The Citizen

Elaine Smith MSP

When Johann Lamont uttered the words “something for nothing” she sparked a storm both within and out with the party. The phrase in itself is controversial, in that it has been long used by right-wing elements to undermine the principles of universal benefits and the welfare state. As such its use by a leading labour politician was questionable.

There has since followed much debate on what Johann actually meant by that phrase in the context of her speech. She went on to say: “This is the stark choice that Scotland has to face up to: if we wish to continue some policies as they are then they come with a cost which has to be paid for either through increased taxation, direct charges or cuts elsewhere”.

Undoubtedly her intervention was aimed at the SNP Government and this is where, although I would question her choice of words, I agree with her point that the current administration is protecting some benefits but underfunding and cutting others. Their position is not consistent.

The spending choices of the SNP do need to be put under the spotlight and their stealth cuts exposed. Also, their propensity to cut taxes evidenced by their freeze on council tax, their plans for reducing corporation tax and their removal of the ability to use the Scottish Variable Rate should be highlighted.

Johann went on to say that she would not “tolerate a country where the poorest pay for the tax breaks for the rich”. Unfortunately, that is exactly what is happening as income tax levels for the wealthy are less than they were under Thatcher, the better off benefit most from the council tax freeze and bankers continue to bag obscene bonuses.

However, the answer is not to remove hard won universal benefits; it is to tax fairly. As we know full well in the Labour Party, services for the poor are often poor services. That is why our party has unequivocally supported the universal provision of school education, the health service and free access to libraries, public parks and other vital services provided by local and central govt. The standards are better because we all buy in and we collectively demand improvements.

These services, along with bus travel, further and higher education, personal care, etc. are not “free”. They are paid for by redistribution of resources via taxation and fairer, more progressive taxation has always been Labour Party policy. It is time we started to restate that loud and clear.

Means testing is expensive and can result in some people losing out even when they are entitled to benefits. It also means that the working poor and the so-called squeezed middle suffer financially whilst the wealthy continue to enjoy benefits like ‘free’ medical treatment through company insurance, ‘free’ school meals for their children provided as part of their subsidised, charity status private schools and ‘free’ travel via company cars and limos.

We also know from bitter experience that when we move services away from universalism they then become easy pickings for privateers.

There are changes ahead that will allow for different tax choices to be made no matter the outcome of the referendum in 2014. But of course we have some tax choices even under the devolution settlement.

The referendum in 1998 involved two votes, one for devolution and the other for tax varying powers, and both were overwhelmingly supported, giving a tax mandate straight from the people. However, the tax varying powers have never been used and the SNP failed to maintain the administration fee that allowed this tax to be used.

The tax issue was raised recently in a debate by Jenny Marra MSP who asked why the SNP had “forfeited the Parliament’s constitutionally decided tax-varying powers”. In response Kevin Stewart MSP said “Ms Marra obviously wants to raise income tax, while the Tories want to lower it. To be frank, people are paying enough as it is…”

That was a very interesting exchange, given that at the start of the debate Alex Neil MSP said: “we should let Fred Goodwin get the bus pass as long as he pays for it through much higher taxation, which would help to pay for everybody”. I happen to agree with Alex on that point but this highlights the lack of consistency on the SNP benches.

However, the SNP, albeit a neo-liberal party occupying the centre ground, won the last two elections by presenting an image of a party in touch with the people and to the left of Labour.

No tuition fees, retaining local services like Monklands A&E, committing to no privatisation of the NHS, free prescriptions, promising free school meals, supposedly abandoning PFI and taking an anti-trident/anti-Nato stance, along with their stance against the Iraq war, won them support amongst traditional Labour voters.

The policies to provide free services and benefits have proved popular but there is a cost in providing them if taxes are not increased. The SNP government no longer provide central heating for all pensioners, bursaries have been reduced and music tuition is no longer free.

Other cuts have included withdrawing free orthodontic treatment for children and podiatry services for elderly people, and free personal care is not as comprehensive as it should be due to lack of time and resources.

The council tax freeze was electorally popular but shouldn’t feature in any debate about universal benefits as it is not a benefit. However, the services that the council tax provides should feature, and in particular those that are now being slashed because of this longstanding freeze.

Instead of slashing services, policies to add to our provisions should be under consideration such as free universal childcare which would help parents get back to work and boost our economy and the government should be fully funding free school meals to help tackle poverty and childhood obesity instead of blaming hard pressed councils for not delivering on this.

So, Johann is right to criticise the SNP Government, expose hypocrisy and demand that they be held accountable for their actions. However, if we believe in keeping the universal benefits we have gained since devolution and adding to them via fairer progressive taxation then we must argue for that in the party and across the wider labour and trade union movement.

These are principles that surely must lie at the very heart of any socialist system of Government since universality underpins the quest for a fair society. Universal benefits are fair, efficient, do not stigmatise anyone and they provide a collective benefit paid for by a system of proper progressive taxation.

That is what we should be striving for in Scotland: a redistribution of wealth in a country where there is more than enough to go round but it’s in the hands of the very rich who don’t even know there is a recession and whose wealth has reached record levels in the last year.

The Labour party, set up to represent the working class, has the moral mandate, and should have the political will, to tackle this and rebalance tax in favour of a fairer society. At the moment the reality is that the rich continue to get ever richer whilst the poor get poorer.

Rather than pursuing divisive responses to the current economic situation, such as a rush to separate from our comrades across the border, or being pushed into arguments about which benefit is better, we should be arguing for income tax powers to be devolved in the post referendum settlement if there is a ‘no’ vote. If not then we are in danger of sinking to the depths of an argument that pits the working class against each other.

