TUC 2014 Unity! Wednesday edition

by

Owain HOlland

HE 1970s were the most equalitarian period in the history of britain. This period of prosperity and equality was ushered in by a strong trade union movement with a high proportion of collective bargaining agreements. The 1970s was a period when nearly 80% of britain’s workforce was covered by collective bargaining agreements. a period where unions were ubiquitous and every member of society down even schoolchildren knew what the role of a union was.

Contrast that with the conditions we find today: children leave school with little or no idea of the role trade unions play, or have the potential to play in the workplace, in society and for themselves. Today only two out of every ten workers (a 60% decline in 40 years) is covered by collective agreements.

This has resulted in an increase in poverty and inequality within our society and, as John Hendy QC and the institute of Employment Rights (iER) state; the “troika” - iMF, European Commission and European Central bank - are currently throwing its weight around Europe's poorer countries forcing governments to pass legislation aimed at crippling the ability of unions to win collective bargaining agreements for their members. This attack on workers’ conditions fulfills the neoliberal ideology of squeezing the wages of those at the bottom of our pyramidal society in order that the wealth flows up into the pockets of wealthy shareholders Things may look bad on paper, and as workers we all know they feel bad in reality, but there is hope. To paraphrase John Hendy; the only way we, as trade unionists, as socialists, can buck the neoliberal trend and reverse the sweeping tide of inequality is with a strong trade union movement. This can only be done by teaching the youth of today about the role trade unions can play in making their lives better. as a movement we need to think seriously about how to make trade unions relevant to young people, and how we are going to access them in the increasingly precarious, low paid and casualised labour market.

The future of trade unions relies on young members coming through so that we can make demands of our employers, in order to improve our employment contracts with collective bargaining agreements which will help make the UK a better, more equal society, halting neoliberalism in its path.

To do this the movement needs to be targeting young people and the places they work ensuring they know what unions can do for them.

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Owain HOlland is THE yOUng COMMUnisT lEagUE nORTH wEsT ORganisER

Join Britain’s party of working class power

by

ZOE HEnnEssy

UC Congress is taking place at a critical time for the labour movement and the left in britain.

The Conservative-led coalition continues to swing the axe at the welfare state, sell off publically owned assets at rock bottom prices, whilst still playing a bloody role in global imperialism. There is no recovery for the 2.16 million people out of work, no recovery for the near million people who have been referred to the food banks this year, and no recovery for those forced to endure unending wage freezes.

Thousands of young people are being forced into part-time, casual work, where they have few rights and where trade unions are finding it difficult to reach them. Unions often organise under class collaborationist partnership agreements.

These essentially deny workers their collective bargaining rights and the right to strike. This will not strengthen industrial democracy but will weaken workers and their trade unions’ ability to challenge austerity, as has happened in ireland. youth unemployment is still running at 18.5%, and many are forced to deal with devastating sanctions and other suspensions of benefits which are being dished out unfairly and with impunity.

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“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.

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socialist society creates the conditions for advance to a fully communist form of society in which each will receive according to need.”

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ZOE HEnnEssy is gEnERal sECRETaRy OF THE yOUng COMMUnisT lEagUE

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and liberation

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.

according to the Prince’s Trust, one in three young people have contemplated suicide due to being out of work. it is hard for unions to reach people in these circumstances, and yet we need to in order to build the next generation of activists. This is why Unite community membership has such an important role to play in the struggle and must be fully supported and developed. we, in the young Communist league continue to work towards developing a new generation of committed, militant and politicised trade union activists. we continue to grow, and develop our members through organising socials and camps, and organising day schools to facilitate political education. we continue to publish our magazine Challenge quarterly with various specials throughout the year.

The young Communist league calls on the TUC to fully invest in its young members, and build the next generation of trade unionists. as bob Crow said: ‘if you fight you might lose, but if you don’t fight you will lose’.

post code email return to Communist Party Ruskin House 23 Coombe Road Croydon CR0 1BD e mail office@communist-party.org.uk or call 02086861659 H TUC 2014

Communist Party www.communist-party.org.uk

Unions must take youth seriously

Unity!

