SOCIALIST UNITY

Union bosses have totally lost the plot. Trumpted up charges have been used against Tony Staunton in Plymouth and Yunus Baksh in the North East to witch-hunt left activists out of the union.

But their charges against Onay Kasab, branch secretary of Unison in Greenwich Borough and three other members of the union have reached new depths of absurdity.

The Greenwich four, who are all members of the Socialist Party, are due to face a disciplinary hearing at the London Hilton Metropole Hotel in Edgware Road on May 14, because the branch produced a leaflet for its national conference last summer which depicted union bosses as “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” monkeys for not allowing debate on Unison’s funding of the Labour Party and other issues.

The leaflet criticsed the union leadership for blocking the union conference’s right to debate issues such as the funding of the Labour Party, the election of full-time officials and control over strike action. A third of all motions were ruled out of order last year and there is nearly half of all motions have been ruled out for this year’s conference.

The union originally claimed the image was racially offensive!

Mr Kasab, who represents nearly 3,500 council and other public sector workers in Greenwich, has led many successful campaigns in the borough. He told the Mercury Today: “The idea that the three wise monkeys is racially offensive is completely ridiculous. I have had a lot of support from members of the union who are appalled by the accusations. They know that there is no substance to the accusations because I absolutely condemn racism.”

Past campaigns led by Mr Kasab include helping to stop the axing of a home school liaison team which works with families, including many members of the black and ethnic minority communities. He also helped to lead a campaign to stop the British National Party setting up a headquarters in Upper Wickham Lane, Welling, a few years ago.

Seeing that this position was indefensible, UNISON now accepts that there was no racist intent. The four are now being charged with producing and distributing a leaflet questioning the decisions of the Standing Orders Committee.

This is an outright threat to democracy if members and branches cannot campaign against union decisions!

See the Stop the Witchhunt website

All supporters are urged to attend a lobby on Wednesday 14th May from 8.30 am at the London Hilton Metropole Hotel, 225 Edgware Road, London W2 1JU. Please bring placards and banners.

Thanks to Paul for this story.

John McDonnell is circulating this petition in reaction to Labour’s massive defeats in last week’s elections and as an alternative to the NL project.

I heard John McDonnell speak at the Labour Briefing AGM yesterday.

And the main thrust of his speech is the need to work together, in an open and non-sectarian way whether we are inside or outside the Labour Party. And practically, we do have alternatives and answers to the NL project hence the petition. I agreed with the majority of his speech.

In my opinion, the Left is an ever diminishing force and we need to work together challenging and fighting the NL project….and an impending Tory victory in 18mths.

 I mean, lets face it, Gordon “the listening man” Brown is more likely to pull a rabbit out of a hat than win the next election if he steers the NL project, predictably, even more right-wing, which he will do.

He believed he could click the heels of his ruby slippers and chant the mantra, “There’s no place like New Labour” but the electorate didn’t buy it. NL’s  project will continue to hammer Labour’s core voters.

Labour will disappear into electoral oblivion and a generation of Tory governments will appear. And boy, we won’t be in Kansas any longer, Toto….

I have been blogging about the great new pamphlet from Hugo Blanco one of my heros over at another green world…I want to advertise the other pamplets from Socialist Voice, I haven’t read every word of every one but I am impressed with Socialist Voice…they work in practical ways to promote change…they are ex-members of the Communist League in Canada who became frustrated for the usual reasons of control freakery and bizarre democratic Leninism (we have all been there this stuff extends well beyond far left groups, I used to be on the wrong side of people like Green 2000) .

If everytime a new political group emerged, they produced a pamphlet from Hugo Blanco…well the world would be a better place! The Castro stuff is certainly worth a look as well if you haven’t seen it before.

However Blanco is the hombre as far as I am concerned, a real red and green revolutionery with his newspaper Lucha Indigena.

Well see what you think of Blanco and the other pamphlets.

Always struggle to victory!

Publications

These pamphlets and magazines are in PDF format. They can easily be printed on letter size or A4 paper, using a laser or inkjet printer. You will need Adobe Reader to read or print them. Adobe Reader can be downloaded for free from here.