Free prescriptions or free bus passes? More college places or free university education? Free personal care or reduced waiting times?

The party of the labour and trade union movement must surely recognise that the obscenity in our society is not the person who’s worked all their life, has a decent pension and gets free bus travel; it’s the wealthy few who wouldn’t dream of using public transport but who have just received a massive Tory tax cut.

Keir Hardie could not have anticipated a 21st century Scottish Labour party whimpering about reviewing spending priorities while sick and starving citizens depend on food banks, have their welfare cut and are evicted because of the bedroom tax . Undoubtedly, he would have expected the party to react with a bang and find policies and solutions to advance the interest of the working class and present clear alternatives to SNP and Tory cuts.

The austerity of 1945 did not stop Labour, in government, from introducing radical reforms to nationalise industry and create a welfare state that protected our citizens ‘from the cradle to the grave’. I believe it’s our challenge and our duty to protect our people now through universal provision and progressive taxation and re-establish our party as the mass party of labour. We could make a start by re-affirming our 1945 manifesto statement: “The Labour Party is a Socialist Party, and proud of it”.

John McDonnell MP

When recessions begin to bite and unemployment and poverty mount, there has to be someone or something to blame. Initially it’s anyone or anything other than the real culprits or the real causes.

For three centuries the philosophy of the Poor Law has been drilled into the working class psyche. This dictates that unemployment and poverty are personal failings. It’s not the economic system that’s at fault or the distribution of wealth or power in society. There must be something lacking in the individual if he or she can’t support themselves and their family.

Poor Law morality determines that if people are poor because they are physically or mentally incapable of supporting themselves; they are to be pitied and become the grateful recipients of charity. On the other hand, if they are physically able and not working, they must be consciously avoiding work and therefore have to be chided, sanctioned and forced into employment.

Cast doubt on the assertion that poverty is a personal failing, then the whole question arises that if it’s not the individual to blame it may be the system.

This is exactly the collective thought process that British society went through during the last great capitalist economic crisis which caused the decade-long depression of the 1930s and produced the Second World War.

Two iconic scenes from Ken Loach’s recent film, “The Spirit of 45,” capture the discussions amongst the air raid wardens resting on their bunks between raids and troops returning from war, as they decide that it’s not the individual but the system that needs changing if the scourges of the pre-war unemployment and poverty are to be beaten.

This generation struggled to throw off the Poor Law ideological burden of personal guilt for poverty. After the experience of mass unemployment in the 30s, people understood better that the precarious existence they lived was caused by a system that held them in insecurity and limited their own and their children’s chances in life.

The catch phrase of the time of “Never Again” reflected the determination of working class people to secure change and never to return to the poverty and deprivation of the 1930s. The expression “We are all in this together,” stolen by the present day Tories, reflected not only the social solidarity of the times but also, more importantly, an understanding of the need to move forward to a new future collectively.

The Welfare State was created to reflect this collective approach. The Attlee Government ensured that nobody was to be excluded from universal access to the benefits of the Welfare State. In this way society would be bound together in a joint venture to improve the
quality of life for everyone.

This universal inclusivity secured much greater support and afforded much greater protection for this new social settlement for the future than if any class or group was excluded or singled out.

The Fabian Society’s report “The Solidarity Society” was published in 2009 to commemorate the centenary of the Minority Report that was written by Beatrice Webb to the 1909 Royal Commission on the Poor Law. The Fabian report explains just why this concept of universalism was so central a foundation stone of the new welfare state. It cites three factors.

The first is that universal institutions are an expression of the core ideal of social equality and express our common membership of society and equality of status. Universal institutions do not differentiate between people whilst targeting and means testing make it all too easy for the disadvantaged to be stigmatised and treated as the undeserving.

The second is that empirically and possibly counter-intuitively, universal benefits are generally more effective at getting the help to where it is needed and overcoming problems of low take up. Apart from the administrative simplicity of distributing universal benefits, targeting divides the population into recipients and non recipients and helps create a perception that it is not respectable to claim benefits. The result, for example, is that that one third of pensioners do not claim the pension credit they are entitled to and one half do not claim their council tax benefit.

The third factor is that universalism shapes the support for the welfare policies. Targeting leads to segregation and a sense of “them and us.” The more a benefit is targeted, the more it becomes associated with a stigmatised group and the more its popular legitimacy is undermined. Whilst the wider coverage of a universal benefit can tap into middle class self interest as a source of support for the welfare state and align the interests of middle income groups with those on lower incomes.

The mass support for a universal welfare state was so deep that it outlasted the Attlee government and meant that no Conservative Government for three decades felt able to challenge it.

It also meant that Thatcher, and every neo-liberal since, came to understand that a frontal assault on the welfare state would not succeed because it would be met with opposition from a wide coalition of supporters from across society and most classes. Instead an incremental chipping away at the universal nature of the welfare state might enable a reactionary government to divide and rule.

This has been the exact policy of the neo-liberals in government over the last three decades pursued either consciously by Conservatives governments or, if we are being charitable, unwittingly by New Labour’s Blair and Brown. It’s worth recalling that means testing was extended by the Blair and Brown administrations with a vengeance and the concept of deserving and undeserving poor began to creep back into public policy under them.

An economic crisis makes it that much easier for right wing governments to dismantle the universality of the welfare state with the beguiling argument that the fewer resources available need to be spent on the poorest. This line of thought then leads almost seamlessly to a conclusion that these scarce resources must also be targeted at the most deserving.

With often the best of intentions, Labour politicians become drawn into the debate about the rationing of resources and invidiously into distinguishing between those in need and those that deserve assistance.

