redscare

CP BRitAin

CP BRitAin

communist-party.org.uk

october 2018

Workers of all lands, unite!

redscare Special for PCS activists

We need a united left leading an organised trade union

Unity and organisation

the challenge to Chris Baugh by Janice Godrich and others in forthcoming assistant general UNITY secretary elections and the creation of left unity group Socialist View is he Unified Left Unity grouping within PCS formed a direct result of these stresses which have been building for a around the right wing while. how can we get more challenge to general secretary Serwotka has been one of the most members involved? how can we recruit into PCS? how can we successful Lefts in the British trade organise our members in the union movement. the ability to private sector? how can we deliver work together and above all take unified collective bargaining? And on board members and activists how can we successfully deliver views has been at the core of its means of functioning. PCS has seen inflation beating pay rises for our members? Are all issues that need off the attacks on check-off and facility time. it has a plan in place to to be addressed... these questions if they are to be answered correctly reduce expenditure focussing on key areas. this is no mean feat. for require a radical rethink. We must some time it was the case that PCS also have a clear view on how we relate to the Labour Party. to do was at the front of the active this we must have a united unions leading the way on the pensions’ and austerity battles. But leadership with clear objectives.

Already Left Unity members have like all Unions it cannot afford to seen the creation of a new internal rest on its laurels. faction – Socialist View with the aim Left Unity is not immune to the of gathering support for Godrich. massive growth in support for the the Socialist Workers Party, Unity Labour Party. thousands of our members persuaded by our union to and Socialist Appeal have all come out in her support Communists play a part in campaigning will see inside PCS recognising the themselves now as natural labour supporters but do not wish to play a importance of retaining a united more inclusive left that works for all part in what they see as factional battles inside their Union. to a great activists will also ask left unity extent the low – very low turn outs members to nominate and vote for Godrich. in elections is a symptom of this. the battle to win the Left Unity the left must recognise this – Left Unity if it is to survive must embrace nomination is currently being fought these members and moreover must but whatever the result Left Unity needs to demonstrate it can give be more than just an electoral the leadership required in 2019 and machine.

PCS CommUniStS

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s Building an economy for the people An alternative economic and political strategy for 21st century Britain Edited by Jonathan White with contributions from: Mark Baimbridge; Brian Burkitt; Mary Davis; John Foster; Marjorie Mayo; Jonathan Michie; Seumas Milne; Andrew Murray; Roger Seifert; Prem Sikka; Jonathan White and Philip Whyman.

Available as a free download at https://21centurymanifesto.files.wordpress.com/20 18/03/an-economy-for-the-people-free.pdf

MANIFESTOPRESS.ORG.UK

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beyond. Communists will work to rebuild the left both inside and outside left unity. this in our analysis is likely to be a much easier task with mark Serwotka and Janice Godrich as the two senior elected officers in PCS. the question of pay remains a key issue for our members. the fallout from the recent pay ballot result remains a matter of much discussion and contention. We should remind ourselves that in may conference almost unanimously voted for this national strike ballot. our failure to deliver and lets be honest we were well aware of the law restricting our right to strike when the vote was taken, now requires the leadership to engage with the membership and activists and above all must analyse why only one group delivered a vote of over 50% of its membership. much of this will of course be down to organising and communication. the recent ballot result in the ministry of Justice when linked to the 1000 new members shows what can be done and lessons must be learnt. one thing clear is that adding additional unspecific ‘‘shopping list’ style demands into the dispute will not give members the pay rise that they wish and need.

Communists have consistently argued for maximum unity across the public sector and wider in pursuit of our industrial demands.

But and this is key, communists have also said that the whole purpose of trade union unity within our industrial area namely the civil service and other central government organisations was so that we are capable of winning on our own if required.

Communists have welcomed the national pay claim. Whilst it is a blunt instrument it does show how much pay has fallen behind inflation.

Communists want to see pay coherence, equal pay and national pay bargaining. Pay rises cannot be linked to attacks on terms and conditions. Pay deals must not come with strings attached and must come with new money. to deliver on this we will need national and sectoral strike action, political campaigning and a focus on equal pay.

We must have confidence in the leadership of the union, a clear strategy, and improved organisation, enough finance to run a campaign, and full engagement with the ranks and file membership. if this happens, together we can win.

Jeremy Corbyn “The Morning Star is the most precious and only voice we have in the daily media” £1 weekdays, £1.50 at weekends. from newsagents or online at www.morningstaronline.co.uk

Put Labour into power have been disappointing given the promising circumstances.