Professionally printed copies of the pamphlets
may be purchased from South Branch Publications:
Download and print the ORDER FORM. …

—-

South Branch Publications

Socialist Voice pamphlets

• Anti-Semitism, Zionism, and the Defense of Palestinian Rights
  by Suzanne Weiss. How the memory of the holocaust – the mass slaughter of European Jews – is being misused today to justify the oppression and murder of Palestinians.
• Canada’s Assault on Afghanistan: Behind the Lies and Cover-ups
  by Roger Annis and Ian Beeching. Canada’s role a brutal and endless war, part of the U.S.-led war of conquest in the entire Middle East.
• COMINTERN: Revolutionary Internationalism in Lenin’s Time
  by John Riddell. The origins and early development of the Communist International.
• Cuba in a Time of Transition
  by John Riddell, Phil Cournoyer, Fidel Castro, and Duroyan Fertl. Why Fidel left office and what the change in leadership means. How can the Cuban revolution be defended and extended today?
• The Fight for Indigenous Rights in the Andes Today
  by Hugo Blanco. The legendary Peruvian peasant leader analyses the battles of indigenous peoples in Peru and Bolivia for land and justice and against the destruction of their environment.
• From Resistance to Power!
  Manifestos of the fight for Indigenous Rights in Central and South America, from conferences in Iximché, Kumarakapay, Chimoré and Qollasuyo.
• Global Warming, Biofuels and World Hunger
  by Fidel Castro. “It hurts to think that 10 billion tons of fossil fuel is consumed every year. This means that each year we waste what it took nature one million years to create.”
• Haiti and the Myth of Canadian Peacekeeping
  by Roger Annis. How Canada helped to ouste a democratically-elected government, and continues to suppress democracy in the poorest country in the western hemisphere.
• Venezuela Eyewitness
  by Suzanne Weiss and John Riddell. Canadian socialists report on Venezuela’s achievements and the challenges facing the Bolivarian Revolution today.
• Venezuela and the International Struggle for Socialism
  by John Riddell, Roger Annis, Ian Angus and Federico Fuentes. Why socialists support the Bolivarian revolution and what Venezuela’s new United Party of Socialism (PSUV) means for the international socialist movement.

Climate and Capitalism pamphlets

• Confronting the Climate Change Crisis: An Ecosocialist Perspective
  by Ian Angus. Humanity’s choice in the 21st century is ecosocialism or barbarism. There is no third way.
• How to Avoid Action on Climate Change
  by Ian Angus. The fine art of greenwash in Canadian politics.

Socialist Voice magazine

• Socialist Voice Magazine - Nov-Dec 2007 (PDF: 1.2 Mb)
  Articles on: Afghanistan; Indigenous Struggles; Ecuador; Venezuela; Bolivia

• Socialist Voice Magazine - Summer 2007 (PDF: 936 Kb)
  Articles on: Labour Movement in Canada; Global Warming; Women in Afghanistan; Iran; Vilma Espin

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picture of yesterdays London demo, taken from Barbaric Document blog

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THE FOURTH ANNUAL SOUNDINGS EVENT IS ON CLASS AND CULTURE
10am-4.30pm Saturday 28 June 2008 Tavistock Centre
120 Belsize Lane, London NW3 (nearest tube stations Belsize Park and Finchley Road).

Class has been the central organising principle in the history of left politics, but in the last four decades new forms of capitalism have transformed the cultures and social relations of class.

Speakers: Beatrix Campbell, Jon Cruddas MP, Andrew Pearmain, Mark Perryman, Leslie Sklair, Gareth Stedman Jones, Jane Wills.

Registration: £30 for Soundings subscribers and £50 for non-subscribers (this fee includes an excellent lunch provided by the Tavistock caterers).

SPECIAL OFFER FOR NEW STANDING ORDER SUBSCRIBERS
If you subscribe before the conference, Soundings will charge you £30 for your ticket and only £20 for your new sub. So £50 will cover the costs of admission and a subscription.
Click for the standing order form: http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/standingorderCOC.html

To reserve a place, go to http://www.lwbooks.co.uk/seminar3.html

Or send a cheque payable to ‘Soundings’ to FREEPOST, LON 176, London, E9 5BR (no stamp is needed).

And the Compass Conference 2008: Born Free & Equal
The Robin Cook Memorial Conference
Saturday 14 June 2008 • Institute of Education, London

How do we deliver EQUALITY in the 21st Century?

