production causing dramatic productivity growth. This in turn brought a steep decline in prices. In many other sectors more modest organisational improvements coupled with greater specialisation and the employment of cheap labour brought similar, though less dramatic, results. An unprecedented range and variety of products thus came within the grasp of a new mass market both within Britain and overseas. No other country could at first compete so Britain became the workshop of the world.

And it was against this background, a time that Victorians became very much obsessed with the accumulation of wealth and I suppose this explains the building of an exploitative empire hence then: Britannia rules the waves; but let’s not forget that working men, and yes, women laid down the foundations of an expanding trade union movement at this very cornerstone of industrial development.   

Economic historian Arnold Toynbee (in a lecture he gave in 1884) described his then-recent times as:

 “A darker period - a period as disastrous and as terrible as any through which a nation ever passed; disastrous and terrible, because, side by side with a great increase of wealth was seen an enormous increase of pauperism; and production on a vast scale, the result of free competition, led to a rapid alienation of classes and to the degradation of a large body of producers.”

Capitalism was still a comparatively new social system, still in its phase of expansion. By today’s standards, its technology, though immensely productive compared with what went before, was backward being based on coal and iron. On the political side too capitalism was still in its growth stage.

In the1860s working class reform organisations existed; they mushroomed-up in different industrial arrears and attracted much working class support. When I consider this historical development; and let us just travel back to our own time and consider is there not something here that we in the 21^st century cannot learn from their development, not so much as seeking reforms but the drive and determination to build organisations that empower workers; organisation with an educational and political acquisition to bring about change?”

More about what short of change latter, but also just consider this: If we want a new start we must first look to the past. The present is too occupied, the future now too obscure.

The 1860s also saw developing pressure from the unions for legislation on a wider range of issues, including safety, employment contracts, the right of trade union organisation, the protection of trade union funds and the extension of the franchise. The Reform Act of 1867, which extended the franchise to sections of the male urban working class, came not from the Liberals but from Disraeli’s Tory Government. It was followed by significant social reforms. The Tories, with their main power base in the countryside, sought widen their support against the Whigs and the Liberals by introducing reforms likely to win sympathy among the working class.

Then in 1867 a number of leading trade unionists issued an appeal for the direct representation of ‘Labour in Parliament’. The appeal not only included the long-standing demands for the extension of the franchise and parliamentary reform but also put forward a programme of claims effecting working class interests. It was, however, in no sense a socialist manifesto.

In the General Election in the following year two trade unionist and a co-operator stood in support of  labour representation. None was elected. In 1868 the Trade Union Congress was formed. It was an indication of the thinking of trade union leaders at the time that the elected executive of the TUC was known as the Parliamentary Committee. It was only many years latter that the title was changed to what is now known as the General Council. And that makes me think that there are always the Generals in the Labour movement, who always hold back the country-dances of the workers.

Part Three coming soon!”

Click here for Labour Representation (1)          

The coalition never had any intension to mend the injured, or to heal the broken tissue in our society

There can be no doubt whatsoever; that we will see under this government a dramatic increase in the numbers of people forced into homelessness. Plans to make cuts in housing benefit may put up to 200.000 people at risk that’s according to the National Housing Federation (NHF).

The NHF, which represents’ housing organisations across the country, claimed that people living in London and the South-East would be hit the hardest and has estimated that up to 34,000 people could lose their homes.

Nationally, the group claims the overall number of people faced with homelessness could be as many as 750, 000.

This of course would be the result of measures announced by rich boy, who has never ever known a single day of hardship in his whole life, the chancellor George Osborn.

I can not put to fine a point on this, for we will see such an explosion of homelessness that will inevitably have such an impact on the lives of so many including children, and that which we know today as society; will cicatrice all that.

Remember David Cameron, giving it the big one about a broken society, about how the family was important and all that otherwise verbal diarrhoea, oh yes, it came out of his mouth just like watery bowel movements. He and his Con Dem coalition never had any intension to mend the injured, or to heal the broken tissue in our society. They work for the love of profit, the followers of a quick buck, a killing to be made when times were good for them, and out of those in need of a home, you could say a vast flowing majority in need, lets remember 9 August 2007 when the bad news from French bank BNP Paribas triggered sharp rise in the cost of credit, and made the financial world realise how serious the situation was.

The roots of the credit crunch.

Defined as "a severe shortage of money or credit". Let us remember that between 2004 and 2006 US interest rates rose from 1% to 5.35%, triggering a slowdown in the US housing market.

Homeowners, many of whom could only barely afford their mortgage payments when interest rates were low, began to default on their mortgages.

The impact of these defaults were felt across the financial system as many of the mortgages had been bundled up and sold on to banks and investors.

Let us remember Northern Rock who relied heavily on the markets, rather than savers' deposits, to fund its mortgage lending. The onset of the credit crunch dried up its funding.

A day later depositors withdraw £1bn in what is the biggest run on a British bank for more than a century.

Let us remember the trillions pumped into the banks and the world economy just like a rhythmic contraction that held up the world of capitalism when through greed it had a massive heart attack as it stood still, heart thumping wildly.

When Osborne, stands up in the House of Commons on the 20^th October and tells us were the axe will fall, let’s remember all this and much more!”

Double-dipping

Optimism is that really the right word. No I think not, greed among chief financial officers in the Golden Mile of the-city has apparently descended to its lowest level in 18 months, with more than a third believing the economy will slide into a double-dip recession.

The latest CFO survey, carried out by the accountancy group Deloitte, found that optimism had declined for the third-successive quarter despite a "fairly robust" economic recovery – what recovery?”

Meanwhile the first phase of the Government's "radical" welfare reform programme starts today with benefit claimants in Aberdeen starting to be reassessed for their ability to work.

The move comes as new figures lay claim (allegedly) that almost £135 billion has been spent over the past 10 years keeping two million people "on the sick".

Long-term incapacity benefit claimants in Aberdeen and Burnley, Lancashire, will be the first across the country to undergo a new test - the Work Capability Assessment - to see if they are fit for work.

When we see these figures thrown about how much it has cost the country in sickness benefits, let’s just remember the 185 billion pounds it cost to bail-out the banks in less than two years, and the rest.