BRITISH JOBS FOR BRITISH WORKERS ?
The Lindsey Oil Refinery dispute has led to very differing responses by different parts of the left. It is therefore worth looking at the roots of the controversy.
According to Socialist Worker:
“These strikes are based around the wrong slogans and target the wrong people It’s right to fight for jobs and against wage-cutting. It’s right to take on the poisonous system of sub-contracting that is used to make workers compete against each other.
It’s right to demand that everyone is paid the proper rate for the job and that there’s no undercutting of national agreements. And we need militant action, including unofficial action, to win these demands.
But these strikes are not doing that – whatever some of those involved believe.
The slogan accepted by many of the strikers is “British jobs for British workers”. That comes directly from Gordon Brown’s speech to the Labour Party conference in 2007. And it has been encouraged by many in the higher levels of the Unite union. Derek Simpson and others at the top of Unite have done nothing to encourage resistance to job losses, or a fightback against repossessions or against the anti-union laws. Instead they go along with a campaign that can divide workers.
Socialist Worker concludes:
Right wing ideas gain a hold among workers when they see their lives being torn apart and the unions offer no lead. No doubt some in Unite think it’s easier to get a fight around a slogan like “British jobs for British workers” which sets people apart than one that brings people together like “Workers should not pay for the bosses’ crisis”. That’s a doomed strategy.
Instead of turning against workers from abroad, everyone should be organising in a united way to pressure the union leaders to fight. And if the union leaders won’t fight then workers will have to organise the resistance themselves.
Let’s demand an end to the system where foreign workers are housed separately from the British workforce. Let’s bring workers from abroad into the unions and link arms against the bosses and their system.
Socialist Worker is obviously disappointed with the actually existing working class, and is prepared to wait for a nicer, more middle class one to come along, before getting involved with its struggles.
Factually, this dispute is not against working alongside foreign workers, but against one contractor, Shaws, laying off hundreds of British workers (by which we should understand workers domiciled in Britain, whatever their original nationality – there are certainly plenty of, or example, Irish in construction), while the prime contractor has awarded the work to an Italian firm, IREM, who have said that it will not employ British workers. The nationwide solidarity can be explained because the contracting community moves around different sites working in any one place typically for a few months, so this dispute directly affects all workers in the industry, who will be lining up their next job - and it is vital for all of them to know they will not be excluded from applying for jobs by discriminatory employment practices from sub-contracters who will not employ British labour.
The migrant workers will live on a floating hotel in Grimsby harbour. This means two things, firstly that even if nominally paid the same hourly rate, they will be incentivised to work much longer hours; and the company will charge them for food and lodgings at a profit, thus the real rate of pay will be below current national rates. What is more, segregating this gang of workers means that they will be inherently outside existing union organisation and collective bargaining.
Lindsey Oil Refinery is not an isolated incident, but is part of a pattern of employers seeking to worsen pay and conditions, and exclude indigenous workers from major contracts, for example at Staythope Power Station. There was an emergency meeting of the national construction shop stewards forum in London on the 8th January, and the current dispute flows from grassroots networking coming out of that meeting. This followed a series of protests in November and December. As such the current dispute is not quite how it is being portrayed in the right-wing press, a spontaneous outbreak of anger at foreign workers; it has in fact been led all along by militants in the unions, and has always been directed against the employers. It is good, effective trade unionism
In this context the content of the slogan raised by some strikers of “British Jobs for British Workers” actually translates to “jobs in Britain should be open to workers who live in Britain”. What is more, these workers are not stupid, they know that Gordon Brown said “British Jobs for British Workers” at Labour Conference, and they are throwing it back at him.
The slogan has since been revised to stress “local jobs”. This is because the workforce correctly see the dangers of the “British Jobs for British Workers” slogan being given a racist or politically nationalist overtone. And the issue is seeking to prevent current pay and conditions, and trade union organisation eroded by bosses bussing in workers from somewhere else to undermine the current workforce.
Defending British jobs has long been a mainstay argument of the labour movement. During the 1970s in the car industry, many militants used to argue for buying British cars. The miners strike in 1984/1985 was to maintain the British coal industry against the threat of imported coal. I am sure there may have been some abstract arguments from the outer fringe that miners in Poland had as much right to mine coal and sell it to Britain as miners in Yorkshire, and therefore the strike was nationalist.
The more recent campaign by the Unite union to keep Cadbury’s production in Keynsham, and prevent the factory being moved to Poland, was about keeping manufacturing jobs in Britain. The campaign against the closure of Longbridge in Birmingham, for most trade unionists, was about defending British jobs.
We need to understand the nature of trade unionism. Trade unions are collective associations of workers within the actually existing economic and social conditions to improve the bargaining power of labour relative to the bosses. Trade unions defend their own members in preference to non-members; and prioritise the interests of those already in work. What is more, to be effective they need to maintain unity, and they need to organise the actually existing workforce, including the full breadth of political opinion, only excluding explicit fascists and those guilty of misconduct against the interests of the union. Socialists are a minority current within the trade unions, even those trade unions with a left leadership, at local, regional or national level.
In its simplest mainfestation, trade unionism organises together those workers in a particular workplace who work together and have a direct relationship with each other, and personal bonds of loyalty. That is partly why sectionalism is inherent in trade unionism. But in very few cases is the economic bargaining power of a small group of workers sufficient to shift the bosses, and it is harder for a small section to understand whether or not their own perception is in the overall interests of the workforce. Combination and amalgamation into bigger associations allows economies of scale, employing specialists, etc.
Therefore effective trade unionism also needs to build upon the collective interest of workers wider than those in their own immediate circle of face to face acquaintance. Insofar as all workers at a particular company, or within a particular industry share a common interest this is still easy to explain – the trade unions within a particular industry can mediate competition to prevent companies playing their workforces off against each other in a race to the bottom on pay and conditions. (However, if there is overcapacity then sectionalism is inevitable, as it is in the interests of each workforce that they should be the ones to keep their job, and the axe should fall elsewhere)
Trade unionism therefore relies upon promoting the idea of an “imagined community” that individual trade union members are conscious of being part of, that includes other people who you will never meet, or even necessarily be aware of - which is why trade unions “build their brand” with badges, posters, placards, banners and T-shirts. Socialists within the trade union movement naturally stress the community of interest between all wage labourers. While workers do share a common economic interest, this community is not necessarily culturally and socially reinforced though experience. To convince someone that they are part of a community with other working class people in Bangladesh or Greece is an intellectual achievement, that may be reinforced though successful trade union solidarity, but it is not a shared community of experience. Even traditions of working class solidarity and shared experience between trade unionists in Britain are not part of the day-to-day life for most workers.
National consciousness is however an “imagined community” that is actively and strongly reinforced on a daily basis through shared culture, language and history, as well as ideologically promoted. Most working class people, including trade unionists, simply DO think of themselves as having a national identity, (or more than one national identity), that makes sense of their experience and their self-perception. This is especially true of British national identity that is both civic rather than racial, and includes a strong overlap with class identity (though this is more nuanced towards belonging to communities of solidarity in the Scottish-British self identity, and more nuanced towards resentment of “them and us” in English-Britishness.)
The mistake that some socialists make is seeing national consciousness as competing with or excluding class consciousness. In fact both forms of self-identity happily coexist, and can ideologically reinforce one another in circumstances where traditions of class struggle and solidarity are internalised as part of a collective aspect of national identity, competing with other interpretations of nationality.
There is a difference between national consciousness, and nationalism. Given the existing ideological and political consciousness of trade union members it is not at all surprising that some of them express the community of solidarity that they see themselves as part of in terms of nationality- “defending British jobs”. But let us be clear, the fundamental dispute is against the bosses, and the existing workforce using collective working class power to defend their employment, pay and conditions. The underlying collective that these workers are part of is their trade union; and their opponent is the bosses.
This is entirely different both ideologically and practically from political nationalism, that does not simply reflect national consciousness (sense of belonging to a nation), but also seeks to promote that nation at the expense of others, and stresses the common interests of all people of that nation, and therefore ideologically promotes class collaboration. Examples of politically nationalist strikes would be the Imperial Typewriters dispute, where racist trade unionists saw black workers as the enemy; or the strike on Bristol buses some forty years ago to keep the workforce all white.
Socialists in the trade unions have an important responsibility to distinguish between actual racism that undermines the possibility of collective organisation and solidarity between workers (whites only), which needs to be condemned; and the more subtle expressions of collective interest voiced in terms of national consciousness (defend British jobs), which needs to be more gently and patiently addressed. Primarily, the strength of trade unions lies in holding the organisation together, and winning the argument for the primacy of working class politics based upon collective self interest – not by politically correct moralism.
So what could the current strike achieve? It is important to note that the strikers are not campaigning against migrant workers, but against the specific practice of British workers (workers domiciled in Britain) being excluded from applying for jobs by contractors working in Britain. A victory for the strikers would be a victory for the working class in breaking the EU regulations that allow this, and would therefore also benefit other workers in the EU, including those from Italy, in impeding bosses from playing different nationalities against each other in a race to the bottom.
The strike actually involves the two unions that have the best record and experience of organising migrant workers – Unite and GMB. Indeed the migrant worker strategy by Southern Region of GMB is seen as a model of best trade union practice across Europe.
The success, for example, of GMB in organising migrant workers in some areas (particularly in Southern region, and specifically Southampton, Plymouth, and Wiltshire/Swindon) has been based upon the trade union principle that migrant workers need to be organised in order to prevent bosses using them to play against the existing workforce. It has proved in the interests of the indigenous workers to organise migrants, to ensure they are taken on at no worse pay and conditions, and it has been in the interests of the migrants not to be super-exploited. GMB has then gone out of its way to overcome structural and institutional impediments to allow migrant workers to successfullly, fully participate in the union.
The organisation of migrant workers has therefore been not only correct in principle, but has also needed to convince existing activists and members that it is in their own hard-nosed best interest. Organising unity between workers of different nationalities is not do-gooder liberalism, but based upon collective self interest among working people.
So what do we make of the wider political implications of the construction strikes, and the “British Jobs for British Workers” slogan.
There have been attempts by both left and right to play the race card. Obviously the BNP have tried to intervene, but have actually been given short shrift by the strikers themselves. The AWL tried to organise a picket of Unite headquarters and invited migrant workers to attend it, trying to pit migrant workers against white workers for their own interests.
The strikers slogan obviously did strike a chord - it was catchy, and ironic against Gordon Brown; but could also be expropriated by racists. To a certain extent the reaction to the slogan was opportunist from right-wing populist newspapers who sought to misrepresent the dispute as being anti-foreigner, and to a certain extent there was a prurient frisson from middle class trendies who loved having their anti-working class prejudices confirmed by that interpretation. But in terms of the strikers themselves and the wider labour movement, the class aspect has become better understood as the dispute goes on. The Morning Star, and left MPs like Jon Cruddas have stood by the trade unionists, and fought their corner. And the Socialist Party have obviously played an absolutely brilliant role, that should be reflected in improved prestige for that organisation, and respect for its judgments.
It is also worth drawing attention to the quote by Derek Simpson, General Secretary of Amicus/Unite, that is spot on:
“The unofficial action taking place across the UK is not about race or immigration, its about class. Its about employers who exploit workers regardless of their nationality by undercutting their hard won pay and conditions. These are rights that trade unionists have fought long and hard for while ultra right wing groups did nothing but stoke hatred in our towns and cities.
Trade unionists stand against everything the BNP stand for. We have warned union members on construction sites to remain vigilant when it comes to ultra right wing leaches. These right wing groups do not support trade unions. In fact, they’re probably taking down the names of trade unionists involved in the unofficial action and adding them to their list of left wing enemies.”
The more unfortunate implications of the slogan have also found a resonance, as illustrated – for example - by the relatively large numbers signing up to BNP facebook groups opposing all migrant workers. But the truth is, sentiment against migrant workers exists independent of the strike. The BNP are actively trying to promote racial tension, and the recession is making many workers - who do not consider themselves racist – to question EU policies about the migration of labour.
The left therefore have a difficult but achievable task of continuing to argue that immigrants are welcome and contribute greatly to our economy, culture and society; while at the same time we campaign to resolve the class-based issues (like shortage of housing) that can be exploited by anti-immigrant forces. What we mustn’t do is lecture working class people that they are racist just because they express entirely reasonable concerns about their job security, housing shortages, or other social resources being overloaded – instead we need to patiently redirect that concern towards fighting for more resources for everyone.
The current wave of strikes in construction are about removing an injustice where bosses are trying to play different nationalities against each other. The strikers are redirecting an anger that could have gone against foreigners and focusing it instead upon the bosses and their discriminatory practices.
‘the content of the slogan raised by some strikers of “British Jobs for British Workers” actually translates to “jobs in Britain should be open to workers who live in Britain”’
Utter utter utter bollocks of the first order. Bollocks squared. Bollocks cubed. Bollocks to the power of bollocks. Totally and completely.
Comment by swp member — 3 February, 2009 @ 2:22 pm
I don’t think we should read too much into Facebook groups, even if large numbers of people are joining them.
A lot of leftists seem to have an irrational fear of the omnipotent power of the BNP, as if they’ll just turn up at picket lines or set up a Facebook group and immediately the striking workers will embrace them.
The fact is that if the BNP were picking up a lot of support from this strike then we’d surely be seeing BNP placards on the demos, seeing their activists encouraged to take leadership positions or at least here some reports of BNP members actually on strike rather than seeing videos of far right activists being told to leave protests.
Comment by Duncan Money — 3 February, 2009 @ 2:31 pm
Very good post Andy.
I agree totally about the Socialist Party. Their role has been crucial and correct.
Comment by Ian — 3 February, 2009 @ 2:33 pm
swp member - I think you’re going to find events increasingly at odds with the original SWP statement. It’s badly written and has misdirected people. The biggest problem is that it was a statement. You make a statement at or about somebody or something. It was not a leaflet or a report. I hear from some SWP trade unionists that they are not at all happy with the shrill tone adopted by some of the young sectarians who’ve been unleashed over this.
Already events are not panning out as the original SWP analysis would suggest. This should have generalised massively to the right by now, if that were right. It has not. I imagine there will be some modification of the line in Socialist Worker this evening. Though the attempt to defend the initial response is likely to lead to lots of confused prose as well.
One thing’s for sure: the SWP statement over this strike is wholly out of line with its criticisms of left propagandists over issues such at the FTAA and the Bolkestein directive. Or was that back in the era of anti-capitalism, and now we are in a period which requires bitter clashes between the pure revolutionaries and the reformists, with their nationalist illusions?
Comment by Nas — 3 February, 2009 @ 2:48 pm
I think it’s terrible the way the working class keep letting their vanguard down like this. Won’t someone think of the poor sociology lecturers in crap History man leather jackets and their zombie army of student groupies?
Comment by Jim — 3 February, 2009 @ 2:51 pm
Great article I think the SWP’s line is totaly ultra left.
Comment by Green Socialist — 3 February, 2009 @ 2:54 pm
“Socialist Worker is obviously disappointed with the actually existing working class, and is prepared to wait for a nicer, more middle class one to come along, before getting involved with its struggles.”
Of course, it’s middle class people who are internationalists, Andy. What a pathetic, paternalistic attitude you have to the ability of workers to be won away from reactionary positions.
“In this context the content of the slogan raised by some strikers of “British Jobs for British Workers” actually translates to “jobs in Britain should be open to workers who live in Britain”.”
Yes, this is what it means to Andy, which chimes perfectly with his tangled and ludicrous nationalist perspective. For the SP, it is just one in the eye for Gordon Brown. Whatever is necessary for following the line of least resistance, eh? Christ, even Cruddas has said that this isn’t the right slogan to use!
One doesn’t have to consider workers/strikers racist to use the BJ4BW slogan. In times of recession, it’s understandable that some people might say “We need to look after our own first”. Socialists need to be exposing the limits and dangers of that slogan whilst encouraging action against Brown and the bosses.
Comment by Inigo Montoya — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:01 pm
#1 I see the SWP are responding in their usual thoughtful, and fraternal manner……
Comment by Henry — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:02 pm
Nas- the SWP has produced a leaflet now, the statement was in response to the nature of the strikes and the leaflet is for taking to the pickets. N
Comment by anonymous — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:05 pm
I thin the paragraph from Andy on Trade Unionism neatly sums up why this struggle should be supported:
“Trade unions are collective associations of workers within the actually existing economic and social conditions to improve the bargaining power of labour relative to the bosses. Trade unions defend their own members in preference to non-members; and prioritise the interests of those already in work. What is more, to be effective they need to maintain unity, and they need to organise the actually existing workforce, including the full breadth of political opinion, only excluding explicit fascists and those guilty of misconduct against the interests of the union.”
But it has several implications: firstly, to attempt to get the Italian and Portuguese workers on their side, which may not be impossible. It is quite strange that in this dispute there has been very little information about these workers’ terms and conditions, whether they are unionised etc. etc. (though it is very likely they are being super-exploited by, for example, the company clawing back money for accommodation and subsistence).
The second is more controversial: what the hell is the point of building an oil refinery in this day and age (of peak oil and climate change)? What work people actually DO is an issue that trade unions will need to address when they have achieved a few victories and strengthened their organisation.
As an aside, I don’t agree there is a “housing shortage”. Rather, there is huge inequality in housing provision. People should not be allowed to own more than one home, empty homes should be seized by local authorities, and more rational use should be made of under-occupied homes.
Comment by PhilW — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:10 pm
The stance of the unions unfortunately and regretably; is faced with a major economic crisis that threatens the survival of the capitalist profit system itself, their response is to adopt the noxious policy of economic nationalism and anti-migrant propaganda, whilst would-be embracing the government and the employers as the allies of “British workers”.
The strikes notably do not challenge the rights of bosses to exploit workers universally , but rather demand that they exploit their own local or national workforce instead!
Comment by Jim — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:12 pm
brilliant article i was horrified by the response of the socialist workers party, this strike is simply standing up the the fat cat as the workrs themselves have reiterated that there problem is with the comopany and not the foreign workers, great article
Comment by Martin Potter — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:13 pm
sorry I didn’t mean to end there: no one said it would deffinently generalise massively tot he right, the point is that the slogans taken up by many (not all, the situation is more complicated than that, but many) of the workers walking out open the door for racists as they direct the focus of the strike in a nationalistic way that does not translate to ‘jobs in britain should be open to those who work in britain’ but to ‘British workers are more important than foreign workers; we shouldn’t pay for the economic crisis, they should’ What the slogans should have been were ‘ more jobs for all workers’- thus pinning the direction of the strike against the bosses and the govt on a class basis. Simpson wouldn’t want to do this as he doesn’t want to take on the govt. Socialists should argue differently, it is not ‘ultra-left’ to do this, it is saying that the working class is going to get fucked in this economic crisis if our response is one that divides our class, helps the confidence of the far right and doesn’t direct the solution against the interests of the class enemy.
Comment by anonymous — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:14 pm
So, when there’s fight in Dagenham over council housing and the demand is put up that the ‘local housing should go to local people’, but this isn’t at all racist or xenophobic, but a good working class demand (look, some socialists are actively supporting the demand by demanding that local working class tenants groups should sit on the committee that allocates the council housing (!)…what then?
Or, to put it another way, what if those who supported this strike (but, let’s imagine, oppose the slogan ‘local houses for local people’) could be told ‘well you supported ‘local jobs for local workers’ in the Total dispute, what’s the difference?’
Comment by Michael Rosen — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:14 pm
Michael
The question in Dagenham and Barking over housing is very specific, and Jon Cruddas has been excellent in explaining a left response that could undermine BNP.
The government doesn’t track the impact of population migration; and the most impoverished communities therefore do often find themselves with greater numbers of people than their housing and social infrastructure can cope with. What is most remarkable is that - notwithstandng the votes for BNP - that there is a great deal of solidarity and tolerance with the diversity of the migrant populations.
What is needed is government as well as local government action to ensure that resources follow the need - so an area with population growth due to immigration should automatically get a proportionate increase in resources to cope with it.
So ensuring that increased immigration doesn’t disadvantage the indigenous population shoudl be a socialist demand, along with demanding equality for all- migrant and indigenous.
Comment by Andy Newman — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:23 pm
‘indigenous population’ ????!!!! who or what is this???!!!!
Comment by Michael Rosen — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:25 pm
SUPPORT THE STRIKE - BUT REJECT THE BJ4BW SLOGAN!
After talking with the strikers - its clear most of the leading ones at least do not want this to be a racist or xenophobic strike.
And of course the strike has legitimate T.U demands over fair hiring practices. Another demand could be around the addition of ’social justice’ clauses in tendering practices - which means cheapest tender isn’t seen as best - the social impact on communities must also be considered.
So far so good.
BJ4BW beyond organised labour….
BUT there is now a huge popular movement well beyond construction industry trades unionists on big plant sites. This is seen on ‘facebook’ etc amongst thousands of diffuse, new, non-unionised younger people who are being hit by the recession with little experience.
And this popular movement often interprets BJ4BW in the ‘wrong way’. For many of these it means something like: “sack the Poles and send them home to stop unemployment in Britain”.
Even if people don’t want to go that far - it means that for a large percentage of people worried about job-losses - they do not blame the economic system - they blame migrant labour. That is dangerous.
Its no use just looking at the progressive content amongst the strikers - its the broader impact that is most worrying.
The BJ4BW slogan rose to the top by accident - first a few posters at the Staythorpe dispute picket lines in December. Then put on the Bearfacts website and then reproduced in haste for the outbreak of picketing at Lindsey. The posters then get on TV, fit the the media’s agenda and capture the publics imagination, and spread like wildfire.
It was an ‘accident’ waiting to happen - years of defeats for the Trades Unions, combined with massive daily media propaganda against asylum seekers, British Muslims or East European migrant labour - add all this at the start of a massive economic depression.
But it is a problem we cannot ignore. The SWP got it wrong about the dispute.
But Andy here is ignoring its wider ‘popular’ impact.
We need a massive, wider, public campaign on the streets and outside workplaces hit by redundancies:- ‘Fight for the right to work’. ‘Make the greedy fat cat bosses pay’.'Workers of all countries unite’.
Comment by Barry Kade — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:25 pm
“Socialist Worker is obviously disappointed with the actually existing working class, and is prepared to wait for a nicer, more middle class one to come along, before getting involved with its struggles.”
But is that strictly true? I sympathised with that statement from the SWP as many things worry me about this strike and what it could turn into. It is important to politically challenge, confront and counter racism.
“Factually, this dispute is not against working alongside foreign workers, but against one contractor, Shaws, laying off hundreds of British workers”
Factually that may be the case but with a slogan like British Jobs for British Workers overshadows the demands. And if the slogan has been changed to ‘Fair Access’…. why did it take so long?
Why the hell are people on those picket lines waving Union Jacks….? That’s a worry in itself.
Comment by Louise — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:27 pm
“So ensuring that increased immigration doesn’t disadvantage the indigenous population shoudl be a socialist demand, along with demanding equality for all- migrant and indigenous.”
Andy, what do you mean by indigenous population….?? Who the hell is indigenous…..sorry but the mind boggles on that score.
Comment by Louise — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:30 pm
Posted this on another thread but this one seems more relevant:
“This small episode demonstrates how important it is to be careful about making sweeping tactical judgements from afar. In such circumstances too little is known about the complex factors involved to justify forming a categorical opinion”
This comment by Farrell Dobbs, responding to criticism of a tactic used to build the Teamsters union in Minneapolis in the run up to the titanic Teamster strike of 1934, keeps going through my head when I read criticism of these mass walk by the SWP, WP, AWL and their hangers-on.
The idea that this strike is based on racism and xenophobia or even that its after-effects will be such and therefore the left must place demands on the striking workers before the left can give their full support to it is foolish in the extreme.
Quite frankly the SWP CC and their ilk have bought the propaganda from the bosses media hook, line and sinker and come out with sweeping statements (which are then parroted by their willing drones and co-thinkers like Michael Rosen) without listening to what the workers in struggle themselves are saying.
Let us briefly recall the context that has thrown up this struggle.
The past 25 years or so has seen the intensification of exploitation of the working class through casualisation, attacks on union rights and the playing off workers against each other internationally, either directly by shipping in migrant labour or indirectly through out sourcing etc. Construction workers, more than most industries, have borne the brunt of this.
At the same time there has been a throwing back of class consciousness and a growth of the far right.
At this crucial moment when there is a beginning of an upturn class struggle is it surprising that there will be all sorts of different moods and ideas swirling about? This is the beginnings of a mass movement after all. There is a living battle of ideas and tactics being played out right now up and down the country between the forces of class consciousness and nationalism. The question for socialists is how do we intervene in this process and how do we point the way towards workers unity?
Do we adopt a high handed and haughty attitude towards workers (who are, to repeat, defying the anti trade union laws and risking fines or prison) warning them they are “playing with fire” (Socialist Worker) or saying “This is a racist strike” (Lenin’s Tomb). Condemning this strike as racist cannot be the starting point for socialists. Instead we must show full support for the strike while pointing the way towards workers unity as the most effective way to win the strike. This will also undermine the influence of the BNP. Not by going head on against so-called racist strikers but entering into a dialogue with these workers and actually LISTENING to their ideas, hopes and fears about gobalisation, casualisation and so on.
In regards to what the SWP are putting forward like saying foreign workers are not a problem, well this is exactly what a mass meeting in Lyndie has said. Keith Gibson has explicitly said: “Any lads coming into this industry, whether they be Spanish, French, Italian or Irish, we want access to them on a trade union basis,”
Michael Rosen displays a purely doctrinaire approach when he says; “So, if we’re fighting sub-contract conditions (and not fighting workers who work on subcontracts) then the only way to do it, is unionise the subcontract workers and raise WITH THEM, the demands for full workers’ rights.” And how is the union going to do that if the union has been undermined by allowing non-union labour to undermine union agreements? Are workers to wait until the union has been reduced to a rump on the sites or do the workers strike now despite the complicating factor of xenophobic or nationalist moods that might exist among some sectors of the workforce?
The SWP has tried to weasel out of full support for the strike appealing to Gramsci saying the cultural effect or the “common sense” view of this will be that of a racist strike. Firstly I would say socialists should be wary of swallowing media manipulation that is bigging up the far right threat in order to undermine public support for the strike.
For example I saw one striker in Lyndsie on ITN saying “These Portuguese and Eye-ties, we can’t work with them” which would seem to be a very intolerant comment. But then on Newsnight that same workers full quote was: “These Portuguese and Eye-ties, we can’t work with them because the company busses them in separately”. Ok eye-ties is not exactly the best word to use but the guy is clearly making the point that the bosses deliberately segregate workers but instead his statement is manipulated to make him appear some kind of far right nutter.
The SP has demonstrated in practice that these strikers can be won to left wing, internationalist demands. However the threat of the BNP latching on to labour movement disputes is not going to go away and simply shouting “fascists!” at them isn’t going to get rid of them. What this episode demonstrates, along with New Labour’s craven capitulation to big business, is that the labour movement desperately needs a party of it’s own to act as a pole of attraction to militant workers moving into struggle for the first time. This is the only way to contribute any negative “cultural” side effects that may result from strikes like this in the future.
Comment by Neil — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:31 pm
I’m worried that Andy Newman has started talking about the ‘indigenous population’. jeeeez, it’s getting shitty.
Comment by Michael Rosen — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:32 pm
Indigenous population?
I did find a tribe of Mapuche Indians wondering in a bit of Rainforest up near Pendle hill in the Lancashire Fells last weekend.
Comment by Barry Kade — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:33 pm
“while the prime contractor has awarded the work to an Italian firm, IREM, who have said that it will not employ British workers.”
Is that true?
The Guardian says it isn’t:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/feb/03/lindsey-refinery-dispute-italian-workers
The Times can’t find evidence of it either:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/david_aaronovitch/article5645229.ece
Comment by David T — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:33 pm
“‘indigenous population’ ????!!!! who or what is this???!!!!”
Indeed!
You know that Ms Miaow will be VERY unhappy with you now, Andy!!!
Comment by David T — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:33 pm
Louise - see me at 16. Quite!
Comment by Michael Rosen — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:34 pm
The term “indigenous population” is the preferred term for those people already domiciled in Britain (whatever race, creed or colour they may be) compared to migrants who are newly arriving, or recently arrived. Sometimes in Voluntary Sector advice organisation “host community” is used instead of indigenous - but in Trade Unions working with migrant workers the preferred term for non-migrant is indiginous workers.
