LENIN'S TOMB

Thursday, October 28, 2010

The Tories are class fighters, not just ideologues. posted by lenin

Me in the Guardian today:

It has become a cliché to say that the Tories' spending cuts are "ideological" . Such is the burden of Labour's evolving critique. Cuts, they say, are unfortunately necessary to assure Britain's fiscal stability, but the Tories go much further than this. They intend to create a smaller state, for ideological reasons. This has a superficial plausibility. After all, the Tories have stated that their aim is to make these deep spending reductions "sustainable", ie permanent. This is not a temporary tightening of the belt, but a project to fundamentally restructure the economy. And there is a fascinating ideological pedigree behind the Tories' plans. But to reduce it to ideology won't wash...

Neither 'ideology', nor 'pragmatism', but praxis.

Labels: austerity, conservatism, cuts, edmund burke, hayek, labour, reactionaries, thatcherism, the meaning of david cameron, tories

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Historical materialism posted by lenin

Just a couple of things coming up. First of all, just to remind you, I will be speaking at Pages of Hackney on 3rd November, on the subject of 'The Meaning of David Cameron' and the spending cuts. You can RSVP on the Facebook event page if you like. If you're coming, please e-mail the event organisers and let them know: info[at]pagesofhackney[dot]co[dot]uk. They'd like to know how many are coming so they can make appropriate arrangements.

Secondly, the annual Historical Materialism conference is coming up. I will be speaking at it on Sunday 14th November on the subject of "Thoroughly Modern Tories: From One Nation to the Big Society". Lastly and leastly, it's my birthday tomorrow - a chance for me to celebrate another year of occupying one third of a cubic metre of otherwise useless space. Indeed, I am presently available to occupy useless spaces all over the country, fee negotiable. Apply within.

Labels: events, historical materialism, marxism, socialism, the complete and utter works of richard seymour, the meaning of david cameron, tories

Daily Mail goes after the disabled posted by lenin

Classy... Okay, let's just get a few things straight:

>The Mail's story is based on a DWP press release, and some rudimentary examination of this DWP report [pdf].

> The Mail's story is mince. It does not show that 75% of disability claimants are fit to work. It shows that 75% of those who apply for the benefit under a new system of testing introduced by the Department of Work and Pensions under New Labour, wherein outsourced medical professionals are incentivised to reject patients, are either rejected or withdraw their applications, which means that the new system is designed to exclude the vast majority of those who apply. Whether or not this means those rejected by the assessors are actually fit for work is not clear. Even if those rejected were indeed fit for work, this would tell us nothing about those currrently on disability allowance.

>The Mail does not discuss the failings of Atos Origin - the private sector assessment contractors whom they mention in their article. It is their assessments that are resulting in the exclusion of hundreds of thousands of people from incapacity and disability benefits. Yet, as they have been hired to help the government meet its target of driving 1 million people of disability rolls, they have a vested interest in finding people to be fit for work. The Child Poverty Action Group has written to Chancellor Osbourne complaining about "the woeful inadequacies in the design of the Work Capability Assessment and shortcomings in quality of assessments undertaken by Atos". The assessment quality is often a problem because the medical professional used by Atos to undertake medical examinations or review the evidence may not have the qualified experience necessary to make a judgment on complex medical problems that people can have. Just as often, it is a problem because the investigation is perfunctory, and unilluminating. (See this discussion). Because one has been deemed 'fit to work' by Atos does not mean that one has been properly examined, or that one is indeed fit to work.

> The Mail relies on the suggestion that people are 'trying it on', and that if the new testing system was applied, perhaps as many as 75% of those who receive the benefit would be rejected as workshy chancers. The evidence of past research shows that the vast majority of those claiming disability-related benefits are in fact disabled. Most such claimants are concentrated in former industrial areas where manufacturing and mining industries regularly produced crippling or disabling accidents. The research finds that at most the government could expect to remove half a million from disability allowance by introducing stricter definitions and procedures. That's not a negligible sum, but a) it's less than 20% of claimants, not 75%, and b) there's no evidence that those who would be removed are deliberately evading work or have trivial complaints. Rather, they would find themselves compelled to undertake various forms of education and training that would make them apt for some forms of work, so that they could be reclassified as jobseekers and put on lower benefits. Surveys of disability benefit claimants find that there are about a million of them who would like to return to work if properly supported. But there isn't such support in place, and there aren't actually millions of jobs waiting to be filled by such people, nor has the government made any indication that it will seek to create those jobs - quite the contrary these days - so the changes introduced by the last government, with Tory support, are actually about reducing the income and consumption of the poorest and most vulnerable people in society.

