The period and the party by Duncan Chapel

The period and the party by Duncan Chapel - reproduced from the Mac Uaid blog (direct link).

Duncan Chapel is a member of the Socialist Resistance editorial board. He has submitted these thoughts on the current pre-conference discussion in the SWP. It overlaps considerably with a piece I am writing for the upcoming issue of the magazine (Socialist Resistance) with the working title “Left unity: surveying the wreckage.

War declared on the John Rees-Lindsey German faction: impending split in the British SWP?

December 28th, 2009

The faction fight in the SWP, which pits the majority led by Alex Callinicos and Martin Smith against the Left Platform led by John Rees and Lindsey German, is utterly depressing, for several reasons. First it is a reflection of the generally depressed and demoralised state of the whole of the British left, although of course with its own specific characteristics.

Second, whatever the ultra-factional vultures on the fringes of the far left may think, it is also depressing that the main organisation of the revolutionary left finds itself in such factional disarray. That is bad news for everyone; the very poor turn out for the recent Stop the War Coalition demonstration testifies to that.

Third, this whole sorry mess, which has included the sidelining of the Socialist Alliance in the early part of the decade, and the split in Respect and its fallout inside the SWP, was utterly avoidable.

If the SWP leadership in particular, but also the Socialist Party leadership, had been less rigid in their political conceptions, if they had shown more openness to political pluralism as demonstrated by international developments like the NPA in France and the Left Bloc in Portugal, the Red Green Alliance in Denmark and the Freedom and Solidarity Party (ÖDP) in Turkey, it could have turned out very different. Indeed, the SWP also had the opportunity to learn from the Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) in France, which the SWP’s organisation in France (SPEB) was part of. Not only did the League allow the right of minority tendencies but also the right of women and LGBT members to self-organise, in addition to an autonomous youth organisation. It is also very important to consider the respectful commitment to political debate that LCR showed to smaller organisations like SPEB not by “recruiting” them but merging with them. Several years ago there was a rather different discussion when the International Socialist Group in Britain was invited to join the SWP. It didn’t join because tendencies in the SWP wouldn’t have the same rights as SPEB enjoyed in the LCR.

Below we explain why, but first to some of the all-too-familiar the specifics of what’s currently going on inside the SWP.

Bureaucratic repression

From the contributions in the internal discussion bulletin number 2, it’s clear that the majority are doing everything possible to organisationally harass the minority. First, the accusations of factionalism based on intercepted emails.

The SWP does not allow factions outside of the 3-month discussion period; anyone having discussions about the possibility of forming a faction inside the 3-month period it open to accusations of breeching the constitution. So the Rees-German minority is accused of disloyal factionalism by sending emails to one another!

At this point though we have to say something that the Left Platform have to think about : John Rees and Lindsay German are the victims of an internal regime and an external policy that they were the upholders of when they were indeed in the majority, in fact the two central leaders, themselves. For example, the exclusion of John Rees from the Central Committee at the time of the 2009 conference was indeed an utter scandal. But it stems from the policy of excluding minorities from the CC that Rees and German of course defended in 2007 when it was a question of whether John Molyneux could be on the CC.

Members of the minority have been told to close down their websites. Most of all the majority leadership is doing everything possible to minimise the representation of the Left Platform, by for example branches and districts refusing to allocate any delegates to the minority, CC member standing as ordinary delegates to exclude minority representation etc etc. This is all documented in the article by Lindsey German in preconference discussion bulletin no 2.

The aim of minimising the representation of the minority at the national conference is very familiar to anyone who knows anything about the recent history of the sectarian left internationally. In a normally functioning democratic centralist organisation it would be elementary to allow the Left Platform adequate representation to express themselves fully, to represent their strength (or lack of it) inside the party, and to go into the debates in adequate detail. This is not what the Callinicos-Smith leadership have in mind. They intend to try to crush and humiliate the minority, to try to demoralise its supporters, and probably to expel the leadership of the Left Platform. This is absolutely typical of the way in which sectarian ‘Trotskyist’ groups have behaved through Gerry Healy, Jack Barnes, Pierre Lambert and all their ilk. Alex Callinicos finds himself in bad company.

