The Citizen

The Boys Who Cried Debt: The Case Against Cuts

Posted on 21 October 2011 by admin

by Joseph M Schwartz

Republicans and conservative Democrats spent the early months of the year whipping up public hysteria about the debt ceiling and the size of the federal deficit to justify cutting social programs that benefit the middle and working class. These scare tactics are hypocritical because conservatives militantly pushed for these same cuts when the federal budget was in surplus during the Clinton administration. The United States is not broke. The long-term deficit problem has not been caused by wasteful social spending, as the right contends, but by conservatives’ thirty-year project of starving federal, state and local governments of revenue via tax cuts for the affluent and for corporations. Of course, the “deficit problem” could have readily been fixed without cutting Social Security or Medicare if the government enacted policies that force the rich and corporations to pay their fair share in taxes and that curtail wasteful “defence” spending.

The Republican leadership never tells the public that well over half of the deficit spending from 2008-11 has nothing to do with the Obama administration’s policies. Rather, it is due to the lost revenue from the Bush tax cuts and excessive military spending, including $170 billion per year in “off-budget” expenditures on the unnecessary wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Stimulus spending and the bailout of financial institutions make up another 30 percent of the deficit spending of that period, with tax revenue shortfalls due to the recession constituting the remaining 20 percent. Much of these funds will be recovered if and when economic growth resumes. In contrast, drastic cuts to spending on vital social services will only prolong the recession.

The manufactured crisis in early August over whether to raise the debt ceiling created the scare that the federal government would immediately be unable to pay 30 percent of its bills, including Social Security and Medicare payments. The United States Treasury has never defaulted on bond payments, and it was always unlikely that it would this time, but even a brush with default sent the global economy into a tailspin and it could make the Great Recession look trivial. But Republicans and conservative Democrats were willing to play with fire because they wanted to use the threat of default to justify cutting government spending on basic social services.

Government budgets are a statement of a society’s basic priorities and social values. We can readily afford our commitments to social insurance for the elderly and disabled and
federal aid to children and the disadvantaged if we institute a fair and equitable tax structure. The Bush and Reagan tax cuts–which distributed 80 percent of their benefits to the top ten percent of income earners–each cost the federal coffers 2.1% of GDP in taxes per year, for a combined total of $600 billion a year in lost revenue. If we returned effective tax rates to the level of 1960, the federal government would take in $400-500 billion more dollars. In 1960, corporate taxes constituted thirty per cent of federal tax revenues; today, corporate taxes only make up seven per cent of federal revenues.

Thus, returning marginal income and corporate tax rates to those of the Eisenhower era would immediately eliminate most of today’s $1.2 billion federal deficit! Even if we can only reverse the Bush tax cuts on the most affluent 2 per cent (which would yield $70 billion a year in extra revenue) and abolish federal tax expenditures on corporations (such as the oil depletion allowance and the corporate exemption from having to pay taxes on foreign earnings) this would bring in $120 billion per year in revenues. Instituting a modest financial transactions tax of 0.25% on stock, bond, and derivatives trading – the level proposed by the European Union- could bring in another $200-300 billion per year.

The same story can be told at the state and local level: if we taxed the top 20 percent of income earners at the same average rate that we tax the bottom quintile of taxpayers, most state budget deficits would disappear. The money is there – if we tax those who have it.

Our budget problems also issue from public policies that increase income inequality, such as the conservative attack on the right to unionize. U.S. productivity has doubled over the past 30 years. However, over 90 percent of the resulting income gains have gone to the top ten percent of households. Couple that with massive tax cuts for the top ten percent of income earners and you obviously get a long-term structural deficit!

Contrary to right-wing claims, except for prisons and the military the U.S. is the land of small, not big government. While we will take in 24 percent of our GDP as tax revenue in fiscal year 2011, we will spend 30 per cent of our GDP on public spending (at all levels of government). But this 30 per cent figure is well below the average of 36 per cent of GDP channelled through the United States public sector in the 1960s. And these figures pale in comparison with all other developed nations. Neo-liberal Britain is at the relative low end this fiscal year with 31 percent of tax revenue as a percentage of GDP and 36 per cent of GDP being government spending; Germany occupies a middle slot in 2011 with 36 per cent of GDP as tax revenue and over 40 percent of GDP as public expenditure. The Scandinavian countries and France spend 45 to 50 percent of their GDP on public expenditure. Why do the German, French, and Scandinavian electorates support these policies? Because these countries raise tax revenue in a fairer, more progressive manner than does the US. Additionally, the affluent utilise these societies’ high-quality universal public health care and childcare programs and thus are willing to pay higher taxes.

Some of this deficit spending is used to fund useful investments in education, infrastructure, job training and research and development. Just as corporations use debt to invest in growth (healthy corporations often have a debt to annual income ratio of 4:1), governments also should issue some debt. The one structural aspect of our deficit that is not healthy – and that conservatives fail to address – is that caused by our massive trade deficit. The United States needs to produce more useful goods for domestic and international consumption if we are to cease transferring our debt to foreign investors. We should also engage in international trade and labour policies that support labour rights for Chinese and other low-wage workers. But we can only reverse this loss of advanced industrial production in the United States if the federal government makes investments — in infrastructure, research and development, and alternative energy and mass transit – that will spur private investment in new forms of industrial output.

The US can readily afford a humane federal budget that funds productive public investments for our future if we restore progressive taxation and enact prudent but major cuts in “defence” spending. “The People’s Budget” for fiscal year 2012 put forth by the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) achieves these very goals. The People’s Budget ends spending on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and cuts wasteful defence spending while preserving all funding for anti-poverty programs and radically expanding public investments in infrastructure, education, job training, and alternative energy by $300 billion a year – while bringing the total budget into balance by 2021.

The budget recognises that Medicare and Medicaid can only be saved if we put a halt to corporate-driven inflation in medical costs. If we instituted a single-payer Medicare-for-all policy that eliminated the role of private health insurers, we could lower the 25% of private health care dollars spent on health insurance company administration and advertising to Medicare’s seven percent administrative costs.

Profligate spending on the poor did not cause the budget crisis. Tax giveaways to the rich and corporations, massive military expenditure, and an out of control financial sector drove us into the Great Recession and now prevent us from enacting a budget that serves human needs. The irresponsible policies of corporate America caused the economic crisis. We can only revive the economy if we implement a fair tax system that funds vital social programs and public investment in education, infrastructure and research and development.

Posted in 2011 autumn, articles | Tagged budget, deficit, economy, USA | Leave a comment

In search of leadership

Posted on 4 October 2011 by admin

Richard Leonard

In the wake of Labour’s biggest Parliamentary election defeat in Scotland since 1931 it is right to have a frank debate about the Party’s purpose and its future direction.

This must address political failings as well as organisational blunders, long term seeds of decline as well as short term tactical gaffes. The seriousness of the situation requires more than mere rule revisions it demands a radical change in culture. Counter intuitive to some perhaps but it is my firm belief that we need to be a bit less electoralist and a lot more of a political movement again. That is not to dispense with the urgent need to overhaul and update our electoral machinery but to concentrate solely on this would be a huge mistake which history will not forgive us for. What we need to be, now more than ever, is a movement that is democratic, campaigning, which sets out a vision of the kind of society we want to build, an up to date, relevant, compelling case for socialist transformation rooted in working people’s everyday experience, bound by a golden thread of intellectual credibility.

That means Labour needs to rediscover its élan and understand its role in transforming public opinion rather than simply trailing behind it with the aid of focus groups and pollsters. It means winning the argument that the most fundamental division that exists in these islands is not that of nationality but the division between those who by their honest endeavour and hard work create the wealth in our economy and those who happen to own it.

It means being instinctively radical not conservative, not seeking refuge in safety first and the beaten path but capturing imaginations and lifting horizons with our vision of socialism as an inspiring message of change. Our job is also to attack all forms of reaction including nationalism in its ugly inhibiting manifestations of chauvinism. But we must alter the mind set that we can sneak back into office upon the inevitable onset of SNP failure. Our calling is to take affairs into our own hands by building public support for a distinctive and compelling Labour alternative which creates a new hegemony around the redistribution of not just wealth, but of power.

