The sacking of the Lindsey workers is a challenge for the whole working class

The sacking of the Lindsey workers is a challenge for the whole working class - Socialist Worker

Support this statement on the construction dispute.

The sacking of 900 workers at the Lindsey Oil Refinery (LOR) is an attack on every trade unionist in the country.

Total used the sacking of 51 workers as a threat to activists at the site. They have now moved to break the recent unofficial strike movement based around LOR. If the employers succeed in breaking this well organised group of workers then every trade unionist will suffer.

There is only one response to this outrageous attack. That is to shutdown every construction site, every refinery and every power station. Workers across the movement have to move now to support the workers at LOR.

The fact that workers have moved to do exactly that should be applauded.

Unite and the GMB unions repudiated the action at Lindsey. They say that they were forced to by the anti-union laws. But 12 years into a Labour government that Paul Kenny, Tony Woodley and Derek Simpson tell us to back why are these laws still in place.

There are 2.2 million on the dole now and soon there will soon be 3 million out of work. A job goes every 30 seconds. We have just seen British Airways ask their workers to work for nothing.

Its time to resist now. These sackings are a challenge to the whole working class movement. We have to back the construction workers to the hilt.

Earlier this year on some construction picket lines the slogan "British jobs for British workers" appeared. Every construction strike is now branded as "anti foreigner". This is not true.

But to win support from the whole movement it needs to be made crystal clear that the battle is for every worker to have decent conditions and one rate for the job, no matter where they are from.

Every trade unionist, every workplace has to get behind this fight.

Sometimes there are pivotal moments in the history of the workers’ movement. The sacking of the printers at Wapping in the aftermath of the miners’ strike was one such moment. It was used to intimidate the whole working class. At a time when resistance to the economic crisis is just developing we can't allow this to happen again.

This is a battle for everyone. We have to build the maximum possible solidarity, urgently. A victory for construction workers would be an inspiration for every worker who is fighting back for the right to work, this is a fight the labour movement has to win.

Add your name to this statement. Email michaelb@swp.org.uk

© Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original.

Link: Construction workers walk out over union-busting - SW
Link: Exposed: construction bosses’ secret plans to block national strike - SW
Link: Total war: Protests solid as 650 workers sacked - Morning Star

Mark Steel: So this is New Labour's legacy...

Mark Steel: So this is New Labour's legacy... (missed this one last week but cant resist posting late) - from The Independent.

They sacrificed all to get elected and now can't get elected to anything.

What a pathetic "rebellion". The Labour Party is in its worst state for a century and all it took for their leader to save himself was a sentence about finding a vision, and a promise he would "learn to listen". So after 10 years as Chancellor and two asPM he's going to start seeing and hearing. Next time he's challenged he'll promise to learn to crawl and eat solids.

Similarly his speech last Friday, when it seemed he needed to deliver an inspired and courageous flourish to save his job, was a bumbling splutter of incoherence that would have embarrassed a regional manager announcing the quarterly figures for envelope sales. If Gordon Brown had been Braveheart, his speech to his troops as the English started to charge would have gone "Now then – we are in a, er, er, a crisis of being attacked by archers that is in as much as it is global in its nature, which requires a global strategy of yes lances which is to say shields, but the Scottish people expect us to deal with that global and that is what I intend to to to do, er, do to."

But that was enough, because then most of his ministers made statements such as, "Of course the Prime Minister is fully aware he's a useless tosspot, but the others are even worse, so let's stop this in-fighting as there is still much work for this government to bugger up."

Because none of them, in all the billions of hours of interviews and intrigue, either for or against Brown, have said a single thing they believe their party should be doing. Instead they make statements about "needing to reconnect with voters" but to do that they'd have to come on television going, "I'm a bloody disgrace, I am. And you should see the expenses I rake in, alright for some ain't it. I'm never voting for me again, I can tell you."

But there's no clue about what they want to do differently. Their last seven years looks like one long fiasco, from Iraq to reverence for a disastrous banking system, but there's no one prepared even tosuggest how they got in this mess and how it might be put right. So none of them can make a case for being any better, except for having a cheerier smile, so no one comes forward.

