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© Marienna Pope-Weidemann
A movement rises BY CHRIS NINEHAM
From the mainstream media, you would think that the need for savage welfare cuts is a given. Anyone suggesting a fairer policy is dismissed as eccentric. Even Ed Miliband’s mild proposals to scrap the bedroom tax and cap fuel bills whipped up a storm of establishment outrage. How dare he suggest that a government could step in to limit profits? But, from Russell Brand to Owen Jones, everyone who speaks out against austerity gets a great response from the public. Despite all the propaganda, 60 percent now want the bedroom tax scrapped, 65 percent want more money spent on the NHS instead of cuts, and millions continue to oppose the whole austerity project. In the last few months that alternative view has started to find its voice. Unreported in the mainstream, since the June launch of the People’s Assembly dozens of local Assemblies have sprung up in towns and cities up and down the country, bringing together all sections of society under attack. Health workers, the disabled, students,
benefit claimants and trade unionists have come together with many others to stop the best things in our society being sold off to the highest bidder. At least 80 assemblies have been organised, from Bangor to Birmingham, and from Newcastle to Norwich. The turnout at the assemblies is
FROM RUSSELL BRAND TO OWEN JONES, SPEAKING OUT AGAINST AUSTERITY GETS SUPPORT FROM THE PUBLIC universally impressive. Pretty much everywhere the atmosphere is electric as activists get confidence and energy from coming together and linking up campaigns. The Assembly movement fits the situation. The tiny numbers of super rich in what they laughingly call ‘boomtime Britain’ are trying to divide us. They play off private sector from public sector, employed from unemployed,
‘efficient’ councils from ‘inefficient’. They try and stigmatise immigrants, the disabled and what they sickeningly call ‘welfare scroungers’. But the truth is they are systematically pushing through the cuts at a national level in an effort to reengineer society. We have to create a movement strong enough to stop attacks like the privatisation of the post office or the vicious assault on workers’ conditions at Grangemouth. That is why we need to stick together and fight together. The Assembly movement made the day of civil disobedience possible. It helped turn out a magnificent demonstration at the Tory Party Conference in September. These kinds of mass protests give people like the teachers and college workers the confidence to strike against the cuts. It was mass pressure that forced Miliband to make his first gestures against corporate power. But this is only the beginning. The movement is spreading, there are plans for another national demonstration in the early spring and early next year the People’s Assembly will reconvene nationally to plan the next steps. The People’s Assembly needs you to get involved to help create a movement that is broad and militant enough to break the back of austerity. For more information go to thepeoplesassembly.org.uk.
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Counterfire: who we are and what we do On International Women’s Day 2010 we launched a new political organisation called Counterfire. Its first publication was A Feminist Manifesto for the 21st Century, written by Lindsey German, the convenor of Stop the War Coalition, in collaboration with activist and author Nina Power. A lot has happened since then. We took as our starting point the idea that a leftwing organisation must be an integral part of the struggles of working people and the mass movements that have characterised resistance to capitalism in the last decade and more. Too much of the far left is keen to differentiate itself ideologically and organisationally from mass activity, and is shrinking not growing, obsessed with its own internal debates.
Counterfire set out on a different path, eliminating unnecessary barriers between our socialist politics and the thousands of activists being drawn into opposition to austerity and war.
Building movements We sought to sustain the anti-war movement. And we have helped to do so right up and through the success of stopping Cameron bombarding Syria with cruise missiles. We have contributed to launching the No Glory campaign to combat the Tories’ official ‘celebration’ of World War One due next year. We were at the heart of the student movement when it exploded in 2010 and Counterfire’s Clare Solomon, then president of the University of London Union, was one of its most effective spokespeople. Counterfire was also a key component in launching the Coalition of Resistance and,
through t h a t coalition, the People’s Assembly, which has become the undisputed, essential vehicle for a united resistance to austerity. Even the TUC recognised the effectiveness of bringing anti-cuts activists and the unions together when it voted to support the Assembly after the 4,500-strong founding conference in June. Indeed there are now more than 80 People’s Assemblies
Public Events... f
BRISTOL
Everything you wanted to know about socialism but were afraid to ask With Lindsey German Monday, 25 November, 7pm Venue TBC
DONCASTER
How to end war and austerity Monday, 11 November, 7pm Women’s Centre 21 Cleveland Street Doncaster DN1 3EH
KINGS LYNN
How to end war and austerity Wednesday, 13 November 6.30pm 38 Bridge Street Kings Lynn PE30 5AB
LIVERPOOL
What does socia mean? Tuesday, 12 Novemb Liverpool Guild Of 160 Mount Pleasan Liverpool L3 5TR
3 Our Unite members were standing shoulder to shoulder with the electricians in their signal battle with construction bosses. A Counterfire member, lorry driver Richard Allday, won his election to the Unite executive joining Bryan Simpson from our sister organisation in Scotland.
Dangerous times But Counterfire is about ideas as well as action. Our website set a new benchmark in the online presentation of socialist ideas, combining written material with video reporting, attracting a readership magnified by the early adoption of a social media strategy. Our analysis of austerity from Counterfire editor Ady Cousins and New Economics Foundation senior economist James Meadway has been second to none. Our accounts of the Arab Revolutions and of imperialism in the Middle East have been reproduced on websites around the globe, from Russia to Spain, from Greece to Chile.
across t h e country, from Pontypridd to Kings Lynn, and from Glasgow to Brighton. Counterfire members were centrally involved in establishing the People’s Assembly, both nationally and locally. In the unions our supporters have been fighting to make action by teachers and college lecturers as effective as it can be.
