The Socialist - Dec / Jan issue

theSocialist

paper of the socialist party scotland committee for a worker’s international (scotland)

What’s socialism got to do with it ?

Issue No 19 - Dec 2011/Jan 2012

Nationalise the energy companies

afterN30.....

ESCALATE TO DEFEAT THE CON-DEM’S

pages 6/7

hree million of us will be striking together on November 30th in what will be the largest ever oneday strike by the working class in Britain.

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Brian Smith Branch secretary Glasgow City Unison (personal capacity) Public services workers in union after union have voted by huge majorities of around five to one to strike against the Con-Dem attacks on our pensions. Trade unions who have never been on strike before are taking action.

In Scotland almost one in four workers are in the public sector, meaning that the size of the mobilisation on N30 will be unprecedented. It represents a watershed and a significant point in the fight back against the cuts programmes of the UK and Scottish Governments and the fat cat bosses.

The huge mobilisation on 26 March in

page 12

London and the marvellous action on 30 June by hundreds of thousands of civil servants and teachers showed that, if properly led and organised, the trade unions remain the single biggest force for defeating the government. We can gather behind our banner all others who oppose the cuts.

The leaders of some of the public services trade unions have habitually used strike ballots as a bargaining tool to gain very limited concessions in disputes. This is not one of those occasions when such an approach is acceptable.

This is not a “normal” industrial conflict. The Con-Dem’s have made it a highly politicised dispute and the big business bosses are foursquare behind Cameron in his attempt to inflict a large defeat on the working class by taking on the public sector unions.

Any serious U-turn by the Con-Dem’s would undermine Cameron’s authority and embolden working class people to take – up other fights to protect their jobs and living standards.

After N30, unless Cameron and co back down, the trade unions should organise

more co-ordinated UK wide action. We need to name the day for at least another 24-hour public sector shutdown, or even an escalation to a 48-hour public sector general strike.

The nature of future action should be decided democratically through mass consultation of trade union members through workplace meetings, shop stewards committees, local branches, etc.

Where possible this should be coordinated with workers in the private sector as well.

The anger of public services workers, their families, young people and the working class grows by the day. We know that we didn’t create this economic mess and should not have to pay for it.

We are clearly entering a huge battle with the strike on N30. It is incumbent on all in the labour movement to ensure that November 30th is the beginning of a mass movement to stop the cuts and bring down this savage government of the rich.

● For more on the fight against the cuts see pages 2,3 and 4.

price: £1

(solidarity £2)

Europe in crisis

ALL OUTONN30 pages 5 and 8

● Name theday for anotherpublic sectorshutdown

● For unitedstrike actionby public and privatesector workers ● Buildcross-union shopstewards committeestobuild for future strikes Standing anti-cuts candidates in 2012 - Open conference Saturday 10th December 2.30pm Adelaides, 260 Bath Street, Glasgow Speakers include

Brian Smith Glasgow City Unison branch secretary (personal capacity)

Cheryl Gedling PCS NEC member (personal capacity)

● see page 5 for more details

email: info@socialistpartyscotland.org.uk website www.socialistpartyscotland.org.uk website of the committee for a workers’ international: www.socialistworld.net

thesocialist

2 editorial

www.socialistpartyscotland.org.uk - Dec 2011/Jan 2012

EDITORIAL

Capitalism is crisis - Socialism is the alternative ism. A founder of the far from radical Independent newspaper, Andreas Whitham Smith, recently stunned readers by telling them that the threat of “revolution” was stalking “Western capitalism”.

However, this was not the deathbed repentance and repudiation of a former stalwart of capitalism but a warning to the capitalists themselves of the need for ‘change’ in the structure and organisation of their system in order to avoid such a ‘nightmare’. Whitham Smith favours a ‘political revolution’ aimed at renovating and legitimising capitalism.

The Egyptian revolutionaries show that it needs to be fundamentally challenged. They have correctly characterised the post-Mubarak regime – dominated still by the army and the security apparatus – as a ‘change of the curtains’ rather than complete dismantling of all remnants of the Mubarak regime, which would involve a social revolution.

no alternative Wall Street has been in turmoil as the US economy falters.

he titanic strike of 30 November in Britain will display the colossal power of the working class through the trade unions, to resist the savage cuts demanded by the capitalists and their political representatives, the Con-Dem austerity coalition.

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It also presents a unique opportunity that must not be lost for the leaders and ranks of the trade unions to reach big audiences of working people.

Many will be involved in mass action for the first time and therefore can be receptive to discussion and debate about a real alternative to the future of unrelieved misery, ‘planned poverty’, promised by Osborne and Cameron with Clegg and Co in tow.

The PCS civil service union has already proposed an immediate alternative to Osborne’s £81 billion worth of cuts over four years. It demands the collection of the massive £120 billion unpaid tax of big business which, if implemented, would render the cuts

completely unnecessary. The Socialist Party and the whole labour movement support this demand.

However, the speed and depth of the present crisis of capitalism and its devastating effect on the lives of millions of workers in Britain and worldwide poses sharply the issue, not just of immediate measures that offer some relief for working people, but of more profound solutions, of ‘system change’. This means outlining and fighting for a democratic socialist alternative.

The powerful and inspirational mass movements of the Greek workers have heroically battered away at the foundations of rotten Greek capitalism.

Their counterparts in Spain, Portugal, Italy and here in Britain, in this decisive movement of 30 November, seek to emulate them. It is also articulated in the tremendous ‘Occupy’ movement, which in the last months has swept through 1,000 cities worldwide and touched every continent.

Moreover, this first breeze of the class struggle – which foreshadows the storms and hurricanes to come – has even touched the summits of capital-

Join the Socialist Party Scotland I’d like to find out more / join Socialist Party Scotland

Not one of the leaders of the main political parties in Britain is proposing serious change. David Cameron, pressed on all sides by the increasing unpopularity of the venal system he presides over, poses as an alternative, mythical ’moral markets’, a contradiction in terms.

Obscene bankers’ bonuses, eye-watering and growing inequality, skyrocketing poverty and unemployment are to be underpinned by the cement of a new capitalist ‘morality’. This represents an attempt by the apostles of capitalist slavery to reconcile us to the perpetuation of this failing system.

We can imagine Cameron’s reply: “The talent and ability of bankers and the chief execs of top companies should receive their due rewards.

Without them, we are doomed.”

Ed Miliband, the New Labour leader, fares no better with his appeal for a “better capitalism”, counterposing “productive” capitalism, which is ‘good’ to “predator” capitalism, which is ‘bad’.

In reality, these are just different wings of the brutal profit system and are linked together in perpetuating the current deadly paralysis of society.

Manufacturers gamble in the finance

sector at the cost of building factories and creating jobs, and finance is organically linked to industry.

Miliband is incapable of answering the doctrine of ‘Tina’ – there is no alternative – which has from the time of the vicious Tory government of Margaret Thatcher been the mantra of every bosses’ government which seeks to unload the burden of the crisis of capitalism onto the shoulders of the working class.

worst crisis ever Against the background of the worst crisis “ever” (according to Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England) the claim that ‘there is no alternative’ is a difficult argument, to say the least, to sustain today. Yet all three main parties insist on it.

The real situation is revealed in the army of unemployed, the colossal wastage arising from the ‘great recession’, which threatens to topple into outright ‘depression’.

One million young people alongside one million women are part of what is likely to become a permanent 2.75 million minimum army of unemployed in Britain. And this is just part of the legions of at least 200 million unemployed in the world who increasingly form a substratum of the poor, homeless and dispossessed.

Eighty-one million of this figure is composed of young people – who are condemned to a life of ‘worklessness’.

There is almost a 50% rate of unemployed young people in Spain and 40% in Greece.

Added to this are the seven million in Britain and 1.6 billion worldwide in part-time ‘precarious’ jobs. They are a ‘precariat’, a modern manifestation of Marx’s “reserve army of the unemployed”.

This is a pool of cheap, sometimes almost slave labour – including young people working as ‘interns’ for nothing. They may be drawn into work when needed and then conveniently tossed aside like an old boot when the economic cycle of capitalism deems they are ‘surplus to requirements’.

Inequality is intrinsic to capitalism.

The exploitation of the working class – the capitalists garner what Marx called ‘unpaid labour’ in the form of profits – is the very foundation of the system. From this flow all the inequal-

ities and the class antagonisms which shape this society. The system can go ahead for a while as long as the surplus is invested in productive industry to create more factories and thereby the production of more goods and services.

But it stagnates and falls back when the restricted incomes of the working class – particularly marked in the last few decades – means they cannot buy back fully the goods and services they produce. This results in ‘overproduction’, a glut of unsold goods and redundant workers and capital. This, in turn, can produce a ‘death spiral’ reflected in the paralysis of production evident throughout the world today.

In fact, a new social system is knocking at the door of history. This is the idea of a socialist democratically planned and organised economy and society. To usher it in requires a movement and the urgent building of a mass workers’ party.

Through the immediate shortening of the working day, working people will be allowed to participate in managing and controlling nationalised industry through a plan. Now, the working day is being extended under capitalism.

It is impossible to prescribe exactly how a plan of production, with all the details and priorities to be worked out, will be implemented in today’s society. This will be best left to the initiative and intelligence of the working class organised through their own collective power. But the present horrors of capitalism will continue to exist, indeed, will be perpetuated, if this system is not replaced by socialism.

But support in the polls for the ‘Occupy’ movements has demonstrated the broad support for a better world.

The ‘99%’ does not yet have a full understanding, consciousness, of how to achieve that alternative. Even those involved in the ‘Occupy’ movement know what they don’t want but do not have a clear alternative. Yet their aims can only be realised through real ‘system change’, socialism.

Brutal capitalism is demonstrating daily the blind alley which this system is in and is preparing the ground for millions to search for an alternative.

Capitalism is incapable of satisfying human requirements in today’s world.

Socialism is the idea which will dominate the 21st-century.

Keep up to date with the most comprehensive socialist news and analysis from around the world with the Committee For A Workers’ International

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Recent highlights include ● Failed G20 summit takes eurozone nearer to the abyss ● Spain: Crisis, elections and the vacuum ● Bolivia - Morales government clashes with workers and the poor ● Italy: Angry students take to the streets .......and much, much more

thesocialist

fighting the cuts 3

www.socialistpartyscotland.org.uk - Dec 2011/Jan 2012

Why we’re striking to defend our pensions The civil service workers I intend to strike on the 30th of November because of the unwillingness of the current government to participate in any meaningful negotiations.

As a lone parent I stand to lose 18.5% of my income as a result of reductions to public services. I will also have to contribute an extra £100 a month in increased pension contribution.

I have worked since I was 17 and will have a pension of less than £4000 per year to look forward to. This fills me with a sense of outrage as for much of my working life I was too low paid to afford pension contributions.

That is why I will withdraw my labour on the 30th and I look forward to escalating the action should it be required.

We must stand together and we must stand firm against these outrageous attacks on our class.

Fiona McDonald PCS Scottish government

member

As a PCS member I will be pleased to be joined by 20 other unions to stand up to the government on N30 and demand that they listen to us, we will not accept their austerity measures.