The first major gathering of progressives post the 2008 elections…

Over 60 speakers including: Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP; Neal Lawson; Prof Ruth Lister CBE; Derek Simpson; Jon Cruddas MP; Polly Toynbee; Jon Trickett MP; Rt Hon Douglas Alexander MP; Baroness Helena Kennedy QC; John Harris; Beatrix Campbell; Prof Danny Dorling; Chuka Umunna; Katharine Rake; Melissa Benn; Dr Tom Smith; Dr Alex Scott; Hilary Wainwright; Kate Green; Deborah Littman; Graeme Cooke; Matthew Pennycook; Tony Benn; Mick Shaw; Christine Shawcroft; Richard Murphy; Doreen Massey; Ann Pettifor; Jonathan Rutherford; Andrew Harrop; Patrick Diamond; Mark Perryman; Sunder Katwala; Peter Kellner; Rachel Reeves; Aditya Chakraborrty - who’ll be joined by other leading figures from across the Left and wider progressive community…

Hosting over 35 sessions organised by the leading think tanks, pressure groups, NGOS and publications all at the one event including: The Fawcett Society; Searchlight; NUT; Socialist Health Association; The Fabian Society; Progress; Crisis; NUS; Campaign for Therapy; Demos; Liberty; UNISON; Unions Together; CPAG; Amnesty International; War on Want; IPPR; Fair Pay Network; nef; Migrants Rights Network; Barrow Cadbury Trust; Red Pepper; RENEWAL; Tribune; Friends of the Earth; Labour Left Briefing; Soundings; Age Concern England; Electoral Reform Society; Make Votes Count; CND; LGBT Labour; Unions 21; Unlock Democracy; Compass Youth…

More details at http://www.compassonline.org.uk/conference/

ZCTU Alert, 9 May 2008

Police have failed to bring to court ZCTU president, Comrade Lovemore Matombo and his secretary general, Comrade Wellington Chibebe after they were locked up yesterday on allegations of ‘inciting people to rise against the government’.

The two were arrested after they presented themselves to the police yesterday morning. They were initially interrogated for more than six hours before charges were laid against them. They had availed themselves to the police after armed police had visited their residences searching for them.

The allegations arise from speeches which the two made at this year’s May Day celebrations at Dzivaresekwa Stadium.

Aleck Muchademehama, a human rights lawyer who is representing the two said there were no longer any prospects of the police taking the two to court, considering that nothing had been done to prepare the requisite court papers.

He said the two were now set to spend the weekend in police custody as Zimbabwean law stipulates that the police can detain any suspect for a maximum of 48 hours, excluding weekends and public holidays, before he or she is brought to court.

Zimbabwean police are in the habit of detaining political and civil rights activists over the weekend before they are taken to court the next week. The weekend detentions are usually aimed at breaking down the activists, who are usually exposed to extreme inhuman conditions while in police custody.
I have been blogging about a new ecosocialist blog from a green shop steward, missed the march today but planning to mark the ‘catastrophe’ in my own way…compassion for the Palestinians is in short supply in some places.

Any way, Miranda Dunn who is my Green Party Regional Council Friend (an official post!) sent me this…spread the word

Dear Greens,

Forwarding you this info so you can act. Particularly if you have access to
a fax as I will have to send my letter via snail mail.

Miranda Dunn
Barnet Green Party

In the ongoing post-election repression of the democracy movement and
workers and trade unionists in particular, Lovemore Motombo and Wellington Chibebe,
respectively President and General Secretary of the Zimbabwe Congress of
Trade Unions (ZCTU) were arrested on May 8 and charged with “inciting people to
rise against the government and reporting falsehoods about people being killed
’ for speaking out on May Day about the country’s political crisis and the
growing repression of the opposition to Mugabe.

The IUF and unions internationally are calling for messages to the
government of Zimbabwe demanding their immediate and unconditional release. In view of
the extreme violence which has been frequently inflicted on union leaders
and activists, the IUF considers the government responsible for the physical
safety and well being of the arrested ZCTU leaders.

You can fax a message to the government of Zimbabwe at the number indicated
in the sample message below. We also encourage copies to the embassy of
Zimbabwe in your country (a list of embassies is available online at
http://zw.embassyinformation.com/?einfo). Please send copies of any messages you might
send to the IUF secretariat.

Sample Message to President Mugabe

To: Mr. Robert G. Mugabe,
President , Republic of Zimbabwe

Fax: + 263.4.70.38.58

Dear President Mugabe

Concerns: ZCTU leadership arrested

I have been informed of the arrests, on 8 May, of Lovemore Motombo and
Wellington Chibebe, President and General Secretary of the Zimbabwe Congress of
Trade Unions (ZCTU). It is my understanding that the two are charged with
“inciting people to rise against the government and reporting falsehoods about
people being killed’, i.e. exercising the right to freedom of speech which is
guaranteed them under international law and, in their capacity as trade union
officials, the Conventions of the United Nations’ ILO. We therefore call on
your government to immediately and unconditionally release these two detained
trade union leaders. In view of past violence against arrested and detained
trade unionists, we hold your government responsible for their physical
integrity and well being

Yours sincerely

Anna Chen’s ten-part BBC Radio 4 series on the history of the Chinese in Britain, is repeated in two omnibus programmes at 9pm on Friday 16th and 23rd May 2008.