Something else that the Left Platform leadership should think about is this: an organisation that has an informal policy of suggesting to members who have differences that they might like to take a six-month leave of absence, in the hope they will leave, is not really preparing a democratic internal life and a healthy attitude to discussion and differences.

The political debate

All the merit in the political debate is entirely with the Left Platform. The main documents of the platform accuse the leadership of retreating from the more open that the SWP tried to develop at the star of the decade, when it made its turn to the STWC, the Socialist Alliance and Globalise Resistance. The platform says that the majority leadership want to downgrade united front work like the STWC and instead replace it with a narrowly conceived ‘Right to Work’ campaign, of the type which those active in the 1970s will remember. Most of all the Platform’s documents make very apposite points on the question of the united front, pointing out that Trotsky never limited the united front to being a mere ‘tactic’, but explained it was a ‘policy’ with strategic significance. These explanations by the Platform are all correct.

But in the formal terms of the debate do not in themselves explain very much, for two reasons. Neither side deals with the fact that for many SWP rank-and-file members, as well as a section of the leadership around Chris Harman, the ‘open’ turn to the Socialist Alliance was very unpopular. And the Platform stops short of dealing with the real strategic question that is staring them in the face, and which the experience of the NPA in France and the Left Bloc in Portugal demonstrates: the importance of trying to create a broad socialist/left alternative at a national political level, using the ‘united fronts’ like the STWC as bases of support for a global political alternative. The Socialist Alliance and Respect both failed because the SWP refused to take the step of fighting for a real pluralistic national political alternative, and instead, when the chips were down, tried to channel everything through the SWP – especially during the height of the anti-war movement in 2003-4.

In effect the SWP adopted a half-way policy of building the Socialist Alliance and Respect as ‘united fronts of a special type’. But they were not. They were political blocs, with global socialist policies. They could not work if the attempt was made control them by the SWP, or at least to subject them to SWP veto.

The proof of the pudding is in the Scottish eating. At first the SWP abstained from the Scottish Socialist Party, but then went into it as a minority faction almost from day 1. By the middle of 2002 the atmosphere between the SWP faction and the SSP majority was icy, with the SWP trying to pick every conceivable little thing to create differences. Then the SWP made the utterly opportunistic and disastrous decision to back Sheridan’s break away Scottish Socialist Solidarity, which of course is now in the process of disappearing.

It is not even clear if the extent of the factionalism by the SWP in the SSP was decided in London, or whether – like the scorpion that stings the frog that is carrying him across the water – it was just in the nature of the rank and file militants who couldn’t help themselves. The decision to back Sheridan’s breakaway was of course decided in London and an act of cynical folly.

In this period it is impossible for Marxist organisations to proceed on the basis of a ‘no risk’, defence of existing acquisitions, policy. Building a broad socialist formation like the New Anticapitalist Party in France, or the Left Bloc in Portugal – or indeed participating in Die Linke in Germany – involves major risks. That arises from the nature of the period. But attempting to avoid the risks inherent in creating broad political alternatives to the left, in defence of the working class and the planet, is full of risks itself.

The period and the party

The left in Britain – even more than elsewhere – seems completely at a loss in the face of the massive economic crisis that has hit Western and especially Anglo-Saxon capitalism. This is obviously combining with a gigantic world environmental crisis, so that the issue is not now stopping climate change, but limiting it and deciding who will pay the cost of adaption. In this situation the right, and even the far right, has the initiative, especially at the electoral level.

Britain faces the biggest attack on working class living standards, the welfare state and democratic rights since the 1970s. To try to respond to that with a few more paper sales and a few more recruits is idiotic.

The tasks facing Marxists is that of building a political force to the left of social democracy that seems like a realistic alternative to millions. This cannot and will not be done by the SWP on its own or by the Socialist Party on its own. These frameworks are too politically narrow.

At the same time it is abstentionist to say that broader political alternatives are impossible without a rise in the level of the class struggle. Such devices are excuses that enable factional leaderships to get on with day-to-day propaganda routine: sell the paper, hold forums, recruit. In the case of the Callinicos-Smith leadership it’s a matter of ‘back to the bunker’, just as it was in 1994 for Peter Taaffe when Arthur Scargill vetoed the attempt by Militant Labour to join the SLP.