The reason that “indiginous worker” is a preferred term is that it makes no assumption that people are white, christian, or whatever.
Comment by Andy Newman — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:36 pm
“host community” - even worse!!! It makes migrants sound like a disease!!
Comment by David T — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:37 pm
Can we have a discussion on the points raised in the article rather than nit picking about terminology. Talk about the last refuge of the scoundrel!
Comment by Neil — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:38 pm
Actually, there is a several hundred year old population descended from Maori’s in the rural North Lancashire / West Yorkshire borderlands near Bentham!
I kid you not! There was a shortage of women in the area during 17th Century - so they imported - from the slave trade - a bunch of Maori women to make into village wives! You can still see Maori features in the remotest farming Village! Its swear this is true! That’s indigenous for you!
Comment by Barry Kade — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:39 pm
#27
“host community” is the euphimism that some BME organisations use to describe white people.
Comment by Andy Newman — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:39 pm
Obviously, this is only a bit of fun, but…
BNP website and indigenous population - 461 hits
BNP website and host community - 114 hits
Comment by David T — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:42 pm
So the BJ4BW slogan isnt realy being used by the reactionary strikers in a racist way- but as an ironic attack on Gordon Brown from the left for saying BJ4BW in the first place? That they dont want the italian`s jobs after all? The racist placards and union jacks are all ironic? That a national racist strike has been turned into a progressive one by the SP intervention on one site?
Come on, do you really believe this?
To me, the brain cells of the left simply cant accept the fact that this is reactionary strike, as it doesnt match with theory, and therefore does not compute. Those on the left who support this strike need to wise up to the fact this strike is a symptom of a xenophobic, reactionary mood in society, also evidenced by most of the BNP election results since Boston Fenside, election results the left are failing to report in the left press any more, I assume so as to not frighten their own members.
Comment by JimPage — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:45 pm
SWP website and indigenous population” - 17 hits - but they’re talking about Bolivians voting for Morales, Palestinians, Native Americans etc.
SWP website and host community - 0 hits
Comment by David T — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:45 pm
#21
Michael. The term “indigenous workers” is the preferred terminology used in those British trade unionss with the best record of organising migrant workers, becausue it allows the distinction between migrant and non-migrant workers to be made without using terminology that carries with it implications about colour, race, nationality or religion.
I am not sure what point you are trying to make by rubbishing the trade unions actually organising migrant workers alongside British workers.
Comment by Andy Newman — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:45 pm
Ironically, the slogan British jobs for British workers is probably finding an echo in workers throughout the European construction industry and this could well lead to the formation of a Europe-wide union of construction workers that can enforce local union conditions on contractors everywhere.
Of course, no union would give jobs to outside workers as long as its own local members were languishing on the dole but on the other hand if there was a genuine shortage of labour for big projects no union would turn individual workers (not those organised by gang masters) from other countries away. In fact, they would welcome them under those circumstances.
The way the bosses have it now, they are just importing and exporting unemployment at the expense of all workers.
Comment by David Ellis — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:48 pm
On the Unite website, there is one reference to “indigenous population“:
But it seems to be about coca leaf cultivation in Bolivia
Comment by David T — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:51 pm
Indegenous is not a useful term - even in South America, where it means the oppressed pre-Columbian peoples.
‘Indigenous’ neglects the tremendous history of mixing, migration and movement that lies behind even the most remote and ‘pure’ South American forest people.
Indigenous on this Island? You gotta be joking! Tens of thousands of years of westward migration make up our population.
Saw a discussion on the facebook BJ4BW groups - about whether to kick out all workers who came here since world war 2 - or just those from the past ten years.
Playing with fire indeed.
I might go on a real indigenous trip and start driving out the Celts who ‘invaded’ 1000 bc!
Comment by Barry Kade — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:51 pm
#18 “Why the hell are people on those picket lines waving Union Jacks….? That’s a worry in itself.”
It is a peculiar conceit of the left that whenever they see a Union jack or Cross of St George, they assume the person waving it is a hardened racist.
It simply is a fact that national identity, and even patriotism, can and does co-exist inside the heads of many workers with class-cosnciousness and even internationalism.
Settinig the bar so high that only those few who reject all idea of having a natioonal self-identity are seen as anti-racist or internationalist condemns the left to the utter fringes.
Comment by Andy Newman — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:52 pm
Oh fuckoff Andy. Consider the sector I work in: education. My daughter’s best friend has a German dad and a Lancashire mother in a school in Hackney. In the class are kids from the Congo, Nigeria, Ghana. In the school there are children who’s parents are from Holland, Cuba, any of the Caribbean islands. Plenty of children with parents from different places. Very few of the parents were born in Hackney whether no matter what colour they are. Those that are born in eg London - plenty of them have had children with people who aren’t from London, plenty with people who aren’t from England or the UK.
What the fuck is ‘indigenous’ or ‘host’ about any of this? And if we were talking about education provision along the lines you’re suggesting re housing or re these jobs, what would a term like this do for the argument. That’s why, Neil, it isn’t some pissy little argument about terminology but is in fact a crucial matter of mindset about how we view jobs and/or social provision.
Is my daughter’s best friend ‘indigenous’? Am I? How many children in her class are indigenous by your count? About four, I think. My father was born in the USA and was a US citizen? My great-grandparents were all foreigners. I’m suddenly not feeling very indigenous at all.
Comment by Michael Rosen — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:53 pm
#17 “Its no use just looking at the progressive content amongst the strikers - its the broader impact that is most worrying.”
Yes, I think that this is an important point now. I have just listened to a BBC World Service commentary about the strikes (it did not contain any interviews) that was miles better than yesterday’s cringe-making “Newsnight”. But most workers do not listen to the World Service and they will mainly be getting their information from the tabloids, or the main BBC/ITV channels, and they have overwhelmingly been describing these strikes as “anti-foreigner” as far as I can tell.
Barry raises the issue of a wider public campaign to challenge this chauvinist interpretation of the current strikes, and to promote a concerted fightback against the impact of the recession. What is the prospect of joint activity between the various left groups on this score at the moment? Or is it the case that everybody is just going to do their own thing because the recent history of the left has just been so discordant in the last few years?
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:53 pm
And Madam Miaow? Is she not indigenous?
Is she a mere guest in our “host” society?
Do you regard her as some sort of “hostess”?
Comment by David T — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:55 pm
Well I can assure you that the term indigenous is used by progressives in my own union, nothwithstanding David T’s failure to find it on web-sites.
I wait to be enlightened what term we should be using instead for non-migrant workers.
After all, my union have only been organising migrant workers, whereas what we shoudl have been doing is having a London trendy-leftie chat over wine and cheese about getting the lingusitic code correct first, so that we didn’t offend the BBC Radio Four presenters
Comment by Andy Newman — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:58 pm
View from the other side
Got to say folks, this strike action is going down a storm on this side of the channel.
Comedians are even joking about it, “Have you heard the one about a the British worker employed by a French company complaining about the Italians?”
The mainstream press is gloating.
http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2009/02/03/gordon-brown-pris-au-piege-par-les-greves-contre-l-emploi-de-travailleurs-etrangers_1150037_3214.html#ens_id=1117337?xtref=
L’huma was more sympathetic-
http://www.humanite.fr/2009-02-02_International_Du-Bolkestein-version-british
What ever the rights and wrongs the unions need to get their communication strategy sorted out as the strike is being portrayed as a protectionist knee jerk reaction by a racist working class on both French and Spanish TV. Can’t speak Italian so don’t know what is being said over there, but can imagine.
Comment by Pete Shield — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:58 pm
Andy, what do you mean by indigenous population
Considering the wording Andy used was
“ensuring that increased immigration doesn’t disadvantage the indigenous population shoudl be a socialist demand”
I think it’s fairly obvious that he meant “whoever was there before the increase in immigration”. What would your preferred, non-shitty, wording be?
Comment by Phil — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:58 pm
Andy
I really think you’ve got this one wrong - big time. I can understand why comrades are desperate for a sign of working class revival - any sign - but this is desperate stuff. In many ways, after decades of defeat and democralization, it would be surprising if there was not an unpleasant whiff of nationalism around a dispute like this. Simply denying it and then issuing childish rebukes against those who want to radicalize and generalize the strike is just burying your head in the sand - there is more than a hint of syndicalism about it.
It is thus facile to suggest, as you seem to, that critique/argumentation = abstention. This is a moment when fighting for internationalist principles is absolutely crucial and pretending that there is nothing between the demands of the strikers and those of the socialist movement is delusional. If socialists cannot intervene critically at times like this, they have no purpose whatsoever.
Comment by Jonathan — 3 February, 2009 @ 3:59 pm
Slightly off-topic but related, in one of Paul Preston’s books on the Spanish Civil War he writes about one of the first actions of Largo Caballero as Employment Minister in 1931: “The so-called ‘decree of municipal boundaries’ prevented the hiring of outside labor while local workers in a given municipality remained unemployed. It struck at the landowners’ most potent weapon, the power to break strikes and keep down wages by the import of cheap blackleg labor.”
Good post Andy by the way.
Comment by Matthew Stiles — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:01 pm
We as socialist need to get to the frontlines of this battle. SP definitely has taken commendable lead in this. Having said that, why can’t we raise a simpler, striaghtforward, and more effective slogan “JOBS FOR BRITISH WORKERS”. BJ4BW is alarmingly susceptible to xenophobic racist interpretration, hence why not dump it, unless we are playing twisted game of reinterpreting the obvious, in which case “PAKI” becomes a friendly term, “POPPADOM” is an innocent joke, and “NIGGER” mere restatement of a bio-physical fact.
Comment by Collaterally Damaged — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:04 pm
In fairness to Andy, the TUC and Unite do both occasionally use the term “indigenous workers”.
Comment by David T — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:06 pm
#41
David T
In the real world, where things actually happen, and it is not all about words. there is a need to distinguish between currently arriving and recently arrived migrants, and those who are already here.
As soon as you consider that in Southern Birmingham the current population are more than 50% South Asian, then you see the lingustic problem of how to distinguish between them, and a newly arrived white latvian immigrant. The existing population of Birmingham - with its high proportion of Muslims, Asians, West Indians is the indigenous population; newly arrived Polish and Czechs are migrants.
The expression “host community” I have heard used by several BME community activists to describe the fraternal relations they have with white British people.
It seems that in navigatig this linguistic minefield some of you would rather do nothing to improve race and community relations, becasue the alternative is that you would have to find language that described differences.
Comment by Andy Newman — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:07 pm
“That’s why, Neil, it isn’t some pissy little argument about terminology”
That’s EXACTLY waht this argument is. You yourself have pointed out how fluid the idea of nationality, locality, identification actually is. Andy has used words commonly used in the labour movement as the best approximation to discuss a very tricky subject.
Do you have anything substantive to say about what Andy is raising? No you don’t, because like your smug middle class performance on previous threads relating to this strike, you are completely at sea when it comes to saying anything about the working class as it actually is, warts and all.
Comment by Neil — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:07 pm
The fact is that if the BNP were picking up a lot of support from this strike then we’d surely be seeing BNP placards on the demos, seeing their activists encouraged to take leadership positions or at least here some reports of BNP members actually on strike rather than seeing videos of far right activists being told to leave protests.
Comment by Duncan Money — 3 February, 2009 @ 2:31 pm
1. They are only just getting their propoganda out from yesterday evening, so the lack of themed propganda so far is not surprising
2. Am sure there will be, staitistically speaking, some members, and defiantly supporters, on strike, but they are probably going to do more good winding things up quietly than anything else.
3. Their poilitical gains will be off the back of this, in terms of putting the idea of BJ4BW in voters heads as a potential alternative to the economic crisis, and idea they support and promote
Oddly enough, the forst test of this will be in Tameside on Thursday- where they have a good chance of getting elected- with a candidate, incidentally, or Italian origin
Comment by JimPage — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:11 pm
“Socialist Worker is obviously disappointed with the actually existing working class, and is prepared to wait for a nicer, more middle class one to come along, before getting involved with its struggles.”
hahahahahaha
Keep building your shrine to sectariana.
Comment by djn — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:15 pm
#43
Pete
the problem is the anti-trade unions laws, the press officers of Unite and GMB cannot promote the interests of the strikers becasue that would be an official endorsement of strikes that took place without a ballot, and over greivences not against their own employer - which are illegal.
The illegal nature of this strike means that the left needs to use every opportunity at our disposal to promote the unions case, and counter the press misinformation.
Comment by Andy Newman — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:15 pm
Andy, I don’t think you’re a racist.
“Host” and “indigenous” seem like laden terms to me. That is probably because, a decade or two ago, they were used widely, and I think euphemistically, as a seemingly neutral term by people who really wanted to say “wogs” and “white people”, but who didn’t want to seem racist.
That doesn’t mean that everybody using those terms is doing to so hide their true perspectives - I agree that they’re used in neutral contexts too, and in good faith.
My impression is that people mostly shy
Comment by David T — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:18 pm
My impression is that people mostly shy away from using these terms nowadays, but frankly, who cares?
Comment by David T — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:19 pm
You know very well, Andy, this isn’t just an argument about the correct term. You also know that it isn’t an argument that puts you in the right because part of my job is to present radio programmes. Another part of my job this year is to work with Hackney schools on a borough wide writing project. What if, at any point in that work, i started to think in terms of ‘indigenous’ or ‘non-indigenous’ children, or parents in relation to the provision of education?
It’s a crap, shitty term. It divides people on utterly spurious grounds. The example given above of indigenous meaning those here before the immigration wave is bloody useless. What immigration wave? the 1948-70s Caribbean one? the 1880-1905 Jewish one? the 1943-48 Polish one? what is going on here?
In this dispute at Total, for all we know, some of the Italian workers might choose to live in the UK. Do they become overnight ‘local’? Or are they still not quite local or not quite indigenous? would they be ‘migrant’ or ‘EU’? would they be post-wave of immigration or part of the wave of immigration? Should their social entitlements be less than the ‘local’? If one of them marries a UK woman and has a kid? How ‘local’ is she/he?
Yeah, all very radio 4 presenter stuff. Pathetic.
How did t.unionists fight the Lump on sites in the sixties and seventies? Not by attacking the lumpers. Or saying that the jobs had to go to the locals. They fought it by appealing to the lumpers on the grounds of safety provision on sites. The lumpers were killing and injuring themselves because it was only the union that guaranteed safety. The lumpers were actually earning more than the union sites at this time but it was cheaper for the bosses to hire them becuase the running of the site was cheaper if you didn’t put in Health and safety measures.
by the way, talking of sites, are Irish people who zip back and forth between Ireland ‘indigenous’? How long do they have to be here before they become indigenous?
Comment by Michael Rosen — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:19 pm
Andy, the problem isn’t the term “indigenous”. What’s problematic is that you claim it’s a demand socialists should support that residents not be “disadvantaged” by immigration. “Disadvantaged” compared to what or whom? Isn’t “jobs and housing for all” the demand we should be raising, instead of “make sure immigration doesn’t endanger the residents’ housing”? The latter, to me, seem well on its way down the slippery slope.
Comment by christian h. — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:27 pm
Yes, Neil, keep it real: him - indigenous…her - non-indigenous; more jobs for him = fewer for her. Fair’s fair. Good politics. We socialist. Neil not smug. Rosen smug. Neil prole. Rosen middle class. Keep it real.
Comment by Michael Rosen — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:28 pm
Thank you christian.
Comment by Michael Rosen — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:29 pm
we’re all indigenous now :/
Comment by etc — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:32 pm
Oh for goodness sake Mchael try living in the real world, not harking back to some bloody union campaign forty years ago.
There has been a huge increase of immigration into the UK from the EU accession states, particularly Poland. There have been some very specific trade union issues associated with this - Agency workers, workers living in accomodation provided by their employers, discriminatory recruitment practices, possible tensions during redundnacies. Some trade unions - particularly Southern Region GMB and Unite - have developed specific strategies for recruiting and working with Migrant workers.
And in the real world, that has been an importnat advance. If we got humg up instead with who is and isn’t indigenous it would mean paralysis. Instead, what we have done is looked at the actual experience and issues of the recently arrived and arriving.
Now with regard to Dagenham and barrking, your politicalluy correct middle class nonsense would be disastrous. The real issue there is that there has been a disproportionate increase of population due to migration, and the borough has not had any corresponding increase in resources for its housing and social infrastructure - as Jon Cruddas has pointed out.
Lingusitically therefore, I am using “indigenous” to describe the whole population prior to the recent increase - without making any assumptions about their race, creed or colour. This is actually a quite common terminology in the trade unions and progressive movement.
What is necessary is to find a form of worlds that allows us to describe the actually existing situation, that there has been an increase in population, but the resources have not followed that increase in population; and any solcution needs to ensure that all of those people who were there before (of all races, religions, nationalisties) are not disadvantaged relative to the newer migrants when new resources are allocated.
These are actually progressive demands, and the noise that you are making to obscure the issues is socially regressive, becasue that sort of liberal outrage potentially acts as a politically correct impediment to real and perceived greivances being addressed in a socially progressive way. If the left doesn’t address social greivances, then the BNP will.
Comment by Andy Newman — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:33 pm
Actually, claiming that the local population is ‘disadvantaged’ by immigration is the perennial falsehood wheeled out by the Daily Mail. The truth is that immigrants are systematically disadvantaged in every walk of life. The problem is racism and ‘positive discrimination’ is a myth. Again, if we do not argue that in the face of nationalism, however mild, we are failing in our duty as socialists.
Comment by Jonathan — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:35 pm
Andy’s account that the SWP’s conclusion is not to get involved in these strikes is dishonest at least.
All I read in their statement is that socialists should not duck the difficult issues when being part of the working class movement.
The SWP has done this and deserves respect, unlike those who are drifting to the right as soon as they have to swim against the grain.
Comment by Dishonest account — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:37 pm
Isn’t it a shame the strikers weren’t well-rounded revolutionary internationalists from the start. On the other channel, Seymour and his chums gleefully pick up on any perceived weakness in the SP behaviour to snipe about its clearly unprincipled less than pure revolutionary activity kowtowing to nationalism etc. Have any Swappies actually seen the SP leaflet Keith Gibson and others gave out at the mass meeting, arguing, amongst other things, against nationalism, racism, divisions in the working class and against the bosses? The arguments put up by Swappies are desperate and pathetic. How is the SP supposed to stop the media portraying the strike as merely a BJ4BW exercise is beyond me. Ss they can’t, what are we supposed to do - nothing except sit around wringing our hands in despair as the working class apparently fall into the arms of the BNP?
The Swappies have called it wrong, ended up looking foolish but instead of an honest accounting (hah hah) they revert to the default position, blaming and attacking someone else. Hence the persistent distortion and denigratiion of what the SP are trying to achieve. The SWP people on these an other sites are clearly more interested in petty sectarian point-scoring than actually advancing the interests of the working class and people will judge them accordingly. As someone said elsewhere, this is the latest episode in the SWP quite consistent political practice, particularly in trade union issues - ultra left posturing when the SP have a key role, otherwise grotesque opportunism e.g. in the NUT.
Comment by Doug — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:39 pm
sign can we just get on with the job of being revolutionaries, without resorting to attacking other rival groups or factions, i’m getting tired of the left.
Comment by etc — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:42 pm
in reference to #64 in particular
Comment by etc — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:42 pm
The article by Andy Newman simply reflects the social democratic condition which for decades has been the dominant ideology of the left in Britain. Social democrats, when the push comes to a shove, will obscure any difference between class and nation, simply because their core political value is to put nation before class when class threatens the ‘national’ interest. Andy Newman has fallen foul of this conundrum and resorts to desperate language (’indigeneous people’, ‘dual identity of class and nation’ etc…) in order to overcome his dilemma. We cannot, as socialists, support the core demands of this dispute in Lincolnshire, because its logic is to send the Italian and Portuguese workers home and replace them with ‘British’ workers (even if they are paid at the same rate and conditions). An alternative way forward is given by the striking and demonstrating workers in Greece and France, who have targeted the employers and state as the real enemy and in so doing put class interests before the interests of the national business.
Comment by martin — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:46 pm
#57
Christian
If we take the specific example of Dagenhaam and Barking, the increase in population over recent years has not been matched by a corresponding increase in housing, schools, health care provision, transport infrastructure.
The existig population of Barking and dagenham have thereofre seen themselves competeing with newer arrivals for a relatively decreasing pot of resources.
As Jon Cruddas has explained, the problem is that the government deliberately refuses to track the social impact of population migration, because it is too hot a potato politically. It is a progresive demand to argue that a borough like Barking and dagenham should have an increase in central government funding proportionate to the increased social needs that have come to the borough through population migration that is what is not happening. Otherwise the existing “indigenous” population perceive themselves (and may in fact be) disadvanatged by the immigration, which in turn leads to community tension.
So if the pre-existing population finds that the housing supply is inceasingly under pressure, or that health service waiting lists are longer than they used to be, or that schools don’t have the aditional resoures to deal with more children who don’t speak English, then they are being disadvantaged.
It is therefore necessary to argue that borough’s in this position should receive proportionat funding. BUt one of the obstacles against this politically as been a particularly smug middle class atitidue that thinks that working class people who complain about such things are motivated by racism. And that any one who seeks to find lanaguage too discuss these difficult issues is somehow pandering to racism.
It is also worth saying that the cultural hotch-potch that Michael Rosen descibes in Hackney, is competely atypical of most of Britain; and London generally has a much, muac greater degree of cultural, linguistic and racial diversity than the rest of Britain. Quite frankly any politics that starts from the idea that London is in any way normative is realy problematic - but is sadly common on the left.
Comment by Andy Newman — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:47 pm
Andy, drop the term “indigenous” - it’s embarassing for you as well as dangerous. Describing those who live in Britain as indigenous is unacceptable because the term actually means something in North America, Latin America, New Zealand, Australia, and other colonial settler states/regions where a non-European population has been oppressed by European settlers. The use of this term in these states is still contested and part of the struggle for Indigenous self-determination. White/European racists in these countries regularly claim to be “indigenous” in efforts to continue the oppression of the genuinely Indigenous communities.
So spare us the use of this term if you give a hoot about Indigenous rights and self-determination. Keep with your bizarre “host community” nonsense or whatever other term you wish to use to facilitate your acrobatics in defence of slogans that are obviously opening the door to nationalism and xenophobia.
Comment by djn — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:48 pm
Etc, not if some toytown revolutionaries can’t handle the fact that the class struggle is messy and all sorts of reactionary ideas aren’t going to disappear even when the SWP supercadres turn up to show the backsliding reformist SP’ers how it’s done properly (the few of them that could actually talk to workers, that is).
Comment by Doug — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:48 pm
what? what the hell are you talking about? you just cant resist can you?
Comment by etc — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:50 pm
“If we got humg up instead with who is and isn’t indigenous it would mean paralysis. Instead, what we have done is looked at the actual experience and issues of the recently arrived and arriving.”
Takes deep breath. It was you who summoned up the term in order to point out that tthis was some kind of meaningful, useful and, yes, correct way to handle eg the Dagenham housing issue - and, I suspect - the Total dispute. I’m not at all ‘hung up’ about who is or isn’t indigenous. That’s how I work every day I work in a school. It’s my starting point. YOur starting point seems to be just the opposite. There are the indigenous ones who might be/are ‘disadvantaged’ by the new ones or the ‘migrant’ ones. (What happens when there are big movements of people within the UK and Ireland? Is it still ‘indigenous’ and ‘migrant’?)
How odd that you’re accusing me of the very thing that you’re doing.
Why raise questions about disputes from forty years ago? Or a hundred years ago? Because they might shed light on what’s going on today. Might.
Can you make clear in what ways, the Italian workers are undercutting the UK workers. Pay? Work conditions? Health and safety? Maternity rights? Pension rights? Can you do that , so that we can see how the union demands (official or unofficial) are legit and not, as silly middle class radio presenters are saying, that it’s really, at heart about ‘local jobs for local people and not for bussed in Italians’ ie one section of the working class fighting another section. If it is about fighting the Italians’ work pay/conditions/rights, then I will, I promise eat humble pie, admit complete error and middle class radio 4 incorrectness. Promise.
Comment by Michael Rosen — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:54 pm
Andy, it is right to demand that, say, Dagenham, receive the resources necessary to deal with the social needs created by an increase in population. But that’s a completely different demand from “don’t disadvantage the residents”. And sadly, Bj4Bw is the latter kind of demand. It therefore must be opposed. As I’ve written repeatedly “on the other channel” (as, by the way, have numerous SWP comrades) I think the SP are working hard to pull this in the right direction. But pulling isn’t enough. There also has to be a head-on challenge of the politics coming to the fore in these strikes, and I find it disturbing when comrades simply deny, or downplay, that these politics exist.
Comment by christian h. — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:55 pm
So, let’s get this straight. The SWP is accused of:
Being abstentionist
Being ultraleft
Being sectarian
And for being upset with workers because they are:
racist
nationalist
not middle-class
not socialist
not internationalist
Blah blah blah
“British jobs for British workers” is a bullshit slogan and there can be no argument about this. The SWP has taken it head-on and rightfully so because, whether the strikers are conscious of it or not, the wider implications of such slogans is to open the door to nationalism and racism/xenophobia. We shouldn’t have to go over the implications of such ideas getting a hold among workers or anyone else. Carrying an argument is not the same as abstentionism and carrying a sharp anti-racist argument in such a high profile strike with slogans like BJ4BW that is making headlines everywhere (including here in Canada) is not ultraleft or sectarian or being somehow upset with the way some workers are conducting/leading this strike. Any intervention in this strike that doesn’t raise the issue of racism/nationalism head-on alongside the class argument is collapsing into economism.
Once again, Andy, your sectarianism has got the best of you. When are you ditching the “Socialist” and the “Unity” in the title of this blog?
Comment by djn — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:57 pm
#62
sigh
“Actually, claiming that the local population is ‘disadvantaged’ by immigration is the perennial falsehood wheeled out by the Daily Mail. The truth is that immigrants are systematically disadvantaged in every walk of life. The problem is racism and ‘positive discrimination’ is a myth. ”
Again, Jon Cruddas has pointed out the problem, that the left fails to talk about th real social impact of population migration. Yes in many ways migrant and immigrant populations are bottom of the heap; but part of their being bottom of the heap is that immigrant populations tend to concentarte in those more impoverished areas where there already scarce resources.
I can assure you there has been more immigration into Dagenham than into Henley-on-Thames.
Therefore both the newly arrived and more established populations of barking and dagenham are potentially disadvantaged by immigration; which would not be the case if the real world consequences of population migratioon were recognised, and solutions commensurately funded - in the interests of both the pre-existing and the more newlyy arrived populations.
the sort of pious middle-class trendy-lefty arguement that thinks that working class people shouldn’t complain about their communities becomming increasingly under–resourced is actualy part of the problem. It is not racism to be worried that your sons and duaghters may never have a house of their own; it is not racism to be worried that your local school has an increasing proportion of children who dont have English as their first language, but no increased resources to help those children. It is not racism to worry about health care waiting lists lengtheneing because the local hospital was built assuming a lower population increase than has actually happened.
It is time that the left woke up and smelled the coffee, instead of living in a middle class la-la land where anyone who supports England in the football is considered a hardened racist; and where any working class person who thinks of themselves as British is considered to be virtually a nazi.
Comment by Andy Newman — 3 February, 2009 @ 4:59 pm
Andy - you’re wasting your time trying to make Cde Rosen et al see sense. You’ve committed a linguistic thought-crime by making ANY distinction between a settled local community and a recently arrived group of men from Sicily.
While dear old Michael is in his comfort zone reading to multicultural toddler groups in Stoke Newington, the BNP will be signing up thousands of disaffected workers across the country. If so many are prepared to join a BNP-controlled BJ4BW Facebook group (30,000+ in a short space of time) then voting for fascists is only the next step.
Respect to Andy, Jon Cruddas and the Socialist Party: working class socialists who are trying to win the argument in the real world.
Comment by Colin — 3 February, 2009 @ 5:02 pm
PRESS RELEASE:Derek Simpson will warn ultra right wing groups that their politics of hate are not welcome on construction sites across the UK
In a condemnation of the British National Party, Derek Simpson, the joint leader of Unite, will warn ultra right wing groups that their politics of hate are not welcome on construction sites across the UK.