As Anna describes the programme:

“For most people, the history of the Chinese in Britain begins with The Takeaway Generation: the thousands of people who came over from Hong Kong in the 1960s, opened a takeaway on every high street, and made chow mein a national British dish. But my Chinese father arrived as a sailor in the 1920s, worked as a firefighter, an activist in the labour movement, and ended up running a newspaper, so I’ve always been curious about those earlier unseen generations. Who were they? What did they do? And what sort of welcome did they get?

“In this series I’ll be exploring the lives of the Chinese who came to Britain before the 1960s: as sailors, scholars, writers and artists, as well as laundrymen and cooks. And I’ll be discovering the many surprising ways in which Chinese people have made their mark on British life.”

And for those of you in the South West, Anna will be reading from The Chop House, her autobiography and a work in progress, at The Salthouse Gallery on Sunday 11th May 2008. Tickets £4.00 - call 01736 795003.

From Today’s Morning Star. FURIOUS prison officers greeted hapless Justice Secretary Jack Straw with a wall of silence and a vote of no confidence on Thursday following a miserly pay deal and new Labour’s strike ban. Mr Straw’s reception at the Prison Officers Association national conference followed the stony silence earlier given to Prison Service director general Phil Wheatley.

A confrontational Mr Straw bluntly told delegates that he would not give them their right to strike back. He said: “I am perfectly prepared to acknowledge that there are some issues on which I have changed my mind. I make no apology for that.

“I believe that, if you’ve been around the block a bit, it is entirely legitimate to change your mind, provided you explain why. But this isn’t one of them.

“My view on the scope for industrial action by services critical not only for the safety and security of the public but for the stability of the state, has always been consistent.

“What the police, the armed forces, prison officers do is simply too important.

“Moreover, in 2000 when then prisons minister Paul Boateng and I agreed to create an independent pay review body, we were clear that a key component should be a self-denying ordinance which prevented industrial action.”

Parkhurst delegate Glen Holmes, supporting a motion of no confidence in Mr Straw which was passed while the Justice Secretary was sitting in the conference hall, told the minister that he was a “man with no shame.

“You will never tell me if I can or cannot go out on strike. I will proudly lead my branch to the gate,” he vowed.

Wormwood scrubs delegate John Hancock said that the Labour Party had effectively criminalised trade unionists, pledging: “We will never back down to this government.”

Executive member Mark Freeman said that it was a sad time when you had to condemn a Labour Prisons Minister. He told Mr Straw: “A Labour government enacting Tory laws to criminalise trade unions? Jack, you’re not the straw that is going to break this camel’s back.”

The POA is angry at a miserly 2.2 per cent pay deal this year following controversy over the government’s decision to stage last year’s 2.5 per cent wage award, which reduced the value of the increase. POA national chairman Colin Moses said that employers and the government had constantly abused the good will of staff throughout Britain.

And general secretary Brian Caton added that it was “unbelievable” that Prime Minister Gordon Brown had intervened recently to stop a pay rise for prisoners to save the service £6 million. He argued that the money should be given to officers, following controversy over the government’s decision to stage the 2007 pay increase, which the union estimated cost prison officers £4 million.

So what are we to make of the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, Wendy Alexander, wanting a referendum on Independence as soon as possible?

Vince Mills, a Labour left winger from Scotland discusses this in yesterday’s Morning Star.

Wendy Alexander epitomises everything that is rotten with the Labour Party, for example, as Vince points out:

” In a pamphlet published in March called Change Is What We Do, Alexander argues that Scottish Labour has pretty well sorted the housing issue. “We needed a new policy means of providing decent affordable homes and the foundations for a new era in community housing have been laid,” she writes. She is referring to stock transfer, which not only failed to solve the housing crisis but made it worse. Arguing that we have to recognise the changing aspirations of potential Labour voters, she writes: “Nowadays, families’ aspirations stretch to second home ownership, two cars in the driveway, a nice garden, two foreign holidays a year and leisure systems in the home such as sound, cinema and gym equipment. If we are not in tune with them, we will be seen as irrelevant.”

There is a terrible housing crisis gripping working class communities. Young people and those on low incomes are excluded from buying, and the credit crunch has made that worse. Many young people continue living with their parents. Many people are stuck in vastly expensive and inadequate private rented accomodation, and the social housing sector is closed to all but those in the most desperate need. In these circumstances to describe the aspirations of Labour voters as second home ownership is an insult.