Secondly, Labour governments SOCIALISM are always ejected from office eSPite ALL the sneers and after they have abandoned any smears, Jeremy Corbyn has radical policies and embraced a fighting chance of leading ruling class orthodoxy. this happened in 1931, 1951, Labour to victory at the next 1970, 1979 and 2010. in every General election. of course, the British establishment and its allies case, Labour governments had ended up trying to impose policies in the tory Party, the to please big business, the Bank of Parliamentary Labour Party, the england, the City and British eU and nAto will do everything imperialism at the expense of they can to prevent this from public services, the welfare state happening. and the working class.

Corbyn and John mcdonnell millions of workers, the are not members of the establishment club. they challenge unemployed, single parents and pensioners switched to other the big business, ‘free market’, parties or stayed at home at austerity and privatisation status election time. quo. thirdly, Labour needs active, A left-led Labour government campaigning movements outside might revive policies of selective parliament that are strong enough public ownership, economic to create the conditions for planning and the redistribution of electoral victory - and then to wealth. horror of horrors - it keep Labour governments to their could abolish anti-trade union manifesto pledges. laws and diversify ownership of Cold War anti-communism the mass media! divided the trade union So trade unionists should movement in the late 1940s. the expect ‘operation Stop Corbyn’ ‘broad left’ militancy developed in to be cranked up another few gears as election-time approaches. the labour and student movements in the late 1960s and Clarity of policy and unity of purpose will be vital in the labour early 1970s lost its unity, drive and movement if we are to win a left- direction, disarmed by the ‘Social Contract'. led government. So will an defeatism and misplaced faith escalation in mass campaigning activity, especially in working class in the eU helped weaken the labour movement still further in communities and workplaces.

But we should also understand the 1980s, as the Communist Party was almost destroyed. that electing such a government Which underlines the fourth will be merely the beginning. lesson. the labour movement in Britain, we have elected needs a marxist party that can Labour governments before.

Labour took office in 1923, 1929, offer strategic analysis, direction and coordination based on class 1945, 1950, 1964, 1966, 1974, 1997 and 2001 promising reforms and anti-imperialist politics and the goal of a socialist society. and improvements that would that is the Communist Party change Britain for the better. and its programme, Britain’s Road Yet they all ended up on the to Socialism. pavement outside ten downing fifth and finally, winning and Street, discredited and rejected by holding government office is millions of voters. nowhere near the same as What lessons can be learnt from this history, so we can break achieving and exercising state power. the cycle in future?

Britain’s ruling capitalist class firstly, Labour tends to defeat will tolerate and subvert Labour the tories when standing on a governments. But it will fight to bold manifesto that shows a substantial difference between the the death to maintain the structural institutions, processes two parties. and relations which perpetuate its this was especially the case in class power and wealth.

1945, 1974 and 1997. the But winning a left-led formula didn’t work in 1983, government free from eU because the fanatically pro-eU, restrictions to carry out its left pro-nuclear weapons ‘Gang of and progressive policies - and four’ split the party. their Social backed by a politically conscious democratic Party received huge mass movement - will mark an media coverage until polling day, important step along Britain’s when most ex-Labour mPs lost road to socialism. their seats despite a clear run from the Liberals.

RoBeRt GRiffithS iS GeneRAL When Labour stands on a timid manifesto, as for example in SeCRetARY of the CommUniSt 1964, 1992 and 2015, the results PARtY RoBeRt GRiffithS

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AnitA hALPin WORKERS' RIGHTS heReSA mAY asked Jeremy Corbyn why he is so strongly committed to teaching young people about trade unions. his predictable reply illustrates the gap in understanding and empathy that distinguishes the leaders of the two class parties that confront each other. the key feature of Labour's new approach to strengthening workers’ rights and trade union freedoms is underpinned by an understanding that law is always class law and that justice is best achieved from a position of strength. As capitalism entered the mid seventies cycle of crisis, the ruling class understood well that the procession of working class victories – the strikes which freed the Pentonville dockers, the successful miners’ pay strikes, the growing power of the rank and file

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We want real jobs Wage inequality in Britain is the worst in europe and this goes hand in hand with precariousness and deunionisation, both driven by neo-liberalism.