It is then that we discover the Poor Law morality of blaming poverty on the individual and not the system is quite shockingly not far beneath the surface. The irony is that there is no reason for Labour to even be drawn into this debate. There is no shortage of resources in

Britain, the seventh richest country in the world. Consequently there is no reason why anyone should live in poverty in our country and there is no insurmountable barrier or lack of a mechanism for mobilising these resources to provide for a fully funded welfare state, providing and distributing its services and benefits on a universal basis.

The introduction of a few simple mechanisms for redistributing wealth and raising the resources to invest to create jobs in our economy would largely obviate the need for much of this unnecessary debate between universalism and targeting. It only appears relevant when there is an apparent shortage of resources. All socialists should keep repeating “there is no shortage of resources.”
If this sounds unrealistic, then simply note that when the banks needed the equivalent of a large welfare benefit payment, the Bank of England and the Government found £1.3 trillion virtually instantly .

There is a standard checklist of how to raise these resources that includes amongst many others tackling tax evasion and avoidance, and introducing a wealth tax, a financial transaction tax on speculation and a land valuation tax.

As our people experience the ravages of the bedroom tax, the new council tax poll tax, the Atos led assault on benefits and the increasing use of benefit sanctions, it is the ideal time for Labour to commit itself not just to reverse these iniquitous attacks but also to a return to a welfare state in which we are all genuinely in this together.

Prem Sikka

Tax avoidance is likely to be a major issue for the 2015 general election. The European Union has estimated that the annual level of tax evasion and avoidance in member states is likely to be around €1 trillion, or around £830 billion. The UK may be losing anything between £35 billion and £150 billion a year.

The loss of tax revenues is a serious threat to the provision of public goods and the state’s ability to reflate the economy. Therefore, curbing tax avoidance will remain a major issue.

This article sketches out some urgently needed reforms.

1. There should be no payment out of the public purse for contracts, loans, grants, guarantees and subsidies to any organisation involved in design, manufacture, marketing and implementation of tax avoidance schemes. Thus banks, railway, utilities, auto, pharmaceuticals and private finance initiative (PFI) companies indulging in tax avoidance would be deprived of taxpayer funded transactions. This policy would also catch accountancy firms PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, KPMG and Deloitte & Touche, who advise government departments whilst operating tax avoidance factories.

2. All tax returns of corporations and wealthy elites, together with related correspondence, should be publicly available. This would enable citizens to alert tax authorities to unusual practices. In addition, public opinion and critical commentaries may deter some from indulging in tax avoidance.

3. All large corporations, as defined by the Companies Act, should publish a ‘country-by-country’ report showing the assets, liabilities, turnover, profits, losses, employees, taxes, etc for each country of their operations. This report would give visibility to anomalies. For example, some multinationals sell goods and services in one country, but book revenues in tax haven subsidiaries run with skeletal staff.

4. Accounting firms are the epicentre of a global tax avoidance industry. In the US, KPMG were fined $456 million for “criminal wrongdoing”. In March 2013 Ernst & Young were fined $123 million after admitting “wrongful conduct” in selling tax dodges. In contrast, no UK accounting firm has ever been investigated, prosecuted, or fined even after the courts have declared its tax avoidance schemes to be unlawful. The legal costs of fighting the schemes fall on the public purse and are not recovered either.

In January 2013, the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee grilled partners from big accountancy firms. The Committee heard that before marketing tax avoidance schemes, the firms’ internal requirements are to apply a “realistic prospect of success” test to the schemes. In the case of PricewaterhouseCoopers, the Committee said that this was set at 25% chance of success, or a 75% chance that the scheme will not be able withstand a legal challenge, assuming that the hard-pressed HMRC has resources. Another firm said that it applied a 50% chance of success test.

The government should shut down the firms marketing abusive tax avoidance schemes. The cost of fighting the schemes should be recovered and the partners designing the abusive schemes should be prosecuted and personally required to pay a fine, at least equivalent to 10 times the tax which would have been lost by the schemes designed by them.

5. Company directors too can increase profits and hence their profit-related remuneration by indulging in tax avoidance schemes. However, there are no penalties when the schemes are shown to be unlawful. This should be addressed by fines, disqualifications, prosecutions and the loss of their pension pots.

6. The UK is the biggest sponsor of tax havens, often referred to as Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories. Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Sark, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Gibraltar and the Turks & Caicos Islands are examples of places routinely implicated in financial crime and tax dodges. The UK is legally and morally responsible for their good governance. That duty should be exercised by ending the corrosive secrecy in tax havens. At the very least these havens should be subjected to the rules of transparency applied in the UK. They should be subjected to automatic exchange of information with other countries and provide names and addresses of all non-resident individuals and corporations who have stashed cash there.

7. The UK tax system is a mishmash of different tax rates. For example, capital gains can be taxed at 18% or 28% though gains by business owners and partners of some businesses may be taxed at 10%. This is in contrast to income tax which may be levied at marginal rates of 40% and 45%. The discrepancy encourages games as accountants try to convert income to capital gains. The games should be ended by adding all gains to total income and taxing it at the appropriate marginal rates.

8. The UK tax base should be rebuilt by considering variables which are hard to avoid. These include a financial transaction tax, recently implemented by France and Germany. Land value taxation should also be considered.

9. The current international taxation system is in urgent need of overhaul. It was devised over a century ago. For a group of companies, consisting of hundreds of subsidiaries, it was agreed that each member of the group would be taxed as a separate entity even though they are centrally controlled. They were to be taxed at their place of residence rather than where the economic value was added. This policy has encouraged tax arbitrage and shifting of profits through artificial schemes. For transfers of goods and transfers within the groups of companies, it was assumed that these would take place at market or “arm’s length” prices. This is now difficult because global trade is dominated by virtual monopolies. 70% of the world trade in controlled by only 500 corporations. Just 10 corporations control 55% of the global trade in pharmaceuticals; 67% of the trade in seed and fertilisers and 66% of the global biotechnology industry.

