Unity! TUC 2010 Tuesday

Unity!

Communists at the TUC

Tuesday 14th September 2010

New CP pamphlet!

The European Union: For the Monopolies, Against the People

by John Foster

Intensely Relaxed about Capitalism

by Robert Griffiths Blair, Brown and their acolytes have squandered the biggest parliamentary majority in British history, driven away millions of Labour voters and lost more than half of the party’s members.

Whatever the shortcomings and failures of previous Labour governments—and they were many— who could imagine James Callaghan leaving the Tory anti-union laws in place. It is difficult to imagine Clement Attlee privatising health and education services, or Harold Wilson launching an unprovoked war with a pack of lies at the cost of half a million civilian lives.

Callaghan was no great liberal, but it is difficult to see him wanting to bang up British citizens for three months without charge, or asylum seekers for even longer.

Yet none of the four New Labourites contesting the Labour leadership disowns the disastrous, treacherous legacy of New Labour.

Instead, they either hide behind the slender achievements of its first term, or they talk blandly about ‘moving on’ because New Labour has outlived its usefulness.

They should not be allowed to rewrite history so lightly.

Most of Labour’s first-term achievements between 1997 and 2001 were the legacy of commitments demanded by the

unions and conceded by John Smith, the last socialdemocratic leader of the Labour Party.

This is true of the statutory minimum wage, trade union rights, devolution for Scotland and Wales and a Freedom of Information Act. Even so, Blair and his New Labour cabal did everything within their power to limit the effectiveness of these policies.

Other pre-1997 pledges, for example to maintain full employment and renationalise the railways, were dumped.

New Labour’s main usefulness was to big business, especially the City of London and British transnational corporations.

Between 1997 and 2008, for instance, whereas total wages

increased by just over threequarters in money terms, the total domestic profits of financial corporations trebled.

The overseas profits of British-based transnationals rose by 179 per cent. In fact, towards the end of New Labour’s reign, Britain’s monopoly capitalists reaped more in profits from their overseas operations than from their domestic ones.

One of Blair and Brown’s first measures in office was to increase the powers of the Bank of England (even though the General Election manifesto had promised to make monetary policy-making more accountable).

The result was a strategy of high interest rates to prop up sterling and the City, and which helped destroy 1.4 million manufacturing jobs in ten years.

It is significant that neither David Milliband, Ed Milliband, Ed Balls or Andy Burnham intend to reverse the New Labour counter-revolution

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Unity! TUC Conference 2010

Intensely relaxed about capitalism cont.

inside the Labour Party.

They do not support public ownership of the railways—or of much else for that matter— or the restoration of Treasury responsibility for setting interest rates.

They do not intend to replace Labour’s risible legislative commitment to cutting the public sector deficit with a serious one to restore full employment as a central objective of government policy.

Indeed, as unemployment heads towards three million— with one quarter of young people neither in work nor college—they propose nothing which challenges the prerogatives of monopoly capital to ramp up prices, close viable enterprises or cut wages while doubling dividends and bonuses.

They propose no measures of public ownership, no end to the Private Finance Initiative, no controls on the movement of capital, no repeal of the most restrictive anti-union laws in Europe.

Their foreign policy also remains the same, peering out of the rear orifice of the United States, maintaining US military bases in Britain, committing £76 billion to a new generation of nuclear weapons under US control, striving to make the European Union safe for British and US monopoly profits.

The best on offer from the New Labourite epigones is Ed Milliband’s pledge to introduce ‘a capitalism that works for people’.

It’s difficult to know whether to laugh at such political naivety, weep at the poverty of its ambition or despair at the cynical dishonesty of a man who knows not his father.

Monopoly captalism has not only survived its biggest and most expensive crisis in three generations; it has done so with the power and arrogance to punish those whose public money bailed out the entire financial system—namely, the people, the workers including public employees, the users of public services.

