This text was agreed at the SR NC in October for the SR conference on February 7th, where it was adopted. Some sections were updated in January or February and where this is the case it is noted in the contents.
Contents
1.The political situation in Britain
2. Economic situation and super-exploitation
3. Our orientation to the trade unions
4. Campaigning against austerity
5. Building Left Unity
6. Building on the 45 per cent – perspectives for Scotland
7. Ecology and Climate Change
8. Women’s liberation (Updated in January)
9. Palestine (Updated in February)
10. Ukraine (Updated in February)
11. Syria (Updated in February)
12. Revolutionary unity (Updated in January)
1. The political situation in Britain
Osborne’s message at the beginning of 2014 was bleak and to the point. The crisis, he said, was not over, in fact it was ‘not even half over’ and as a result ‘difficult sacrifices’ would have to continue. ‘2014’, he said, would be ‘the year of hard truths’.
If the national books were to be balanced by the end of the next Parliament, and the Tories win the election, he would introduce an additional £25 billion of cuts—on top of those already planned—for the period 2016–2018. At least half of this, he said, would come from the welfare budget, mostly working age benefits, with state pensions excluded—with Tory voters defecting to UKIP, the grey vote was too politically sensitive to touch.
According to the OBR this would mean that government day-to-day spending, as a proportion of the total economy, would fall below pre-1948 levels by 2018—i.e. before the welfare state existed.
His speech was a sharp change from the rhetoric at the end of 2012 when we were told that the worst of the crisis was over, that a corner had been turned, that the ‘recovery’ would increasingly take hold as long as austerity was not ended too soon, and we were heading back towards some kind of pre-crash normality.
His original plan had been to balance the books by the general election in 2015. This has now sunk without trace—showing that it was a cynical ploy to force through his cuts agenda.
At the last (2014) Tory Party conference, however, his ‘year of hard truths’ line was reasserted with a vengeance. If the Tories won the next election they would launch a massive new attack on the ‘undeserving’ poor. There would be a two-year freeze on all in-work benefits—under conditions where the signs are that wage levels would continue to fall. This would save £3bn a year and would hit ten million families, most of which are in work. The public sector pay freeze would also continue.
At the same time, the cap on welfare payments would be cut from £26,000 a year to £23,000 and a benefits payment card introduced to restrict purchases to ‘essential items’ only.
All this will hit the poorest third of society with the poorest families loosing up to £1,300 a year.
He also launched an extraordinary attack on young people. The under 25s would be excluded from jobseekers allowance and housing benefit in order to force them into the worst paid and most precarious jobs. Disabled people who are deemed ‘possibly able to work’ would suffer further cuts and pressure. The environment would also be further downgraded with a new commitment to fracking.
In sharp contrast he announced a give-away to the middle class by abolishing inheritance tax on pension pots.
As he spoke Britain’s multi-billion pound bombing campaign in Iraq was getting underway which served to demonstrate not only Britain’s continued role as an imperialist power but that money was no object when the government decided to spend it.
At the end of the Tory conference Cameron launched the Tory election campaign with the promise of £7bn a year of tax giveaway by 2020 if the Tories win the election—overwhelmingly benefitting the middle class—and paid for by an additional package of welfare cuts that would hit the poor. The threshold for the 40p rate of tax would be increased from £41.500 to £50,000 and the personal allowance up from £10,000 to £12,500.
This is worth three times more to the higher rate taxpayers than 20p payers because people earning above £50,000 would benefit from both threshold increases. Those earning less than £10,000 would get nothing.
In order to appeal to UKIP supporters, Cameron also pledged to prevent judgments of the European Court of Human Rights being enforced in Britain and to withdraw from the European Convention of Human Rights, a move that would lead to Britain’s expulsion from the Council of Europe.
This brutal right-wing Tory agenda is designed to bring back votes from UKIP, but whether it will do so is another matter altogether. It is also designed to take full advantage of the opportunities opened up by the recession to bring about the biggest possible transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich with a small state and minimal welfare provision. Cameron has ditched his early posturing around ecological and social issues with a vengeance.
The rise of UKIP
In the May 2014 European elections, UKIP won 27.5 percent of the vote. At the same time in the council elections in England, they won 163 seats; around 17% of the national vote. The question remained, however, as to whether UKIP could hold its support until the general election next May, or whether it would fade.
At the end of August Douglas Carswell defected to UKIP and resigned as an MP creating a by-election in Clacton. He was followed by Chris Kelly the Tory MP for Dudley South, who, although he said he is not joining UKIP, congratulated Carswell for doing so. Then Mark Reckless, Tory MP for Rochester, defected to UKIP on the eve of the Tory Party conference inflicting maximum damage on the Tory leadership and setting up another by-election which UKIP might also have a chance of winning.
The Clacton by-election was held on October 9 along with a by-election in Heywood and Middleton in Manchester caused by the death of Labour MP Jim Dobbin. UKIP won Clacton by a landslide (13,000 majority) over the Tories on a 40% turnout—which has boosted their momentum further and gave them a good chance of winning the more difficult challenge in Rochester. In Heywood and Middleton they ran Labour a very close second (only 600 votes difference), on a 36% turnout—although the bulk of their votes came from the Tories with Labour holding their percentage of the poll.
And more defections are in the offing. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the maverick Tory MP for East Somerset, has called for a pre-election pact with UKIP and for Nigel Farage to replace Nick Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister. UKIP is now heavily funded by Stuart Wheeler, who previously funded the Tory Party.
UKIP is at root a split in the centre-right, reflecting long-standing divisions in the Tory Party itself. The Tory rightwing always resented Cameron’s (now abandoned)
Tory Party reform agenda from gay marriage to green-wash and to what they have seen as his weak and vacillating Euro-skepticism. They resented the removal of the climate denier (and Eurosceptic) Owen Patterson as environment secretary in the summer reshuffle. They are strongly attracted by UKIP’s core racist, anti-immigration, and anti-EU message. And Cameron has no answer to this. Each time he panders to the racist agenda he is outflanked by UKIP. Labour to its shame has pandered to the racist agenda in exactly the same way.
