CP BRiTAin
CP BRiTAin communist-party.org.uk
Monday 10 September 2018
Workers of all lands, unite!
@TUC Against racism TOnY COnWAY RACISM He CAll by John Mcdonnell and others to relaunch a broad nationwide anti-fascist movement is timely. Fascism remains a clear and present danger and the working class and trade unions must take the lead. The rise of fascist movements across europe and in Britain cannot be separated from the vicious antimigrant and anti-refugee rhetoric of mainstream politicians and eU governments — some of which include fascist and far-right parties. There are complex reasons for these developments, but the basic facts cannot be ignored. At one level the ruling class of every country keeps fascism in its tool box — to be deployed when the popular mood threatens the profits and property of the rich. Think Franco’s revolt against Republican Spain; the bankers’ bonus for Hitler when the german communists surpassed the nazi vote in pre-war germany, and US and eU sponsorship of the Ukrainian fascists in power today. The State and the big business media give maximum air time to right-wing ideas when the left threatens to put the many before the few. But when traditional social democratic parties move to the right and abandon the working class and its communities this also gives right-wing demagogues a chance. labour’s shadow minister for trade Barry gardiner was right to warn that subverting the popular decision to leave the eU risks unrest. it will enable right-wing nationalists and fascists to pose as better allies in defending working class communities than the left. This is where the TUC leadership is treading a dangerous path in suggesting that working class interests can best be achieved through membership of the single market and the customs union, when it is precisely the constraints that this places on a government that will obstruct a labour manifesto that would reverse privatisation and marketisation, break free of the austerity straitjacket and restore our union rights. The best Brexit deal is one that is negotiated by a labour government that respects the people’s vote. The liberal media and those middle class ‘Remoaners’ who choose to identify people who voted to leave the eU as racists hide the responsibility of national governments and ‘Fortress europe’ alike. A genuinely broad based anti-racist and anti-fascist movement cannot be built by demonising a great proportion of our people. Opinion formers who do so risk splitting the movement. likewise those organisations — some anti-racist — which join in the campaign to reverse the referendum result do us no favours. it is worth remembering that Brexit voters placed sovereignty over immigration as the key issue in the vote while Remainers put it the other way round. The eU is not a bastion against fascism. Capitalist restoration in european countries with nazi, fascist and collaborationist histories – Hungary, germany, estonia, latvia, lithuania and Romania – has permitted a big rise in national chauvinism, anti-semitism and racism. right-wing politicians find a comfortable home in the eU. Anti-muslim rhetoric and policies are on the rise. The racist Allianz für deutschland is even outperforming the SPd. This is a sign that social democratic parties that hitch themselves to the eU’s neo-liberal austerity consensus face annihilation in the polls. in contrast, labour is leading in the polls, we have an organisationally united union movement, a vibrant Peoples Assembly against Austerity and a strong antiracist tradition. local union organisations should take the lead.Trade unions have the primary responsibility to combat racism in the workplace. We have the resources and strength to do so. The way forward is clear. now it takes leadership and organisation.
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Young workers want real jobs faced early trade unionists. if today’s young workers and the generations ahead are to prosper, PRECARIOUS WORK then the balance of class forces must be upset and to achieve this Age ineqUAliTY in trade unions will need to re-invent Britain is the worst in themselves in many sectors of the europe and this goes economy where change, such as hand in hand with precariousness zero hours contracting, is fast and and de-unionisation, both driven by dramatic. neo-liberalism. For many the recent norm of Precarious work is not new, an annual negotiation on a salary capitalism has seen it all before. it increase of around RPi, an hour has existed since the industrial off the working week and maybe revolution. Marx referred to an ‘industrial reserve army of labour’, an extra day’s leave can only be dreamt about. We have the first able to be coerced into filling in generation in decades where the gaps as employment patterns young see a future of less hope of changed. According to Jonathan White, in work, housing, health and education than their parents look his article ‘Precarious work and forward to. contemporary capitalism’ However, there are recent (published in ‘Trade Union Futures examples of new forms of - a Morning Star Supporters organising and militant solidarity research resource for the union left’), Marx argued that “capitalism beyond traditional methods, and victories are being won. We must constantly creates a surplus quickly move on from being population amongst the working merely defensive to planning our class who live in a state of wins, using company supply chains, precariousness and poverty.” combinations of trade unions, Precariousness, he said, is a solidarity actions by other workers defining and common feature of and non-workers, etc. working life under capitalism.. in September 2017 the first The issue