The new scheme will cost an average of £63 extra a month. How are ordinary civil servants such as job centre and pension centre workers supposed to pay this when are we have a pay freeze and rocketing inflation, particulary on essentials such as food!

For this campaign to be successful, it is unlikely that one day of strike action will be enough, N30 will have to be the first of many days of united trade union action. "

ernment to steal an additional £230 million a year from us.

N30 ‘s one-day public sector general strike should be seen as a starting point for further industrial action to protect us from present and future attacks on our living standards by the governments of big business in both Holyrood and Westminster.

A Dundee pension centre worker

The nurse

The local government worker "The members I represent are extremely angry at this Government of the rich that intends to make them pay for this bankers crisis. We need to fight back and fight back collectively across all workplace in public and private sectors."

Ian Leech Glasgow City Unison Local Government Branch

The teacher Increased contributions from teachers and Health Service pension schemes in Scotland will allow the Gov-

Jim Halfpenny EIS member West Dumbartonshire

Workers in the NHS haven’t taken national strike action since the 1980’s. The fact that Unison was prepared to ballot and advocate support for action has emboldened our members.

Everyone wants to walk out on the 30th November.

November 30th will be a sea change, but we’ll need further national coordinated action to force the government to back down. Believe me NHS workers are up for a fight, whatever it takes.

Alan Manley - Assistant branch secretary Tayside Unison healthcare (personal capacity) PCS members took widespread strike action on 30th June

What needs to happen after N30 ? he joint strike against the Con-Dem attacks on pension rights on 30 November could be one of the biggest strikes in modern trade union history. It is likely to involve more workers than even the 1926 general strike.

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John McInally national vice-president of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) (personal capacity) The leadership of PCS viewed the attack on pension rights as the issue on which an effective fightback against vicious government cuts could be launched. This would be by building a wide alliance of trade unions capable of organising and delivering widespread, coordinated, industrial action.

The impact of coordinated action on this scale will be profound: it needs to be, because if the gangsters and spivs currently in government win on pensions they will be emboldened to attempt greater outrages.

The cuts programme is the most serious assault on living standards since the 1920s. PCS rejected the consensus the government attempted to establish that there was no alternative to the cuts.

But this consensus was only possible because the Labour Party also argued cuts were needed. Labour proposed cuts of a similar level but to be carried out less quickly. This policy is reflected by some trade union leaders who say that the cuts are being carried out "too deeply and too quickly" rather than fighting against them being carried out at all.

PCS's policy has been that if we organise in our workplaces and communities and build the greatest possible anti-cuts alliance in society the government can be defeated. Critical to the defeat of the cuts programme was the necessity to build a strong alliance

among the public sector trade unions in order to organise widespread, coordinated industrial action.

PCS believes all the cuts should be opposed, no job losses, pay freezes nor cuts in terms and conditions. Accepting cuts is saying "don't cut my job, cut his or hers". The true savagery of the cuts programme goes beyond attacks on workers' jobs and conditions. The cuts in welfare and social provision will devastate the lives of individuals, families and communities.

The three key elements in the battle over pensions are the Con-Dem coalition's attempt to make public sector workers pay more, work longer and get less despite the fact public sector pensions are affordable, sustainable and reducing in cost. The attack is ideological and based on the demand from big business to cut workers' conditions in order to make the privatisation of our services "affordable".

Up to six million private sector workers had their pensions stolen from them over the past 30 years or so.

While private sector pensions are broadly comparable with public sector pensions, although the figures are undoubtedly skewed by the obscene pension payouts for many company directors and so on, the real issue in the private sector is about provision.

The slogan and campaign of Fair Pensions For All must be an integral part of the TUC strategy.

30 November Industrial action on the scale that 30 November promises will shake the government's confidence and the more serious strategists of the ruling class. Industrial action represents the most organised, disciplined and focussed form of class action and can fundamentally challenge the established order: it demonstrates that working people are prepared to fight in order to defend or improve their conditions.

Industrial action also reveals the abilities and talents of working men

and women. It exposes the great lie that working people cannot organise their own workplaces and by extension, society, in their own interests.

If there are no concessions following 30 November then there must be a serious escalation of the industrial action. It is important that debate on how to escalate starts now, among members and activists as well as union leaders.

Widespread, coordinated national action involving as many unions as possible is the key to applying enough pressure to bring the government into meaningful negotiations. All efforts should be made to increase the number of trade unions and members participating in any further action, including potentially private sector workers, where disputes exist or potentially exist, under the banner of Fair Pensions For All. While all forms of industrial action must be seriously considered, that discussion must start with coordinated national action. There is a tight timetable on pensions as the government intends to have its proposals in place by spring 2012.

The impact of the action on 30 November will be huge. Maximum pressure can be applied by making a clear statement that further national action of two or even three-day nationally coordinated strikes will follow month on month until there are serious negotiations. The nature and scale of the current struggle means it could not be ruled out that, given a clear lead from the TUC and union leaders, workers would be prepared to take four, or even five days of coordinated national action.

Linking the struggle Such escalation would be a very serious matter and would mean a mobilisation of our movement on an unprecedented scale, linking the struggle not just between workplaces but into our communities and among pensioners, students etc. The message

to the coalition would be clear enough is enough, back off now or face the consequences.

National coordinated industrial action, effectively a public sector general strike, can defeat the pensions attack and would fundamentally shift the balance of forces in society. That is precisely why some in the leadership of our movement will resist developing such a strategy, as they see no real alternative to the profit system and so do not want to seriously challenge it.

There is no easy road to winning on pensions but an effective strategy and committed leadership can succeed.

The government has been in crisis since it took office and is deeply unpopular. The organised strength of the trade union movement as expressed through widespread coordinated industrial action, supplemented by other forms of action is more than up to the job of stopping the cuts.

Tactics for industrial action The use of selective action is viewed with deep scepticism by PCS activists due to their experience going back decades. However, the type of selective action being discussed in other unions including Unite, which results from this method of action being recently used by local authority workers in

Southampton, would be of short, sharp duration, perhaps rotating groups of workers in action, unlike the very long disputes characteristic in civil service history.

But the idea that a key group of workers exists whose role is so vital that they can take action on behalf of all others because their industrial impact will be so strong is problematic.

Industrial impact depends on the industry itself. Clearly workers who have the power, for example, to literally turn off the lights have enormous and immediate, industrial power.

The vast bulk of public sector workers do not have that type of industrial power and the impact of industrial action is, generally speaking, cumulative.

However there tends to be a sharper political element to public sector strikes because the government and local authorities are the employers and also such workers deliver public or local services in which people feel they have a direct interest.

However, one simple principle must apply, all strategies should be properly considered but if the battle is to be won the role of widespread, coordinated industrial action must be paramount.

Other forms of action will play important, in certain circumstances, even critical roles. But national action, the best method of generalising and optimising impact, is the key.

thesocialist

4 news

www.socialistpartyscotland.org.uk - Dec 2011/Jan 2012

THEY’RE JUST RUBBING OUR NOSES IN IT....

As a UNISON steward in a national branch, I’ve been asked to speak to members at workplace meetings across Scotland about the threat to our pensions and the need for a big YES vote in the ballot for November 30th.

Diane Harvey Unison Steward, SCRA Branch Members understand the need to fight any attempt to make us work longer for less pension.

And while there is anger about the threats to our pensions, time and again the focus of the meetings shifted from the attacks on our pensions, to the attacks on our pay, to cuts to the budget which has meant fewer staff and an increasing workload, stress levels through the roof, and the effect that all this is having on the service we provide.

There was anger at the big bonuses still being paid to bankers and outrage at figures which came out while the ballot was still running, which showed that top bosses pay went up by an average of 50%, while public sector workers got 0%...."they don’t even try to hide it…..they’re just rubbing our nose in it".

This ballot was around the current

attack on our pensions, but for many members the ballot was long overdue.

UNISON members in my branch want to show their opposition to the ongoing attacks on workers, our communities, on jobs and services. Many staff who weren't union members came to the meetings and joined the Union there and then - wanting to take part in the ballot to defend their pensions and to support their colleagues. Even before the ballot closed, members were volunteering for picket duty!

There is a mood of determination to strike on 30th Nov together with our fellow workers in the public sector, to stand together and send a clear message to ALL politicians who want to make cuts, whether it be to our pensions, our jobs, or our services.....we will fight you on this....and on everything else you threaten us with!

But members also want to know “What happens after the 30th ….. one day won’t be enough!” There is a recognition that it doesn't end here....that we will have to be prepared to take further action as the attacks continue. .

30th November will be a massive show of strength by public sector workers …..but everybody knows….this is just the start!

Edinburgh says NO he ‘Our City’s not for Sale’ campaign by Edinburgh Unison has been taken up by the Edinburgh people over the past few months through public meetings, demonstrations and leafleting.

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Jimmy Haddow It’s had the effect of throwing the Edinburgh SNP/Lib Dem cuts coalition into disarray.

The Council wants to privatise waste collection and recycling, and the management of the parks and greens; along with the maintenance of public buildings, janitorial and security services, the school lunch service and the cleaning services.

The preferred private contractor is called ‘Enterprise’, which according to the Council would save a minimum of £51.4 million over seven years, possibly rising to £72 million.

At the same time an in-house’ bid by existing staff was estimated to save £45 million over the same period. However, it is estimated that the Enterprise bid could lead to 220 plus job losses, but scandalously the in-house bid would lead to over 120 job losses.

Some trade union officials are backing the in-house’ bid.

“Privatisation in tatters as SNP reject bin deal” screamed the headline in the Edinburgh Evening News the day before the full Council met.

The SNP councillors decided to back down, for the moment, from going to full privatisation and rather, as the Leader of the SNP and Deputy Council Leader, put it “for the council workforce to be given a chance to show it can make the required savings”.

In other words accept cuts to jobs

and attacks on conditions and possible privatisation through the back door.

On the day of the full Council meeting to discuss the plans there was a demonstration of over 100 council workers, trade unionists and anticuts/privatisation activists which pushed the Council to pull back to full privatisation at the moment and to have more time to review the options and have further ‘consultation’ with the public.

The unelected Edinburgh Council officials have decided that they want more time to see the details on the bids to privatise a plethora of council jobs such as the janitors, the school lunch service and the cleaning services and other services not associated with the waste collection.

So it will now not be decided until the December 22 Council meeting where there is expected to be a strong trade union and anti-cuts activist’s demonstration against any privatisation.

The trade unions need to be clear that the £45 million in savings promised by the in-house bid cannot be achieved through redundancies or reduction in wages of the cleansing staff.

There must be no cuts on the living standards of any of the rank and file Edinburgh council staff. There must be no privatisation of Edinburgh council services and all council services must be kept within the Edinburgh Council remit for the benefit of the Edinburgh people, not the private sharks.

Next years local elections must also see anti-privatisation and anti-cuts candidates stand against the cutters and privateers from the establishment parties.. This idea has been warmly received when it’s been raised at public meetings in Edinburgh over the last few weeks.

Standing candidates to fight the cuts he first important step in standing anti-cuts candidates in next year’s Scottish council elections was taken at a 70 strong meeting on the 22nd October.