Precarious work is not new, capitalism has seen it all before. it has existed since the industrial revolution. marx referred to an ‘industrial reserve army of labour’, able to be coerced into filling in gaps as employment patterns changed. the issue is global and the european Union, gives primacy to the ‘freedom’ of unrestricted movement of capital and labour, reinforced by rulings of the legal arm of the eU, the european Court of Justice. the ‘free’ movement of labour, or rather the ‘economically coerced mass movement of people in search of work’ has resulted in an employers’ drive to the bottom on wages in sectors where workers are not well organised in unions.

and influence of the Liaison Committee for the defence of trade Unions – meant that the balance of power in the workplace was shifting. Which is why the tories, under thatcher and her successors, were so keen to slice away at the organised power of workers and their unions. the scandal of the last decades is that new Labour, under Blair and Brown, obstructed every attempt to get the party to carry through its promises to repeal the tory anti-union laws.

With the current shadow cabinet's willingness to take on board the well-crafted and expert proposals contained in the policy platforms put forward by the institute of employment Rights and the Campaign for trade Union freedom we have the basis of a legislative programme which, if buttressed by a willingness to take action, could shift the balance of class power in the direction of the working class.

three million workers are locked into zero-hours contracts, agency work or in low-paid selfemployment and nearly five million cannot enforce their rights with their 'real employer’ because they are outsourced or working for a franchise. So whether you are a mcdonald’s worker, a cleaner in the civil service, local government or nhS you probably cannot hold your parent company to account because the workforce has been fragmented and franchised.

A Labour government’s first commitment must be to a ministry of Labour that will ensure that Britain’s 33 million workers have a direct channel to government and a say in an industrial strategy that shapes the investment, training and employment planning that is essential in a productive economy that is shifted away from predatory finance and the City and towards production and human services.

Second, we need every worker to be covered by a national

agreement that provides a floor of rights below which no worker should be forced to work. one of the features of the european constitutions that were crafted after the war was the value attached to labour. the italian constitution makes it explicit (which is why the right wants to change it) but in socialist europe it was embodied both in law and practice.

All working people need to be protected by a set of standards negotiated by unions and employers in their sector and enforceable in law. third, we need to strengthen and extend employment rights so that all workers are protected and strengthen our enforcement mechanisms so that the unorganised and vulnerable are not defenceless before predatory employers.

Rolling out a Manifesto for Labour Law: towards a comprehensive revision of workers’ rights edited by K d ewing, John hendy and Carolyn Jones the manifesto is supported by Jeremy Corbyn’s team and by the Britain’s major unions www.ier.org.uk/ www.tradeunionfreedom.co.uk AnitA hALPin iS A foRmeR memBeR tUC GeneRAL CoUnCiL And ChAiR of itS Women’S Committee And ChAiR of the CommUniSt PARtY of the

BRUSSELS PROTEST ‘It’s finance that takes us hostage not the strikers’

Precarious work is often the end result. the new pamphlet, We want real jobs is an output from the Communist Partyand Young Communist League school for young workers in pracrious jobs and union organisers.

Available at www.communist-party.org.uk at £2 plus £1.50 p&p.

itself a result of bending to the eU’s maastricht treaty which limited government spending. Belgian statePEOPLES’ BREXIT aid was deemed illegal because “you f theRe is one thing guaranteed to could not find a market investor that would give them the kinds of loans weaken Labour’s appeal to the they got from the authorities”. millions of working class voters Precisely so, governments can who plumped for Britain to leave the borrow money cheaply and invest in european Union it is the patronising double speak of the liberal lobby who infrastructure at little risk while the money markets charge much higher pretend that it is concern for our rates. that is why we are paying out country’s most exploited and a fortune for dodgy Pfi deals when impoverished that drives their bid to direct government spending — subvert the Brexit vote.

But, just as the deceptive duet of precluded because the Blair Brown governments slavishly kept to the michel Barnier and theresa may eU’s spending strait jacket — would dances us towards the Remainers delight of a big business and bankers’ have been cheaper. it is the eU’s competition rules Brexit deal up pops a new campaign that are fragmenting the continent’s to demand a ‘final Say’. railway operations, opening them this campaign, fronted by The up to capitalist competition and Independent, has gathered precious driving down rail workers wages at little support from the trade union movement. oddly enough, the two a time when public transport union leaders who have signed up to desperately needs planned state the Independent’s circulation building investment, a stable, well paid and expert labour force and integrated wheeze, (from Community and management. tSSA) represent two groups of the big business Remain lobby is workers whose livelihoods are most running Project fear over prospects at threat from continued for manufacturing when Brexit is membership of the bosses’ eU. complete. But when real economic Procurement and state-aid rules mean governments of eU states are interests are at stake in bilateral negotiations with sovereign states blocked from aiding domestic outside the eU commercial reality is industries including steel. the eU trumps. for example, in the CetA pressured Belgium to withdraw trade negotiations the parties €211m from steelmaker duferco agreed: “eU and Canada will each Group. in italy the struggling ilva steel firm faced an eU inquiry into a continue their own framework of clear and transparent regulation by state-aid proposal. public authorities, and that they the language used to block consider the right to regulate in the state-aid evokes the false logic that led to new Labour’s Pfi scheme — public interest within their territories

