unity!
April 2016
Communist Party
Workers of all lands, unite!
Trident
Our health, homes, T jobs and education
An expensive threat to peace and jobs
T
HE SYSTEM of capitalist exploitation and inequality lies exposed. One law for the rich and another for the rest of us. Cameron’s family fortune is tucked away in a tax havens along with £trillions of rent, interest and profits which the rich have salted away. Meanwhile our wages and savings are held hostage to an unending government programme of wage freeze and spending cuts. Osbourne’s Budget was packed with giveaways for big business and banks. Corporation tax is to be cut to 17 per cent by 2020 even though Britain’s 20 percent rate is already the lowest in the entire G20. Osborne’s pretence that transnational tax avoiders are to be targeted was exposed the moment he let Google off the hook. Now the whole world knows how his Eton schoolmates stand downstream to a fortune in untaxed wealth. Capital gains tax is also to be cut — the headline rate from 28 per cent to 20 per cent and the basic rate from 18 to 10 per cent in another bonanza for the richest. Business rates are to fall, with calculations switched from CPI inflation to RPI inflation, and more council cuts are coming our way. Osborne says in future that all council funds are to be raised locally. Another measure to ringfence the rich and dump on working class areas. How councils will make up for the
resulting losses without far greater revenue raising powers is not mentioned — because they won’t. Cue more bed-blocking in hospitals as elderly patients cannot be safely released due to gutted local care services, more library and youth club closures, more women’s refuge and children’s centre closures — the further destruction of communities. Tory dogma dominates government thinking. Public ownership of steel is ruled out and an industry vital for Britain’s economic revival as a manufacturing nation is left to market forces while well paid and skilled jobs are abandoned. Alarmingly, even some Labour figures, including that EU retread Stephen Kinnock MP appear to rule out public ownership. From outlawing ethical investment by local authorities to gerrymandering parliamentary constituencies to attacking opposition funding and seeking to cripple trade unions, this government is dismantling democracy. This was the first Osborne Budget to be answered by a socialist leader of the Labour Party. The rejection of the entire austerity programme stood in stark contrast to five years of mixed messages from Labour over the lifetime of the coalition government. Recent developments in Labour economic policy show a renewed emphasis on public and co-operative ownership. Millions agree, including many Tory voters.
And John McDonnell’s fiscal rule, while clearly an act of positioning to challenge Tory myths that Labour spending broke the economy, allows the party to move beyond Keynesian inspired sticking plasters and to look at the fundamental causes of injustices and inequalities in the British economy — which are not about how much money we have but about who’s got it. The Labour leadership remains fragile, with significant hostility within the PLP, and the labour movement has yet to understand the scale of the task that faces it — or the severity of the consequences if it fails. It is time we took on this challenge. The People’s Assembly stands at the heart of community struggles to resist the austerity of Osborne. The Communist Party is committed to strengthening the People’s Assembly, which must become the street wing of a labour movement that can help realise the true potential of the Corbyn revolution. The Communist Party backs the junior doctors and all health workers. We welcome the call from the teachers’ unions for a combined effort of health and education workers. We stand with the housing activists in London and throughout the country who are challenging homelessness, the sales of social housing and sky high rents. Communists call for controlled rents and massive programme of council housebuilding.
HE COST of the Trident nuclear missile system is £167 billion over its lifetime. Scotland’s annual share of this cost would be roughly £500m – almost exactly the size of the cuts being imposed on local government over the next few years. The Trident nuclear missile system has no realistic military purpose in terms of the threats currently facing this country. It is simply a symbol of Britain’s status (a subordinate one) in the US alliance and NATO. Its renewal escalates the nuclear stakes and sets back the process of disarmament. It creates danger not peace. The joint CND-STUC study in 2007 found that the number of jobs sustained by the nuclear-armed submarines in Scotland at Faslane and Coulport is around 500. All these workers could easily be transferred to other functions within the Faslane base or in the local economy. By contrast proceeding with Trident renewal will cost many more jobs – not least in the defence sector. Two years ago BAE were budgeting on building 13 Type 26 frigates on the Clyde. Now the number has been cut to eight. How many less jobs will this mean for the Clyde yards over the next two decades ? Communists call for the establishment of fully-funded Nuclear Arms Conversion Agency within a remit to ensure that alternative work was found for the shipbuilders and engineers at Barrow and Derby and those employed at Faslane. In the United States such redeployment of defence workers is mandatory on the Federal government. In Britain it could supply the skills need for redeveloping industrial capacity and creating a world-beating renewables industry. Trident is dangerous and wasteful. Cancellation would release funds desperately needed elsewhere.