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Philip Stott It was agreed to organise a meeting on 10th December to launch the anticuts coalition (see advert on page 1) The initiative, led by prominent public sector trade unionists, is to establish an anti-cuts coalition that would aim to stand in as many areas as possible next May when all of Scotland’s councillors are up for election.

Speaking to the proposals Brian Smith, a Socialist Party Scotland member and the branch secretary of Glasgow City Unison argued for “an umbrella anti-cuts coalition that trade unionists, anti-cuts campaigners, community groups, socialist organisations etc would collaborate together under to provide the maximum number of candidates in the election.”

Brian explained that central to standing anti-cuts candidates was a recognition that all the main parties, including the SNP and Labour, were carrying out savage cuts. It was essential that principled fighters be prepared to stand to offer an alternative. “There are three elements to building a mass campaign against the cuts,” he said, “a trade union strategy that involves mass mobilisations including 30th November public sector shutdown, a community movement and now thirdly we need a political campaign, which means standing anti-cuts candidates in the election.”

Cheryl Gedling, a PCS NEC member also spoke and explained that “trade unionists were facing an onslaught on jobs, pay and pensions while the bankers who created the crisis get away with barely a scratch.” Cheryl put the case for a real political opposition, which is our responsibility to create.

The SNP in Edinburgh council are supporting mass privatisation of council services, proving they are no alternative for trade unionists.

In moving support for the initiative both Brian and Cheryl outlined a minimum five point programme including opposition to all cuts, that our candidates would support needs budgets that defended jobs and public services, opposition to privatisation and support

It has become obvious that mainstream parties have abandoned ordinary workers, existing only to maintain their own positions and protect the interests of big business and the wealthy in society.

If we only campaign industrially we fight with one hand tied behind our backs. We need a political alternative. We need anti-cuts candidates who will vote against cuts, stand up against attacks on services, and ensure the voices of ordinary workers, whether in the public or private sector, are heard."

Cheryl Gedling PCS NEC member (personal capacity) for taxation on the rich as well as support for public ownership.

These proposals were welcomed by most of the individuals and organisations represented at the meeting, including activists from trade unions and anti-cuts campaigns from different parts of Scotland.

Political organisations including Socialist Party Scotland, the Socialist Workers Party and Solidarity welcomed the idea of an anti-cuts coalition and agreed to take part in a coordinating committee to prepare for the 10th December. The Scottish Socialist Party said they would not back the coalition idea immediately but would go back and discuss it in their organisation.

The only specific opposition to the idea of an anti-cuts slate of candidates came from the International Socialist Group – this is a split of around 40 people who left the SWP earlier this year.

They raised concerns that if an anticuts slate stood it would “cause problems” for people "we are working with in the anti-cuts movement who are in other parties, including the SNP and Labour."

The ISG are the main organisation building the Coalition of Resistance (CoR) in Scotland, that has so far not come our clearly and consistently

against all cuts.

They have sought to build links with elements of the SNP, Labour and sections of the trade union leadership who only argue for cuts to be slowed down, not opposed in their entirety.

MSPs who have spoken on the platforms of CoR and the Right to Work campaign in the past have voted to implement cuts. Both CoR and the ISG should make clear their opposition to politicians who speak on anti-cuts platforms and then vote for the cuts when they go into the parliament or council.

As the draft proposals explained “we also see this initiative as appealing to groups of trade unionists, anti-cuts activists, community campaigns, young people etc who are organising against the cuts to also stand in the elections through this coalition.”

It was agreed to build for a major event on December 10th and in particular to advertise this widely on November 30th.

The participation of trade unionists and community activists facing the sharp-end of the cuts is important in creating a wide anti-cuts challenge for next May. Socialist Party Scotland will be giving our full support to make the 10th December the lauchpad for a major anti-cuts challenge next May.

NHS workers are angry and we won’t take this anymore HS workers who are members of Unison have voted by a massive majority to strike on November 30th. 88% of our members supported taking action.

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Alan Manley Assistant branch secretary Tayside Unison NHS (personal capacity) There is searing anger at plans to make us pay more into our pensions at a times when we are facing year-onyear pay freezes – in effect wage cuts.

More than this with falling staffing levels in the NHS those of us who are left are working harder and shouldering increased workloads.

The idea that we should be working until 67 – in very often physically de-

manding work – is viewed with outrage by many in the health service.

The impact of the pension tax is significant. For me it would mean an increase from £170 a month to £250 once fully implemented. That’s £1,000 extra a year.

The scandal is that the NHS pension fund is cash rich – with £16 billion having been paid in by workers over the last ten years. The proposed pension hike is nothing more than a cash-grab by the Con-Dem government to plug a gap created when we bailed out the banks.

Workers in the NHS haven’t taken national strike action since the 1980’s.

Everyone wants to walk out on the 30th November. Those that need to work to provide emergency cover will be supporting the action as well.

We’ve been recruiting new members across Scotland by the thousands, because the union is seen as being pre-

pared to fight. There is now growing pressure on the RCN – who have a no strike deal – to call action. The RCN membership has fallen significantly over this issue.

The “savings” made in the NHS last year were £400 million. £170 million over target. That’s more than enough to avoid the need for a pensions contribution hike and yet the SNP government have decided to impose the Con-Dem attacks on our pensions.

The SNP government have made it clear that there is no prospect of these lost wages being recovered in the future.

Ed Balls and the Labour leadership have also supported the reform of pensions – in fact they started the ball rolling under Blair.

We’ll need further national coordinated action to force the government to back down. Believe me NHS workers are up for a fight, whatever it takes.

thesocialist

news 5

www.socialistpartyscotland.org.uk - Dec 2011/Jan 2012

Occupy movement exposes capitalist greed situation. “No job, no house, no pension, no fear” expresses how young people occupying feel whether occupying Wall St or the London Stock Exchange.

The nature of this capitalist society and system has been summed up by the slogan “They are 1% , we are 99%”. Discussions are taking place about how to build the movement and what the occupations should aim for?

At the same time governments are trying to crush the movement. In the US the police have been used brutally to attack demonstrations.

The occupy movement in the US started out being organised by radical young people but has grown more powerful, particularly after being attacked by the police, to involve organised workers in the trade unions.

The transport workers in New York came out in support after the police

orld leaders are in panic, unable to find an answer to the economic crisis.

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Matt Dobson The banks and financial institutions are crippled internationally by colossal debt. Austerity is inflicted, even bailouts amounting to money that cannot be imagined cannot cure the paralysis of the system. Economic experts and commentators are terming this the worst crisis of capitalism ever.

They who defend and represent the capitalist system are exposing themselves. They say we cannot afford the living standards of a few years ago.

Yet huge amounts of wealth is declared as profits for the bosses and bonuses for the bankers, those who are guilty for the crisis. They carry on buying luxury goods, while school children in Greece, feint with malnutrition in classrooms and millions queue for food stamps in the US. Mass movements of the enraged from Madrid to Athens and now occupations starting in Wall St, the belly of the beast, and then across 1,000 cities in the US

Occupy camp in London

and all over the world against the dictatorship of the markets.

At the beginning of the crisis, millions were stunned by the job losses, house repossessions, wage cuts and price rises. Many hoped against hope that things would change for the better. But shock has turned into anger.

The biggest occupations are in Southern Europe and the US but significant

protests are taking place everywhere and are getting larger.

The number of occupiers is significant with many young people taking political action for the first time, but even larger is the mass support in wider society at the time of writing, in the US, polls say 59% of people support the Occupy movement.

Slogans have spread articulating the

Italy: New government of big business ’technocrats’ n 16 November, the new Italian Senator for Life and Prime Minister, Mario Monti, announced his cabinet of ‘technocrats’ to run Italy. This unelected government is made up of heads of banks, companies and the armed forces and is meant to push through harsh austerity measures.

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Editorial from ‘Resistenze’ journal of ControCorrente (CWI in Italy)

To mobilise against the new semidictatorial technocracy under Mario Monti, it is first necessary to say clearly who Mario Monti is and above all what he represents. Monti, apart from being a prominent spokesperson for the biggest business committees of the international bourgeoisie like the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group, he is the international adviser of Goldman Sachs, one of the major business banks in the world.

In 2010 Goldman was charged by the SEC - the controlling body of the US stock exchange - with deceiving clients by selling a junk derivative and making $15 billion profit on their losses. But they did the same with 24 other similar derivatives and in the past helped the Greek government falsify the state accounts with the aim of covering up the real level of debt.

So, to entrust Monti the task of reviving the health of Italy is like sending a collaborator of Moggi [Juventus football team manager, jailed for fraud during the ‘Calciopoli scandal’] to restore the moral propriety of football! If we add to this that Monti was appointed in

made mass arrests. Socialist Alternative (the sister organisation of Socialist Party Scotland in the US) has put forward the idea of linking up the demands of the occupations to the struggles of workers and the trade unions.

In Oakland the power of this idea has been demonstrated, after the police hospitalised an Iraq war veteran, workers organised generalised strike action, including the blocking of ports and closure of schools.

Occupations should discuss with workers taking action, supporting picket lines and taking part in the major cities across Scotland.

Young people and workers uniting to take mass action fighting for jobs, education and public services not cuts is the most effective resistance to the austerity agenda of the bosses and their politicians.

Berlusconi was hated - but the new technocracy are no solution

1994 by Berlusconi to become European Commissioner we realise how the nomination of Monti corresponds to the famous saying of the writer Gattopardo: ’Everything must change because everything remains the same’.

An opinion poll carried out by the Piepoli Institute says that confidence in Mario Monti as president of the Council of Ministers is at 50%.

That means there are about 30 million Italians, among them many workers and young people without any prospects, who can be reached with ideas of how to fight back. Others will be added to them after the next few weeks, when it is revealed what the cure of the eventual new government consists of.

For some months now the social climate in Italy has been heating up. There have been outbreaks of social protest against the austerity measures and on a few occasions, such as October 15th, these outbreaks have turned into a major conflagration.

So there does exist a favourable basis for organising resistance, but not yet adequate. To fight off an invasion organisation, strategy and tactics are necessary. On the political plane, this

means a political force, methods of struggle and an alternative programme to that of the ECB for getting out of the crisis.

The first consideration, before looking at any economic recipe, because of the ’who’ and the ’how’ in relation to the recipe chosen and applied, that is the question of democracy. When politicians give way to technocrats it means that even a fictitious democracy like that which we have experienced in recent years is too much for the capitalist system.

Alongside fictitious democracy, fictitious national sovereignty goes into crisis. Italy’s president, Napolitano, a few months ago trumpeted about the fatherland and the 150 years of Italian unity. Today he consigns the fate of the country into the hands of Sarkozy and Merkel. This is even when the latter declared menacingly that, "If the Euro collapses, Europe collapses and we cannot count on another 50 years of peace".

Marxists are internationalists, but they also know that in certain moments in history the defence of the living conditions of workers and other layers of the population are linked to the defence of the “nation” - which in its over-

Europe in crisis: End the dictatorship of the markets! he imposition of the 'technocrats', in reality bankers, in both Italy and Greece, shows the seriousness of the crisis for the capitalist class nationally and across Europe.