On the question of building a broad socialist alternative the SWP leadership now talks out of both sides of its mouth. Fulsome in its praise for ‘our comrades’ in the French NPA or the Portuguese Left Bloc, policies inspired by the same political methods in Britain fall foul of Alex Callinicos’ contemptuous ex-cathedra dismissal. A leadership content in its ability to issue tactical advice to anyone worldwide will have no difficulty erecting sectarian schemas in Britain.

A Spanish translation of this article is online at foro anticapitalista.

Link; Socialist Worker
Link: Mac Uaid Blog
Link: Socialist Resistance
Link: Respect
Link: Junius Blog

Unison unveils its 'no-cuts budget'

Unison unveils its 'no-cuts budget' by Will Stone - Morning Star.

Unison published a "no-cuts recovery budget" on Monday which the union claimed could recover over £70 billion of wasted public money.

The public-sector union put forward 11 reforms, including a 50 per cent tax on incomes over £100,000 a year, action against tax havens and the ditching of the controversial Trident nuclear weapons programme.

If all 11 policies were implemented, savings of over £74.1bn could be made.

Unison said its proposals provided a clear alternative to the Tory rhetoric of slashing public-sector spending that would cause long-term damage and plunge Britain into severe depression.

"We do not have to fall into the trap of Tory rhetoric that deep cuts to public spending are needed to balance the books," Unison leader Dave Prentis declared.

"Cuts are not inevitable. They are a dangerous option that could shock the system into a prolonged depression. Public spending is the jump-start our economy needs and it must be kept up."

While the government was right to take action to prevent financial meltdown, now it needed to remain calm and carry on investing to create jobs.

"Now is not the time to push public-sector workers on the dole - people need them," he said.

And the union proposed that employing extra cleaning staff in the NHS could help save millions a year by stamping out infections acquired while people were being treated in hospital.

The largest savings of all could be made on introducing a tax on major transactions between British financial institutions, which could raise a colossal £30bn a year, according to the union.

And equally huge savings could be made long term from scrapping the government's £76bn Trident programme.

CND chairwoman Kate Hudson said: "Scrapping Trident and its replacement would not only save billions, but would actually improve our security by pushing forward CND moves towards global nuclear disarmament.

"Unison has quite rightfully identified it as a prime target for cutting, while maintaining socially useful spending."

Trident was a wasteful drain on the economy, she stressed.

"We would be better off without it even at the best of times. In the current climate it really is the new common sense for Trident to go."

Unison's recovery budget

• £4.7bn could be raised every year by introducing a 50 per cent tax rate on incomes over £100,000
• £10bn could be raised every year by reforming tax havens and residence rules to reduce tax avoidance by corporations and 'non-domiciled' residents
• £14.9bn could be raised every year by using minimum tax rates to stop reliefs being used to disproportionately subsidise incomes over £100,000
• £30bn could be raised every year by introducing a Major Financial Transactions Tax on financial institutions
• £76bn could be saved over 40 years by cancelling Trident, amounting to £1.8bn annually
• £500m could be saved every year by eradicating healthcare-acquired infections from the NHS - extra cleaners would cost half this
• £495m could be saved every year by adopting measures to improve the health and well-being of NHS staff, thereby reducing sickness absence
• £1bn could be saved every year by halving the local government agency bill, a sum achieved by high performing councils
• £5bn could be raised every year with an Empty Property Tax on vacant dwellings, which only exaggerate housing shortages and harm neighbourhoods
• £2.8bn could be saved every year by reducing the central government use of private consultants
• £3bn could be saved in user fees and interest charges every year if PFI schemes were replaced with conventional public procurement

Total: £74.195 billion

Link: Unison
Link: Morning Star

Tell them to pack their bags - Morning Star Comment

Tell them to pack their bags - Morning Star Comment.

Possibly the most startling thing to emerge from the latest confrontation between the directors of RBS and the government is the estimate made in Parliament by City Minister Lord Myners.

The minister told the assembled MPs that, unless something was done, over 5,000 senior British bankers would earn more than £1 million this year.

That's not to say that it will make them all new millionaires. Most of them are millionaires already.

In an exercise in avarice which can have few parallels in history, 5,000 people will trouser a million pounds each in just 12 months. That's £20,000 a week, give or take the odd few hundred quid.

And for what? Why, for taking the country's and the world's economies to the brink of disaster, ruining thousands of people and driving into unemployment hundreds of thousands of others.

