SOCIALIST UNITY

There is a bit of an exclusive from Salman at the Third Estate, who has an interview with the leader of the Lib Dems, Nick Clegg. Maybe it is a generational thing, or maybe because I have always been politically active in the West Country, historical home of the horrible old Liberal Party, but for me the Liberals are just Tories in jumpers. In the interview Nick Clegg boasts:

We …  now control more big cities outside London than either of the other parties: Bristol, Sheffield, Hull, Leeds, Liverpool, Cambridge – they’re all Liberal Democrat cities, and I could name more. … In all these parts of the country we’re showing the way we treat power, … . People see the difference Liberal Democrats make in these places and they vote for us time and again.”

It is a shame that Salman didn’t push the slimy weasel on their record in Leeds, where the Lib Dem council are currently seeking to cut male manual workers’ pay by up to £6000 per year, in order to bring their pay rate down to the rates of women workers, 600 GMB and UNISON members are now in their seventh week of strike action. These workers are certainly able to tell of the difference the Lib Dems are making! Not only is this unjust for the staff involved, but it drives a coach and horses through the whole equalities agenda, because women workers will be intimidated out of pursuing equal pay and raising the issue of discrimination if the outcome is that they don’t gain, but male workers lose.

There is a new blog from Germany reporting on the cleaners general strike: Sauberkeit hat ihren Preis!   There are some good films on there of striking women in Dortmund (view the more recent one, because the older film has cheesy music!)

We all have guilty pleaures that we are slightly embarrassed to admit to. My dirty secret is that I regularly read John Gray’s blog. This alerted me to an interesting but bizarrely situated debate, about “transformational leadership”. This has started at the UnisonActive blog, responding to a Morning Star article by Gregor Gall. Gregor had noted the passing of a generation of charismatic leaders. like Ken Gill, Jack Jones (and in a different way, even Eric Hammond). this led to a discussion of the difference between “transformational leadership” - which motivates other people to act through inspiring them to share your convictions; and “transactional leadership” which motivates people though patronage and appealing to their self-interest.

Rather oddly, the UnisonActive blog gets this muddled up with the idea that such charismatic leadership can be created by sending the existing numpties and careerists in the Unison top-brass on training courses. Jon Rogers points out“Of course if anyone really wants to create trust, admiration, loyalty and respect then they could sensibly start by taking a stand against the politically motivated misuse of UNISON’s disciplinary procedures (as I may have mentioned now and again and again and again).”

If you look at inspirational trade union leaders from our history, they learned their trade through hard won lessons in grassroots organising in defiance of hostile bosses, and they were inspired by a conviction that trade unionism is a just cause that will lead to a better world. It is hard to believe that the current timid leadership of UNISON can be transformed into clones of Jack Jones or AJ Cook (even Ernie Bevin would be a step forward!) by watching PowerPoint presentations full of Dilbert-like management speak. One has a nasty feeling that the model of a “transformational leader” close to the hearts of UNISON might be Tony Blair. Nevertheless, the point that Gregor Gall raises is a good one, the unions do need inspiring leadership, and that leadership has historically been provided by people who combine socialist conviction with genuine experience of class struggle organising.

Tony Greenstein throws some light on Michal Kaminski, leader of the far-right Law and Justice Party in Poland’s Sejm and leader of the “Conservatives and Reformists Group” in the European Parliament - who manages to both be an outrageous anti-Semite, and also a big supporter of Israel (this does make sense I suppose, if you want to throw the Jews out of Poland, it is handy if to have somewhere to send them). Tony highlights the Jewish Chronicle article that exposed how Kaminski lied when asked whether he had ever worn the fascist symbol, the Chroby Sword. At first he said he had never worn it and had never even heard of it - then later he admitted  to wearing it - rather distastefully comparing the wearing of the Chobry Sword symbol to displaying a Union Jack.

Left Foot Forward has also been asking questions about the connection between David Cameron and Michal Kaminski. This is an important story, because the Thatcherite extremism of David Cameron and George Osborne is usually hidden behind their glib facade, and their dangerous economic policies are an issue too inaccessible for most voters to grasp. But Cameron is exposed as a dangerous extreminst by his locking the Tory party out of the mainstream of European conservative politics and rejecting alliance with Sarkosy and Merkel, (where the Conservatives might have been able to exercise influence to promote British interests) - in favour of a lash up with the Loony-Toons of the the comic-opera European far-right!

Incidently, I was also interested, while looking on the Alexa site rankings package that Richard Seymour’s Lenin’s Tomb gets just 29% of its readership from the UK, 19% of its readership from the USA and 9% from Israel. This compares to Dave’s Part where 71% of the readership comes from the UK, and Socialist Unity blog, where 70% is from the UK.