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Paul Murphy Socialist Party Ireland MEP To try to save their system across Europe, the democratic rights of people to decide who will govern them have been trampled on. The markets, through the Troika of the IMF, EU and ECB, have usurped democracy and placed their own men in charge to ensure that the cost of this crisis is placed on the shoulders of the working class, unemployed and poor.

The technocrats elevated to rulers in Greece and Italy, Lucas Papademos and Mario Monti, are the banking sector's choice of leader. Monti was an as advisor to Goldman Sachs until his appointment.

Papademos was a former vice-president of the European Central Bank, and has publicly been opposed to the write down of Greek banking debt as it would hurt the banking sector.

Goldman Sachs was described in a 2010 Rolling Stone article as: "The world's most powerful investment bank" and "a great vampire squid whelming majority consists of the working people and the poor – defending its hard-gained rights against predatory international and national capitalism.

Governments of elected politicians are being replaced with presumed technical governments in order to send in the IMF and ECB commissioners to dictate what must be done. They demand the dismantling of public services, the INPS (state pensions) and state industry (see the attempts to sell off the Fincantieri (shipbuilding industry)). It will mean burying millions of Italians under the paving stones - employees but also small enterprises, shops and the lower layers of the so-called middle class. It will take away the futures of millions of young people and this time not only those from a working class background.

This is the reason why in Ireland, in

wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."

It can manipulate "whole economic sectors for years at a time, moving the dice game as this or that market collapses and all the time gorging itself on the unseen costs that are breaking families everywhere - high gas prices, rising consumer credit rates, half eaten pension funds, mass layoffs, future taxes to pay off bailouts."

These 'technocrats' have been presented to the world as the experts who will be able to solve the financial crisis, as some sort of wise men who can rise above politics. It has been put out that these men will put the 'national interest' first. This is a lie.

The 'dictatorship of the technocrats' is an attempt to divorce economics from politics. The technocrats will act, not in the interests of the mass of the people, but in the interest of the people they represent - the financial elites.

The protest movements and strikes that have swept across Greece and Italy need to be intensified against this anti-democratic and anti-working class move by the national and European establishment.

No matter how much they try to persuade us that the technocracy is above politics, a mass movement of workers, the unemployed and young people which builds its own party, can brush away this dictatorship of the markets and start to create a society that is democratically run in the interest of the mass of the people.

France and elsewhere, the CWI has supported the slogan of ’No to the Treaty of Lisbon’.

For this reason the first point on the agenda today is for European workers to fight to retake control over the big economic choices of their own countries. The way to do this is through fighting for a programme of nationalisation under democratic workers’ control of all major finance and industrial companies so that the use of resources and production of goods can be planned in a thoroughly democratic way.

If there was a European confederation of trade unions worthy of such a name, this would be the first point in a platform for calling a general strike in every country of Europe against those who want to make us pay for the effects of their misdeeds.

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special feature

We need a programme of act

When all they offer is cuts, jobles

The magnificent Youth Fight For Jobs marchers

ever before has it been more necessary for the trade unions and the labour movement to combat the deadening pessimism and hopelessness which pervades the capitalist media.

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Peter Taaffe General Secretary Socialist Party England and Wales In a situation marked by searing economic crisis and its attendant suffering, commentators wail that ’nothing can be done’.

This can only be challenged by outlining and fighting for a positive, realistic programme which can hold out the hope of rescuing working people from the abyss of mass unemployment and poverty which the capitalist system threatens.

Every working man and woman, young and old, in Britain could and should have a job, with a decent living wage.

They should enjoy life in accommodation within which a healthy lifestyle is possible, with the occasional holiday thrown in, and a health service catering not for the rich few but for the many.

They would also need well-built and funded schools for their children, free from the ’feral’ Free School and academy privateers.

They would want to live in an environmentally sustainable world with cheap transport and a modern infrastructure.

To also want a decent pension after a lifetime of work and, in the case of many workers, of toil is not a lot. ’You are asking for the moon, in fact you live on another planet,’ reply our critics. In the vanguard of these opponents will, no doubt, be Conservative Prime Minister, David Cameron, and George Os-

borne as well as Tory collaborator Nick Clegg from the Liberal Democrats in the present millionaires’ and bosses’ ‘ConDem’ coalition government. ’Don’t you realise we are in a crisis?’ they will intone. ’Rather than the pie in the sky proposals that you make, we must remorselessly cut living standards in virtually all spheres, if we are to get out of this crisis’.

Under extreme pressure, president Obama in the US has announced another ’stimulus package’. But this, amounting to $450 billion, half the value of the stimulus package of 2008-9, is too little, too late.

The economy is expected to continue to stagnate and unemployment to increase.

Chancellor Osborne is not presently prepared to follow Obama, declining pressure for a ’Plan B’. The Tories’ endlessly repeated mantra is, like their mentor Margaret Thatcher, ’There Is No Alternative’ (TINA).

For the Con-Dems TINA is alive and kicking. But there is an alternative and history demonstrates this.

Take housing. In an economic landscape similar to today, a crash housebuilding programme was launched in the

Pic Paul Mattson

1930s which brought together unemployed labour and ’fallow’ capital supplied by increased government expenditure.

In the 1930s the number of new dwellings built each year averaged over 300,000, half a million in 1935.

In 2010 only 95,000 properties were built. There is a crying need for a massively expanded house-building and renovation programme like this today.

Housing conditions Heartbreaking stories of how thousands live in Victorian conditions, some in disgraceful ramshackle sheds, appear almost daily in the press.

Rising homelessness, affecting now, according to the Guardian newspaper, the middle class, and skyrocketing rents accompany the slashing of housing benefit for already economically besieged tenants.

In its wake comes the return of the horrible spectre of the bullying landlord, typified in the 1960s by the figure of Rachman.

Construction electricians march to the Scottish parliament

Pic Duncan Brown

Down with the prevailing gloom and pessimism - deliberately fostered by those at the top - that nothing can be done! This mood can be reinforced by accounts of the tragic impact of cuts on workers.

For instance, the Daily Mirror reported in August: "A mum who lost her job in government cuts hanged herself, an inquest heard.

Linda Knott, 46, was ’devastated’ after being told the community centre where she worked as a supervisor for 16 years in Little Hulton, Greater Manchester, was closing. Husband Frank yesterday told Bolton’s coroner she was ’worried’. Verdict: suicide."

A more suitable verdict was that this poor working woman was driven to kill herself by the cold cruelty of this government and capitalist society.

This is just one manifestation of the corroding despair which this system, including those who profit from and defend it, generates.

But we must loudly re-assert that so long as working people are prepared to struggle for jobs, homes and a better life and to organise for this, then massive change is possible. And the mood is there.

Angry unemployed workers recently invaded a US congressional committee carrying placards that read: "America wants to work - good jobs now".

The mood of the unemployed in Britain is no less determined. This was and is being harnessed by the magnificent ’Youth Fight for Jobs campaign’ including the recent march from Jarrow to London.

Similar action, mobilising millions, must be organised by the trade unions.

But it must be on a programme of action, with one of the centrepieces the demand for a massive extension of useful government expenditure.

A vital part of this should be the insistence on a huge house building programme as well as to renovate schools, repair the shattered infrastructure of Britain, etc.

According to the Centre for Economic and Business Research, "a house building boom" could generate "200,000 new jobs".

This would help to soak up the massive unemployment among building workers at the present time.

The same effect would flow from the introduction of a 35-hour week without loss of pay. But the capitalist class and its representatives will no doubt respond to this: ’This is preposterous, it would cost too much, it failed when implemented in France.

Moreover, workers prefer to work longer hours and some even want less holidays in order to strengthen their firms, the source of their employment.’

Share out the work Far from ’failing’ in France the 35hour week created, according to the French ’Socialist’ Party, 400,000 extra jobs between 2000 and 2006.

Even the employers’ federation put the number of increased jobs at 200,000. In the current situation of chronic and mass unemployment, such a measure is vital.

The shorter working week was emasculated in France because of the ceaseless campaign of the employers and the complete failure of the trade union leaders to

resist it.

The bosses were successful in their campaign also because of the botched way it was introduced, which sometimes meant that workers faced longer shifts and a longer working day without overtime pay. We should learn from this and ensure that the same mistake is not repeated here.

And why, according to the bosses, is it ’necessary’, with much more technically and technologically proficient industry, for work to become more intensified and longer? In the 1970s, the future was projected, for example, by Jack Jones, then leader of the transport workers union (now part of Unite), as meaning that workers would only need to be employed for 19 hours a week.

Participation Not least of the factors which make a shorter working week necessary is the time that this will allow for working people to participate in control and hopefully management of factories and workplaces, as well as society as a whole.

In this current crisis, the capitalists have demonstrated their complete incapacity and have forfeited any claim to be what Karl Marx called the "trustees" of society.

Instead, the workplace is now often a neoliberal hell with longer hours, bullying management, etc. In Germany, the annual average working time is 1444 hours whereas in the UK it is 1707.

Has this made Britain more productive and efficient? On the contrary, productivity is greater in Germany despite the fewer hours worked.

The reason for this is that German capitalists maintain the manufacturing sector and have ploughed more of the surplus extracted from the labour of the working class back into industry.

The parasitic British capitalists went down the road of ’financialisation’, relying for growth on the backs of ’services’.

When this blew up in their face, they presented us with the bill. This has added to the downward economic spiral of Britain.

The ruinous expense of massive overwork here has been underlined by the New Economics Foundation. They point out that today: "Many people work longer hours than 30 years ago.

Since 1981 two-adult households have added six hours - nearly a whole working day - to their combined weekly workload." And yet at the same time, millions cannot find a job!

In view of the creaking dilapidated infrastructure in this country - which has dramatically fallen behind many countries in Europe, particularly northern Europe - urgent measures are demanded.

Vastly increased expenditure on our schools and investment in the infrastructure of roads and railways, providing cheap and efficient means of transport, are required. ’This is madness, your programme is completely utopian, we cannot afford this.’ Yet what is demanded here, what every working man and woman wishes, is extremely modest, indeed some would argue too modest.

We are asking for the very basics of

special feature

thesocialist www.socialistpartyscotland.org.uk - Dec 2011/Jan 2012

ction to fight back!

essness and misery...

This article is an extract from the new pamphlet Fighting the cuts What’s socialism got to do with it?

Available now from the Socialist Party.

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Order your copy today See page 2 for contact details

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7

Workers in Greece are in revolt against the economic carnage being implemented by European capitlaism

human existence. Our reply to the bosses and the government is very simple: if you say you cannot afford these necessities, then we cannot afford your system.

Capitalism is passing through its greatest crisis in 60 years - some say in 100 years. According to ’experts’, this is not a passing phase, an economic ’typhoon’ that will soon pass over.

On the contrary, the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, said that Britain is passing through "seven lean years" of which we are in the middle.

He was challenged by Max Hastings in the Financial Times who reported a conversation with a banker which concluded that this ’leanness’ could last ten times that!

