SOCIALIST UNITY

The Virginia massacre is still making the news in the most inane way: “…constitutional right,” stated the correspondent; “…constitutional right,” reflexively muttered another correspondent; “…constitutional right,” bleated yet another correspondent. And so it went: no broadcast was, or indeed is, complete without reference to the alleged constitutional right of Americans to “bear arms”. The predictable verbal diarrhoea of any correspondent is only matched by the fact that it will be regurgitated by his or her fellow club member.

However, the constitutional right that the correspondents lean on as crutch of first and last resort is not quite as it seems. Ratified in 1791, the famous amendment (one of ten that make up the Bill of Rights) that Blighty’s correspondents refer to so readily and with apparent thorough knowledge reads as follows: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” In the case of the highly-paid correspondent the right to ignorance “shall not be infringed” - and it hasn’t, and doesn’t look like being so.

Now, how many a correspondent, apparently so knowledgeable about the U.S. constitution, has read it and its amendments? About none would be my considered calculation. One would imagine that at least one of the motley crew would find a few seconds to quote the famous second amendment. That at least would wake the sonorous: “…what… what…Militia?”

A literal reading of the seldom read, frequently incorrectly quoted amendment would suggest - demand? - that only a “well regulated Militia” has the right to “keep and bear Arms”, and that it is not an individual right.

The NRA, of course, disputes this. Interestingly, they refuse to state the amendment in its entirety, in fear of the truth, no doubt. There is a lively debate in the U.S. around this issue, not that you would be so informed by the scores of lucky correspondents who have made it across the pond to the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Not being particularly well-acquainted with the intricacies of how this clear stipulation has been ignored and that almost anyone with the urge to buy an assault rifle being allowed to do so is evidently a shortcoming. Perhaps the Supreme Court has ruled - or rather overruled, if you see my meaning - that the right applies to individuals, not to the state Militias entrusted to keep freedom alive. If anyone knows, drop me a line.

Although it is dangerous to try to read into what those who ratified the amendment in 1791 had in mind, I do not think these chaps had assault rifles in mind (operative word: assault). Since the forces of the nation state are now so overwhelming, one would be inclined to suggest that no individual has the capacity to counter F-15 jets and “Daisy Cutters”. Therefore the “freedom” argument melts away, unless, that is, U.S. citizens should have access to awesome military firepower. Best not give the NRA any ideas.

The building workers union, UCATT , recently published a report
they had commissioned from the Centre for Corporate Accountability

The report was published on 28th April, which is workers memorial day, commemorating workers who are killed at work. In the construction industry alone there have been 80 deaths during the last twelve months.

Remarkably UCATT’s report finds that in a six-year period from 1998 to 2004 Health and Safety Executive (HSE) prosecutions in construction deaths plummeted from 42 per cent to just 11 per cent. The study covered the deaths of 504 construction workers. It often takes over three years following the death of a construction worker before a company is brought to trial and convicted.

So convictions have dropped by 75%, and during the same period work related deaths have increased by 25%.

The worst year for prosecutions following the death of a worker was 2001/2 when just 9 per cent of companies were prosecuted. The conviction rates are far below the HSE’s own research which estimated that in 70 per cent of construction workers deaths management failures caused or contributed to the deaths. Although prosecutions are not always possible a recent HSE internal audit , estimated that prosecutions should occur three times more often than the current reality, creating a target of 60 per cent.

As Alan Ritchie, general secretary of UCATT, says: “The failure of the HSE to prosecute companies who kill their workers is profoundly shocking. The HSE are clearly failing to follow their own rules and guidelines on prosecutions. Serious questions must be asked about why the HSE is so spectacularly failing to prosecute more companies.”

Whether or not there is a prosecution is often entirely a question of whether or not the HSE has the will to do so, which is illustrated by the striking regional variation in the likelihood of a company being prosecuted when a construction worker is killed. It is three times more likely that a conviction will occur in the South West (31 per cent) than in the East Midlands (9 per cent). While convictions rates for England and Wales are both 22 per cent, in Scotland they are only 18 per cent.