Mr Simpson said: “The unofficial action taking place across the UK is not about race or immigration, it’s about class. It’s about employers who exploit workers regardless of their nationality by undercutting their hard won pay and conditions. These are rights that trade unionists have fought long and hard for while ultra right wing groups did nothing but stoke hatred in our towns and cities.
“Trade unionists stand against everything the BNP stands for. We have warned union members on construction sites to remain vigilant when it comes to ultra right wing leeches. These right wing groups do not support trade unions. In fact, they’re probably taking down the names of trade unionists involved in the unofficial action and adding them to their list of left wing enemies.”
- Pretty clear I would say.
Comment by Hamish Ions — 3 February, 2009 @ 5:12 pm
The main slogan of the strike ‘British Jobs for British Workers’ I’ll allow
was initially adopted by the workers involved, and their leaders, as a dig at
British PM, Gordon Brown, who came out with this atrocious and misleading
term during a keynote speech recently. Brown knew when he said it that it was a
lie, as under EU legislation workers of member states are able to travel to
and work within other member states. That this Italian subcontractor has
exploited this legislation to import the entire workforce for a specific contract
has laid bare the reality of the free market and the EU, despite the various
strands of progressive legislation that have been passed under its auspices over the years,
as at bottom a bosses’ charter in the interests of the corporations.
Worryingly, however, has been an ugly turn taken by the strike, fanned by the right wing press and jumped on by the BNP and UKIP, etc. In all the news footage I’ve seen of the strike thus far, I’ve seen nothing but white men holding up placards carrying a slogan that is a gift to the far
right and has in effect played into the hands of the bosses by pitting worker
against worker.
I blame of course Brown for playing politics with nationalism, covering
himself in the Union Jack in order to distract from the
reality of a free market to which he was a major proponent. But I also blame
the trade union bureaucracy for tailing the reactionary consciousness which appears to have gained traction during this strike rather than working to turn it into a
clear and unambiguous fight against the bosses.
Comment by John Wight — 3 February, 2009 @ 5:13 pm
PRESS RELEASE:
Unite’s three point plan for dealing with the current wave of unofficial strike action
Derek Simpson, joint leader of Unite, has today proposed a three point plan for dealing with the current wave of unofficial strike action taking place across construction sites in the UK.
Derek Simpson said: “Unite is proposing a three point plan that the UK government should follow to resolve the wave of unofficial unrest gripping the UK. There needs to be a systematic approach which deals with the immediate problem of the current unofficial strikes and then addresses the root cause of the discontent.”
Resolve the immediate problem that exists at Total’s Lindsey oil refinery. Reach an agreement which gives fair consideration for UK labour to work on the contract.
Carry out an investigation into the practices of contractors and subcontactors in the engineering and construction industry. Follow by action from the government which will insist that companies applying for contracts on public infrastructure projects, sign up to corporate social responsibility agreements which commit to fair access for UK labour.
Overturn European legal precedents which allow employers to undercut wages and conditions. A European Court of Justice precedent gives employers a license for ’social dumping’ and prevents unions form taking action to prevent the erosion of UK workers’ pay and condition (see notes to editors).
Mr Simpson continued: “The government is failing to grasp the fundamental issues. The problem is not workers from other European countries working in the UK, nor is it about foreign contractors winning contracts in the UK. The problem is that employers are excluding UK workers from even applying for work on these contracts.
“The flexible labour market is a one way street that only benefits the employers. We are now seeing the backlash as the recession bites. The government must ensure that employers do no not raise barriers to UK based labour applying for work. There should be a level playing field for workers who wish to apply for work on Britain’s engineering and construction projects. No European worker should be barred from applying for a British job and absolutely no British worker should be barred from applying for a British job.”
ENDS
Notes to editors
the ECJ cases of Viking, Laval:
The Viking case concerned the re-flagging of a Finnish ship to Estonia with the aim of applying lower standards to the seamen on the ship
The Laval case concerned the application of Latvian wages and working conditions on Latvian workers employed by a Latvian company on a Swedish construction site.
*** ALSO PRETTY CLEAR!!
Comment by Hamish Ions — 3 February, 2009 @ 5:14 pm
#72
Michael:
Michael, your actual lack of experience of the practical trade union issues relating to migrant workers is coming to the fore here.
In many workplaces, there is a clear social differentiation between newly arrived migrants, and the indigenous workforce. Not only cultural, but also in terms of density of union membership. And unions not only need to be able to navigate through those issue,s but also find a language to discus them.
There is also some institional inertia in the trade unions against organising migrant workers, and some misconceptions that migrant workers will require a disproportionate amount of servicing time by FTOs, etc. In the real world those who argue one-size-fits-all are not the anti-racists.
There is therefore an actually existing debate about this already in the labour movement, ironically my union branch has submitted a motion to GMB congress arguing that the union should put greater resources into organisating mgrant workers, and stressinig within that motion the benefits to the indigenous workforce. I didn’t know that this was semi-racist until you explained it to me, and learning from your wisdom clearly I now see we should stand with those in the union who oppose giving specific resources to organising migrant workers. After all, small factories in Wiltshire towns are EXACTLY the same as schools in Hackney.
And for those in a middle-class PC lather about using the term indigenous, it simply is used by some Britosh trade unions and indeed the TUC, in the way i use it, to promote a progressive pro-immigrant agenda.
What you haven’t done is provide an alternative way of discussing the difference between migrants and non-migrants.
Comment by Andy Newman — 3 February, 2009 @ 5:16 pm
Andy
You have set up a straw man there. Of course working class people should complain about their communities being increasingly under-resourced. Who is suggesting otherwise? Increasing spatial polarization is a notable feature of contemporary capitalism. But where does that leave us in terms of the political arguments that socialists should be making in Barking and Dagenham? Is the problem control of resources and space, or immigration?
The way you put it in #75 implies that when people express their anger through the medium of racialized language, socialists (from whatever social class) should hold their noses unless the BNP is directly involved. Can that be right?
Comment by Jonathan — 3 February, 2009 @ 5:19 pm
#81 “Who is suggesting otherwise?”
Well, the government for one. who do not track the impact of population migration, and do not ensure that increased resources follow increased population
Comment by Andy Newman — 3 February, 2009 @ 5:23 pm
Andy, I still think the demand “ensure residents aren’t disadvantaged by immigration” is absolutely the wrong demand to make from a socialist viewpoint - not just theoretically, but in practice. I am baffled why you wouldn’t see this.
Comment by christian h. — 3 February, 2009 @ 5:26 pm
#83
So you don’t admit that communities can be negatively impacted by immigration?
or do you think it would be impolite for us to mention it?
Or do you have an idea that socialists shoud,just avoid difficult real world issues, and talking to actual working class people?
After all, if we are only concerning ourslves with arguments for the university campus, or Islington dinner party circuit, then you would probably be right.
Comment by Andy Newman — 3 February, 2009 @ 5:27 pm
back to Louises point at #18
“Factually that may be the case but with a slogan like British Jobs for British Workers overshadows the demands. And if the slogan has been changed to ‘Fair Access’…. why did it take so long? ”
What people need to et their heads round is that these are unofficial strikes, and as such the union machine cannot intervene quickly to produce profesional placards, or give guidence.
The authority in the strikes resides with the mass metgings, and actuallu winning the arguments with the workforce in open democratic debate - that takes a bit of time.
Comment by Andy Newman — 3 February, 2009 @ 5:41 pm
#84 “After all, if we are only concerning ourslves with arguments for the university campus, or Islington dinner party circuit, then you would probably be right.”
Oh jeez, let it go
Real lazy way of arguing a position
MRD
Comment by MRD — 3 February, 2009 @ 5:41 pm
” Can you make clear in what ways, the Italian workers are undercutting the UK workers. Pay? Work conditions? Health and safety? Maternity rights? Pension rights? Can you do that , so that we can see how the union demands (official or unofficial) are legit and not, as silly middle class radio presenters are saying, that it’s really, at heart about ‘local jobs for local people and not for bussed in Italians’ ie one section of the working class fighting another section.” - Michael Rosen.
So ‘local jobs for local people’ is not ‘legit’? It’s ‘one section of the working class fighting another’?
This point of view comes from a conception of work which sees it not as a means for the worker to sustain life, family, community and leisure; that, in facts, sees these things as illegitimate aspirations. Does Rosen not accept that these are legitimate aspirations, and that therefore UK and EU law should contain a heavy bias towards the use of local labour? Or by ‘legit’ does he mean ‘legit ‘ in terms of current EU law? Would he like to explain, if this is the case, what bearing EU law has on a socialist’s assessment of the validity of workers’ struggles?
Comment by Jock McTrousers — 3 February, 2009 @ 5:45 pm
Andy (84.) don’t be ridiculous. Communities are negatively impacted. So demand that those communities are supported. What’s so wrong with that? Instead you want to phrase the demand in such a fashion as to negate the notion of community in the first place. Your demand clearly identifies the immigrants as the problem (they are “advantaged”) instead of the authorities who refuse to provide the necessary resources. How a socialist could possibly agree with that, whether (s)he happens to work on a campus, on the radio, or as a union official, is beyond me.
When large numbers of former slaves migrated to the North after reconstruction, would you think the demand “Oppose white job loss due to Negro migration” would have been the correct one, because, after all, it was the case that black workers were used to undercut the wages of white workers, and the demand doesn’t say “Negroes out”, so it’s okay?
Comment by christian h. — 3 February, 2009 @ 5:55 pm
Well, just to reiterate: I’ve never supported the slogan “BJ4BW” anywhere in the discussions here about these strikes. For the simple reason that it’s open to misuse by the right.
But I do support the strikes.
The two positions aren’t contradictory, as the SP showed in practice.
The spectre of the dockers marching for Powell seems to be haunting some people.
But there’s no comparison with that situation.
This is an entirely justifed and predictable response to the actions of the French-owned multinational TOTAL. A company recently subject to a lawsuit in French and Belgian courts for using forced labour in Burma to construct a pipeline.
As Andy has shown, this is not an isolated incident, but part of a pattern in several recent construction projects in the energy sector. It was predictable that Total’s contract with IREM would provoke a reaction from the existing workforce.
The question being, how to lead it, given that the strike broke out unofficially.
No one in the SWP, WP, Gerry Downing etc..has yet answered the question:
Should your supporters be crossing picket lines in the biggest challenge to job losses and the anti-union laws we’ve seen in years?
If not, why?
Comment by prianikoff — 3 February, 2009 @ 5:56 pm
Michael: There will be nations long into the socialist future so don’t worry about it. In fact, socialists are still struggling for their formation in Ireland and Palestine for instance. This strike is about opposing the most vile excrecense of capitalism made legal and respectable by the neo-liberal EU: Gang Masters. You know the types. They keep their workers isolated on ships or drive them out into the sea to drown whilst cockle picking. (If they could speak I’d bet those poor workers wish there had been a picket line that day). The question is: who will organise the workers, the capitalists or the workers themselves?
I would say an indigenous worker is one who holds a British passport. Until recently you needed one in order to get a job except under certain circumstances when you could get a visa. All the laws around this were determined by Parliament. You still need one to be a civil servant or the Prime Minister or even an MP. What will you do about that `hypocrisy’? Of course, under the EU democratic rights and trade unions are being circumvented to the benefit of British, German, French and global capitalism and at the expense of workers throughout Europe. What Europe needs is a planned transnational economy not this disgusting anarchy that tells workers to get on their bikes.
Comment by David Ellis — 3 February, 2009 @ 6:02 pm
No one has answered that question, prianikoff, because it is completely idiotic, and, by the way, even the most sectarian blow-hards haven’t asked it - until now, that is. Socialists don’t call for the crossing of picket lines. Just like socialists usually don’t call for the sacking of workers just because they are foreign.
Comment by christian h. — 3 February, 2009 @ 6:06 pm
So my father wasn’t an indigenous worker. He never held a British passport but lived in Britain for 87 years. I think I’m clear now. Thanks.
Anyone else on this?
“Can you make clear in what ways, the Italian workers are undercutting the UK workers. Pay? Work conditions? Health and safety? Maternity rights? Pension rights? Can you do that , so that we can see how the union demands (official or unofficial) are legit and not, as silly middle class radio presenters are saying, that it’s really, at heart about ‘local jobs for local people and not for bussed in Italians’ ie one section of the working class fighting another section. If it is about fighting the Italians’ work pay/conditions/rights, then I will, I promise eat humble pie, admit complete error and middle class radio 4 incorrectness. Promise.”
Comment by Michael Rosen — 3 February, 2009 @ 6:07 pm
David Ellis, are you actually supporting the demand that someone should need a British passport to work in the UK?
Comment by christian h. — 3 February, 2009 @ 6:09 pm
mark p, over at LT points out that workers on the job at the refinery were made redundant and that job is now being done by the subcontracted workforce. Have I/he got that right?
Comment by Michael Rosen — 3 February, 2009 @ 6:16 pm
ANDY IS NUTS!
Comment by Adamski — 3 February, 2009 @ 6:16 pm
‘Mr Pickford said workers had walked out in “general sympathy with what’s happening in the construction industry,” where British workers were being excluded from applying for jobs by foreign subcontractors.
He said: “All the Polish workers have walked out as well, because this is not an issue against foreign workers.’
http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/news/600-workers-strike-Langage-Power-Station/article-666037-detail/article.html
Langage Power Station all out, including many Poles, what price the SWP position now!
Comment by history tells us things — 3 February, 2009 @ 6:18 pm
We need a European - if not world wide reaction to the crisis, otherwise the nazis will overspeed us.
28 February will be a day of national protest in Berlin and Frankfurt organised by left groups. It will only be a starter. But we ask other European lefts groups to organize demos on that day as well.
Comment by vikko — 3 February, 2009 @ 6:21 pm
My father came on a ship to Britain as an immigrant, I take personal offence at the kind of stuff that Andy is coming out with.
Andy - “So ensuring that increased immigration doesn’t disadvantage the indigenous population shoudl be a socialist demand, along with demanding equality for all- migrant and indigenous.”
So you are saying that it is immigrants who disadvantage the ‘indigenous population’ not say, the rich and powerful who control how resources are allocated in our society? And you think that this is the basis for a struggle for equality?
Andy, you are really sinking into the gutter.
Comment by Adamski — 3 February, 2009 @ 6:25 pm
Andy (and others)
To put the argument into another context, What would you say if you were in a township like Alexandra, where many thousands from South Africa’s northern neighbours have ended up in settlements that are dire even by the standards of the average tin shack?
Would it be better to describe the conditions of the immmigrants as a ‘problem’ for the non-immigrant shack-dweller, or as a particularly nasty case of the same thing that they face: deprivation and misery right in the face of the grotesque opulence of Sandton?
Comment by Jonathan — 3 February, 2009 @ 6:27 pm
This strike is about opposing the most vile excrecense of capitalism made legal and respectable by the neo-liberal EU: Gang Masters.
No, that’s what you’d like it to be about. There’s been no mention of gang masters in the strike. If it was about that, then there’d be a campaign to recruit the Italian workers, not to get them sacked. Quit projecting and get on with dealing with the reality.
And Andy - claiming that immigration disadvantages ‘indigenous’ people (whatever the hell that means), and bemoaning people as ‘PC’ for suggesting you shouldn’t use language that has obvious racist connotations, could have come straight out of the Daily Express. How’s about you act like a socialist for a change?
Comment by Keith Watermelon — 3 February, 2009 @ 6:33 pm
Adamski and co are getting into full witch-hunting mode now: “Andy, you are really sinking into the gutter.”
Stick your student moralising up your arses.
Comment by Colin — 3 February, 2009 @ 6:36 pm
hundreds of polish workers join wildcat strikes
3 02 2009
600 workers, including hundreds of Polish workers, have walked out from Langage Power Station near Plymouth in solidarity with the wildcat actions sweeping across Britain.
When five hundred site staff had failed to arrive by 10am, the small group of other foreign labourers (mostly Polish) who had been bussed in were sent home by management, deciding it was unsafe for them to work by themselves.
Jerry Pickford, regional officer for Unite South West, said workers had walked out in “general sympathy with what’s happening in the construction industry… all the Polish workers have walked out as well, because this is not an issue against foreign workers.
“This is an issue against foreign employers using foreign workers to stop British workers getting jobs. Once they do that they will try and undermine the terms and conditions of employment in this country.”
It would be illegal for the union to support the strike or even hold a ballot, but workers are taking action off their own backs. Today strike action also spread to the Sellafield nuclear plant, while 400 contractors at Scottish Power’s Longannet power station in Fife (along with 80 workers at an ExxonMobil plant there) and 130 at the Cockenzie Power Station extended their action until Friday.
Comment by Anonymous — 3 February, 2009 @ 6:46 pm
Shorter Colin: Real workers don’t mind racism from time to time.
In the US, someone like this would be immediately identified with his natural home: the right wing of the Republican party.
Comment by christian h. — 3 February, 2009 @ 6:49 pm
Michael
The dispute is a manifestation of the anger felt by construction workers at the increasing threat to their terms and conditions and nationally negotiated agreements. Why do you think there is a barge in Grimsby harbour housing workers from a company who are not party to these agreements? Why do think you think workers covered by these agreements are not to be considered for the jobs? The company has now said it will employ some local workers but this is just a PR exercise. The only legal requirement is the minimum wage.
Yes I know these are not new issues and the sub contracting business should have been dealt with in the “good” times. They weren’t and we are where we are.
To simply latch onto the nationalistic aspect as large parts of the media have done is to undermine the strike.
If you accuse me ignoring the difficult issues I will have you put on detention.
I know this is a strange question for one socialist to ask another but do you support the strike?
Comment by paulv — 3 February, 2009 @ 7:01 pm
http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/news/600-workers-strike-Langage-Power-Station/article-666037-detail/article.html
Polish workers article
Comment by Dave — 3 February, 2009 @ 7:01 pm
‘There is no training being given to the long term unemployed, last year I was sent on a scheme with A4E for 3 months I and several hundred other pople had to attend every day for 6 hours a day, all anyone did there was play cards or read newspapers, the staff there had no qualifications to train anybody and all they did was talk to people. They offered placements/Work experience in charity shops.
This is another issue that seems to be ignored retraining people to work in other industries. I think my experience of being long term unemployed as taught me that yes this country is going down the pan.’
While it may become a focus for the far right, etc many of the people on the BJFBW Facebook site are not actually talikng about migrants or even the dispute, they are using it as a rallying point to get their frustations out such as talking abouut the shit experiences they have had from the New Deal and the training agencies like A4E which have made milions upon millions from poor quality courses. Perhaps the SWP and others on here could start campaigning on issues like that and then they may have some more purchase on the wider industrial/working class sphere.
Comment by history tells us things — 3 February, 2009 @ 7:03 pm
The example given above of indigenous meaning those here before the immigration wave is bloody useless. What immigration wave? the 1948-70s Caribbean one? the 1880-1905 Jewish one? the 1943-48 Polish one?
Any one of them, at the time it was happening. My mother-in-law, for example, was an immigrant in the 1940s and a member of the indigenous population in the 1970s. If you think ‘indigenous’ is the wrong word, feel free to suggest a different one, but I think the concept behind it is straightforward and uncontroversial.
You migrate, you’re a migrant (for a while). You stay put and others move in, you’re an indigene. You stay put after migrating and others move in… you’re an indigene.
Comment by Phil — 3 February, 2009 @ 7:04 pm
#104 paulv; “I know this is a strange question for one socialist to ask another but do you support the strike?”
That’s exactly what a Unite comrade said to me on the phone just now when I talked to her about the dispute and that some socialists had a problem with it.
That is in fact the exact right question to ask those posting here hostile to the dispute.
Do you support the hundreds of unionised workers taking illegal secondary, solidarity, action across the UK currently ?
Comment by Eddie Truman — 3 February, 2009 @ 7:09 pm
Are critics of the strike students, middle class or middle class students? Who honestly thinks they can discern someone’s class background from their position on an industrial dispute?
Comment by Jonathan — 3 February, 2009 @ 7:12 pm
#100 `No, that’s what you’d like it to be about. There’s been no mention of gang masters in the strike. If it was about that, then there’d be a campaign to recruit the Italian workers, not to get them sacked. Quit projecting and get on with dealing with the reality.’
Presumably if the Italian workers were recruited to the union they’d be sacked by their bosses and wouldn’t it be a bit opportunist on the part of the union in this case to recruit them if they were to stay in these jobs when there was no shortage of qualified local unionised labour that necessitated their coming here in the first place? Wouldn’t that be a bit like the NUM recruiting scabs during the 1984-5 strike just to get their subs. These Italian workers are, however, unwitting `scabs’ and the anger of the workers should and is rightly directed against the contractor that employs them.
Comment by Just a thought — 3 February, 2009 @ 7:23 pm
My Grandads and 1 of my nans came here from Ireland in the late 40’s/early 50’s. The term indegenous worker does not offend me one bit. It’s really simple if you’re not one of the mealy mouthed middle class lala land socialist from the SWP. Basically when they first came here they weren’t indigenous workers they were migrant workers they then assimilated into British life and culure and became part of the indigenous population, just as my parents are indigenous and therefore I’m indigenous. The term doesn’t imply that someone is inferior or superior in any way. It’s that as Andy said we do need some way of differentiating if we are going to deal with the problems that immigration can sometimes bring like overstretching resources or getting them into unions. People here claiming to be offended by the term should drop the false indignation and start living in the real world. The left cannot afford to ignore issues around immigration because the BNP certainl won’t.
Comment by paul c — 3 February, 2009 @ 7:31 pm
I am still not sure what to make of the strike - on the one hand, I am impressed by working-class action that is actually breaching the anti-union laws, on the other, the xenophobic stuff disturbs me. The fact that there are “bloody foreigners” among my forebears may explain some sensitivity about the latter point.
Comment by Faust — 3 February, 2009 @ 7:33 pm
#111. ‘….middle class lala land socialist from the SWP’. Right, so if you’re in the SWP, you are middle class and prone to political correctness? Is that a serious point or just another sectarian jibe?
‘The left cannot afford to ignore issues around immigration because the BNP certainly won’t’. What does that mean? How does defending the principle of open borders constitute ‘ignoring’ the issue? Isn’t that the euphemism that New Labour uses all the time when it wants to play the race card?
Comment by Jonathan — 3 February, 2009 @ 7:45 pm
Letter in The Herald from;
Professor Gregor Gall, Research Professor of Industrial Relations, Director of the Centre for Research in Employment Studies, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield.
Protesters’ fight is about the right to work
Charles Woolfson, professor of labour studies at Glasgow University, seems to have got the wrong end of the stick about the construction workers’ strike (”Warning over repercussions against union”, The Herald, January 31). From the evidence of reports of interviews with strikers, reports of those visiting the picket lines and the workers’ own website (Bearfacts), the dynamics of the action are far more complicated than he is willing to appreciate.
The incident that sparked the current wave of walkouts concerns the exclusive use of Italian and Portuguese workers to be brought in by the Italian contractor, IREM, specifically for a particular contract by dint of its right under the EU Posted Worker Directive. This comes after many protests outside construction sites in the past few months.
What the workers are protesting about is not the use of foreign workers per se but that existing workers in Britain, whether “British” or not, do not have the right to be considered for work on this contract. Their fight is about the right to work (in a recession) and their anger is directed against the Italian contractor. They are not calling for the expulsion, repatriation or sacking of “foreign” workers.
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Alongside this, the strikers speculate that the use of the “foreign” workers by IREM is an attempt to undermine national terms and conditions of employment of any worker, whatever their nationality, who works in the sector in Britain. This is a reasonable point to make given that many employers operating in Britain have done so in other parts of the construction sector.
Beneath this lies another complex phenomenon. While the demand of “British jobs for British workers” has been to the fore on the placards and the like of the strikers, this owes much to the attempt to make political capital out of the phraseology of the promise coined by Gordon Brown in 2007. The strikers do so in order to exert some leverage over the government but at base this is a demand for the right to work. Their anger is then focused, also in part, on a government which has bailed out the bankers but not workers from the effects of a severe recession.
Now, of course, this is not to suggest that there is no racism or xenophobia involved. There is some among the workers, but where I have seen much more evidence of this is among those people who leave comments on newspaper websites and the like, and who are not directly involved in the dispute. Moreover, certain right-wing forces - such as the BNP - are also fond of trying to portray the strikers in this light in little regard of the reality, which is quite different.
It is to be hoped that the workers understand the underlying issues of the race to the bottom under capitalism, the drive to neo-liberalism and the European Union’s deregulatory preference. If this is the case, as well as continuing their collective action, because it is having a political impact on the government by virtue of calls for talks and the use of Acas, they will hopefully also see that they need to engage in the political process much more and on a critical basis with all the mainstream political parties.
Comment by Eddie Truman — 3 February, 2009 @ 7:48 pm
paul c, you agree then that your grandad shouldn’t have been felt singled out if “socialists” put out the demand he not be “advantaged” over the resident population? I’d still like someone to explain to me how the demand “don’t disadvantage the resident/indigenous/whatever population” is not blaming the immigrants and isn’t divisive. Of course, since we have now had comrades wax nostalgic over the good old times, when only workers with UK passports could be legally employed, I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for an answer….
Comment by christian h. — 3 February, 2009 @ 7:56 pm
christian #115
I’d still like someone to explain to me how the demand “don’t disadvantage the resident/indigenous/whatever population” is not blaming the immigrants and isn’t divisive
Reply:
Because it fails completely to address the root cause of the current crisis. This strike is not taking place in isolation. It fits into the pattern of strikes, protests, and rallies taking place throughout Europe in response to big business and governments that represent their interests unleashing an offensive against the working class with the aim of making it pay for the global recession.
Your slogan keeps the struggle at the level of workers fighting amongst themselves for the crumbs from the bosses’ table. The right to work is a human right, and like all human rights it is a universal right. There is no universality in the slogans we’re seeing on this strike.
Comment by John Wight — 3 February, 2009 @ 8:15 pm
john#116
Have you got a few minutes to expand on your thoughts on what’s happening John ?
Comment by Eddie Truman — 3 February, 2009 @ 8:21 pm
John 116., I agree it’s an awful, divisive, demand. Andy doesn’t, he explicitly claimed this would be a “socialist” demand and so, by anology, would be Bj4Bw. I’d like to know why he, or other here, would think so.
Comment by christian h. — 3 February, 2009 @ 8:21 pm
“It’s really simple if you’re not one of the mealy mouthed middle class lala land socialist from the SWP.”
Ha ha. What a hoot. I look forward to your sociological study of the SWP and how militant anti-racism is “mealy mouthed middle class…”
“It’s that as Andy said we do need some way of differentiating if we are going to deal with the problems that immigration can sometimes bring like overstretching resources or getting them into unions.”
And here’s the nub - “We’re not against immigrants, it’s just that they bring problems.”
The problems are not immigration problems - they are resource allocation problems, in other words, they are class problems. The problem of union density isn’t an immigration problem - it is a problem of the organizing (or lack thereof) model of the unions and the union busting of the bosses - the latter being the most important factor.
Canada has double the immigration that the UK has by population, approaching 1% each year. Our unionization rates are the same as they were in 1960 - the UKs are down 20%, our public (and private) debt is way below that of Britain, our unemployment rate is lower, our banks are sounder, our wages higher.
Clearly, the problem is that you lot haven’t got enough immigrants, that’s your real immigration problem.
Comment by redbedhead — 3 February, 2009 @ 8:28 pm
Eddie,
I’m worried about the direction it’s taken, especially with regard to the slogans being used. In all the news footage I’ve seen so far I’ve seen a sea of white faces waving placards advocating British jobs for British workers. As I said before, I believe this slogan began as a dig at Brown’s statement during his speech, but it appears to me have moved on from that and developed along a nationalist trajectory.
I’m not there on the ground so it’s hard to give a considered analysis. I hope the socialists involved, and those there offering solidarity, are doing their utmost to ensure the anger is aimed at the correct target - the bosses and a government that governs on their behalf. I don’t consider the Italians and Portuguese to be scabs. I consider them victims of the same free market madness that’s led to this crisis. What attempts are being made to engage with them on a fraternal basis? What attempts are being made to involve the Italian and Portuguese labour movement, socialist parties, to coordinate joint statements, actions, etc?