BOOKS
FROM manifesto manifestopress.org.uk
PROUD DLY OWN NEED D BY OUR R READERS
Mornin M ng Starr ore to reality than what’ss portraye ed in this fiction DEUTSCHLAND D EUTSCHLAN 883: 3 P11 P1
PATIENTS RRAALLY LY BEHIND JUNIORR DOOCCCTTTOORRSS’ SSTTRIKKEE
Public refuse to join PM’s smear campaign by Conrad Landin Industrial Reporter TORIES joined forces with bosses last night in a desperate attemp pt to smear heroic striking doctors, but patients are laying the blame squarely at the PM’s door. Press officials briefe ed that 4,000 operations would be cancelled as a result of the walk-out by junior docttors, in spite of emergency procedures still going ahead. And Mr Cameron smarmed: “This strike is not necessary, it will be damaging. “ We are doing everything we can to mitigate its effects but you can’t have a strike on this scale in our N HS without there being some real difficulties for patients and potentially worse.� His intervention came after L ondon Mayor Boris Johnson attempted to blame the action on Jeremy Corbyn. The buffoon claimed that social media posts from British Medical Association council members David Wrigley and Jacky Davies welcoming the L abour leader’s election in September were evidence that doctors were in the grip of “advanced Corbynitis.� Medics are resisting plans to heavily
cut back on unsocial hours payments they receive fo or working weekends and nights. Talks with NHS bosses broke down last week just an hour affter they had begun. And the ultra-right Bow Group issued a report yesterday saying the strike would “cause hundreds of deaths� and “cost millions.� The Tory think tank, whose trustees include racist historian David Starkey and “on yer bike!� Thatcher cabinet minister Norman Tebbit, described the action as “a ploy by the BM A to distract the public and politicians from the real harms to the medical profession.� The report’s author Dr Jonathan Stanley said: “The balloting of members ffo or a mandate to strike, before negotiations were complete, can only be seen to have been made in poor faith by negotiators out of their depth.� But striking doctors at five major London hospitals will today be greeted by a “ flying picket� of over 4 0 cycling sup porters, who describe themselves as “patients — past, present and future.� And the medics have received a flurry of support from fe ellow trade unionists and L abour Party frontbenchers.
Brixton says goodbye to its favourite son NEWS: P2
Global education reform Edited by Gawain Little, foreword by Christine Blower General Secretary National Union of Teachers ÂŁ7.99 (+ÂŁ2 p&p), 126 pages,
L abour Treasury spokesman Richard Burgon said the doctors had “no other option� but to go on strike. “I believe Jeremy Hunt and the Conservatives have treated them appallingly,� he told the BBC’s Daily Politics programme. “If I was in my constituency rather than having to be in Parliament tomorrow I would be on the picket line. “Nothing at all is going to change if Hunt and the Conservative government are acting like dictators to junior doctors who go into that job to try to help people.� Britain’s largest union Unite said its 10 0,0 0 0 members in the health service would give doctors “maximum support� and join doctors on picket lines before and after working today. “The fact that Hunt has allowed matters reach this stage is a disgrace, and he needs to enter into meaningful and constructive talks with the junior doctors as a matter of urgency,� the union’s head of health Barrie Brown said. Members from other unions including GM B, Unison and rail union R M T will also join this morning’s pickets.