UKIP’s rise has been made possible by a significant shift to the right in the whole political spectrum in the last five years and a compliant media, which has endlessly done their bidding and has given Farage the status of a mainstream politician. UKIP has been allowed to make racism appear respectable.
Whether this will result in a full-blown split in the Tory Party remains unresolved. Some of the Tory right-wingers are clearly more interested in destroying the Cameron leadership—which they see as pandering to liberalism—than in winning the general election. Many of them see Cameron’s pledge of a referendum on EU membership if the Tories win the election as a move to stay inside the EU. They think that he will get some meaningless concessions from the EU, declare a victory, and then campaign to stay in. Their ‘big opportunity’ would then be lost for a generation.
Labour’s response and the general election
With a Tory crisis on this scale, Labour’s fortunes for the general election are being shaped more by what is happening with the Tories and UKIP, than by anything that Labour is doing itself. Labour is helped by the constituency boundaries (because the Lib Dems blocked their reform), by the fact that the impact of UKIP is greater on the Tories than Labour when it comes to a general election and by the indications that Labour will gain most from the collapse of the Lib Dems. On top of this Labour is polling better in the Labour/Tory marginal seats than in the country as a whole.
All this means that the general election is Labour’s to lose. They are, however, more than capable of doing so, as the recent Labour Party conference demonstrated in shedfulls. The conference reflected the massive contradiction that has existed at the heart of their politics since the coalition was formed. On the one hand there were some progressive though timid policy proposals but on the other a high profile pledge to continue the cuts—although with “better choices” than the Tories—and to prioritise balancing the books. This is a formula that hands the initiative to the Tories at every stage.
At the Labour Party conference (2014), they pledged to raise the minimum wage to £8.00 by 2020, to repeal the Health and Social Care Act, to raise £2.5bn for the NHS from a mansion tax, to repeal the bedroom tax, to freeze energy prices and a ban on zero hour contracts that restrict other employment and restore the 50% top tax rate. They also pledged to build 200,000 new houses and introduce some form of rail public ownership that falls short of nationalization and do something about climate change.
Some of these are important proposals, to repeal the Health and Social Care Act and the bedroom tax for example, but others are not what they seem. The minimum wage would be £7.50 anyway by 2020 and whilst a mansion tax on properties over two million and a windfall tax on the tobacco companies would be a very good thing, £2.5bn is a fraction of what is needed to stabilise the NHS after 5 years of frozen spending under Tory rule—with the threat of five more years of freeze if the Tories get back in 2015. It is good that they have pledged to build 200,000 new houses and tackle climate change but explanations as to how this is going to happen are far from convincing.
It is all a long way short of the kind of bold programme aimed at relieving low pay, lifting people out of poverty and tackling the housing crisis that would have ensured a Labour victory. People are crying out for a programme of this kind.
Labour are trapped by their disastrous decision at the beginning of the coalition to accept that austerity cuts were necessary and their later and logical decision to continue with Tory cuts for their first year in office. In fact Ed Balls repeated his pledge to continue austerity at the Labour Party conference. They may see their cuts as slower and shallower, but they are cuts just the same.
Labour, therefore, far from having an answer to the coalition austerity programme have helped to facilitate it. The coalition have repeatedly utilised this to carry through brutal attacks on welfare and living standards, particularly in regards to women, young people and disabled people, with a minimal response from the unions.
Although there have been some good mobilisations, and the development of the People’s Assembly to unite the anti-cuts campaigns, the unions have failed to develop a response to the cuts and the level of strikes and struggles remain at historically low levels.
The impact of Scotland
The political situation in Britain has been turned upside down by the fallout from the referendum in Scotland. Through a combination of a fake carrot and a big stick, and a strongly supportive media, the Westminster establishment and the pro-union parties have defeated independence at this stage. Repeated threats from the banks, the supermarkets, big business, and the EU, plus a dishonest panic ridden pledge of devo-max just before the vote, was enough to swing the result.
Cameron’s claim, however, that that the union is now the settled view of the Scottish people is wishful thinking. The margin was just was big enough for Cameron to claim a clear victory but not big enough to settle the issue.
An hour after the announcement of the result Cameron kicked the devo-max pledge aside by linking it to English devolution and challenging the role of Scottish MPs in Westminster — the so-called West Lothian question. This has thrown Britain into a constitutional crisis that is likely to continue up to and beyond the general election next year. Meanwhile the remarkable and dynamic grass roots Yes campaign has transformed the political situation in Scotland. It has created a political dynamic and involvement that is unlikely to go away, particularly amongst young people.
Labour, on the other hand, paid a very heavy price for their shoulder-to-shoulder act with the Tories and other (even less desirable) unionist forces. Swathes of Labour supporters voted Yes in Labour’s Red Clydeside heartlands from which the modern Labour movement was born. Cameron even persuaded Gordon Brown (whom he had been blaming for everything for four years) to re-launch himself and intervene in support of Unionism. In fact Labour figures in Scotland led by Darling and Brown, outdid the Tories in Unionist fervor. The Rule Britannia-singing Orange Order taking over St Georges Square to celebrate the result was a measure of what they have created.
All three main Westminster parties have been damaged by their role in all this, whilst the smaller pro-independence parties have been strengthened. In the latest UK wide poll the Green Party, that played a good role in the Yes campaign, is on 7% the same as the Lib Dems. Of the main parties the Tories could suffer the most since Cameron was the architect of the about face. In Scotland the pro-independence parties are experiencing unprecedented recruitment.
The West Lothian question is an anomaly created by the way partial devolution was introduced. Raising it throws up a range of issues around the democracy of the British state, one of the most centralised in Europe. These issues range from the unresolved national questions in Scotland, Wales and Ireland, regional devolution in England, the role of the House of Lords and the Church of England, to the voting system and the voting age for Westminster.