is global and the eU, McStrike, since Mcdonald’s opened gives primacy to the ‘freedom’ of in Britain 44 years ago involved 30 unrestricted movement of capital and labour, reinforced by rulings of workers in two stores. it was just the start. in May 2018 five stores, the legal arm of the eU, the organised by BFAWU as part of an european Court of Justice. The international effort, went on strike ‘free’ movement of labour, or and they have had widespread rather the ‘economically coerced support from other unions and the mass movement of people in public with union membership search of work’ has resulted in an employers’ drive to the bottom on growing as staff see they can win. The struggle continues with wages in sectors where workers demands for a real living wage of are not well organised in unions. £10 per hour for all, the option of Precarious work is often the end fixed hour contracts instead of zero result. We have a major challenge, but hours, an end to Mcdonald’s culture of fear and a union in the it’s no greater than that which AndY BAin
s Marx’s Das Kapital and capitalism today by Robert Griffiths Illustrated £8 €9 (plus £2 €2.5 pp)
s State Monopoly Capitalism by Gretchen Binus, Beate Landefeld and Andreas Wehr. Introduction by Jonathan White The 2007/8 worldwide banking collapse exposed – to a new generation – the cyclical nature of modern capitalism’s enduring crisis. With the collapse in bank confidence came the crisis of confidence in modern capitalism itself, and thus a resurgence of interest in Marxism. £4.95
manifestopress.org.uk
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workplace. There are many more such struggles often applying new ways of organising, such as flash mobs involving non-employees and other trade unionists via trades councils and Unite Community (eg Mixed Fleet flight crew). Others in the fast food and retail sectors include the Tgi Friday, inspired by the McStrikers, in actions over ‘tip theft’ and a Unite organised boycott of Premier inns. Young trade unionists are leading the fight. UCU successfully enlisted the support of students in the strike campaign to protect pensions. The neU had a major impact in engaging parents during the last general election, over education funding. Short-term work makes continuation of trade union membership difficult, so the movement must find ways to address this, possibly using a flexible across-Trade Union App or card. new ‘hubs’ for precarious workers to meet and organise could be developed, as in glasgow as part of the ‘Better than Zero’ campaign. Along with the immediate struggles political demands must be made, including repeal of anti-trade union laws, effective sector collective bargaining and reinstatement of good quality apprenticeships. A new labour government should set up a Ministry of labour to help plan the economy and shift the balance from the unregulated market. Backed by a mass movement outside parliament, it would be in a position to challenge companies and clamp down on precarious employment. We need a government that breaks up the giant monopolies and in the wake
of Brexit, seeks controls over the movement of capital in order to build a modern, efficient, socially advanced and collective economy. We want real jobs is an output from the Communist Party trade union school in May 2018 and aims to play a part in the necessary shift in class forces to bring about progress for the vast majority, who work for a living or are available to do so, in a socialist Britain.
TONIGHT Monday 10 September the pamphlet We want real jobs will be launched, at a meeting hosted by Manchester communists, fromt 67.30pm, Room F13 at Manchester Friends Meeting House, 6 Mount Street, Manchester M2 5nS, . Communist Party general secretary Robert griffiths will open the discussion. The meeting is open to all but there’s a special invite tfor TUC delegates and observers. AndY BAin iS THe COMMUniST PARTY indUSTRiAl ORgAniSeR And A FORMeR
TSSA PReSidenT
TOnY COnWAY iS A FORMeR PCS indUSTRiAl OFFiCeR And THe COnvenOR OF THe COMMUniST PARTY AnTi-RACiST And AnTi-FASCiST COMMiSSiOn
Fringe meeting
Bill gReenSHieldS
Tuesday 11 September 6-8.30pm Friends Meeting House, 6 Mount Street, Manchester M2 5nS
AUSTERITY S An old sitcom reminded us. The extent to which they don’t like it up ‘em is shown every day by increasingly desperate smear campaigns and orchestrated resignations of Blairite has-beens. With the Tories in self-destruct mode, courtesy of the eU referendum vote and developing knife-fight over the MayBot succession, the Blairite rump is key to finessing the bankers and big business no 1 priority – the electoral defeat of the labour Party. it’s in the success of the anti-austerity and antiprivatisation struggle, led by the People’s Assembly and anti-cuts groups throughout Britain, working nationally and locally with our unions and particularly with trades union councils, that we can see where Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership came from. The Collins Report – which was designed to undermine the role of our unions in the leadership election – and the decision of dame Margaret Becket of the British empire to nominate Jeremy were both designed to give the left a thrashing. Both backfired and opened up a huge opportunity for thousands of antiausterity activists – young and older – to make the labour Party do what it used to say on the tin, before Clause 4 was dumped, and ‘socialism’ branded a rude word. Hundreds of thousands more have since pitched in to ‘stick it up ’em’. no wonder Jeremy’s success has attracted such venom, slanders and sabotage – for the most part ineffective, as the working class long ago turned its backs on Blair and