In the coming months and years, there will be an intense battle to reshape the global tax system. Here two alternative models stand out. One is the ‘formulary apportionment’ method practiced in the US since the 1930s and widely used since the 1960s. Thus a company booking its profits in the tax haven of Delaware cannot avoid taxes on profits in California as profits booked in Delaware are ignored for tax purposes because there is little or no economic activity in Delaware. In fact, regardless of where a company is resident, its total US profits are calculated and then allocated to each state according to an agreed formula based on the location of assets, employees and the incidence of sales.

The second model is the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB) advocated by the European Union. There are lots of similarities between the two models. Essentially, they are based on the recognition that all companies within a group are subject to a common control and strategy. Therefore, they should not be taxed on the assumption of hundreds of autonomous units. Instead, the global pre-tax profit of the whole group needs to be calculated. The artificial shuffling of profits to tax havens are internal transfers and do not result in any value being added. They will be ignored. The total profit of the group of companies can be allocated to each country on the basis of economic activity. Profit is generally a function of assets, employees and economic activity (e.g. incidence of sales). These factors will need to be weighted and applied to pre-tax profits to allocate the amount attributable to a country. That country can then tax it at the desired rate. This method will not constrain mobility of capital as in pursuit of competitive economic advantage companies can relocate operations, but it will curtail tax arbitrage because that has no real economic substance. An international agreement would be needed to operationalise CCCTB, but the issues are not insurmountable.

Trade unions and workers need to campaign to secure effective tax reforms.

Vince Mills

The recent events in Cyprus following hard on the heals of the imposition of EU imposed austerity in Ireland, Portugal, Greece, Italy and Spain have pushed the issue of how we respond to the EU, which has often brushed off by sections of the British left as an irritating distraction, centre stage.

You will remember that to qualify for the 10 billion euro loan Cyprus needed to head off economic crisis, it has to come up with 5.8 billion euros. Bank accounts that exceed the nation’s deposit insurance limit of 100,000 euros are to be raided. The deal also involved winding down the Popular Bank (Laiki) where 1,500 jobs will go, with all the big depositors’ cash going into an unsecured “bad bank”.

Given that the financial sector accounts for 45% of the nation’s GDP and employs 70% the workforce, the damage to credibility means the future of the finance sector is now in serious doubt. This together with cuts and the selling off of public assets guarantees a long period of misery for the people of Cyprus.

Faced with the Cypriot crisis and other econmic and social disasters the European Left seems strangely paralysed. Writing in 2011, Gerassimos Moschonas, an Associate Professor at Panteion University in Athens, argues that the European radical left faces a sharp dilemma. On the one hand he argues that it could choose to work inside the EU, adopting “a long-haul, long-term

reformist project, with limited prospects of imposing its preferences in the short and medium term”, or alternatively, he argues, it could opt for an anti-EU policy and engage in the logic of a national “go it alone” strategy which would mean exiting from the euro and returning to national sovereignty.

He claims that this dilemma has no obvious solution. Those arguing for reform have difficulty in convincing European populations about their ability to promote fundamental changes. The anti-EU left have difficulty in convincing people of the feasibility of the breaking away, allowing them to be labeled as ‘extremist’.

However, the prospects for the reformist project are not only difficult to achieve in “the short and medium term” – they appear impossible, even in the long term.

Why, because both in terms of its structures and its political direction the EU has been created in order to deliver for European capital. Further, the EU is not open to the democratic pressure that can be applied against governments in Britain, or Spain or Cyprus, because the EU is not a state. In the words of Matthew MacDonald, it is a “vehicle for the collective interests of its member states”, whose decisions are agreed outwith the democratic processes of the member states concerned; it is the collective interest of capital that increasingly seeks to impose fiscal and policy positions that are not an expression of the will of European peoples.
The current project of the Eurocratic elite is to further dilute national sovereignty in favour of the collective project of European capital, in so far as that can be agreed. This is not unopposed and we should not underestimate these historic tensions which are

only too evident in the British Tory party about the best direction for British capitalism which UKIP has been adroit at exploiting.
The political project of the EU, has been nothing if not about creating the conditions for monopoly capitalism to flourish. According to Gill, “economic and monetary union has, since the early 1990s, constitutionalised neo-liberal discipline within the EU and contributed to the formation of a ‘transnational historical bloc’ which socially and politically embeds neoliberalism.”

The eventual destination of this undemocratic structure and political project is not in any doubt, as Jose Manuel Baroso, president of the EU said in his state of the European Union address last September:

“Today, I call for a federation of nation states. Not a superstate. A democratic federation of nation states that can tackle our common problems, through the sharing of sovereignty in a way that each country and each citizen are better equipped to control their own destiny. This is about the Union with the Member States, not against the Member States. In the age of globalisation pooled sovereignty means more power, not less.”

If he means greater power for the European elite we can agree; if he means giving the anti-austerity demonstrators in Cyprus a real democratic say, then we can only treat his use of the word ‘democracy’ with the contempt it deserves.

Of course we have a complicating factor in our discussion about the EU and that is the possibility that Scotland could vote for independence next year with a clear commitment to the EU as part of their independence platform. Firstly, let me say that in terms of Europhilia you cannot put a fag paper between Miliband and Salmond or for that matter Salmond and Lamont.

In fact, it is more credible to imagine a progressive UK strategically committed to leaving the EU to enable it to implement left policies in a federal structure and developing political and economic alliances within and beyond Europe, than the likelihood of an independent Scotland, winning a case for progressive policies in an undemocratic European Union.

