06/06/2008 by admin.

Posted in Power and politics | 6 Comments »

03/06/2008 by admin.

In the light of Labour’s election defeat last week, John McDonnell MP is circulating a manifesto petition to Labour Party members, trade unons and MPs to gain large scale rank and file support for a new policy programme for Labour to bring about a radical change in political direction for the Laboour Government.

John McDonnell MP said:

“After the serious rejection of New Labour at the polls last week assurances that the Government is listening are simply not going to be enough to restore any sense of belief in the Labour Party. What is needed is a radical change of political direction.

“We have to demonstrate that change by introducing a new policy programme that specifically and very concretely addresses peoples’ concerns raised on the doorstep. This May manifesto petition is launched so that all our supporters can have a say in pressing for the changes we need.”

We believe that Labour can win back the support of our people by adopting a new 2008 May Manifesto, which should include:

• Nailing the 10p tax mistake by the introduction of a fair tax system removing the low paid from taxation and ensuring the wealthiest and corporations pay their fair share
• An increase in the basic state pension, immediately restoring the link with earnings, lifting people off means tested benefits and providing free care for the elderly
• An immediate start on a large scale council house building programme and assistance for those facing repossession
• Immediate end to programme of local Post Office closures and liberalisation of postal services
• An end to the privatisation of our public services
• A new pay deal for public sector workers to protect their living standards and tackle low pay
• Abolishing tuition fees and restoring maintenance grants for all students
• Scrapping ID cards and abandoning 42 days detention
• Introduction of a trade union freedom bill and measures to protect temporary and agency workers
• Rejecting the proposals to renew Trident

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03/06/2008 by admin.

Can Brown be beaten by John McDonnell’s Manifesto? by Mark Hoskisson

Post election blues 

The local elections have left Gordon Brown and the Labour government in a very weak position. Brown himself is deeply unpopular. The Tories, thanks to years of New Labour betrayal, are once again a viable electoral alternative….writes Mark Hoskisson….

In the South Welsh valleys, where Labour used to rule unchallenged, control of three councils have now slipped from its grip. In a newspaper interview a Labour activist from the area argued that Brown’s continuation of Blair’s policies, symbolised by his invitation to Number Ten of Margaret Thatcher who is rightly hated for her role in destroying the coal based economy of South Wales, was the number one cause for the recent election losses.

John McDonnell’s own response to the local elections was relatively muted. He said:

“After the serious rejection of New Labour at the polls last week assurances that the Government is listening are simply not going to be enough to restore any sense of belief in the Labour Party. What is needed is a radical change of political direction. We have to demonstrate that change by introducing a new policy programme that specifically and very concretely addresses peoples’ concerns raised on the doorstep. This May manifesto petition is launched so that all our supporters can have a say in pressing for the changes we need. We believe that Labour can win back the support of our people by adopting a new 2008 May Manifesto.”

What is to be done? 

Across the labour movement activists in the Labour Party, the unions and the wider left are all asking what should be done in the light of New Labour’s rotten record and the shift to the right, in elections at least, that it has precipitated. The answer is to wage war on the whole New Labour Project. And the war should start with a battle to finish Brown’s leadership off.

We don’t say this because we think Brown lacks charisma and is a poor communicator. Such twaddle is best left to the press pundits who think politics should be about celebrity and image.

But nor is addressing Labour’s crisis merely a matter of convincing Brown to adopt a few better policies to revive Labour’s credibility with its voting base. Cosmetic surgery cannot eradicate the ugliness of New Labour.

Brown and New Labour need to be fought at every level of the labour movement. The pay freeze needs to be smashed. The increasingly regressive tax system needs to become the focus of mass protest action. The steam roller of Labour privatisation across the public services needs to halted in its tracks. And the daily racism meted out by this government – racism that is fuelling the growth of the fascists – needs to be combated.

The Labour Left today 

The first port of call for workers up against such a right wing Labour government as this one used to be the Labour Left. But today the Labour Left cannot rally mass support in the unions and really shake things up in the way, for example, that Benn’s deputy leadership challenge did in the early 1980s.

John McDonnell, the nearest person to being a figurehead that the Labour Left has in parliament, could not get enough support from MPs to mount a leadership challenge to Brown last year. With so many MPs looking anxiously at their slender majorities he would probably get even less support for a challenge now.

More importantly he does not have anything approaching a sizeable base amongst the activists – in the party or the unions – to be able to shake things up. The membership of the Labour Party is in sharp decline. So too is that of its left. The Labour Representation Committee (LRC) which McDonnell heads has rightly opened itself up to non-party members (though wrongly, as long as they don’t stand against Labour) to try and build up wider support for its renewal project. But there are no signs that this is transforming the LRC into a significant player.

McDonnell’s manifesto 

In these circumstances John McDonnell’s new manifesto is a disappointing one. It consists of the following ten points:

“ * Nailing the 10p tax mistake by the introduction of a fair tax system removing the low paid from taxation and ensuring the wealthiest and corporations pay their fair share
* An increase in the basic state pension, immediately restoring the link with earnings, lifting people off means tested benefits and providing free care for the elderly
* An immediate start on a large scale council house building programme and assistance for those facing repossession
* Immediate end to programme of local Post Office closures and liberalisation of postal services
* An end to the privatisation of our public services
* A new pay deal for public sector workers to protect their living standards and tackle low pay
* Abolishing tuition fees and restoring maintenance grants for all students
* Scrapping ID cards and abandoning 42 days detention
* Introduction of a trade union freedom bill and measures to protect temporary and agency workers
* Rejecting the proposals to renew Trident”

This is a pallid manifesto. While Brown hits the poorest sections of society with unfair indirect taxes he tolerates criminally low rates of corporation tax. Calling for fairness doesn’t really amount to much. Why not say openly, let’s tax the rich?