That’s why the election of the next leader of Labour in Scotland assumes such profound importance and moreover why if the leadership
election rules are to be amended to widen the choice of eligible candidate, eligibility should not be confined only to those inside our parliamentary debating chambers. Why should an unelected peer be entitled to stand, but an elected council leader not? We need open recruitment right across the whole of the Scottish labour and co-operative movement so that the Party can decide.

We need a renewal of Labour’s distinctive and historic humanitarian mission to secure equality, peace and democracy including economic democracy.

Bringing this inheritance of those traditional values to life must be a precondition of applying for the post of Scottish Labour leader, because it is a precondition of winning back the confidence of working people.

What is needed is a new leader in tune with the values that brought many of us into the Labour Party in the first place. Someone with a sense of history but forward looking and thinking and driven by a hunger to change society to its foundations, not simply to manage it. A leader with wisdom beyond personal ambition, with passion in their politics, who is prepared to be a champion of grass roots democracy inside the Labour Party and who understands that the Party is not subordinate to them, they are answerable to it. And this should define the style of leadership. As Gramsci would characterise it we want “leadership not domination.”

A new leader who recognises that James Keir Hardie’s decision to found the Scottish and then the Independent Labour Party on the bedrock of the trade union movement is a source of strength not of weakness. Someone who understands that we should not drift further from these moorings in the labour movement but rather steer our Party closer to them and so listen more to the social experience of trade union members.

Someone who will not apologise for the fact that we organise and represent working people right across these islands as part, in turn, of a worldwide movement for change. If our goal is to socialise ownership and control of power in Scotland it is at the level where the power lies that we need to intervene and that economically is predominantly at the UK level.

The Labour Party is not a business making an “offer” to consumers we are a movement with a cause, and an international one at that seeking to enlist the active support of our fellow citizens. And our goal is not to transfer power from one parliament and one set of politicians to another but to transfer power, including economic power, back to the people. That’s our vision for the future. Providing we keep our faith in this, and pay no heed to the sneers of those who claim idealism to be a luxury, then Labour can win again. Despite the setback of May’s election this is not a time to despair but a time to step up our efforts, for in the end people will see right through the insufficiency of nationalism and understand that real self determination can only be secured through democratic socialism.

Posted in 2011 autumn, articles | Leave a comment

What should Labour do?

Posted on 4 October 2011 by admin

Neil Findlay MSP

It is clear from the post-election analysis that Labour lost across all social classes, regions, genders and minority groups and religions. In short we were “gubbed”. On policy and presentation we were simply out thought and out manoeuvred. Put another way Labour was “out Laboured” on policy and “out new laboured” on campaigning. The SNP on the other hand constructed a narrative of the protector of Scotland from the Tory Westminster government, all the while presenting itself as all things to all people and the party of “Scottish Social Democracy” (how does this square with its plans for Corporation tax cuts).

But, the election result brought to a head questions of policy, message, ethos and strategy which have been in need of asking for some time. Considering these questions is fundamental to rebuilding the Labour Party. How we do this is vital, Fads and nicknames should be binned and basic tenets of Labour must be brought back: no more ‘New, Old or Blue Labour’, the ‘Real’ Labour Party must be re-discovered, renewed and revived.

The party has to stop abandoning our traditional supporters in pursuit of the so called “aspirational middle ground.” We could begin by apologising to both our loyal voters and those who deserted us for getting it so badly wrong. I was always taught that when you do wrong you should own up to your errors, be humble and seek forgiveness before rebuilding your friendship which will in the end become stronger and more long lasting– we should follow this lesson.

Yet, only 15-16 years ago things were so different. Then Labour appealed to a very broad section of society. In the mid to late 90’s people believed Labour offered a credible alternative to the tired and nasty Tory Party. So how did we go from having broad and cross-society appeal to our current position? The legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan (and other foreign adventures), benefit cuts, the 10p tax fiasco,
tuition fees, subservience to the markets and the courting of the super-rich (yes including Murdoch), light touch regulation of the banks and the subsequent banking crisis and the expenses scandals all contributed to the electorate falling out with Labour in the UK. In Scotland, this was compounded by bland, uninspiring and sometimes just silly policies and the perceived control of Scottish Labour by London.

Currently, our public services are under all-out ideological attack from the Tories at Westminster. Labour has to be at the forefront leading a campaign for an alternative and positive agenda – we have to be seen as the defender of public services; the defender of a decent and civilised society and we need to say what we would do different. We can do this with our partners in civic society, yes with the third sector who are feeling the brunt of the cuts but most importantly with the Trade Union movement – the greatest ally our party has. In carrying forth this vigorous defence of our public services the party can begin its renewal and the revival of ‘Real Labour’.

As can some solid ideas and principles from the Peoples Charter and Better Way Campaign which will undoubtedly resonate with a Scottish electorate who are currently feeling marginalised, under threat and unjustly treated. These could include: Supporting economic stimulus to attack unemployment – the UK party’s position of “our cuts would be less harsh than the Tories cuts” is not good enough. Investment in the economy to create jobs and stimulate growth can and does work – look at history and we can see how investment not cuts rebuilt the economy, created the NHS and the Welfare state after 1945. Oppose privatisation, including those that the SNP/Lib Dems are proposing in Edinburgh, and say how we would run local government better. Develop – genuinely – co-operative models of public service delivery. Create publicly run renewable energy projects. Rather than cede control to big business (as the SNP is currently doing) we should facilitate community schemes where there is a direct financial benefit distributed to local people. If the council tax is to be frozen, let’s have a freeze for those in the smallest, lowest priced properties but create a new charging structure to increase payments for those at the top of the income scale. Or whisper it – we could look at a (genuine) local income tax based on the principle of progressive taxation – ability to pay – I have never understood why it is good nationally but not locally? Labour should have no fear of promoting fair progressive taxation and a national clampdown on tax evasion – a Scottish, UK and global scandal. If the SNP want new powers for the Parliament then maybe they would have more credibility if they were banging the door of Downing Street asking for powers to deal with tax evasion. We should oppose the SNP demands for powers over corporation tax – there is no evidence cutting corporation tax would create growth – Germany has 33% corporation tax, Greece has 20% and Ireland 10% – Question do we want our economy to be like Germany’s or Ireland’s? Answers on the back postcard to Mr J Swinney. Labour has to champion and be prepared to implement major reforms of financial institutions including a Robin Hood tax on speculative transactions. This is morally and financially the right thing to do. Labour has to promote positive polices like the Living wage across the public sector and ensure that contractors are included and we should be evangelical about getting the private sector sign up too. Labour must reform employment legislation to strengthen workers’ rights and remove fear from employees. And we need to rebuild our relationship with our greatest allies in the Trade Unions, making real efforts to re-engage Trade Unionists in our movement and getting the RMT, the FBU and others back into the party (and Ed let’s stop listening to the metropolitan spinners and show some maturity and get yourself along to events like the fantastic Durham Miners gala day; you did more harm not turning up than you ever will by being there) And Labour should have an investigation into high wages in the public and private sectors including the bonus culture of the city – it is our lack of challenge on issues like this this that tarnished our reputation as the party of fairness. And we should support workers who are resisting redundancies, pension cuts and privatisation as we know it is our people (or our former supporters) who will suffer most.

Considering, and then introducing these types of policies would demonstrate the substance, resolve and principles of a newly renewed Labour Party. As would our determination to fight the downgrading and downsizing of our public services, and opposition to the private vultures who see our public services as ripe for harvest. We could show imagination and vision by making the case for new models of public ownership, for the public and by the public, which create conduits of public and community participation and involvement and which sees our people and communities benefit directly. It is these types of ideas and this type of vision which will help the people of Scotland re-connect again with the Labour Party.