Under any of the feeble four, it will be ‘big business as usual’—unless the trade unions fight to reclaim the Labour Party for the labour movement.

The signs are not encouraging, although the next few months could be decisive.

Firstly, the trade unions— especially the main ones in the public sector—need to call joint meetings in all the regions and nations of Britain to organise broad-based local campaigns to defend public services and jobs.

A new, huge round of cuts in public spending will be unveiled in the Con-Dem government’s Spending Review on October 20.

This week we must commit ourselves to real action, ending the embarassing contrast between the militancy elsewhere in Europe and torpor here in Britain.

Last year’s TUC decision to support the People’s Charter— which provides the progressive alternative to Con-Dem policies

of slash and burn—needs to be turned into solid campaigning.

Whoever wins the Labour Party leadership election, affiliated unions should make clear that there will be no more blank cheques to fund antiworking class, pro-war policies.

To abjure this weapon, as some union leaders do at present, signifies a lack of determination to reclaim the Labour Party for the labour movement.

Without substantial changes in policy, no Labour leadership will carry any credibility when attacking all those Con-Dem measures which are based upon and extend New Labour’s programme.

The next Labour Party leader should be told to read some of the classic works of Ralph Milliband, beginning with, say, Parliamentary Socialism and progressing to The State in Capitalist Society before moving into Ten Downing Street.

Anyone who blathers about building ‘a capitalism for the people’ might be better

deployed in the Tory or LibDem parties, trying to civilise his colleagues, not misleading Labour into another cycle of hypocritical oppositionism, empty promises, hope-filled victory, abject surrender to big business, disillusionment and defeat.

But there are two other lessons to be learnt from history here and from other countries in Europe.

Firstly, the left in the trade union movement has to begin putting the case for a fundamentally different kind of society—socialism—in place of corrupt, crisis-ridden, antipeople, anti-planet capitalism.

And secondly, a bigger, more influential Communist Party is vital to counteract rightwards drift in the labour movement and the Labour Party, to help organise the fight for realistic militancy in the labour movement and to project the prospect of socialism.

Robert Griffiths is general secretary of the Communist Party

Britain for the people not the bankers Communist Party TUC Fringe Meeting Wednesday 15th September 7pm, Mechanics Institute, Princess St. Anita Halpin on unions at the forefront of struggle Rob Griffiths on the alternative strategy Jane Carolan on resisting public sector cuts Bill Greenshields on the People’s Charter Chair Carolyn Jones

TUC Conference 2010 Unity!

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Who died on September 11th?

The question has several correct answers. On that day in 1974 Salvador Allende, the president of Chile died in a CIA-sponsored coup, to be followed by thousands more in the years of repression that followed.

And among the thousands who died on that date nine years ago in the ‘blowback’ attacks on the US were 300 muslims working in the twin towers.

Veteran TUC delegates will remember that day. As we assembled after lunch to hear the new Labour prime minister the news of the attack crept around the hall like a poisonous mist. Before the conference was abandoned we heard words from Blair that with hindsight appear even more sanctimonious than they first sounded.

A rush edition of Unity was issued two hours later with a prescient piece penned by Andrew Murray that placed the attack in the context of the partnership of US and British imperialism and predicted a decade of war.

Groucho

Missing Costa-Gavras’s brilliant film about the tragic events of 9/11 is now available of You-tube. It is based upon a true story, and shows the terrible human cost of the crime against humanity, with thousands of lives lost. (Hat tip to Andy Newman at http://www.socialistunity.com/) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3Sx8yl4pKk&feature=p layer_embedded - at=93 Class struggle or class cuddle We at Unity are sensible, moderate pragmatists. We accept the inevitable and bow to reality. We know that progress is slow, almost snail like but we must be modestly grateful for advances, however small.