Wednesday 10 September 2014

Finale of the war on terror if credit were given where due, the black banners of the islamic state now flying over Mosul, Fallujah and Ramadi would be emblazoned with portraits of Tony blair and george bush by

andREw MURRay

HE sUddEn and stunning military triumphs of the fighters of the is (previously known as isis) is both the consequence and the collapse of the policy launched with the anglo-Us aggression against iraq in 2003.

The overthrow, by means of illegal invasion, of the dictatorial regime of saddam Hussein in iraq spawned an increasingly sectarian, authoritarian and corrupt state which is now on the brink of disintegration along more than one axis. now the Us appears to be doublingdown with a further military intervention, allegedly to stop is advances, fuelled by

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the barbaric murder of James Foley. The only certainty is that this new military incursion will not solve the crisis in iraq and the wider Middle East but will most likely end up exacerbating it. so far the Us has limited itself to supporting military operations by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, who had been losing ground to the is. Clearly this will not defeat is on its own, since the Kurds are not likely to carry the fight far outside their own territory.

The other initiative taken by washington is to shuffle aside the incurably sectarian and authoritarian premier Maliki and replace him with what they hope will be a more inclusive regime. again, it can be stated with a fair degree of confidence that this will not restore the corrupt, sectarian and dysfunctional iraqi state to anything like a condition in which it can confront is with confidence.

The iraqi army created by the Usa after its occupation liquidated the existing armed forces, had its sectarian character enhanced by Maliki to the point where it seems uninterested in fighting outside “its own” territories in baghdad and to its south.

The leadership of the autonomous region of Kurdistan, forever looking for the opportunity to upgrade their autonomy to the foundations of an independent Kurdish state, took advantage of the chaos to seize control of Kirkuk and the surrounding oil field, a position which they will not voluntarily relinquish. a de facto independent Kurdish state based in iraqi Kurdistan is now becoming a reality. as with the erasure of the iraqi-syrian border by is, the nefarious work of the 1918 Versailles Treaty in the Middle East is gradually coming unglued.

Thus the scene is set for a tripartite division of iraq – an effectively independent Kurdistan which would be a pole of attraction to Kurds in other states, including Turkey, iran and syria; a fundamentalist-ruled is in the north (also incorporating much of syria, where dislodging it would require as a minimum cooperation with the assad government) and a shia-based authoritarian Us satrapy in the south. democracy could perhaps knit it together again, bombing certainly will not. continued overleaf Unity!@TUC 2014

war on terror continued from page 1 it is cold comfort to say that precisely this fracturing was a clearly foreseeable outcome of the invasion of 2003, joining the long list of prescient warnings ignored by the hubristic and messianic Tony blair.

Undoubtedly the most humiliating aspect from the point of view of london and washington is the triumph of is across not only much of iraq but a large slice of syria as well, where they have benefitted from western and saudi support for the rebellion against assad. so here is the finale of the “war on terror” – an islamist terror group ruling across the heartland of the arab world as a direct result of western intervention. add that to the growing power of the Pakistani Taliban – unknown in 2001 – and it is fair to describe the bush-blair war as a strategic disaster almost beyond measure.

For blair, of course, none of this is his fault. bizarrely, he argued on his Faith Foundation website – the faith in question seems to be his own omniscience – that the rise of isis could have been avoided had the west intervened militarily in syria. yet the intervention in syria he was urging – he likes an uncommon amount of Middle East wars for a Middle East peace envoy – would have been against the assad government, not is; so it could only have left the islamist insurgents even stronger. so Obama is left contemplating the virtual disintegration of the bush-created surrogate state in iraq. bombing is is likely to prove of only limited effectiveness if translated into action, for the reasons outlined above. it would also be deeply ironic if he now bombed those in insurrection against the syrian government when this time last year he was gearing up to bomb the troops of that self-same government. seldom have the contradictions of imperialism’s policies been so nakedly displayed, highlighting the difficulties the great powers now have in assembling an acceptable cast of surrogates to preserve their interests in the region.