The full impact of the referendum on political opinion in England is not yet clear. The political situation in England, however, has shifted sharply to the right over the past two years as the Tory right and the 2010 intake of right-wing Tory MPs have made their mark in relation to the anti-EU and racist anti-immigrant agenda. Cameron’s raising of the West Lothian question plays not only to these people, but directly to English nationalism and the UKIP agenda – all of which has serious implications for the Tories at the general election.
Labour’s approach to the West Lothian question is to call for a constituent commission of some kind to look at English devolution and the Tories are using this to paint them as prevaricating on English demands in the election. The left should demand a fully representative constituent assembly to promote a wide-ranging discussion on these issues and refuse to allow them to be stitched up by the main parties.
2. The economic situation and super-exploitation
We are told that Britain’s recovery is now well under way, and that the economy is amongst the fastest growing in the G7. And indeed in August (2014) unemployment fell again from 6.5% to 6.4%, the lowest since the banking crash of 2009. Even if we take into account the fact that the official figures are deeply flawed and that the real figures are very much higher, unemployment has been falling for nearly two years.
At the same time, however, neither the ‘recovery’, nor the fall in unemployment figures, has translated into higher wages. As unemployment has been falling so, too, have wages. An increased availability of jobs has created no upward pressure whatsoever on wage levels. They remain stuck below the rate of inflation with no sign of change. In the quarter from April- June 2014 wages fell by 0.6% and are likely to stay below price inflation levels for some time. The average household has lost around £1,600 a year since the coalition came to office in 2010.
This is why few, other than the rich and the ruling elites, have celebrated it. Few feel any benefit. To the extent that there is a recovery, it is based on increased household spending and rising house prices – mainly in the South East.
People are spending money that they don’t have or have borrowed from loan sharks. The economy, we are told, is growing but spending power is declining. It is a ‘recovery’ based on falling living standards, poverty pay, depleted welfare, precarious employment and personal debt. Women and disabled people in particular are suffering the greatest impact with mental health services and those for older people seen as soft targets for cuts by health authorities and local government.
Public debt is still rising by £100m a year and personal debt has reached a staggering two trillion pounds. Household debt is now 140% of income, higher than either in the Eurozone or the USA.
We are witnessing a fundamental (structural) change in the relationship of forces between the employers and the working class in Britain. The British ruling class has had a good crisis. Although real wages have been in decline for many years—since trade union strength was broken in the 1980s in the name of a flexible labour market—this has accelerated since the banking crash and wage levels have fallen by 6% since 2008, which is the biggest five-year drop since 1921-26.
Public sector pay, frozen or subject to below inflation increases for the past 5-6 years, has fallen even more, encouraged by the timidity of the public sector unions that have mounted only the most tokenistic show of resistance.
Britain is now a cheap labour, high exploitation economy compared to most of the rest of Europe.
Although there are more people in work (even taking into account the growing population) both pay levels and conditions of employment have plummeted. Poverty wages are now endemic and young people have been by far the hardest hit. According to the low wage think tank, the Resolution Foundation, the proportion of young people (18-30 year olds) on low wages has tripled since 1975 whilst the proportion of 51-60 year olds on such wages has declined. This represents a structural shift in the labour market.
The result is that the gap between rich and poor is reaching record levels. In the OECD Britain now ranks 28 out of 34 in the economic equality league table. The top 1% of earners accounts for 14% of total income. We have the biggest fall in living standards for over 100 years and a new generation that is set to be worse off than its parents for the first time since the Second World War.
Inequality was at its lowest in the 1970s when 58% of workers were in trade unions and 82% were covered by collective bargaining agreements. Today only 26% are in unions and 23% covered by collective agreements.
Wages and working conditions have been eroded to the extent that the majority of those who live in poverty are not the unemployed but the working poor. Almost 1.5 million workers are on the minimum wage of £6.31 an hour. Many more—the official figure is 350,000 but the reality is certain to be higher—are paid illegally below the minimum wage. But virtually no prosecutions take place. Rather than legislate for a living wage, billions of pounds are spent subsidising poverty wages though tax credits.
Alongside this has come a huge rise in precarious employment. Over 40% of all jobs created since 2008 are self-employment, much of it involuntary. People forced out of relatively well-paid jobs end up on very low and insecure incomes without holiday or sick pay or state benefits. Employers have become increasingly aggressive in enforcing such conditions. Patterns of employment previously seen as temporary are becoming permanent.
According to the GMB, job splitting is now a major feature of employment. What were once 40 hours a week jobs are split into three or four jobs on zero hours contracts. The GMB claims that 8 million people now suffer precarious employment. Part time work is rife and 92% of them are women. People are working for nothing in the hope of getting a job at the end of it – meanwhile the employers cash in.
At the same time the cost of living for the poor is rising faster than for any other section of society—creating an unprecedented cost of living crisis. The working poor are trapped between rising rents and mortgages, and essentials such as food, gas and electricity, and falling wages and benefits. In fact 1.6 million homes are now forced to spend more than half of their disposable income on either a mortgage or rent. Even households with two jobs often cannot make ends meet. Tax credits, though essential to the working poor, subsidise the employers and institutionalise low wages.
This is all part of a conscious plan with the Coalition and the employers working hand in hand.
An important part of Tory election preparation is a revival of the housing market through their Mortgage Guarantee Scheme that puts public money into private mortgages. They hope that this, alongside a large dose of racism, xenophobia, anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner rhetoric between now and the election, alongside bashing the poor and branding claimants as scroungers, will be enough to win them a majority.
Such high-risk state intervention into the mortgage market has indeed stimulated the housing market. House prices are now rising 5 times faster than wages. Even the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors has called on the Bank of England to impose a cap on house price inflation in order to avoid what it called a ‘dangerous debt bubble’— the same kind of bubble that caused the crisis in the first place.
The real housing problem, of course, is that prices are being kept high by a deliberately created shortage. Fewer than half the new homes needed are being built every year. Public money that is thrown at the Mortgage Guarantee Scheme is therefore finding its way to developers and landlords rather than to people who need housing.
This leaves young people, in particular, in a desperate situation. They no longer have access to the kind of secure jobs or the pay levels that would allow them to save for a deposit or get a mortgage under normal market conditions—or pay the ever-increasing rents. Even if they can get on to the Mortgage Guarantee Scheme they might end up with a house which they cannot afford if they lose their job or get a pay cut.