Scotland could of course survive as an independent state. The question facing us from a left wing perspective is what kind of state would that be? Would it advance the prospects of transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor? Would it facilitate or impede the majority of the population owning the means of generating wealth, including democratic ownership of the financial institutions that have served us so poorly in the recent past? Would it allow us to switch resources away from the ‘financialisation’ of the economy to the productive economy? And would it allow us to restore union rights so that we could fight for all of the preceding measures?

In concrete terms, membership of the EU comes with a commitment to neo-liberalism. It requires the continued privatisation of our transport system and energy companies. It has enabled large corporations to bring in cheap labour from non EU countries and the rulings of the European Court of Justice have driven down workers’ rights across Europe. The Fiscal Compact which reduces the maximum annual deficit to 0.5 would be imposed on Scotland as a new member. This would reduce public expenditure at the very time when many European workers face unemployment. The EU is the very engine of the politics of austerity.

All of this calls into question the notion of an alternative ‘Social Europe’ which the EU left would have previously seen as at least a brake on the worst aspects Euro neo-liberalism. Even Vasco Pedrina Swiss, TUC representative on the ETUC Executive Committee, who is
opposed to withdrawal, notes: “Wage-dumping pressures and attacks on workers’ rights have increased just about everywhere, following, first, the rulings of the European Court of Justice in 2008 (cases Laval, Viking, Rüffert, Luxembourg) and, then the proliferation of pro-market and labour legislation reforms.”

From a strategic point of view independence will weaken Scotland’s capacity to play its part in combating the political and economic concentration of power located in London and Brussels. This is surely a critical question for the left and socialists because the delivery of a more equitable, less bellicose set of international and national arrangements is directly dependent on the extent to which democratic control can be exercised over the power of capital. In this regard a separate Scotland will be more dependent, not less, on the power of capital.

I write this without the slightest doubt that building the alternative project of a progressive Britain is also monumental. But at least it sets out a feasible strategy of how the combined political and economic potential of the British working class can be used to forge a social and economic alternative capable of challenging the global might of capital.

It means that once again we have to gird our loins and try to push the Labour Party to the Left. This time, though we have no excuse about how we organise. We know that the influence of neo-liberal ideas on the Labour party came through the pockets of the wealthy sponsors of Progress. We do not have that financial resource, but what we lack in money we can make up for in commitment and the desire to rid ourselves of an economic system and its political institutions that are immiserating the peoples of Europe.

Mike Cowley

As FELA Vice President elect John Kelly noted during the 2013 EIS AGM in Perth, Scottish further education has been subject to the most vicious and unforgiving cuts of any public service across the UK.

Teaching budgets have been hollowed out to the tune of £24.6 million in 2013/14, with John Swinney’s ‘additional’ £10 million this year giving ‘creative accountancy’ a bad name. With 1,600 lecturers and support staff lost to the sector, a public wealth of expertise, experience and commitment has been recklessly squandered.

In addition, the focus on 16-19 year olds suggests a cynical attempt to massage youth unemployment figures ahead of the referendum, with mature students being arbitrarily penalised by a strategy that has secured little buy-in from professional staff or student reps.
In many ways, the sector has been force-fed the most corrosive toxins available to the high priests of the austerity era – exhausted staff, vultures circling the tastiest outsourced morsels and trade union-unfriendly managements transfixed by neo-liberal business models utterly unsuited to the priorities of education.

Access to skills and knowledge remains a significant redoubt of collectivism in the political economy of ordinary people. But it remains vulnerable to those who regard its public provisions as either an affront to market disciplines or an unaffordable luxury in times of crisis.

Delegates in Perth were anxious to reaffirm that FE offers a lifeline to individuals and communities for whom education beyond the school gates is often both culturally and materially as plausible as a spring vacation to the moon.

Women (already shouldering a disproportionate burden of UK cuts) and special needs applicants have been hit particularly hard by the loss of over 40,000 places across the sector. Although insulated from Brother Gove’s Year Zero attacks on education down south, the devolved Scottish system has nonetheless provided a target for an SNP government apparently profoundly indifferent to the traditional capacity of FE to progressively intervene in localities throughout Scotland.

Trouble is brewing for the Education Secretary Mike Russell as pay emerges as the lightning rod around which a diversity of staff concerns coalesces. A return to national bargaining continues to be a priority for the EIS, but, as the government dithers, staffs are asserting themselves independently. Reid Kerr is only the first of many to secure, through industrial action, improvements to pay and conditions previously regarded as impossible by College authorities. Look out for co-ordinated action in the autumn.

Branches are growing, despite Edinburgh College Regional Chair Ian McKay’s comments to the contrary in a recent TES article. Members have overwhelmingly supported further industrial action over pensions. And as the relentless attacks on our sector continue, EIS Reps are finding solace in the swelling numbers of active members determined, alongside NUS and UNISON colleagues, to staunch the haemorrhaging of staff, courses, teaching hours and pay which has become routinized across a public profession no longer willing to accept the intrusion of market disciplines into their classrooms.

Mike Cowley Edinburgh College EIS Branch Convenor

Neil Findlay MSP

Next year will mark the 30th anniversary of the miners’ strike. Despite the passage of time, feelings still run high in the communities affected, understandably so as more than 1,400 Scots were arrested during one of the most significant social, economic and political events of the past century.

Last year, the Hillsborough stadium disaster inquiry exposed alleged widespread police malpractice in South Yorkshire at the time of that tragic event. This was followed up by a BBC documentary into events at the nearby Orgreave coking plant during the 1984-5 miners’ strike. It alleged that the same force fabricated evidence and that officers committed perjury, duplicated witness statements and were guilty of misconduct. Since this exposé, South Yorkshire Police has referred itself to the Police Complaints Commissioner for England.