Posted in 2011 autumn, articles | Leave a comment

Miliband’s Clause IV

Posted on 3 October 2011 by admin

Defend the Union link
Mike Cowley

Ed Milliband has, at last, shared his previously well-guarded vision for the future of the Party; trailed in the press as a pre-emptive overture, we are informed with confidence that the problem has been identified. A lack of democracy lies at the heart of the Party’s current lassitude. The only effective curative therefore is more democracy, a diagnosis that surely must fortify the spirits of even the most jaded of Scottish left souls.

As Vince Mills, Chair of CFS and Secretary of the People’s Charter Committee in Scotland has noted previously, the defeats inflicted on the labour movement throughout the 80s/90s left wounds that have still to properly heal. In addition, the architecture of liberal democracy itself has been quietly and deftly compromised, and where possible dismantled all together. The neo liberals ‘long march through the institutions’ left civic society emasculated or cowed. Such consequences were not regrettable collateral damage of the New Right’s offensive against ‘creeping Socialism.’ They were instrumental to the vision of intellectuals such as Hayek, Friedman and later Alan Greenspan. A massive redistribution of wealth and power from the majority to the minority necessitated a relentless assault on the legal capacities of those organisations best equipped to resist such a shift. The UK labour movement – the Enemy Within – had to be dealt with. Labour politicians fell into line, while civil society battled on, its resources incrementally depleted.

Cheap credit allowed many of us, in relative terms, to live out a new type of dream. As our communities fragmented and our workplaces mutated into dystopian jungles, the market offered us the democratic palliative of meritocracy. Complex human appetites were simultaneously infantilised and suppressed with a diet of celebrity gossip, status envy and confected scandal. Everyone could have aspirations. In fact it was your duty as a citizen stakeholder to pursue the dream. You after all, were ‘worth it.’

Now, corruption on an industrial scale is exposed as endemic within the highest echelons of the police, media and political classes. Positions once caricatured as the fancies of leftist paranoia stand revealed as self-evident. We should take heart from this lurid demonstration of how quickly ‘common senses’ can shift, and how radically.

An opportunity presents itself, though without guarantees. A retreat further into cynicism and apathy is just as conceivable as a refocusing of the public imagination on the principles of transparency, accountability and power in both politics and the media. Just a few weeks ago many parts of England were in flames. This can be perceived as a herald of the future – people socialised on gruel of consumerism and police harassment, wondering why their consent should be assumed for a system which as John McDonnell rightly says, of ‘the streets’ in a way which addresses, at last, the baleful drift we have endured these past decades.

So this, we hope, is where the Labour leadership steps into the breach. A perfect juncture offers itself up; a coalescing of circumstances presents the left with a shot at redemption. Ed Milliband raises the banner of democracy! At last, we are to hear how the leaders of our movement are braced to reconfigure social democracy in a modern setting, to assert democratic principles just as the iniquities of the unregulated free market experiment are exposed as the inflammable toxins they are.

Instead of this the influence of the trades unions on Labour Party policy is to be targeted. In tabloid-speak, this is Milliband’s ‘Clause IV moment.’ Dragons must be slain, and seen to be slain. Never mind that Party Conference is little more than a postmodern spectacle of choreography and spin, nor that policy inconvenient to the New Labour project is routinely ignored. Though plans are in their formative stages only, it is clear that the unions are to be marginalised, their influence curtailed and a central shibboleth of New Labour theology delivered.

Where is the evidence that Party members – in submissions to Peter Hain – have been prioritising this shift? From where is the public clamour to be heard? The unions have pledged themselves to resist. Plans to restore the Conference as the sovereign policy making body are being formulated, as are proposals to remove the MP’s separate voting section for Party leadership.

In countries where unions are empowered and active, inequalities are at the lower end of the global scale. Their relative decline in the UK is a direct causal factor in widening income disparities. If the Labour Party is serious in regard to the principles of democracy, it should be seeking out ways of entrenching and extending the reach of the unions. Instead, Milliband will be cheered on by a tabloid chorus now exposed as immersed in the most egregious of corrupt practice.

CFS supporters and readers of the Citizen should prepare themselves to defend the role of unions at Conference. We can most effectively do so through affiliated unions. As the illusions and limitations of liberal democracy disintegrate in front of our eyes, an opportunity to reassert some basic features of Socialist democracy presents itself.

Posted in 2011 autumn, articles | Leave a comment

Reclaiming the Labour Party

Posted on 3 October 2011 by admin

Stan Crooke puts the Campaign for Socialism’s position

There are only two possible outcomes to the current “Review of the Labour Party in Scotland”.

It will either mark the first stage of Labour Party members, and members of affiliated trade unions and societies, regaining control of the party. Or it will condemn the party to further decline and electoral annihilation.

The background to the review is straightforward.

Under the ‘New Labour’ regime the party in the UK lost five millions voters and half of its membership. Annual conferences became media events rather than exercises in democratic decision-making. Many CLPs and branches imploded.
‘New Labour’ in power could find billions of pounds to fight wars, but comparatively meagre sums to fight poverty. It boasted that it was comfortable with people being “filthy rich”. It might have added it was just as comfortable with filthy poverty. The gap between rich and poor increased under ‘New Labour’: income inequalities reached a level not seen since 1945.

Given this scenario, eventual electoral collapse was inevitable. It arrived in 2010 and 2011. In the Westminster elections Labour’s share of the vote fell to its second-lowest level since 1922. In the Holyrood elections its vote in constituency seats was its worst since 1923, and its worst since 1918 in the regional lists.

If the architects of these defeats had any shame, they would accept that they played the central role in leading Labour to defeat, and that the blame for those debacles falls squarely on their shoulders. Incredibly, their argument is that
‘New Labour’ was not ‘New Labour’ enough!.

Labour lost, they say, because it failed to reflect ‘middle class aspirations’ and win over the affluent voters who switched from the Lib-Dems to the SNP. Instead, they claim, Labour ran a ‘traditional’ campaign which appealed only to its ‘tribal supporters’. This is despite the fact that the average salary of someone on a permanent contract in the UK is less than £25,000. It is much less than that that if you are temporary or part time. So much for two cars and foreign holidays.
And 50% of the electorate did not even vote. This was not because they had ‘middle class aspirations’ which Labour failed to meet. It was because Labour failed to offer the policies that would attack social deprivation and inequalities and used the power of the state to create work, not bail out bloated bankers; this would have inspired millions of working people to come out and vote Labour.

Nor was there anything ‘traditional’ or ‘tribal’ about the Labour campaign. Labour’s policies on knife crime and longer prison sentences would not have been out of place in a Tory election manifesto. And the panicked promise of a two-year council tax freeze was simply a watered-down version of the SNP policy of a five-year freeze.

Ironically, in the election campaign ‘traditional’ Labour policies – such as defence of the NHS and opposition to privatisation – were not seen to be the property of the Labour Party.

The party which, however hypocritically, campaigned on the basis of ‘traditional’ and ‘tribal’ social-democratic policies was the SNP. And on 5th May it was the SNP, not Labour, who won.

‘New Labour’ cost Labour the Westminster and Holyrood elections. Party members and members of affiliated trade unions and societies need to ensure that the “Review of the Labour Party in Scotland” does not end up proposing another dose of their failed policies and disastrous party ‘reforms’ designed to give non party and no doubt aspirational labour ‘supporters’ a say in the Party.

It is not enough just to be given space in the Review meetings to let off steam. We also need to make sure that the outcome of the Review includes the input from Party members and affiliated organisations on alternatives like the Peoples Charter and There is a better Way.

The Review’s eventual report should be open to amendment by CLPs and affiliated trade unions and societies. There should be a special Scottish Labour Party conference in the autumn to debate and vote on the report and proposed amendments.
We should also challenge any attempt to weaken trade union input into the Labour Party, such as cutting the trade unions’ share of the vote in policy-making and in electing the Scottish Labour Party leader.

Rebuilding the links between trade unions and the Labour Party is not an optional extra. It is central to what we need to make sure comes out of the Review: restoring the rights of the party membership, and reclaiming the party as a vehicle for progressive social change.