According to the Office of National Statistics, 3.3 million 20 to 34-year-olds were still living with their parents last year, 25% more than in 1996 when records of this began. Between 1997 and 2007 the numbers increased to 2.6 million but after the banking crisis it leaped by a further 700,000. In June 2014 just 3% of buyers were between 18 and 30 years old.
There is another problem as well. The historically low interest rate of 0.5% for the past five and a half years has kept mortgage payments down but it can’t stay at this level forever. It is a ticking time bomb that threatens to explode not only into a wave of repossessions when the rate goes up, as people are unable to cope with an interest rate rise, but into a second credit crunch this time affecting large numbers of individual people rather than the banks.
The question, therefore, is how and when interest rates will start to rise again and what will be the consequences when they do? It is a huge unresolved and unprecedented problem. People who could pay their mortgages at the old rates, before the crisis, may well find it impossible to pay such rates today with declining incomes and bigger bills. Even a small rise in interest rates could result in large numbers of defaults.
Even a small increase would have a big impact on mortgage repayments. Matthew Whittaker, the chief economist of the Resolution Foundation, calculates that should the base rate go up to 3% a third of all mortgage holders would be dangerously stretched to meet their payments. There would also he says be 770,000 ‘mortgage prisoner’ households who because of the precarious employment and low pay would be trapped in deals that they could not get out of.
Both the coalition and the Bank of England would like to hold to the current position until after the general election next year and then give the problem to Labour to deal with. That, however, might be difficult and the Bank of England is already split on the issue.
The more they talk up the economy the more difficult it is for them to hold the line on interest rates. In any case house prices in London are rising by 17% a year and the official unemployment figure is down to 6.4%. Whilst this does not amount to a recovery it does amount to a case for an interest rise in the eyes of the Bank of England.
The continuation of the ‘recovery’, however, cannot be taken for granted, even in its current fragile form. In fact the economy is more fragile than the ruling elites care to think and the current fragile growth may stall well before the election date. Growth in the service sector has slowed down over the summer. Some of the growth was in any case long term stock replacement rather than new orders and the external factors are not good.
The world economy is still faltering and the Eurozone is stagnant. Industrial production has declined in recent months by an average of 3%. In the Netherlands and Ireland it has declined sharply and even in Germany it has declined by 2%. The problem therefore might not be so much whether to raise interest rates but how to explain what happened to the ‘recovery’.
And of course they are caught in another contradiction as well. The sharp and structural decline in the income of the majority the employers and the ruling elites have brought about has a knock-on effect on the economy itself. It people don’t have money they are unable to spend it. The producers by paying rock-bottom wages are helping to destroy their own customer base. This is now an ongoing problem that British capitalism will have to face.
3. Our orientation to the unions
The successful offensive by the ruling class during the recession has created a far less favourable relationship of forces between the working class and the employers. However the employers’ offensive long pre-dated the recession, both in Britain and internationally. From the late 1970s, through the introduction of new management techniques in key industrial sectors such as the car industry, productivity was driven up and the ability of workers to have any control over their working environment was substantially eroded.
Notions such as team working on the shop floor, partnership working between trade unions and management were introduced tying the supposed interest of workers to those of the employer and undermining the independence of shop stewards’ organisation.
In Britain New Labour enthusiastically supported this approach. The response of the majority of trade union leaders was to capitulate to this offensive and to the increasingly blatant class collaboration that it encapsulated.
Following its success in large swathes of the private sector, the same approach was increasingly introduced in the public sector where class-consciousness and shop stewards’ organisation had been developing in the previous period.
Rock-bottom employment conditions and an intensity of workload is now the hall-mark of most workers’ situations whether they work for Nissan, for local government or universities or for McDonalds. This harsh reality is however not often discussed—making divide and rule between different types of workers much easier.
This restructuring of the working class combines with the defeats imposed under Thatcher; the dockers, steel workers and of course the miners together with more recent defeats such as Grangemouth, to create a very problematic relationship of forces. More recently the austerity squeeze has been taking its toll on the public sector unions which are now the largest part of the TUC.
The last year for which we have statistics for trade union membership is 2012 when the total trade union density in Britain stood at 25.8% (23.1 for men, 28.7 for women). This was a minuscule increase (from 25.7%) from the previous year but with that minor exception the rate of unionisation has been falling steadily for example from 28.9% in 2002 and 39% in 1992. 1986 is the earliest year for which this data is available and at that point the figure was 49.3% so in that period density has fallen by almost 50% – graphically summing up part of what we have been arguing.
In terms of international comparisons the current rate of density in the USA (2012 figures) is 11.3%, in Sweden 80.9% in China 41.2% in Canada 31.4% in Australia 18.2%.
In 2013, 443,600 working days were lost in the UK from 114 stoppages of work arising from labour disputes. In 2013 there were 50 stoppages in the public sector compared with 64 in the private sector showing a decrease in the overall stoppages from the previous year particularly in the public sector. In 2013, 443,600 working days were lost in the UK from 114 stoppages of work arising from labour disputes. Looking at the number of days lost from 1994-2013, the greatest number of days was lost in 2011 with 1996 and 2002 being the two next largest.
There have been significantly fewer strikes in the 2000s on average compared with the 1990s. However, the average number of working days lost per strike since 2000 is generally in line with or higher than that in previous decades, showing that although the number of stoppages appears to be reducing, large scale stoppages are becoming more common.
All of this means that not only young people (many of whom are almost completely unaware of unions) but most trade unionists today have few memories of any but the most minimal local victories against the employers or the government. Even the larger scale and more prolonged strike by over 200 clerical staff at Mid Yorkshire Hospitals Trust, backed nationally by UNISON, and led by a strong left wing branch, was unable to secure a clear victory.
This means that strikes, which have the potential to win even partial victories, become disproportionately important: one such example is the Ritzy strikers. The victory of the support staff who took strike action over pay at Ealing hospital stands out as a lone beacon of hope in the public sector.