For gambling on the stock markets with other people's money and losing. And for plundering the taxpayer for billions to bail them out when the whole house of cards came tumbling down.

The directors of the Royal Bank of Scotland are now threatening to resign if the Treasury blocks the 84 per cent publicly owned bank from upping bonuses to 50 per cent above last year's total, aiming to pay out £1.5 billion to its top investment bankers.

It would be hilarious if it wasn't so damn arrogant. But you've got to give the board brownie points for sheer brass neck. The facts are astonishing. According to the BBC pundit Robert Peston, an RBS currency trader in New York took home $20 million last year and a commodity trader was paid $40 million.

The directors claim that they really have to give these absurd bonuses in order to retain top-level staff in the face of huge competition for their services.

Well, if their services are what drove the banking system into meltdown, it should surely be obvious to even the meanest intellect that we, as taxpayers and the owners of the bank, would be a sight better off without them and their dubious services.

Lord Myners put that fairly well, but his further comments reveal exactly what the real problem is.

"I think," he continued, "the real responsibility here must lie with the shareholders. Accordingly I have written to the National Association of Pension Funds, the CBI and the TUC urging them to use their influence to persuade trustees to ask their fund managers: 'What are you doing to stop these quite unreasonable and unjustified levels of remuneration?'"

All well and good, but it shouldn't be necessary, in the case of RBS at least. The bank is now 84 per cent owned by the taxpayer, so we are the shareholders. It should need no pressure, just a simple instruction.

Top bankers earn salaries that the rest of us can only dream of. Let them live on them and stop this pernicious bonus culture dead in its tracks. If they don't like it, they can leave and join the ranks of the "resting."

They can be replaced easily enough, despite their overblown estimates of their own importance.

And they can be replaced by a new generation of bankers working for a publicly owned bank, placing investment capital where it can revive manufacturing, develop a new generation of green enterprises and give employment to some of the millions of unemployed in the process, rather than placing capital merely to generate speculative profits.

All it takes is the will in government. Unfortunately, it is that will which is evidently lacking. Given Business Secretary Lord Mandelson's comment that he "understood" the point of view of the RBS directors and his admission that "the government does not run RBS, it is run by its management and its board," perhaps the not-so-noble lord ought to do what he has done all his political life and crawl to wherever the movers, shakers and money men are.

He's welcome to join them on the dole queue.

SEE: Banks bailout to cost state £131bn

Link: Junius Blog
Link: Morning Star Comments

Town halls face annual £11bn spending shortfall by Hélène Mulholland

Old friends think alike!

Local Government Association says councils will have to find cuts amounting to 10% of spending by Hélène Mulholland - The Guardian.

Town halls face an annual £11bn spending shortfall as the next government seeks to bring down the deficit in the nation's finances, the umbrella body for councils has warned.

Stephen Jones, director of finance for the Local Government Association, said the "ballpark figure" for anticipated cuts in the annual budget from 2011 is equivalent to around 10% of spending for local authorities, which deliver a range of services including social care, policing and schools.

Councils are on target to deliver £5.5bn of efficiency savings by the time the current spending review comes to an end in 2011.

With both the Conservatives and Labour promising to protect spending on health and international development in the next spending round for 2011-14, Jones said councils were vulnerable to cuts.

Local government currently spends around £105bn on local services, but this needs to rise to just under £110bn by 2013-14 to allow for additional pressures on services due to demographic changes, such as a rise in the elderly population.

The anticipated shortfall is almost equivalent to the entire spend on policing, said Jones, and prompts a serious debate about services provided in the future.

He told the Guardian: "None of this is written in stone because we have not had the spending review and we do not know what it is going to show up. What this modelling is trying to do is to give people a first shot of what the scale of issues council might have to deal with will be."

Editors Note: 10% cuts by either New Labour or the Tories (and supported by the Lib Dems) would be devestating. No one who is under 65 has ever seen a 10% cut in local government budgets. Having worked in local government for 32 years I can assure you that even a cut of 2% to 5% (and it could be more) would be a disaster. A 10% cut would signal the end of many local services as we know them and result in the wholesale privatisation of whats left of local government and services. Be afraid, be very afraid whoever wins the election - and get ready for the fight back!

Link: The Guardian