> The Mail relies on apparently shocking, but false, and irrelevant, claims to bolster its case. For example, the Mail thinks this is a right laugh: "Incredibly, 7,100 tried to claim because they had sexually transmitted diseases and nearly 10,000 because they were too fat." The DWP breaks up initial self-assessment claims according to the categories of the International Classification of Diseases. The Mail has, shall we say, taken liberties in decoding the technical jargon used. Let's start with the figure for being "too fat", which corresponds with the category in the DWP report labelled "Endocrine, Nutritional and Metabolic Diseases". This category includes all sorts of problems such pituitary, thyroid, and pancreatic disorders. These are not reducible to being "too fat". As it happens, however, obesity-related disability is a genuine problem and is about more than fatty tissue. There is a strong relationship between obesity and health problems limiting one's ability to work (see). Being obese is often a symptom of underlying problem - a sudden change in metabolism or rapidly diminished mobility. It can create severe functional impairments that prevent people from working. There's nothing in this to laugh at - unless you're a Daily Mail reader, or Top Gear fan. Now let's consider the claim concerning STDs and disability. This figure corresponds to the DWP category "diseases of the genitourinary system". This includes such problems as acute renal failure, renal tubular acidosis, bone and kidney diseases, breast hypertrophy, etc etc. These are not sexually transmitted diseases, but they can be serious disorders and highly painful and debilitating conditions. Again, the only humour available here is the comedy of the psychopath. The Mail's claim is absurdly, flatly false - a downright lie.

> The Mail seeks to give the impression that even those who have been turned down for incapacity or disability benefits have grabbed millions from the system: "Even so, those who have failed or avoided the test since it was introduced have managed to claim as much as £500million in total before being screened out." In fact, during the first three months in which the assessment takes place, claimants received £65 a week, exactly what they would receive on jobseekers' allowance. They have not duped the system out of money to which they are not entitled. In fact, jobseekers' allowance is a very small benefit that has been steadily declining in value since the 1980s, from about 16% of the average wage in 1987-8 to 10% in 2007-8.

> Last thing. I've picked on today's Daily Mail front page. It's actually the same as the Express front page from two weeks ago. And it's almost identical in the nature of its claims and basic agenda to recent Daily Mail articles, and to numerous other front page shock exclusive reports made for the last few years by the right-wing tabloids, inspired by DWP press releases. It's also identical to ignorant claims made by the former investment banker David Freud while he was working with the last government to 'reform' welfare. It is a propaganda line, constantly promoted by the state, business and the right-wing media. It fits in which the agenda of capital, but is rejected by trade unions, charities, and disability groups. The regularity of its appearance in widely read newspapers is more decisive as a factor in its acceptance than the reliability of its conclusions. Undoubtedly, this will have contributed to a situation in which most people, who lack access to the kinds of information that would expose the propaganda as a sham, will either endorse or acquiesce in cuts to such benefits. It is repeated far more often than any criticism of business, or of bankers, and certainly of the capitalist system which produces mass unemployment and incapacity. This is, in other words, a concrete example of the ideological power of capital.

Labels: austerity, cuts, daily mail, disabled, neoliberalism, new labour, public spending, reactionaries, tories, welfare

Monday, October 25, 2010

Firefighters out for two day strike posted by lenin

The firefighters aren't taking it, and they aren't backing down - and good on them. They're going out for another strike, this one lasting 47 hours, starting on bonfire night. It's in addition to an eight hour strike already planned for November 1st, and constitutes an escalation of the action against Brian Coleman and the LFB management The last strike, lasting for eight hours, has already hit hard. Assetco, the London Fire Brigade's scabbing company showed that they couldn't put out a cigarette, never mind a blaze (eg). There were, I have heard, many Assetco workers who didn't know they'd be scabbing and who won't want to participate in future operations. They probably don't want to face this kind of mass picketing either:

Labels: austerity, boris johnson, cuts, fbu, firefighters, militancy, public sector workers, strikes, trade unions, working class

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Conservatism and war posted by lenin

Corey Robin on why the authentic conservative has always had a taste for violence:

While the contrast between the true conservative and the pseudo-conservative has been drawn in different ways—the first reads Burke, the second doesn't read; the first defends ancient liberties, the second derides them; the first seeks to limit government, the second to strengthen it—the distinction often comes down to the question of violence. Where the pseudo-conservative is captivated by war, Sullivan claims that the true conservative "wants peace and is content only with peace." The true conservative's endorsements of war, such as they are, are the weariest of concessions to reality. He knows that we live and love in the midst of great evil. That evil must be resisted, sometimes by violent means. All things being equal, he would like to see a world without violence. But all things are not equal, and he is not in the business of seeing the world as he'd like it to be.

The historical record suggests otherwise. Far from being saddened, burdened, or vexed by violence, conservatives have been enlivened by it. Not necessarily in a personal sense, though it's true that many a conservative has expressed an unanticipated enthusiasm for violence. "I enjoy wars," said Harold Macmillan, wounded three times in World War I. "Any adventure's better than sitting in an office." The conservative's commitment to violence is more than psychological, however: It's philosophical. Violence, the conservative maintains, is one of the experiences in life that makes us most feel alive, and violence, particularly warfare, is an activity that makes life, well, lively. Such arguments can be made nimbly, as in the case of Santayana, who wrote, "Only the dead have seen the end of war," or laboriously, as in the case of Heinrich von Treitschke:

To the historian who lives in the world of will it is immediately clear that the demand for a perpetual peace is thoroughly reactionary; he sees that with war all movement, all growth, must be struck out of history. It has always been the tired, unintelligent, and enervated periods that have played with the dream of perpetual peace.

Pithy or prolix, the case boils down to this: War is life, peace is death.

Labels: conservatism, counter-revolution, edmund burke, gop, imperialism, joseph de maistre, reactionaries, reactionary subjectivity, republicans, tories, war

French union leadership raises white flag posted by lenin

Guest post by Apostate Windbag:

Le Monde carried an article on Saturday bearing the headline ‘At the intersyndicale, hardliners lose ground (A L’intersyndicale, la ligne dure perd du terrain)’, an analytical report direct from the meeting of the various French union centrals by Claire Guelaud. Apart from the interesting journalistic point I could make that such illuminating industrial reportage, once a prestigious ‘beat’ (the Industrial Correspondent), particularly in the UK and latterly almost extinct, is vital for any informed citizenry, the article more importantly shows how far from adhering to the stereotype we have beyond France (and even domestically) that the French are incorrigible ‘greve-ophiles’, ready to descend into the street at the drop of a beret, the movement is heading toward a defeat consciously constructed by a majority of the union leadership, who are petrified at a ‘debordement’, or overflow of the struggle beyond their control.

The unions have called for two further days of action - one of strikes and demonstrations on 28 October, during the week of a parliamentary vote, and a second of ‘mobilisations’ on 6 November, ahead of the promulgation of the law by the president. All of which might on the face of it suggest the union leaders remain committed, and that the movement will continue. Le Monde’s reporter describes how the union leaders are conscious that the persistence and strength of actions since the beginning of the autumn “renders impossible a premature halt to the movement.”

The mobilisations will continue both during the coming week’s All Saints holiday that Sarkozy has hoped would interrupt and drain the energy of the movement - particularly of students and pupils - and afterward. All the ‘reformist’ unions (Le Monde’s term for the more conservative unions, not mine) - the CFDT, the UNSA, the CFTC, and even the ‘tres reservé’ CFE-CGC - have all called on their troops to keep up the pressure.

However, as the journalist accurately notes, “the centre of gravity has shifted and the hardliners have lost ground.”

The FSU and Solidaires union centrals, both of which had wanted earlier days of action, and Force Ouvriere, which continues to call for a general strike, did not win the day. (The latter two did not sign the resulting intersyndicale communiqué, but the FSU did.)

The crucial quote in the article is the one from Marcel Grignard, the ‘number two’ in the CFDT, the union central close to the Socialist Party, which quietly, and not so quietly in the form of Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the IMF and frontrunner to be the party’s presidential candidate next time around, has supported the pensions reform.