Vince Mills is quite correct that “the current popularity of the [Scottish National Party] SNP - is built on its social programme, not its core nationalist objective. … In Scotland, the SNP has offered an alternative, a fairly limited alternative, that recognises the trade union agenda, hence the sight of Alex Salmond at the STUC, seeks to erode some of the worst excesses of new Labour like PFI, extends aspects of welfarism, for example free prescriptions, and generally points, however deceptively, to a society reminiscent of 1970s social democracy.”

Alexander fears that if an independence referendum is postponed until 2010, then there will be a Tory government in Westminster, supported by almost no Scottish MPs. So she wants to get the referendum over with before then.

The SNP are growing in popularity. A recent Telegraph-commissioned YouGov poll put the SNP at 36 per cent in the constituency vote, five points ahead of Labour on 31 per cent, and much the same sort of lead in the regional lists seats. The SNP had also improved its position in relation to Westminster.

Labour is an institutionally Unionist party, and Vince Mills argues that as the polls show only 19 per cent of Scots would support independence given a three way choice, Labour is closer to Scottish opinion on this issue than the SNP are. ( 34 per cent favoured the status quo and 38 per cent wanted more powers for the Scottish Parliament.)

But devolution has created an accelerating dynamic towards the break up of the UK. The social and political dynamic created by Scotland’s parliament being restored, means that Scotland has an increasingly divergent policy agenda from England; and at the same time that Scottish agenda has much greater legitimacy as the sovereignty of the Scottish parliament rests on the approval of the Scottish nation: there is a national popular dynamic that will favour the authority of Holyrood over Westminster. That accelerating dynamic can be seen in the 38% who want greater powers for the parliament, in addition to the 19% wanting full independence. It is quite remarkable that only 19% support the existing constitutional settlement, and yet that conservative Unionist sentiment is where the Labour Party positions itself.

Any independence referrendum in Scotland will find most of the left in England quite unprepared for the political arguments about English identity and the future of England that will inevitably flow out of that. Worth checking out the beginnings of that debate in “Imagined nation, England After Britain”, edited by Mark Perryman, and including an article by me about how an English left might be imagined.

One of the terrible misrepresentations of Africa, is that it is a helpless continent of victims. But in fact Africa has produced some great socialist heros.

Here is a short film about Africa’s Che Guevara, Thomas Sankara, the inspirational President of Burkino Faso, before his murder in a French instigated coup d-etat.

Between 1983 and 1987, Sankara’s government prioritized fighting corruption, promoting reforestation,  education and health and women’s rights and averting famine. It is important to recognise that the emphasis on reforestation makes Burkino Faso’s socialist government one of the world’s pioneers in promoting sustainability and defending the environment.

Sankana acted against the privileges of the tribal chiefs such as their right to receive tribute payment and obligatory labour. And Comités de Défense de la Révolution were formed as armed, popular organisations of the poor and labouring classes. The greatest gains were in the area of women’s rights, and his socialist government included a large number of women. Improving women’s status was one of Sankara’s explicit goals, an unprecedented policy priority in West Africa. His government banned female circumcision, condemned polygamy, and promoted contraception. The RDP [Rassemblement Démocratique et Populaire] government was also the first African government to publicly recognize that AIDS is a major threat to Africa.

And here is a fine film of Samora Michel, showing an interesting process of rehabilitation for those who had collaborated with the Portuguese colonialists during the national liberation war. Samora Machel was killed in a plane crash in 1986. It is widely believed this was due to South African sabotage.

Samora Machel was a former nurse and the son of a peasant, who became a guerilla leader in the Frelimo army to defeat the brutal Potuguese colonialist rule over Mozambique. He was then elected to became Mozambique’s first president. For Machel the Marxist programme of Frelimo grew out of the class struggle in Africa, and the experience of life in Mozambique: As he said himself: “the people’s liberation war, our military science which defeated the colonial-fascist generals, was drawn up and developed by our own illiterate people. Marxism-Leninism did not appear in our country as an imported product.” He was determined to prevent a new elite forming, after the Portuguese were expelled: he still continued to chant “Aluta continua”… the struggle continues. Machel used to say, there are no small or big people, all people are equal. In a speech at the first Conference of Mozambican women in 1973, he said; “the liberation of women is a fundamental necessity for the revolution, the guarantee of its’ continuity and the precondition of for it’s victory”.

The most distinctive aspect of Samora Machel’s politics though was his active internationalism and pan-Africanism. Post-independence Mozambique gave active practical, military and financial support to the liberation movements in Ian Smith’s Rhodesia and in Apartheid South Africa, which was his downfall, as the South Africans destabilised Mozambique, funding rebel insurgencies against Frelimo, as well as direct military intervention by the SADF and sabotage.