Unity! TUC 2017 tuesday 12 September

CP britain

CP britain

communist-party.org.uk

Time to get serious about pay

Groucho

PUBLIC SECTOR PAy CAP

LawrenCe Dunne A kEy debate this week’s Congress is on the issue of public sector pay cap as our movement decides how best to hammer home the advantage on a government who are under increasing pressure to take their figurative foot off the head of public sector workers.

The work done by the unions and Labour during the General Election campaign to make public sector pay a core issue has undoubtedly helped to achieve a big shift in public opinion.

However, as millions of public sector workers face the prospect of another real term pay cut this year, it’s up to the movement to show the leadership required to turn the pressure into something tangible for public sector workers.

Motion 43 from PCS (complemented by motions from EIS, the FBU and the POA) provides the basis for what needs to be done. Previous Congress debates committed affiliates to taking forward co-ordinated action on pay and other matters effecting us all. This is a simple demand, understood by most ordinary workers but one which all to often fails to materialise beyond the fierce agreement during debate at Congress and a few "A to B" marches which make us feel good but have achieved very little. That has to change.

The public sector is the best organised sector of our trade union movement. If we fail to show the leadership and unity required to win a proper pay rise for a public sector workers (avoiding a Tory led discussion over the ‘deserving few’), there is a real prospect that the credibility and relevance of our movement as a force for political change will be damaged irreparably, due to missing the open goal which a weak and divided minority government presents us with.

This week is an opportunity to send a message of determination and solidarity to the government but, most importantly, begin to plan how we will work together to win the campaign in our workplaces and confine the pay cap to the dustbin it belongs in.

LawrenCe Dunne is a member Of the PCs natiOnaL exeCutive COmmittee

tuesday 12 september 2017

Oh, Jeremy Corbyn strategic reserve for the working class as one marxist sage remarked. And the Tories are divided on the EU, the NHS, civil liberties and ABOUR STANDS on the brink of an even how to turn the ending of the pay cap to historic electoral breakthrough. The their advantage. signs are everywhere. A string of by Dependent on an unstable and narrow election results in council elections showing Labour taking seats with stunning majorities. majority they face an electorate that is fed up with austerity, fed up with wage stagnation, Especially striking were the victories taking fed up with benefit cuts and worried about seats from UKIP and the Tories.

These victories in key working class areas – their children’s chances of a steady job, a decent education and a house of their own. where the Blair and Brown years saw the collapse of the Labour vote and the decay into The prize of a Labour government of a distinctly different kind is there for the defeatism of the party itself – represent a triumph for the strategic approach the Corbyn taking.

Jeremy Corbyn will get the kind of warm leadership.

Neither are these freak regional results but welcome from TUC delegates that he gets in working class areas throughout the country. reflect national trends. The fourth This is not simply because Jeremy Corbyn YouGov/Times survey of the new Parliament is an honest and principled man with an saw Labour ahead on 44% (from 43% two exemplary record but because the policies weeks earlier) while the Conservatives with which he is linked in the minds of remained on 41%. millions chime with the beliefs of millions Elsewhere, Liberal Democrat voting His problem, and our problem, is that a intention stands at 7% (from 6% in mid-July) large number of the parliamentary Labour while 9% of people would vote for other Party hold to entirely different ideas. parties. This trend continues.

They cleave to NATO and Trident, oppose The right wing Labour narrative suggested the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn and shadow that under Corbyn Labour’s appeal is to chancellor John McDonnell because they youthful metropolitan, middle-class liberal oppose public ownership, economic planning strata (with the explicit suggestion that in and taxing the rich. Over the last days Unity! order to appeal to ‘traditional’ working class has put the spotlight on the support the voters a right wing tack towards empire nostalgia and patriotic sentiment is necessary. unholy trinity of Mandelson, Blair and Adonis is giving to Starmer’s manouvering over It is true that students and young people voted in large numbers for Labour but equally Brexit but the potential for parlaimentary perfidy goes wider. working class areas also turned out. Labour Trade unionists have the responsibility over takes votes off every other party. the next few weeks to guarantee that our The truth is that where working class electoral gains and policy advances are not or communities have been under assault for lost in bureaucratic bungling at Labour’s decades as among big sections of the middle conference or thrown away by a class, there is a new mood for change. parliamentary fifth column.

Divisions among the class enemy are a

LABOUR

H One of the more bizarre customs of the TUC is the priority assigned to General Council statements which, if endorsed by Congress, ‘trump’ agreement reached through debate, compositing and delegate votes.