The bosses are organised internationally and so must we. What this has demonstrated is the danger of the working class being split along national and, if the far right get their way, race lines within this country.
Comment by John Wight — 3 February, 2009 @ 8:34 pm
redbedhead - or as George Galloway puts it often, if immigration was an economic problem, Bangladesh would be the richest country in the world and the US the poorest. These are very good broad bruch arguments. They need to be heard. Socialists need to address the conrcrete questions so that these ideological arguments do get heard. The way to do that is not through propagandism. You must know this from the arguments with the ISO about the FTAA and the protests in Quebec. The same underlying argument emerged with the ISO over dealing with Serbian nationalism in the movement against the Balkans war. The same argument was made by Callinicos of the ISO’s understanding of Seattle. This is very, very familiar.
Comment by Nas — 3 February, 2009 @ 8:39 pm
John,
It’s been reported that the Socialist Party is going to be leafletting Italian workers tomorrow with a leaflet, in Italian, saying Italian workers have more in common with their British counterparts than Italian management.
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/14/20090203/tpl-bnp-attempt-to-infiltrate-lindsey-st-81c5b50.html
Comment by Duncan Money — 3 February, 2009 @ 8:44 pm
#119
Immigrants don’t live in barges moored in harbours, brought in to carry out contract work on anisland and then leave when the contract is over.
That’s something different.
And the difference is that it is part of a labour dispute on a major industrial site in the UK.
The dynamic, as has been repeatedly pointed out on this site by far more erudite comrades than myself, is the European Union’s neo liberal drive to be able to moor boats of subcontractors off Grimsby harbour so that any European Union based firm can get it’s hands on a prime contract in the UK.
There are 3 remarkable things about the situation that we are now faced with;
1. It is incredible that it happened in the first place, militant industrial action has been few and far between for the past 10 years.
2. That it spread; completely illegal secondary action from Scotland will continue at least until Friday.
3.That the union appears to be supporting it at this stage; there has been no condemnation of the strikes. Anyone who has followed UK unions over the past decades will know exactly how significant this is.
Comment by Eddie Truman — 3 February, 2009 @ 8:45 pm
redbedhead is spot on in post #119
I find it bizarre and worrying that Andy and other socialists are going down the line of “…to deal with the problems that immigration can sometimes bring like overstretching resources”
Let us be quite clear that if there are any problems, lack of resources etc, it is not caused by immigration. The argument of ‘we have to face up to it,immigration can bring problems’ is an argument that pushes ever rightwards to the point where you align yourself with the government and controlled immigration.
Because you know comrades, we only have a small swimming pool in this town, anymore Poles come here and there won’t be enough chlorine to irritate everyones eyes, especially the ‘indigenous population’. The answer, build more bloody swimming pools!
Wake up.
Comment by MRD — 3 February, 2009 @ 8:47 pm
“The way to do that is not through propagandism.”
Agreed - activists on the ground should put forward concrete demands that cut hard against the chauvinism and offer a way to realize the underlying concerns of the strike - job loss, whipsawing, etc - in a way that builds solidarity with foreign workers.
As for the ISO, I don’t remember all the arguments but, yes, that is broadly correct in my opinion. The ISO’s position was abstentionist. However, what differentiates this strike wave with the movements you point to is that those movements had an overall progressive direction with problematic components, whereas in this case, it seems to me that there is an overall problematic direction with progressive components. Right now the only logic for an immediate solution is to cause the firing of at least some of the Italian workers. Socialists must cut against this central dynamic of the strike.
In the case of the FTAA, for instance, the central thrust was against whipsawing and the privatization of everything for corporate profit, with the models of inspiration being Cochabamba, Bolivia, Chiapas, Mexico, the WSF in Brazil, etc - and within the movement there were reformist, protectionist conceptions of how to win.
Comment by redbedhead — 3 February, 2009 @ 8:50 pm
#120 John, thanks, I thought that the point you made #116 of the importance of understanding what’s going on as a part of the Europe wide reaction to the economic crisis was a crucial one.
Comment by Eddie Truman — 3 February, 2009 @ 8:54 pm
“The dynamic, as has been repeatedly pointed out on this site by far more erudite comrades than myself, is the European Union’s neo liberal drive to be able to moor boats of subcontractors off Grimsby harbour so that any European Union based firm can get it’s hands on a prime contract in the UK.”
Just as UK workers go down - in their thousands - to work on oil rigs and sleep on barges moored off the Saudi coast. And UK workers on construction sites in Spain, etc. etc. The same thing happens in Canada, the US, etc. It’s subcontracting, that’s how it works - a company needs a specific job done but doesn’t want a permanent workforce, it hires it out to a company, sometimes local, sometimes international. The origin of the company is irrelevant to the political point - resist subcontracting, resist whipsawing.
Comment by redbedhead — 3 February, 2009 @ 8:55 pm
Duncan #122 - This is the best news I’ve heard yet! Congratulations to the SP, who seem to have excelled in solidarity work on the ground among the workers involved.
Eddie #123 - I agree with everything you say. Now it’s a question of which direction it moves in. That the far right is all over this, according to reports, means that it is vital that the left wins with an analysis of class over nation. The news from Duncan about the leaflet being distributed by the comrades from the SP is heartening in this regard.
Comment by John Wight — 3 February, 2009 @ 8:57 pm
#115 I don’t know what job you do christian h. but if it is one that requires a passport I think you should quit in solidarity with the Italian contractors.
Immigrant labour has always come here in the past when capitalism was flourishing and they were encouraged and sought to become naturalised. The rules around all this were determined by Parliament which supposedly represents the democratic will of the population. Now they are encouraged to come and bugger off before they can even think about joining a union and British workers are told to get on their bikes and the rules are determined by the unelected EU. In the past British workers did get on their bikes usually at the expense of other populations but now the world is divided up and that option is no longer there. Workers, unlike the middle classes, are not in a position to `globe trot’ for ever and are now making a stand. These contractors are shipping in workers to do a quick job then go home thereby importing unemployment and union busting and also reducing British capitalism’s need to invest in education or training for the local workforce. They are even being supported by Polish workers who live here. Tell me what you think the logic of shipping these workers in is when there are unemployed skilled workers already in situ. There is nothing racist or reactionary about this strike. Hopefully it will lead to a Europe wide union of construction workers that controls labour deployment. Under those circumstances the illogical nonsense of shipping skilled workers across Europe when there are perfectly qualified workers already in place will come to an end. Ideally, the only passport I’d like to see is a union membership card but we are not there yet and even then mass migration is no fun for anybody and I don’t envisage it happening under socialism.
Comment by David Ellis — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:06 pm
this is simply a lie from Chruistian h at #88
“Your demand clearly identifies the immigrants as the problem (they are “advantaged”) instead of the authorities who refuse to provide the necessary resources.”
I have argued that already disadvantaged communities should not be further disadvantaged by population migration, and that government funding should follow the increases in population to the mutual benefit of both the established and new parts of the community.
but it simply is the case that largely unplanned and big population movements do have negative impacts on resources - for example new facilities need to be planned for, funded, built and delivered. and even were the resources allocated (which they currently are not) then there would be a lag before they came on stream.
If you don’t recognise the real world problems, then you cannot leverage the political influence to fund and provide solutions.
all the moral outrage of those suggesting that we shouldn’t even talk about the social problems caused by migrating populations arriving in existng communities and stretching resources are helping to prevent there be extra resources granted to solve those problems.
Comment by Andy Newman — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:15 pm
“600 workers, including hundreds of Polish workers, have walked out from Langage Power Station near Plymouth in solidarity with the wildcat actions sweeping across Britain.”
SWP - Now shut the fcuk up and support the working class!
Comment by Roy — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:15 pm
`Right now the only logic for an immediate solution is to cause the firing of at least some of the Italian workers.’
The logic is to end this despicable contract and these types of contracts and contractors and to do that you need pickets.
Comment by David Ellis — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:15 pm
#129 David Ellis; “Under those circumstances the illogical nonsense of shipping skilled workers across Europe when there are perfectly qualified workers already in place will come to an end.”
I said there were far more literate comrades than myself; thank you David Ellis, that’s it.
Comment by Eddie Truman — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:17 pm
“It’s been reported that the Socialist Party is going to be leafletting Italian workers tomorrow with a leaflet, in Italian, saying Italian workers have more in common with their British counterparts than Italian management.
”
shame they can’t be bothered to argue that they shouldn’t be sacked and replaced by “local… ie British labour. SP’s pandering to populism is shocking if it wasn’t so predictable. They are never willing to take on a hard arguement… immigration, abortion, Ireland, falklands a very sorry and pathetic record. Their newspaper doesn’t seem to want to discuss the British Jobs 4 Britsh Workers slogan… given the situation that is the same as goign along with it.
Comment by ll — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:18 pm
131 Roy
Shut the fuck up.. is that really the way to debate you arsehole.
What about Immingham and the BNP hsaving their election van at the picket line, lealflets from the BNP all around… are but they are workers so its ok and best keep my gob shut. Roy you really think this is good news, you rhink turning on other workers is good.
Comment by ll — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:20 pm
#124
“Because you know comrades, we only have a small swimming pool in this town, anymore Poles come here and there won’t be enough chlorine to irritate everyones eyes, especially the ‘indigenous population’. The answer, build more bloody swimming pools!”
Yes but each town doesn’t have extra swimming pools just in case there is immigration; and there is not a homogenous distribution of migrants.
So if a town suddenly has an extra 50000 people arrive, there may be a demand for a new swimming pool. The increased demand and the strain on the existig swimming pool has been caused by the immigration.
The solution is to admit that the immigration has created too much demand for the old swimming pool, and argue for funding for a new one. That needs the town with the immigrants to make that case for respurces, in prefernece to towns that have not had a new 50000 people, and who have adequate swimming pools
You argument is that we shouldn’t even admit that the old pool is now overstretched, because that would be somehow an anti-immigrant argument.
But even if we win the extra funding, there would still be a couple of years before it came on line.
So perhaps a planned, socialist economy would try to ensure that economic development happened in towns where there was already excess capacity in the swimming pools
Comment by Andy Newman — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:21 pm
When my dad migrated to the UK from India in the 60’s he didn’t have a choice were to live and ended on a council estate in Dagenham. My abiding memory of the place is the incessant racial abuse, verbal and physical I recieved throughout school until I finally left the place. My dad still lives there and has had his living room windows bricked more times than he cares to remember.
The poor pay the price for capitalism’s contradictions and to appeal to statification of racial difference to correct imbalance is misguided whether the terminolgy is sanctioned by institutional bodies or not.
Comment by john — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:23 pm
Michael Rosen #94
“mark p, over at LT points out that workers on the job at the refinery were made redundant and that job is now being done by the subcontracted workforce. Have I/he got that right?”
this is priceless!
So days after Keith Gibson’s explanation of the background to the strike was publsiehd - both here and on the SP web-site, Michael Rosen still hasn’t bothered to find out the basic facts about the dispute.
I even refer to these very facts in the artcile above that Michaell is commenting on.
But he does have lots of opinions based upon a strike that happened 40 years ago, and on multi-cultural toddler groups in hackney, that are so diffeent from life in Grimsby he may as well be lioving on planet Jupiter.
Comment by Andy Newman — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:26 pm
ll,
What about Immingham and the BNP hsaving their election van at the picket line, lealflets from the BNP all around…
Is this a report from the picket line? Are you there?
In fact, where is this report from? The only place I’ve heard report that there is a significant BNP presence on the picket lines in the main BNP site itself, hardly a reliable source of info.
Comment by Duncan Money — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:30 pm
#137
“to appeal to statification of racial difference to correct imbalance is misguided whether the terminolgy is sanctioned by institutional bodies or not”
John G, and in plain English?
i am sure that no-one here is appealing to stratification based upon racial difference.
But to be clear, are you sayng my union branch are wrong to have a migrant workers committee that reports to the branch committee. this initiative came from the migrant workers themselves, but do you think we shoukld force them to attend the general branch committee instead, against their wishes, in order to avoid the danger of “stratification based upon racial differnce.”
It is funny that I am basing my arguments upon experience of being equality officer in a union branch that is seen as one of the models of best practice for organising migrant workers ithe whole of Britain, and indeed Europe; but I am the one being told that these ideas are anti-imigrant - even though they are informed by the experience and arguments of migrant workers themselves.
Comment by Andy Newman — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:32 pm
138
“opinions based upon a strike that happened 40 years ago, and on multi-cultural toddler groups in hackney”
- thats a bid rude Andy. And your version degrades a quite witty put down of Michael by somebody else earlier into a crude bullying stereotype.
Comment by Barry Kade — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:34 pm
#136 “The solution is to admit that the immigration has created too much demand for the old swimming pool, and argue for funding for a new one.”
No Andy, that’s where you end up with talk abour “host” and “indigeneous”.
The solution is to admit that the increase of RESIDENTS has created too much demand for the old swimming pool!
Comment by Chlorine — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:35 pm
Shut the fuck up.. is that really the way to debate you arsehole.
What about Immingham and the BNP hsaving their election van at the picket line, lealflets from the BNP all around… are but they are workers so its ok and best keep my gob shut. Roy you really think this is good news, you rhink turning on other workers is good.
Actually Yes I do - the coming out of Polish workers is a big step forward for united class action.
Go back to your middle class home or become New Labour etc like a lot of your former ‘comrades’
The class struggle does not always follow the line so clearly set out by the ‘vanguard’ its a little bit complicated.
I don’t usually swear but the way that you and the SWP have painted workers in struggle is frankly disgusting! and not marxist!
Comment by Roy — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:37 pm
#142
But in the real world, you would have to explain why there was such an increase in residents, beyond the planned and predicted expansion of the town.
o
FFS, if this is the moralising and petulant way you debate with me, who supports open borders, God knows how you manage on the doorstep talking to potential BNp voters.
Comment by Andy Newman — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:39 pm
Andy, don’t try to misrepresent your own words. You claimed that “ensuring that increased immigration doesn’t disadvantage the indigenous population shoudl [sic] be a socialist demand”. (#15.)
So you identify immigration as the problem. It’s the wrong demand, no socialist should support it. It leads directly to the demand that immigration be curtailed, because there just aren’t enough resources to be allocated etc.. In the same way, “Bj4Bw” may, in context, be meant to ask for “fair access to jobs”, but it is nevertheless the wrong demand, because it implies that, if the demand for enough jobs should fail, excluding foreigners is the next best thing.
It is disturbing that some here would argue that the slogan should not be challenged.
Also, good on the SP comrades on the ground for leaf-letting the Italian workers. That’s great news.
Comment by christian h. — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:40 pm
#141 barry
may be I am rude, and don’t come up to the scintillating level of wit of some other commenters.
But Michael rosen does take the biscuit, he has been patronisingly pontificating away for days telling off these striking wokers for not being as lingusiticly nuanced as the London dinner-party left; then he admits that several days after the strike has started, he hadn’t bothered to find out what it was actually about!
Comment by Andy Newman — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:43 pm
To put it another way, less confrontational (maybe it’s too late for that…): I am sure you and your union are doing outstanding work. I would be surprised if you went around Dagenham and phrased your demands in the way you did here.
Comment by christian h. — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:45 pm
Andy, it’s you sounding a wee bit petulant now. No prob, but if you dish it out you should be able to take it.
Comment by christian h. — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:46 pm
It’s not moralizing to say that referring to immigrants as the cause of a resource problem is a concession to nationalism. 1) Because there is a debate inside the working class in a context of economic crisis where the BNP are on the rise and are saying “locals don’t have access to resources/housing/jobs because of immigrants.” 2) because it is inaccurate - the problem is not an immigration problem, it is a resource problem. There is nothing static in the world - buildings require maintenance, populations age or become younger as a community evolves, trees die and need to be replaced - these things are only a problem if the resource priorities are located elsewhere, say on the military. There is no need to make recourse to “immigration problems”.
As for having a migrant workers committee - this is so obviously different than saying “there aren’t enough pools because of all the immigrants moving in”. Setting up a women’s committee, or anti-racist committee, or a migrant workers committee is about addressing the specific problems faced by specifically disadvantaged groups in order to strengthen the unity of the union and win gains for the oppressed. Pointing to immigration as the cause of a shortage of resources is about assigning blame - wrongly, as it happens and in a politically dangerous way.
Comment by redbedhead — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:48 pm
119,I’m not saying that uk workes should be favoured over immigrant workers at all, nothing in my comment implied that I do. And there are problems around immigrantion and the immigrants themselves are totally blameless that goes without saying. And I agree with you that the problems are the fault of the Gov and the capitalists. I don’t know what I said that implied anything else. My arguement was simply that I disagree that the term “indigenous worker” implies any kind of racism and/or nationalism. It is merely a term used to differentiate between someone who has been in this country for long time and a new comer. And it is a useful term as we do need to adress the needs and desires of both demographics. Trying to imply racism here is just plain dishonest in my view and is being used to try and give the SWP et alls ultra-left posistion some of the substance which it severly lacks by acussing those on the left who back the action by workers of being racist or pandering to racism. Your arguments aren’t washing in the picket lines and luckily they don’t wash amongst the rest of the left either.
Comment by paul c — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:50 pm
“lingusiticly nuanced as the London dinner-party left” - there’s a lot of really tedious prolier-than-thou nonsense thrown around as a way to avoid actual arguments. It’s also pretty right-wing.
Comment by redbedhead — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:50 pm
Andy your bullying posts suggest that you are struggling to cope with the contradictions in this strike. What I find very surprising is the prejudice and the sectarian way you are attacking everyone and any one who has a different viewpoint to you.Something you often accuse others of.
The strikes are complex and the demands changing and confused. However one cannot be a little bit pregnant and one has to take sides, interpreting events a best one can given the contradictory and contested nature of the strikes.
Dialogue between socialists will help to clarify the situation, bullying and hectoring wont
Stereotyping by highlighting and attacking difference is not a useful or functional way to conduct a debate.
Comment by ANIN — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:53 pm
paulc - Here’s an excerpt of what you wrote (not the silly stuff about the SWP): “if we are going to deal with the problems that immigration can sometimes bring like overstretching resources or getting them into unions.”
My point was that you’re making a concession to the argument that the problems arise as a result of immigration - when, in fact, the problems are not rooted there, they are in the distribution of resources and in weaknesses in union organizing (which applies to the 60% of the UK workforce who are not in unions now).
I didn’t even address the indigenous worker stuff because I think it’s more specific to North & South America (as well as Australia) where there is an “indigenous question” - re: the ongoing oppression of indigenous populations. In this part of the world “indigenous” has a very specific political meaning.
Comment by redbedhead — 3 February, 2009 @ 9:55 pm
Whine! Whine! on a good day for workers unity
Comment by Roy — 3 February, 2009 @ 10:09 pm
Quite an interesting demonstration of the mixed politics of this strike can be had in the video here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7866614.stm
Comment by christian h. — 3 February, 2009 @ 10:10 pm
“Socialist Worker is obviously disappointed with the actually existing working class, and is prepared to wait for a nicer, more middle class one to come along, before getting involved with its struggles.”
Andy
SWP members have been and continue to go the picket lines, Respect has not, has Galloway got involved and gone to the picket line? What has Salma said about the situation? can you post up the Repsect leaflet which surely you Repsect has been giving out?
If Andy you think its middle class to argue for workers unity and against scapegoating one set of workers against another then you have lost the plot. I do see the middle class daily mail, telegraph all supporting the strikes and slogans, the middle class UKIP is right behind the slogans, the BNP are in full agreement… indeed their election van was at Immingham giving out their leaflets. But hey ANdy don’t let that worry you. Those in the movement who argue to fight the bosses not immigrants are by you singled out as middle class. Given your public school education you may know a few things about this strata in society. No doubt when you see workers at a mass meeting holdign up the union jack with the slogan “British jobs 4 british workers” you get all nostalgic and see it is has a lovely bit of english patriotism, maybe some of us shudder and think of the NF and BNP. How does it feel yto be an immigrant workers in the UK today when they see those images. The daily mail is whipping up a campaign around the olympics and saying 1 in 3 workers will be foreign are you going to join in Andy and back this campaign. Repsect has shown itself to be a busted flush and cowardly when faced with this situation.
Oh by the way, Is ALan Thornett middle class as well, his organisations position seems to me fairly the same as the SWP. Don’t see you and your comrades sticking the boot in to them, but I am sure you will.
Comment by ll — 3 February, 2009 @ 10:13 pm
II, please stop that. Making everything into a question about Galloway and Respect isn’t any better than making everything into a question about the newest “mistakes” of the SWP. Both are sectarian approaches.
Comment by christian h. — 3 February, 2009 @ 10:16 pm
ANIN comment 152 “The strikes are complex and the demands changing and confused”.
The SWP may be confused but I assure you the stikers are not - just read what they voted for:
“No victimisation of workers taking solidarity action.
All workers in UK to be covered by NAECI Agreement.
Union controlled registering of unemployed and locally skilled union members, with nominating rights as work becomes available.
Government and employer investment in proper training / apprenticeships for new generation of construction workers - fight for a future for young people.
All Immigrant labour to be unionised.
Trade Union assistance for immigrant workers - including interpreters - and access to Trade Union advice - to promote active integrated Trade Union Members.
Build links with construction trade unions on the continent.
The mass meeting overwhelmingly voted for the demands put to them by the strike committee”.
ANIN they voted OVERWELMINGLY for this. The local stewards, the Socialist Party, Respect, Communist Party and others like the National Stewards Committee have played a very positive role so far - shame on the SWP!(sorry but this is too important not to make this very clear)- the livihoods of 10,000’s of ordinary working people and their families are at stake.
Comment by Red — 3 February, 2009 @ 10:16 pm
156. ll …. who do you support in the world cup?
Comment by ARF — 3 February, 2009 @ 10:18 pm
By the way ANdy it was only a few months ago you were arguing that the New Labour govt were not going to attack workers becuase of bailing out the banks………you argued it was not the workers money that was being pumped in so we shouldn’t worry. Dont you feel a bit of a idiot now?
Comment by ll — 3 February, 2009 @ 10:19 pm
Red, I’ve asked this before: at that mass meeting, was the Bj4Bw slogan discussed at all? Was it challenged by anyone, in any way, or put forward by someone but rejected?
Comment by christian h. — 3 February, 2009 @ 10:20 pm
#136. The question is why one should want to appropriate the language of the right for the left, when in the popular vernacular discussing immigration problems is indelibly associated with xenophobia? Andy, mirroring non-socialist discourses in a situation like this cannot be innocent, common sense or subversive. We need to use different language if we are to address political issues with the requisite clarity and distinguish ourselves as internationalists.
This debate also misses an important point, that immigration provides the very resource needed to build the second swimming pool: labour. The problem is caused by the economic system, not the influx of people per se. In this light, talking about the problems caused by immigration is not simply a matter of common sense, or a technical problem - it is a question of how we organize our society. I think that in presenting your point as merely a pragmatic one, you inadvertantly depoliticize an inherently political question.
Comment by Jonathan — 3 February, 2009 @ 10:23 pm
#151 “there’s a lot of really tedious prolier-than-thou nonsense thrown around as a way to avoid actual arguments. It’s also pretty right-wing.”
#152 “What I find very surprising is the prejudice and the sectarian way you are attacking everyone and any one who has a different viewpoint to you.Something you often accuse others of.”
Well sorry if I am coming over as a bit exasperated.
I just don’t recognise the argumetns that are coming from some of you as being ones that would have any resonance at all arguing in the actually existing labour movement and trade unions.
All this lingusitic purity about whether or nor “indigenous” is a good word or not is ridiculous given that it actually is already one of the preferred terms in the trade union movement for progressive reasons. So it doesn’t really metter what it implies in New Zeal;aind or Bolivia - what does it imply in Chessington and basingstoke?
Comment by Andy Newman — 3 February, 2009 @ 10:27 pm
158
Didn’t seem to mention the slogan British jobs 4 british workers
didn’t mention this because its a bit of a problem isn’t.
didn’t mention the support from UKIP, BNP, DAILY MAIL, DAILY TELEGRAPH who all love the slogans.
What about the jeering of foreign workers. what about the chants of It’s go home… all a bit of a problem isn’t. Didn’t mention the threats to sink the foreign workers boat and protests outside their accomodation, don’t mention the flying of union jacks with BJ4BW written on them.
No the best thing for the elft to do is to avoid any arguement and just pretend it doesn’t exist and we will all be ok. We keep our gobs shut and go along with it, or Galloway argues it all lies and made up bt the media… except of course there keeps having these photos and coverage showing Galloway to be talking out of his arse. But what the heck, we can’t argue woith workers about racism can we….
By the way the support by Repsect,,, what form did this take.. have they been to the picket lines, handed out a leaflet, ahs Galloway been to show solidarity, ahs Slama made any statement? please no one seems to know if Galloway has been to the picket line. He surely mnust have given his party are fully behind the British Jobs 4 British workers campaign and he would surely have been welcomed by all on the picket line. No one seems to know if Respect has issued a leaflet to the picket lines and other trade unionists aroud the country. No one seems to know which may suggest they have in reality done fuck all but cheer in cyber space. Galloway no doubt in private thinks shit the Gaza issue has receded and there goes my last hope of re election….
Comment by ll — 3 February, 2009 @ 10:27 pm
Andy
Has Respect issued a leaflet to the striker
has Galloway been to the picket line yet?
simple yes or no would suffice
Comment by ll — 3 February, 2009 @ 10:29 pm
ll cmmment 156 “can you post up the Repsect leaflet which surely you Respect has been giving out?”
I suggest the strikers might appreciate support rather than a flashy leaflet from the SWP!
The Respect position is very clear we support the stikers “Right To Work”. Statements from both Jerry Hicks and George Galloway are posted on the Respect web site.
Strikes, protest and the crisis in the construction industry by Jerry Hicks at:
http://www.respectrenewal.org/content/view/483/1/
And
Galloway: “It’s about decent jobs, available to all” at:
http://www.respectrenewal.org/content/view/481/1/
Unlike the SWP we are not lining up with the “snake” Mandleson!
Comment by Neil Williams — 3 February, 2009 @ 10:30 pm
Look now you being unfair by posting the above - our friends only wear blinkers in the class struggle.
Comment by Roy — 3 February, 2009 @ 10:36 pm
Andy: everyone knows what the strike is about - it’s about workers wanting jobvs. But we all know what the demand of the strikers is too: its that the jobs at Lindsey should go to british not foreign workers. All the lovely SP demands adopted by the strike committee don’t alter that - because they dont renounce it. And Keith Gibson’s own statement showqs it as clearly as anyone could possibly hope for. It’s there in black and white.
Of course all socialists want to intervene to turn the strikers against the real enemy. But you are now stuck. You first went along with the Morning Star who at leasis honest enough to sya that it actually does support the outright reactionary idea of british buisness against ‘foreign’ buisness. then you went along with the SP member on the strike committee trying to give the strike a fig leaf and claim its not against foreign workers - without cvhallenging the basic demand of the Livesey strike of course. Now you have to say that indienous workers should have some kind of fixed place towards the front of the queue.
Michael Rosen has got you good in this debate and by the tenor of your replies you kind of know it.
A little bit of national chauvinism is still like a deadly virus in the workers movement - it turns us against each other. The SWP is right to stand up clearly against this. So is Workers Power. the groups that are giving way to it - however wise some fools might think their ‘judgement’ is - will never lead the working class to victory. They give way in the face of chauvinism now; they will do it again, when the winds of reaction are stronger than now.
Of course they say they have to give way to be able to ‘have influence and really intervene’ in the working class movement - internationalists can do both of those things without sacrificing their principles, if necessary by swimming againmst the stream when it leads to division and defeat.
Comment by rb — 3 February, 2009 @ 10:38 pm
thanks Neil
I am just interested that Repsect support for this strike is that the “BJ4BW” stuff is all lies made up by the media. I take it also that Galloway has not had time to visit the picket line yet. Has Respect as an organisation been able to go to the picket lines at all? have they argued against attacks on foreign workers? Do you think Thornett is lining up with Mandelson and if so are those uncritical of this disptute lining up with the BNP/ukip/daily mail etc etc
Haven’t heard from Salma on this issue as yet, any news? what about Ken Loach has he said anyhting about the issues raised? Perhpas they think its not an issue for foreign workers to be scapegoated but I somehow doubt it. Chickens coming home to roost. Galloway is good on Gaza but on class politics falls very badly behind and relies on his old popular front CP bullshit.