They might as well have a frog as their leader, and Ed Balls would be on Newsnight telling us the frog isn't the problem, and the way he responded to some sharp criticism by hopping off the table shows his determination, because they haven't got a clue. This is why they're in a much worse mess than the one in 1983. Back then, although the election was a disaster, the Labour Party had active branches in every area, with thousands of young members bursting with ideas of why they wanted to run local councils or the country. Now the branches barely exist, debate has been eliminated, and all that's left are careerists frightened of losing their careers.

For example, at four o'clock last Friday Caroline Flint was adamant she supported Brown, but two hours later she couldn't stand him. So either this was because she'd been snubbed for promotion, or she's genuine, and she honestly thinks he did a wonderful job for Labour for 15 years but then did one dreadful thing that negated all that, at around half past four.

This is New Labour's legacy. They sacrificed principles, debates, humanity, purpose and personality for the prize of getting elected. But now they can't get elected to anything so there is absolutely nothing left.

Link: Respect

Open Letter to the left: How we can join together

Open Letter to the left: How we can join together.

Michael Rosen welcomes the Socialist Workers Party’s (SWP) open letter to the left and discusses how he thinks unity can be achieved.

The open letter to the left is a good move. We desperately need to make the things that unite us count more than the things that divide us.

The simplest way to do this would be to create some kind of federation or umbrella organisation.

At this stage, a federation need be no more than an electoral pact – an agreement to not contest candidates from each other’s groups or parties. This could also mean that we could put out some kind of joint platform, with shared publicity.

Obviously this kind of thing isn’t easy. There are long histories of mistrust and splits, and there are some big disagreements over ways of interpreting the past and the present.

The question in front of us now though is whether we would gain more or less by staying divided? I think it’s clear – the answer is less.

This is not only a matter of developing a more effective way of organising. It’s also a matter of political wisdom and thought. None of us has a monopoly on that.

We all have insights and we all make mistakes – but in the long run we have to acknowledge that it is only the collective minds and deeds of like-minded people that can change the world.

What we have to work out is how best to pool and mix those words and deeds.

My own view is that a federation or umbrella is one way of doing this. The years of analysis and organisation that each group or party has worked out wouldn’t be thrown away. No one is being asked to give anything up.

However, in the act of co-operating, we will come up against different ways of working, different analyses.

There will be local and sectional knowledge that might not have been shared, but would be in a federal structure.

So, for example, I’ve just been in Dagenham. The British National Party (BNP) has a whole bunch of their people on the council. When you walk about the area, you see devastation. Ford’s pulled out, and more than 25,000 jobs have gone.

Right next to the deserted factories and car parks, the government is putting up a brand new prison. The politics is clear: who closed Ford? Ford. It wasn’t any of the groups that the BNP target that closed the factory. And what’s the New Labour response? Lock people up.

Now, this situation may or may nor prevail elsewhere. What we know is that this has to be fought in the locality dealing with the conditions on the site.

Federation

In a federation, it may be that one or other of our groups or organisations has done the most work in that locality. Then we should be grown-up enough to give that organisation pride of place and the rest of us do what we can to support them.

Across the country, this is likely to even out – more or less. If it isn’t absolutely even Stevens, so be it.

It will be more important to make the effort to unite than to get too worked up about perfect divvying up of electoral battlegrounds.

Four key names have emerged over the last few years who have strong local bases of support. In alphabetical order – George Galloway, Michael Lavalette, Dave Nellist and Salma Yaqoob. There are others all over the country.

It would be great if we could create a network and give it time to develop.

I wouldn’t want to prejudge anything more than that. Let’s leave that to our dreams and hopes. In the meantime, let’s be simple, practical and strong.

Link: Socialist Worker

John McDonnell: We need change now, Gordon

John McDonnell: We need change now, Gordon.

The Campaign Group had nothing to do with the coup attempt, but if Brown does not offer real change, I will back a challenge.

About a month ago the weekly discussion meeting of the Campaign Group of MPs focused on the imminent electoral wipeout of Labour in the coming European and local council elections. We decided to write to Gordon Brown to seek a meeting with him to see whether any common ground could be found on the policy changes needed to win back support for the party. No response was received.

