Unity@ TUC
New Series Number 1 September 2013 Published by the Communist Party
FOR DEMOCRACY IN FURTHER AND HIGHER EDUCATION BY MARTIN LEVY
AUSTERITY WORKS ...FOR THE RICH BY
ROBERT GRIFFITHS
ew Labour ex-minister Liam Byrne regrets having left a note to his incoming Tory successor at the Treasury in 2010. It read: ‘Dear chief secretary, I’m afraid there is no money. Kind regards – and good luck! Liam’. The Tories have made the most of it ever since, pretending that Britain is near bankrupt and crushed by government debt, which is why massive public spending cuts are necessary. Incredibly, a Labour shadow cabinet which still contains buffoons like Byrne has largely swallowed this nonsense. Never have so many lies been told so often, by so few and then swallowed by so many. In reality, the last Labour government raised public spending as a share of total spending in the British economy just a little, from 38 per cent to just under 41 per cent by the eve of the financial crisis in 2007. The latter is less than in any year of the Thatcher governments of the 1980s. It was the bank bailout and the growing costs of unemployment and poverty after 2007 that drove public spending up to around 47 per cent of GDP by the time David Cameron’s coalition took office. In other words, it was a major crisis in the capitalist system that caused by far the biggest rise in public spending. Now the Tory-LibDem regime aims to slash it to below 40 per cent by the end of 2017. They claim this is necessary in order to cut the government’s annual budget deficit and its accumulated National Debt. Another pack of lies. At present, the National Debt stands at 77 per cent of GDP and rising. Toryled government plans will do no more than bring it back down to that level in four years' time! Britain’s national debt was that size or bigger for half of the 20th century. We didn’t go bankrupt as a result. The sky didn’t fall in. Today, as Osborne fails to hit his debt reduction targets and the discredited rating agencies chop Britain’s credit rating, there is no crisis for Treasury
N
bonds or sterling in the financial markets. Why not? Because the City financial gangsters – who insisted on this unelected coalition taking office in the first place – know what is really behind the government’s austerity drive. It’s about further cutting taxes for big business and the rich and removing the main obstacles to wholesale privatisation of all public services that can be turned to a profit, beginning with the Royal Mail and the NHS.
of full employment. Exchange controls were lifted, allowing capital to flood overseas for the next three decades. More and more industrial investment became concentrated in the arms industry rather than civilian technology. Then, to cap it all, the City was deregulated in the 1986 ‘Big Bang’ which gave free reign to US monopolies, the crooks and gamblers to inflate the financial sector to bursting point.
‘NEVER HAVE SO MANY LIES BEEN TOLD SO OFTEN, BY SO FEW AND THEN SWALLOWED BY SO MANY’
THE NEW LABOUR TORIES Financial services grew twice as fast as overall GDP under the last Labour government until the banking crisis began in 2007. This was the period when Chancellor Gordon Brown was telling the bankers and speculators in his annual Mansion House speech things like, ‘I want us to do even more to encourage the risk takers’. Corporation Tax on big business profits began to fall to some of the lowest levels in the developed capitalist world, below even those in the US and Germany. The City came to account for 9 per cent of economic output, a far higher proportion than in Germany (4 per cent) and France (5 per cent), even leap-frogging over the US (8 per cent). Of course, much of the City’s ‘output’ is parasitical and socially useless. Both new and old Labour failed to slow British manufacturing’s long declining share of the British economy, from 29 per cent in 1970 to just 10 per cent by the 2010 General Election defeat. Although public spending on education, health and transport grew during the Blair and Borwn years, much of the extra cash enriched the private sector through rail subsidies and new schemes such as PFI.