In light of this I, along with my colleague and ex-miner David Hamilton, MP for Midlothian (himself arrested and jailed during the strike), have been calling for a review of the convictions of all miners arrested in Scotland at that time. There will be a members’ debate on this in the Scottish Parliament.

To date, more than 900 people have contacted the justice secretary, Kenny MacAskill, calling for a review. Mr MacAskill has so far refused. But evidence I have received from a number of those convicted suggests police tactics deployed in South Yorkshire may also have been used at places such as Bilston Glen, Polkemmet and across the Scottish coalfields.

Therefore, I believe it is incumbent upon the Scottish Government to carry out a full investigation into claims that people were convicted on bogus and/or exaggerated charges. This new evidence gives weight to this call.

The passage of time does not make injustices disappear. We need a review to determine once and for all whether hundreds of Scots are, as they allege, victims of a near 30-year-old miscarriage of justice.

Pauline Bryan

It was in 2009 that proof was finally found that blacklisting was being systematically carried out in construction. The Consulting Association’s blacklist contained details of over 3,200 individual names and was being used by more than 40 contractors, including most major UK construction firms, to avoid employing anyone who might have a trade union background or who had raised concerns about health and safety or other legitimate issues. By autumn 2012, only 194 of the 3,213 blacklisted workers knew they were on it.

This revelation highlighted the inadequacies of the legal protection available to victims. In 1992, the TUC complained to the UN’s International Labour Organisation that there was no effective protection against discrimination suffered by blacklisted workers. The ILO Freedom of Association Committee upheld the complaint as UK law fell short of Article 98 of the ILO convention. Regrettably the Government failed to act.

Since 1999, legislation had given UK Governments the power to pass regulations against blacklisting, but they failed to do so. Unions had been lobbying the Labour Government to pass regulations, only to be told that there was no need for them at the time. With no legislation outlawing blacklisting, Ian Kerr, head of the Consulting Association, was only convicted under the Data Protection Act 1998.

A GMB report on blacklisting estimated that in three month period, the major construction company Carillion, checked 2,776 names with the Consulting Association, and in the period from October 1999 to April 2004 it estimates that the company checked at least 14,724 names. During The Consulting Association’s final year of operation Skanska, another huge company, paid £28,122 for blacklisting checks and Sir Robert McAlpine paid £26,842. During his evidence, Mr Kerr who was Chief Officer of The Consulting Association, confirmed that his organisation was involved in blacklisting during the Olympics. Kerr named Sir Robert McAlpine Ltd, Balfour Beatty and Skanska as using blacklisting during the ground works.

Ian Kerr’s written statement reveals that Sir Robert McAlpine funded the establishment of The Consulting Association and also paid the costs associated with winding down the company after the raid by the Information Commissioner’s Office.

After Ian Kerr gave evidence to the Scottish Affairs Committtee at the end of 2012, UCATT demanded a public enquiry into the blacklisting scandal. GMB is calling on councils not to award work to the companies that operated the blacklist until they compensate those they damaged.

Meanwhile Skanska signed a contract valued at £57 million with the Scottish Prison Service for the construction of HMP Grampian, McAlpine has a contract for the Commonwealth games Emirates Arena and the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome, and Carrillion has a contract for the new concert hall in Glasgow. None of these companies have been penalised for their use of illegally held blacklisting information.

Dominic Bascombe

Glaswegians are rightly proud of their friendliness and welcoming nature. Not for them the aloof, unapproachable stereotype of residents in other big cities across the United Kingdom. Yet when it comes to issues of race and dealing with different identities and ethnicities, can Glasgow claim to be exemplary? Like many other big cities, Glasgow has benefitted from the skills, values and work ethic of various incomers over the years.

They, alongside the indigenous population, have worked together to create a vibrant city confidently looking towards the future. On the other hand, some parts of the city have seen fundamental changes partly as a result of an ill thought-out dispersal system. These changes, combined with the economic downturn of recent years and a city still dealing with the lingering effects of a sectarian history, paints the picture of a metropolis at a crossroads.

We welcome the artistic, culinary, professional and cultural delights that a mixed population can bring, yet can still be swayed by appeals to our base nature of ‘us’ versus ‘them’. Such appeals, whether they are around feelings of entitle- ment to jobs, housing, or life partners, wrongly focus on the misconception that if others are gaining then we must be losing. These divisive approaches have been the philosophy of 14 racist and fascist groups such as the Scottish Defence League, the English Defence League, the British National Party and others.

These groups have, in the recent past, brought their violence and hatred on to the streets of Glasgow. HOPE not hate believes that we can have a society where racism and fascism are not welcome. HOPE not hate is a national campaign which mobilises everyone opposed to the far- right’s politics of hate. It has the support of the Daily Mirror, trade unions, celebrities and community groups across the country. We are not aligned to any political party and will work with everyone wherever possible. HOPE not hate has many local autonomous groups across the UK carrying out anti-racist & anti -fascist work in their own local area, with an emphasis placed on education and long-term community involvement.

The Greater Glasgow HOPE not hate is one such group. Since our founding in September 2012 we have gained support from members of the local community in addition to MSPs and Councillors. In December 2012, Glasgow City Councillors passed a motion supporting the Greater Glasgow HOPE not hate group – a major step in declaring that we will not allow our city to be disturbed by racism. The motion, proposed by Councillor Bill Butler, noted the formation of the Greater Glasgow HOPE not hate and resolved to work with HOPE not hate, “in support of a common objective: a strong multicultural Glasgow which promotes racial equality and harmony.”