The Brexit statement follows in this disreputable tradition. Confused thinking and class-cuddle politics has produced the usual fudge but brings in a new, I think, demand (p2 para 2): for ‘a level playing field between the Uk and the EU on workplace rights into the future’.

But we shouldn’t we be arguing for a Labour Government policy that restores and improves workers’ rights rather than being restricted to the EU minimum.

And what are we to make of the contradiction in the next paragraph which proposes a ‘new agenda’ including ‘banning exploitative zero hours contracts’. Does the EU ban such contracts?

In line with the Starmer/Adonis/ Blair/ Mandelson offensive it argues for a single market transition (p3 para 2) then 3 paras later for a reformed single market (as the charlatan Varoufakis proposes). I wonder which bits of the neo-liberal single market rules they want to keep/remove?

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H This week citizen Macron faces the rentreè social in which the elite encounters the traditional resistance of the French working class to the annual attacks on job security, sectoral bargaining, guaranteed holidays and decent retirement. If the French unions were to follow the advice of the TUC leadership could they not give up on the blockades, demos and factory occupations and rely on the EU and the ECJ to protect their pay and conditions.

what is unity! Privatisation is a failure regular delegates to union conferences have been reading unity! since the dog days of the 1990’s when the working class movement was on the back foot following the defeat of the miners, deindustrialisation, thatcher’s anti-union laws and the dismantling of socialism in the ussr and europe. unity! brought together socialist and communist militants from dozens of trade unions to renew the fight for working class power. Key to its success has been a blend of well informed comment and humour combined with a irreverent attitude to the leadership’s attempts to blunt the sharp edge of struggle. today no union leader or Labour politician will own up to having supported the maastricht treaty or Pfi but when new Labour enthusiastically picked up this tory policy the tuC leadership and some union leaders worked overtime to stop Congress from opposing them. it was unity! which helped rally opposition on the conference floor. when, during conference, news came through of the 11 september terrorist attack unity! rushed out a special afternoon edition which predicted the decade of imperial war that would follow and put the spotlight on the role of the us and saudi arabia in sponsoring the jihadis. when union leaders sucked up to blair, brown and balls it was unity! which stripped bare their defence of neo-liberal policies and big business economics. today, when we welcome a Labour leader of a new type it is worth remembering these days of shame. here is a flavour of those times from anita halpin

Blair is guilty (and so is Brown ) a stanDing OvatiOn for tony blair will shame tuC delegates before the british public for whom blair is a proven liar. the dogs in the street knew iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, posed no threat to britain. and now the iraq survey group confirm it. blair compounded his lies with war crimes. he lied to justify his crimes and lied to cover up his crimes. his new Labour majority joined with the tories to take our country to war against the wishes of our people. he compounds his war guilt with an occupation which continues to bring misery and repression to the iraqis and has brought grief to the families of sixty british soldiers. british soldiers – conscripted by unemployment – continue to face death in an illegal and unjust war. Like soldiers everywhere they make sense of the madness of war by depending on each other. it is loyalty to their mates which holds soldiers together. but our loyalty is to principle and not to leaders who put appeasing bush above the lives of iraqi civilians and british soldiers. gordon brown who found £billions for war but cannot find enough to fund health, housing ,education and pensions shares his guilt. every scrap of applause for this despicable duo weakens the prospect of Labour holding the trust of the british people.

Opposition to this war and occupation unites millions and challenges the consensus which links tory, new Labour and Lib Dem. never before has the anti war movement mobilised so many. never before has the tuC opposed an imperialist war while british troops were in action now we must take these forces a stage further. to end foreign military interventions, cut the arms bill and invest in britain’s infrastructure, jobs, health and education. we can cut arms spending to restore pension levels and bring down the pension age. new Labour wants the us alliance because of growing trade and investment ties and because us power is a protective ‘umbrella’ for british monopoly capital’s world-wide assets (larger than those of any other capitalist class except that of the usa itself). at the same time the blair government wants a leading role in the european union, where there are big trade and investment links, while also ensuring that it does not develop into a fully-fledged rival power to the usa.

Cutting arms spending, ending foreign wars, controlling the export of capital and investing in manufacturing, health and education is the alternative to new Labour’s big business-friendly policy. anita haLPin was then a member Of the tuC generaL COunCiL anD wrOte in her CaPaCity as Chair Of the COmmunist Party

RAILWAyS aLex gOrDOn MT MEMBERS employed by Southern (‘GoVia Thameslink Rail’) have been taking discontinuous strike action for over 16 months in protest at the private operator’s decision to scrap safety-qualified guards on its train services.