The introduction of the anti-union laws by Thatcher shackled the unions in a dramatic manner and gave timid and defeatist union leaders a golden excuse for inaction. This has been an essential tool for the ruling class. These laws prevent effective legal action across companies where privatisation has introduced different accounting units, as well as effective picketing or solidarity action without the unions being threatened with sequestration. They have also imposed and institutionalised passive postal ballots as opposed to the collective democracy of mass meetings which also undercut the effectiveness of trade union organisation.
However even in this context there is some trade union action outside the law for example in the post office where workers have regularly walked off the job in unofficial action or action which sails as close to the wind as possible as in much action organised by the RMT. Right-wing trade-union leaders, however, have not been unhappy with the anti-union laws as it has strengthened their hand over the membership and prevented ‘wild-cat’ actions by local unions outside of their control.
The recent ballot of NHS unions over the derisory pay ‘offer’ in which less than half of staff would even get the pitiful 1% increase awarded to them by the Pay Review Body, was an indication of the low level of organisation and awareness, coupled with the reluctance of union leaders to spell out a clear and bold pay demand: just one sixth of staff voted, although of those voting a clear majority favoured strike action. The result: a 4-hour stoppage on October 13, followed by a campaign to take tea breaks and go home on time.
None of this means we accept the argument put forward by Guy Standing and others that what we see today is a new class, the precariat. Instead precariousness is a restructuring of the working class, making employment conditions for large sections more like that of the end of 19th century in Britain or large parts of the Global South.
Of course none of this is to forget that union leaderships in general play a key role in blocking effective union organization. At a strategic level there are many aspects of the way they are themselves an impediment, which should be restated:
The majority of union leaderships have at best failed to effectively oppose the very changes in working practices which have increased productivity and super-exploitation and precariousness for many workers, and in other cases they have been their enthusiastic advocates. The introduction of new management techniques, of privatization and marketisation as well as cuts in large swathes of the public sector have not been frontally opposed by the TUC or the central leaderships of most unions.
Even where the majority of unions and the TUC itself have paper policies opposing these changes for example on questions like public sector pensions or zero hours contracts, the actions they have been prepared to take are extremely lily livered.
While one day strikes on a cross union basis especially when combined with mass picketing, large demonstrations and drawing service users in as appropriate, can be <!–
important tools in building confidence as part of a serious campaign, when they are seen as the pinnacle of action this can quickly become problematic especially when the employers/government are self-evidently more intransigent than the union leaderships.
The weakness of internal democracy within most trade unions in Britain today is a further important factor. In many key situations it is unelected officials rather than directly elected (and recallable) activists who are involved in key discussion both with management – and sometimes in reaching agreements without any reference to the workforce. Where consultation does take place postal ballots rather than meetings of the affected workforce are often the mechanism – obviously lowering the level of political engagement and the articulation of alternative views and courses of action
The argument that trade unionists should put their faith and their energy into campaigning for a Labour government rather than trying to build a fight-back in the here and now is a familiar refrain. With some small but important exceptions—RMT, FBU, in some respects PCS—it remains the position of the overwhelming majority of the trade unions.
The role of the RMT in supporting TUSC on the one hand and of the FBU in almost leaving the political stage has not, however, been entirely positive. Perhaps this is an inevitable consequence of the negative relationship of forces but it needs more consideration
Unite leader Len McCluskey’s position has been interpreted by some as proposing a break after the election. In fact what he argues is, unfortunately, a classic repeat of the left version of this approach: ‘we would like to fight but not if it endangers a Labour government’.
In terms of a political approach we should argue for unions to only back credible parliamentary candidates who support the union’s programme. This may be Labour (e.g. Corbyn & McDonnell) but others as well (e.g. Lucas, etc.). This opens up the debate about affiliation to Labour and what sort of political intervention a union should have.
We see the line of division in the unions in terms of class struggle versus collaboration, as running vertically rather than horizontally (rank and fileism). This latter position is unfortunately the one argued by large sections of the revolutionary left either explicitly or implicitly.
It is positive to have general secretaries like Serwotka, Blower, the late Bob Crow and even McCluskey as opposed to Prentis. Those that adopt a rank and fileist approach often downplay the importance of the role those more progressive leaders play and can play, including in actively fighting for industrial action, dismissing them instead as nothing more than bureaucrats.
This doesn’t mean that we have no criticisms of those leaders when they make errors, for example the NUT leadership’s vote against support for industrial action on October 14th alongside unions in local government. Health unions have also gone their separate ways and called action for the 13th instead.
The concept of rank and fileism can be confusing. The SWP for example were historically opposed to their comrades even taking shop steward positions whereas at other points they have put comrades forward as branch secretaries and members of National Executives.
The idea of social movement trade unionism is something we support. At the most basic level we understand the idea that trade unions should only act on issues that directly affect the situation in the workplace feeds into the notion that the Labour Party, or more generally parliamentarians are the political voice that is needed, is a profoundly reactionary one. Particularly for women, black workers, those receiving benefits etc. we fight for political trade unionism.
In the public sector in particular community support for industrial action or more broadly for the political aims of the union – such as the NUT’s Stand up for Education campaign are things we support. The RMT for example have worked with community groups against fare increases or station/ticket office closures to break down the notion of selfish well paid workers only concerned about themselves.
The setting up of UNITE community branches which can involve the unemployed and precarious workers are another positive development we should support, as is the campaign of the Baker’s Union and others to organise fast food workers. In general the better organisation of precarious workers strengthens trade union organisation everywhere – and workers that have no history of organisation can often move quicker when they come into activity.
4. Campaigning against austerity
After four years of a Tory-led coalition government, the anti-austerity/anti-cuts movement has failed to win any significant victories. The employers and the government have successfully imposed privatisation, cuts in public services, as well as in the pay, pensions and conditions of those who work in them.