Being able to go to work without endangering your life is a basic human right. Yet ten years into a Labour government we don’t see the situation improving, we see it getting worse. As a question of deliberate policy the HSE has fewer inspectors, carrying out fewer inspections, and prosecuting less often.

When enforcement notices are issued then companies ignore them, secure in the knowledge that the labour government will not make the enforcement of workplace safety a priority. To draw attention to this, on 1st May the GMB are calling a protest outside the head office of Marks and Spencer, because M&S’s supplier, Bakkover Park Royal, has ignored no less than seven HSE enforcement notices, and several workers have been injured.

The yawning gap between the reality of New Labour, and the hopes and aspirations of its working class supporters could not be clearer.

For the first time since 1970, the Communist Party have this week had a party political broadcast, which had five slots on TV, and two on radio. It was broadcast on HTV last Sunday and on all other channels on Wednesday.

This is becasue the CP are standing in all regional list seats for the Welsh assembly. I have to say, it is quite a good broadcast. If I was in Wales I would vote for them.

This is the English language version.

You can watch it in Welsh here:

(Actually it is not exactly the same, perhaps becasue Angharad Halpin doesn’t speak Welsh?)

Call me old fashioned but I was brought up with the notion that building trades unions meant convincing workers to join them, and getting them involved. However, in the wake of the news that union membership has declined by around 100,000 despite all these wonderful New Labour ‘union friendly’ policies, Brendan Barber has come up with a startling new plan to build up union membership.

The TUC is going to ask employers to organise workers! It saves us the effort doesn’t it.

The TUC is targetting non-union companies in “a concerted attempt to convince reluctant employers that, rather than posing a threat to them, union involvement in their workplaces could actually prove to be an asset to their businesses”.

“An employers’ introduction to trades unions” tells these ill-informed bosses that union reps can settle individual disputes and save them going to time consuming and expensive Tribunals.

Union reps have “a positive benifit on the UK economy”, and save days lost though accidents.

Brendan Barber says that over 2,500 companies have realised that working with unions makes sound business sense” chosing to recognise unions. Perhaps it’s a slip of the toungue but Brendan “hopes that this marketing drive” will convince more to do the same.

Perhaps somebody should tell Brendan this is not a new idea. The EEPTU/AEU used to approach employers rather than workers to get recognition agreements. The only problem was that the workers were denied the right to chose which union represented them. A small price to pay for a ‘partnership’ which is directed at achieving success in the global market place, I suppose.

I really don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

Yesterday’s violent clashes in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, due to the government’s intention of removing a war memorial to Red Army soldiers, and the defence of the monument by Estonia’s Russian speakers, has thrown light the plight of the Russian minorities in Estonia and Latvia. (The other Baltic republic, Lithuania, does not discriminate against Russians)

Russians comprise 25.6% of the Estonian population and 29.2% of the Latvian population, but in both countries they are denied citizenship rights, and are not allowed to vote. New language laws also exclude non Estonian and Latvian speakers from certain jobs. Yet only 14% of Estonian Russians speak Estonian (a phenomenally difficult language to learn being Finno-Ugric), and only 23% of Latvian Russians speak Latvian.

Estonia is the darling country of the European Union (EU), with a successful market economy, and is supposedly a liberal democracy. The systematic discrimination against the large Russian minority is due to the state not recognising anyone as a citizen if they cannot establish descent from someone who was a citizen of Estonia in 1940. The Estonian government has also refused to cooperate with the Simon Wiesenthal centre in bringing to justice Estonian’s Nazi war criminals. In 2006 the Estonian state prosecutor, Heino Tonismagi, described the Nazi collaborator Harry Mannil, who personally murdered several civilians in Tallinn in 1941, as “one of the most outstanding Estonians” and cleared him of any criminal responsibility, on the ludicrous grounds that the Estonian authorities had no responsibility as the country was occupied at the time.

Significantly the EU has made no complaint about the denial of citizenship by Estonia and Latvia, and systematic discrimination against significant minority populations. Nor have voices been raised against Estonia’s protection of Nazi war criminals.