Grignaud: “Our responsibility as trade unionists is to construct compromises that make sense, and not to threaten the legitimacy of parliament or politics.”

The intersyndicale communiqué reminds that the mobilisations will continue “respecting property and people” and makes no mention of other actions and strikes concurrently underway, making links with other confrontations and thus generalising the movement.

Finally, reading between the lines, the UNSA and CFDT have already signalled their surrender, so long as Sarkozy is able to complete passage of the law, saying in essence that this would end the current level of industrial action.

“We will stay together for as long as the parliamentary debate lasts and the imposition of this reform,” said Jean Grosset of the UNSA.

“For the CFDT, the closure of parliamentary debate and the promulgation of the law will create a new situation,” said Grignard.

The CGT, the union close to the Communist Party, for its part has effectively done the same. In the words of Nadine Prigent, a member of the CGT executive: “We demand the immediate opening of negotiations. We will see what the head of state decides and will proceed step by step.”

The reporter is clear to say that none of this suggests a progressive “atterrisage” or “landing” of the movement: What direction the leadership of the CGT takes to manage the various internal tendencies within the union is crucial in the coming days, such as signs of a “wise prudence” on their part. She notes that the desire on the part of the CGT to maintain a unity of action with the more moderate CFDT weighs heavily: “The CGT knows that the the unitary character of the movement is decisive,” remarked Prigent on Thursday night.

“Given these conditions,” writes the reporter, “6 November could be the last day of mobilisations and demonstrations.”

All of this is less important for what occurs in France as far as this particular law goes than for the rest of Europe in the face of the imposition of austerity. The markets, the European Commission, the European Central Bank, the IMF, and Berlin, the invigilator of EU member-state fiscal policies, are all watching the balance of forces in two member states in particular: France and Greece, where opposition forces are the most organised and politicised.

Last week, the IMF and the Greek government began to tentatively discuss an extension repayment of Greece's €110 billion loan. While Brussels and Berlin immediately rejected the idea out of hand, Costas Lapavitsas, a Greek economist at the University of London, told the EUobserver, the EU affairs online newspaper, that he believes that this opening of the discussion on Greek debt repayment is actually an indication that the Greek government and the IMF are beginning to feel more confident that the austerity shock measures are working.

"This is basically signalling a new phase of the crisis. They believe that they are meeting success in stabilising the deficit. The recession is still unfolding and is pretty serious, but the government believes that this is looking like it will be within what the IMF expects for this year," he said.

He also said that a second crucial factor behind the comments is that the IMF and Greece have managed to push through the programme without stirring massive popular opposition to the extent that was originally feared.

"There has been discontent, to be sure, but not in an organised or decisive fashion that could threaten the political situation."

Elites feel, with some justification, that they have held the line in Greece. Thus it is not even that the failure of the French popular movements to halt Sarkozy’s pension reform will only add to their overall confidence, but that it will send a signal to them that they can push through anything.

The struggle in France is pivotal. The state of the struggle across Europe hinges upon what French grassroots forces beyond the trade union leadership are able to achieve in the republic in the coming hours and days.

***

For additional information and perspective, see the following pieces: "The Revolt Shaking France", and "France: a key moment as unions meet to consider next move".

Labels: austerity, capitalism, capitalist crisis, france, militancy, neoliberalism, pensions, recession, sarkozy, socialism, strikes, trade unions, working class

Social cleansing posted by lenin

Quite by coincidence, I was reading about Dame Shirley Porter's gerrymandering yesterday. You might remember that under her leadership, the Conservatives on Westminster city council implemented an elaborate and expensive plan to engineer the movement of thousands of the borough's poorest citizens out of certain 'marginal' wards that were in danger of going Labour. This was because the Tories had just about retained control of the council in the 1986 bye-election. Following the exposure of this scandal, and the launching of an official inquiry in the early 1990s, Porter eloped to Israel where she remained until 2006. She has never been brought to book, but the project was overwhelmingly successful, ensuring that Westminster remained under Conservative control - today, 80% of its councillors are Tory.