Over the following weeks we refused to be dragged into either the plotting to oust Brown or the positioning by others seeking to fill his shoes if he fell. Our line was straightforward – there's no point in changing the faces at the top if there is no change in political direction.

When I then learned that No 10 was briefing journalists that Campaign Group members were involved in the email plot calling for Brown to go, I wrote again to the prime minister requesting that his people desist from this covert briefing. I told him straight that allegations about our involvement in this backstage plotting were untrue and that whatever political differences we had with him they were always expressed openly and honestly. I got no reply.

Few realistically doubted that the prime minister would survive this half-hearted attempted putsch. Nevertheless at the parliamentary Labour party meeting on Monday a chastened Brown for the first time admitted to weaknesses and mistakes and assured Labour MPs that lessons had been learned and gave the strong impression that changes would follow with intensive discussions within the PLP and party, and that a raft of new policies would be announced.

Labour MPs have taken false comfort in the Tories not surging ahead in the percentage share of the vote, ignoring the role Ukip plays in siphoning off Tory votes in European elections that largely return to the Tories in general elections. They cling to the statistic that Cameron needs a 7% swing to win the next election, which has only been achieved twice in the last century, forgetting that they themselves were party to just such an achievement only 12 years ago.

On Wednesday the first of the policy announcements on constitutional reform produced typical Brown-like long-winded, turgid consultations and committees of inquiry, stretching well beyond the election and possibly into infinity.

If Labour is to stand any chance of surviving at the next election, real change has to be visibly under way and progress demonstrated at the latest by the autumn.

A consensus checklist of what constitutes real change is emerging from many sources. Securing jobs by intervening in manufacturing and restoring trade union rights; securing homes by a mass local authority house-building programme; stopping the squandering of public resources by ending the privatisation of public services; reasserting the government's green credentials with no third runway; for young people freezing, as the first step towards abolishing, student fees; for pensioners restoring the link between pensions and earnings; halting the attacks on welfare; paying for our programme by fair taxation and cutting out the waste on the likes of Trident renewal and ID cards; and making government ruthlessly clean, open and fair with immediate electoral reform.

Most of the policy changes are blindingly obvious and readily implementable to re-establish our credentials with each section of the broad coalition that enthusiastically ensured the rout of the Tories and Labour's election in 1997.

These all seem straightforward, sensible and popular. But what happens if Brown refuses to contemplate real change? If we go beyond November without real change visibly under way, what hope is left of Labour not only remaining in government but also surviving as an effective political force at all?

At that stage the only responsible act in the long-term interests of our movement would be to offer a real change in political direction by mounting a challenge to the political leadership of the party and letting the members of the party decide. Let me give notice now that this is the path I will take. If this route is blocked again by MPs failing to nominate, then the alternative is Labour MPs making it clear at the next election that they stand on a policy platform of real change as "change candidates".

Of course, they will be standing as Labour candidates but binding together as a slate of candidates committed within Labour to advocating a change programme, setting out the policy programme they will be advocating as a group and supporting in parliament if elected. Only in this way can we demonstrate to the supporters that want to come home to Labour that there is the hope and prospect of change.

Link: Labour Representation Committee
Link: Respect

Southwark Respect welcomes the appeals for action to be taken to pose a united socialist alternative at the next general election.

The following statement was passed at a well-attended Southwark Respect branch meeting last night.

Southwark Respect welcomes the appeals of the last few days for action to be taken to pose a united socialist alternative at the next general election.

In the face of the recession and the growing assault on working class living standards the left needs to unite in defence of our class.

The recession is also being accompanied by its ugly outrider the rise of the fascists as a force in politics.

The BNP represent a real danger. The anger at the corruption of the mainstream politics linked into the worsening recession means that the BNP now have the opportunity to establish themselves as a permanent fixture on the political landscape, and to solidify a still soft voting base into a harder, more racist and more openly fascist one.

This has happened in theses elections not through a spectacular growth of the BNP vote, but by the collapse of the labour vote.

A strategy that merely relies on stacking up as many votes as possible against the Nazis cannot succeed.