ASLEF drivers took strike action in 2016 against driver-only operation (DOO). ASLEF members twice voted to reject offers to accept DOO made by their employer.

Solidarity between rail workers (with tremendous support from the public, longsuffering commuters, disabled people’s rights campaigners and others affected by proposals to de-staff passenger trains) has been notable in the dispute, the same cannot be said for the role of the TUC. Despite longstanding policy opposing driver-only operated train services and excellent campaign work by Action for Rail (the TUC-backed campaign, which highlights the failure of rail privatisation) the TUC pursued a divisive and mistaken strategy in the dispute. To understand how this occurred we need to look again at the political and economic failure of rail privatisation.

By the mid-2000s despite attempts of both Conservative and Labour governments to stabilise finances of the privatised rail industry, it became clear that costs were running out of control while essential maintenance and capital expenditure on new rail projects could no longer be deferred. The lost decade following the disastrous 1994 Tory privatisation of British Rail had finally caught up with the free market fanatics in the Department for Transport.

Privatised train operator National Express East Coast was insolvent and had to be taken over by the DfT and run as publicly-owned.

Rail infrastructure firm Jarvis Rail was forced into administration putting thousands of skilled engineers out of work.

In 2014 Network Rail (the ‘Not for dividend’ company limited by guarantee set up by Labour transport secretary Stephen Byers and Chancellor Gordon Brown) reached the point where repayments on loans from commercial banks overtook its railway maintenance budget.

DfT mandarins and neoliberal policy advisers reached for their emergency manual and brought in yet another ‘top businessman’ to advise them on how to make Britain’s railways more efficient.

Sir Roy McNulty, former boss of Short

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‘The Morning Star is the most precious and only voice we have in the daily media’

Brothers, chair of the Civil Aviation Authority and a non-executive director of Gatwick Airport recommended closing ticket offices, replacing knowledgable railway staff with ticket machines and scrapping guards by implementing driver-only operation as the default method of passenger train operation across Britain’s rail network.

The current industrial dispute with Southern (GTR) is a direct outcome of the McNulty Report. The DfT has sponsored the dispute, in September 2016 paying the useless train company a £20 million subsidy to tide it over despite £157 million in profits taken by the parent company GoAhead Group.

The DfT strategy is to radically de-staff Britain’s railways in order to divert a greater share of state subsidy and rail fares from the wage bill to the profit accounts of GoAhead, Virgin, FirstGroup as well as foreign stateowned rail companies Deutsche Bahn, Abellio, SNCF and Trenitalia, which run our privatised train services.

The RMT fight for no more DOO and to keep a guard on every passenger train has now spread to Northern Rail (operated by Arriva, a subsidiary of Deutsche Bahn) and to Merseyrail (operated by a joint venture between Serco and Dutch state rail operator Abellio). Further RMT disputes are probable with Abellio’s Anglia franchise and with South Western Railway (operated by FirstGroup).

This is a national dispute taking place in a fragmented fashion due to the smashing up of the rail network through privatisation. It is a dispute that the trade union movement cannot afford to lose.

RMT’s motion 11. ‘A safe, secure, accessible, publicly owned railway’ strengthens the fight for accessibility to public transport and to public spaces for all – a fight that the whole trade union movement has a vested interest in.

RMT’s motion 78 ‘Support for affiliates involved in trade disputes’ goes to the heart of the matter concerning TUC involvement, not to say interference, in the Southern trade dispute, which excluded RMT (one of the two unions involved) from talks to seek a settlement of the dispute.

Congress is the parliament of the trade union movement and it is vital for the parliament of the movement to hold the TUC to account and to establish clear rules for when and how its involvement in industrial disputes. aLex gOrDOn is a train Driver, a fOrmer exeCutive COmmittee member anD PresiDent Of

rmt anD is a member Of the COmmunist Party’s exeCutive

want and need reliable and informed labour movement news. the morning star is on sale at all Co-op stores, rs mcColls and can be ordered at your local newsagent.

Jeremy Corbyn December 2015 the mOrning star is the world’s only english language socialist daily pape.r it was founded in 1930 as the Daily Worker to be the organ of the central committee of the Communist Party and in 1948 became a cooperative, the People’s Press Printing society. it is run by an elected management committee which currently has ten national trade unions in membership. the paper provides day to day coverage of the fight for workplace rights, equal rights and the struggle against austerity. until his election as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was a weekly columnist.

Leading figures in the labour and trade union movement and progressives and peace activists write regularly in the paper. there is a vibrant arts page and the paper’s sports coverage, especially football (including womens’ football), boxing and racing is renowned. the paper’s online edition is proving very popular with busy labour movement activists who

subscribe online at www.morningstaronline.co.uk

What kind of EU exit?

