TUC 2014 Unity! Monday edition

By

The Morning Star and trade unions in 2015 and beyond

TOm mORRISOn

nLy PROGRESSIvE federalism can serve the interests of working people across Britain.

A ‘yes; vote will be a blow to workers on both sides of the border The polls may be close but be we need to very aware of the consequences of a 'yes' vote. Scotland would 'separate in 18 months when Scottish mPs will leave Parliament .

This will have an immediate spin off in Westminster because even if a majority Labour government were to be elected in may 2015, it would fall unless it had a safe majority because 44 of the current Labour mPs represent Scottish constituencies!

Communists in Scotland do not support 'independence' on the SnP's terms. Since the 1930s, the demand by communists has been for a future based on progressive federalism, a position that was backed in the 1970s by the STUC and the majority of the Scottish labour movement.

So what does ‘progressive’ mean? It is federalism that is not simply a constitutional fix but one which facilitates the struggle for progressive social change across the nations of Britain — which enables a redistribution of wealth and power.

Under progressive federalism the federal government at British level would control overall economic policy and be constitutionally required to redistribute income geographically in proportion to social need. Parliaments in Scotland, Wales and, if supported locally, in the regions of England, would have the power to take utilities into public control, to intervene industrially to sustain employment and to increase the power of working people over the resources of their country.

This was the vision of the Scottish Assembly of 1972: for a ‘workers parliament’, one whose actions would help lift struggle elsewhere, to unite not divide. The ‘independence’ offered now by the SnP in its White Paper is very different and is a trap for working people.

It will weaken and not strengthen their position against that of big business and the banks.

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2015 will be the most important General Election year since the second world war. Everything we have struggled for and gained since 1945 is now on the line.

All of us in the trade union and labour movement, the People’s Assembly Against Austerity and many others must be part of the struggle to save our society.

Every movement needs an educator, agitator, and organiser.

The movement has all three and more in the Morning Star, Britain’s only national daily socialist newspaper, fighting for peace, socialism and a better world.

Join us at our fringe with UNITE General Secretary Len McCluskey and others to debate a fighting way forward to 2015, and a better future.

The White Paper’s recipe for economic growth is to lower corporation tax. It seeks to offer stability for Scotland’s massive financial sector by remaining in the sterling area and to guarantee the rights of external big business, which owns over 80 per cent of Scottish manufacturing industry, by seeking membership of the EU. Without a central bank or its own currency, Scotland’s budget would still be set by Westminster — and after 2015 most likely a Westminster run by Tories. Austerity would continue. And it would be policed by the EU. Once in the EU, Scotland would have to incorporate the 2012 Stability Treaty into its written constitution, and the new government would need to ensure that its annual deficits did not exceed 0.5 per cent and, if long-term borrowing or national debt exceeded 60 per cent of GDP, it must be brought down by 5 per cent a year. Scotland’s debt is currently calculated as at least 85 per cent of GDP. Hence SnP independence would make austerity cuts even worse. As for public ownership or ‘state aid’ for industry, forget it - it’s absolutely outlawed under EU rules.

TOm mORRISOn IS SECRETARy OF THE

COmmUnIST PARTy In SCOTLAnD AnD IS CHAIR OF UnISOn WEST DUnBARTOnSHIRE

Monday 12.45 Hall lla, BT Convention Centre Chair: Bob Oram Refreshments provided

continued from page 1 Dave Prentis argued that ‘The TTIP is coupled with the new EU public procurement directive that weakens public control and encourages a market-driven approach to public services’.

However far too many unions have simply called for their sector to be exempt from the requirements of the TTIP rather than calling for the negotiations to be abandoned. The approach of the AFL-CIO and the European TUC also fails to face up to the need for a complete rejection of the TTIP in favour of a listing of conditions that in reality are not at all likely to be acceptable to the major corporations. Pious appeals for ‘greater transparency’ and seeking ‘an active role in the consultation process’ for the trade unions ignore the power and influence of the corporate lobbyists such as Business Europe and the European Services Forum as well as a dangerous assumption that the EU Commission is not already committed to implementing the TTIP as soon as possible.

The TUC needs to recognise the dangers inherent in the TTIP and ‘adopt a clear position of outright opposition’ (Unite motion) rather than continue the equivocal position that it has taken in previous years on the European Union in general.

ROBERT WILkInSOn nUT DIvISIOn SECRETARy

IS An

The truth about TTIP Communist Party Fringe meeting. Tuesday lunchtime, 12.45pm at Jurys Inn, Suite 4, first floor. Speakers include Anita Halpin and Robert Griffiths

Unity!@TUC 2014

www.communist-party.org.uk Communist Party

Fake independence FIGHTING FOR ‘A trap for the left’ OUR FUTURE

Unity!

Sunday 7/Monday 8 September 2014

Partnership for profit The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is the biggest ‘free trade’ deal in history and a vast power grab on behalf of the world’s biggest capitalist corporations By

ROBERT WILkInSOn

HE USA is the centrepiece of three new trade agreements being negotiated outside of the structure of the World Trade Organisation on which the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are regarded as now having too much influence. The Trans Pacific Partnership is being established alongside the deal being done with the EU Commission on the TTIP and the final nail in the coffin of national economic sovereignty is the Trade in Services Agreement that aims for the absolute and

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permanent privatisation of services.