So public servants have seen around 400,000 jobs scrapped, their wages frozen, their pension rights downsized and attacks on their trade union organisation. State benefits are being cut without mercy even for the unemployed and people with disabilities (including 7,000 former Remploy workers). Almost a million more people were plunged into poverty last year, a third of them children. Meanwhile, the super-rich are enjoying a tax cut and hundreds of our biggest companies pay little or no tax on their abundant profits. Far from being bankrupt, the richest 10 per cent of Britain’s population own £4,500 billion in declared personal wealth (44 per cent of the total) and around £10,000 billion in industrial and financial assets overseas. TORY ROT How has Britain become a more unequal and less productive society, with an economy still dominated by financial speculation that produces little of real value? The rot set in during the Thatcher and Major years when steel, coal and shipbuilding were massacred and the remnants privatised. This helped reestablish a permanent ‘reserve army of labour’ after the freak post-war period
THE BLUE AND ORANGE TORIES In the past year or so, manufacturing has picked up a little since the worst of the banking crisis. But his has been hampered by the loss of buying power as state benefits are cut and wages have fallen by 8 per cent over the past five years. Export markets are still shrinking in
the eurozone and decades of British under-investment have limited new sales in north America and Asia, including China. Certainly, there is no evidence that much of the £375 billion handed to the banks and bond markets in ‘quantitative easing’ has found its way into productive industry, including house-building. So Britain continues to hover on the brink of a triple-dip recession, although the crisis remains real for the three million unemployed, including almost a quarter of young people without jobs, training or a college place. That crisis will continue as long as the Conservative, LibDem and New Labour Tories can get away with plans to cut public spending by £569 billion by 2018. A PEOPLE’S PROGRAMME The kind of policies outlined in the Communist Party’s left-wing programme and in the People’s Charter would create jobs, rebuild industry, enhance our public services, promote social justice and plan for society’s sustainable energy and transport needs. MEASURES TO END AUSTERITY ● Slap a two per cent Wealth Tax on the super-rich, thus raising £90 billion a year – equal to twice this year’s public spending cuts. ● Reverse the recent cuts in corporation tax for the biggest companies and increase the top rate of income tax to 60 per cent. ● Impose a windfall tax on energy, retail and banking monopoly profits and a financial transaction tax on the City bankers and speculators. ● End the tax haven status of all territories under British jurisdiction ● Reverse the spending and benefit cuts and invest in health, education, housing, public transport and the environment. ● Control gas, electricity and water prices and take all the utilities and public transport back into public ownership. ● Nationalise the banks and direct funds into manufacturing, small businesses, cooperatives and housing. ★ ROBERT GRIFFITHS IS GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY
JUST A MONTH ago Amazon boss Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post newspaper for $250 million. Apart from the fact that all that money has come from the superexploitation of Amazon employees, does that matter to us? It’s what he didn’t buy that is arguably more important. The Washington Post company is still in existence, although its name will change. But it has sold its flagship brand because it is making a lot more money from other subsidiaries, and principally from Kaplan Inc, its for-profit education company. From relative modest origins, Kaplan has grown by aggressive marketing into a transnational corporation principally in higher education, and including some subsidiaries in Britain. In the USA, it has faced charges of defrauding the government of hundreds of millions of dollars, by paying incentives to recruiters of students, and by lying to achieve accreditation. Many Kaplan students have been left with no qualifications and with massive tuition fee debts that they will never pay off. It is this market in further and higher education that the ConDem government in Britain wants to open up. Already some of the larger FE colleges are becoming corporate groups, taking over smaller colleges and private training organisations – a prelude to full privatisation. The government has also eased the entry of private, private equity and for-profit companies into higher education. Just last month, BPP University College of Professional Studies, in London, became the second for-profit institution in Britain to be granted the title of university with degree-awarding powers. If this sounds a bit analogous to the way that private companies are muscling into academy schools, then it’s not surprising. The government is intent on privatising the whole public education system. The process is tantamount to a massive transfer of funds to the private sector, from the public purse and from students in both FE and HE. These private companies pay their workers less and offer worse terms and conditions than in public sector institutions, which in turn are putting pressure on their own staff as a result of the increased competition. Education, throughout all sectors, is about the empowerment of individuals. What is coming, if we don’t act to prevent it, is disempowerment – a narrow vocationalism with the ethos of the market, and with students as consumers who will pay throughout their lives. continued overleaf