The EU, Brexit and class politics

Communist Party fringe Steve Nolan ITUC anti-sectarianism unit Moz Greenshields TUC delegate personal capacity Rob Griffiths Communist Party general secretary & LEXIT chair Andy Bain Communist Party industrial organiser Chair: Liz Payne Communist Party chair 6 pm Tuesday, September 12, Friends’ Meeting House Ship St., Brighton, BN1 1AF

hen the Communist Party helped launch Lexit: the Left Leave Campaign, some friends on the left thought it an impossible and even dangerous dream. firstly, they said, it was a lost cause because all the polls pointed to a ‘remain’ vote. secondly, it was argued, a ‘Leave’ result would put the far right in power for a generation. uKiP and the bnP would run rampant. any lingering prospect of a Labour government would vanish. so what actually happened? a clear majority of voters rejected the eu in the referendum. Cameron and Osborne, defeated, resigned replaced by the equally pro-eu theresa may and Phillip hammond heading a pro-eu Cabinet no more right-wing than the previous one. angered by Jeremy Corbyn’s immediate call to respect the result, pro-eu Labour mPs forced a second leadership election – which Corbyn won. far from gaining ground on the scale predicted, uKiP collapsed. the bnP remained a corpse.

Only after almost nine months of confusion and delay, may triggered article 50 to start brexit. hoping to strengthen her position in the tory Party at the expense of a divided Labour Party, she called a snap election.

Corbyn and Labour fought a strong campaign on the most left-wing manifesto since the 1980s and won more seats. and many more votes after losing her majority in the Commons, may turned to the ulster Loyalist DuP to prop her up. having pledged to leave the eu and its single market, Labour has overtaken the tories in the opinion polls.

Lexit’s critics have been proved wrong on every count. why? because they based their ideas about the eu on superficial, one-sided and mediadriven propaganda. they judged the eu by those loudest in attacking it, namely, some of the more right-wing tory mPs and papers, uKiP and the bnP. they believed what they have been told by the pro-eu media, some Labour mPs and union leaders and the by the eu itself – that the eu is an exercise in international cooperation responsible for progressive measures in employment and health safety law, environment and human rights. even if the ‘social europe’ agenda has been abandoned and vicious punishment dished out to the greeks, the critics of Lexit conceded, it could still be won back and, anyway, europe is a vital market in a world of inevitable globalisation. a new Lexit publication explains why there is a huge hole in the progressive, left-sounding case for the eu and single market. it’s the hole where class politics needs to be.

The EU, Brexit and class politics lays bare the class character of the eu project from its beginning. it shows how the eu and its forerunners have been based on treaties, institutions and rules that serve the interests of the big monopoly corporations in a capitalist, militarist and imperialist united states of europe. it’s ten sections deal with the eu’s Cold war origins; britain’s membership from 1973; the anti-democratic and class character of the eu; the financial crisis and the ‘troika’; the referendum campaign; brexit, ruling class strategy and the exit negotiations (including the irish border issue); the labour movement alternative; and britain in a post-exit world. in particular, it explains why, in britain’s eu referendum, all the big guns of big business – the Cbi, institute of Directors, the City – and their political creatures (Cameron, Osborne, blair, mandelson, hammond, hunt, fallon & co.) lined up with their imperialist allies in the eu, imf, OeCD and natO to warn of the direst consequences should the people disobey their masters. the ruling class – not the maverick goves, farages, Johnsons and reesmoggs – is clear about where its interests lie. that’s why the drive goes on to keep britain in the eu in all but name, whether through efta and european economic area membership or a bilateral eu-uK customs area or free trade agreement. a so-called ‘transitional’ arrangement by which britain remains subject to single market rules, eu Court of Justice diktats and eu budget contributions would allow a ‘breathing space’ during which the eu exit might be reversed.

Labour will play a heavy price if it helps the pro-eu tory Cabinet and big business sabotage the referendum. it will have backed the capitalist class against the working class – risking defeat in the next election. the alternative is either a limited, bilateral customs or free trade agreement with the eu and other major trading markets, or a reversion to wtO rules. the latter already govern more than half of britain’s trade, and the revenue from tariffs on eu imports would more than compensate exporters to the eu.

Copies of the Lexit pamphlet are available from: Lexit, c/o ruskin house, 23 Coombe rd., Croydon Cr0 1bD at £2.50 each (including postage), payment by cheque to ‘Left Leave’ or PO.

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