Support for the BNP is growing out of the lack of hope and the fear which is now stalking working class communities.

An real alternative has to be posed.

That is why we in Southwark Respect supported NO2EU in this election. It was a temporary platform formed shortly before the election and though it had imperfections, it was a real attempt to grapple with this question.

Though it might not have staged a dramatic breakthrough, NO2EU together with the SLP got 326,000 votes, more than Respect (standing as the sole national left force) got in the 2004 European elections in aftermath of the Iraq War. It also did better than Respect did in some important working class areas such as Wales and the North East.

The vote was not as large as we would have liked, but it proved that there is still, despite the difficulties that the project of a new political force to the left of labour has experienced, the basis for such a party.

The experience of constructing a political alternative to Labour has proved to be a difficult and bruising one for the left.

The project has suffered a number of setbacks and the left is now hampered by the fact that after twelve years of Labour government it has not managed to build a political force that can seriously challenge the mainstream parties or the fascists, across the country.

The need for unity however presses heavy on all now. We cannot let previous strife prevent us uniting again. We should not allow past differences to blind us to the importance of the task in hand.

We notice that there is a growing realisation in the trade union movement that there is a need to pose a political alternative to Labour and stand candidates against in the general election. No2Eu is the most concrete example of this, but the PCS is also talking about standing candidates, the FBU remains disaffiliated and relations between Labour and the CWU have been stretched to breaking point.

We welcome the appeals put out by Bob Crow, the CPB and the SP following their joint work in NO2EU. We also we welcome the moves by the SWP and others to seek unity again with the rest of the left.

These moves will not immediately result in the kind of party that we believe is necessary, but they could be steps towards it.

We in Southwark Respect have long maintained that what the working class needs a new party, rooted in the labour movement, to represent its interests.

We welcome every step taken by the working class to find its own political voice again.

Note: The editor of this blog fully supports the motion passed by Southwark Respect.

Link: Southwark Respect

Open letter: Left must unite to create an alternative - SWP

Open letter: Left must unite to create an alternative.

An open letter to the left from the Socialist Workers Party (SWP)

Labour’s vote collapsed to a historic low in last week’s elections as the right made gains. The Tories under David Cameron are now set to win the next general election.

The British National Party (BNP) secured two seats in the European parliament. Never before have fascists achieved such a success in Britain.

The result has sent a shockwave across the labour and anti-fascist movements, and the left.

The meltdown of the Labour vote and the civil war engulfing the party poses a question – where do we go from here?

The fascists pose a threat to working class organisations, black, Asian and other residents of this country – who BNP führer Nick Griffin dubs “alien” – our civil liberties and much else.

History teaches us that fascism can be fought and stopped, but only if we unite to resist it.

The SWP firmly believes that the first priority is to build even greater unity and resistance to the fascists over the coming months and years.

The BNP believes it has created the momentum for it to achieve a breakthrough. We have to break its momentum.

The success of the anti-Nazi festival in Stoke and the numbers of people who joined in anti-fascist campaigning shows the basis is there for a powerful movement against the Nazis.

The Nazis’ success will encourage those within the BNP urging a “return to the streets”.

This would mean marches targeting multiracial areas and increased racist attacks. We need to be ready to mobilise to stop that occurring.

Griffin predicted a “perfect storm” would secure the BNP’s success. The first part of that storm he identified was the impact of the recession.

The BNP’s policies of scapegoating migrants, black and Asian people will divide working people and make it easier to drive through sackings, and attacks on services and pensions.

Unity is not a luxury. It is a necessity. If we do not stand together we will pay the price for a crisis we did not cause.

The second lesson from the European elections is that we need a united fightback to save jobs and services.

If Cameron is elected he will attempt to drive through policies of austerity at the expense of the vast majority of the British people.

But the Tories’ vote fell last week and they are nervous about pushing through attacks.

Shadow chancellor George Osborne told business leaders, “After three months in power we will be the most unpopular government since the war.”

We need to prepare for battle.

But there is a third and vital issue facing the left and the wider working class. The crisis that has engulfed Westminster benefited the BNP.

The revelations of corruption, which cabinet members were involved in, were too much for many Labour voters, who could not bring themselves to vote for the party.