Comment by ll — 3 February, 2009 @ 10:38 pm
Neil
Repsect produced quite a lot of flashy postcards for Gaza.. but not this strike.. isn’t that a bit unfair of you. Why the difference?
Comment by ll — 3 February, 2009 @ 10:40 pm
Andy, now you’ve pigeon-holed me as uselessness to the power of ten, I can tell you, that yes, I did read all the reports of what’s behind the strike that you and others posted and all the demands and you must know that some things don’t quite add up.
1. The workers who were made redundant worked for one sub-contractor . They were made redundant because that sub-contractor lost a third, I think, of his contract to another sub-contractor. To characterise it in the way that I (and mark p) did in my original question was because I wanted you or someone else to be honest about the fact that the workers have been sacked because of competition between sub-contractors and not (and this is vital) because of the job being sub-contracted out.
2. You will have noticed therefore that there is no demand that the workers should be reinstated.
3. I have tried to find out here and elsewhere what are the ways in which the Italian workers are working to inferior conditions to the Shaws workers who have received their redundancy notices. Pay? conditions of work? employment rights? holidays?
No one here or elsewhere seems to know.
But you may not want to reply to any of this because I’m a) middle class, b) refer to strikes 40 years ago c) tell stories to toddlers. c) present radio programmes on radio 4. I’ve just a smidgeon of an idea, that if I was wholeheartedly in agreement with you on this matter, or any other matter, a-d wouldn’t worry you one jot.
But if you, Andy, or anyone else has a moment, I really would be interested to know if there’s something I’ve got wrong here.
Comment by Michael Rosen — 3 February, 2009 @ 10:43 pm
ll are you really being serious or just arguing for the sake of it. If you are for real and genuine - take a step back and take a deep breath and read your all of your posts again. If you still agree with yourself then watch a film called the ‘Killing Floor’. It may help you to see things from all sides.
Comment by ARF — 3 February, 2009 @ 10:45 pm
I have tried to find out here and elsewhere what are the ways in which the Italian workers are working to inferior conditions to the Shaws workers who have received their redundancy notices. Pay? conditions of work? employment rights? holidays? No one here or elsewhere seems to know.
I don’t think anybody does know, because neither Total nor IREM has been in any hurry to tell us. Which is why opening the books is a crucial demand.
Comment by Phil — 3 February, 2009 @ 10:50 pm
And are we talking about one third of one sub-contract being replaced by a another subcontractor?
(There are plenty of people on the left here who know Italian, are Italian (sorry Andy, not indigenous, I know, but there you go)and have contacts with leftwing and TU people in Italy…Even I know some, and when I’m not talking to toddlers, I could have found someone…)
Comment by Michael Rosen — 3 February, 2009 @ 10:54 pm
I thought UNITE had been involved with the negotiations regarding the wages/conditions for the subcontracted work - that’s what the local Labour MP suggested in her report on meetings with the company.
Comment by redbedhead — 3 February, 2009 @ 10:56 pm
160: “Red, I’ve asked this before: at that mass meeting, was the Bj4Bw slogan discussed at all? Was it challenged by anyone, in any way, or put forward by someone but rejected?”
And here we see the false method of the continual offensive, always meeting things “head on” in all it’s glorious silliness.
As you are well aware Keith Gibson speaking from the platform explicitly said this dispute was about getting union rights and conditions for ALL workers. The BJfBW demand was then counterposed by the following:
All workers in UK to be covered by NAECI Agreement.
All Immigrant labour to be unionised.
Build links with construction trade unions on the continent.
In the real world this is called dealing with a potentially difficult situation skilfully. Of course for purists like yourself this is not enough. Workers must be told off from the platform about the slogan they were holding. Of course these poor little workers are probably too thick to draw there own conclusions from seeing the way the BNP were able to latch onto the slogan or that the new demands are better able to draw in other migrant workers in the UK who are suffering the same discrimination.
To go in mob handed accusing the workers of racism would have been a disaster. Thankfully those advocating such a course were not present in the crucial early days of the dispute, which I think says a lot about the role they play in the movement when they do have an influence.
Comment by Neil — 3 February, 2009 @ 11:00 pm
There are plenty of people on the left here who know Italian, are Italian (sorry Andy, not indigenous, I know, but there you go)
Please drop this, Michael. Plenty of people of Italian background are members of the indigenous population relative to subsequent immigrants - just as my mother-in-law was a Ukrainian immigrant in the 1940s and a member of the indigenous population, relative to Asian immigrants, in the 1970s. It’s a very simple point and it’s got nothing to do with racism.
If anyone among the IREM workforce is talking about their pay and conditions, I’m not aware of it. It’d be quite an interesting story.
Comment by Phil — 3 February, 2009 @ 11:02 pm
Neil - obviously, our approach would have been catastrophically stupid, if it was anything like your caricature. Thankfully, it is not.
Comment by Jonathan — 3 February, 2009 @ 11:03 pm
Sorry, Phil, maybe you find talking like that useful, but in my field of work (and my daily life in Hackney, actually) it’s utterly divisive and useless in getting anything done. I don’t think I used the word ‘racist’ to describe its usage. I said it was divisive, I think.
Comment by Michael Rosen — 3 February, 2009 @ 11:11 pm
“To go in mob handed accusing the workers of racism would have been a disaster”
More fantasy land from Neil
Looks lime Respects strategy was to not go at all and cheer quietly. If their MP can’t make it to a picket line then why should the members I guess.
Comment by ll — 3 February, 2009 @ 11:15 pm
“This IS a progresisve strike that the Left should support. The fact that the media have played up the “British Jobs for British Workers” element does not mean that this is at the centre of the despute”
Neil on Liam Uiad
Again Respect goes for its laa the media lies. Neil must be confused to see official placards with the BJ4BW as the dominate slogan. Neil must think those media types have a fantastic computer programme like photo shop which can also be used for tv bulletins and make workers say things they obviously according to Neil don’t beleive. Its time Neil to wake up, side with the workers whatever their nationality and argue for unity and not to pander to the petty nationalism which has infected this dispuite and could become very nasty for our class. Perhpas Nurses who can’t get a job should demand foriegn workers be sacked. No doubt Neil you would see this as progressive and all the while Satan sits there laughing.
Comment by ll — 3 February, 2009 @ 11:23 pm
Obviously I don’t go around proclaiming that I’m indigenous or challenging other people to demonstrate their immigration status. But thanks to the area where I live, and the sector in which I work, I’d be almost completely unaffected if several thousand Uzbeks, Goans or Montenegrins arrived in Manchester tomorrow. Some people in the city would find that resources on which they rely were, temporarily, stretched by the influx: some people-who-were-already-here-last-year would have problems which would be related to the recent arrival of people-who-weren’t-here-last-year. All you’re doing, it seems to me, is depriving yourself of a language to talk about these problems.
Comment by Phil — 3 February, 2009 @ 11:27 pm
I disagree entirely with your description of the arrival as a ‘problem’ when what happens is that much more often than not, people arrive to do jobs that wouldn’t otherwise be done. In other words they are a solution not a problem. However, the weird bit is that you think that the word ‘indigenous’ can be stretched to mean ‘those who were already here last year’, so that by next year, this year’s arrivals can be called ‘indigenous’ too! Maybe that’s what you and Andy have in mind, but I don’t think you’ll find that that’s how the word is being used in general circulation. Listen to Anthony Green of Immigration Watch. It’s not what he means. But, hey, perhaps you’re ‘reclaiming’ the word for the left. ‘Indigenous’ can mean the Afghan refugee who arrived before the Afghan refugee who arrived today.
Comment by Michael Rosen — 3 February, 2009 @ 11:47 pm
Phil I refer you my #161. It is impossible to depoliticize the issue as you try to do in #179 in presenting it as a common sense problem - as if it was just about the tribulations caused by people moving around.
Comment by Jonathan — 3 February, 2009 @ 11:48 pm
By the way, Andy, before you go to bed - I know I don’t understand things - do tell me if Shaw’s is a subcontractor or not.
Comment by Michael Rosen — 3 February, 2009 @ 11:58 pm
“No victimisation of workers taking solidarity action.
All workers in UK to be covered by NAECI Agreement.
Union controlled registering of unemployed and locally skilled union members, with nominating rights as work becomes available.
Government and employer investment in proper training / apprenticeships for new generation of construction workers - fight for a future for young people.
All Immigrant labour to be unionised.
Trade Union assistance for immigrant workers - including interpreters - and access to Trade Union advice - to promote active integrated Trade Union Members.
Build links with construction trade unions on the continent.”
It is good that the SP comrades involved were able to argue for these demands. I am curious about a couple of things though: How many people voted against these positions? Did anyone speak against them? Was there a discussion from the floor about what the various demands mean?
I’m not trolling in asking these questions. I’m wondering what kind of engagement there was with the arguments. I’ve been at so many meetings where demands have been suggested, from back when I was in uni right up to a recent meeting about Gaza, where the top table has put forward some options and they are just voted through without any real big deal. Sometimes because people present are unsure about what the demands entail and just agree with the crowd or the seniority of the stewards/speakers, sometimes because they feel that they already know what they’re doing and are happy to let other people run around with demands. We’ve always referred to it as “nodding through”, moving on to the next thing.
The reason I ask is because whilst I think it’s important to not condemn the strikes as racist, I do worry that there’s far too much back-patting and imagining that this meeting and a few quotes has somehow represented steering this movement left. I think Simpson’s proposals are poor and simply play-up to the British Jobs for British Workers slogan. I’m also concerned that anyone who thinks that the slogan is just echoing Brown’s use of it in an ironic way is avoiding a real problem.
The workers’ movement in this country has been at a low ebb for such a long time that I would be surprised if notions of internationalism hadn’t taken a back seat to ideas like “We’ve got to look after our own first”. There’s a big facebook group with the British Jobs slogan and that site runs the gamut from that notion to just plain racism. I am really worried by the possibility that many on the left, so keen to latch on to a resurgence in struggle, are simply imagining away understandable uneven conciousness off the back of an under-reported meeting.
Neil says above that the SWP has tried to “weasel” out of full support of the Strike by evoking Gramsci. I think that some people here would do better to pay attention to Gramsci not just on the question of hegemony but also on contradictory ideas in the head of all workers. The SWP’s position does not seem to me one of abstention - it’s one that argues for radical action but argues against the “British Jobs” slogan. It’s the right perspective because that slogan is not just a dig at Brown, it’s a serious, if contradictory, position held by many of the strikers and many, many more in wider society. I have spoken to some people both at work and the pub about this issue and there are many people who have broad sympathy with the argument that British workers need to be prioritised because of the recession. I’ve also spoken to other people (interestingly, several of them more established union activists and lefts) who are deeply worried about the direction of the strike and its effect on wider society.This dispute will have helped bring it out more, which makes it all the more important that all of us are arguing against this slogan on picket lines, our own workplaces, colleges, paper sales etc.
All of which adds up to: It’s not for us to condemn the strikers. We should be encouraging the action to move on to a different argument. We ignore at our peril the real, serious danger that the toxic “British Jobs for British Workers” slogan poses to our class. We are useless if we imagine that it somehow hectoring or lecturing to argue with workers in struggle that they should drop wrong slogans, preferring to simply imagine that they mean something else.
Also, we should be leafleting the strikers and putting on buses for them to come to the G20 demo in London in 2 months.
Comment by J David — 4 February, 2009 @ 12:12 am
O.K: I’ve been enthused at some good statements coming out of the L.O.R strike committee - and this news above from Plymouth Langage sounds good.
BUT the statements appearing in the local press about my nearest solidarity strike by contractors at Heysham Nuclear Power Stations, Lancashire depress me…
The most prominent statement in the story is an unnamed worker : “Our protest is against foreign workers taking British Jobs”.
Then comes the statement from a local unite shop steward who says grovellingly:
“This action is in no way guided at Balfour Kilpatrick or British Energy as we feel we have an excellent working relationship with both our employer and client”.
FFS!
Comment by Barry Kade
I thought this is important. I hope the left in Respect wakes up and sees what is happening. You cannot bury your head any longer and say its a figment of the media. Galloway and Hicks statement are totally inadequate. There is a fight going on for the direction of the labour movement and if we pander or keep quiet about anti immigrant rhetoric or slogans we are really in the shit.
The SWP statement and the leaflet being distributed at picket lines and in the wider movement is one thats argues for a fightback and put the blame where it lies.. with the bosses of whatever country,. It really is ABC and no amount of spin can alter that.
Comment by ll — 4 February, 2009 @ 12:14 am
Re swimming pools - the rotten elements think that swimming pools are bordered swamps that you’d be mad to take the waters of.
Plunge instead into the hithering thithering waters of…rising foaming mouths spuming dabs & dace
Comment by rotten element — 4 February, 2009 @ 2:40 am
“So perhaps a planned, socialist economy would try to ensure that economic development happened in towns where there was already excess capacity in the swimming pools.”
Comrades! For god’s let’s calm down a bit & leave ‘perhaps’ for bath-night.
There’s no way that we could enough have swimming pools AND fish and chip shops in towns. I grew up in Fishponds, Bristol. They turned the plaice into a lido! We were battered comrades, battered!
Comment by rotten element — 4 February, 2009 @ 2:55 am
Michael Rosen asks: “I have tried to find out here and elsewhere what are the ways in which the Italian workers are working to inferior conditions to the Shaws workers who have received their redundancy notices…”
Surely the size AND quality of the swimming pools available to them on their large, off-shore, communal, floating homes would come into that equation?
Comment by rotten element — 4 February, 2009 @ 3:09 am
97. ‘We need a European - if not world wide reaction to the crisis, otherwise the nazis will overspeed us.
28 February will be a day of national protest in Berlin and Frankfurt organised by left groups. It will only be a starter. But we ask other European lefts groups to organize demos on that day as well’.
Not a bad suggestion, but to demand what ?
A European response from the Left should have one demand ; for the right to work - of IREM employees.
That is the only progressive or internationalist stance to take.
IREM employees are not replacing anybody’s jobs, this is new work.
IREM employees are not undermining the union agreement on pay and conditions.
IREM employees are not exclusively Italian or any single nationality, they include 22 British workers in Grimsby and another 150 in Italy.
So why don’t they have the right to work then ?
Or is this a right only for British workers on British soil ?
Sorry guys, but you are on the wrong side in this dispute. I’m for the Italian/British/Portuguese workers whose employer is IREM.
Comment by Anon — 4 February, 2009 @ 3:21 am
Neil (#173.), in other words, the slogan was not discussed. So when you say it was “rejected”, you are in fact lying. I don’t, by the way, understand your logic. I don’t think the workers are racist. It seems you do, however - otherwise, why’d you be afraid to discuss the fact that this slogan is just unfortunate? Now I gather from your comments on blogs that you aren’t able to discuss anything without being a bully. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
(Note: it seem the SP have put out leaflets rejecting Bj4Bw explicitly. good for them. I’m sure Neil will now leave the party, he wouldn’t want to be called with bourgeois lecturing mobbers, I’m sure.)
Comment by christian h. — 4 February, 2009 @ 3:51 am
#188 -”Or is this a right only for British workers on British soil ?”
‘Soil is the naturally occurring, unconsolidated or loose covering on the earth’s surface.’
- Mummy is there soil at the bottom of the ocean?
- (Pinter pause)…
- Answer me mummy, I’ve soiled myself!!!
- You dirty boy
…(plop plop)
Comment by rotten element — 4 February, 2009 @ 4:15 am
(Yet another Pinter pause…God Rest His Soil)
“Soil is different from its parent rock(s)…
Soil particles pack loosely, forming a soil structure filled with pore spaces…
Accordingly, soils are often treated as a three state system.”
Comment by rotten element — 4 February, 2009 @ 4:28 am
“Soil is also known as earth: it is the substance from which our planet takes its name.”
Comment by rotten element — 4 February, 2009 @ 4:34 am
Christianh: As you have been told repeatedly socialists and trade union militants generally have argued against the “bj4bp” slogan on the ground. Much more importantly they have pushed for international solidarity and a class analysis, things that can cut across nationalist sentiments.
Where the Socialist Party disagrees with you is on the issue of whether you first offer your support and solidarity and then from that position put forward a class perspective or whether you lead with your disagreements and adopt a hectoring approach.
One of these approaches, that of the SP, has been tested on the ground. And so far it has had what even most members of your own party would accept is a positive effect. That’s no guarantee that events couldn’t take a turn for the worse or that there are now no nationalist sentiments amongst strikers. But the best way to fight such sentiments is to do it from a position of fundamental solidarity.
Comment by Mark P — 4 February, 2009 @ 4:38 am
Mark P
Why doesn’t your paper have any article or discussion about the BJ4BW’s slogan?
Comment by ll — 4 February, 2009 @ 8:55 am
Micahel Rosen: “By the way, Andy, before you go to bed - I know I don’t understand things - do tell me if Shaw’s is a subcontractor or not.”
Well, the refinery are owned by Total, so Shaw are a contractor - whether they are the prime or a sub i don’t know, does it make a difference?
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 February, 2009 @ 9:09 am
mark p - very well put. The problem I fear with some of the SWP commenters here, though by no means all of their members, is that they are behaving as if the labour movement is hurtling right over a national chauvinist cliff (one of them somewhere mentioned August 4, 1914 I think) and that it is only the thin red line of Socialist Worker that is going to stop it (buttressed by the AWL and Workers Power).
I think their view is profoundly mistaken and is both a product of a leftist lurch and is feeding into a further one. But the test of these views is, as you say, in practice. There’s nothing in Socialist Worker or on its website to indicate that their practice has achieved anything like the results of left wing union activists/officials or the Socialist Party.
Comment by Nas — 4 February, 2009 @ 9:18 am
#180
Michael.
You are seeking to de-legitimise a discussion about the different experiences and needs of migrant workers - and how the left xcan address them.
the term “indigenous” I have heard not only in GMB but also used by Unite and TUC. Perhaps the arguments you use about why it is inappropriate have substnace perhaps not, but if the term is problematic then it is up to you to propose an alternative.
But it seems that you are actually proposing that it is a thought crime to even acknoweldge the different experineces of migrant workers, compared to the pre-existing community.
Your expereince of working in primary schools in Hackney (one of the most multi-racial and diverse communities in the world - and has been for decades) is a very poor guide for how to naivagte these issues in an overwhelming white trade union, with a membership weighted towards manual workers, spread right across the UK, includig many concentrations of members in towns where the recent migration from the EU accession states is the first mass imigration they have ever experienced.
What you seem unable to grasp is that it is the left in the union who have found the need to lingusitically distinguish between ariving and newly arrived imigrants; and the different experience of the population they are arriving into.
Michael, you say; “in my field of work (and my daily life in Hackney, actually) it’s utterly divisive and useless in getting anything done. I don’t think I used the word ‘racist’ to describe its usage. I said it was divisive,”
This is exactly the argument that the right wing use in the union - to oppose having a specific strategy with dedicated resources to work with MIgrant workers.
You have to acknowledge that Migrant workers coming into cmmunities and workforces, have a different experience, and different issues for the pre-existing communities and workforces that they join. That different experience impacts both the migrants and the people who were there before they arrived.
The left needs a language to discuss that, in order to effetcivley assist and organise migrant workers; and also to ensure that we take the indigenous workers (who may or may not include a high proportion of BME in settled communities) with us.
One of the SWp supporters who feels qualified to discuss the detailed context of britosh tarde unionism from across the Atlantic points out at #119 above:
This shows he has no understanding of what is going on at all.
jon Crudas wrote about this a couple of years ago, explaining that the problem with the government’s policy on immigration is that on the one hand it actually provides a legal and economic framework to encourage immigration becuase of its economic benefits, while at the same time demonising immigrants in their political rhetoric; and underresources those communities where most immigrants go to live.
meanwhile there really are cases of migrant workers being used by bosses to drive down wages.
the left response has to be to defend the benefits of immigration, while simulataneouly arguing that social respurces overloaded by population migration need to be addressed by government funding and action. It is also necessary to organise migrant workers, and for the trade unions to resist migrants being used to depress wages.
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 February, 2009 @ 9:43 am
Nas
Why does the SP’s paper have no article or discussion about the BJ4BW’s slogan?
Comment by ll — 4 February, 2009 @ 9:43 am
ll - I’ve only seen their leaflets. Do they have a paper out reporting on the strikes?
Comment by Nas — 4 February, 2009 @ 9:47 am
Andy, you told me I didn’t understand what was going on. When this dispute has been described by you and others here, it wasn’t made clear that what happened was that Shaw’s were on a contract and the contract was coming to an end. Then, it wasn’t renewed. There’s no reason why a subcontractor should or would get renewed. There is no loyalty in capitalism. That’s how subcontracting works. So Shaw’s issued layoff notices. Then some of that work went to a new subcontractor who so happened to be Italian, who hired workers local to him. That’s also how subcontracting works. Tell me I’m wrong, but I don’t think you made this clear here. Industry everywhere has turned into ‘ganging’ - not much better than the situation facing the docks before they were unionised. (oh whoops, history. I forgot, you don’t like that. Yes, as others have said, there is only one way to fight this: a Europe-wide union.
Incidentally, I’ve seen jobs in France where the English subcontractor (or contractor) has brought English workers with him and the French ‘artisans’ can’t get on the job. And it’s known that the English job isn’t insured (which all such jobs in France should be). The Brits have a terrible reputation for this in France.
Comment by Michael Rosen — 4 February, 2009 @ 9:50 am
Andy - there was a time, which you may remember, when the SWP and Socialist Worker made pretty much these kinds of arguments and said that a moral stand against racism was not enough. Various different left groups attacked them for being soft on white racism when they explained that dumping immigrants in deprived against a background of anti-migrant rhetoric was a recipe for racism.
The sad thing about all this is that the SWP’s position is so one-sided and abstract. It is such a far cry from the very concrete and principled arguments that tradition was able to mount over previosu difficult disputes. The IS was rather good over Imperial typewriters, for example.
Comment by Nas — 4 February, 2009 @ 9:54 am
Labour MP John Mann has put down a Commons early day motion “deploring” the use of foreign workers at the Lindsey refinery and praising unions for “exposing this exploitation and the absence of equal opportunities to apply for all jobs”.
so deploring the use of fofeign workers by that well known left winger!!! John Mann. Is Galloway signing this motion!!
Comment by ll — 4 February, 2009 @ 9:55 am
Nas
I would have thought the SP’s paper would have had some article on the slogan BW4BJ as it is the key demand of these protests, but then keep your head down and hope it goes away… they do have a track record of this.
Comment by ll — 4 February, 2009 @ 9:57 am
The MP also said imminent large capital projects - such as new power stations - should be built by “companies employing primarily British labour John Mann MP
So its about stopping foreign workers
Comment by ll — 4 February, 2009 @ 10:00 am
Did he also say, keep Brits off French sites? No?
Comment by Michael Rosen — 4 February, 2009 @ 10:06 am
#196 Well said Nas. The SWP’s position seems to be based on a more general pessimism about the state of the working class. Indeed it seems redolent of the “downturn” analysis in which the working class had suffered a very serious defeat and was therefore being driven to the right. The real revolutionaries would inevitably therefore be very isolated and the key to preserving the organisation was to differentiate themselves on the basis of “hard” arguments. This contrasts with the excessive optimism which characterised the SWP in the past few years where the downturn was firmly behind us and green shoots of the upturn were constantly being sighted.
Both analyses are wrong in my view. And if you take off the ideological blinkers, the wave of unofficial action is an extremely positive development. Remember these are unoffical walk outs involving solidarity action, breaking the anti-trade union laws and with clear offical encouragement (don’t think I’m giving away any secrets here following Paul Mason’s report on Newsnight), the like of which we have not seen for many a year and they have the government reeling.
Well worth listening to is the report on The World Tonight last night http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00h5f0l/The_World_Tonight_03_02_2009/. It reports Hugh Kerr attacking New Labour’s role in failing to repeal the anti-trade union laws and allowing “social Dumping”, Jon Cruddas warning the government against characterising the strikers as xenophobic and the motions he and John Mann have introduced attacking the “posted workers directive” and the government’s complicity with the weakening of workers’ rights under the EU. Michelle Everson, professor of EU law at the LSE pointed out that some of those holding up British Jobs for British Workers placards are “foreign” workers enjoying the local (British) pay and conditions.
None of this is to suggest that this was a good slogan to coin in the first place. It has the dangers that have been identified on this blog and elsewhere, although I don’t think Socialist Worker pointing out Oswald Mosley used the slogan is very helpful. Very few pickets will have heard of Mosley, much less been motivated to support the slogans as a result! More importantly, Gordon Brown used it just a couple of months ago. New slogans have now appeared on the picket line, the resolution passed at Linley does not use the slogan and Derek Simpson, amongst others, have condemned the BNP trying to exploit the dispute.
The SWP mantra that the most important thing we need to do is “have the argument” over the placard is just part of the posturing which is characteristic of downturn politics. Time for the ultra-lefts whose primary concern has been to attack the dispute and those who have sought to lead it in a progressive direction to butt out.
Comment by vladimir antonov-ovseenko — 4 February, 2009 @ 10:07 am
Michael
Shaw’s contract came to an end, correct. the workforce were issued redundancy notices.
IREM won the new contract, and told the unions they would not be employing British labour.
Now when a contractor’s contract is awarded to someone else, depending upon the precise details, the existing workforce might be expected to TUPE over, if they were performing the same job; or if the job has changed they might be expected to apply for jobs with the new contractor.
There is currently a wave of contractors on major UK construction sites - for example the struggle at Staythorpe power station, who are refusing to employ UK labour.
This is a situation where the bosses are seeking to benefit from globallisation and deregulation in order to play the workforces off against one another.
Now your worldly wise “that is how sub-contracting works” argument is true; but in this case organised labour want to change “how sub-contracting works”. That is trade unionism.
It is the “internationalism of fools” to argue that workers shouldn’t defend their jobs from the threat of bosses bringing in workers from abroad to replace them.
If that is what the left argued, then that would be the best recruiting sergeant for the BNP and UKIP.
Now in fact no-one of the left has defended the BJ4BW slogan, and the strikers have changed it. But it is neither suprising nor new that such sentiments have resonance and support among trade unionists.
And the demand that UK domiciled workers should be able to apply for all jobs on Uk construction sites is not a reactionary one.
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 February, 2009 @ 10:11 am
Truth is that it is not the BJFBW slogan that SWP’s worst sectarians are now objecting to. They are trying to undermine the strike itself by spreading lies about how the strikers are lying when they say that they have in any way had their union right and working practices undermined by the actions of IREM. Objectively, the line some SWPers and their apologists are pushing here is slipping into being anti-union.
This does not mean that the SWP comrades are subjectively anti-union, by the way. But sectarianism can drive well-meaning people in that direction and it wouldn’t be the first time that a leftist organisation, bereft of roots in the working class, went off the rails in that direction.
Comment by ID — 4 February, 2009 @ 10:21 am
vladimir - that was the phrase I was searching for, ‘have the arguments’. I suspect that this lurch is driven by a) the internal crisis generated in the SWP over the last 18 months b) an absurdly optimistic view of the state of class organisation and struggle which has finally stubbed its to against a rock, giving rise to this overreaction and c) a crisis-catastrophism, which is wider than the SWP, which in their case amounts to pointing out the rivers of blood between reformists and revolutionaries, and shrill denunciations of the left bureaucracy (much more dangerous than the right, don’t you know).
A lot of experienced members might be unhappy. But the recruitment ground is the colleges and a new crop of students can be told they are principled revolutionaries battling against reformist sell outs.
Comment by Nas — 4 February, 2009 @ 10:27 am
“the existing workforce might be expected to TUPE over, if they were performing the same job; or if the job has changed they might be expected to apply for jobs with the new contractor.”
Ay, there’s the rub. ‘Might be expected’. This is the problem. On what basis ‘might be expected’. Because we are Brits? Because ‘our’ subcontractor had the work and now he hasn’t? Because ‘our’ subcontractor is a nice Brit and not a horrible foreigner? Because the job is in Britain? There isn’t a single subcontract in capitalism that can be regarded as safe for renewal. I know I don’t know anything, but the world I live in for half my life is entirely based on this premise. If you resist it, then a person or a TU had better be clear it’s on what basis, otherwise all you do is end up doing yourself out of a chance to be employed somewhere else, and/or slagging people off because they come from ’somewhere else’. Even an EU wide agreement on recruitment to subcontracts is problematic because it’s fortress EU and would exclude non-Europeans (or give them a different status from ‘indignenous’ (snigger) Europeans. And the demand for an EU-wide agreement is also dodgy because of the fantastic variability and complexity of sub-contracting now. Some of it goes on out of the back of lorries. Sounds like gifting millions to company lawyers to me.