Posted in 2011 autumn, articles | Leave a comment

New Labour’s Foolish Notions

Posted on 3 October 2011 by admin

Jackson Cullinane

Lampooning vanity and extolling the virtues of constructive criticism, Robert Burns famously wrote “O Wad some power the giftie gie us to see oursels as ithers see us, it wad frae monie a blunder free us an foolish notion”.

In the wake of Labour’s disastrous result in the recent Scottish Parliament elections, one such foolish notion currently doing the rounds is that Labour lost because it appealed too much to its traditional support instead of focusing on capturing the middle ground. This view, which is predicated on an analysis of a decline in the Liberal vote and its seeming shift to the SNP, is flawed in a number of ways.

For example it is debatable whether this shifting vote was in fact a traditional mainstream Liberal vote in any case. Since the Iraq war Labour has lost support to the Lib-Dems in Scottish elections and this vote may now have shifted to the SNP.
More fundamentally, however, the “lets target the Liberal vote” analysis does not begin to explain why the most stunning Labour loses were in areas considered to be Scottish Labour heartlands, including former mining areas in Ayrshire, Fife and Lanarkshire and in areas of the City of Glasgow. Perhaps, if lessons are to be truly and accurately learned, we should focus less on dubious statistical analysis and more on what people were saying on the doorstep, during telephone canvassing and in the workplaces in the run up to the May election.

Uncomfortable as it may be to acknowledge, it was common to hear Alex Salmond described as an articulate and strong leader and as someone prepared to defend Scotland from the Westminster cuts agenda. It was also common to hear comments to the effect that the SNP has done “not a bad job” with free prescriptions and the reversal of planned accident and emergencies closures being cited as particularly positive developments. Many voters thought that the council tax freeze was also a positive thing, whilst the ability of Labour canvassers to counter this by pointing out the potential damaging consequences for funding of services was undermined by Labour’s policy reversal and acceptance of a freeze, albeit for a shorter period than that proposed by the SNP. Young voters, recognised as a key constituency in the election, pointed to and praised the SNP’s resistance to tuition fees and graduate taxes. In short, the SNP was perceived as a social democratic, left of centre party. Those now arguing that what was needed was needed was more and not less of “New Labour” will only further distance the party from its traditional base, raise the prospect of further electoral defeat and prevent the rebuilding of Scottish Labour.

On the wider extra-Parliamentary campaigning front in Scotland, there is growing support for the People’s Charter and the STUC’s Better Way campaign that challenging the cuts agenda and pose real alternatives. These initiatives can help shift Labour spokespeople and others from the “too deep and too fast” position on cuts to the more plausible, correct, popular and principled standpoint of “ no cuts, tax justice and protection of public services”. As part of this process, Labour councillors should publish needs budgets were made available, creating a campaigning tool, mobilising Labour at local level in the run-up to the 2012 Scottish local government elections and firmly linking the party to the anti cuts campaign. As my comrade from the GMB, Richard Leonard, commented recently in the Morning Star, Labour needs to be less of an electoral machine and more of a movement.

The People’s Charter and the STUC’s campaign also highlight policies such as the case for a Scottish Living Wage, which has the potential to expose the contradictions in the SNP’s position. Having declared support for a living wage in their election manifesto, the SNP majority government is now pushing for a five year pay freeze for workers in the public sector whist seeking powers to reduce corporation tax. The result would be that the poor pay for the crisis while the rich get hands outs.

Linking with the unions and communities in the Living Wage campaign would be particularly relevant to Labour’s next major electoral challenge, the Scottish local government elections, given the endemic nature of low pay in local government jobs.
The People’s Charter also argues for investment in training, against privatisation and for decent transport services. It could provide a platform for Labour to oppose any plans to privatise Scottish Water or Scottish ferry services and present the case for re-regulating buses and bringing the rail industry in Scotland back into public ownership.

Off course, the SNPs victory in May ensures that the constitutional question is now firmly on the Scottish political agenda. However, it would be a grave error if Labour’s approach to this was to limit discussion around “unionism” versus “nationalism”. There are many in Scottish Labour’s own ranks who would not describe themselves as unionists but as socialists and internationalists. It should also be acknowledged that there is and has always been (to varying degrees at any point in its history) a pro-Home Rule current in the Scottish Labour movement, stretching back to and beyond Keir Hardie.

The central issue here is that Scotland’s constitutional future should be considered by the left as linked to and not divorced from the practical considerations of where real power and wealth lies in Scotland. We should be asking questions such as: would independence or more devolution advance us towards socialism?; would it delay the process or detract from it?; how would it fit with our internationalism? ; and how would it affect the wider labour movement given that the major trade unions are generally organized on a UK/British Isles basis?. In essence, we need to shift the debate on Scotland’s future from the narrow “unionism versus nationalism” parameters to considerations of what powers are required to deliver social progress and enhance democracy and “what kind of Scotland is it that we want to see?”.
Here again, the key is to rebuild the labour movement with a campaigning approach, ensuring that Labour Party banners and activists are visibly in local and national campaigns.

It should be central to the campaign for practical alternative policies outlined in the People’s Charter and championed by the “There is a Better Way” campaign. Such an approach, founded on an honest acknowledgement that the Labour Party in Scotland needs to reconnect with communities and the wider labour movement, offers the potential to avoid further foolish notions and free us from future blunders.

Posted in 2011 autumn, articles | Leave a comment

Ideas into Action – The Socialist Education Group in West Lothian

Posted on 3 October 2011 by admin

Kenny Selbie

The newly founded Socialist Education Group, formed in West Lothian by a diverse collaboration of left political activists, aims to support socialist theoretical understanding amongst its membership, develop critical analysis of the most influential thinkers and writers of the left and harness learning to support education, ideas and grassroots action throughout the communities where its membership has influence.

As post 1970s neoliberalism began to take capitalism to a new height of globalised economic, political and social dominance, to study the ideas and works of left thinkers such as Karl Marx (and take these theories seriously) would have been considered an esoteric indulgence and a complete waste of time.

At the end of the 1980’s and early 1990’s the Soviet Union collapsed, the Berlin Wall was dismantled and the Soviet satellite nations began rejecting State Socialism. At this time Fukuyama declared that this was the ‘end of history’ and that liberal democracy and capitalism had triumphed over communism. We had achieved, Fukuyama proclaimed, the highest form of human relations. At this point many people consigned Marx and his works to the dustbin of history, at best characterised as failed and out of date.

The impact of the latest in a long line of western capital crises in 2008, followed by the 2009 global recession, economic stimulus measures and the resulting attacks on public finance (packaged as national austerity measures) have all contributed to a resurgence of interest in radical left thinking. Critical analysis of the theoretical frameworks which led to the foundations of the global socialist movement has once again become relevant, and when viewed through the context of the current economic climate, it can be argued that such an analysis and the subsequent development of contemporary ideas and action is more important than ever before. Grassroots left activists, from a range of backgrounds and interests, are beginning to discover or rediscover the strong explanatory power of Marxist social, economic and political analysis.

It is within this context that the new Socialist Education Group has emerged. Comprising a membership which already includes wide ranging activism within the Labour Party, the Campaign for Socialism, the Trade Union movement and national feminist campaigning, the group is focused on gaining, and most importantly sharing, a detailed critique of capital and development of an evidence based and credible left alternative within Scotland, the UK and beyond.

As a reading group, the membership will work together to develop and enhance its own knowledge and understanding of the work and ideas of Karl Marx and other acclaimed left thinkers. This in turn will enable the development of a practical working knowledge of Marxist and Socialist tools of analysis.

Openness, inclusion and accessibility are the key underpinning principles. The approach both to learning and engagement within the work of the Group will ensure the creation of a mutually supportive learning environment to encourage both political enquiry and the development of critical thinking. The Group intends to generate activism within the communities of Scotland, where it has geographical ability to do so, by developing presentations and other learning resources to engage a wide range of individuals and community groups in educational opportunities, debate and genuine grassroots action.

Developing a comprehensive critique of the current interpretation of global capital and the impact of its insatiable search for 3% compound growth is in itself a significant challenge. To then aspire to utilise that knowledge to stimulate new ideas, action and positive alternatives is another level altogether. However, by focusing on the key issues and concerns identified through the Group’s continuous analysis, it intends to work towards providing support for, and where appropriate identification of, credible evidence based alternatives to the destructive impact that capitalism continues to create in all our communities and daily lives – throughout Scotland, the UK and internationally.