Demonstrations and strikes have taken place to protest and resist the cuts. The TUC organised a 500,000 strong demonstration in October 2012 calling for “A Future that Works”. This was the largest trade-union event for a generation — since the miners’ strike. Since then, demonstrations have been getting progressively smaller. There were over 50,000 marching in Manchester outside the Tory party conference in 2013. Over 25,000 (50,000 according to the organisers) marched in London in June 2014 following a call by the People’s Assembly and unions such as UNITE, the PCS and the NUT.
The anti-cuts movement also got off to a good start following the election of the coalition government in May 2010. The broad-based Coalition of Resistance was launched at a conference attended by 1,200 in November 2010 at the Camden Centre. This conference attracted a wide range of individuals and local groups, while the main forces of the radical left, the SWP and the SP, were peripheral. CoR provided an umbrella at a national level for local and national campaigns, alongside some unions, parties and left Labour MPs, to organise initiatives against austerity and the cuts in addition to the yearly TUC events. CoR also organised in September 2011 a European conference with 600 attending
The size of the November 2010 CoR conference indicated a surge in spontaneous organisation and mobilisation across the country as trade-union and left activists understood the scale of the attacks threatened by the newly-elected Tory-led coalition and wanted resistance. Trade-union strike action also increased, with days lost in strike over 1.5 million in 2011, the highest level for over 20 years, while it had been under 0.5 million a year for the previous decade. But this rise was due to a few strikes in the public sector.
The Tories had given very clear indications in the election campaign that they were going to use austerity to roll back the welfare state and public services. This level of mobilisation carried on until the October 2012 TUC demonstration where McCluskey was cheered as he called for a general strike while Miliband was booed. The TUC Conference in September 2012 had just adopted a resolution which committed it to look at the feasibility of calling a general strike.
The position of the TUC provided the opportunity for some on the left (SWP and SP) to organise a campaign of petitioning calling on the TUC to name the date for the general strike. But as this was happening, the anti-cuts movement and resistance in the workplace were declining. What was necessary then was a re-launch of the community-based anti-cuts movement. This was to provide the confidence to trade-union members so that they could all strike together for at least a day of co-ordinated strike action and have the backing of a substantial proportion of the population who supported their aims.
The term “general strike” was misleading, as all that the unions envisaged was a one-day strike by unions, and not strikes and civil disobedience involving large sections of society over a sustained period of time. It was the latter that SWP and SP were implying. Given the lack of response of the TUC over its decision, some unions looked at co-ordinating action over a common issue. This turned out to be the attack on pensions (paying more, working longer and receiving less) over which the NUT and the PCS co-ordinated days of strike in the spring of 2013, forcing UNISON to join them in a further common day of strike in the autumn of 2013. The dispute was lost, partly because UNISON settled, leaving the NUT and PCS on their own and thus feeling that they could not win this big battle. But it was also lost because of the determination of the Tory government to face down every strike and refuse concessions.
The (relative) rise in industrial action, the continued imposition of austerity, and support of Labour for austerity gave the opportunity to CoR to re-launch itself into a broader organisation, the People’s Assembly Against Austerity (PA) at a conference of over 4,000 at Central Hall in June 2013. An overflow hall with 1,000-seat capacity had to be booked in two days before the event due to enthusiastic attendance. The PA, and CoR previously, was established clearly on the basis of opposition to austerity and defence of public services, and adopting the People’s Charter platform. This was clearly in opposition to Labour.
The establishment of the PA was an enlargement of CoR as it brought in the PCS and UNITE, as well as War on Want, fully into the running of the campaign. Meanwhile the SWP still carries on with its Unite the Resistance front and while the SP seems to have dropped the NSSN. The operation of the PA is relatively democratic as demonstrated by its conference, while it also has to operate on a consensus basis. This reflects the need to keep all the organisations together within this united front type organisation on the simple issue of opposition to austerity. This united front can only be built outwards from the radical left, which is now at its core, towards the more moderate left which is still nevertheless opposed to austerity.
The success of the PA is such that a resolution at the TUC containing support for the PA was adopted. However, the inclusion of major unions in the PA has encouraged some on the left to denounce it as a bureaucratic top-down organisation which gives a left cover to Labour, and that what is needed instead is a rank and file type organisation. But it is a major step forward to have a national campaign, clearly against austerity and for mass action, and which includes significant organisations of the labour movement.
Whether the PA can organise mass actions independently of the TUC and Labour to stop austerity is a different question. But the demonstration of June 2014 showed that it is prepared to organise national mobilisations independently of the TUC. But what the PA cannot and should not do itself, is to call for strikes independently of the unions. It should mobilise communities to create the conditions in which union members can push their leaderships to call for strike and to massively back the action.
The need for a national umbrella campaign against austerity and the cuts is clear. This should not cut across existing local organisations and other specific campaigns, such as Keep our NHS public (KONP).
Large rallies with big name speakers such as the 1,300 attending the Q&A in East London on the 9 October with Brand, Bennett, Serwotka can draw a big crowd. They do indicate that there is a desire to hear how to resist austerity and what is the alternative.
But they can be organised by a relatively small number of people and can give a false impression of the strength of the movement. They are necessary but no substitute for long-term patient work in the communities.
The anti-cuts/anti-austerity movement on the ground has been in decline over the last two years: there are fewer functioning groups and these are less active. This is reinforced by the lack of struggle by local trade-union branches that would provide a focus for the local anti-cuts groups. With the failure to stop the austerity steamroller, there is a natural tendency to pause and wait for the outcome of the general election, hoping and working for a defeat of the Tory coalition government to change the relationship of forces.
Pay freezes have been imposed since 2010 in the public sector, and even the pay review board for the NHS which recommended a 1% rise saw this overturned by Jeremy Hunt. The cumulative effect of pay freezes has now provided a favourable context again for one-day strikes to be organised, but the outcome is very mixed. Health unions are out for 4 hours, on the 13 October 2014, the one in local government has been called off, the PCS are due out on the 15 October, but the UCU action on October 14 was called off because of threat of legal action, and the RMT also suspended its action on the London Underground over those days.