In other words, they have absolutely no hope of even a ray of economic sunshine, let alone a dramatic improvement in the already parlous state of the economy and society, and particularly in the fate of working people.

Capitalist waste We say to the capitalists: It is clear you cannot afford even modest improvements in the foreseeable future.

Yet you cling to the notion that yours is the only alternative. Your system, it is now clear, has enormously wasted the treasure and resources of society.

Huge resources criminally lie idle for one reason and one reason only - it does not allow you to maintain and boost your profits.

In fact, in one year, 2008, you destroyed $50 trillion in wealth in assets, according to even your own institution the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This is probably enough to wipe out most of world unemployment.

We say: If you are saying that you and your system have drained to its last drop the cup of historical progress - and not being able to provide a job, home and adequate income to all signifies this - make

way for those and a system which can!

This is quite simply a democratically planned socialist economy. This would immediately allow use of all the resources that criminally lie idle today for one reason and one reason only: it does not pay the capitalists, does not allow them to maintain and boost their profits.

According to Mervyn King, the British economy is working at 10% below the level it was before this crisis in 2007.

The loss in wealth since 2008 alone comes approximately to £200 billion, even if there had been no growth since then.

Imagine what we could do if this extra wealth existed! The cost of a hospital bed per day is £400. £200 billion would pay for 500 million hospital bed days.

If the full potential of the economy was used then the £81 billion in cuts which Osborne is implementing would not be considered.

On the contrary, a programme of massive expansion in building hospitals and schools would be possible.

Young people suffer What stands in the way of a such a programme is a system that is based upon production for profit and not social need.

Moreover, it is chronically failing the majority of the population. Uncontrolled and ferocious are its effects on almost all aspects of daily life - particularly on working-class people. Capitalism is today wreaking terrible havoc.

Unemployment increases remorselessly, bearing down especially on the young. Savage cuts in wages and income are relentlessly pursued by the boss class, adding to the wage repression of the last two decades.

So desperate is the need to get a foot on the ’job ladder’ that the aspiring young become literally wage slaves - working for nothing under the fancy label of ’interns’.

And then, when they have completed their ’training’, which often amounts to stacking shelves in supermarkets, there is no sign of the promised ’full-time job’ at the end.

With almost a million NEETS (not in employment, education or training), many young people work for £2.25 an hour - not even half of the legal national minimum wage.

And when those young people, discouraged or locked out of higher education and universities, seek an alternative in an apprenticeship they are rebuffed: "It is easier to get into Oxford University than to become a BT apprentice." [The Guardian]

Dangers In this desperate social situation and with no consistent lead coming from the right-wing tops of the trade unions, there is a real danger of a generalised mood of despair gripping working people.

Some could lapse into indifference and succumb to Osborne and Cameron’s Tory capitalist mantra of ’there is no alternative’ to cuts, both in social services and state jobs, and to the living standards of working people.

Others could be seduced by the false arguments of the far right which will divide the forces of working people in the face of the enemy.

Therefore it is vital that a fighting economic and social alternative, which is already there in outline, is clearly formulated and discussed at all levels of the trade union and labour movement, and working class communities, among the youth on the streets.

That alternative must have at its core the simple but correct ideas expressed in many working class demonstrations, not just in Britain but internationally: "We will not pay for this crisis which is not of our making."

On unemployment we demand a full-

time job with a living wage for all. ’How can this be achieved in this period of crisis?’ chime the bosses and their defenders.

Very simply, by using all the resources of industry and society which have been built up by the labour of working-class people.

At its heart must be a useful programme of public works. Britain is crying out for this.

Employees are being forced to work all the hours necessary to keep body and soul together as the average family income plunges to levels not seen in a generation.

We are experiencing a massive increase in Britain of those working two or even three jobs! These are insecure jobs and are usually part-time, short-term contracts, "survival" jobs.

The searing, rising inequality and a consequent increase in poverty means that millions of people are squeezed in a vice between diminished incomes on one side and rising prices and rents literally going through the roof on the other.

Flatlining economies In Britain and worldwide the working class and the poor, it is clear from the foregoing, face a threatening catastrophe.

The British and world economies are flatlining but this is met with a mere shrug of the shoulders by the man allegedly responsible for the economy, the Chancellor George Osborne.

This leads us to the conclusion that this system is in a blind alley and can offer no way forward. This is why the Socialist Party argues the case for a democratic socialist society.

But the mass of working people have not yet arrived at this conclusion. Their outlook has largely been shaped by the situation following the collapse of the planned economies in Eastern Europe and Russia.

Although dominated by a greedy, totalitarian bureaucratic elite, nevertheless they did give a glimpse of what was possible economically and, to some extent, socially if workers’ democracy had been implemented.

The seeming collapse of ’socialism’ - in reality a bureaucratic caricature of real democratic socialism - presented the capitalists with a field day to extol the virtues of their system.

They were echoed by the leaders of the workers’ parties and, to some extent, the right-wing trade union leaders.

But boasts that capitalism was the only conceivable engine for the generation of adequate resources to take society forward, now lie in ruins in the economic

wasteland which confronts us.

Yet despite this the majority of workingclass people have not immediately drawn even from this catastrophe the need to fight for a new society.

This is partly because they have been stunned by the severity of the crisis and are also hoping against hope - despite the evidence around them - that the sunny economic uplands may once more return.

However, these hopes are being systematically undermined and growing opposition is manifest throughout the world.

But this needs to be harnessed to a clear alternative programme which links the ongoing daily struggle for jobs, homes and education, etc, with the idea of the transformation of society in a socialist direction.

We have tried to show here that this can be achieved through a series of what we call ’transitional’ demands which all workers can embrace.

They are ’transitional’ in the sense that they can lead from the present situation and the present political outlook of working class people to the idea of societal change, which we believe is socialism.

But this does not mean that we are putting forward a programme which is ’unrealisable’. The realisation or otherwise of the demands in this programme depends upon struggle.

Mass struggle Even in the most desperate economic circumstances, through mass struggle, the capitalists can be compelled to give a lot more than they believe they can ’afford’.

For instance, they gave the eight-hour day and an increase in wages to the French workers in the occupied factories in 1936.

It is true that they then sought to take this back later, through inflation for instance, and were to some extent successful.

But this does not imply that it was wrong to struggle for the eight-hour day which was achieved. It just means that all gains will not be secured so long as capitalism itself continues.

A similar conclusion is drawn from all the demands we have outlined in our programme; this article deals with a few examples of some of the most important ones.

It is vital that a thoroughgoing discussion is initiated in the labour movement for a combative programme of action which will repulse and defeat the current bosses’ and government offensive against all aspects of the lives and conditions of working class people.

thesocialist

8 international

www.socialistpartyscotland.org.uk - Dec 2011/Jan 2012

Greek government collapses over euro crisis Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou has been forced to leave office and his PASOK government has been replaced by a ’national unity’ coalition government. This new PASOK/New Democracy ‘austerity coalition’ will agree a bailout package which entails yet more punishing cuts that are driving millions of Greeks into poverty. Andreas Payiatsos, Xekinima (CWI in Greece) and Niall Mulholland, a member of the International Secretariat of the CWI report.

he new Prime Minister, Lukas Papademos, is an unelected “technocrat”, in reality a viscous neo-liberal and a former deputy president of the European Central Bank.

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The deal agreed with the ECB, EU and IMF (the ‘Troika’), last month, would give the indebted Greek government 130bn euros, see a 50% write-off on private holders of Greek debts, and bring in yet more deeply unpopular austerity measures.

Troika policies have already shrunk the Greek economy by a staggering 15%, over the last 3 years. The PASOK government passed a series of laws under the directives of the Troika that push two thirds of Greek people into poverty. The salaries of public sector workers have been cut by about 50% (compared to what they were at beginning of 2010) and the minimum "legal" wage will go down to 500 euro per month (but even this, with “collective bargaining” abolished, is not binding on the employers.

Over 40% of youth are unemployed.

The Troika demand that 250,000 people are sacked from the civil service - more than one third of the workforce. Public services are taking a battering. Hospitals beds have already been reduced by 30% and a further 20% reduction is intended (to take it down to 50%).

New taxes, together with the cuts in wages and benefits, mean the loss of hundreds of euro, every month, for many workers and their families. Children go to school complaining of hunger, with some fainting in class.

Even the previously relatively well-off ’middle layers’ are now being driven into deprivation.

referendum Papandreou made a desperate referendum proposal, to put the austerity package to a national vote, because the resistance of the Greek people to his cuts policies is so overwhelming.

He realised that the PASOK government was in danger of total collapse.

On 19 October, Greece saw the biggest 48 hour general strike and union demonstration in its post-war history.

On 28 October, an annual day of "national pride" and parades commemorating Greece’s occupation during WW2, turned into angry anti-govern-

ment demonstrations.

At the beginning of November, PASOK and the opposition New Democracy (which previously refused offers to form a coalition government with PASOK) agreed to go on a coalition government, led by a third “personality” the unelected Papademos, for a period of a few months and then to hold new elections. The coalition government will be made up of the two main procapitalist parties and two smaller parties, one being the far right, populist LAOS. Greek workers and the middle classes also came under relentless propaganda pressure from the EU, Greek bosses and media over the referendum. They were told that unless they accept new more cuts, Greece would be forced out of the euro zone and the EU, and would suffer an even greater collapse of living standards.

The main Left parties, like the KKE (Greek communist party) and SYRIZA (a broad left party) did not put forward a viable alternative to this ferocious pro-capitalist propaganda assault.

All this has had an impact on the outlook of Greek people. Opinion polls showed that a large majority of Greeks were against holding a referendum.

Moods changed after the massive propaganda by the ruling class and its mass media. A large majority, over two thirds, also favoured staying in the euro-zone and not more than about 15% stated that they prefer to leave (a number of different telephone polls were held, so there is no accurate figures, but the trends are the same in all).

These poll results are really an expression of desperation in desperate times - a ’hope against hope’ that somehow a new coalition government will find a way out of Greece’s deep economic crisis. In truth, most workers see no end to the crisis or cuts and any illusions section of the population have in the new coalition will most likely be short lived. Recent polls show that consistently 90% of the Greek people are against PASOK government cuts – policies which will be continued by the ‘national unity’ government.

Greek workers have shown many times since the crisis began in 2008/2009 that they are willing to fightback against cuts and for an alternative to the crisis ridden system. Thirteen general strikes (two of which 48 hour general strikes) have taken place over a period of less than two years, as well as student strikes, sit-ins and occupations

Greece has been in revolt against savage austerity and cuts

of public serviced buildings and schools, and mass non-payment campaigns against unjust taxes. Industrial action and mass protests culminating in the magnificent 48 hour general strike on 19 October. Around 500,000800,000 people were on the streets of Athens on that day - the biggest postwar union demonstration in Greece.

But the bureaucratic, conservative trade union leaders have not used the huge power of the organised working class to step up mass resistance to decisively finish off the PASOK government, to halt all cuts and to strive for a government of working people. The union tops only called for action in the last 18 months under the intense pressure of the masses – they have no plan or strategy to win, not to mention an alternative political programme.