Comment by Michael Rosen — 4 February, 2009 @ 10:30 am
So Michael
On what basis would it be egitimate for a trade union to capmiagn to prevent a factory being closed in Britain, and the production moved to Poland or Italy?
And if it is OK t defend the jobs by preventing a factory closing, wthen why is that different from opposing the existing workforce of a workplace being replaced by workers from Poland or Itlay on the existing site.
Your argument is becomming increasingly anti-trade union.
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 February, 2009 @ 10:37 am
I’ve just re-read and seen your “workers shouldn’t defend their jobs from the threat of bosses bringing in workers from abroad ”
Oh jeez. Just spell this out. ‘Workers from abroad’. Where is this place ‘abroad’? Hundreds of thousands of Brit workers have been working in Europe, many on dodgy contracts (in my experience). Standby for French/German/Italian/Spanish workers defending their jobs from the threat of bosses bringing in workers from Britain.
You can’t defend jobs on the basis that they’re under threat from some place called ‘abroad’. There is no ‘abroad’ within Europe. And to talk that way misleads people.
Comment by Michael Rosen — 4 February, 2009 @ 10:38 am
Michael
“There is no ‘abroad’ within Europe. “
So Unite were wrong to oppose the Keynsham cadbury’s factory being closed and relocated to Poland? Despite the fact that the reason the company was doing so is that Polish wage levels are much lower?
I wish you had come to Keynsham and explained to the workers that it was their internatonalist duty to give up theire jobs for the benefot of the brothers and sisters in Poland.
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 February, 2009 @ 10:43 am
There’s a political level and an immediate TU level. The political level it’s a campaign against sub-contracting. At the TU level it has to be a Europewide struggle to unionise every site on the basis of parity of pay, conditions and rights. Agreements about who to employ on the basis of ‘locality’ or nationality I suggest will immediately collapse. Nations are different size. Locality can’t be defined. Proof of living in a locality can’t be controlled. The percentage of suitable workers in a locality or nation can’t be proved. It’s a nonsense. And it’s a lie to be peddling it or demanding it. The only way to hit the employers is through pay, conditions and rights. If the subcontracting world is based on,, in effect, cutting pay, conditions and rights. then that’s the basis to fight it on, not on some crap about employing ‘local’s and people like you talking about ‘abroad’. And you tell me I’m anti-trade union. (oh yes, that’s because I read to toddlers. I forgot)
Comment by Michael Rosen — 4 February, 2009 @ 10:45 am
No Michael
You are becomming anti trade union becasue you keep shilling for IREM and implying that the strikers are lying that the Italian workers are underming union organisation
(Italian unions confirm IREM is 100% non-union)
and saying that it is simpy a fact of life of contracting, and the workers should not take any action until they can deliver a Europe wide camapign to bring wages in Slovakia up to british levels. FFS.
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 February, 2009 @ 10:49 am
Michael
The argument “there is no such place as abroad” is so ridiculous.
How do you think that argument would play on the doorstep in Grimsby?
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 February, 2009 @ 10:50 am
For goodness sake Michael Rosen, will you listen to yourself.
Workers have taken illegal solidarity action from Grangemouth oil refinery and Longannet power station in Scotland, Sellafield and Heysham nuclear plants, Fiddlers Ferry in Warrington to the Drax power station in Yorkshire and many more places.
Are you saying these workers have been duped ? That they don’t really understand the industry that they work in ?
Or is your narrative that we are witnessing an explicitly racist, xenophobic, strike wave by the UK’s skilled industrial workforce ?
Comment by Eddie Truman — 4 February, 2009 @ 11:02 am
Why single out Grimsby? Why not ask how the argument would go down on a site in Marseille employing British workers? Or the Olympics sites of Greece and London employing workers from all over Europe? You’ve got caught up in a nationalist explanation and justification for fighting trade union matters. I don’t know the Cadbury case was fought, but you can’t fight capitalism on the basis that it moves, because half the time you find you benefit from the fact that capital has moved near you and the other half you suffer because it moves away. Polish workers were presumably pleased that Cadbury moved to Poland.
Comment by Michael Rosen — 4 February, 2009 @ 11:05 am
Eddy says: Or is your narrative that we are witnessing an explicitly racist, xenophobic, strike wave by the UK’s skilled industrial workforce ?
Afraid that’s what you are seeing.
Comment by Gerry Downing — 4 February, 2009 @ 11:08 am
that should be ‘how the Cadbury case was fought’.
Eddie, I think there is a real struggle over sub-contracting, which is of course a form of casualisation and de-unionising. When this gets interlaced with defend British jobs or local jobs, yes, I think people have tragically missed the point. The defence against casualisation and de-unionising is to fight for unionisation, and equalisation of pay, conditions and rights. If people think there is anything to be gained by defending sectionalism, it will come back to bite them when they/we try to work in Andy’s great ‘abroad’, and/or it will come back to bite all of us, when we talk about health, education, and housing provision.
Comment by Michael Rosen — 4 February, 2009 @ 11:09 am
michael - Europe is not an integrated polity. Your beginning to sound like Dennis MacShane - and that’s worrying! It’s not protectionists who are in charge of policy or petty nationalists. It is those committed to deregulation of labour and the free movement of capital masquerading as the free movement of labour.
Comment by Nas — 4 February, 2009 @ 11:15 am
Michael: #218
“I don’t know the Cadbury case was fought, but you can’t fight capitalism on the basis that it moves, because half the time you find you benefit from the fact that capital has moved near you and the other half you suffer because it moves away. Polish workers were presumably pleased that Cadbury moved to Poland.”
This is an explicitly anti-wrking class, and anti-trad eunion argument.
Cadbury have scheduled for closure a profitable factory, with a skilled, unioonised workforce, that is the mainstay of the community on Keynsham, and has been for 100 years. They explicitly did this to move to Poland where labour was cheaper.
It is precisely what socialists and trade unionists should be doing to use collective pressure to prevent capitalism moving factories to worsen pay and conditions.
To oppose that on the basis that Polish workers are pleased with the jobs, is the argument taht comes from the libertarian neo-liberal right.
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 February, 2009 @ 11:23 am
Just to give a Polish perspective, where I live, Poles have never been too happy about how foreign capital has bought up large amounts of its assets. One of these was the Wedel chocolate factory (an old precommunist company) that was bought frist by Pepsi and then by Cadbury in the ’90s. The destruction of the Polish industrial sector is a large reason why so many Poles had to move to UK, Ireland, etc to find work.
Comment by Gavin — 4 February, 2009 @ 11:30 am
Well comrades, the strike is approaching a successful conclusion from your point of view. The company offer is to ‘ring-fence’ half the jobs for British workers, the unions (GMB and Unite) are holding out for more. A Unite official was quotes as expressing his expectation that this same issue was ‘bubbling over’ in other sites, so we can expect the ‘indigenous’ (what a glorious BNP term, now the property of the TU movement and the ‘left’0 workers will now be fairly treated in future, just as they can expect more ‘fairness’ in council housing, car parking spaces and everywhere else. And we will closely monitor this ‘fairness’ with a rigorous test for ‘Britishness’ say a ‘cricket test, or an allegiance to the Queen test or even a skin colour test. And we can expect white Polish workers to quickly realise what side their bread is buttered and support us because at least their children will pass for British if they change their names.
Shame on you for being so blinded by chauvinism not to see you are cutting your own throats, but they will cut yours first, you hasten to add. Pastor Niedermayer where are you?
Gerry Downing
Comment by Gerry Downing — 4 February, 2009 @ 11:31 am
‘Pastor Niedermayer’- probably wishing he hadn’t been turned into a cliche, cited in wholly inappropriate contexts and persistently misquoted (as well as hoping people would get his name right).
Comment by Nas — 4 February, 2009 @ 11:37 am
#217 & #219
Are the strikers hard-core racists and Nazis? no.
Does the slogan “British Jobs For British Workers” encapsulate the strikers demands? Yes.
Is that slogan inevitablt racist in this context? Yes.
Have those socialists who back the strikes racists? No.
Have those who don’t back the strikes suddenly ceased to be socialists? No.[This point is particularly directed at the comment yesterday that any remaining working-class militants in the SWP should immediately hightail it to the Socialist Party]
“Are you saying these workers have been duped ?” No, but that their action is wrongheaded.
#221 The bourgeoisie are capable of being capable of being publicly against racism while being happy to see workers divided because of it.[By the way, if I was adopting your usual debating tactics, which I see you’ve been employing against ll in my absence, I would ask if you’ve got something against olive-skinned people. And “etc”, if you’re the same poster as “swp member”, why is it you spend your time chiding pro-SWP posters instead of the vitriolic abuse from supporters of Respect(gone to pot) and sound pretty indistinguishable from them while you do it? Try to spend more time actually addressing the issues, rather than acting like a roving outrider for Respect(losing it fast)]
Comment by skidmarx — 4 February, 2009 @ 11:38 am
ll asks “Why doesn’t your paper [the SP’s] have any article or discussion about the BJ4BW’s slogan?”
Perhaps because our paper isn’t due out until tomorrow?
Comment by a very public sociologist — 4 February, 2009 @ 11:41 am
Quoting Martin Niemoeller implies that the strikers, and their unions, are fascists (or social-fascists). Insanity.
Comment by ID — 4 February, 2009 @ 11:41 am
skidders - maybe ‘etc’ and ’swp member’ do that because they are more in touch the cadre of the SWP than you are. It’s not as if you have any particular experiences that bring great insight here is it? As for debating tactics, please skidders, people have been addressing all sorts of aspects of this. So do give it a rest. Try speaking to the serious trade union militants in Hackney and Tower Hamlets, or wherever you squat these days. You’ll find they are not best pleased with the juvenile antics of some of the SWP’s ‘friends’ on this and other sites.
Comment by Nas — 4 February, 2009 @ 11:43 am
#229 Nashole - thanks for the advice. Maybe if you weren’t such an obvious enemy of the SWP I might consider what you say for a moment. You’ve obviously been googling my screenname to find some titbits you can attack me with (I expect you’re probably the idiot who was posting as “Bloody Hell” and “skidtwit”), good luck you obsessive little man. As for debating tactics, why don’t you actually engage in debate rather than spending your time hurling abuse? My surmise would be that you’ve seen the abyss that Respect(last few months) is in and know that you have so few arguments to make that honest debate won’t get you out of it.Do give it a rest.
Comment by skidmarx — 4 February, 2009 @ 12:00 pm
For Andy Newman to suggest his omnipotence by beginning his article with a claim to have an understanding of the ideas of actually existing working class is breathtakingly arrogant.
However his ideas may be excusable when we consider (in line with his own methods)that as a member of the actually existing working class his ideas can reflect a backward socialist consciousness.
For me his article is desperately disappointing. To suggest that ideas about trade unionism among actually existing workers operating in his version of the ‘real world’ can be reduced to statements such as “it is in the interests of each workforce that they should be the ones to keep their job, and the axe should fall elsewhere” is dangerously simplistic, naive, patronising, pessimistic and totally disconnected from the real and far more diverse and complex world of trade unionism as experienced and perceived by other real actually existing workers.
By way of one small real world example he may want to get along to trade union branch meeting in a city like Glasgow where firefighters have been arguing for their membership funds to be used to support firefighting jobs and resources in Gaza.
Comment by inf4mation — 4 February, 2009 @ 12:10 pm
#231
“For Andy Newman to suggest his omnipotence”
I think you mean Omniscience
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 February, 2009 @ 12:13 pm
Andy, if you think trade union leadership in Europe should be focussing on ‘don’t let the jobs go to Poland’ you’re helping leaders lead workers into a never ending set of defeats, an increasingly sectional and divided workforce, turning on each other. On the other thread you’ve got someone calling the Italian workers ’scabs’ and you haven’t commented. Scabs????!!!! They are just blokes on a subcontract that won the fight for subcontracts between subcontractors. And you’re still talking about ‘abroad’ and ‘indigenous’ and ‘British jobs’.
re other folks: To try and shit on me by associating me with others, is pathetic. I’ve laid out quite clearly how I think TUs can fight in Europe and it can never, ever, ever be on the basis of nationality or locality or we’ll all go down. Ignore what I said, if you want, but don’t claim that I’m some crypto neoliberal. It’s lies. In terms of labour, Europe is now like one country. There are over a million British workers in Europe. In France, they’re known for breaking local (yes) regulations on insurance, which mean that jobs are guaranteed for ten years. There is no ‘local’ or ‘abroad’ left in Europe. Andy is talking 1950s talk.
Comment by Michael Rosen — 4 February, 2009 @ 12:30 pm
The demand that at least 50% of employees hold british nationality
sets a dangerous precedent. It has the advantage of combating
contractors who seek to undercut general working class living
standards by moving groups of workers around europe in a “block” and
kept separate from local workers but it has the big disadvantage of
encouraging the growth of british nationalism and other demands for
jobs for brits rather than foreigners etc. Demands for union control
of who gets the jobs is a better demand but may be unrealistic and
seen to be so by the strikers
Any progressive solution means a change to european law and a european
wide struggle for workers right. A european wide demand that any
construction project should have at least 50% of locals employed on it
and all employed get the national rate for the job could be a useful
demand to prevent further atomisation of the working class caused by
employers use of “mobile block” labour.
I still think it was right to support the strikers and argue for a
socialist perspective with them (as the CWI has been doing) but it the
absence of a real living socialist alternative with some real strength
there is a danger that nationalism may profit at the expense of
generalized working class solidarity. Of course this would be even
more the case if socialists had simply denounced the strikers from day
one as reactionary chauvinists or even worse as racists. Nationalist
sentiment is inevitable within the working class particularly when the
socialist left is weak but it has to be combated not by shrill
denunciation but by promoting a class struggle and socialist
alternative. The creation of a real socialist alternative is going to
take a lot of patient practical work on the ground and the creation of
a healthy democratic revolutionary socialist party with international
breadth
The media will certainly play up (and distort) events in order to
emphasize the nationalist aspect of the dispute. but they will also
be nervous of the outbreak of wild cat strikes and working class
direct action in times of growing crisis for the capitalist system.
sandy
Comment by Anonymous — 4 February, 2009 @ 12:33 pm
Workers reject Lindsey refinery jobs offer
By John O’Doherty
Published: February 4 2009 10:02 | Last updated: February 4 2009 10:53
Trade union shop stewards at the centre of the wildcat strike at the
Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire met on Wednesday to discuss and
reject a proposal that had already been superseded in subsequent
discussions, amid confusion and poor communication between trade union
negotiators and shop stewards.
The stewards who met on Wednesday morning in committee, and in a
subsequent mass meeting with striking workers, rejected a proposal
that would have seen 20 per cent of 198 contractor jobs awarded to
British nationals.
However the 20 per cent proposal, which was reached on Tuesday
afternoon by unions negotiating with ACAS and Total, was improved upon
in negotiations late on Tuesday night, when an improved formula was
reached that would award 50 per cent of contractor jobs to British
nationals.
However, the meeting on Wednesday morning discussed and rejected only
the earlier 20 per cent proposal.
“We have had the shop stewards’ meeting and the mass meeting on the
basis of what wasn’t the final offer,” a spokesperson for GMB said on
Wednesday morning.
“Certainly the decision made this morning by the shop stewards’
meeting wasn’t on the basis of the latest offer. These things happen
when you have talks going on until late in the night. We have now
moved on from what was put to the stewards this morning. We’re just
waiting for that [revised offer] to be put in writing so that we can
then put it to the stewards.”
The new formula under discussion would allocate half of the
engineering contractors to British nationals.
“We have a formula that was reached very late last night at about 11
o’clock,” the GMB spokesperson said.
“They are talking of a 50/50 ratio of [British to foreign] jobs on the
site. However in this kind of dispute, the devil is in the detail, and
there are other outstanding issues to be resolved. Bums will sit on
seats until we get the right agreement and we won’t be held by a clock.”
The dispute at Lindsey began when Total UK, which owns the Lindsey
facility, subcontracted expansion work on the facility to the Jacobs
Engineering group, which in turn subcontracted the work to IREM, an
Italian group.
IREM subsequently brought Portuguese and Italian contractors to the
site to perform the work, prompting protests by British engineers at
the site, who said they had been excluded from the contract.
The GMB now says that of the skilled – so-called “blue book” –
contract engineering posts at the Lindsey facility, British labour
could even make up even more than 50 per cent under the terms of the
formula.
Unite, the trade union, and ACAS, the government conciliation service,
were not available for comment.
Total UK, which owns the Lindsey facility, declined to comment.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Comment by Anonymous — 4 February, 2009 @ 12:34 pm
#233
So explicitly Michael, you would not oppose Cadbury’s closing the Keynsham factory? You think it is wrong for trade unions to oppose manufacturing jobs being lost by companies shifting production to lower wage economies?
europe is incidently, not “like one country” - there are vastly different rules in terms of working conditions, pay, health and safety, medical cover - and it is responsible trade unionism to organise against a race to the bottom.
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 February, 2009 @ 12:35 pm
#231 When I was in the SWP in the late 1970s the party’s standard formulation was something like “the short-term interests of the working class” (racism, sexism, nationalism, Protestant ascendancy, whatever etc) stand in contradiction to their long-term interests (i.e. internationalism, revolution and socialism).
On this basis, I don’t see really see the problem with Andy’s formulation “it is in the interests of each workforce that they should be the ones to keep their job”. I don’t think it is “disappointing”, I just think that it is accurate. Of course it is in “the short-term interest” of all workers, wherever they are, not to be made unemployed. And if they are made unemployed it is not much consolation at all to them that other workers in Poland or India, or wherever will be getting the next contract.
Similarly, for those workers in the current strikes who are saying “British jobs for British workers” all they are doing is prioritising their “short-term interests” over and above the struggle for socialism (of course, a lot of them are not even thinking in these overtly political terms). And, of course, it is up to socialists to challenge these ideas wherever they manifest themselves. There is quite a bit of evidence that this is being done reasonably successfully by all the left-wing groups right now, including the SWP. The BNP are getting turfed off, the placards are being changed, socialist/trade union resolutions are being accepted at mass meetings and the Guardian today is even reporting demonstrators holding up “Workers of the World Unite” placards!
Comment by Anonymous — 4 February, 2009 @ 12:53 pm
re Cadbury. I’ve opposed closures of workplaces where I’ve been working or allied to. I think it’s crazy to do it in terms of the jobs shouldn’t go to them over there. Capitalists move capital. So you have to fight at a political level ‘don’t close’. This is the opportunity in which you expose how capitalism operates. The real trade union work is in negotiating settlements, access to the jobs in that firm wherever it is, and, ideally, making contact with the workers at the other end to unionise them. You know and I know that if a capitalist decides to move, there is no trade union in the world can stop them moving. It’s an illusion to suggest to workers they can stop them. They have no leverage. Part of the cunning of trade union work, you would say, I think, is operating within the bounds of the possible, whilst raising political issues surrounding it. Encoraging people to believe that they can stop a capitalist from moving elsewhere is the route to disillusionment with trade unions. ‘What’s the point of joining a trade union! they said they could stop the firm moving to X, but they could do nothing.’ As opposed to, ‘Bloody typical. Capitalism doesn’t give a stuff about human beings. They just move capital wherever they want. But we screwed them on the settlement deal and did alright. We went to X with leaflets and it looks like they’re setting up a union there.’
Any thought about Prianikoff’s comment that IREM are ’scabs’, Andy? Any thought on the demand that on the refinery site 50% should go to UK workers???!!! Would that include Irish workers? How would it be determined that they’re really UK? Passports? Work permits from non EU countries can’t apply?
Comment by Michael Rosen — 4 February, 2009 @ 12:53 pm
#232
#231
“For Andy Newman to suggest his omnipotence”
I think you mean Omniscience
Yes I do - total omniscience man.
Maybe you are!
Comment by inf4mation — 4 February, 2009 @ 12:54 pm
# Sorry, 237 was me.
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 4 February, 2009 @ 12:55 pm
I detect constantly in all this that somehow Brit workers have won better deals off employers than European workers. And ‘our’ sites and workplaces are better organised than ‘theirs’. ‘Our’ pay and conditions and rights are better than ‘theirs’. Really? Where’s the evidence for that? I’ve seen it argued that the great thing about Britain was that Thatcherism made the UK very attractive to employers. Was that because our workers’ rights were better than the Europeans? I don’t think so.
Comment by Michael Rosen — 4 February, 2009 @ 12:58 pm
#238 “You know and I know that if a capitalist decides to move, there is no trade union in the world can stop them moving. It’s an illusion to suggest to workers they can stop them.”
What about occupation, comrade?
Comment by Stockwell Pete — 4 February, 2009 @ 12:58 pm
#238
Michael
You say that Cadbury’s workers have no leverage to stop cadbury’s closing a profitable factory, and moving it to Poland. let me repeat that - a profitable factory.
Well, Unite dodn’t deliver a fight in the end - not really the FTO’s fault, the local stewards didn’t have much gist in their kegs. But a strike across the whole bargaining unit - Bourville as well as Keynsham in the run up to Easter or Xmas might have learned management a thing or two. A consumer boycott campaign to prevent jobs being lost. How about publicising the fact that all cadburys chocolate had to be transported from Poland instead of produced locally - and therifre increasing he carbon foorprint.
The history of trade unions is that boses can be persuaded to change their minds.
I love the idea that you would have gone to Keynsham and argued that there was F all they could do to stop the closure, but the good news is that the Polish workers who are going to replace them have taken a union leaflet!
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 February, 2009 @ 1:01 pm
Michael #241
You are staring to come across as a fool now.
Of course wages are lower in Poland than they are in the UK.
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 February, 2009 @ 1:02 pm
How about publicising the fact that all cadburys chocolate had to be transported from Poland instead of produced locally - and therifre increasing he carbon foorprint.
I presume we would be opposed to cadbury exporting as well as other companies… that would go down well with the workers Andy!!!
Comment by ll — 4 February, 2009 @ 1:32 pm
As a question of fact, most cadbury’s chocolate is sold in the UK.
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 February, 2009 @ 1:33 pm
a sneering patronizing fool at that. I guess those Hackney jibes were a bit close to home.
Comment by fred — 4 February, 2009 @ 1:37 pm
BBC scotland
Plant protesters return to work
Workers at Longannet in Fife will meet union leaders on Thursday
Striking workers at Cockenzie power station and the Mossmorran chemical plant in Fife have returned to work after four days of industrial action.
The move comes despite a deal aimed at ending a dispute over foreign labour contracts at UK power plants was rejected by strikers in England.
About 400 workers are still on strike at Longannet power station in Fife.
The Unite trade union said it was due to meet with the Longannet workers on Thursday to discuss a return to work.
The dispute began last week after contractors at the Lindsey oil refinery in North Lincolnshire used only non British labour on a construction project.
A deal proposed by ACAS following talks with refinery bosses and the union would have seen some of the jobs offered to UK workers.
We want fairness from those foreign contractors who are coming to the UK and refusing to recruit UK labour
Bobby Buirds
Unite
However, on Wednesday workers rejected the proposal saying not enough jobs would be allocated to locals.
Despite the news, 120 striking workers at Cockenzie and 80 at Mossmorran have agreed to return to work.
Bobby Buirds from Unite said that although workers had wanted to remain on strike, they had backed a union initiative to end the wildcat action.
He said: “They are aware that this is not a sprint, this is a campaign.
“We want fairness from those foreign contractors who are coming to the UK and refusing to recruit UK labour.”
Mr Buirds said demonstrations would be held at three sites in England, including at the Isle of Grain power station, the Staythorpe plant in Nottingham and at the Lindsey refinery on 11 February.
He added: “We want a change in the Posting of Workers Directive, with a social inclusion clause saying indigenous labour should be used.”
The issue has led to wildcat strikes involving thousands of workers at more than 20 sites in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
On Monday more than 1,500 workers at seven sites across Scotland, including at the giant oil refinery in Grangemouth, took part in unofficial industrial action.
Comment by Anonymous — 4 February, 2009 @ 1:38 pm
Andy is always looking for solutions which are “common sense”.. so BJ4BW makes sense to a lot of people and is a product of low class struggle, union leaders unwilling to fight, a consistent drip drip of anti immigrant hysteria over many years. Andy takes that and doesn’t want oe believe the left can or should challenge it. The problem with this approach is that this slogan has become popular and is extremely dangerous, yes in the begininning the left may be in a minority but so be it. Andy has a view that English Nationalism is progressive etc well I think he therefore feels comfortable with these petty nationalist slogans. where I work those who are inclined to racism are totally boyed by this and those who are the most committed to anti racism and fighting as a union by and large are disturbed by the slogans and union jacks on these picket lines. One women who is Asian stated to me she was always in support of strikes and gives money when asked stated she would be frightend to visit this picket lines. She said the slogans remind her of the 1970’s and the NF. Now this may be not accurate picture of the dispute and I talked to her about why this was happening and there wrere others opposed to the racism but you can understand why she felt the way she did.
I am interested in this light on what Salma thinks about this. I haven’t seen Loach say anything. We know Thornett is basically with the SWP position. So its not clear what respect are saying overall. They haven’t produced any leaflets and as I understand it have not visited the picket lines. There are no financial appeals for the strikers, Galloway has even been to the protests. It seems Respect have abstained from this dispute… really odd.
Comment by ll — 4 February, 2009 @ 1:42 pm
A mass meeting of workers was held today to discuss an offer:
At the end of the ACAS negotiations last night the company were saying that UK workers could have 60 (40 skilled, 20 unskilled) of the 300 workers on the IREM contract. That would not mean laying off Italians (only 100 of whom are in Lindsey as yet) because all the Italian workers are a core workforce for IREM so will still be employed by them. In addition some other concessions have been promised. All of these relate to the specific issues at Lindsey rather than the EU laws, although obviously a victory (if it can be achieved) at Lindsey would set a new precedent.
The offer of 60 workers was roundly rejected at the mass meeting and further actions are planned.
So the strikers are NOT asking for Italian workers to be sacked over British workers, only for fair access to job oppertunities for anyone who is not already an employee of IREM. Hardly rule Britannia?
The SWP finally showed up to Lindsey today and gave out a leaflet which starts out by attacking the BJfBW slogan. At the mass meeting not one word of nationalism or xenophobia was raised by the workers and Keith Gibson rounded it off with calling for “workers of the world unite!” which got a huge round of applause.
Comment by Neil — 4 February, 2009 @ 1:43 pm
He added: “We want a change in the Posting of Workers Directive, with a social inclusion clause saying indigenous labour should be used.”
I assume he wants to see all UK workers working in Europe sent back……
Comment by ll — 4 February, 2009 @ 1:44 pm
251
Neil
I take it back, workers woere holding placards with BJ4BW’s on it, they did not protest outside the Italian workers accomodation, they did not say put british workers first, The picture with a worker fyling a union jack with BJ4BW’s was all a joke and a bit of fun.. indeed it was all fake and made up by the media. Indeed this would of course explain why Respect did not issue any leaflet, whuy Gallowya can’ be bothered to turn up to the picket lines, Salma says nothing as far as we see, Loach has not issued a statement, that Thornett is also like the SWP deluded into thinking the slogans were reactionary and should also be brought to task. The SWP of course should never ever disagree with any worker anywhere because thats not the way. In future I hope the SWP keep their gobs shut and don’t mention asyluim seekers, palestine, iraq, homophobia and racism you see it can upset some workers and we shouldn’t do that. So apologies Neil. By the way, why didn’t Galloway get to any picket line or protest??? It seems Respect have abstained from this dispute…
Comment by ll — 4 February, 2009 @ 1:53 pm
Bloody hell.. I left all the Socialist stuff behind a decade ago because it was obvious that most were just interested in ‘recruiting’ ’selling papers’ and bloody arguing amonst one another.. seems nothing has changed! The first proper ‘wildcat’ strike, instigated and maintained by workers, and here we all are gurning about ‘indigenous this’ ‘immigrant that’.. so bloody busy sitting analysing words from each other, instead of getting out there and trying to offer leadership and support to these, and lets be honest here, brave workers.