In 2002 a war memorial was raised in the Eastern city of Parnu celebrating the Estonians who served in the Waffen SS, describing the Nazi invasion of Estonia as “a war of liberation for the fatherland”. The worrying current here is the equation between Soviet communism and Nazism as equally bad.

Let us consider an analogy. There is a difference between a reckless driver who kills 14 people in a road accident, and a serial killer who systematically hunts down and murders 14 people.

The Soviet Union during the Stalin era did see terrible crimes, but this was in the context of a very backward country seeking to industrialise, and operating in a hostile environment where other states were threatening it and seeking to undermine it. What is more the official ideology of the USSR was to promote the concept of human liberation, and the excesses and crimes were despite not because of what the USSR stood for.

In contrast, the crimes of Nazi Germany were deliberately planned and executed by a state who intentionally sought to engulf the world in a nightmare of barbarism. One of the most economically developed and cultured countries in the world established modern industrial processes to slaughter human beings by the methods of mass production. The victims were transported by the most advanced railways, the extermination was administered using the most modern IBM computers, the gas chambers were designed by professional engineers, and human beings were turned into soap and lamp shades.

Had Nazism triumphed, this would have represented a catastrophic and cataclysmic defeat for the soul of humanity. The values of compassion, solidarity and fraternity would have been stripped away, and we would have been engulfed in a maelstrom of darkness, torture and despair.

Did those Estonians who volunteered for the Waffen SS know this? Or were they simple misguided patriots? With the advancing German Wehrmacht into the Baltic states in 1941 came the Einstatzgruppen. Special detachments who individually hunted and murdered Jews, gypsies, trade union activist and communists. Even before these Estonians joined the SS they would have seen atrocities against Estonian Jews by German troops. Did they know? Everyone knew.

Every Estonian, every Latvian and every Lithuanian who wore the uniform of the Waffen SS was a fascist murderer. During Nazi rule the Baltic states witnessed pogroms, in many case with mass popular participation, where Jews were murdered in their thousands.

Of course the history is complicated by the absorbtion of the Baltic states into the Soviet sphere of influence in 1940 following the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and subsequent repression. But we need to understand the context that the USSR did not believe after the defeat in Spain that the Western demcracies would ever stand up to fascism, and was seeking to build a military buffer zone.

And when the Red Army entered these countries the second time they did so as liberators. They stopped the mass murders. They stopped the transportation to the death camps.

It was a crime to forcibly incorporate the Baltic republics into the USSR, a deviation towards Russian chauvinism, and a mistake by Stalin.

But the current attempt by the Estonian government to equate the Russian annexation of their country with the murderous and genocidal occupation by the Nazis carries the terrible risk of normalising and excusing the fascist barbarism, and covering up the role of Estonian Nazi collaborators.

The fact that two relatively small but still important unions, the RMT and FBU are no longer affiliated to the Labour party does not mean that they have no political voice. (They are also, of course, not the only unions without political affiliation)

In many ways it is the unions who represent the real centre of ideological opposition to New Labaour. It has been significant that in recent months it has been the unions, the GMB in particular followed by the T&G, who have made the political case against private equity.

It is also not beyond the bounds of possibility that we may see more future cooperation from those unions who have moved further away from the business union model that held sway in the 1990s. The RMT, FBU, PCS, and perhaps the CWU and GMB.

But what is going on in Scotland?

On 17th April, the RMT issue a press release slamming into the Scottish National party (SNP) for dropping their opposition to rail privatisation. As RMT leader, Brother Crow argues: “It seems the SNP would rather take money and support from the likes Souter and non-executive director of Stagecoach, Sir George Mathewson rather than putting the interests of passengers first. Public money should no longer be wasted on a franchise system that is discredited, inefficient and costly and it is time to bring the failed experiment to an end”.

But on the very next day, it is announced that the Scottish region of the Fire Brigades Union is donating money to the SNP! The Tartan Army’s Justice spokesman Kenny MacAskill, who is fighting Edinburgh East & Musselburgh and is top of the Lothians list, has been given £500 by the firefighters union and West Lothian council group leader Peter Johnston has received £250.

This clearly shows that some greater coordination between the more radical unions is necessary.