2 TUC WOMEN AGAINST AUSTERITY jobs.’ She argued that while it is important to celebrate the fact that an enormous amount has been achieved WOMEN REMAIN at the sharp end since Vera Sime and her colleagues of Cameron’s vicious economic and walked out, there’s still plenty more to social austerity policies. As women’s fight for. ‘Maybe we need a bit of that unemployment rises, wages fall, the spirit back’. It was with this in mind and pay gap widens and household and following the huge success of the living costs rise, women face a daily People’s Assembly Against Austerity in struggle to keep themselves and June 2013, that the National Assembly their families from slipping deeper of Women along with women from the into poverty. This is particularly People’s Charter and Stop the War true now that one in three families decided to co-ordinate a Women’s have a woman as the main Assembly Against Austerity to take breadwinner. place in January 2014. The introduction of the totally The aim is to follow the same formula unnecessary and vicious bedroom tax as the People’s Assembly and reflect the has added insult to injury. During the cultural and social diversity of the first four weeks of the bedroom tax women’s movement and show-case the coming into force more than 14,000 important role women have played in Merseyside households fell into arrears campaigns for equal pay, childcare and with their rent. For nearly 6,000 it was historic trade union struggles. It is the first time they had ever spiralled hoped to create a positive and creative into rental debt. atmosphere with a good balance of Forty five years after the Dagenham speakers as well as a mixture of comedy, women workers walked out in the fight poetry and visuals. The only criteria for for equal pay and inspired a generation, involvement in the Women’s Assembly the gender pay gap in the area is still are that individuals and organisations double the national average at 32.2%, must be anti austerity and support the compared with a national average of founding statement of the People’s 14.9% (comparing mean full-time Assembly. Planning is in the early hourly earnings excluding overtime). As stages, but so far the idea has been Frances O’Grady said on the endorsed by the signatories group of anniversary of the Dagenham strike ‘For the People’s Assembly and met with an awful lot of women, they start off in approval from the Charter for Women, a low-paid job, and they end their CND and a number of unions. It is working lives in a low-paid job. Shop hoped that the Women’s Assembly will work, cleaning, catering: there are bring together single issue campaign legions of working women in low-paid groups, women in the trade union BY
ANITA WRIGHT
movement and other organisations fighting for peace and equality. The purpose is to: ● Give voice to the impact that policies of austerity and privatisation are having on women ● Develop thinking about the alternatives to austerity from women’s perspective ● Encourage women in resisting through linking up and learning from each other, including between women’s organisations and women in the labour and trade union movement ● Ensure that women are at the front and centre of a movement against austerity and in developing the alternative The National Assembly of Women was created in 1952 when women from all over Britain came together to demand peace, equality and justice. It is hoped that this Women’s Assembly Against Austerity will re-create the passion and determination to fight for the same aims. It’s time for women to get active, get organised and get even with a Government that is hell bent on destroying the hard won rights of women and working people in order to maximise the profits of their friends in banking and big business. ★ To express an interest email: naw@sisters.org.uk ANITA WRIGHT IS SECRETARY OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF WOMEN
DEFEND THE LABOUR LINK BY
KEVIN HALPIN
ALLEGED IRREGULARITIES by Unite in the Labour Party parliamentary selection in the Falkirk constituency were exploited with glee by Prime Minister Cameron to put Party funding back on the agenda; to add justification to the ConDems latest attacks on trade union rights and freedoms, and generally embarrass opposition leader Ed Miliband. Unfortunately Miliband went on the defensive suspending local party members and calling in the police and, even though they found there was no case to answer, did not lift the suspensions. In this he was supported by Mandelson, Blunkett and their cronies in the right-wing think tank, Compass. His response was ill judged; he should have attacked Tory Party big business funding including donations as high as £12 million from one family alone, the Bamfords, owners of JCB. Instead of this he set up his own internal consultation on reviewing the trade union link and reforming party funding with any constitutional changes being put to a special conference next spring. This obviously antagonised trade union leaders who, like Unite general secretary Len McCluskey, have been urging Labour to abandon its policy of promising only fewer cuts and over a longer period than the ConDem regime. It is the bankers and tax-avoiding and tax-evading billionaires who are the enemy, not the millions of loyal trade union members who continue, as I do, to pay political levy and affiliate to the Labour Party. Going back to Falkirk, it is worth remembering that the Unite members locally were working within the context of the union’s political strategy, endorsed