One answer to the problem is to say that we should swallow everything New Labour has done and back it to keep David Cameron, and the BNP, out.

Yet it would take a miracle for Gordon Brown to be elected back into Downing Street.

The danger is that by simply clinging on we would be pulled down with the wreckage of New Labour.

Mark Serwotka, the general secretary of the PCS civil service workers’ union, has asked how, come the general election, can we ask working people to cast a ballot for ministers like Pat McFadden.

McFadden is pushing through the privatisation of the post office.

Serwotka proposes that trade unions should stand candidates.

Those who campaigned against the BNP in the elections know that when they said to people, “Don’t vote Nazi” they were often then asked who people should vote for.

The fact that there is no single, united left alternative to Labour means there was no clear answer available.

The European election results demonstrate that the left of Labour vote was small, fragmented and dispersed.

The Greens did not make significant gains either. The mass of Labour voters simply did not vote. We cannot afford a repeat of that.

The SWP is all too aware of the differences and difficulties involved in constructing such an alternative.

We do not believe we have all the answers or a perfect prescription for a left wing alternative.

But we do believe we have to urgently start a debate and begin planning to come together to offer such an alternative at the next election, with the awareness that Gordon Brown might not survive his full term.

One simple step would be to convene a conference of all those committed to presenting candidates representing working class interests at the next election.

The SWP is prepared to help initiate such a gathering and to commit its forces to such a project.

We look forward to your response.

© Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original.

Link: Socialist Worker

No2EU calls for unity to defeat the BNP

No2EU calls for unity to defeat the BNP

No2EU:Yes to Democracy coalition convener Bob Crow has called for urgent discussions involving socialist organisations, campaigns and trade unions to build a concerted response following the election of two fascists from the BNP to the European Parliament.

No2EU was the first progressive EU-critical coalition to stand in Britain in any election and it gained 153,236 votes despite an almost complete media blackout.

The combined vote in Thursday’s poll for No2EU, the Socialist Labour Party and some of the smaller left parties stacks up to nearly a third of a million votes - just over 2% of the total. In Scotland, the combined left vote was close to 4%.

Meanwhile, the Labour share of the vote has dropped by a massive 31%, the Lib Dems by over 7% and the Tories, despite all the hype, have only managed a tiny increase in share with turnout collapsing to just over 30%.

Bob Crow said today:

“There is no question that the BNP have benefitted from the collapse of the establishment political parties and from media coverage that has pumped them up like celebrities on “I’m a Nazi - Get Me Out of Here.”

“Sections of the press, which have deliberately ignored anti-establishment parties from the left, need to take a long, hard look at the way the blanket coverage they have given to the fascists from the BNP has contributed to their success.

“But it’s the collapse of public support for the three main parties - each of which is pro-business, pro-EU and supportive of the anti-union laws - which has created the conditions for the scapegoat-politics of the BNP to thrive.

“The fascists support in former mining communities like Barnsley is shocking and throws down a massive challenge to the Labour and Trade Union movement.

“Along with our colleagues from the SLP and other left groups we won nearly a third of a million votes. From No2EU we won over 150,000 supporters from a standing start in the teeth of a media blackout. That gives us a solid platform to build from.

“We now need urgent discussions with political parties, campaigns and our colleagues in other unions like the CWU to develop a political and industrial response to this crisis.

”I also want to pay tribute to our colleagues from the Hope Not Hate campaign. There is no doubt that without their tireless efforts the BNP would have won even more seats,” he said.

Link: No2EU - Yes To Democracy

Seizing the moment by Steve McGiffen

Seizing the moment by Steve McGiffen - from the Morning Star.

Last month I used my column to try to persuade No2EU - Yes to Democracy to drop its abstentionist line and, should it win seats in the European Parliament, use them to further resistance to neoliberalism and the fight for socialism.

I don't want to return to that subject exactly, though I note that, while there has been no public evolution of this position, candidate Dave Nellist said recently in an interview on these pages that he felt that the No2EU list could and should become the basis of a new workers' party.

That such a party is urgently needed seems to me to be beyond dispute.