Through the work of the Group, and in time development of similar networks and organisations across the country, increased awareness and support of the STUC Better Way campaign can be harnessed through the evidence base that will be generated.

The Socialist Education Group will, by its nature, review its purpose and progress on a continual basis. Although founded in West Lothian through an organic chain of connections, the Group already includes membership from West Lothian, Edinburgh and Fife. If you want more information on the Group, or would like to get involved, please contact Stuart Moir via email moir.stuart@o2.co.uk

Posted in 2011 autumn, articles | Leave a comment

Making a Market out of Misery The Con-Dem plans for the English NHS

Posted on 3 October 2011 by admin

Gordon McKay

The first simple question to be posed before embarking on structural change in any organisation is whether the proposed change will deliver an improvement in outcome.

There were undoubtedly areas in the English National Health Service that the Labour Government of 1997 to 2010 could and should have improved on, with the most obvious example being their failure to end the Private Finance Initiative funding model which simply saw huge sums of public money delivered into the hands of private financiers for no good economic reason.

What the Labour Government could rightly be proud of however was both public satisfaction with the NHS and improved clinical outcomes. The British Social Attitudes Survey of 2008 noted a sixty per cent increase in those who were quite or very satisfied with the NHS as compared to 1997. With regards to clinical indicators, infant mortality fell and life expectancy increased for all social groups as well as there being consistent falls in deaths from cancer and cardiovascular disease.

The present Conservative dominated Coalition’s plans for the NHS in England contained in its White Paper ‘Equity and Excellence: Liberating the NHS’ are simply an ideological attack on a publicly delivered service and contain no detail of how they will result in a more efficient or effective service. David Cameron famously claimed that the Conservatives were the Party of the NHS. The game is rather given away however by Mr Kingsley Manning the Business Development Director of Tribal, a private support services company, who stated enthusiastically that the Government’s plans “could lead to the denationalisation of healthcare services in England.”

Outside of the Conservative Party and the private sector there is no support for Andrew Lansley’s proposals. This opposition goes far beyond what would be termed as the usual suspects, it includes the Royal Colleges, the NHS Confederation and think tanks such as the Kings Fund. Cameron, in a pre-election pronouncement on the NHS in England, said that there would be “No more disruptive re-organisation of the NHS.” In the Coalition agreement with their partners the Liberal Democrats the Conservatives said “We will stop the top-down re-organisations of the NHS that have got in the way of patient care.”

What Andrew Lansley has proposed in his White Paper is the biggest structural change to the NHS in its sixty three years of existence. It will abolish Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities and will handover eighty billion pounds of public money to consortia led and operated by General Practitioners. There is little prospect that the vast majority of GPs will be equipped, or able, or indeed willing to operate such businesses and the reality is that they will simple buy in the services of private providers who will then dictate what services can be provided and what patients will be accepted. In effect will take on the operating of the health service in England.

Along with GP commissioning, the provision of services will be opened to “any willing provider” as compared to the preferred status enjoyed by the NHS under Labour. This will allow the private sector to cherry pick the most profitable services and leave the rest to the public purse to provide. This cherry picking of the most profitable will almost certainly leave services such as mental health and addictions to flounder and suffer funding restrictions even greater than they operate on today. Once services are put out tender it is likely that European Union Competition law will make it difficult to bring them back into any future integrated NHS.

A third consequence of the Lansley Bill is that the cap on private patient income provision will be removed which means that there will be direct competition for medical resources between private, fee paying patients and NHS patients. The impact could include both an increase in waiting times and the actual denial of care and treatment. Care provision will be based on the ability to pay rather than need.

As well as privatisation of the Service and reduced provision and quality of care there will be an increase in bureaucracy with services being duplicated and increase in costs due to contracting, billing and invoicing. All of these will take money away from direct patient care.

The NHS will exist as no more than a brand name. The ethos of the NHS will be replaced by a US style health system which is based, not on delivering care but on denying care. As it is through denying care that profit is increased.
The Tory MEP Daniel Hannan said that the NHS was a “grave mistake”. Hannan was of course criticised at the time of these comments by the Tory leadership but then of course they had an election to fight. The White Paper is a model for putting Hannan’s ideas in to practice.

What effect will the proposals have in Scotland? A simplistic response of is to say, “absolutely none” as health is a devolved issue. While the left across the whole of the UK need to oppose Lansley’s Bill it is one of its ironies that the proposals will probably strengthen the Scottish model of funding and delivery.

Since devolution there has been a clear divergence in health policy and delivery between Scotland and England. Westminster has opted to go down the road of, to a greater or lesser extent. a market variant of Bevan’s original vision. In Scotland however we have witnessed a loyalty to Bevan’s publicly financed and publically delivered model.

It was Scottish Labour who started the shift in Scotland from the previous health policies of Thatcher, Major and Blair when they made the decision that there would be no Foundation Hospitals in Scotland, and in 2002 the Labour led coalition took the private white elephant that was the Health Care International Hospital into public ownership and turned it into the very successful Golden Jubilee Hospital providing specialist surgical services. It was also of course the coalition that introduced free personal care to Scotland.

Two SNP Governments have since built on that success and have added free prescriptions and a commitment to scrapping the Private Finance Initiative model of capital funding and replaced it with the more traditional publicly funded model. The most obvious example of that commitment being the new Glasgow Southern General being financed direct from the public purse rather than at the exorbitant long lease arrangements via PFI.

What both Scottish Labour and the SNP proved was not only the popularity of a publicly funded health care system but that the public approach to health delivery worked. Between March 2008 and November 2010 the number of Scots waiting more than fifteen weeks for in-patient treatment fell from over 2,000 to just 58. A thirty-one day cancer waiting target was met a year ahead of target without any difficulty and the number of Scots who registered with a dentist rose by one million.

The genuine furore caused by Lansley’s Bill sent the Conservatives’ coalition partner running for cover and they dropped their original support for Lansley’s plans. The lesson that all Scottish political parties will take is that no political party who threatened the NHS public service model could win power in Scotland. This should ensure that the Labour Party and the SNP will deal with those in their parties who would argue for a more market orientated approach.
The NHS in Scotland will face challenges. While these are not directly related to the Lansley’s Bill, the effect of the funding cuts for the English NHS will feed their way through to Scotland via Barnett consequentials. A further effect will be during the Independence Referendum, which will probably come in 2015, when the SNP will undoubtedly hold up the English NHS as a portent of things to come if Scotland votes No. The NHS will be a battleground in Scotland over the next four years but the war will be fought over the constitution rather than health policy.

Posted in 2011 autumn, articles | Tagged NHS | Leave a comment

A Statement on the Riots by the Labour Representation Committee

Posted on 3 October 2011 by admin

A deeply reactionary furore has been whipped up by politicians and the media in response to the riots that swept London and other English towns and cities.

People in the communities affected were understandably angry at the destruction and disruption caused, but their distress has been hijacked by the government to whip up a witch hunt against anyone involved, and to push an authoritarian agenda. The riots were not caused by technology, benefits, council housing or the lack of police – and future social unrest will not be prevented by shutting down technology, removing incomes and homes, or by deploying, or even employing, more police.

Likewise the punitive and summary sentencing of those charged with offences during the riots has made our legal system a joke. It has also exposed the myth of judicial independence, as magistrates and judges have been told to ignore sentencing guidelines and dish out ridiculous custodial sentences. Some would say such sentencing is a deterrent, yet the UK already has the toughest sentencing in Europe, with proportionately more people in prison than any other EU country.

But the hysteria around this witch hunt is not just limited to the grotesque sentences handed down for minor ‘crimes’ – like six months for stealing £3.50 of bottled water – but has extended to demanding that people’s benefits and social housing should be removed. This is both ethically and logically nonsensical. It would mean poorer people being punished
twice, and a collective punishment on their household.