So they are waving the Union flag? So what? Perhaps the reason they aren’t waving a SP or SWP flag is because you sit gurning at one another, and have totally missed the boat.. so what do the workers do? They go for a symbol that a)They all recognise, and B) they all ‘feel part of’.. ok, so it doesn’t fit the marx/lenin notebook of proper socialism according to Comrade SP or Comrade SWP.. but hey, it is an IN! They, the workers, have taken it upon themselves to do what they thought they couldn’t, and are seeing the results!
So you boys and girls sit and rip each other to shreds, while the rest of us get on with it.. at least when you are doing that you aren’t trying to tell us we are racist, xenophobic, or wrong for wanting to put food on our tables.
Comment by Neill H — 4 February, 2009 @ 2:31 pm
I think you will find the SP have been getting on with it rather effectively.
Comment by ID — 4 February, 2009 @ 2:36 pm
Neil H. I am a Socialist Party member and I fully support the strike. I also would oppose any attempts to remove the Union Jack from picket lines if an ordinary worker wanted to carry it.
If you read comments from SP members you’ll see a lot of the argy bargy is because we support workers putting food on the table and are opposed to calling workers in struggle xenophobic or racist.
Also in case you don’t know one of the strike leaders in Lindsey is a Socialist Party member.
You will find that it is the SWP and their mates who are in the same camp as IREM and Peter Mandleson.
Comment by Neil — 4 February, 2009 @ 2:38 pm
Oh I have read with interest, and can see the differences in approach, and I know with which one I agree with.. but my overall point was that it is the lack of unity on the Left that will destroy, actually maybe not, but negate, any potential this has.
BTW were has all this ‘you are sectarian’ stuff come from? as a Belfast boy, I haven’t read that word so many times.. has to be since the early 90’s!!
Comment by Neill H — 4 February, 2009 @ 2:44 pm
its ok Neil.. the SP won’t object to the slogan BJ4BW, they won’t argue woth anybody and certianly not see a problem with the union jack and the BNP visitng picket lines. I mean what is the problem . Those bloody SWP have a cheek, they are aguing for a fight against the bosses, against racism and blaming foreign workers because they have silly notion that somehow workers share the same interest and that in the end cutting each others throats isn’t very useful. I know this is silly and rather old hat. I know the left should not say anything and let it all pass by…
on the other hand Neil, just perhaps the idea that BJ4BW is a slogan from the NF in the 1970’s may just give you a slight doubt that all is rosy. The SWP are not in the Mandelson camp or the bosses. The SWP are arguing in the movement and yes on the picket lines that it is not foreigners who are to blame.. do you really have a problem with that?
Comment by ll — 4 February, 2009 @ 3:29 pm
Mark P (#193.), first off, I’m not a member of the SWP, or any IST group. Nor have I ever been.
I asked a very simple question about the mass meeting: was the Bj4Bw slogan even discussed there? The answer seems to be, “no it wasn’t”. This clearly means that it wasn’t “rejected” at that meeting. You can delude yourself into thinking it was, because “class demands” (your words - economic demands would be more accurate) were agreed instead, but it ain’t so. Bj4Bw is a political slogan, it is not contradicted by any of the demands agreed at the meeting.
All that said, I never doubted that comrades on the ground - from various tendencies and groups - have argued against the slogan. I also gather the SP is now in the “hectoring” business and has put out a leaflet explicitly challenging it. Good work, it’s great to see the leading comrades at least have gotten over the idea that it’s simply a poke at Brown etc.
Comment by christian h. — 4 February, 2009 @ 3:33 pm
“the SP… won’t argue woth anybody and certianly not see a problem with the union jack and the BNP visitng picket lines”. SP members helped chuck the BNP off picket lines. You’re such a liar.
Comment by lliar — 4 February, 2009 @ 3:35 pm
Andy, I like your whining about overseas comrades commenting (apparently, immigration works completely differently in the UK than in Canada?). Damn foreigners! Now if only I could remember whose blog extensively commented on the Obama campaign and election, events in Gaza, Tibet, Cuba? Who was that? Can’t have been you - maybe someone hacked this place?
Comment by christian h. — 4 February, 2009 @ 3:39 pm
Fair point Neil.
i take your point about the need for unity. I would say that the only useful kind of unity is principled unity. That is where there is general agreement on aims and tactics.
The SP totally disagree’s with the SWP patronising approach to workers, calling them xenophobic etc. For that reason any unity with the SWP on this issue would isolate us from the workers who are fighting the bosses. This is the kind of unity we can do with out.
I’ve said it before on another thread but it bears repeating. In times of relative social peace, like the last 20 years, where the working class movement is largely dormant, middle class organisations like the SWP can often step into the vacuum and take on a size far greater than their politics warrant. But when the working class starts to move such organisations are quickly found out. Part of the reason for this is because the working class needs unity around correct strategy and tactics and parties like the SWP become an irrelevance at best or a block at worst in such circumstances. What has happened here with this dispute is a text book example of this I think.
Finally on sectarianism maybe this can help. It is a little known fact that there are THREE meanings to sectarianism.
Religious meaning: Discriminating against a person or people on the basis of religion.
Political meaning: Putting the interests of one’s own group or ‘sect’ before the wider interests of the working class.
SWP meaning: Disagreeing with or criticising the SWP. (the most deadly sin of all!)
Comment by Neil — 4 February, 2009 @ 3:40 pm
christian h. - I don’t think your examples help your case, different category and all that. The issue for me is that I would have thought people like anti-capitalista, redbedhead and so on would have learnt their lessons from the detailed interventions they made over the Respect split. Going through the micro tactics of industrial disputes in another country is unlikely to shed any light, particularly when the point of departure is backing a fellow outfit in your international. How many times have we heard absurdities on the left on that basis. The FI used to be the worst - and funnily enough, the SWP statement read like something from the FI official section in the 1970s.
Comment by Nas — 4 February, 2009 @ 5:05 pm
There’s a danger in this discussion that the pronouncements from planet Zorg emanating from ll and Micheal Rosen both set the tone and terrain of debate. (That probably makes me a galacto-chauvinist in their book but quite frankly I’m past caring).
Neil @ 255 said that he ‘would oppose any attempts to remove the Union Jack from picket lines if an ordinary worker wanted to carry it.’
I have to say as a Socialist Party member that I agree with Neil that I would ‘oppose any attempts to remove’ the a flag carried by a member of the union involved.
However if I had the ear of that worker, and especially if I was a member of the union I would suggest to him or her that displaying would be used by the media, Labour right-wingers (and those who chose to line up with them) to misrepresent the purpose of the strike as a nationalist struggle against Italian workers and that the struggle would be helped by not displaying it. I’m sure Neil would do the same.
What I wouldn’t do as an ‘outsider’ is make my support for the strike conditional on the workers accepting my definition of what it’s purpose ought to be, which Michaell and ll continue to do.
Comment by paulm — 4 February, 2009 @ 5:17 pm
#260
Christian
The devil is in the detail. In fact the politics of immigration are very different in Hackney from Grimsby
And to navigate through a particularly difficult issue like this, you need some appreciation of the arguments on the ground, and some way of assessing which sources of informatioon you trust - which requires a network of friends and comrades in the movement.
For example erudite condemnations of the connotation of the word “indigenous” for coca farmers in Bolivia rather miss the point when that is the preferred terminology by the left in the trade unions in the UK actually seeking to organise and help migrant workers.
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 February, 2009 @ 5:18 pm
Actually the question of the Union Jack is interesting, becasue the flag itself has connotations that go beyond national identity, and are specifically associated with far right politics in Britain.
The Scottish, Welsh and English flags, much less so.
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 February, 2009 @ 5:20 pm
Neil #261 - “I’ve said it before on another thread but it bears repeating. In times of relative social peace, like the last 20 years, where the working class movement is largely dormant, middle class organisations like the SWP can often step into the vacuum and take on a size far greater than their politics warrant”
Your political analysis is about as strong as your grasp of political history. Your tailing of the reactionary slogans of the striking workers is on a par with your earlier pandering to homophobia (”homosexuality is a bourgeois deviation”, anyone?) and the laddish singing of sexist football songs on coaches. Also, your top down approach to changing society (”elect a conscious Marxist leadership”, anyone?) will allow you to assume that the slogans put forward from the stewards have somehow become common currency amongst the thousands on strike and the thousands more in sympathy?
Your organisation’s handling of it’s role in in this dispute is riddled by it’s innate devotion to left reformism with a workerist/syndicalist edge. Who needs politics when you can have a short back and sides?
Comment by Inigo Montoya — 4 February, 2009 @ 5:21 pm
#266 “homosexuality is a bourgeois deviation”, anyone?
Yes Tony Cliff did eventually stop saying that, but Duncan hallas maintained that position a bit longer if I recall.
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 February, 2009 @ 5:22 pm
Sorry Nas (#262.), but this is nonsense on many levels. First, the local context of Andy’s whining wasn’t the industrial dispute, it was the impact of immigration on problems of resource allocation and the political conclusions to draw from it. The idea that this impact is fundamentally different in the UK than anywhere else is, frankly, preposterous. I will skip second because I for one don’t want to discuss the Respect split yet again. Third, you don’t know what comrades “point of departure” is; and coming from someone who sees every issue only as it relates to some imagined mistake or internal squabble of the SWP, this is a strange accusation anyway. Fourth, it is you and your fellow SWP bashers who claim that this is not a dispute about tactics - let alone “micro tactics” - but rather - SURPRISE! - shows some fundamental flaw with the SWP etc.. I appreciate you’d like to have your cake and eat it, too - but it doesn’t work that way. Finally, I don’t have to live in a place to see Bj4Bw for what it is. I’ve seen versions of it before in various places.
Comment by christian h. — 4 February, 2009 @ 5:24 pm
Neil - I don’t buy the sociological stuff about the SWP. James P Cannon has a lot to answer for - as does Trotsky to some extent - for this tendency to ascribe positions you don’t agree with to their petit bourgeois position.
Inigo Montoya - If you want to live in the sectarian bickering of the 1980’s, good luck. Most people I know would rather not return to it.
Comment by Nas — 4 February, 2009 @ 5:25 pm
#266
“laddish singing of sexist football songs on coaches.”
IS boot boys here are we
have you ever heard of the IMG?
I say no, I don’t think so
but I’ve heard of the IS
agro!
(agro was 1970s slang for violence)
and froom the SWP era:
We’re on the march with Deason’s army
we’re marching to the Blackpool tower
we’ll fight the Tories on the sand
with a spanner in our hand
we’ll show them a taste of workers power
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 February, 2009 @ 5:26 pm
more laddish songs
oh and my favorite
SWP, we’re the best
we are the fucking trotsky-est
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 February, 2009 @ 5:27 pm
christian h. - as Andy has explained, the politics of immigration, beyond the broad ideological positions, are intensely local. Or, rather, they are if you want to do politics; if you want to do propagandism, ideology and some money to spread it is all you need. And please don’t put words in my mouth. I haven’t said this betrays a fundamental flaw with the SWP. I said I was disappointed with its reponse - ie, I hoped for better, something you don’t do with something that you consider fundamentally flawed.
Comment by Nas — 4 February, 2009 @ 5:28 pm
Andy (#264.), and you may have noticed that I said explicitly that my problem isn’t with the use of the word “indigenous” (although you also may have noticed I’d use “resident” instead, but I appreciate this may be an American sensibility speaking). It is with the way you translate analysis into political demands. These demands are incorrect no matter the detailed situation.
Comment by christian h. — 4 February, 2009 @ 5:30 pm
Trawl the press of the world, look at the Italian CGIL YU for instance and it will be plain that only those sunk in British chauvanism could defend these strikes. On Post 250; really how you can come to this totally upside conclusion, Neil, is beyond me. Workers are to be employed, or not employed, on the basis of their NATIONALITY, the union have accepted this is a good thing and have offered a compromise, but the militant workers have rejected this rotten sellout compromise and have demanded MORE BTITISH JOBS FOR BRITISH WORKERS. And there are similar issues ‘bubbling over’ in many other sites, Simpson tells us. Well us British lads will sort out Johhny Foreigner there as well. That what it bagan as, it was not media lies, the SPEW compromise was a fig leaf, and that is how will be ended. We do not know what test of Britishness the local unions will enforce but they will surely come up with something. And we woun’t have to have any more srikes, because we have now established the BJ4BW principal.
Today’s Indy for a bit of sanity:
Johann Hari: Strike, yes – but not at this target
And so the rage begins. For months we have sat inert as the economic roof collapses in on us. The Greeks and the French rioted, but we – the British – were shocked into silence. Until now. The pervasive insecurity has finally taken physical shape, with thousands of unofficial strikers taking to the streets bearing fury-streaked banners.
So which of the people responsible for knocking out the support beams of the economy are being picketed and pilloried? Is it the market fundamentalist politicians – both Tory and New Labour – who told us endlessly that economies work best when they are regulated least? Is it the bankers, who used this deregulation to spread the dry rot of bad loans throughout the banking system? Is it the bank CEOs who – even now – are using taxpayer money to pay themselves fat bonuses for screwing up? Is it the corporations who are refusing to pay £12bn in taxes every year? Is it the super-rich who are stashing £11.5trn in tax havens – many of them British dependencies – rather than contribute to rebuilding this mess?
No. It is a few immigrant workers, living in hostels. They are the only people who have seen a British protester outside their door in this depression. The wildcat strikes are directed at them – and they are spreading.
Our anger has skipped over the people responsible, to people who are not. Why? The political elite and much of the media have a vested interest in directing our rage away from their own responsibility on to someone – anyone – else. Murdoch’s News Corporation – and other lackeys of self-interested billionaires – sold us the deregulation- mania and tax-slashing that contributed to this disaster, and have refused to pay any net taxes in Britain for over a decade.
The political elite was happy to follow their lead and bask in their applause. So now it has reached its predictable end-point, they have failed to tell the story of how this disaster came to pass. They have not named and shamed the bankers and market fundamentalists who brought the economy crashing down – because they would have to point into a mirror.
So the wildcat strikers settle on the people closest to hand: the Poles and Italians. The men protesting outside their factories and plants are – rightly – worried about their jobs and their futures. Because nobody has given a shape to their anger or offered a roadmap out of this insecurity, they have lapsed into zero-sum scrambling for the scraps that seem to remain.
There is a real issue concerning recent immigration – but it is low on the list of the factors threatening these men’s livelihoods. Nonetheless, we have to be honest about it. It is true that immigrants make a net contribution to the British economy of £2.5bn a year, but it is also true that this benefit isn’t felt equally. When there is a significant increase in the supply of cheap labour – with immigrants arriving in large numbers – the price businesses pay for it falls. This means at the bottom of the income scale, wages are eroded. It is not racist or irrational for people in that position to feel angry.
But is the solution to turn on those immigrants? The protesters in Hull and Lincolnshire are motivated first, second and third by a desire for a secure job. They need to be shown that the route they are pursuing now won’t achieve it – but there is an alternative to fight for that will.
What would happen if we ended the freedom to work across the European Union? Yes, one million Europeans based here will have to go home, and you won’t be competing with them any more. But the 1.5 million Brits based elsewhere in the EU will also have to return too. You would be competing against them instead, in an economy that would be even more depressed by the unravelling of European trade.
No. The best way to deal with the wage-depressing effect of immigration at the bottom is to demand an increase in the minimum wage. This places the white working class and immigrants on the same side against the CBI-led elite – rather than squabbling among themselves as the bankers stroll away laughing.
But this is only the first step. If we are going to pull out of this depression, we need the Government to embark on a huge programme of job creation, just as the US government did in the 1930s. We urgently need millions of jobs anyway to turn Britain into a low-carbon economy – and the Government can pay for it by closing tax havens and finally getting the rich to pay their fair share. That’s real, urgent work.
But so far, the Government’s fiscal stimulus has seemed to only concentrate on people at the top: bankers and big business. Gordon Brown is not talking plainly about launching huge programmes to get Britain working through a depression. His response has been filled with jargon and hard to follow.
Compare it to Barack Obama’s statement last week, calling Wall Street “shameful” and saying “the American people will not tolerate this behaviour”. David Cameron’s Conservatives are much worse, renouncing the idea of any fiscal stimulus at all – guaranteeing a much more bitter economic contraction.
But neither party is going to spontaneously propose the New Deal we need. They have to be pressured into it: even FDR had to be spurred by heavy waves of public protest. My friend Nick O’Donovan has launched a British equivalent to the US campaigning group moveon.org to draw together the great latent mass of people in Britain who want to lobby for a progressive way out of the slump. It is called Dosomethingaboutit.org.uk – and it should be the fulcrum for turning anger currently directed at immigrants into demand for a British New Deal.
If we turn on each other like rats in a cage, the depression will only become longer and more bitter. There is a better way. We should be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the wildcat strikers and, yes, immigrants too, in protests outside Downing Street demanding a big fiscal stimulus that will get us all back to work. That’s the only outlet for our anger that will drag us up and out. Our choice now is between a New Deal – or a national ordeal.
j.hari@independent.co.uk
Comment by Gerry Downing — 4 February, 2009 @ 5:35 pm
Ah, that great authority on workers struggles, Johann Hari. Nice bloke in some ways but his political perspicacity leaves rather a lot to be desired. Took him rather a long time to realise that Bush invading Iraq was not a good idea, I recall.
Comment by ID — 4 February, 2009 @ 5:42 pm
I sing football songs every other Saturday, this is my current favourite;
Tell all the Hearts you know
Wallace Mercer is dead and we’re no
He’s no longer here so lets have a beer
Wallace Mercer is dead and we’re nooooooh
Comment by Eddie Truman — 4 February, 2009 @ 5:46 pm
#267 Sources? Or is this just another slander? Neither Cliff nor Duncan had that position when I first met them in 1969.
Comment by PW — 4 February, 2009 @ 5:53 pm
Change the record Montoya. I answered every single one of your baseless accusations when there was the debate over Andy’s review of Peter Taaffes critique of the SWP.
So can you provide any evidence of anything the Militant said or wrote or did to back this up?
No you can’t.
Can I provide evidence of the SWP…
Calling the 1990’s the 1930’s in slow motion
Calling non payment the Poll Tax an irelevance
Welcoming British troops into Northern Ireland
Yes I can.
However this would be intensly boring for everyone else and this issue is too important to waste time on me slapping you down with a quick peek into the zany world of Tony Cliff. So why don’t we postpone the merry go round to a less important issue so you can say the exact same thing again, and again, and again.
Comment by Neil — 4 February, 2009 @ 5:54 pm
#277
I remember discussing it with Duncan himself in a bar in Bristol, probably about 1989, he was the one who told me.
The context was that Duncan had just done a public meeting where John Sullivan had been in the audience, - John of course opposed gay rights until is dying day. So Duncan was talking about how he had known John Sullivan for decades, and reminsicing about days in the RCP, etc.
Duncan was talking about the homophobic consensus was common thoughout the left pre-Stonewall.
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 February, 2009 @ 5:56 pm
#279
So you are talking about over 40 years ago. As I am sure you will remember, the IS tradition reacted positively to Stonewall unlike many others on the left.
Comment by PW — 4 February, 2009 @ 6:13 pm
this is brilliant.
the swp are attacking the socialist party for singing football songs on coaches. that is the funniest thing i have ever heard.
paul
Comment by Paul Hunt — 4 February, 2009 @ 6:16 pm
#280
Yes I am talking about 40 years ago, in response to Inigo Montoya dragging up positions of the MIlitant nearly as old hat and irrelevent.
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 February, 2009 @ 6:30 pm
Trawl the press of the world, look at the Italian CGIL YU for instance and it will be plain that only those sunk in British chauvanism could defend these strikes.
“If it’s true that a clause in the contract excludes the employment of local workers, we believe this is mistaken and a source of discrimination. The company bears a huge responsibility in cases of this kind. We would also like to note that this is a non-union employer. That speaks volumes about its approach to industrial relations.”
says the CGIL.
Comment by Phil — 4 February, 2009 @ 6:35 pm
Should the strike end with some sort of quota system for overseas workers it will be a sad night.
If this the case (I’m watching the news now))
120 new jobs created / Italians to keep jobs. That’s better.
If it finishes on that note I think the strike has been a success.
We now have to discuss what demands we need to put to our unions and the TUC to make sure a strike with the potential to divide workers on grounds of nationality doesn’t happen again.
Congratulations to the strike committee.
Comment by paulv — 4 February, 2009 @ 6:37 pm
I have to tell you that many of the rank and file strikers want more than the deal offers.
Some want more than 50% at Lindsey - and IREM driven out.
But the real grudge is the 600+ new jobs at Staythorpe power station site.
They want this to go to British labour.
Basically, they want to secure their future jobs - and the easiest and most ‘realistic’ route to achieve this is a mobilisation that mixes class and nationalism.
Comment by Barry Kade — 4 February, 2009 @ 6:46 pm
#276 A brilliant song. Even TWIS has been known to break disipline and join in.
On the crimes of SWP/IS what about supporting the ultra-left coup that signalled the end of the Portuguese revo in 1975. I was unlucky to get caught in the cross-fire.
Or on a football note - deflected revolution - without the revolutionary party the workers and the peasants miss the open goal and the ball is deflected to the petty bourgois
who run up the to other end of the park and create state capitalism.
Bless them the SWP, how do they make these things up?
Comment by Trotsky's Witness In Scotland — 4 February, 2009 @ 7:07 pm
I’ll wait to see what the deal is.
Channel 4 talks about quotas again
Comment by paulv — 4 February, 2009 @ 7:25 pm
OK my fellow S.U readers / writers
I supported the tactic of intervening in the strike to try to bring to the fore the class element and hopefully eclipse the nationalist aspect.
That has had success on the strike committee and the demands of the strike. But while some class demands can be foregrounded, the nationalist element cannot be wished away.
But now some rank and file striking engineering construction workers want to reject the deal.
They point to what they call the ‘bigger picture’ - the issue that made thousands of their fellow engineering construction workers walkout around the UK.
A key part of this bigger picture is the 600+ jobs at Staythorpe site.
Some are saying keep the momentum going until their is victory in the Staythorpe site as well.
What do people here say?
a) Hope they accept the deal at Lindsey and say ‘phew!’ - Hope the nationalist focus is over, and workers can move beyond BJ4BW to better demands etc.
Or
b) Argue for rejection of the ’sell out’?
If Staythorpe is abandoned - that will lead to bitterness.
The ‘nationalists’ will argue that it is a ’sell out’ by ‘internationalist leftist trades union bureaucrats’ wedded to the globalist new labour party - or some such in different words. But if the strike carries on around Staythorpe etc - could this intensify the nationalist element?
If the strike ends - then Simpson’s negotiations for a wider settlement of the issue will of course, go nowhere.
Comment by Barry Kade — 4 February, 2009 @ 7:48 pm
#288
Good post.
I did a)
I’ll sleep on it.
Comment by paulv — 4 February, 2009 @ 7:58 pm
Barry #288
The wiggle room to solve the “bigger picture” is that the unions need to secure government commitment to enact article 3(8) of the 1996 Posted Workers directive directly into UK employment law, thus overturning the Viking and laval judgements by primary legislation.
This would make it illegal for contractors to discriminate against employing UK domiciled labour in construction projects in the UK.
This also takes the dispute clearly away from the direction susceptible to infleunce by far right rabble rousers.
But don’t slur the workers in the construction industry, there is a genuine greivance over Staythorpe, and it is not “nationalist” to say so.
Comment by Andy Newman — 4 February, 2009 @ 9:00 pm
#288 The `deal’ appears something of a sell-out I must say at first sight. However, even though the contract hasn’t been overthrown completely the imposition of the union workers on the contractor is as near as dammit. The principle seems to have been established successfully by the strikers that these gang master contracts are not acceptable. Had, for instance, the union simply agreed to the Italian workers joining the union without challenging the exclusionary basis of the contract that would have been pure opportunism. Yes to signing them up but only if it was to get them on the picket line. So congratulations to the steadfast strikers but this is just the beginning of establishing the principle and pressure needs to be kept up on the union leadership not to acquiese to them in the future and to fight for union deployment of labour on construction contracts.
Comment by David Ellis — 4 February, 2009 @ 9:07 pm
I’m not ’sluring’ workers in the construction engineering trades, Andy.
I’m merely recognising that there is a MIXTURE of class and national dynamics here.
We probably agree that socialists have to bring the class element to the fore - and make it the dominant dynamic. This is the only way workers can win. But it is not an easy or simple task - not in this strike.
But it is not so easy to separate these two elements. It never has been, in world or British history.
Just as it would be a mistake to dismiss these strikes as mere nationalism - and reject them - it would be the equal and opposite mistake to present them as being only about class.
I think that you here lean towards the latter error, while the SWP lean towards the former.
Comment by Barry Kade — 4 February, 2009 @ 9:24 pm
#281 I sing football songs all the time at football matches. I tend not to sing them on demo coaches though, and I don’t sing sexist football songs full stop. Words do have meaning - try not to miss crucial ones out when reading otherwise you end up getting all indignant about things people haven’t said.
Comment by M — 4 February, 2009 @ 9:38 pm
…and the smallprint of this agreement will tell us who and how it will be worked out who is or is not ‘local’ or ‘British’ therefore who is or is not eligible for jobs? And this will be stewards? subcontractors? bosses? Checking passports? Driving licences? IN the site office? Can Irish apply? What about non-EU workers with leave to stay, but living ‘locally’. How local is local? Who determines ‘local’? What will ‘local’ workers do, who think that a guy is cheating eg false address, or false papers?
And this is a working class ‘victory’?
Comment by Michael Rosen — 4 February, 2009 @ 10:21 pm
If I’ve understood the SP (formerly Militant Tendency) comment correctly then their alternative slogan of “Jobs for British workers” is typical opportunist avoidance nonsense. This is true of the SWP also.
The issue is the EU. The founding anti-working class covenant of “Free movement of Capital. goods, services AND labour” is the issue. Recent European Court of Justice (ECJ) judgements reinforcing that and the “country of origin” principle are the issue.
We require the re-introduction of capital and import controls, control of our economy can’t happen without them, socialism can’t be achieved without them.
The EU is a big business driven, neo-liberal, bosses organisation. We should withdraw. the idea of creating a socialist EU is akin to supporting the concept of a socialist NATO.
Failure to understand the fundamental nature of the EU by those who consider themselves socialist can only play into the hands of the fascist right.
As far as I’m aware only the SLP and the CPB understand this issue and have credible positions on the matter.
Comment by Jim — 4 February, 2009 @ 10:45 pm
#291
Dave
I don’t understand your point about the Italian workers and you suggestion that getting them into the union (Italian union or British union) would be opportunist. It would be a dream come true.
Not only would it be a major blow against the union busting contractors, it would make contracting less attractive for the bosses.
Have I missed something?
With the extra jobs as well of course.
Comment by paulv — 4 February, 2009 @ 11:14 pm
well said again michael rosen
Comment by rb — 4 February, 2009 @ 11:33 pm
“I’ve said it before on another thread but it bears repeating. In times of relative social peace, like the last 20 years, where the working class movement is largely dormant, middle class organisations like the SWP can often step into the vacuum and take on a size far greater than their politics warrant”
this is a cracker.. of course the Militant as was were irrelevant in the 1970’s a perod of upsurge in workers struggle.. came to prominance in the 1980’s period of defeat. Supported the falklands war, called for a ballot in the minners strike but only when it went down to defeat, didn’t defend scargill with the witchunts.. “No smoke without fire” was written in their paper, defend Israels right to exist and now oppose boycott Israel campaign!!!, didn’t do anyhting over clause 28, opposed labour party black sections, do sweet fa defending abortion rights particularly in scotland and Ireland, joined in “get your tits out for the lads chants in the miners strike”, daily would proclaim that they were “going forward to a daily” and then never did, Hatton in Liverpool sacked thousands of workers and wore Armani suits as instructed by the Militant to look good and professional (in a gangster sort of way lol). Oh do nothing in STWC, poll tax national cttee had only 1 non militant member, blocked car workers who were SWP members going to the poll tax conference,. All in all they have a rotton track record.. oh by the way blamed respect for islamaphobia!!!! indeed specifically blamed Galloway lol and thats jsut a snippet. oh voted to stop workers striking in the PCS.. fucking bullshit artists.