his cronies, and view them with total distrust and contempt. What now are the tasks of the People’s Assembly, the trades union councils, anti-cuts groups? The battle for a labour government will not be won by focussing exclusively on the battle of ideas inside labour. The smears and sabotage will accelerate and grow as the election gets closer. The media, with the exception of our Morning Star, will become more frenzied and vicious in the service of capitalism. We have to build a real, integrated mass movement in every city, town and village in Britain, reaching deep down into communities, workplaces and trade union memberships, taking up all the desperate issues facing working class people and communities on a day to day basis, raising confidence and expectations…. and, through that, support for Corbyn and the Manifesto against the monopolies. But how? every local People’s Assembly and trades council needs to be acting now to plan the nuts and bolts, the strategy and tactics of building such a movement. it won’t happen by itself or through wishful thinking! That mass movement will be even more a necessity with a labour government. enormous economic and political pressure will be applied by the capitalist class at home and abroad – greek style – to force it to knuckle under… or out of office. The challenge is for us to exert more pressure upwards from the people, than the capitalist class can exert downwards from the Banks and Big Business. That means a direct, nose-to-nose face-off between ‘us’ and ‘them’ – working class and capitalist class. it’s not just about ‘left’ and ‘right’ politics. it is class war, as Francis O’grady said at the first People’s Assembly Conference. it will not end in a draw. either we inflict a major defeat on them… or they will on us. Are we up for it?
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Bill gReenSHieldS iS A FORMeR PReSidenT OF THe nATiOnAl UniOn OF TeACHeRS And RePReSenTS THe COMMUniST PARTY On THe PeOPle’S ASSeMBlY nATiOnAl STeeRing COMMiTTee.
Brian Campfield Former president Irish Congress of Trade Unions graham Stringer MP Robert griffiths chair Lexit the Left Leave campaign Chair: liz Payne Unison activist BRUSSELS PROTEST ‘It’s finance that takes us hostage not the strikers’
niCk WRigHT PEOPLES’ BREXIT F THeRe is one thing guaranteed to weaken labour’s appeal to the millions of working class voters who plumped for Britain to leave the european Union it is the patronising double speak of the liberal lobby who pretend that it is concern for our country’s most exploited and impoverished that drives their bid to subvert the Brexit vote. But, just as the deceptive duet of Michel Barnier and Theresa May dances us towards the Remainers delight of a big business and bankers’ Brexit deal up pops a new campaign to demand a ‘Final Say’. This campaign, fronted by The Independent, has gathered precious little support from the trade union movement. Oddly enough, the two union leaders who have signed up to the Independent’s circulation building wheeze, (from Community and TSSA) represent two groups of workers whose livelihoods are most at threat from continued membership of the bosses’ eU. Procurement and state-aid rules mean governments of eU states are blocked from aiding domestic industries including steel. The eU pressured Belgium to withdraw €211m from steelmaker duferco group. in italy the struggling ilva steel firm faced an eU inquiry into a state-aid proposal. The language used to block state-aid evokes the false logic that led to new labour’s PFi scheme — itself a result of bending to the eU’s Maastricht Treaty which limited government spending. Belgian state-
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public morals and the promotion and protection of cultural diversity”. And again, the eU economic partnership agreement with Japan guarantees that the parties will fully align themselves to the same international standards on product safety and the protection of the environment. This means that: “european cars will be subject to the same requirements in the eU and Japan, and will not need to be tested and certified again when exported to Japan.” Added in the deal is an accelerated dispute settlement between the two sides specifically for motor vehicles which includes a clause allowing the eU to reintroduce tariffs in the event that Japan would (re)introduce non-tariff barriers to eU exports of vehicles. if the eU can reach a realistic agreement with Canada and Japan it will do the same with Britain. After all eU manufacturers already have an export surplus with Britain. no matter that all sides of the Brexit referendum campaign insisted that the result would be honoured. in that traditional eU manner – as experienced by the greeks, dutch, French and irish – if a vote goes against the wishes of the eU establishment each nation is compelled to vote again until they get it “right”. 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 marxist analysis and located the genesis of “capitalist imperialism” in the nation state. She is joined in this endeavour by the rump of left Unity and one or two of the more poisonous trotskyite sects. That the actually existing european Union – as opposed to the ideal one that exists in the imaginations of liberals – is the principal instrument for maintaining and extending capitalist relations of production, privatisation and liberalisation is discounted. As is the Third World view that the eU is but the collective expression of european imperial power. Jeremy Corbyn’s scepticism about the prospects for the transformation of the eU into an instrument for introducing socialist measures is justified. Much of labour’s programme could not be implemented if our country remained subject to the lisbon Treaty and the judgements of the european Court of Justice. in the context of qualified voting, national vetoes and the untrammelled power of the Council of Ministers imaginary schemes to democratise the eU are a diversion. Until those left wingers who imagine that transforming the eU is the road to working class state power can come up with a convincing plan for such a socialist transition we have to insist that whilst another europe is possible, another eU is not. niCk WRigHT iS THe COMMUniST PARTY’S HeAd OF COMMUniCATiOnS