The anger, hopelessness and consumerist opportunism expressed in the riots will not be resolved by greater authoritarianism or even addressed by those whose interests lie in the maintenance of policies which lead to them in the first place. Alienation and nihilism are the inevitable consequences of a generation of policies that create inequality, promote individualism and condemn hundreds of thousands to unemployment. The labour movement needs to engage with, organise and mobilise the whole working class against such policies and all attempts to divide us against one another and for a form of society which abolishes inequality. As a start we must make every effort to stop this repressive backlash.

Posted in 2011 autumn, articles | Leave a comment

The Fire Next Time

Posted on 3 October 2011 by admin

Mike Cowley

Socialists should tread delicately when appraising the ‘meaning’ of the disturbances down South. Alex Salmond’s complacent and clumsy intervention, suggesting that Scotland was somehow insulated from such schisms, reflects a glib underestimation of the possible consequences of our own inequalities.

We should avoid quantifying the virtues of these cries from the street without qualification. Ordinary people were assaulted and burnt out of their homes. Some lost their lives. Socialist morality dictates an unconditional solidarity with such communities. Although any defiance of the state can and ought to be conceived as by definition political, we cannot caricature the looting of status symbols as acts of radical intent. Status seeking via the symbols of competitive consumption cannot be read as direct challenges to the social order.

Our compassion for these communities should not preclude an analysis of the social, historical and economic conditions which drive such outbursts of impotent rage. Police harassment, gross and disfiguring inequalities, the raising of individual success to the status of religion, the fraying of communities as successive governments disputed the centrality of collective security and endeavour; all of these and more contributed to this predictable catharsis from people with no ties to a society that has long rejected their aspirations out of hand.

Conflate these pressures with the official looting of the public purse by bankers and politicians and the corruption of the police in collusion with the media, and you have a society where anti-social behaviour is normalised at the highest levels. The Tories cannot concede any of this. To do so would represent too great an ideological concession.
Instead their response has been a retreat into New Right certainties: It’s the parent’s (or lack thereof) fault! Lefty teachers are to blame, permissive values, the welfare state and the decline of the church! These platitudes ring shrill and hollow.

This is our chance to distinguish our morals from theirs. So it is heartening to see Ed Milliband drawing some tentative clear lines in the sand. We must push the Party in every way we can on this matter. The feral rich must be made to take responsibility not only for the current crisis they alone are culpable for, but for the venal and divisive values they have foisted on our cultures for too long.

Now is the time for the serious left to demonstrate what unregulated greed does to communities. Calmly, temperately and assertively we must begin to engage a listening public with the alternatives to barbarism. The public are beginning to realise that there has got to be an alternative. We must be confident of our ability to articulate the options.

Posted in 2011 autumn, articles | Leave a comment

Downfall – The Tommy Sheridan Story by Alan McCombes

Posted on 3 October 2011 by admin

“Farce”, someone once pointed out “is much more fun to watch than live through”. This insiders account of l’affaire Sheridan more than bears out this observation.

The title is a misnomer, partly because this is really The Alan McCombes Story, but mainly because, unquestionably, Tommy Sheridan is the author of his own downfall. McCombes writes of the Tommy Sheridan that he knew, and the Tommy Sheridan he helped construct for the rest of us, as his ‘closest political associate for twenty years’.
Of course involvement can have its drawbacks. This volume has a similar level of objectivity and impartiality about its subject that you might expect from The Maggie I Knew by Arthur Scargill or, some would argue a closer parallel, Jesse James by Bob Ford.

Mr McCombes, in his never knowingly underwritten style tells us that ”I didn’t want to be the person to bring into cold daylight the whole sickening sordid, destructive, account,” but somebody had to. This purports to be an “in-depth account of the incidents, the personalities and the politics”. But the politics of it all are,deliberately, played down lest it interfere with the psychodrama.

Take Militant for example – in this telling it comes across as a sort of left wing glee club or perhaps the direct action wing of the Mothers Union. How they operated – other than doing good things isn’t discussed. Of course had it been, lovers of irony would have been denied the pleasure of the former leading Militant outlining his shock and horror at the antics of the Socialist Workers Party and the Committee for Workers International. He claims they showed a blind loyalty to the factional line, they would intimidate and insult opponents and people were even shouted down. Unheard of – at least in this ladybird book treatment of Militant.

Here we have a through the looking Glass version of Tony Benn’s aphorism that “Politics is about issues not personalities”. The issues are skated over – a volte face on Cuba here, an embrace of Scottish Independence there, even party splits, are all despatched in a few lines or paragraphs. That’s because the issue is personality, specifically the one belonging to Tommy Sheridan.

No opportunity is missed to put a negative construction on Sheridan’s behaviour or motivation. If Tommy practices public speaking in front of a mirror, it couldn’t be determination to succeed at a difficult and demanding task, but must be vanity or incipient egoism. It’s a bad thing that Tommy “read very little” but somehow refreshing that Rosie Kane admits to having read very few books. Even a photograph of Tommy on a nursery nurses picket line is captioned as him, not showing support but “using his charm”.

This relentless demonising clouds the story of Tommy’s assisted political suicide. The sheer vileness of the News of the Screws is downplayed, the pressure put on Anvar Khan to testify for them for example goes unmentioned. The pressure put on an obviously fragile woman with a history of mental health issues and drug abuse to give a coherent story is skipped over. Even the moment of high comedy where a reporter reads out from the transcript of a recorded conversation, a denial that he was recording the conversation, is omitted. This isn’t an accident – in this melodrama there is room for only one villain.

The flipside of this, whether deliberate or not, is a picture of the anti-tommy faction as more or less plasters saints. Reality suggests otherwise . The contention that after Tommy’s shock exit as convener no one spoke to the press about why is simply false “Of course he fucking did it” was the exact phrase I got from an SSP MSP months before the defamation trial. During this period Tommy plotted and conspired for support, but according to this account, his opponents did nothing. The idea that veterans of not one, but two, previous party splits stayed at home knitting is difficult to believe.

Not that the other side of this far left tea cup storm deserve any sympathy. I’m no expert, but I’m fairly sure that when Leon Trotsky sat down to write Their Morals and Ours it wasn’t Cupid’s in Manchester that he had in mind.

Despite the hyperbole and inevitable one sidedness, if you were interested in the End of the Tommy Show you’ll enjoy this book. More time and distance might have made for a better one – revenge after all is best served cold not straight from the stove.

Stephen Low

Posted in 2011 autumn, book review | Tagged tommy sheridan | Leave a comment

Scottish Parliament Petition

Posted on 3 October 2011 by admin

At a meeting in August called to discuss EU Austerity, Frank Keoghan, president of the Irish Technical Engineering and Electrical Union and active in the Irish Peoples Movement, called for a strategy that would bring the people of Ireland into political confrontation both with the Irish puppet political elite and their puppet masters in Brussels. My metaphor – his idea, although it seemed very familiar when he argued it. And that was probably because in Ireland the public response to aspects of the austerity package like the savage cuts in public sector pay has, as yet, been fairly muted, as it has been here, so far. We need to change that political mood in Scotland too.

There is already a lot of activity going on in individual unions and in the STUC with another monster demonstration promised for October 1st in support of the STUC’s Better Way. The Peoples Charter for Scotland is committed to playing its part in raising the political temperature. It is perfectly designed for this job because the six demands of the Charter – A fair economy for a fairer Britain. More and better jobs. Decent homes for all. Protect and improve our public services – no cuts, Fairness and Justice. Build a secure and sustainable future for all - offer the basis of defence – no cuts for example - as well as providing a platform for building a better future. It is capable of being broadened in terms of content as well as political appeal to embrace a wide cross section of the Scottish population.

And what gives it particular edge here is the fact that it is a petition and it can therefore be used to engage with people to alert them to the unfairness of the austerity package we face, as well as inspire them with an alternative.