Comment by faslehood — 4 February, 2009 @ 11:44 pm
Checking passports? Driving licences? IN the site office? Can Irish apply?
Come off it, Michael. If you cared about this level of detail you’d be finding ways to raise these questions with the people actually making the decisions; you wouldn’t be airing them on socialist blogs.
Situation 1: Total has a free hand in awarding contracts to whoever it likes, regardless of UK-wide agreements.
Situation 2: the union has a say in how Total’s contracts are awarded and can ensure that UK-wide agreements are at least partially observed.
In what sense is situation 2 not an advance on situation 1?
Comment by Phil — 5 February, 2009 @ 12:14 am
Because you’re talking form not content. To take a hypothetical and extreme situation (though there was one decision made like this in the early days of Caribbean immigration at, I think Vauxhall): if a group of workers struck because they refused to work with someone on account of the colour of his skin, would we say that was an advance? We would say no, I think. So, not every single bit of collective working class action that wrests power of hiring away from the bosses is of itself necessarily good.
Do I think winning the right to make any job (not just one, but a hundred!) which are for British workers only is a victory? No, I don’t. I think it’s something that we are going to have to cope with in many workplaces and could easily spread by analogy to questions about provision of education, health and housing. People hailing this as a victory have missed the fact that this has turned into a ‘victory’ for quotas based on nationality. It will (yes, it’s ‘detail’ but the ‘devil’s in the detail’ as we know) create site offices, sign-ons and the rest into places where people turn up with passports, driving licences, utility bills in order to prove their right to earn a living. And, with shop steward control of that, with one set of workers overseeing other workers’ right to work on the basis of nationality. I ask the entirely legit question for the building trade: does this include Irish? Why should I be asking such an awful question? It’s terrible that it might even be an issue. Imagine the stewards meeting where they discuss such a thing! And what if a guy turns up who comes from Jersey or the Isle of Man? Is he British? And what about the bloke whose naturalisation papers are going through? Is he British yet? Will he get turned away, until he’s got his passport?
Advance? Are you really asking? UK wide agreements observed - perhaps - but at what price? That there is a UK wide agreement that there should be some Brit only jobs!
Comment by Michael Rosen — 5 February, 2009 @ 12:54 am
#297, ‘faslehood’
“Hatton in Liverpool sacked thousands of workers and wore Armani suits as instructed by the Militant to look good and professional (in a gangster sort of way lol)”.
You don’t have a clue what you are talking about, obviously.
Comment by Eddie Truman — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:14 am
I won’t directly comment on specific UK tactics and perspectives but have some hopefully useful comments from Australian experiences. A little irony for me was that after reading this article and as much of the discussion I could handle last night (our time), this morning I hear in the radio news an official of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union, one of the more leftist unions in the land, demanding the scrapping of special temporary workers visas under with the comment “Australian jobs for Australian people”.
He didn’t mention the undercutting of wages and conditions, only job availability with the downturn. He did say the union had always opposed these types of work visas. I hadn’t noticed that before, only that in the last few years the union and some others had done some good work organising workers on these visas and exposing and scandalising particularly exploitative bosses utilising them. Perhaps a new line encouraged by UK events?
I find Andy’s writings on these issues interesting and thought provoking, even if flawed by I guess a Bauerite devisionism (though he’s right that in my thesis that I sent him I could have engaged with Bauer more). It’s correct and important to distinguish (though not absolutely) national identity and nationalism. I would also distinguish to some extent national culture - internationalists might have a fairly strong sense of national identity or, like me, pretty much none at all, but all would be marked in speech and practice, often unconsciously, by a historically constituted national culture. Comrades in the IS tradition seem to deny this reality.
The main political implication for internationalists is the need to be aware and relate to national history and culture without any concession to nationalism. For example, Green Left Weekly was correct to celebrate in 2003 the sesquicentenary of the Eureka Stockade rebellion, despite the use nationalist use of this event and associated imagery, including by fascists (Socialist Worker was much the same if I recall). But we were also correct in, last week, denouncing “Australia Day” as a racist event, and more correctly described as Invasion Day, as do the more militant indigenous activists (some have moderated this to Survival Day in recent years) - despite many workers undoubtedly not understanding and even being offended by this. Sometimes you have to tell it like it is, when faced with bourgeois hegemony (incidentally I hadn’t realised until I read an indigenous newspaper the other day that Labor had a campaign promise for the late 2007 election of considering a change to Australia Day to a more inclusive date, junked with of course many other things after gaining power).
Andy would know from my thesis that in recent years attempts to articulate a “progressive” nationalism and/or national identity have been counterproductive for even the social democratic and liberal left in recent years. Notably, current PM Kevin Rudd, before gaining the Labor leadership in late 2006, critisised the sterile debate about national identity and national values (that his own leader was then enthusiastically engaged in, handing the conservatives one goal opportunity after another). He then rode to power on a “class” perspective (however moderately and indirectly expressed) of opposing anti-union laws and contrasting social democracy to conservatism.
Liberal, class-blind multiculturalism is a problem here too, but there’s also a tradition (if now attenuated) of working class multiculturalism led by migrant workers organizations. I find Andy’s formulation about immigration not undercutting “host communities” problematic, and think there would be a better “services for all” formulation.
I presume post 29 about Lancashire Maoris descended from 17th century slaves is a joke - the only Europeans to go to New Zealand before Captain Cook and gang in 1769 were some Dutch explorers who were easily crushed by the well-organised Maori, and New Zealand was never involved in the slave trade. Incidentally Polynesians from islands near New Zealand were imported in near slave conditions into Australia until the early 20th century, and there was a trade union campaign against this that was generally very racist.
Cheers,
Nick.
Comment by Nick Fredman — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:17 am
I think, Nick, you would have another excellent historical example that might be of use here. I seem to remember reading Humphrey McQueen’s account of the ‘left’ unions and even Communists in the last years of the nineteenth and early years of the twentieth arguing for a whites-only kind of socialism/communism, particularly in relation to Chinese workers. Weren’t there strikes and pogroms carried out against Chinese workers in the name of socialism? I seem to remember that the great Henry Lawson, poet and short-story writer was active in this too?
The interesting thing in this strike, is that there are people here who want to claim that simply because the union has won some control over the workplace that this is something of itself, that socialists should be cheering about. But if it’s been won on the back of a British jobs quota, and indeed, one of the purposes of union control is to impose a British jobs quota, then where’s the victory?
I know the Australian example I’ve cited isn’t directly analogous. I only mention it because it was an example of high level, working class and trade union activism but with an anti-workingclass (in its entirety) purpose. There are people here who seem to think that if it’s workingclass, active, pro-union, militant and successful in winning some control of hiring (and of conditions), then that’s good enough, or at least a step in the right direction.
Comment by Michael Rosen — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:37 am
The only thing true about post 297 is the name of the Students Waving Placards (SWP) supporter posting.
Comment by falsehood=accurate — 5 February, 2009 @ 2:23 am
Hi Michael,
McQueen’s /A New Britannia/ (1970) is a classic of labour histiography (covering the 1890s), that sharply challenged the then dominant Labor/CP left nationalist paradigm. Lots of examples from various spheres, from memory Lawson is discussed in a chapter called “Poets”. A more pertinent example is perhaps William Lane, more of a labour activist and journalist than Lawson, as well as a writer. In Lane’s novel /A Workingman’s Paradise/ from around 1900, he combined insightful passages explaining exploitation and commodity fetishism with very freaky blood and soil proto-fascism (it’s commonly accepted that the Australian federation proclaimed in 1901 resulted from a liberal/labour alliance around protectionism, labour market regulation and a White Australia).
There were internationalist groups in the in the 1890s-1900s, including in the developing ALP, some challenged racism , others kept their heads down. There wasn’t any Communists as such until 1921, and I think the CP was always strongly anti-racist.
McQueen has always been a bit eclectic (he was generally sympathetic to Maoism at the time except for the Australian Maoists extravegent nationalism), and he originally argued that the Australian working class was really entirely petty bourgeois. Best to read is the 2004 edition http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:11 with an extended afterword along more orthodox Leninist lines, taking up imperialism, the labour aristocracy etc.
Sort of relevant is the fact that my labour/Labor spelling is correct - early on some unions and the the ALP took on the US spelling as a nationalist poke in the eye to the Brits.
As I said I’m not taking any sides here though. BTW enjoyed your comments I happened to hear on BBC World on the poetry at Obama’s inauguration.
Comment by Nick Fredman — 5 February, 2009 @ 2:46 am
297, ‘faslehood’
“Hatton in Liverpool sacked thousands of workers and wore Armani suits as instructed by the Militant to look good and professional (in a gangster sort of way lol)”.
You don’t have a clue what you are talking about, obviously.
Obviously you agree with the other stuff, by the way the Armani suits is all documented by Hatton himself.. he says it was concious to portray an image and this was encourged by Grant etc. Small beer I guess but the Militant are being praised on this site and it makes me laugh given their poor politics and track record. Interesting is that Thornett opposition to Galloways position is not mentioned,Salma doesn’t appear to have made a statement, Loach likewise, Galloway has not gone to the picket lines. I think their absence speaks volumes.
Comment by alf — 5 February, 2009 @ 3:16 am
Ah, ll is posting as “alf” and “falsehood” again, in an attempt to make it look as if other people are as shitty as he is.
Comment by external bulletin — 5 February, 2009 @ 8:28 am
Can SP members and others bear in mind that anyone can post any nonsense on here and claim to represent the SWP (or anyone else) but they are NOT ‘official’.
I for one would most definitely not want to be connected with some of the nonsense above. I’ve got my differences with the SP, but I’ve worked with their members in a few places over the years and for the most part they’re hard working committed socialists. (With an annoying tendency to say that anyone who disagrees with them is not proletarian enough but hey) The issues round this strike clearly need debating and the debate will be sharp, but as far as I’m concerned its a debate between people who will AGREE on 90% of issues (even while they go at it like ferrets in a sack over the 10%).
For example, someone said that the SP wouldn’t have a problem with the BNP being on the picket line. Sorry even if i didn’t know that the BNP had been kicked off LOR i wouldn’t believe that.
Comment by swp member — 5 February, 2009 @ 8:33 am
Post 304: “There were internationalist groups in the in the 1890s-1900s, including in the developing ALP, some challenged racism , others kept their heads down. There wasn’t any Communists as such until 1921, and I think the CP was always strongly anti-racist”.
The ACP was whatever Stalin wanted they to be. Thet were openly racist during WWII, as were all CP’s infamously producing the cartoon celebrating the dripping of the atom bomds in Japan, showing a tortured Japanese face looking up at the decending bomb under the caption ‘Jappy Landing’. Or did they not tell you about that one? But then WWII was the ‘great patriotic war’.
Here is a post from the PS controlled National Shop Stewards Network which shows that some can take objective and internationalist judgements independently of how this might affect their career prespects in the TU bureaucracy:
Why the apparent silence? I couldn’t agree more with Gerry Downing: ‘British Jobs For British Workers’ is a rampantly xenophobic and completely unsupportable slogan. It leads to division within the working class and directly down the path of racism. You can be sure that the BNP agree wholeheartedly with the slogan. It’s not foreign workers to blame for this capitalist mess, it never has been.
The workers are rightly angry at being made to pay for this crisis but socialists should be taking the argument to them that targeting foreign workers is to play ideologically into the hands of the bosses, the governments and the fascist filth who will feed on these sentiments. When such slogans are raised and accepted they provide an audience and direction that is diametrically opposed to that which is needed. We make our task a hundredfold more difficult by not openly and vociferously opposing this ideological poison.
I hope that the lack of discussion - I’ve not seen one other email – is a result of my spam filter misbehaving or some such – rather than anything more worrying.
Come on comrades, can we have some agreement on this or at least an open debate.
Steve Campbell
Comment by Gerry Downing — 5 February, 2009 @ 9:05 am
Michael Rosen and others: this dispute had nothing whatsoever to do with immigrants no matter how much you wanted it to be so.
It was an industrial dispute which was caused by the EU Posted Workers Directive and the judgements by the European Court in cases including Viking, Laval and Ruffert.
The judgements have had the effect of undermining union negotiated collective agreements which are not recognised as `universally applicable’ in the UK.
Comment by Eddie Truman — 5 February, 2009 @ 9:26 am
Michael Rosen: “That there is a UK wide agreement that there should be some Brit only jobs!”
Are you suggesting that Unite and GMB have agreed to a deal that breaks UK anti-discrimination law? Are you suggesting that Derek Simpson and Paul kenny are racists?
You need to be caredful where your are going MIchael.
And what about the provisions in the BBc charter that a certain proportion of radio and Tv content shoudl be locally produced? Maybe it is OK to protect media workers jobs but not contruction workers?
Comment by Andy Newman — 5 February, 2009 @ 9:31 am
The target of this campaign of strikes is now obvious
Attempts to paint the week of walkouts as anti-foreigner look silly now that Polish workers are joining the protests
* Seumas Milne
*
o Seumas Milne
o The Guardian, Thursday 5 February 2009
It has suited government ministers, the CBI and the most backward parts of the British media to present the multiple walkouts by engineering construction workers at refineries and power stations across Britain during the past week as a spasm of xenophobic protest against foreign workers and migration. For Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson and champions of free-market globalisation, this is an indefensible rejection of free trade based on a self-defeating misunderstanding of the facts. As Philippe Legrain wrote in the Guardian yesterday, the strikers have “got it all wrong” by allegedly blaming foreign workers for the mess we’re in.
Meanwhile, the anti-union Mail, Express and Sun have expressed their honeyed “understanding” for people they would normally castigate as wreckers and layabouts. So ingrained has this view of the strikes become that BBC news on Monday managed to edit a striker’s comment in such a way that it appeared he was refusing to work with Italian and Portuguese workers, when he was in fact complaining that he had no chance to do so.
But in reality - as Derek Simpson - joint leader of the Unite union, said, the campaign of strikes “is not about race or immigration, it’s about class”. This is a battle for jobs in a deepening recession and a backlash against the deregulated, race-to-the-bottom neoliberal model backed by New Labour for a decade and now so clearly falling apart.
There certainly has been a danger that the dispute could be diverted into a chauvinistic blind alley, not least because of the cue given by Brown’s cynical and fatuous use of the British National Party’s slogan “British jobs for British workers”, which was then thrown back in his face by the strikers.
But it hasn’t happened. The strikers haven’t scapegoated the non-union Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Polish workers brought in by subcontractors to replace local labour, let alone called for their sacking or repatriation. They’ve targeted the employers and the government. The more nationalistic slogans have largely been replaced - “workers of the world unite” even made an appearance at Total’s Lindsey oil refinery - and union activists have made short work of BNP infiltrators.
Far from being any kind of echo of the small minority of east London dockers who backed Enoch Powell in 1968, the real nature of this dispute was shown by the hundreds of Polish workers who joined the sympathy stoppage at Langage power station in Plymouth on Tuesday: not a campaign for privileges for indigenous against foreign workers, but for the rights of access of all workers in Britain to jobs, and against the use of foreign-based contract labour to exclude or undercut them.
That was underlined yesterday by a joint statement in the name of engineering, construction and chemical workers’ unions across Europe identifying the British strike campaign as part of a wider expression of “anger by working people at the prevailing EU settlement which prioritises the needs of business and capital over those of labour”.
The signs were yesterday that the striking workers at the Lindsey refinery had made a significant breakthrough after shop stewards agreed to recommend a Total offer reportedly opening up half the construction work currently contracted to the Sicilian firm Irem to British employees, without loss to the Italian or Portuguese workers.
Total insists that union-negotiated pay rates weren’t undercut by the Irem contract (subcontracted through a US firm), though British workers suspect they may have been through charges or tax arrangements. But the effect of such contracting chains is to give the whip hand to employers to play one national group off against another and, in this case, to deny jobs to local workers at a time of sharply rising unemployment.
The dispute in any case goes far wider than one site. The focus is now expected to shift to the new Staythorpe power station in Nottinghamshire, where Alstom is using subcontracted Polish and Spanish labour, the refusal to employ British-based workers has been more direct, and the undercutting less open to question.
Underlying it has been the unpicking of the much-vaunted European social model - and the 1996 posted workers’ directive in particular, intended to protect EU workers from exactly the kind of social dumping through contracted labour which is at the heart of this dispute. As usual, the government went for the weakest version, only requiring the minimum wage and basic rights for groups of workers shipped in from elsewhere in the EU. Both the directive and wider union rights have now been undermined by a series of European court judgments which have tilted the balance further in favour of corporate freedom and against workers’ protection. And once again last month, Britain opposed efforts to reverse the impact of the court decisions and strengthen the directive.
No doubt New Labour ministers would regard such moves as protectionism, locked as they are in a discredited free-market mindset. But the idea that encouraging European corporations to send groups of workers back and forth around the continent to live on barges hundreds of miles from home, while others are thrown out of work, is a progressive step - or that it will generate the productivity growth to propel Europe out of recession - is evidently absurd.
Whether these unofficial strikes now fizzle out or not, they represent the first time since the economic crisis went critical that any section of the British public has moved beyond the role of passive spectators and taken matters into its own hands. And although the walkouts are illegal under anti-union legislation, such is the strength of the workforce and public support that employers have so far stayed well away from the courts.
By promising talks with the industry about giving local labour its share, Brown yesterday finally seemed to be recognising that inaction is no longer an option. But talks won’t go far enough. Britain likes to hide behind European legislation, but other governments have shown local employment and social clauses can be included in public contracts under EU rules - and the authority to impose such conditions on new power station licences already exists if ministers are prepared to use it. The strikers have driven the corporate threat to jobs and working conditions to the top of the national and European agenda. Unless the government moves fast, it risks inflaming the very xenophobia it has been warning against.
s.milne@guardian.co.uk
Comment by Anonymous — 5 February, 2009 @ 12:46 pm
And what about the provisions in the BBc charter that a certain proportion of radio and Tv content shoudl be locally produced? Maybe it is OK to protect media workers jobs but not contruction workers?
Rosen you BNP racist.
British radio! For British listeners!
Comment by fred — 5 February, 2009 @ 1:02 pm
You sad buggers, I was just throwing out a few dispersions that I didn’t really know much about. It seems common practice around these parts, you know, to just deploy politically idiotic comments like “middle class organisations like the SWP”, I wanted to get in on the game.
Back at the time I was referencing, I was in school with a short back and sides. My dad still works in a factory too, can I please be working class Neil and Andy? Go on, I’ll wear Bill Stunt jeans from the market and everything!
Comment by Inigo Montoya — 5 February, 2009 @ 2:55 pm
“Rosen you BNP racist.”
Fred
what sort of prat is this fred. SOunds like any objection to BJ4BW’s is out of order for this idiot.
Comment by ll — 5 February, 2009 @ 3:00 pm
317:
“You sad buggers, I was just throwing out a few dispersions that I didn’t really know much about.”
You don’t say!
Comment by Neil — 5 February, 2009 @ 3:29 pm
# - 319 “You don’t say!”
Just following in the steps of your infantile “analysis”, Neil.
Comment by Inigo Montoya — 5 February, 2009 @ 3:37 pm
I think the kind of sectarian abuse thrown around here is so typical of a certain section of the left in Britain. Very few of these comments would be made face for fear of a kick in the bollocks. Typical is the notion that working in education in Hackney means a few Stoke Newington Toddlors Groups. Really? There is as, we know, no social deprivation in Hackney and teachers all clock of at three thirty any way - middle class bastards! It is clear where the argument for uncritical support for this dispute leads. It leads to claiming that immigration is a problem as Andy Newman does.
Comment by disgusted — 5 February, 2009 @ 3:51 pm
It was a joke. I don’t think Michael Rosen is in the BNP but its a bit rich to sneer at workers for being protectionist or even racist when he does work for a organization that has quotas.
Comment by fred — 5 February, 2009 @ 4:02 pm
People hailing this as a victory have missed the fact that this has turned into a ‘victory’ for quotas based on nationality.
No, it’s turned into a victory for trade union representation of a locally-resident workforce. It’s got nothing to do with nationality - British residents are of all nationalities and none. If the guys on the IREM barge decided to settle in Grimsby at the end of their contract, they’d immediately be covered by these quotas based on nationality. Quotas based on nationality are not what this strike has been about and they’re not what has been delivered.
This strike started on what were potentially very dodgy premises, and could easily have gone very bad indeed. The SWP deserves credit for pointing out the risks and insisting that they weren’t ignored. But those dangers have by and large been avoided: this wasn’t a xenophobic strike and it hasn’t delivered a xenophobic result.
From the BBC Web site:
Strike committee member Tony Ryan said: “It’s been a hard week for the lads, this week they’ve stood out in all weathers.
“It’s been a hard-fought fight, and I’m glad the lads are back at work, earning money again, and the Italian lads are still here.”
Comment by Phil — 5 February, 2009 @ 4:02 pm
It is clear where the argument for uncritical support for this dispute leads. It leads to claiming that immigration is a problem as Andy Newman does.
Have you noticed how you can always tell when ll is lying?
Comment by Phil — 5 February, 2009 @ 4:05 pm
I thought Andy was saying that an increase in population puts a strain on services especially in poorer areas where immigrants tend to settle. And that more resources need to be put in. Hardly the same as saying there a problem.
Comment by fred — 5 February, 2009 @ 4:11 pm
Fill in the blanks -
Unemployment and inflation are not caused by __________
Comment by disgusted — 5 February, 2009 @ 4:15 pm
It is clear where the argument for uncritical support for this dispute leads. It leads to claiming that immigration is a problem as Andy Newman does.
Have you noticed how you can always tell when ll is lying?
where is the above quote from? please Phil just let me know who made the quote you have ascribed to me…..
Comment by ll — 5 February, 2009 @ 4:18 pm
“It was a joke. I don’t think Michael Rosen is in the BNP ”
to attack a jewish socialist and think its funny to say he is a nazi is below comparision..
Comment by ll — 5 February, 2009 @ 4:23 pm
the above was with regards to Fred
Comment by ll — 5 February, 2009 @ 4:24 pm
Well, I’m Jewish myself so don’t play that game with me.
he has spent plenty of time inferring far right motives to the strikers, not very nice is it.
Comment by fred — 5 February, 2009 @ 4:36 pm
As people are saying things to me and about me on various threads, I’ll try and say one or two things here, even though, this thread may have passed its sellby date.
1. Andy, your litany of my sins that you presented were mostly attempts at describing the status quo not reasons for not opposing it.
2. You asked me how I would oppose the status quo in those circumstances and I wrote and said how.
3. You’ve put up a list of social and economic conditions that you’ve claimed I’ve acquiesced in. That may be because I didn’t explain myself properly. It may be because you didn’t understand what I wrote. It may be because you didn’t want to understand what I wrote. It may be because you wanted to tell lies.
4. If you want to describe me as someone who doesn’t support strikes, be my guest. I’ve supported every strike I’ve ever known in the whole of my life since my mother gave me money to give to striking busworkers when I was a kid.
5. The issue I’ve raised about this strike have not concerned how the strikers have or have not described the Italians, but about the nature of the demand for jobs to be reserved for British/local workers and the apparent winning of this demand. In all my life I’ve never ever heard before of a strike being fought and now won on this basis.
6. I fully understand how the stewards have won (I hope) a set of guarantees about pay, conditions, rights and unionisation. If so, I’m as pleased about that as any victory won by any workers anywhere in the world.
7. You seem to know about the BBC quotas. For as long as I’ve worked for the BBC, (remember by the way, I was sacked from my staff job at the BBC for being a marxist. I’m hired by the bbc on a programme by programme basis or on a series by series basis (6 programmes at a time). I’m not complaining but that is just about as insecure a contract that exists in the labour market. re the quotas - as far as I’ve ever understood them, they are not ‘local’. They are ‘independent’. There are no quotas based on WHERE you come from. They are based on the fact that are, in effect, subcontracts. A percentage of programmes are subcontracted out to indies. Indies could come from, (as far as I know - correct me if I’m wrong) anywhere in the world.
8. Calling me a middle class shit etc etc clearly helps some people here. I’ve noticed down through the years that when I support the kind of political action that most of us here support, no one tells me that I’m a middle class shit. On the one occasion I’ve said that I thought one central aim of the strike was anti-working class, (I wasn’t defending employers, subcontractors or capitalists, note. Andy had challenged me to describe the real world), I become a middle class shit who reads to toddlers in Stoke Newington. For the record I am proud of reading to toddlers to anywhere and everywhere. As it happens I’ve never read to any in Stoke Newington. As it happens I don’t read. I do a performed show which I constantly vary. It’s a skill and a trade that I work at and try to perfect and take into schools and libraries. If doing this, precludes me from thinking and writing about industrial processes, someone should explain. The other half of my work is very much involved in a job that involves subcontracts and the like. As far as I know, the access to those subcontracts has never ever been formalised into terms that could possible be described as ‘local’ or ‘non-local’. If people have info on that to the contrary, I will immediately eat humble pie.
9. Next time I meet any of you on a Palestine demo or as I’m chucking some money into a picket line bucket, speaking at a meeting fighting closure of schools, hospitals, libraries, sports centres etc, do come over and call me a middle class, patronising, sermonising shit. I’ve got one or two coming up in the next month or so, see you then.
Comment by Michael Rosen — 5 February, 2009 @ 10:45 pm
Can someone who knows more about this than I do answer two questions arising out of this discussion on which I am confused.
First when reference is made by strikers, union stewards and FTOs, or the media to ‘British/local/indigenous’ workers, and specifically when it is announced that 60 or 120 jobs will be set aside for such workers, does this mean either that
a] the advertisements for such jobs will specify a requirement in terms of passport held, ancestry, or domicile within a certain radius of the site; or that
b] the job will be advertised locally rather than in, say, Italy; and everyone responding to that advertisement will be considered for employment regardless of citizenship status or ethnicity.
I had assumed that [b] was meant rather than [a] but if the meaning is as in [a]. Michael Rosen surely has a point. But equally, surely any attempt to apply such conditions - either in the advertisement or when making the appointment - would be illegal, not only under European law but, as I understand it, under British anti-discrimination legislation.
Second; Mick Hall over at his blog ‘Organised Rage’ claims that;
‘The construction industry in the UK and Ireland has a long trade union tradition of employing local labour. In the days when the trade unions dominated the industry this was done by unofficial agreement at a local level between unions and management. In the 1960s and 70’s battles were fought to ensure such practices were adhered to by management. Normally the term local was used to describe the region the construction work was situated in. Local shop stewards and site conveners aimed for a workforce of 75% local—25% traveling-men.
‘There were advantages for the employers of employing local labour in that they had no need to pay the subsistence rates for board and lodging for traveling-men, agreed in national agreement negotiations between the TU and management. There was also a moral issue here for many of the local trade unionists, a large construction site disrupts and impacts on the local community, thus it is only correct that people who live within that community are given a fair chance of gaining employment on it’
http://www.organizedrage.com/2009/01/support-lindsey-construction-workers.html.
Is Mick right? And if he is, were the building industry stewards and their unions wrong?
mick and bldg sites
whose freedom to move whom?
Comment by Stephen Marks — 6 February, 2009 @ 12:25 am
Stephen - If it was a)then either the UK courts would strike it down quickly or the UK would find itself paying Frankovich fines faster than you can say Bolkestein.
Comment by Nas — 6 February, 2009 @ 12:30 am
the last two lines in my post at 332 were notes which I failed to delete when copying and pasting. But the last line reminds me of the point I meant to make. ‘Free movement of labour’ can mean the freedom of labour[ers] to move where they want to go; or freedom of employers to move workers to where the employers want to send them Presumably we are for the first and against the second…
Comment by Stephen Marks — 6 February, 2009 @ 12:37 am
When I was taking leaflets and agitprop round sites over the Shrewsbury pickets, there were some sites I went on, which were 100% Irish. The problem here is re the kind of work. Loosely on sites there used to be ‘labouring’ and the ‘trades’. Labouring was and still is often entirely ‘non-local’. My stepdaughter’s partner was a kind of ganger on the Vauxhall sites and he filled his gangs with ‘illegals’. At that time, mostly from the Balkans. That was to do the labouring. It’s probably different for the ‘trades’.
Comment by Michael Rosen — 6 February, 2009 @ 12:52 am