US and Uk banks are eager to include financial deregulation in the secretive talks drawing up the TTIP with minimal scrutiny by national or European parliaments. The control of energy is also a major element looking to achieve the replacement of European reliance on Russian gas with the expansion of the extraction of US shale gas.

The most obvious concern so far in Britain has been the threat that the TTIP would pose to the nHS and other public services like education, water and transport. Some trade unions have already expressed deep reservations about the impact that the TTIP would have upon health and safety standards, financial services regulations, consumer and environmental protection, product standards and employment rights. The European Commission has been clear that the biggest trade ‘barriers’ under discussion are not tariffs on the imports of goods but ‘different safety or environmental standards’. Harmonisation discussions are likely to be used to level down standards in a race to the bottom with strict limitations on the role of

governments to act in the public interest. most restrictive of all will be the power given to a new legal process known as the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) mechanism that GmB described as ‘effectively limiting the power of national governments and public authorities whilst giving unelected and unaccountable foreign businesses and investors unprecedented control to challenge state actions which they perceive to be a threat to their private investment’. An arbitration panel of lawyers, operating in a jurisdiction of the corporation’s own choosing, will consider any dispute purely on the basis of ‘free trade’ values with no regard for public health, environmental protection or labour or other social rights.

The Unison annual conference condemned the ISDS as a mechanism that ‘would allow multinational companies that take over public services to sue the government if their contract was threatened…. Governments could be faced with a lawsuit saying their policies impinge on their company profits’. continued on back page

Unity!@TUC 2014

Euro con trick By

AnITA HALPIn

GEnERATIOn AGO Jacques Delors told TUC delegates that the ‘European project’ would guarantee jobs, workers rights and safeguard our welfare state. But this vision of Social Europe was unachievable.

The future direction of the EU had been crafted two years earlier in the Single European Act (SEA) of 1986. Its clearly stated objective was the elimination of all obstacles to the free movement of capital, labour, goods and services within the boundaries of the EU. The Act contained a commitment to establish a single currency, thus creating both economic and monetary union and all the institutions and directives have only one purpose. to serve the interests of monopoly capitalism.

The maastricht Treaty of 1992 opened the door even wider to big business to capture public services and utilities in a privatisation scramble that has left millions of Europeans with mounting energy bills, failing public services and soar-away fares The free fire zone for big business and the banks has given us an unemployment crisis, youth unemployment tops 60 per cent while millions of women are driven out of the jobs market or suffer forced part time working.

Over the years directives stemming from the SEA have required member states to l end the public ownership of basic utilities including transport, postal services, communications, energy and banks; l end ‘state aid’ for industry; l introduce compulsory competitive tendering in the public sector; l end local government direct labour schemes; l introduce private pension schemes.

The devastating effects of these directives have been exactly the opposite from what so many trade unionists thought Delors had promised them over 25 years ago, and a stark reminder of exactly how much power the EU has to dictate domestic policy to member states.

And now, the jewel in the crown of our welfare state - the nHS - is under dire threat, as is the whole range of state education with the proposed European Union/US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). It would be naïve in the extreme to imagine that the provision of health and education would be safe from unscrupulous,

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Unity!@TUC 2014

privateering vultures.

One third of people in this country now live below the poverty line. The grim reality of austerity Britain today is that 21 million are unable to heat their homes; 18m have no proper homes, and 4m don’t have enough money to eat properly.

This is criminal in the fifth richest economy in the world. But the blame does not lie solely at the door of four years of ConDem misrule. It has to be seen within the context of the EU’s mandatory deficit reduction targets which are stifling growth and decimating public services across the EU. In opposing the 2012 'no deficit' Fiscal Compact even the European TUC had to admit that 'economic governance is being used as a means of restricting negotiating mechanisms and results, attacking industrial relations systems and putting downward pressure on collectively agreed wage levels; to weaken social protection and the right to strike and privatise public services.'

I am finding it harder and harder to understand why so many trade unionists continue to believe that the small benefits that ‘social’ Europe delivered in the past somehow excuse all the EU’s other draconian measures that are driving austerity, poverty and unemployment.

AnITA HALPIn IS THE COmmUnIST PARTy’S TRADE UnIOn ORGAnISER

This pamphlet argues that the answer to austerity for the people of Euope is to withdrawal from the European Union. £2 from www.communist-party.org.uk

HE QUESTOn can be forgiven because its feeble response to the issues facing the people of Britain indicates otherwise. Indeed, cynical voices are being heard suggesting that it might be better to let the Tories deal with a resurgent economic and financial crisis after may 2015 while Labour bides its time until the crisis passes.

Any such perspective betrays the hopes and interests of the workers and peoples of Britain. Labour cannot abdicate its responsibility to govern in their interests.

The problem is that it would fail to do so unless it radically changes its policies.