Occupations and industrial action Since the 19 October, occupations and sector-based strikes have receded.

But this does not mean an end to industrial mass struggles, just a temporary pause after months of hectic strike and other mass activities.

Youth and working people may now look to other forms of mass resistance.

The mass non-payment campaigns against household taxes can take on new life, as can mass protests over environmental issues. The new wave of cuts promised by the ’austerity coalition’ means that class struggle is inevitable and new rounds of industrial action.

Some unions, involving council workers, primary school teachers, railway workers and the telecommunications workers, fought more determinedly and have broken their connections with PASOK. A section of the union movement is moving in a more radical, combative direction. Although these unions are splitting away from PASOK, their leaders are not giving their members a clear and bold plan of action. CWI in Greece (Xekhinima) appeals to the rank and file workers of these unions to make a definitive break

from PASOK and to help build a new workers’ party, on bold socialist policies.

Xekinima opposes the new ’national unity’ government of PASOK and New Democracy. This will be a coalition of yet more deep cuts and poverty. The policies the new coalition government will apply will be the same as has been applied up until now. The new government will obey the directives of Merkel

and Sarkozy, to the last iota.

There is nothing “positive” in this government apart from the fact that, one might say, New Democracy will be exposed before all Greeks as also responsible for austerity policies. Up until now, the ND leader, Samaras, has cynically adopted a populist role, criticizing government policies and blaming PASOK for not putting up resistance to the EU directives.

A socialist programme is urgently needed Illusions amongst some sections of the population that things might get a ‘bit better’ under the ‘national unity’ coalition will not last long.

In the political situation that will open up, the parties of the Left will have a unique and historic opportunity to grow and to play a decisive role.

But to bring about the kind of fundamental changes that are required to provide real and lasting solutions to the deep problems faced by the Greek workers and the whole of society, requires the Left adopting a socialist programme and to fight decisively for system change.

Up until now, the main, traditional parties of the Greek Left - the KKE (communist party) and SYN (Synaspismos – Coalition of the Left of Movements and Ecology) – refuse to move in this direction. The need to build and develop the mass movements, and to build new forces of the Left, with radical, socialist policies, is more starkly posed than ever.

Xekinima puts forward a socialist perspective and policies. Xekinima say, do not pay the debt and no more cuts! Xekinima calls for a government representing working people, the impoverished middle classes, the poor and youth. A workers’ government would mean jobs, affordable housing, a properly funded education and

health service. It would take the major planks of the economy into democratic public ownership and control, for the benefit of the majority not the wealthy elite.

Xekinima reject the argument that Greeks must endure the destruction of their living standards so as to remain in the eurozone. Xekinima also argues against sowing illusions in a so-called "progressive and sovereign national currency policy" that sections of the Greek Left put forward.

There are no solutions on a national and capitalist basis. Xekinima calls for genuine internationalism - for a workers’ alternative to capitalist crisis and austerity across Europe.

Only with the prospect of common struggle with the workers in the rest of Europe can we find an alternative to the Europe of big capital, the bankers and the IMF and fight for a socialist Europe!

thesocialist

youth and students 9

www.socialistpartyscotland.org.uk - Dec 2011/Jan2012

1 million reasons why we marched he Con-Dem government now officially presides over one million young unemployed people. That’s 20% of all young people, of which I am one.

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Jamie Cocozza Glasgow YFJ This is a multi-faceted attack, with many more unable to afford to go university or college, stung by a lack of decent, affordable housing and youth services slashed across the board.

In response, the Youth Fight For Jobs (YFJ) campaign - of which the Socialist Party Scotland is an initiator - decided to re-enact the historic Jarrow Crusade - when 200 unemployed men marched to London demanding work in the 1936 - as a rallying cry for young people against this government and the capitalist crisis. We demand that there is no return to the 1930s.

Three YFJS members, from Glasgow, Dundee and Brora respectively, participated in the march. It was imperative for Youth Fight For Jobs Scotland (YFJS) to send members to represent young workers and unemployed youth.

Scotland’s young people are facing a desperate future, particularly in its former industrial heartlands; Glasgow East and Glasgow North-East have the highest rate of male unemployment in Scotland, while the number of claimants in the Inverclyde region alone has risen by 26.5% in the past year, the second highest in the whole of the UK. At public events held during the march, YFJS members pointed out that attacks on public sector workers’ jobs, wages and pensions - passed on by local authorities and the SNP Holyrood administration - will have a catastrophic effect on young people. As

wages in real-terms decrease, older workers are forced to work longer for less of a pension and public sector jobs continue to be shed, young people face a future in the doldrums.

However, the participants in the ‘Jarrow March For Jobs’ (YMFJ) were under no illusions about this government. We do not believe that the political representatives of the capitalist class, the Con-Dem administration, have any intention of ever meeting the five core demands of the YFJ campaign, and in fact, would much rather denigrate our efforts.

lazy During the first week of the march, Tory MP Robert Goodwill branded the marchers as lazy, claiming that, “it must have been a big shock having to get up in the morning rather than watch Jeremy Kyle”. In 2008/09 Goodwill claimed £145,387 of taxpayers’ money in expenses, and in 2000 he went as far as to say that, “as a capitalist, [and] also as a British Conservative, I see it as a challenge to buy cheap [plane] tickets and make some profit on the system”!

On the penultimate day of the march, a delegation of six marchers met up with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Ian Duncan Smith (IDS), to quiz him on Tory ‘reforms’ over issues such as pensions, housing and the hated work programme. IDS was unable to answer our questions with any substance. Firstly, he claimed that workers he had spoken to accept the need to work longer and for pension reform.

Then, when challenged on the work programme, he appeared to have very little knowledge of what it actually involves, a plan dreamt up and implemented by him! This was a clear notice if ever one was needed that the Tories have no real solution to the problems the youth of today face.

Instead, we believe that only a mass campaign of struggle is capable of bringing about the changes needed.

The March for Jobs concentrated on mobilising young people, anti-cuts groups and the trade union movement in each and every area we passed through, highlighting the issues and developing stronger and deeper links.

However, we do not believe that our long-term needs can ever be met by the arbitrary nature of the capitalist system, and ultimately we will require the installation of a democratic socialist government based on the need of the many rather than profits of the few.

On the opening demonstration in Jarrow, five hundred people turned out to support the marchers and wish them well on their journey. Some of the locals were even moved to tears by the occasion.

Furthermore, in a great show of solidarity from the labour movement that was to continue over the whole of the march, the Railway, Maritime and

Defend education campaign launched uts mean that an entire generation of young people are being thrown on the scrapheap.

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Wayne Scott Dundee Youth Fight For Jobs The politicians are making us pay for the bankers crisis with our education. The SNP government has cut £79 million from college budgets.

At Angus College 400 full time places are to go. Earlier this year, 20 courses were cut at Dundee college.

With jobs being cut, these young people will likely be condemned to the misery of unemployment.

With no politicians ready to stand up and fight for ordinary people against the cuts agenda of the Tories, the need for young people to take action is greater than ever before.

From Occupy Wall Street to the mass demonstrations in Spain and Greece, to the Arab Spring, right across the world, young people are standing up and fighting back.

If we are to have any chance of stopping the attacks on our education, a mass campaign organised and democratically run by young people is needed.

Youth Fight for Jobs & Education

links up the struggles of young people in education, the workplace and communities. We play a leading part in the university student movement against cuts and in campaigns like Students Defending Dundee Schools which organised a school student strike involving hundreds against Dundee City council’s education cuts on April 1st.

We are calling a public meeting on the 24th November to launch an anti education cuts campaign across Tayside. From this, we seek to establish a mass campaign of college, school and university students. A campaign that opposes all cuts no matter who carries them out.

We also seek to help build a campaign that will coordinate action by students with that of education workers and trade unions. This is now more important than ever as November 30th will see the biggest strike in decades by the trade unions.

Students and young people must ensure that we do all that we can to show maximum support to those workers who will be on strike against attacks on their pensions. We need to take part in the strike and come out onto the streets to demonstrate with trade unions and workers.

An attack on pensions is an attack on our future, these attacks will stop young people getting jobs in the public sector as people are forced to work longer.

Transport Workers’ Union (RMT) donated their brass brand to the proceedings.

solidarity We garnered excellent support in many working class towns and cities on our way. Leeds and Hull both provided demonstrations of hundreds of people, and we were greeted very warmly in the latter by the demonstrating BAE workers when we spoke of linking up the struggle of young people and workers in struggle. Furthermore, we found that when we put forward our programme in areas where the far-right operate, the basic class-demands were strong enough to cut across racism and bigotry. In those areas such as Luton, where deindustrialisation has left devastation in its wake and allowed the English Defence League to build a base, the demands of decent housing, jobs and a living wage proved appealing to

We need to build a future for young people oung people are among the hardest hit by the brutal austerity measures of the ConDem’s and often passed on to us by the SNP government.

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Ryan Stuart Glasgow Youth Fight For Jobs

As Harris Academy school student Basil Ibrahim said – I will be taking part in the demonstrations on the 30th November as I think that it is unfair that my teachers and staff are being made to work longer to get less while the rich who caused this crisis continue to make millions.

It’s not only pensions that are being attacked. Our education and right to a decent future is being taken away through cuts to education and public spending. I and many like me will be out on November 30th to show solidarity with everyone who is taking action on the day.

many working class people.

The culmination of the march was a march through London and rally in Trafalgar Square, which attracted three thousand people and saw many of those who had shown us support and solidarity on the march, be it food, shelter or other assistance, join us on the streets to tell the government that we refuse to be a lost generation. We were lucky enough to have speakers such as Bob Crow from the RMT and Chris Baugh from the PCS join us on the platform.

On November the 30th, Youth Fight For Jobs calls for young people to give their support en masse to the labour movement as up to three million public sector workers take coordinated strike action.

Join the picket lines, marches and demonstrations in their area, and help to link young people in with the struggle for decent pensions, employment, a living wage and, most importantly, a future.

With 1 million young people unemployed not in training or education, one in three JSA applicants are 18-24 year olds there has also been an 89% increase in unemployment in the is age group in the last two years and this figure is set to rise. This shows that the SNP are not afraid to follow in the orders of the coalition government by attacking the young and stripping them of a decent future.

It’s no wonder there is a lot of anger amongst the young working class.

This was shown in full with the riots in August, the most deprived in the cities of England vented their frustration, anger and hatred at the way they are being treated by the rich fat cats making them and their families pay for this crisis. Some of the places

where riots erupted have 40% youth unemployment. While this was happening SNP politicians gleefully wrote on Twitter that Scotland did not have these problems due to the different society. They are obviously ignoring the fact that in the east end of Glasgow there is 50% youth unemployment and contains some of the most deprived areas in western Europe.

While there may have been no riots in Scotland the social conditions are the same. Young people have to be shown that there is an alternative to the current system of cuts and poverty. There have been large mobilisations of the students against tuition fees and education cuts, but a movement of the unemployed youth and young workers joined with the might of the trade unions and student movement would be unstoppable.