Leader of the International Socialist Organisation of Zimbabwe, Munyaradzi Gwisai, a former MP for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) for the Highfield constituency in Harare, was recently interviewed on New Zealand radio. This is a 30 minute long and in depth interview that provides a brilliant socialist analysis of the current situation in Zimbabwe.

Listen to the interview here on Radio New Zealand

The interview deals with the support of the ISO for the seizures of the land by Mugabe’s government from white farmers, which was one of the major issues for which Gwisai was expelled from the MDC. The ISO correctly argues that addressing poverty in rural areas requires land distribution, and their criticism of ZANU-PF was that the land taken by Mugabe was often given to the rich supporters of ZANU-PF, rather than to the local poor, and also there was not enough support given to those poor farmers who did get land. Gwisai also brilliantly explains why there should be no compensation for the white farmers, as the land was stolen under colonialism, and the rich whites have been already more than adequately compensated by the profits they have made.

Gwisai explains that the danger of the MDC’s opposition to land seizures is that this permits the ZANU-PF to masquerade as the friends of the rural poor, and it runs the danger of allowing ZANU-PF to drive a wedge between workers in the cities and the rural poor.

The interview also makes a critical assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the recent general strike, and there is now a rolling series of general strikes every three months, which the ISO argue are fundamental to overthrowing Mugabe.

He also explains the need to not only get rid of Mugabe, but also to develop a society that addresses poverty, economic independence and opposes neo-liberalism.

Gwisai comes over as a mature socialist leader, and the ISO are clearly an impressive party, that have learned and grown from the experience in the mass movement.

Council faces compensation bill of up to £350,000 for dinner ladies on top of £560,000 previously awarded

The House of Lords has today ruled in favour of 36 school dinner ladies who claimed they were victimised by St Helens Borough Council in Merseyside after they brought equal pay claims against the local authority. The women’s fight for justice was backed throughout by their trade union the GMB.

In a damning verdict, the five law lords unanimously backed the women in their claims against the council for sex discrimination and victimisation. The result means that a tribunal will now assess the award due to the women which could be up to £10,000 each.

The women, along with 473 others, claimed equal pay with male road sweepers in 1998. The majority accepted the terms of a settlement offered by the council but the remainder took their claim to an employment tribunal and won. The tribunal awarded them £560,000 for their equal pay claim.

Just two months before their claims were to be heard a senior council official sent two letters, one to the women and the other to all the catering staff, claiming that if they continued their claims and were successful, there would be “a severe impact on all staff”. It was, Lord Neuberger of Abbotsbury said, “effectively a threat”. The letter warned of redundancies and said there was a danger that the claimants might deprive children of school dinners.

The letter sent to all catering staff resulted in, according to Lord Hope of Craighead, “some odium” for the claimants from colleagues, who feared for their jobs and their ability to pay for their children’s lunches.

This was, the Law Lords said, “a classic case of blaming the victims”.

The Lords said that the original ET had been right to conclude that the women had been victimised. They said the letter was “intimidating” and said that the indirect threat it contained was just as likely to deter an employee from enforcing her claim as a direct one.

Noting that equal pay claimants are “particularly vulnerable to repro ach”, the Lords said that “however anxious the employers may be to settle, they should not exploit that vulnerability in their attempts to do so”.

Commenting on behalf of the 36 claimants, GMB National Secretary for Public Services, Brian Strutton said: “All they did was to exercise their legal rights as low paid women workers to claim equal pay for the jobs they do for St Helens and for the community. And yet they were victimised by their employer as a result. They were made to feel they would be personally responsible for the council’s claimed financial difficulties if they were successful. It was extremely distressing to be told by their employer that their action might lead to cuts, to children going hungry at lunchtime, to colleagues losing their jobs or not receiving pay rises.

Frankly it felt like blackmail and it took a lot of courage by them to keep going. St Helens acted wrongly towards these women and now they’ll have to pay up for it. The fact that GMB took these women’s equal pay claims to employment tribunal in the firs t p lace should have told the Council that we would not stand by and let our members be victimised. We are proud to represent our women members in the pursuit of equal pay with the support of Thompsons, our lawyers, and the support of the EOC, the CRE and the DRC. We are very pleased with the outcome and hope that it serves as a warning to other employers”.