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Sex, Gender, class and identity mary davis | trish Lavelle | Susan michie | Joanne Stevenson | deirdre o’neill Two blogs on Keynesian economics michael Roberts Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism Kohei Saito’s book reviewed by martin Levy Remembering Domenico Losurdo Alex höbel SOUL FOOD mike Quille www.communist-party.org.uk

CPB

s All power to the working class This pamphlet examines the role of the Communist Party in winning working class political power £2 communist-party.org.uk

s Education for the people Education activists, parents and teachers argue the case for a democratic education system. £2

no, another eU is not possible niCK WRiGht

COMMUNIST PARTY THEORY AND DISCUSSION JOURNAL Autumn 2018 Number 89 £.50

on the political left a small chorus of voices is singing from the same song sheet as the ruling class Remainers. hilary Wainwright, who over the decades has fronted many a scheme to build a ‘left’ alternative to the Labour Party now wants to foist on Corbyn a plan to “transform” the eU. her blueprint is the Ventotene manifesto, a wartime plea for a federal europe that abandoned as a basic underlying principle of the marxist analysis and located the Agreement. the eU and Canada are genesis of “capitalist imperialism” in the nation state. She is joined in this resolved to preserve their ability to endeavour by the rump of Left achieve legitimate policy objectives, Unity and one or two of the more such as public health, safety, environment, public morals and the poisonous trotskyite sects. that the actually existing promotion and protection of european Union – as opposed to cultural diversity”. the ideal one that exists in the And again, the eU economic imaginations of liberals – is the partnership agreement with Japan principal instrument for maintaining guarantees that the parties will fully and extending capitalist relations of align themselves to the same production, privatisation and international standards on product liberalisation is discounted. As is the safety and the protection of the third World view that the eU is but environment. this means that: “european cars will be subject to the the collective expression of european imperial power. same requirements in the eU and Jeremy Corbyn’s scepticism Japan, and will not need to be tested about the prospects for the and certified again when exported transformation of the eU into an to Japan.” instrument for introducing socialist Added in the deal is an measures is justified. much of accelerated dispute settlement Labour’s programme could not be between the two sides specifically implemented if our country for motor vehicles which includes a remained subject to the Lisbon clause allowing the eU to treaty and the judgements of the reintroduce tariffs in the event that Japan would (re)introduce non-tariff european Court of Justice. in the context of qualified voting, barriers to eU exports of vehicles. national vetoes and the if the eU can reach a realistic agreement with Canada and Japan it untrammelled power of the Council of ministers imaginary schemes to will do the same with Britain. After all eU manufacturers already have an democratise the eU are a diversion.

Until those left wingers who export surplus with Britain. imagine that transforming the eU is no matter that all sides of the Brexit referendum campaign insisted the road to working class state power can come up with a that the result would be honoured. convincing plan for such a socialist in that traditional eU manner – as transition we have to insist that experienced by the Greeks, dutch, whilst another europe is possible, french and irish – if a vote goes another eU is not. against the wishes of the eU establishment each nation is niCK WRiGht iS the CommUniSt compelled to vote again until they get it “right”.

PARtY’S heAd of CommUniCAtionS

s China’s new era and what it means.

The aim of this pamphlet is to strip away the layers of myth and misunderstanding that surround discussions on China and its growing role in the world economy.

by Kenny Coyle £2 €2.5

s Challenge Magazine of the Young Communist League, Britain’s fastest growing revolutionary youth organisation. £2 www.ycl.org.uk

s Workers of all lands, unite! sets out a labour movement policy on migration, labour and refugees. £2 www.communistparty.org.uk

redscare is published by the Communist Party and prepared for PCS members by communists working in the public and commercial services sector