This is presumably not the same type of scheme. For one thing, it's far too brazen a form of 'social cleansing'. Councils in the centre of London are openly organising an exodus of 200,000 of the capital's poorest people into outlying areas such as Reading, Luton and even Hastings. This is the result of a combination of cuts in social housing benefit, lower levels of socially affordable housing, higher rents and the failure to impose any kind of rent cap on landlords. It adds a new layer of callousness to Iain Duncan Smith's demand that the unemployed should "get on the bus" and find work - this from a minister whose job is to know that jobseekers are already compelled to travel far and wide in order to take work if it's available.

The alternative to being shunted out of the capital, away from friends, relatives, communities and - interestingly enough - jobs, will possibly be to sleep on the streets as, according to the National Housing Federation, the cuts to housing benefit "could see more people sleeping rough than at any stage during the last 30 years". And then it will be the job of the cops to keep the problem invisible - in the tourist areas anyway - by arresting and 'moving on' said rough sleepers who find a shop doorway or station entrance to curl up under. Such 'social cleansing' is, to different degrees and in different ways, an aspect of all spaces where neoliberal accumulation is the rule. The rule is for a global system of opulent, highly securitised 'green zones' to proliferate, with the working classes compelled to commute for hours a day from outlying, dilapidated suburbs, banlieues or ghettos, to work in shops they can never buy from, clean hotels they can never sleep in, sweep streets they have no stake in, and make goods they will never take home. The combination of economic pressures - high rents and consumer prices, declining relative wages, unsustainable debt levels, etc - would tend to have 'socially cleansing' effects in themselves, forcing the city's working classes to seek affordable accomodation in outer London overspill areas like, say, Barking. The Tories, by attacking housing benefits, have just made such tendencies into official policy.

Oh, and by the way, spare a thought for this scumbag, who has been struggling with his conscience.

Labels: austerity, cuts, defend council housing, housing, neoliberalism, spending cuts, tories, welfare

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Anti-cuts protests posted by lenin

Surprisingly large turn-outs outside of London, especially in Edinburgh which saw the biggest Scotland-wide protest since Gleneagles, with more than 20,000 in attendance. Socialist Worker reckons that a further 15,000 turned out in Belfast, 3000 in Bristol, 1000 in Manchester, 2000 in Sheffield, and hundreds in other towns and cities. London's RMT-led rally against the cuts saw 2000 turn out - though in fairness, today's efforts in the capital mostly involved bringing people out to mass pickets at fire stations.. See SW's pics and report.

Labels: austerity, cuts, neoliberalism, public spending, socialism, tories, trade unions

Firefighters strike posted by lenin

Socialists and trade unionists have been out supporting the striking firefighters today. This is what I'm hearing. The scab company Assetco was supposed to have 27 fire engines at its disposal. It actually has 14, four of which crashed, according to strikers at Woodford, because the idiot scabs don't know how to handle them. One of the vehicles reportedly crashed into a lamp post. A report on the firefighters' support group on Facebook reckons that some of the Assetco workers didn't realise they were being used as scabs and have returned one of the engines.

The fire authority isn't admitting to any of this. The Mirror's report cites fire bosses saying that they have all 27 vehicles out with 162 "contract staff" working them. And the band played, 'believe it if you like'. Reports from Woodford, Holloway, Poplar and elsewhere that I've heard about evince a huge amount of popular support, with cars and buses tooting on the way by. Socialist Worker has some picket line photos here. I hear that Police have turned up at a couple of picket lines, but they aren't intervening so far, and the scab workers aren't interested in having a confrontation with the firefighters, so a lot of the stations that were supposed to be used for scabbing have actually not been used at all. At the same time, striking workers are actually leaving their pickets to deal with one or two severe emergency situations that the scabs aren't able to deal with.

You'll remember I suggested that Brian Coleman, the Tory assembly member and head of the London Fire Authority who is provoking this dispute, didn't appear to have the ability to beat the firefighters. Of course, there's nothing to say that he and the commissioner won't improve their game, learning from experience so that they handle the next strike better. But the system is already stretched thin as it is, and even the various measure short of strike such as an overtime ban have hit hard.