Contradictions abound. iran now appears to be cooperating with the Us in propping up the government in baghdad, over which it exercises considerable influence. and will Turkey stand indifferent while a Kurdish state emerges, or will it claim the right to protect the Turkoman population around Kirkuk as the iraqi state disappears? in total, the picture is a more vivid indictment of blair’s war policies than anything likely to emerge from the elephantine gestation of the Chilcot report. Every charge made against the invasion in 2003 by the anti-war movement – including the danger of sparking a wider regional conflict – has been confirmed in spades.

Of course, there will be those keen to double down on disaster, and the familiar neo-con personalities on both sides of the atlantic are urging an anglo-american return to iraq in force. The large-scale deployment of land forces seems unlikely. but we have already embarked on the familiar route of “mission creep” in which supposedly humanitarian intervention against the barbaric depredations of is morphs into a full-scale renewed war. The anti-war movement must mobilise against this. britain owes the iraqi people the obligation, after a century of disastrous and bloody intervention, of now doing nothing.

One thing is clear. in Mosul, in eastern Ukraine and in the south China sea the 1991 world order is breathing its last. The new order is full of danger of new and expanding wars, but also of the possibility of the defeat of imperialism on a world scale. andREw MURRay is dEPUTy PREsidEnT OF THE sTOP THE waR COaliTiOn Unity!@TUC 2014

NO MORE WARS FOR BIG BUSINESS

by

RObERT gRiFFiTHs

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HE nORTH aTlanTiC Treaty Organisation (naTO) was formed in 1949 on the basis of a pack of lies. The people of britain were told at the time that this military alliance was simply a mutual self-defence pact. it was not aimed at any other country in particular and so did not contravene the Charter of the United nations. but it soon became clear that naTO was at the core of a string of Us-led military alliances to encircle the soviet Union, alongside sEaTO and CEnTO. Us, british and naTO forward military bases stretched from alaska, Canada and iceland across to scandinavia, britain and western Europe (including the then fascist Portugal), the Mediterranean, Turkey, the indian Ocean, south-East asia, south Korea, Japan and the Pacific.

This ensured that soviet cities could be hit by short and medium range as well as inter-continental nuclear missiles. when the soviet Union attempted to site its own short range missiles within striking distance of the Us, to defend Cuba in 1962, the white House threatened all-out nuclear war to have them removed.

naTO was set up when the british government was lying about Us bombers visiting here on temporary ‘training’ and ‘goodwill purposes’. some 66 years later, they are still here at Us controlled sites originally designated as 'RaF' bases to fool the public.

The late 1940s was also the period when the post-war labour government was developing britain's own atomic bomb, an operation initially kept secret from most Cabinet ministers.

From the 1950s, it was claimed that naTO had been formed in order to counter the threat to western freedoms posed by the soviet Union and its allies, who had launched an arms race against the west. yet the warsaw Pact was not established until 1955, six years after naTO, and then only because the latter had rearmed and enrolled west germany in its ranks. Meanwhile, in the arms race, both the atom and hydrogen bombs were developed first by the Us, as were nuclear bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The soviet attack on western Europe never remotely looked like materialising

before the warsaw Pact was wound up in 1993. but instead of this being the signal for naTO to dissolve itself, new enemies were invented such as the ‘rogue states’ led by gaddafi, saddam Hussein, Milosevic and the iranian ayatollahs to justify naTO’s continuation. naTO forces have since bombed or invaded bosnia (1992-95), serbia and Kosovo (1999), afghanistan (from 2002) and libya (2011). breaking pledges given to ex-President gorbachev, naTO has driven eastwards to the borders of Russia and with new capabilities to hit China. Twelve soviet and warsaw Pact states have been enrolled with new Us bases also established in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, georgia, azerbaijan, afghanistan and iraq.

Plans to incorporate georgia and Ukraine into naTO and the EU have led to civil wars and to military confrontations with Russia. naTO proposals for a European ‘missile defence shield’ in eastern Europe would ensure that it could attack Russia without fear of effective retaliation. since the berlin Plus agreement in 2002, the European Union has become increasingly enmeshed in naTO, reflected in the militarisation programme outlined in the 2007 EU lisbon Treaty.