Despite Tory crowing about Britain's economic recovery, we still have more than two million unemployed (over 6 per cent of the workforce), half of them young people (17 per cent).

It means nothing when we are told monthly by the monopoly media that 'more people are employed than ever before'. Britain's population and workforce have increased almost every year since the end of the Black Death in 1350.

Certainly, we have more low-paid, part-time or precarious jobs than ever before. What's needed now is a massive programme of public and private sector investment in public services, public sector housing, green technology and manufacturing.

That means taxing the rich and big business, closing down tax havens around the world under British jurisdiction and directing private capital to where it is most needed. yet at the moment, Labour threatens to continue the Tory-LibDem austerity drive against public services and the poor, albeit more softly and over a longer period as 'austerity-lite'.

While Labour's pledge to reintroduce a 50p top rate of income tax is welcome, a modest Wealth Tax on the very rich would wipe out Britain's public spending deficit overnight.

Repealing the Bedroom Tax would end a nasty assault on the unemployed and disabled. Allowing councils to use the proceeds of council house sales to buiild new homes would signal another step forward. But Britain's housing crisis cries out for a wave of public sector housebuilding, backed up by training programmes to help create millions of new jobs.

Cancelling plans to renew Britain's nuclear weapons system would free up to £100 billion for socially useful investment. The dithering over renewing or replacing Trident continues as Labour maintains its loyalty to the US and nATO, instead of adopting an independent foreign and defence policy for Britain.

The two Eds, miliband and Balls, witter on about a 'cost of living crisis'. yet they

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ARE WE DOOMED? Does the Labour Party leadership intend to win the next general election asks ROBERT GRIFFITHS?

refuse to control the costs of food and clothing while the retail monopolies pile up the profits. nor will they commit the next Labour government to a substantial rise in the statutory minimum wage or compulsory equal pay audits in the private as well as the public sector.

As the slogan of the TUC demonstration on October 18 puts it, 'Britain needs a pay rise'.

Workers in the public and private sectors, together with the unemployed, pensioners, students, carers and people with disabilities all need a substantial rise in incomes to boost economic demand instead of building a castle of sand based on house price inflation, household debt and yet more subsidies to the banks through 'Quantitative Easing'.

Labour's proposals to freeze household energy charges will bring only partial and temporary relief, even prompting the Big Six monopolies to get their price rises in early from the end of 2012. Appointing a new regulatory body would be a waste of time.

Britain managed to expand and modernise our gas, electricity and water industries without parasitical private directors and shareholders for five decades from the 1940s. Who needs them now? Public ownership would be a vote winner, with even the right-wing tabloid newspapers supporting renationalisation.

A massive investment programme in non-nuclear renewable energy, gas storage and a national water grid would create long term energy security and create more than a million jobs.

Furthermore, instead of subsidising Britain's railways so that shareholders can receive fat dividends, the whole industry should be taken back into public ownership. Instead of tinkering with the franchise system, the next Labour government should legislate to shorten the franchises and then renationalise each section for free as these expire.

What a vote winner that would be among the million of rail passengers who pay the highest fares in Europe for one of the worst services!

Then there is the distorting domination of the British economy by the spivs, crooks and gamblers of the City of London. A Labour government should extend public ownership and control into the banks and markets and channel their funds into low interest investment in new housing and sustainable, productive industry.

However, the prospects for Labour changing course and winning the General Election on may 8 are poor.

The manipulated national Policy Forum in June laboured to produce a weak mouse or two. miliband's leadership has not clearly broken from Blair-Brown

neoliberal economics and US-nATO militarism.

The failure to confront the EU, which is driving austerity and privatisation across Europe and destabilising the former Soviet republics, is handing a gift to UkIP which opposes the EU from the right when Labour should be doing it from the left.

While last month's Labour nEC ‘What's needed now is a massive elections produced some welcome gains for the left, the Special Conference programme of reforms will entrench centralised diktat public and and further weaken the links with the private sector trade unions, perhaps fatally. investment in In this context, the proposals to form a public services, trade union party, linked to Labour at public sector least for the time being, are worthy of housing, green serious consideration. technology and In the meantime, we need the trade unions, manufacturing’ the People's Assembly and the peace and other progressive movements to campaign together against austerity, privatisation and war, in favour of the kind of policies set out in the People's Charter.

On every front, the prospects for success would be stronger if we had more readers for the morning Star and more members for the Communist Party.

The labour movement needs its own mass party. But it also needs a militant party active on every front, based on marxism, rooted in the working class, part of an international movement and with its own programme for revolutionary change, namely Britain's Road to Socialism.

If you agree, join us!

ROBERT GRIFFITHS IS GEnERAL SECRETARy OF THE

COmmUnIST PARTy

This new pamphlet offers a Communist perspective on the labour movement, the Labour Party and the crisis of working class representation. It features a series of articles published in the Morning Star by Communist Party general secretary Robert Griffiths as well as relevant excerpts from Britain’s Road to Socialism.

This is a contribution to the debate that's certain to be ongoing in both affiliated and non-affiliated trade unions in the run up to the 2015 general election and beyond. £2 from www.communist-party.org.uk

Unity!@TUC 2014