The last-minute calling off of action reveals the weak position that unions are still in. The legal shackles are still an important tool by of the employers. Furthermore, weak organisation means a low turnout in ballots and provides a reason for a leadership to call off action if a marginally improved offer has been made. The industrial action in mid-October is being followed by the TUC demonstration on 18 October under the catchy and radical slogan of “Britain needs a pay rise”.
The political issues which are mobilising activists and communities are those at the heart of the welfare state: the NHS, Housing, Education and Transport. The recent NHS “Jarrow” march and demo organised by the “Darlo mums”, and the current mobilisations around the E15 mothers and the MIPIM property fair are an indication of what concerns working class communities. The NHS march even drew the reluctant but official support from Labour. The NHS is still the major issue that the right is vulnerable on. This explains the massive mobilisations in Lewisham, Ealing, Stafford and elsewhere.
The ideological battle over Council housing is being lost with Right to Buy, and the new housing now just “affordable” with a programme of social, let alone council housing, barely on the agenda of New Labour. Nevertheless battles erupt over social cleansing (e.g. E15, West Hendon, Southwark) as estates are demolished with tenants dispersed, and no new subsidised social housing. Speculative new housing development is geared for wealthy private owners, and only has a much smaller number of “affordable” or social rent units, often accessed via a “poor door”. The Heygate estate in Southwark is being demolished with 1,200 mostly social rented units being replaced by twice that number, but only 79 will be for social rent with a further 500 either for rent or part-buy at the higher “affordable” levels. A new militant campaign, the Radical Housing Network, is providing a focus for housing on a wider scope than just Council housing.
In Education, the battle is being lost with university fees at £9K/annum, and Academisation and free schools, introduced by New Labour, gaining momentum. Nevertheless, Education is still the fourth most important issue for voters, behind the NHS, Immigration, and Jobs Prices and Wages. This indicates the potential basis for a campaign for properly funded comprehensive education, against increasing selection and fragmentation of provision
The attacks and cuts of welfare rights “benefits” are also stimulating the creation of new campaigning organisations such as around the Bedroom Tax, or the withdrawal of the subsidy for the council tax, leading to tens of thousands being dragged through the courts, in particular the most vulnerable such as the elderly, those with disabilities, single mothers.
5. Building Left Unity
The launch of Left Unity (LU) was inspired by the development of broad left parties across Europe, particularly the growth and impact of Syriza, and later by the extraordinary rise of Podemos in Spain.
SR has strongly supported this approach as the most effective way for the left to make its weight felt under today’s conditions. We have also sought to take into this process the lessons of previous attempts at building parties of the left in Britain and of other experiences from Europe.
We have therefore been fully involved in the emergence LU from the initial informal steps towards it in early 2013 through to the founding conference in November 2013 and subsequent developments. We strongly supported the orientation put forward by the Left Party Platform in that regard which was towards building a party that is feminist and environmentalist as well as socialist.
The way we work inside LU is important. Independent socialists need to be sure that LU can become their political home. We therefore seek to avoid working within LU as an organised caucus always taking the same position as a result of prior discussion through our own structures. Although our overall approach to building broad parties and our wider agreement on strategic questions will often lead us to a common view. In this way we can help to build LU as a healthy organisation with its own internal life and external projects.
Left Unity remains a fragile organisation. The path on which it has embarked is not straightforward; that is to build a broad party under conditions where although the political space for this definitely exists the relationship of forces between the classes is profoundly unfavourable and the legacy both of previous failed attempts to fill this political space and of the sectarianism and fragmentation of the radical left weigh heavy.
Left Unity, which established a formal membership structure in August 2013, has just under 1900 members today. It has 40-50 functioning branches with others in the process of creation. Its infrastructure remains relatively weak with most of the political work done by people with jobs and other political responsibilities. It currently has one worker for two days a week but this will be increased to six days in the relatively near future.
The response from branches to LU’s campaigning priorities over the summer was good overall but with some weaknesses
The overwhelming majority of branches were involved in campaigning over Gaza—many working locally and supporting some or all of the national initiatives in London. The LU postcard on Palestine was extremely well received. Left Unity supported the relatively small anti-Nato march in Newport at the end of August, led by the Welsh branches and with a national leaflet.
Participation in the highly successful 999 call for NHS march was more of a challenge because of the nature of the campaign marching across the country. The intervention of LU branches across the country was patchy—partly because LU doesn’t have branches in some of the areas through which it was passing and because the marches took place when people were working.
We underestimated the extent to which some of the key organisers would use the march to project support for Labour — even if sometimes critical— epitomised by the weak platform at the rally in Trafalgar Square. Nevertheless the LU leaflet on the NHS was extensively distributed in many of the major centres through which the march passed and Ken Loach was extremely well received when he addressed the march in St Albans.
In the wake of the Scottish referendum the LU conference, a two-day event in London on November 15/16, will take a discussion on our approach on constitutional reform. It will need a programme of radical democratic reform to take forward in that context—PR, abolition of the House of Lords, votes for 16 and 17 year olds.
It also also needs to develop a discussion on local government—which has been gutted of any real power over the last decades—for example we have not discussed what changes we would make to the London Assembly and that needs to be developed. On the other hand it needs to be conscious that reactionary notions of English nationalism are coming to the fore not only amongst the Conservatives worried about the rise of UKIP but also in parts of New Labour. Neither do the Green’s constitutional solutions have all the answers as they also talk about four nations—i.e. including the North of Ireland.
In terms of the General Election, Left Unity’s position remains that it will not join TUSC as a part of its coalition. This was a positive discussion at the LU NC with a number of newer voices arguing very cogently why and how Left Unity’s project is a different way and the way that entering such a coalition would undermine this project on the ground. On the other hand discussions about which seats we definitely plan to stand in remain embryonic and need to be firmed up.
It is important that the conference is a positive and outward facing event and gives a voice to new forces coming into politics for the first time or breaking with Labour.
6. Building on the 45 per cent in Scotland
The campaign around the referendum in Scotland was a remarkable and unique example of political engagement the like of which most of us have never seen.