Dialectical and Historical Materialism Understanding why change happens
3 s An introductory course on Marxism A basic course in marxist philosophy. This publication is dedicated to the memory of Kevin Halpin (1927-2017), the outstanding workers’ leader, chair of Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions. £2 €2
s The EU, Brexit and class politics Which way for the labour movement? by Robert Griffiths £2
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s Women & Class by Mary Davis has become the standard text for the labour movement’s engagement with the issues. £2
s Workers of all lands, unite! sets out a labour movement policy on migration, labour and refugees. £2 communist-party.org.uk
Operation ‘Stop Corbyn’underway LABOUR
pro-eU, pro-nATO labour MPs who are determined to sabotage PeRATiOn ‘STOP Corbyn' Brexit and the election of Jeremy Corbyn to Ten downing Street', he has gone up a gear as the charged. prospect of a left-led The Communist Party leader labour government gets nearer, said pointed to recent reports in the Communist Party general secretary Times, Guardian and Financial Times Robert griffiths. indicating that Britain’s Tory He told the party’s Political government, business leaders and Committee in August that British ruling class circles were determined eU officials want a future Corbynled government to be constrained to prevent the election of a by eU single market and customs socialist prime minister who has a union rules. long record of opposing austerity, ‘They understand better than privatisation, nuclear weapons and some trade union leaders and imperialist war. sections of the left that labour ‘Their most valuable allies in policies to promote industry, invest “Operation Stop Corbyn” are an in infrastructure, renationalise organised faction of anti-socialist,
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Get your copy of “In Place of Austerity – a programme for the people” Download free at www.thepeoplesassembly.org.ok/what_we_stand_for Paper copies £1, or 80p each for orders over 10, plus postage from The People’s Assembly 52, Beachy Road, London E3 2NS
aid was deemed illegal because “you could not find a market investor that would give them the kinds of loans they got from the authorities”. Precisely so, governments can borrow money cheaply and invest in infrastructure at little risk while the money markets charge much higher rates. That is why we are paying out a fortune for dodgy PFi deals when direct government spending — precluded because the Blair Brown governments slavishly kept to the eU’s spending strait jacket — would have been cheaper. it is the eU’s competition rules that are fragmenting the continent’s railway operations, opening them up to capitalist competition and driving down rail workers wages at a time when public transport desperately needs planned state investment, a stable, well paid and expert labour force and integrated management. The big business Remain lobby is running Project Fear over prospects for manufacturing when Brexit is complete. But when real economic interests are at stake in bilateral negotiations with sovereign states outside the eU commercial reality is trumps. For example, in the CeTA trade negotiations the parties agreed: “eU and Canada will each continue their own framework of clear and transparent regulation by public authorities, and that they consider the right to regulate in the public interest within their territories as a basic underlying principle of the Agreement. The eU and Canada are resolved to preserve their ability to achieve legitimate policy objectives, such as public health, safety, environment,
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They don’t no, sister, another eU is not possible like it up ‘em! Peoples’ Brexit
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energy and the railways, revive regional development policies, regulate the labour market and reform vAT would cut right across eU treaties, rules, directives and eU Court of Justice rulings’. He said that this explained why British and eU negotiators have moved closer to agreement on exit issues such as City of london access to eU financial markets and ‘backstop’ arrangements to retain northern ireland within the framework of the eU single market. ‘Both sides would prefer a bogus big business Brexit rather than a real Brexit that would allow a left-led labour government
freedom to pursue its policies without eU obstruction at every turn’, the Communist Party general secretary concluded, ‘although their first choice would be another referendum in the hope that their scare stories and lies might work better the second time around’. The Communist Party political committee condemned the ‘vile smears’ of anti-semitism as another aspect of ‘Operation Stop Corbyn’, noting that Margaret Hodge had been the first labour MP to step forward as a challenger to Corbyn when the labour leader called for the eU referendum result to be honoured the day after the poll.
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
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