Youth Fight For Jobs in Scotland is fighting for the future of young people. We demand no more cuts, make the bankers and fat cats pay. Local campaigns have already made the government retreat on certain cuts, this shows that it is a weak government that is ruling this country and if the Thatcher government can be brought down by a mass movement so can this one.

10 news

thesocialist www.socialistpartyscotland.org.uk - Dec 2011/Jan 2012

End violence against women STOP THE STRIP While the public sector and women’s organisations are paying the price for the banking crisis, others are making huge profits off the back of it.

Companies like Greene King Plc have seen their profits increase by 14% in the last year…mainly through turning their pubs into main street lap dancing clubs.

With unemployment rocketing in Scotland by 20%, cuts to wages and miserly student grants many women feel they have little option but to work in these clubs. Indeed 60% of lap dancers in Edinburgh are students working there to pay there way through university.

Even Murdoch’s Sun newspaper has dubbed the recent recession a “sexcession” because of the increasing numbers of women moving into the sex industry.

This was in an article where they interviewed 4 women, all who had recently been made redundant, and who couldn’t find any other work so felt they had no choice but to work in different sectors of the sex industry.

Of course, The Sun were trying to portray this in a positive light, however, 3 of the 4 women said they would not have chosen to go into the industry but did so because they just couldn’t get a job.

lap dancing In Dundee Socialist Party Scotland have been campaigning against the opening of another lap dancing club in the city centre. We have opposed the view of the owner Jimmy Marr that it is nothing more than a bit of harmless fun.

In fact the reality of these establishments is quite the opposite. In Camden Town, London, in the year following the opening of 3 new lap dancing clubs in 2003 reported rapes increased by 30% and sexual assaults rocketed by 57%, all attacks took place in the surrounding areas.

Working conditions are also horrendous for most. You don’t get a wage rather you have to pay the owners for the privilege of working there.

Some nights you can end up owing

Women are at the forefront of fighting the cuts and for equality

them money.

There is huge pressure on the workers there to ‘go the extra mile’ to keep the punters happy. 50% of men in Glasgow who went to these clubs said they went for the purpose of having sex, 25% said they did have sex with the dancers.

In the pursuit of ever increasing profit margins big business have put a lot of energy into trying to soften people’s attitudes to porn and sexual exploitation of women. You just have to open an Argos catalogue or go into a toyshop to see all of the Playboy images that are for sale – all aimed at young children.

Easier access to the Internet, sex telephone lines and the expansion of lap dancing clubs has expanded big businesses opportunity to profit from the sexual exploitation of women. A One Poll survey revealed that men spend £4.2 billion a year in the UK on strippers, adult websites, downloads and prostitutes.

It is clear that the gains that women have made through struggle are all under attack.

It’s crucial that the trade union movement together with women’s organisations, the youth and local communities link up the struggles against domestic and sexual violence with the campaigns against the cuts and also the trade union struggles to defend jobs in public services and protect funding for these vital services.

Socialist Party Scotland Why not find out more about us The Socialist Party Scotland is the Scottish section of the worldwide socialist and Marxist organisation, the Committee for a Workers' International. The CWI is active in 45 countries across the world.

Our sister parties include the Socialist Party in England and Wales and the Socialist Party in Ireland. We have a long history of struggle, and experience of leading mass campaigns in Britain and internationally.

We are working to build a mass campaign against the cuts and for the building of new mass parties of the working class armed with a

The 25th of November marks the start of the annual international 16 days of activism in opposition to violence against women. In this article Sinead Daly examines the scale of violence against women in Scotland – and what needs to be done to challenge and end this nightmare that affects 1 in every 5 women in Scotland.

Marxist programme to defeat the attacks of the capitalists and to build a movement internationally that fights for a socialist future.

email: info@socialistpartyscotland.org.uk

www.socialistworld.net www.marxist.net

New book “It doesn’t have to be like this - Women and the struggle for socialism.”

Get a copy. See page 2 for contact details

very 10 seconds there is an incident of domestic abuse recorded by the police in Scotland – 82% of cases involve female victims and male perpetrators.

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This shocking statistic is a harsh and depressing reminder that despite the strides forward that have taken place over the last 20 years, domestic and sexual violence remains a fact of life for many, many women.

There are loads of statistics that can be rhymed off about the scale of Violence Against Women in Scotland: These shocking figures can only shine a little light on the horrendous reality of living with domestic abuse on a day-to-day basis or of the trauma and hurt that sexual violence has on women. Apart from the obvious impact on women’s mental and physical health, women with experience of domestic abuse depend heavily on the public sector to provide support for them at these times.

Sylvia (her name has been changed to protect her identity) spoke about her experiences of domestic abuse she experienced over years.

One incident really stuck out for her “I was pushed against a concrete wall, and I actually was knocked out. He pushed me by about 7 feet onto a concrete wall and I was knocked out. And all my head... the blood was just unbelievable, and an ambulance had to come ... and I had to get all my head stapled together. I mean the scar still really itches.” On another occasion he repeatedly punched and kicked her in the stomach while she was pregnant…she lost the baby.

Sylvia who has young children suffered with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and although she has managed to get away from her abuser a few years ago, she still has regular panic and anxiety attacks, has an eating disorder and has found it a real battle to recover from her experiences “you still feel like...you’re suffering a bit of domestic abuse and domestic violence…because you have all of these illnesses that you take away with you...and it’s just really sad... and it’s not right!”

Sylvia, however, is very much a survivor – she has got away from her abuser and is on the road to recovering from her experiences of domestic abuse. Believe it or not, Sylvia is ‘lucky’

❏ There were almost 52,000 incidents of domestic abuse in Scotland last year ❏ 3 million women in the UK have experienced domestic or sexual abuse in the previous 12 months ❏ 2 women are killed every week at the hands of their partner or ex-partners in the UK ❏ 78-86% of stalking victims are women ❏ There were 6509 reported sex crimes in 2010/11, including rape, attempted rape and sexual assault ❏ Only 7% of all reported rapes in Scotland resulted in a conviction ❏ 26% of Scots surveyed blamed the woman’s behavior as contributing towards the abuse because she managed to secure refuge accommodation, support from Women’s Aid, other women however, have not been so ‘lucky’.

On September 20th 2011, Women’s Aid groups in Scotland (organisations who provide support and refuge accommodation to women, children and young people with experience of domestic abuse) provided support to 1,267 women children and young people. On that day, one third of women who needed to leave flee their homes and get refuge accommodation were turned away due to lack of space.

Every year thousands of women and children leave their homes, their friends and family, their job, their school with perhaps a few black bags with their belongings and go into refuge and homeless accommodation and wait to be re-housed.

Of course, once you get your home then you've got to furnish it. If you've been forced to leave your belongings behind - your bed, fridge, cooker, washing machine, your carpets, TV, kids toys etc - then it's a very expensive time. You may get a ridiculously small grant or loan from the benefits agency or fall prey to the loan companies with criminal interest rates.

The main worries that women have about leaving abusive relationships are where will I live, how will I survive financially, will I be safe, how will my children cope and what if he finds me?

Not to mention concerns about their ability to recover from the impact of sustained abuse on their physical and mental health.

Where do women go to get this support? The job centre, their local au-

thority for housing or social services, specialists services, the police and so on.

lifeline These services that provide a real lifeline for women need to ensure they can gain access to justice or be protected which are the very services which are under attack and paying the price of bailing out this defunct, corrupt and unjust economic system.

While in Scotland we have not seen the level of cut backs to violence against women’s services as in England and Wales, the current budgets that have been announced will no doubt impact on essential support services for women, like Rape Crisis and Women’s Aid. But as socialists we need to go further, we need provide an explanation about why women continue to experience low pay, domestic abuse and sexual violence. Socialist Party Scotland understand that the additional oppression that women face is firmly rooted in this profit driven system, which can only survive on the basis of gross inequality including the gender oppression faced by women.

We fight and struggle for a democratic socialist society. A society that meets the needs and aspirations of the 99%. Which can provide all with a decent living wage, free education, a home and access to good quality social provision. It is only on this basis will women and men begin to be totally free and personal relationships can be truly equal.

thesocialist

workplace 11

www.socialistpartyscotland.org.uk - Dec 2011/Jan 2012

Victory to the sparks jobs for killed skilled workers was the chant as over 300 construction electricians and supporters marched from the Unite offices to George Square on Saturday 19th November.

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This impressive and determined mobilisation followed a similar sized march and rally to the Scottish parliament the previous week, demanding an end to the attacks on the electricians national agreements. The JIB/SJIB national agreements are under imminent threat from the big 7 construction contractors who want to cuts wages by up to 35%. Reducing the hourly wage of an electrician from £14.50 to just over £10 an hour.

Speaker after speaker at the rally pointed out the profits being made by the big companies, while workers are being made to pay the price in attacks on wages and through de-skilling.

Davie Brockett from Unite summed up the mood when he said “we might be taking on the biggest companies in the country, but we’re one of the biggest trade unions and we’re getting in about them until the BESNA terms are torn-up and our fair national agreement is maintained.”

Ian Leech, brought solidarity greetings from the 11,500 members of Glasgow City Unison. “Three million of us will be striking on 30th November against attacks on pensions by the Con-Dem government. Our fight is the same as yours. We’re fighting to defend decent pay, pensions and working conditions from millionaires who think we should pay the price for an economic crisis created by the rich. They also want to divide public and private sector workers – and have us fighting each other. The message I want to bring is that will not happed. We’ll stand united, hit them where it hurts by striking together until we win.”

The ballot now taking place for strike action by BBES electricians is welcome.

NISON members at Stow College have voted to accept the management's revised pay package for 2011/12 by 80% to 20%.

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Brian Smith Glasgow City Unison branch secretary

Organised strike action by electricians is urgently needed, including unofficial but coordinated walkouts to hit the companies hard.

The ‘Dirty 7’ big construction contractors want to break away from the JIB/SJIB national agreement and impose new BESNA terms that will lead to de-skilling and cut wages by up to 35%.

Even this isn’t enough for some of the bosses. The site manager at the Gratts Cannon St site in London two weeks ago said that if he had his way he’d force wages down to £1 per hour!

This is an experience understood by workers who walked out at the Lindsey oil Refinery in 2009 to defend the NAECI agreement with Socialist Party member Keith Gibson playing a leading role.

This then spread to a national stoppage. Workers are told that they have to bear the price in the private and public sectors for an economic crisis caused by the bankers.

It’s not a question of even cutting costs to survive but to make more and more profits.

For the likes of Balfour Beatty (BBES), who’ve sent 90 day notices to 1600 electricians to smash their contracts, in the last 6 months their revenues have risen to £5.2billion and profits stand at £91million! Their order book stands at over £15billion. Chief executive Ian Tyler got paid nearly £1 million this year!

And while electricians face pay cuts on December 7th, two days later Balfour Beatty are raising shareholders’ dividends! This is the bosses’ law.

The people who make the profits are squeezed so that the bosses get richer Despite what they say, the employers are terrified of the electricians’ struggle.