Moving into such policy areas as international piracy and cyber crime is designed to extend naTO's reach across the globe. This same ambition has led to the conclusion of a strategic pact with Colombia, whose right-wing governments act as a Trojan horse for Us disruption of anti-imperialist unity in latin america. as Communist MP Phil Piratin warned in 1949, far from upholding the authority of the Un, naTO undermines it. always in line with Us foreign policy, naTO picks and chooses which Un decisions to enforce and which to ignore (such the Us trade embargo of Cuba or israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian, syrian and lebanese territories). when the Un fails to fall into line, naTO goes ahead to take military action anyway.

The naTO powers now account for more than 70 per cent of global military spending. naTO has no democratic structures, nor is it accountable to any. it undermines the Un, promotes militarism and is the world's single biggest menace to peace and stability. britain should withdraw from naTO and the EU to pursue an independent foreign and defence policy which rejects military aggression and nuclear weapons.

RObERT gRiFFiTHs is gEnERal sECRETaRy OF THE

COMMUnisT PaRTy

Long shadows

by JOHn FOsTER

HEREVER we turn we see imperialism’s long arms and even longer shadows.

And whatever the mass media does to convince us otherwise, we know that every arm ends in a savage claw raking in the world’s resources or a controlling iron fist.

Imperialism’s tentacles reach out for resources, supply routes, ever cheaper labour and control of markets. They reach out to invest in every place and every scheme they can devise to suck out profit.

In Gaza we see the Israeli war machine slaughtering civilians and being daily supplied with munitions and funds by the leader of the NATO alliance, the US. Netanyahu’s cynical objective is to destroy the recently won unity between the PLO and Hamas and thereby derail any comprehensive peace agreement on terms set by the United Nations: two states, Palestine and Israel, within their pre-1967 borders.

Our movement needs to win public opinion to impose a total boycott of Israel and demand that the British government condemns the US funding of the Israeli war machine and itself ends all material support for the Israeli state In Libya, Syria and Iraq we see the consequences of two decades of military intervention. As in Israel, those whom Western imperialism sought to use as its agents have developed their own deadly agendas.

The Jihadi fighters use the equipment supplied by the US and Britain, funds from the West’s traditional allies, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Turkey while their ideological appeal stems directly from anger against a century of imperialist oppression.

Urgent support must be given to the secular and democratic forces in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan but it must be channelled through the United Nations and genuinely international agencies. All military intervention in Syria must cease. Further US and British intervention can only fuel support for jihadi reaction.

Equally in Ukraine we see the tragic consequences of US and EU political interventions to topple a democratically elected government and secure one aligned to NATO directly on Russia’s borders. Well over 2,000 civilians are now dead and hundreds of thousands of families

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homeless and displaced. Extreme right-wing and openly fascist elements are entrenched in the Kiev government’s state apparatus and the aggressive US agenda continues: the September NATO summit in Cardiff will consider proposals to shift NATO headquarters to Eastern Europe, in defiance of all previous understandings with Russia.

Our movement must demand an end to Britain’s membership of the aggressive military alliance with a ‘first strike’ nuclear policy. It must also support calls for an end to the Kiev government’s drive to outlaw the Communist Party of Ukraine, a mass party with 2.5 million votes in 2012, that has consistently worked for a peaceful and democratic solution based on regional autonomy, respect for linguistic and cultural rights and an end to oligarch dominated presidential powers.

In Latin America, US imperialism has clamped down on any breath of progress; supporting dictatorships across the continent to suppress human, democratic and trade union rights, fomenting devastating civil wars and conflicts, militarising whole regions and using every means in an attempt to halt the development of societies that have taken the road towards a just and peaceful future.

The Bolivarian revolution is a beacon of hope throughout the region. No wonder that everything imperialism can muster is being thrown into Venezuela. With Chavez dead, all resources are now concentrated on the fall of the democratically-elected government of Madura, on reversing the gains of the Venezuelan people in health, welfare, education and infrastructure development and restoration of complete control to the elite strata and their multi-national backers.

We need to understand that, in solidarity with working people across the world, our struggle must be to end capitalism and its exploitation, to replace imperialism with socialism and to ensure that it is the people alone who have the right to determine their future. Only by this can we achieve an equality, justice and peace.

JOHn FOsTER is THE COMMUnisT PaRTy’s inTERnaTiOnal sECRETaRy

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