We firmly believe that racism and fascism will not grow in places where communities are able to understand and talk about the politics of hate. Localised campaigning where we can build relationships and give confidence to those who dislike racism and empower communities is a real and fundamental way to make a difference. We have seen nationally how communities, when they are given proper information, are able to challenge the myths and lies put out by extremists and are confident enough to reject them. As part of that community discussion, the Greater Glasgow group has organised a number of events across the city where local people can come together and discuss various issues.

One such recent event was a talk by a Holocaust survivor to mark Holocaust Memorial Day. The guest speaker, Rosa Sacharin, left Berlin when she was a child in 1938 on the Kindertransport relief effort en route to Britain. Her experiences through the development of Nazism, the imprisonment of her father and her eventual departure from Germany, wrenched at the heart of every member of the audience.

Her emotional talk highlighted Resisting Welfare Cuts – the the horrific experiences that so many went through in that dark period of human history. However it also brought home just how easily it can be to ignore the warning signs of racism and fascism. That is why it is important for you to support HOPE not hate. You can get involved by visiting the website.

Get your local trade union branch to lend their support; encourage your Trades Union Council to affiliate and get approach to constitutional involved. Trade unions already change do very vital work promoting equality – their solidarity and support is a crucial part of working with communities. We cannot stand aside and do nothing when people on our streets are being targeted for no reason other than being different. We cannot allow our city to be the sullied by the politics of hate. We can make a difference if we work together.

Matthew Crighton

It has taken his death to show us how many friends Hugo Chavez had. The regular drip, drip of hostile lies about Venezuela in the media gave way to a torrent of praise for the remarkable changes he brought to his country; and in doing that, to the world.

Governments and leaders across the world, in particular Africa as well as of course Latin America, lined up to praise him.by previous regimes. The sheer scope of the imaginative programmes he led forward is extraordinary – for health, education, food sovereignty, land reform, electoral democracy, environmental protection, employment laws, racial and gender equality, the rights of indigenous people and industrial democracy, for example.

Venezuela has done more than any other country in the don’t like his methods’ and go on to assert that he controlled the media and was some kind of totalitarian or demagogue – an echo of the efforts of US spokespeople to taint him by referring to him alongside Ahmadinejad, Gaddafi and ‘other tyrants’. That we can expect. Yet even left of centre papers like the Guardian and the Independent found people to slur him – like Martin Kettle saying that he was a ‘human rights abuser’ and Rory Carroll suggesting he had ‘ruined Venezuela’. So, it is still necessary to nail a few of the more persistent lies. For the record, the Venezuelan media is biased against Chavez – 80% of national TV is owned by his opponents; the only TV station shut down was the one which played an active part in the coup against him.

As regards being a tyrant – Chavez has won all his many election successes in an electoral system praised as one of the best in the world – in the last one registering an 80% turnout. As John Snow said: “when I started working in Latin America, the US was still killing leaders it didn’t like: Chavez is part of the order that put an end to that”.

The end to political violence as a means of government in countries ruled by Chavez and his allies (like Morales and Correa) is inspirational. Despite coups, attempted coups and assassinations, not once have they turned to the armed forces in response to political opposition. By contrast in countries still ruled by the right, like Colombia and Honduras, the state-sponsored political violence which characterised the ‘lost decades’ in which hundreds of thousands died across the continent.

People across Latin America are also the beneficiaries. Chavez forged new relations with other countries based on solidarity and mutual benefits (and respect) through ALBA, and the creation of Latin American institutions like Mercosur, the ‘bank of the south’ – challenging successfully the hegemony of the USA.

One of the most remarkable examples of internationalism is the Venezuelan/Cuban Operation Miracle which has restored sight to 2 million people for free. And of course Venezuela’s friendship brought much-needed respite for Cuba’s revolution.

Not surprisingly, considering the transformations of so many spheres of Venezuelan society, there are numerous achievements of Chavez’
governments from which we can learn. The best-known Venezuelan export in Scotland is El Sistema, the inspirational method of addressing the impact of poverty and exclusion through music. It involves community-based teaching of orchestral music to children from an early age – though started under earlier governments its massive expansion has been funded under Chavez.

In this case the practice has been transferred directly to The Big Noise in Raploch. Generally however it is not specific projects which we need to bring to our country, it is the spirit and political philosophy of Chavez and his governments. One strand of this can summarised as ‘Just Do It’. He was deeply pragmatic – in order to go around corrupt national and local bureaucracies, captured by the old elite, he used the state oil company to deliver his famous missions in the poor barrios (or slums)! Another strand is the vital importance attached to working with the people in their communities, unions and other organisations.

The most outstanding feature of Chavez’ politics, however, was his willingness to challenge the undemocratic powers of the rich and the powerful in his determination to build social justice in all its many forms.

Surely this is the message we should hear in Scotland – what matters most is the political will to build an equitable society which empowers its communities and looks after the most disadvantaged. If that’s what a government wants to do it can find the ways to do it. How long must we wait for our own Hugo Chavez?

Matthew Crighton is Secretary of Scottish Venezuela Solidarity Campaign

Drew Smith MSP

It has been said that the SNP’s reputation for competence, built up by steady management and a solid team of ministers between 2007 and 2011, was assisted by showy presentation of not much substance.

The shiny present on offer in 2011 was a well wrapped but ultimately even emptier box than in 2007, when at least making a fuss about reversing the perceived failures of the previous Labour-led Executive, on issues such as rescued A+E Departments was enough, just, to give the appearance of smooth running, if not exactly frenetic activity.