last year by its policy conference, to win back the millions of Labour voters lost by the unpopular decisions of New Labour. The aim being to make Labour electable, supporting progressive and left policies and representing the interests of working people. Only four per cent of MPs are former manual workers; which is not really representative of core Labour voters. This is just one of the challenges facing affiliated trade unions in their local constituencies and highlights the current crisis of political representation where the collective views and interests of the labour movement are not being properly represented in parliament. No wonder trade unionists who pay the political levy question why they give millions of pounds to Labour when they get so little in return; promises of fewer cuts over a longer period will not end austerity. Set against this background, Miliband’s decision to seek to reform Labour Party funding seems even more foolhardy with a general election less than two years away. He is not proposing to sever the historic link completely but favours restricting Labour Party affiliation to the number of those who opt to pay the political levy who also then choose to become individual Labour Party members. A very bad proposition because, given the lack of anti-big business policies, there are not going to be queues to join. In fact, it is estimated that only between five and 10 percent would take out individual membership. But while unions could still choose to make one-off grants (from the political fund) to the Labour Party at election times, the unions’ collective voice in the party’s democratic processes and policy formulations would be immeasurably diminished. So, in effect, this is disaffiliation in all but name because it would be no more than a number of
individual and disparate groups of members scattered unevenly around Britain. Clearly, defending and saving the historic link between the Labour Party and its founders is crucial for working women and men to win a government with the policies to end the misery of austerity. I am in no doubt that only a Labour victory can oust the Tories and their partners in crime the LibDems at the 2015 general election. And if (?when) Labour win then the affiliated unions must still be there to combat any backsliding and attempts to water down radical policies. So, despite Miliband’s attacks on the link, calling for disaffiliation is wrong. This is a diversion at this stage as is any premature or sectarian attempt to set up a new workers' or 'left' party. The Communist Party accepts, as Lenin recognised over 100 years ago, that the working class needs a mass party of labour and we are committed to the struggle by the labour movement to reclaim control of the Labour Party. We also recognise that there are no guarantees of success and, if the Labour Party cannot be reclaimed, the movement will then have to re-establish a party of labour. The Communist Party will continue to assess the situation, including considering how the decisions of the Labour Party's special spring conference - and indeed the outcome of the 2015 election - might affect our strategic positions. ★ KEVIN HALPIN IS A RETIRED ENGINEERING 50 YEARS AS A SHOP-
WORKER WITH OVER
FLOOR ACTIVIST AND WAS FOUNDER CHAIRMAN OF THE LIAISON
COMMITTEE FOR DEFENCE OF TRADE UNIONS (NOW AMALGAMATED INTO THE CAMPAIGN FOR TRADE UNION FREEDOM) THE
New from the Communist Party Bill Greenshields provides a sweeping analysis of the current crisis of capitalism, the class war being waged by the ConDem coalition government and the steps that need to be taken to build a People's movement in response. £2 from the Communist Party www.communist-party.org.uk
21st century marxism 2013 Saturday 2 November Class, power and socialism Themes The State | The Labour movement | Alliances | Marxism Briefings For peace in the Middle East | A new dawn for Africa? | Latin America: the empire strikes back | The Russian Revolution Rally: Long Live working class internationalism Sunday 3 November Class, race, gender and internationalism Briefings: The alternative economic and political strategy | The fight for disability rights | Resistance and the new social media | The World Peace Council Plenary Britain’s road to socialism www.communist-party.org.uk
We need to resist the changes, but we also need a Charter for Democratic Education, uniting the sectors, and recognising education both as a democratic equal right and as a basis for informed participation in society, as well as providing the skills needed for productive employment. But it also needs to be democratically run and accountable to its communities, staff, students and the public. Such an education system could only be realised within the context of an expanding, productive economy, and one not based on putting private profit first. It therefore has to be fought for as part of the struggle for an alternative economic and political strategy, something like the People’s Charter for Change. By defending the current public provision, while projecting the need for a Charter for Democratic Education, we fight for the empowerment of individuals which will help to make the People’s Charter or the AEPS a reality. ★ MARTIN LEVY TEACHES AT NORTHUMBRIA UNIVERSITY AND IS A BRANCH OFFICER AND NEC MEMBER OF UCU, BUT WRITES HERE IN HIS CAPACITY AS A COMMUNIST PARTY MEMBER.
More about the proposed Charter for Democratic Education can be found in the Communist Party pamphlet, Education for the People www.communist-party.org.uk