It seems to be a similar situation with the tube. Anyone who has used public transport in London this week, as expensive as it increasingly is, will have heard of or experienced directly some of the chaos that is already taking place. This is in part because of a loss of good will on the part of staff, as bosses are looking to shed thousands of jobs. Even by 'working to rule' - that is by declining to do more than they are contractually obliged to do - they have demonstrated that the system works effectively because of the good will and small sacrifices made by workers on the job every day. If London's Tory administration wants to keep pushing these delinquent, ruthless cuts - and it is about cuts - then I hope there'll be coordinated action by all the workers affected.

Labels: boris johnson, cuts, fbu, firefighters, militancy, public sector workers, strike, tories, working class

Friday, October 22, 2010

1970 posted by lenin

Duncan felt a bit uncomfortable for another couple of minutes. He thought about Liz, but even here, just in the street outside the record shop, he couldn’t remember what she looked like. Now he could only see Maria.
But he’d got the record. It was a good omen. Killie would surely win, although with these power cuts you didn’t know for how long football would be on as the nights would start to draw in soon. It was a small price to pay though, for getting rid of that bastard Heath and the Tories. It was brilliant that those wankers couldn’t take the piss out of the working man any longer. His parents had made sacrifices, determined that he wouldn’t follow his father down the pit. They insisted that he was apprenticed, that he got a trade behind him. So Duncan had been sent to live with an aunt in Glasgow while he served his time in a machine shop in Kinning Park. Glasgow was big, brash, vibrant and violent to his small-town sensibilities, but he was easy-going and popular in the factory. His best pal at work was a guy called Matt Muir, from Govan, who was a fanatical Rangers supporter and a card-carrying communist. Everybody at his factory supported Rangers, and as a socialist he knew and was shamed by the fact that he, like his workmates, had obtained his apprenticeship through his family’s Masonic connections. His own father saw no contradiction between freemasonry and socialism, and many of the Ibrox regulars from the factory floor were active socialists, even in some cases, like Matt, card-carrying communists. — The first bastards that would get it would be those cunts in the Vatican, he’d enthusiastically explain, — right up against the wa’ wi they fuckers.

Matt kept Duncan right about the things that mattered, how to dress, what dance halls to go to, who the razor-boys were, and importantly, who their girlfriends were and who, therefore, to avoid dancing with. Then there was a trip to Edinburgh, on a night out with some mates, when they went to that Tollcross dancehall and he saw the girl in the blue dress. Every time he looked at her, it seemed that his breath was being crushed out of him. Even though Edinburgh appeared more relaxed than Glasgow, Matt claiming that razors and knives were a rarity, there had been a brawl. One burly guy had punched another man, and wanted to follow up. Duncan and Matt intervened and managed to help calm things down. Fortunately, one of the grateful benefactors of their intervention was a guy in the same company as the girl Duncan had been hypnotised by all night, but had been too shy to ask to dance. He could see Maria then, the cut of her cheekbones and her habit of lowering her eyes giving an appearance of arrogance which conversation with her quickly dispelled. It was even better, the guy he befriended was called Lenny, and he was Maria’s brother.

Maria was nominally a Catholic, though her father had an unexplained bitterness towards priests and had stopped going to church. Eventually his wife and their children followed suit. None the less, Duncan worried about his own family’s reaction to the marriage, and was moved to go down to Ayrshire to discuss it with them. Duncan’s father was a quiet and thoughtful man. Often his shyness was confused with gruffness, an impression accentuated by his size (he was well over six foot tall), which Duncan had inherited along with his straw-blonde hair. His father listened in silence to his deposition, giving the occasional nod in support. When he did speak, his tone was that of a man who felt he had been grossly misrepresented.

— Ah don’t hate Catholics, son, his father insisted, — Ah’ve nothing against anybody’s religion. It’s those swines in the Vatican, who keep people doon, keep them in ignorance so that they can keep filling thir coffers, that’s the scum ah hate. Reassured on this point, Duncan decided to keep his freemasonry from Maria’s father, who seemed to detest masons as much as he did priests. They married in the Register Office in Edinburgh’s Victoria Buildings and had a reception in the upstairs rooms of a Cowgate pub. Duncan was worried about an Orange, or even a Red speech from Matt Muir, so he asked his best pal from school back in Ayrshire, Ronnie Lambie, to do the honours. Unfortunately, Ronnie had got pretty drunk, and made an anti-Edinburgh speech, which upset some guests and later on, as the drink flowed, precipitated a fist-fight. Duncan and Maria took that as their cue to head off to the room they had booked at a Portobello guest house.