So the news that our brothers and sisters in Unions21 appear no longer to be lecturing trade unionists to follow the yellow brick to class cuddle (sorry social partnership) but merely reflecting their views (http/:www.unions21.org.uk:news:whatsgoing-on-at-work-what-workers-think) must be progress.

nmanifesto press Politics & analysis, action & culture making the link between working class power & liberation The imperial controversy Challenging the empire apologists

by Andrew Murray £12.95 (£2 p&p) 150pp The education revolution Cuba’s alternative to neoliberalism

by Théodore H. MacDonald £14.95 (£2 p&p) 265pp Illustrated Killing no murder? South Wales and the Great Railway Strike of 1911 by Robert Griffiths £12.95 (£2 p&p) 126pp illustrated

www.manifestopress.org.uk

Pamphlets, flags, badges and books from www.communist-party.org.uk or CPB Ruskin House, 23 Coombe Road, Croydon CRO 1BD

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Unity! TUC Conference 2010

Trident Replacement will destroy thousands of jobs

by Kate Hudson Trident is a dead-end option - a weapon of mass destruction that is eating up money and jobs and it has to be recognised as such.

New research from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament explodes the myth that replacing Trident will create more jobs for defence workers. On the contrary, it shows that

pushing ahead with Trident replacement will destroy thousands of jobs across Britain. This is not just because spending on Trident comes at the expense of other public spending like health, education and basic community services. It is because the money for Trident will come primarily at the expense of other conventional defence projects and the jobs that support them.

Trident & Jobs The Renewal of Trident will be decided by the end of the year as part of ConDem governments Strategic Defence and Security Review.

• Trident replacement, and particularly its dependence on US-contractors to provide both the missiles and the missile launch technology on US-based contractors, will mean that it will cost more jobs, either in defence or the public sector, than it will generate • US Congress hearings have established that the cost of the US replacement submarine and missile system is likely to be double the estimates made in 2006 • The originally estimated £20-30 billion cost of replacement, in the context of the existing crisis of the defence budget, will mean that a number of defence programmes scheduled for British industry over the coming decade will either be cancelled or significantly reduced • The most vulnerable programmes, both from the impact of Trident costs and the overall budget reduction, are in the areas of surface ships, jet fighters, helicopters and armoured vehicles as well as the servicing of airbases and dockyards. The cancellation of such programmes will cost more than 10,000 jobs and is likely to result in the closure of major workplaces

One of the most interesting parts of the report is the section on marine energy. In 2009 the TUC called for a Just Transition to a low carbon green economy, rich in jobs, high in research and development and generating exports. Marine energy has this potential and UK companies are at the leading edge of this technology.

Barrow - where Trident subs are built - could become a major centre for the design and manufacture of wave and tidal turbines. If we invest the money saved by cancelling Trident, we can make the UK a world leader in wave and tidal power technology and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs in Britain, more than compensating for the

jobs lost by cancelling Trident replacement.

In the past some trade unionists have argued that replacing Trident was essential to maintain high value defence jobs. This report shows the opposite.

Scrapping Trident is a key part of the fight for jobs.

The CND briefing entitled Trident, Jobs and the UK Economy will be launched at a TUC fringe meeting on Tuesday 14th September at 5.30pm in the Midland Hotel, Manchester. For a copy visit CND’s website at www.cnduk.org or phone 0207 700 2393. A longer fully referenced report is also available.

Kate Hudson is general secretary of CND

CND’s report recommends that: • In line with the TUC’s 2009 support for Just Transition towards a fuel-efficient, green economy, government-funded programmes should be adopted now, as operated in the United States under the Base Realignment and Closure programme, which would ensure alternative industrial employment in communities most affected, particularly in Barrow-in-Furness. The report highlights the scientific, design and technical skills concentrated in Barrow and the potential, identified by International Energy Agency, for the development of new technological niches in the efficient production of marine and sub-sea energy over the next decade and a half. www.communist-party.org.uk www.solidnet.org

www.morningstaronline.co.uk

www.21stcenturymanifesto.wordpress.com