The game is well and truly up with the Labour Party. The threat from the BNP must be countered - and fast.

We need a mass activist party and we need it now.

Parliamentary politics is in deep disrepute.

Britain and Europe are run by crooks and liars in the pay of corporate capital. The danger is that the now almost universal understanding that this is the case is currently most likely to benefit the enemies of democracy.

On the other hand, the combination of financial crisis, open greed in the corporate world and corruption in politics offers the left an opportunity to reconstruct itself.

There is a country not very far from here where the left has spent the last 15 years successfully doing just that.

In 1994 the Dutch parliament contained not a single radical socialist.

To the left of the Dutch Labour Party there was nothing but a ragbag of Europhile remnants of moribund left parties, the so-called Green Left.

In the general election of that year, however, the radical left Socialist Party (SP) entered national politics for the first time, winning two seats.

In 2005 the SP, which by then had grown considerably in membership and had nine seats, led the campaign against the European constitution.

Almost two-thirds of the Dutch electorate voted No to this neoliberal con trick.

Over the next two years, the SP tripled its vote in local, regional and national elections.

It is now the country's biggest opposition party both inside parliament, where it has 25 seats, and outside.

With almost 50,000 members, the SP has never succumbed to the tempting comforts of parliamentary politics.

It remains an active presence on the streets of the Netherlands, in its workplaces and social organisations, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with every campaign of resistance to neoliberalism, to the destruction of social provision and of the environment and to the undermining of democracy by political parties which have forgotten what the word means.

Every SP member of parliament, local representative and employee is paid a salary based on the average skilled workers' wage (ED: this needs further discussion as a lot depends on what you mean by an average skilled workers wage).

Those who receive a salary from the state must comply with a rule under which any amount above that level is handed over to the party.

Expenses are paid against receipts and only against receipts.

Such a rule should be the first principle of any socialist political party.

Such a party is badly needed in Britain and must be organised in good time to fight the next general election.

It should adopt a broad but clearly anti-neoliberal platform and make it clear that it will not be confining its activities to Parliament or to council chambers but will be out on the streets and standing at the side of everyone and anyone who is fighting back.

It should be active in its solidarity with every victim of workplace exploitation, of racism or sexism, every person resisting the degradation of our environment, the sullying of public life and the cynicism of the whole pack of political opportunists, from the formerly social-democratic Labour Party through to the BNP.

People want their vote to make a difference.

They want people to represent them who understand the real problems of real people.

If we offer a clear alternative and avoid speaking as if it were 1917 or 1968, or as if we have all the answers and are therefore by definition not interested in listening to people's views and concerns, we can create a new political force capable of setting fear into the hearts of the political establishment.

The tired old argument that standing candidates against Labour will let the Tories in is now laughable.

The Labour Party no longer has the slightest claim on the loyalty of working people or the left.

In any case, it is in for a thorough tonking whatever we do or don't do, so we really don't need to worry about costing it votes.

They have spent the last quarter century collaborating with increasing enthusiasm in the theft of the people's property, not just in the case of the relatively trivial amounts stolen in fiddles expenses, but in the wholesale corporate trough-snouting that was privatisation and deregulation.

They have supported illegal wars and illegal torture camps.

They claim to be "green" while planning new airport runways and new motorways.

They claim to respect civil liberties while allowing the police to behave like the militarised force which is the hallmark of a repressive state.

I believe in a broad and diverse socialist movement, but surely not so broad that it includes the flimflam artists currently governing the country.

The left must seize this moment, before the far-right does.

A salary rule similar to that of the Dutch SP should be at the heart of our programme.

This would leave plenty of money to cover the legitimate, receipted expenses of MPs and other party personnel, reducing or even eliminating the need to claim reimbursement from the state.

Whatever is left would be used to run the party and finance campaigns.

If we tell the people the truth and show them that we live by our principles, we can yet reconstruct our movement, save democracy and begin to offer the real and effective resistance which Britain has not seen in a quarter of a century.

Steve McGiffen is editor of the EU-critical website Spectrezine.org. He is a former environmental adviser to the European Parliament's United European Left group.

Link: Morning Star
Link: No2EU - Yes to Democracy