Back at the factory and back at the machine, Duncan was singing The Wonder of You, the tune spinning in a loop in his head, as metal yielded to the cutting edge of the lathe. Then the light from the huge windows above turned to shadow. Somebody was standing next to him. He clicked off the machine and looked up. Duncan didn’t really know the man. He had seen him in the canteen, and on the bus, obviously a non-smoker, always sitting downstairs. Duncan had an idea that they lived in the same scheme, the man getting off at the stop before him. The guy was about five-ten, with short brown hair and busy eyes. As Duncan recalled, he usually had a cheery, earthy demeanour, at odds with his looks: conventionally handsome enough to be accompanied by narcissism. Now, though, the man stood before him in an extreme state of agitation. Upset and anxious, he blurted — Duncan Ewart? Shop Steward?

They both acknowledged the daftness of the rhyme and smiled at each other. — I art Ewart shop steward. And you art? Duncan continued the joke. He knew this routine backwards.

But the man wasn’t laughing any longer. He gasped out breathlessly — Wullie Birrell. Ma wife … Sandra … gone intae labour … Abercrombie … eh’ll no lit ays go up tae the hoaspital … men oaf sick … the Crofton order … says that if ah walk oaf the joab ah walk oot for good … In a couple of beats, indignation managed to settle in Duncan’s chest like a bronchial tickle. He ground his teeth for a second, then spoke with quiet authority. — You git tae that hoaspital right now, Wullie. Thir’s only one man that’ll be walkin oaf this joab fir good n that’s Abercrombie. Rest assured, you’ll git a full apology fir this!

— Should ah clock oaf or no? Wullie Birrell asked, a shiver in his eye making his face twitch.

— Dinnae worry aboot that, Wullie, jist go. Get a taxi and ask the boy for the receipt and ah’ll pit it through the union.

Wullie Birrell nodded gratefully and exited in haste. He was already out the factory as Duncan put down his tools and walked slowly to the payphone in the canteen, calling the Convenor first, and then the Branch Secretary, the clanking sounds of washing pots and cutlery in his ear. Then he went directly to the Works Manager, Mr Catter, and filed a formal grievance. Catter listened calmly, but in mounting perturbation at Duncan Ewart’s complaint. The Crofton order had to go out, that was essential. And Ewart, well, he could get every man on the shop floor to walk off the job in support of this Birrell fellow. What in the name of God was that clown Abercrombie thinking about? Certainly, Catter had told him to make sure that order went out by any means necessary, and yes, he had actually used those terms, but the idiot had obviously lost all sense, all perspective.
Catter studied the tall, open-faced man opposite him. Catter had encountered hard men with an agenda in the shop steward’s role many times. They hated him, detested the firm and everything it stood for. Ewart wasn’t one of them. There was a warm glow in his eyes, a sort of calm righteousness which, when you engaged it for a while, seemed to be more about mischief and humour than anger. — There seems to have been a misunderstanding, Mr Ewart, Gatter said slowly, offering a smile which he hoped was contagious. — I’ll explain the position to Mr Abercrombie.

— Good, Duncan nodded, then added, — Much appreciated.

For his part, Duncan had quite a bit of time for Catter, who had always come across as a man of a basically fair and just disposition. When he did impose the more bizarre dictates from above, you could tell that he didn’t do it with much relish. And it couldn’t be too much fun trying to keep bampots like Abercrombie in line.

Abercrombie. What a nutter.

On his way back to the machine shop, Duncan Ewart couldn’t resist poking his head into the pen, boxed off from the factory floor, which Abercrombie called his office.

— Thanks, Tarn! Abercrombie looked up at him from the grease-paper worksheets sprawled across the desk.

— What for? he asked, trying to feign surprise, but his face reddened.

He’d been harassed, under pressure, and hadn’t been thinking straight about Birrell. And he’d played right into that Bolshie cunt Ewart’s hands. Duncan Ewart smiled gravely. — For trying to keep Wullie Birrell on the job on a Friday afternoon with the boys all itching tae down tools. A great piece of management. I’ve put it right for ye, I’ve just told him to go, he added smugly.