THE BATTLE FOR THE LABOUR MOVEMENT Morning Star pamphlet
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Art for the digital age CULTURE: P10
Coe backs world records resetting SPORT: P16
The Morning Star is the world’s only English language socialist daily paper. Founded in 1930 as the Daily Worker, it is today run by a co-operative, the People’s Press Printing Society whose management committee includes eight national trade unions. The paper carries articles by leading figures from the Labour Party, Greens, Plaid, SNP and the trade union movement. It provides day
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Communist Review 79 Spring 2016 theory and discussion journal of the Communist Party
Building an economy for the people An alternative economic and political strategy ÂŁ6.95 (+ÂŁ1 p&p)
The Empire and Ukraine the Ukraine crisis in its context by Andrew Murray ÂŁ11.95 (+ÂŁ1.50 p&p) 138 pages
The 1916 Rising: A risen people challenges the empire Eugene McCartan State monopoly capitalism Part 2 Gretchen Binus, Beate Landefeld and Andreas Wehr Marxism versus reformism in the 1926 General Strike Jack Cohen PCF: The French anomaly Jimmy Jancovich Women workers and the trade unions: Review: Mary Davis
Your next step Marching is not enough. The battle to change policies takes many forms, all important, all necessary. But the battle to change the economic basis of society, to do away with unemployment, house the homeless, safeguard our health service, win equal rights and free education and end wars means we must end the capitalist system. ‘The aim of the Communist Party is to achieve a socialist Britain in which the means of production, distribution and exchange will be socially owned and utilised in a planned way for the benefit of all.
This necessitates a revolutionary transformation of society, ending the existing capitalist system of exploitation and replacing it with a socialist society in which each will contribute according to ability and receive according to work done. Socialist society creates the conditions for advance to a fully communist form of society in which each will receive according to need.’ Communist Party Programme If you want the working class in power your next step must be to join the Communist Party. If not you, who? If not now, when?
Join Britain’s revolutionary party of working class power and liberation 1 want to join the Communist Party m more info m Young Communists m Name Address Post Code
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TUC 2015
Why the labour movement needs a re-think on the EU BACK IN THE 1980s when the trade union movement faced a massive onslaught from the Tories, Jacques Delors as president of the European Union Commission, spoke of trade unions as social partners. Over the following ten years he sought to give content to the term ‘Social Europe’ by introducing measures which gave the same basic rights on health and safety, working hours, works councils and gender equality at work to all workers across the EU. These measures were of significant assistance for trade unionists in Britain and won many to give wholehearted support to the EU as an institution – even though traditionally the Labour Party had opposed the EU from Atlee and Bevan on to Michael Foot, Barbara Castle and Tony Benn. These measures were, however, directly accompanied by the first great push to secure an EU Single Market: opening up local government to private procurement and requiring public utilities, rails, gas, electricity, communications and ferries, to be broken up into competing and privatised units. It was claimed that this new Single Market would generate, through the elimination of inefficiencies, massive new levels of demand and create five million new jobs – even though workers would need to move on to where the work was needed. At the same time rules were laid down under the Maastricht Treaty that banned governments facing economic crisis from adopting Keynesian policies of deficit financing to prevent rising unemployment. Instead unemployment itself was meant to overcome crisis by reducing wages and pushing workers to wherever labour markets remained tight. This has remained the basic economic principle of the EU ever since and had been progressively tightened. In 2012 the EU Fiscal Compact banned ANY deficit at all. This is what the European Congress of Trade Unions said at the time: Running as a red line through the programme of Economic Governance is the idea of turning wages into the main instrument of adjustment: currency devaluations (which are no longer possible inside the Euro Area) are to be replaced by a devaluation of pay in the form of deflationary wage cuts. To achieve this wage ‘flexibility’, labour market institutions which prevent wages from falling are perceived as being a ‘rigidity' which should be eliminated. This is also why the EU has moved to dismantle collective bargaining structures across all the ‘debtor’ nations and why the EU Court of Justice has banned trade union action to enforce the same collectively bargained rates for local and ‘posted’ workers. EU economics are neo-liberal. They require competition between workers to be maximised. That’s why solidarity and collective bargaining are off the agenda. So equally is economic democracy: the ability of parliaments to limit the powers of big business. This is why the movement needs a rethink. There is no basic difference between the principles of the EU today and TTIP.