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s socialism
November, 6pm uild Of Students Pleasant
LONDON
But we’ve never restricted ourselves to an online presence. Our frequent free broadsheet given out at protests and meetings across the country has been much emulated by other left-wing organisations and campaigns. After all, when mainstream, paid-for tabloids are declining while free papers like the Metro are widely read, we reasoned, why doesn’t the left develop its own free-sheet strategy. It’s worked so well we are now planning to produce it more frequently and with more pages. Neither have we neglected the development of radical ideas. We’ve been at the heart of the most successful new left-wing festival in recent years - the Dangerous Ideas festival which has brought hundreds of new activists into closer contact with the left. And we’ve worked closely at these festivals with Tariq Ali, Jeremy Corbyn MP, the Guardian’s Seumas Milne, Owen Jones, Tony Benn and many others to make sure that the full
Seeing Red: A festival of subversive cinema Saturday and Sunday 16-17 November, 11-7pm KLT, SOAS, Thornaugh Street London WC1H OXG
LONDON
Everything you ever wanted to know about socialism but were afraid to ask Weds, 27 Nov, 6pm, Rm G3, SOAS, Thornaugh Street London, WC1H OXG
vitality of left ideas can be presented to the widest audience.
Explaining crisis Counterfire members have produced the largest body of new Marxist theory available from any left organisation in Britain in the last few years. This ranges from the widely read Strategy and Tactics, a statement of Counterfire’s aims, through books such as Capitalism and Class Consciousness: the ideas of Georg Lukacs, Timelines: a political history of the modern world, The People Demand: a short history of the Arab Revolutions, to the best-selling A People’s History of London. We have also contributed the best account of the 2010 student rebellion for Verso’s Springtime. In the last few months Counterfire members have published How a Century of War Changed the Lives of Women, The People v. Tony Blair, and the book of the enormously popular Counterfire series, A Marxist History of the World, which is now being enlarged for its Spanish edition. That was part of an ongoing collaboration with Pluto Press. A new book on radical suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst, by Counterfire’s Kate Connelly, has just been published by Pluto to widespread acclaim. In the pipeline are a book on class and another on anti-capitalism and fashion. We believe all this makes Counterfire the most outward looking, dynamic and thoughtful organisation on the left.
We are growing – join us All this has meant Counterfire has grown. We now have groups forming in Bristol, York, Nottingham, Manchester and Liverpool, as well as existing organisation in other cities, towns and universities. If you like the sound of Counterfire and want to help us grow, please join online, over the page or contact us at info@counterfire.org.
NEWCASTLE
Booklaunch: Sylvia Pankhurst, Suffragette, Socialist and Scourge of Empire, with Kate Connelly Tuesday, 26 November, 6pm Blackwells Bookshop 141 Percy St, NE1 7RS
For more events go to www.counterfire.org/events
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The Great British Sell-off BY PAUL HARTLEY
The coalition government’s privatisation programme has been more comprehensive and more brutal than even Margaret Thatcher’s. From the NHS to the police, the private sector has been granted unprecedented access to public services that were previously thought untouchable. And the worst may be yet to come. The privatisation of the Royal Mail, a profitable company, shows that the government intends to be even more audacious as the next general election approaches. Even at the height of the privatisation frenzy of the 1980s Thatcher said she was not prepared to see the Queen’s head privatised. Cameron’s government was willing to slaughter her sacred cow for £3.3 billion – a little less than twice the annual earnings of a top hedge fund manager.
Broken promise Cameron’s promise that the NHS would be safe in his hands is in tatters. Regulations passed in April allow any qualified provider to run health services under the NHS logo. Service by service, from mental health in Bristol to social care in Cambridgeshire, the NHS is being broken up and sold off. Last year, £4.5 billion of contracts were put out on the market, and the numbers are rising. Britain already leads the way in prison privatisation, and houses a larger proportion of its prison population in private prisons than even the US. The Ministry of Justice is now selling off the probation service and legal aid, with the
© Marienna Pope-Weidemann
likelihood that G4S will run both, and police forces are being pushed to outsource everything from investigations to patrolling.
Staggering scale The scale of the great British sell-off is staggering. It includes the government’s manic desperation to dump its shares in RBS and Lloyds, even at a massive loss, Michael Gove’s plans to sell off academies outright, and the privatisation of the East Coast Mainline. Under the guise of a deficit reduction programme the government has been creating facts on the ground – privatisations that cannot be reversed when the economic forecast
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looks more temperate. By simultaneously pushing privatisation and austerity, the government intends nothing less than a wholesale restructuring of the UK economy along US lines. Many of the services formerly carried out by the state are now run by companies such as G4S and Serco that are unaccountable to the public and are run only for the benefit of their shareholders. Morsel by morsel, they are picking the country’s bones clean. But privatisation has created social stresses throughout the country, and movements opposed to the government’s programme are now coming together to resist the great British sell-off.
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