A pellet of hate exploded in Abercrombie’s chest, spreading to the extremities of his fingers and toes. He began to flush and shake. He couldn’t help it. That bastard Ewart: who the fuck did he think he was? — Ah run this fuckin shop floor! You bloody well mind that!

Duncan grinned in the face of Abercrombie’s outburst. — Sorry, Tarn, the cavalry’s on its way.

Abercrombie wilted at that moment, not at Duncan’s words but at the sight of a stonyfaced Catter appearing behind him, as if on cue. Worse still, he came into the small box with Convenor Bobby Affleck. Affleck was a squat bull of a man who had a bearing of intimidating ferocity when even mildly irritated. But now, Abercrombie could instantly tell, the Convenor was in a state of incandescent rage. Duncan smiled at Abercrombie and winked at Affleck before leaving and closing the door behind them. The thin plywood door proved little barrier to the sound of Affleck’s fury. Miraculously, every lathe and drill machine on the shop floor was switched off, one by one, replaced by the sound of laughter, which spilled like a rush of spring colouring across the painted grey concrete factory floor.

— Irvine Welsh, Glue, 2001

Labels: communism, labour, Literature, militancy, shop stewards, socialism, strike, trade unions, working class

Remembrances of things past posted by lenin

Nick Clegg, patronising a member of the public:

"I understand people are very fearful. Fear is a very powerful emotion. It pushes everything aside. I ask people to have a little bit of perspective. We believe... that it is done as fairly as we possibly can, where the richest are genuinely paying the most. We've tried to make sure particularly the elderly and the young are protected. If people can just look at some of the variety of the announcements we've made, rather than respond to a totally understandable anxiety, they'll see the picture is a lot more balanced."

It all sounds so familiar. Where have I heard that condescending, evasive, vapid, aloof, placatory, but at the same time wheedlingly hectoring tone before? (Similar style here). Could it be? Has the antichrist found a new host...?

Labels: austerity, cuts, lib dems, nick clegg, tony blair, tories

Labour loses the East End posted by lenin

Lutfur Rahman romped to a huge victory in the Tower Hamlets mayoral election. Turnout was low, as it generally is for local elections, but the margin between the candidates speaks for itself:

Lutfur Rahman, Independent - 23,283 (51.76%)
Helal Uddin Abbas, Labour Party - 11,254
Neil Anthony King, Conservative Party - 5,348
John David Macleod Griffiths, Liberal Democrats - 2,800
Alan Duffell, Green Party - 2,300

This is a wholly deserved defeat for the Labour Right, who have already proven their inability to command support in London with their inept campaign for Oona King. They must have thought that in seeing off Respect in the 2010 elections, they had seen off the leftist insurgency in their own back yard, as it were, and go on a purge. But it doesn't work that way. And it's as well it doesn't because, as I say, this was as much about fiscal priorities and the cuts as it was about anything else. The new mayor will have enormous executive power over budgets, and has said that he will oppose the cuts. Whether or not he intends to put something behind his promises, the vote shows that Tower Hamlets residents are not in a compliant mood.

Labels: blairites, ken livingstone, labour, labour left, new labour, respect, right-wing, tower hamlets

Thursday, October 21, 2010

A fake's 'progress' posted by lenin

The IFS have, predictably, torn the Tories' 'progressive' claims for their Comprehensive Spending Review to ribbons. The headline is: the spending review is overwhelmingly regressive, with the poorest 10% suffering most. The 'total consolidation', including Labour's measures, will bite more into the income of the richest 2% - but only because of the previous government's tax policies. (Follow Faisal Islam's tweets on the IFS's briefing). Far from being progressive, it's quite a deliberate assault on the poorest, and "risks" - so says this economist - "spiralling poverty". The cuts to social housing, for example, will result in a trebling of rent for new council house tenants. It's also worth mentioning that the bank levy, raising a miser's sum of £2.5bn, will coincide with corporation tax cuts, leaving the biggest banks better off. Note that even the solitary figure of £2.5bn is much lower even than the total sum of expected bonuses, which will rise to £6.8bn this year.

Relatedly, check out China Mieville's 'letter to a progressive Liberal Democrat'.

Labels: austerity, budget, cuts, david cameron, george osborne, neoliberalism, new labour, poverty, public sector workers, public spending, tories, trade unions