Michelle Cronin, the women’s solicitor at Thompsons said: “As Baroness Hale says in today’s judgement, women workers have suffered injustice in the labour market for centuries. There is still an unacceptable gender pay gap. The Equal Pay Act 1970 provides a mechanism by which women workers can establish that their work is “equivalent” to that of male colleagues and the right to claim equal pay. That the victims of the injustice of unequal pay are then victimised for pursuing that right is disgraceful.

Today’s judgement should make clear once and for all to employers what their response to equal pay claims should be. They can negotiate with the trade unions and their solicitors by all means to avoid litigation for all parties, but they cannot intimidate individuals and expect to get away with it.”

There has been a very interesting exchange of views in the Morning Star recently about the wisdom of Respect standing a candidate against Ken Livingstone for mayor in 2008.

On 12th April, an editorial argued: “On both domestic and international issues, the mayor of London has provided a progressive base around which socialist, environmentalist and other progressive forces have been able to unite. At the last mayoral election, the Respect candidate polled 4.67 per cent, with just 26 per cent of her second preference votes going to Mr Livingstone. In the event of a close-run contest next year, such a tally of more than three missing percentage points could prove decisive in working out whether we have a progressive mayor - warts and all - or a disastrous return to the discriminatory and divisive policies associated with Tory rule. The left cannot afford to indulge in the luxury of division. A unified popular movement, shattering the narrow confines of new Labour neoliberalism, could deliver a Livingstone victory and open the way to further successes based on unity of the left.”

The Morning Star is nominally independent of the CP, but there is no doubt that it is the party speaking here. They make the excellent point that this will be a dirty election. “Tory leader David Cameron has told the Jewish Chronicle in a recent interview, which proclaimed that “my values are Jewish values,” falsely accused the London mayor of “borderline anti-semitism.” And the Standard, which monopolises London’s evening newspaper market, carried five substantial articles attacking the mayor’s policies in a single fortnight. These included Mr Livingstone’s links with Cuba and Venezuela, including the exchange of cheap Venezuelan fuel for expertise and advice, which London Tory leader Angie Bray misrepresented as a one-sided deal to benefit one of the world’s most prosperous cities at the expense of Venezuelans struggling below the poverty line. The Standard also slated the mayor’s transport policies, including free travel for under-18s in full-time education, free travel on buses and trams for under-16s and free travel on Tube and Dockland Light Railway for under-11s in the company of an adult. Such policies are generally popular in London, but there is a clear intention by Mr Livingstone’s opponents to carry out a drip-drip incessant campaign to distract the public from the essence of his policies and to convince voters that he has character defects that will reflect badly on their city.”

Of course they also recognise that: “Although seen largely as his own man, he may still lose some votes on the basis of his party affiliation, as part of the rising tide of dissatisfaction with new Labour. And some issues - such as the envisaged contracting out of the East London Line that was forced on Transport for London by the government as a quid pro quo for bringing the North London Line under TfL control - have angered the trade unions and risk losing him some support.”

This isn’t a clear cut issue, and on Monday 23rd, Lindsay German and George Galloway replied , reminding us that the Respect candidate came fifth in the last Mayoral election, beating both the British National Party and the Greens.

They argue that: “The electoral system for London mayor actually makes it very hard for the vote to be split, since it operates on the basis of transfers - all candidates bar the top two have their second preference vote distributed to eventually determine the winner. Respect’s candidate was the only one to call clearly for transfers to Ken in 2004 and more than a quarter of those voters responded - a relatively high proportion. … Not to stand for mayor would put Respect at a disadvantage in relation to these other parties, especially with regard to the list for the assembly, where, last time, we narrowly missed the 5 per cent that would have got us elected. … Without a mayoral candidate, the party has no access to the booklet which goes into every London household, no chance of appearing at hustings, little media exposure and no television and radio broadcast. That would mean Respect standing with one hand tied behind its back.”

They also make the good point that the prospects of the Tories coming up with a serious candidate who can beat Ken are looking remote.