Sites have been idle on many of the protests. Balfour Beatty have missed out on the second phase of the Carrington Mill project in Manchester and British Nuclear Fuels are withholding payments because of the ‘industrial unrest’. Already one of the original ‘Big 8’, MJN Coulston has withdrawn from its threat to leave the JIB. We need to step up the campaign further. The ballot in BBES has started and we must fight for a massive YES vote and help the workers stop all their sites.

Then it has to spread officially or unofficially to all other construction sites, appealing to all workers in the building trade.

On November 30th, construction workers should walk out to join the 3 million public sector workers who will be striking to stop Cameron and co attacking their pensions.

A victory for the electricians is the best way to protect all national agreements. If you’re not in the union - join.

If you’re already a member - get active and get the word on the sites. We’ve shaken the bosses, now we have to defeat them and keep the JIB.

Reinstate Unison member Vik Chechi ueen Mary University of London (QMUL) Unison is currently running a public campaign demanding the reinstatement of its suspended branch secretary Vik Chechi.

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The branch believes this suspension is linked to Vik's opposition to the cuts.

These cuts include 100 redundancies and imposed restructurings.

On 10 November, a public meeting

comprising of workers, students and supporters was convened.

Speaking at the meeting was Vik Chechi, April Ashley (Southwark Unison assistant branch secretary and a member of Unison's national executive, personal capacity) and Glenn Kelly, former Unison national executive member.

QMUL Security had received orders from senior management to bar members of the public and supporters from the meeting.

Not deterred, workers and students braved the cold, holding the meeting

Teachers vote to strike Members of the EIS, Scotland’s largest teachers union, have voted overwhelmingly for industrial action against planned changes to their pension rights which will see the average member contribute 50% more and have her pension cut by up to 40%.

Jim Halfpenny 82% of those teachers voting voted for immediate strike action on 30th November.

Stow college strikers force concessions

The SNP government in Scotland, which has already taken £45 million from the education budget this year and frozen teachers wages for the next two years (in reality a cut of more than 10%), will continue to administer Tory policy and make further attacks on teachers conditions.

The McCormac report into Scottish education shows what the future holds if we do not take decisive action. Under the guise of flexibility teachers conditions of service will be seriously eroded.

This will mean increasing management

outside and took the opportunity to leaflet passing staff and students.

QMUL management have threatened to do the same at the 24 November Stop the Cuts meeting which is being organised by trade unions and students in the run-up to 30 November.

QMUL Unison communication officer, Olivia Ribeiro, said banning members of the public is against the proud working class history of the university, whose campus centerpiece is called the 'People's Palace', and the local area. It's also a clear attempt to curtail support for trade union campaigns." control over our workload and the systematic bullying that this will generate.

The introduction of unqualified staff to teach children will allow then to reduce teacher numbers and, as a consequence, the quality of education.

The recent sell out by the EIS leadership of teacher’s pay and conditions has not been forgotten and the anger from that has forced them to take a stand on pensions. However their militant rhetoric should not disguise their normal position of working ‘hand in glove’ with management.

N30 should be seen as a starting point for further industrial action to protect us attacks on our living standards.

The securing of the Scottish Living Wage of £7.20 per hour represents an 8% pay increase for around one in five UNISON members at the college.

This pay award will be backdated to 1st August for most, will be paid to all future workers, will form part of any TUPE transfers and represents a successful aspect of the dispute.

The two days additional annual leave won for all support staff is a concrete improvement in a core condition of service. The introduction of

a new training fund for support staff linked to pay also represents an advancement in members overall employment arrangements.

All 90 members took one day of all out strike action and the canteen workers took a further six days of selective strike action.

The failure to force the management into a pay award for other members is disappointing and will be a core demand of the UNISON branch in 2012/13.

The UNISON branch will also continue to do all it can to protect the interests of our members already subjected to or threatened by transfer to private companies.

Stow College UNISON members are to be congratulated on making a stand against the employer's pay freeze, for the manner in which they conducted themselves during the dispute, can be proud of the part they played in winning the improvements and will take confidence in that for the future.

Cleaners win 10% wage rise after strike action ontract cleaners working on West Coast mainline trains have won a 10% pay rise. Organised in the RMT union, 350 workers took one day of strike action.

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Hugh Caffrey north-west Socialist Party This seemed to send their employer bananas as "Carlisle Cleaning & Support Services" probably broke the law by using agency staff to do the work of strikes.

Following this action by refusing to empty on-train sewage tanks for two days, and then announcing a further two-day strike, forced Carlisle to concede this substantial pay rise.

Immediately, workers get a 5% increase. The rest will be phased in over the next 10 months, and also include further improvements in benefits, allowances and working conditions.

RMT general secretary Bob Crow hailed this "fantastic achievement" won through "the strength, solidarity and sheer courage of the Virgin West Coast Cleaners," who were paid barely above the minimum wage in "sweatshop" conditions.

These workers have dealt a body

blow to low pay by a viciously antiunion employer.

This is because they stood firm, organised solid industrial action, and were prepared to seriously escalate the strikes if necessary.

For public sector workers defending their pensions, for construction electricians fighting against a 35% pay cut, for numerous local disputes, and for working people generally, the clear lesson is as Bob Crow says, "If you organise in a trade union, and are prepared to put up a fight, you can win."

Alex Gordon, RMT President, said: "The 23% pay increase since 2010 by RMT members employed by Tory paymaster, Lord Ashcroft's, Carlisle Cleaning Group on Virgin West Coast train cleaning is a victory for the lowest paid railworkers.

"It shows industrially-organised, militant trade unions can win at a time of austerity. ConDem policies are outsourcing more and more workers to privatised 'utility management'.

"These super-profitable contracts are based on a national minimum wage (NMW) business model, superexploitation and corruption.

"The lesson for NSSN is that the fight for public sector pensions on 30 November must extend to decent pay and pensions for all.

Cleaning, Catering and Security contractors in the transport industry watch out. RMT has you in our sights."

Send us your workplace and trade union news The Socialist is dedicated to reporting the struggles of workers and developments in the trade unions in Scotland, Britain and internationally.

If you have a report for us please send it in email info@socialistpartyscotland.org.uk The Socialist Party Scotland website is: www.socialistpartyscotland.org.uk The CWI website is at: www.socialistworld.net

theSocialist

NATIONALISE THE ENERGY COMPANIES paper of the socialist party scotland committee for a worker’s international (scotland)

ousehold fuel bills are rocketing while the vast majority of people are struggling during the economic crisis.

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Jim McFarlane Jobs losses, pay freezes and rising living costs are hitting ordinary people hard. Yet at the same time the “big six” suppliers British Gas, EdF, Npower, Eon, Scottish Power and Scottish & Southern Energy have pushed prices

whatwe standfor work and income ● For the unions to take immediate action to increase the minimum wage to £8 an hour without exemptions as an immediate step towards £10 an hour. For an annual increase in the minimum wage, linked to average earnings. ● Reject Welfare to Work; for the right to decent benefits, training or a job without compulsion. ● A maximum 35-hour week without loss of pay. ● All workers, including part-timers, temps, casual and migrant workers to have trade union rates of pay, employment protection, sickness and holiday rights from

up by over 18% in some cases.

The average gas and electric dual energy bill has rocketed 117% since 2004 while median household income has only increased by 18%. By 2015 most households will be experiencing 'fuel poverty' ie spending 10% of their incomes or more on fuel bills.

Currently over five million households are experiencing fuel poverty.

The average household bill now stands at a record £1,345 a year.

These private profiteers continue to rake in massive profits and pay obscene salaries to their top bosses.

The widespread anger at the energy and utility companies is totally ignored

the first day of employment. ● Scrap the anti-union laws. Build fighting trade unions, democratically controlled by their members. Full-time officials should be regularly elected and receive no more than a worker’s wage. ● An immediate 50% increase in the state retirement pension, as a step towards a living pension.

Reinstate the link with average earnings now. environment ● Major research and investment into replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy. End the problems of early obsolescence and unrecycled waste. ● Public ownership of the energy generating industry. No to nuclear power. No to Trident ● A democratically planned, low fare, publicly owner transport system.

solidarity price: £2.00

ISSUE No 19 - DEC 2011/JAN 2012

by all the main parties. Their only advice to ordinary people is to shop around for better deals on their bills by changing suppliers.

This is a deliberately confusing and complicated process for most people evidenced by the fact that just 15% of households changed their supplier in the last year.

It is clear that the energy companies are operating an unofficial but effective cartel.

The recent “energy summit” convened by the ConDem government and attended by suppliers, self appointed consumer groups and the paper tiger watchdog Ofgem was a talking shop

public services ● No to privatisation and the Private Finance programmes.

Renationalise all privatised utilities and services. ● Free, high quality education for all from nursery to university; with a living grant. No to the return of tuition fees in Scotland. Cancel the student debt and end the cuts in education funding. ● A socialist NHS to provide for everyone’s health - free at the point of use and under democratic control. Kick out the private contractors from all parts of the NHS. ● Keep council housing public. For a massive programme of publicly owned housing to provide good quality homes at low rents. ● Fully fund all services and run them under accountable, democratic committees that include workers and service users.

Profiteering from misery ❐ The big 6 energy companies have seen their dual-fuel profit per customer increase by 733% – from £15 to £125. ❐ Over 65% of single pensioners in Scotland are fuel poor; 23% are living in extreme fuel poverty. ❐ 1 in every 3 households in Scotland pay more than 10% of their income on energy bills

which effectively reinforced the energy companies right to continue profiteering regardless of the effect on households.

It is obscene that we have millions of people across the country struggling to pay for the basic need to power their own homes.

Thousands of mainly older people still die every winter due to the fear of being unable to pay for energy to fuel their homes through the cold weather.

The continuing scandal of fuel poverty is only given lip service by politicians from the big business parties.

This scandal totally exposes the myth

rights ● Oppose discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, disability, sexuality, age and all other forms of prejudice. ● Repeal laws that trample of civil liberties. For the right to protest.

End police harassment. ● Defend abortion rights. For a women’s right to choose when and whether to have children. ● For the right of asylum. No to racist immigration laws.

A mass working class party ● For a mass workers party that draws together workers, young people and activists from other movements to build a political alternative to the big business parties. ● Trade unions should disaffiliate from the Labour Party now and play a central role in helping to build a new workers’ party.

that capitalist competition means improved services and lower costs for consumers. The bottom line for all these companies is that they exist to maximise profit regardless of the human misery they inflict on many ordinary people.

We do not accept that this is the way it has to be and that there is no alternative to the market and profiteering of big business.

We demand that the energy private energy companies are nationalised bringing them into democratic public ownership ensuring they are run for the benefit of society not to make profits for greedy bosses and shareholders.

socialism and internationalism ● No to imperialist wars and occupations. Withdraw the troops now from Iraq and Afghanistan. ● Tax the super rich. For a socialist government that takes into public ownership the top 150 companies and banks that dominate the British economy, and run them under democratic working class control and management.

Compensation only on the basis of proven need. ● For a socialist Scotland and a free and voluntary socialist federation of Scotland with England Wales and Ireland. ● A democratic socialist, environmentally secure plan of production based on the interests of the overwhelming majority of people. ● No to the bosses neo-liberal European Union. For a socialist Europe and a socialist world.