Posted in 2011 autumn, articles | Tagged People's Charter | Leave a comment

Unity Created Strength

Posted on 3 October 2011 by admin

Lessons from the UCS work-in

Stephen Low

“We’re taking over the yards because we refuse to accept, that faceless men, or any group of men in Whitehall or anywhere else, can take decisions that devastate our livelihoods with impunity. They’re not on…The Shop Stewards on behalf of the workers are in control of this yard. Nobody and nothing will come in and nothing will go out without our permission”

With these words, forty years ago Jimmy Reid declared the work-in at Upper Clyde Shipbuilders. The work-in lasted fifteen months, saved all four shipyards in UCS, brought about a major U turn in Government regional policy and spawned a wave of sit ins and occupations across the UK.

These remarkable achievements will rightly be studied for many years to come – but for the moment it is useful for today’s trades unionists and activists to note that this fight has many parallels with current struggles to defend services and jobs.

Then as now, a politically weak Tory government hoped to drive up unemployment and attack trade unions. Like today’s workers in Councils or Health Authorities, UCS stewards had to overcome the challenge of organising across disparate, large, multi union workplaces with a huge number of different jobs and potentially damaging sectional interests. And, as those of us looking to defend public services will have to do – the workforce in UCS looked beyond their own industrial strength and consciously sought to build alliances with other workers and vitally, with wider civil society

Although Clyde shipyards had a long history of union organisation – even militancy – they were also bedevilled by sectional rivalries. Without overcoming these, effective campaigning would be impossible. So at the outset aims designed to secure maximum unity were declared. ‘Not a yard shuts, not a man down the road’.

This gave everyone a stake in the dispute. It also, deliberately, closed off ‘compromise solutions’ involving saving some of the yards. These were offered by Government as the campaign grew and held its support.

Not that the Work-in leaders were rigid in approach, rather they maintained a tactical flexibility. The original demand, for the retention of all four yards within UCS, was dropped to allow the sale of the Clydebank yard – as long as the principle of no redundancies was maintained.

Key to sustaining this unity was a rigorous internal democracy – the elected co-ordinating committee took relatively few decisions. Instead weekly mass meetings were held, with the entire workforce bussed to one or other of the four yards. In addition there were regular meetings at yard and shop level, the proceedings of which would be fed back to the coordinating committee. Regular bulletins were produced and distributed around the yards to keep the workers informed. This two way flow of information allowed the leadership to negotiate, but crucially maintained involvement and engagement in the workforce.

The stewards were aware that however good their organisation in the yards, the struggle could only be won by mobilising support outside. From the beginning they sought alliances and support from as broad a section of society as could be mustered. This was not a random process – detailed work was put into working out who would lose what from the demise of the yards and specific appeals made. The cumulative effect was to completely isolate the government – not merely from its working class support (still significant at that point), but even from most of its base in Scottish business. This approach, with it’s emphasis on working out the economic and social consequences of decisions and building coalitions of support based on the findings is surely one that should be emulated.

This alliance building strategy was helped by the language of the campaign. This was always positive and outward looking; not a campaign to “Save our Jobs” or “Save the Yards”. Rather, from the first leaflet produced, it was a campaign for the ‘Right to Work’. The workforce said to the public “This is not just about us, this is about you”. This can be seen even in the term “Work-in” invented by UCS stewards for the campaign as a more useful term than ‘occupation’. This was demonstrated in Jimmy Airlie’s brilliant riposte to BBC reporter “No we will not occupy the yards … we are not a foreign power … We will work-in” As Reid put it in an interview many years later “We wanted to show that the we wanted to work, and the work was there to do”. A sentiment that many facing cutbacks will identify with.

It is a fact, though one seldom noted, particularly by establishment figures who line up to heap praise on Jimmy Reid, that the work-in was an illegal from start to finish. To point this out is not to suggest that unions can or should pay no heed to the law merely to suggest that in certain circumstances legality may be a matter of tactical calculation rather than principle. After all if corporations can adopt an ‘as legal as necessary’ approach to taxation why should working people do any different when defending jobs and services.

Many of the leading figures in the dispute, Reid, Airlie, Sammy Barr to name a few, were active Communists. This was a significant factor in the success of the dispute. Acknowledging this is not to endorse the CPGB specifically, but for the campaign to have at its centre political activists who were used to considering events in the workplace not as individual happenings, but part of a wider industrial, economic and political context paid enormous dividends.

The struggles facing us today may lack the dramatic architecture of a Glasgow shipyard, and possibly, the stirring rhetoric of the Reid and Airlie, but they are no less serious in scale, nor any less political in nature. Despite the forty years that have passed the campaign for UCS is one that we can still learn from.

Posted in 2011 autumn, articles | Tagged Jimmy Reid, UCS | Leave a comment

Editorial: Spring 2011

Posted on 19 May 2011 by admin

It is time to get angry. Day after day we see how the Con-Dem government is attacking the most vulnerable people in our society. We see its determination to undermine the remaining elements of the welfare state. The media, including the BBC, reinforce the image that somehow ‘taxpayers’ and ‘services users’ are at odds and not actually the same people. They stir up a whirlpool of exaggerated anger against people receiving pensions of a few thousand pounds as a distraction against the super rich who readily damage local economies to increase their already obscene wealth.

In this issue Prem Sikka, not someone given to hyperbole, says “Maybe the UK people need to heed the lessons from Egypt and Tunisia and take to the streets to vent their anger”. Mike Kirby, Vince Mills and Marc Livingstone all call for a united front against the Con-Dem government sensing the time is near at hand when people will be angry enough to fight back.

John Slaven looks at Citizens UK as a new way of galvanising the fight back. Gordon Munro argues that a materialist approach is not enough. He argues that people are taking drugs and alcohol to self medicate against the desperate state of their lives. Thomas Doyle destroys Gordon Brown’s mantra that markets can have morals. Gordon Brown’s view that globalisation is somehow like a stage of evolution and just part of the natural development of the world order is a smoke screen for neo-liberal ideology that allows Cameron to smash what is left of the public sector. We should not let New Labour off the hook. Particularly those who are still around, keeping their heads down, in Westminster, Holyrood and local government.

Bob Thompson looks to a different electoral system to start the process of change and John Slaven to a new type of movement, but neither of these are substitutes for a root and branch change in the labour movement.

We have an opportunity with a new generation of trade union leaders to reject past practices and unite to fight back. We will soon reach a point where these leaders will be faced with demands for action and they will either lead that fight or retreat. Local Councillors will either make cuts or stand alongside services users and providers. MSPs will join campaigns against cuts or do the Con-Dems work for the them. MPs will join the protestors on the streets or become irrelevant. It is one or the other, they can’t do both.

The referendum on the voting system is little more than a diversion and we should not let it become the focus of elections on 5 May. The focus should be the fight back against the Con-Dems brutal attack.

The People’s Charter and There is a Better Way Campaign deserve the support of all those who claim to represent the electorate, trade union members, students or their communities. If they do not give their support to these campaigns then we should ask why they deserve our support. During the Thatcher years the STUC helped establish the Scottish Convention to bring together all strands of civic and political society in Scotland. As Vince Mills argues it is time to convene again to unite all right minded people against the vicious attack and for the People’s Charter.

The Citizen is the journal of the Campaign for Socialism. If you would like more information contact:
Mike Cowley, 47/5 Constitution Street, Leith, Edinburgh EH6 7BG
0131 555 5713
Mike.Cowley@ed-coll.ac.uk

Posted in 2011 spring, articles, editorial | Leave a comment

Government’s Class War Hurts Ordinary People

Posted on 19 May 2011 by admin

Prem Sikka

UK citizens are being subjected to the biggest social engineering project of all times. The government is reducing ordinary people’s wages, pensions and hard-won social welfare rights. It is all being done in the name of reducing public debt and provides a convenient cover for transferring wealth to the rich. Newspapers and commentators repeat the mantra that the country needs to reduce its debt and that we somehow have to take the bitter pill. There is rarely any historical perspective. The current government policies offer little prospect of any economic salvation.

The public debt needs to be understood in a context. Anyone making an investment in a house or other essentials knows that their debt will amount to a large part of their income and might even exceed their annual income, but that in itself is not calamitous. The corporate sector always separates the long-term investment in assets from recurring service expenditure, but successive governments have failed to separate the public debt for investment in schools, hospitals, transport and replacement of crumbling social infrastructure from the rest. These large amounts are paraded in newspaper headlines. Even then they do not support the case for the savage cuts.