They stress the advantages of a left campaign: “it is important that a strong left voice is heard round many of the issues facing Londoners - the acute housing crisis, which is not being dealt with, the transport system, which is both the most expensive and one of the worst in the world, the privatisation of the East London Line and the business agenda, which is making London a worse place for many of the poor to live. “

Respect are correct to point out that Livingstone has a flawed record on delivering services to working class Londoners, and his. “popularity …. tends to be over those issues where he differs from the Labour government - his anti-racist and anti-war stances, his support for countries such as Venezuela and his commitment to equal rights. ….. Ken has a year to bolster his own support by stressing these elements of his programme and further distancing himself from Blair and Brown. Many Londoners are dissatisfied with the record of new Labour in government and will not turn out to vote Labour in the numbers that they once did. A vote for Respect by these people will help the left and can help Ken by lifting the left vote overall from people who might otherwise abstain.”

They also argue that a “good vote for Respect will also help to keep the fascist BNP off the assembly. More votes for new Labour will not keep the BNP off the assembly, because the proportional representation system favours the election of smaller parties. So, the only way of keeping the BNP off is to vote for a left-wing, smaller party.”

This last argument was also used by Respect in the North West constituency in the Euro elections in 2004, and is based upon an incorrect understanding of how the d’Hondt voting system works. There is a good discussion of the argument by Pete Cranie here . Basically, this is only true if Respect get more votes than the BNP, but a lot has changed since the 2004 mayoral elections and the BNP are much stronger now in London. What is more, a tactical vote in the London regional list to keep the BNP out would be better placed for the Greens, who are the minor party most likely to get more votes than the BNP.

But the big issue is not the BNP, but the strategic task of building opposition to neo-liberalism, and an alternative to New Labour.

The key point to grasp here is that the progressive base of the Labour Party, its working class electoral constituency, and its reservoir of support from the unions is largely intact, but the party itself has irrevocably moved away from that base towards neo-liberalism and an authoritarian agenda of social conformity.

But building an alternative to fill the space vacated by Labour, will perhaps require a long process of patient work. I was at Southern Regional Council of the GMB last Friday (which covers London south of the river), and although we decided to support Peter Hain for deputy leadership, when I talk to the other delegates it is clear that dissatisfaction with New Labour is extremely high. But this key layer of movement activists are not ready to break with Labour, rather they want Labour to be better than it is.

It is essential that any attempt to build a left alternative to Labour simultaneously works to strengthen the hand of our friends and allies who are still in the Labour Party. Most union activists will not abandon hard won ground within the Labour party until they have exhausted their options of trying to move the Labour party closer to an agenda in the interest of working people. Now in reality, the right within the party have decisively defeated the left and unions, but many trade unionists (perhaps due to the triumph of hope over experience) have not yet acknowledged that. For all his faults, Ken Livingstone is someone who socialists can build a progressive campaign around, both inside and outside the Labour party, and inside and outside the unions, which consolidates the progressive base for future battles.

Of course, part of this argument is that the last four years have not seen Respect develop towards being a party that established labour movement activists would join or support. It is widely seen as undemocratic and an SWP front, and Galloway’s standing is in tatters after Big Brother, his low profile in the constituency and general reputation for being self serving.

Lindsay German is a good mayoral candidate for the left, a talented woman, a dedicated activist and a good speaker. But the interests of the left, including the long term interests of building a left alternative to labour, are not best served by a Respect mayoral challenge next year. Paradoxically, the best way in the long run to build an electoral challenge to Labour may be to back labour for mayor.

One aspect of writing a blog is that there are lots of issues which we don’t get to cover, for reasons of time, and also because perhaps we don’t have anything unique or particularly insightful to say.

That doesn’t mean they aren’t important.

Obviously the French election is extremely significant, including the remarkable 1.8 million votes for the LCR. Olivier Besancenot’s declaration
is published at Liam’s blog.

The excellent progress towards a united socialist party in Venezuela is analysed very clearly by Korakious over at the Squirrel’s lair.

Finally, it is good news that Fidel is seemingly back to good health and making public engagements again. His credentials on green issues are probably better than any other world leader, so his Charlie Pottin’s blog .