It is partly summed up by the numbers — a 97% registration rate in a situation where voter registration has been falling across Britain — and where many in Scotland have never reregistered since the country was used as the testing ground for Thatcher’s hated poll tax. A 84.6% turnout where the 1997 referendum which led to the establishment of the Scottish Parliament was only 60.4% and where the highest previous turnout in a British election since universal suffrage was achieved was 83.9% in the 1950 general election.
But it was also obvious in so many of the interviews which eventually broke through into the mainstream media south of the border that the majority of people on the streets of Scottish towns and cities knew what the issues under debate were — and had an informed opinion on them.
And the media reluctantly conceded that it was the Yes campaign with its dynamism and diversity, which was the motor force behind this mass engagement. Mass canvasses around the housing schemes (estates), street meetings and stalls and public meetings were combined with a consistent and imaginative use of social media not only to announce initiatives but to engage in discussion. There was a consistent message up to the moment that the polls closed that every single vote count— that no one should be taken for granted in a way that completely contrasts with the way the three big Westminster parties have behaved particularly in the last decade or so.
Millions of people who had been previously sold a message that politics was not for people like us were engaged in vibrant debate—and responded not by staying at home in apathy but by going out to vote — with queues at some polling stations before they even opened.
When the results were announced, both the fact of the defeat for this magnificent campaign and the size of the gap given the fact that everyone had been saying it was too close to call was initially rather deflating. That may well be at least part of the context of Alex Salmond’s resignation as leader of the SNP and as First Minister. But the Yes campaign had gained a massive 15% -20% increase in support for independence from that showing before the campaign started. And it is clear that a huge amount of the energy that was generated within the campaign itself has not been dissipated by the result
One significant consequence of the campaign is that Scottish Labour under the lack-lustre leadership of Johann Lamont is likely to get a drubbing both at the General Election in 2015 and at the Scottish Parliament elections in 2016.
They worked hand in hand with the Tories in the Better Together campaign in a sickeningly bipartisan way (it’s difficult to take the Lib Dems seriously enough to say they played any real role). It was clear from the beginning that in order to defeat Yes it was Labour voters that had to be delivered for the No campaign. The role that Alistair Darling played heading up Better Together has certainly sealed the hatred against him in the schemes across Scotland – including in his own constituency. Douglas Alexander was also a central figure in that campaign. And of course Gordon Brown played a significant role in those vital weeks after the panic when the first poll showed a majority for Yes.
But despite this huge effort made by unionist leaderships, along with the deep tribal hatred of the SNP (long known as Tartan Tories despite the fact that this hasn’t summed up their programme or practice for some time) in many Labour households, over 40% of Labour voters voted yes on September 18. (In fact Chris Bambery points out here that this may be an underestimate as these figures are based on 2010 voters and so ignores those who abstained in 2010.)
Appeals from Shadow Scotland Secretary Margaret Curran that everyone voted for change so the divide is not so important are very unlikely to have a warm reception. One of the co-convenors of Labour for Independence has resigned his membership of the Labour Party following the vote—and he is clearly not alone.
And fury with the unionist parties—particularly Scottish Labour—is not confined to those who voted Yes. The unionists won in the end with a stick and carrot—the carrot being the ‘vow’ of devo-max and the stick the dire threats delivered not only by politicians but by representatives of banks and supermarkets of what would happen if the Yes campaign won.
David Cameron’s statement immediately after the result was announced was an illustration that he is more concerned with trying to deflect UKIP’s political impact in his own backyard—by pandering to their most reactionary ideas—than with talking to people in Scotland.
Ever since the discussions started which eventually led to the creation of the Scottish Parliament, unionists of every stripe have peddled the myth (and often convinced themselves of its veracity) that a tiny modicum of self-rule will satisfy the Scottish electorate. That hasn’t been the dynamic of Scottish politics for more than 30 years and it is not going to become so now.
Twenty percent of those who voted No did so because they had believed the promise of more powers for Holyrood and were hostile to Cameron’s speech. These are people who can be won to supporting independence in the longer term because their No vote wasn’t cast with the reactionary unionism of the leadership of Better Together
When the Smith Commission was established to draft proposals for further devolution the SNP proposed that all powers other than foreign affairs and defence are devolved to Holyrood. The unionist parties began fighting between themselves particularly on the question of income tax. Gordon Brown seems determined to continue a high profile role of mediating between the unionists and denouncing the SNP as trying to introduce independence through the back door. The Smith commission will publish its initial proposals at the end of October but with formal proposals coming at the end of January.
The Yes campaign was remarkable. There was the official campaign, which alongside the SNP who were the dominant force also included the Scottish Green Party (whose leader Patrick Harvie played a prominent and positive role) and also the SSP as well as many individuals.
There was Women for Independence in which three of the previous women MPs from the SSP, Carolyn Leckie, Frances Curran and Rosie Kane played a prominent role and which managed to get quite a lot of coverage even in England during the campaign. Scottish Asians for yes were another strand in which Jonathan Shafi of the ISG played an important role. Websites such as Bella Caledonia also played an important role in developing and elaborating such a high level of political debate.
Then there was the extraordinary Radical Independence Campaign which organized two massive conferences of over 1000 strong before the referendum and was probably the single most important element on the left of the Yes campaign. RIC was the key organizer of many of the mass canvasses and other work which was successful in delivering a yes vote amongst the most excluded and deprived communities in Scotland—even while losing the overall vote.
Contrary to the accusations made by the No campaign, including their supporters on the ‘left’ it was not a message of nationalism that was propagated by campaigners for independence. It’s true that the formal message of the SNP itself can be understood as independence-lite—with its maintenance of House of Windsor, retention of NATO membership, and the failure to break with the Bank of England and its chains by putting forward an independent currency.
But for the majority of Yes voters what they cast was a vote against the neo-liberalism Westminster has imposed on them—without a democratic mandate. It was a vote against tuition fees, for free prescription charges and against the privatization of the NHS. It was a vote for getting rid of Trident.
SNP politician George Kerevan, in an important reflection in The Scotsman on September 19, put it like this: “The reality is that, by the end, the Yes campaign had morphed into the beginnings of a genuine populist, anti-austerity movement like the