In 2010, the UK public debt was estimated to be about 52% of the gross domestic product (GDP) and reached 60% in February 2011, compared to 115% for Italy, 77% for Germany and 71% for the USA. Some of the current UK debt is for long-term improvement in public services, hospitals and schools and is most welcome. Some is due to the failure of successive governments to tackle organised tax avoidance, estimated to be depriving the government of around £100 billion each year. There are considerable disputes about the true levels of public debt and whether it should include some of the borrowings for the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and obligations for public sector pensions. Nevertheless, a look at the historical trends helps in making sense of the austerity programme being hoisted on the people.

The public debt in 1987, about midway through the last Conservative government‟s term in office, was 37% of GDP. The government took its revenge on schools, hospitals, transport and the public sector generally by spending cuts. The government sold council houses but prevented local authorities from building new ones. The link between the state pension and earnings was broken. Millions of children lived in poverty-stricken households. Local councils, schools, universities (and private companies also followed), were given pension holidays and in common with many employers did not make their agreed contributions to pension schemes. This financial alchemy enabled the Thatcher government to reduce the national debt to 26% of GDP. Of course, the private sector was not going to step in and provide public services. The cuts hurt the private sector too as it relied on the government to purchase its product and services. Toxteth and other riots reminded the government that people are not going to take it lying down. By the end of the Conservative years in 1997, public debt stood at around 42% of GDP, and nobody called it a crisis.

The mentality of cuts destroys people‟s spending power, deepens the economic crisis, erodes the tax base and creates misery and insecurity. In the 1920s and 1930s government followed programmes of austerity and from 1918 to 1938, the debt was more than 100% of GDP. In 1918 it was 114%, rising to 177% in 1933. The Second World War brought its own challenges and by 1947 the debt stood at 238% of GDP. The wise souls counselled that the way to reduce it was to stimulate demand, rebuild the economy and redistribute wealth through the creation of the welfare state. The Conservatives resisted it all, but the Keynesian policies brought prosperity and the UK public debt finally fell below 100% of GDP in 1962 and declined to 43% in 1979.

The historical trajectories do not support the view that current public debt is high or that austerity programmes pave the way for long-term economic prosperity, especially when they are not accompanied by any policies for regeneration or investment. Regardless, the government is continuing to further erode the purchasing power of ordinary people and discipline workers. This will increase corporate profits and increase concentration of wealth in fewer hands, but will do nothing to create social harmony or build a sustainable economy.

Currently around 2.5 million people are officially unemployed. The figure would be much higher as 1.2 million are working part-time because they cannot find full-time work. The official total includes 833,000 people who have been out of work for more than a year. Some 965,000 16-24 year olds are out of work. Graduate unemployment is at a new high of 20%. The state pension age will rise to 66 between 2018 and 2020. At 17% of average earnings, compared to an average of 57% for the EU, UK citizens receive the lowest state pension in the western world. As senior citizens are forced to remain in work, young people will find it even harder to find a job. There isn‟t any relief on the horizon.

We have not yet felt the full effect of public sector cuts and neither have we felt the inevitable knock-on effect on the private sector.

There is no sign of the miraculous private sector economic recovery that the government is pinning all its hopes on. Since the last quarter of 2009, some 200,000 new jobs have appeared but only 3% or 6,000 are full-time. The remainder are part-time and will inevitably force people to take on more than one job just to make ends meet. Some young children will rarely see their parents together. The holders of part-time jobs in many cases do not qualify for sick pay, pension rights or paid holidays.

The government needs to stimulate the economy by increasing the purchasing power of the less well-off, investment in infrastructure and restructuring the economy through investment in manufacturing, green technologies and new industries. Instead, the government is engaged in brutal class warfare. The wages of public sector workers have been frozen and many private sector workers are facing the same. The final salary pension schemes have declined and workers are being given inferior schemes for the same or increased pension contributions. In time many will not have adequate pensions and will be forced to a life of poverty and misery in retirement. The prospects of an economic recovery are low as ordinary people‟s purchasing power has been eroded by wage freezes, higher pension payments, national insurance contributions, higher VAT and rising cost of food, fuel and transport. Instead, wealth is accruing to the wealthy through tax avoidance and forcing ordinary folk to either pay higher taxes or forgo their hard won social welfare rights.

Some companies artificially shift their profit overseas but leave tax deductible costs, such as interest payments, in the UK. They want to make profits in the UK, enjoy the benefit of property rights, courts, security, infrastructure, educated workforce, healthcare for their workers, but resent paying taxes to finance them. Corporate tax rate has declined from 52% in 1973 to 28% in 2010 and will be further reduced to 24% in 2014, and will no doubt further boost executive salaries, but corporations still resent paying taxes. The UK taxpayer is still providing loans, guarantees and subsidies to banks to the tune of £512 billion but banks and their executives dodge the payment of taxes, which would reduce the public debt and provide resources for rebuilding the economy. A few examples would help to illustrate the points.

A large number of previously UK based companies have relocated to tax havens. In 2009, Diageo closed its bottling plant in Kilmarnock with the loss of 700 jobs and then warned the government that companies will move their headquarters out of London if the UK tax regime becomes unattractive. Its chief executive warned, “If ever our presence is taken for granted, or indeed the threat of tax becomes onerous, we will look at all our options”. Lord Levene, chairman of Lloyd‟s of London, wants lower taxes for corporations to blunt the lure of offshore tax havens even though the organisation reported a doubling of profits to a record £3.9 billion. Sir Philip Green, estimated to be worth £4.1 billon and the boss of Top Shop, BHS and Dorothy Perkins, has registered the shares of his business empire in the name of his Monaco resident wife. That helped to avoid a tax of £285 million on his £1.2 billion dividend payment. Recently, Barclays Bank declared pre-tax profits of £11.6 billion, but the UK tax payment was only £113 million. Royal Bank of Scotland reported a loss of £1.1 billion for 2010, but its executives picked up bonuses of £950 million.

As the rich have been the biggest beneficiaries, they can also solve the crisis. According to the Sunday Times Rich List, the 1,000 richest people in the UK had wealth of £335.5 billion in 2010. This is an increase of 29.9%, or £77.265 increase of 29.9%, or £77.265 for investment.

Due to incessant attacks on ordinary people, 50% of the adult population now owns billion since 2009. 53 of the richest 1,000 are billionaires. They can‟t spend it all or take it with them to the next world. If the government really wants to reduce the budget deficit, its billionaire friends could help by ending their tax dodging games and giving-up a quarter of their wealth. This would hardly erode the quality of their lives. The government could instil good habits into them by imposing wealth tax, higher rates of income tax, mansion tax, tax on their stock options and higher VAT on luxury items. This would alleviate economic misery for millions and also generate revenues just 1% of the UK wealth and it does not have the capacity to reflate the economy. In 1976 wages and salaries paid to employees accounted for some 65.1% of GDP. The Thatcherite onslaught on workers reduced that total to 52.6% in 1996. After the introduction of the minimum wage and improvements in the public sector it now barely stands at 55%, a staggering reduction of 10% in just over 30 years. Ordinary people have no pot of gold to boost the economy or even see them through harsher times. A recent survey reported that the ordinary man or woman in the UK currently has £1,771 in readily accessible cash savings in banks and building societies. The value of this is eroded by an inflation rate of 5%, whilst savers get a measly 0.10%. This boosts corporate profits and executive salaries, but does not enable ordinary people to save for pensions, a rainy day or help their local high street.

The government’s policies are shaped by old-fashioned class warfare. We are certainly not in this together. The economic and social savagery is unnecessary and there are plenty of other ways of generating revenues to avoid cuts and rebuild the economy. The obsession with reducing debt is covering up harsh economic and social policies. Maybe the UK people need to heed the lessons from Egypt and Tunisia and take to the streets to vent their anger.

Posted in 2011 spring, articles | Leave a comment

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