Over the last year, the business of governing, has slid from its previous funereal pace to something nearer glacial. In the week the SNP’s referendum date was announced, the only legislation MSPs could look forward to getting their teeth, or rather their shears, into was the High Hedges (Scotland) Bill: a law so banal it made the attempt to reform of Scottish Water a splash. The Water Reform Bill was variously trailed as the end of the national water company as a public enterprise, and then when that idea, thankfully, sank; a plan which would herald the beginning of something called the Hydro Nation. In the event, it consisted mainly of measures to do something about discharge of effluent in inappropriate places.

The parliamentary debates which preceded a grand unveiling of the great calendar of destiny, (or day of calamity for Better Together inclined comrades), included discussions about Iraq – 10 years on, and renewal of Trident. Both issues which could undoubtedly motivate socialists to some response if they had not been so blatantly presented as garland for the referendum debate (sic). Yet, beyond the hyperbole and hysteria on the constitution, there are other issues in Scots politics, just.

The apparent inactivity of Scottish Ministers appears to have given way to some discontent in the land. It turns out, despite intermittent denials, that kids are indeed on waiting lists to get college places – while youth unemployment remains stubbornly high. In the NHS, waiting lists exist too, but the numbers on them and the reasons they have been left there appear also to have been somewhat mis-communicated. In the same week as the referendum date announcement, figures revealed NHS boards massively expanding their use of private hospitals as the cuts to nurse numbers and growing queues in A+E departments (yes, the same ones ‘saved’ in 2007) result in capacity issues and delays in older patients being discharged to the care of local social services, which are being ravaged by cuts in many parts of the country.

Even the creation of a new state police force has been handled so badly as to ensure that no one concerned by the civil liberties implications of it all will be too worried. Police officers will hardly be able to do much more than harass a few football fans before getting back to the back room to do the job of departed civilian staff. Their jobs, like so many in the public services are lost, not for greater efficiency but, because the loss of backroom jobs is less noticeable. Their loss is not in the service of good government but in order to keep up appearances.

Hence, teachers are maintained ‘in line with pupil numbers’, a statement which sounds good so long as you don’t think for a single second about what it might mean.

In the face of Tory attacks to welfare benefits and public sector pensions, as well as to the very ethos of public services, you’d be forgiven for not noticing that things in Scotland are not so much running to stand still, as standing, well, still. What’s more if we all stand still long enough – 18 September 2014 will come around. The Labour leadership are calling it Scotland ‘on pause’, for many of those on frozen wages or reliant upon local services it’s progress in reverse.

The challenge for Holyrood will be whether it has the wit to do something about it all before the public wonder why they should give more powers to those who do so little when there is so much to be done.

Drew Smith is Member of the Scottish Parliament for Glasgow Region,

Poems by Brendan Moohan
Sacked miner from Bilston Glen

Arrested

Sun beats on my neck
Cops puffing and panting
There’s something in the air
Something not right
Something angry in the heat, something.

Talking with Drew
Son of a union man
Started the pit with him
We’re two infants
On the periphery of war
This is the calm, the calm.

Sun beats on my neck
Merciless
Breaking loose all hell I am through the lines
And fists and batons fly A moment I look, I twist
Somewhere to run, nowhere, nowhere.

He grabs and pulls me
He has to; his job
I look, his eye
He’s scared, I pull away
He holds
I stop, he trips
And then I walk
The cop in tow, cop in tow.
In the cell, bored Winding up cops Passing the time
Six cells full
Four to a cell
Shouting and banging
Calling out names
In this situation And every one
An innocent man
Under the sun, innocent man.
Dust

This dust is everywhere here
Carried by the wind
Suppressed by the rain
And etched into the
Crevices of men’s faces.

Each black speck
An individual
Gripping to the edge of kerbs And cracks in the road.

Drifting like thoughts, ideas
Each one a part
Of a man’s life
Left scattered to wander.

Wild is the wind
That takes remnants
Of earths gut
And sows them afar.

One day there will be
Less dust
No men
And only memories:
And words of old men
Will represent this place
Gone like the dust
Dust to dust
But I hope not too soon.

Dust

Sun beats on my neck
Cops puffing and panting
There’s something in the air
Something not right
Something angry in the heat, something.

Talking with Drew
Son of a union man
Started the pit with him
We’re two infants
On the periphery of war
This is the calm, the calm.

Sun beats on my neck
Merciless
Breaking loose all hell I am through the lines
And fists and batons fly A moment I look, I twist
Somewhere to run, nowhere, nowhere.

He grabs and pulls me
He has to; his job
I look, his eye
He’s scared, I pull away
He holds
I stop, he trips
And then I walk
The cop in tow, cop in tow.
In the cell, bored Winding up cops Passing the time
Six cells full
Four to a cell
Shouting and banging
Calling out names
In this situation And every one
An innocent man
Under the sun, innocent man.
Dust

This dust is everywhere here
Carried by the wind
Suppressed by the rain
And etched into the
Crevices of men’s faces.

Each black speck
An individual
Gripping to the edge of kerbs And cracks in the road.

Drifting like thoughts, ideas
Each one a part
Of a man’s life
Left scattered to wander.

Wild is the wind
That takes remnants
Of earths gut
And sows them afar.

One day there will be
Less dust
No men
And only memories:
And words of old men
Will represent this place
Gone like the dust
Dust to dust
But I hope not too soon.

Victimised

205 of us
Scottish miners
Sacked
For trespass
For breach
For whatever
They could pin on us

I am one
Gross industrial misconduct
At Bilston Glen
It seems not real
On strike
From a job
That is no longer mine

And the others I know
All the same The militants
The obtuse
The usual suspects
All my friends

I do not feel hard done by
Sure in the knowledge
That we will win And I will return
As though nothing
Ever happened