A new pay deal for public sector workers? Why not call for an end to Brown’s pay freeze? Reject Trident – sure, but we aren’t using it in Iraq and Afghanistan. Let’s prioritise getting Britain out of the wars Labour is actually waging and link this to a fight to end Britain’s nuclear missile programme.

A new trade union bill is all well and good – but what about scrapping the existing anti-union laws? And why no mention of renationalising the railways, raising the minimum wage and carrying through a massive investment in the public sector, including bringing privatised services back into state ownership?

By any standards this manifesto seems timid when so much is at stake. And if you believe, as McDonnell does, the answer to the current political crisis and growing economic mess, is a programme of left reforms then those reforms should provide a fundamental alternative to the New Labour programme.

It is questionable whether even a set of more powerful reforms would do the trick. Will issuing a manifesto, even a better one than Mcdonnell’s (better in left reformist terms) really change much? It will be taken up by a handful of supporters. It will give Labour left activists a petition they can take to meetings. And it will provide a counterpoint to the official manifesto when work on it gets underway. But it won’t change a great deal in British politics because it does not constitute a full frontal attack on New Labour.

A manifesto for today should encompass a strategy for taking on and defeating New Labour in every arena of the class struggle – the party itself, the unions, the campaigns against racism and fascism, the campaigns against climate change, the campaigns to defend abortion rights.

A call to arms 

McDonnell should have issued a call to arms. He should have said, “Brown is following on from Blair. He is leading us to disaster and I intend to call a national meeting of all activists across the movement (or I call on all activists to come to the Convention of the Left) to discuss waging a fight to the finish with these traitors in our midst. They have single handedly saved the Tories from oblivion and restored their electoral credibility. I will ask every union conference to back my challenge to the leadership of Brown in the next few months. I declare war on New Labour” … or words to that effect!

But he didn’t. He did not outline a course of action that could rally people to a fight now. He poses it all as a “policy” change. This misses the point. Brown will change policies as and when it suits, as the retreats over the 10p tax threshold shows.

What Brown will not do is change New Labour’s fundamental line. And getting into arguments about the finer points of policy plays into Brown’s hands. He can keep the debate going at that level while carrying on a neoliberal programme at a practical level.

None of this is to suggest that McDonnell and the LRC should not be part of the fightback. They should. But the number one priority is not a policy debate within the Labour Party in preparation for the next election. The priority is beginning the fightback – the sooner the better – so that the working class movement is better equipped to resist whatever is thrown at them by either New Labour or the Tories, before, during and after the next general election.

Posted in Power and politics | 2 Comments »

04/05/2008 by admin.

The election results on May 1st should be a wake up call for the left. The size of the Tory recovery - and the election of the BNP to the London assembly - signal a shift to the right. Ten years of dog-whistle politics - from both the Tories and New Labour -  found their echo on election day. In this new situation, the importance of the Connvention of the Left should not be under-estimated. We need to look at the state of British society with clear eyes and an honest appraisal of where we are and where we need to go. Below is the initial response of RESPECT to the election results. 

 Clive Searle

 The local and London elections have been bad for the left and for progressive voters everywhere. The backlash against the Brown government, which many now feel has betrayed them on the economic and social fundamentals, has pushed Labour’s share of the vote below the Liberal Democrats nationally.

In London, Johnson is now mayor, although the final margin after second preferences was lower than many predicted. Much worse, the BNP got a first seat on the Assembly. The Liberal Democrats also had a bad day in London, with their vote down substantially and it was a pretty mixed picture for them elsewhere.

For parties to the left of Labour, results were also generally poor with some notable exceptions, particularly but not only in Birmingham. In London the best results were posted by Respect with almost 60,000 list votes, 2.43%, but this was still below the deposit saving level and less than half what was needed to get a seat on the Assembly. The combined left vote, excluding the Greens, was only 3.61% on the list.

On the positive side for Respect, winning another seat on Birmingham council was a sharp ray of light. This now gives us all three councillors in Sparkbrook.

Another good result was both the constituency and list votes in East London, which clearly show we have built on our vote after a long period of internal difficulties. The constituency vote for Hanif Abdulmuhit increased by almost 7,000 from the 2004 result.

The local roots Respect has established in East London checked the forward march of the BNP. Without Respect East London could have begun to look like the 1970s with the BNP pushing into third place. Instead, Respect is one of the two major parties along with Labour in parts of Tower Hamlets and Newham, we beat the BNP on the list vote and pushed the Liberal Democrats into fifth place.

There was clearly a massive turnout in some parts of the Tory suburbs, a vote with some pretty nasty racist overtones following a campaign of vilification against Livingstone and his support for ethnic minority communities in general and the Muslim community in particular.

There is little for the left to be celebrating after these results. Many Labour voters will be rightly gutted at what has happened.

There will be many battles ahead against this big shift to the right. What we need to be doing now is regrouping our forces with a determination that the resistance starts here and starts now. George Galloway, Salma Yaqoob and Respect intend to be at the heart of that resistance pursuing the approach of building a plural left opposition.

Posted in Power and politics | 3 Comments »

17/04/2008 by admin.

A theme on trade unionism and workplace organisation in the UK and internationally

As was pointed out at the ‘big’ meeting, there is a major gap in the themes of the Convention as there is nothing specifically aimed at trade unionists or taking up trade union issues other than privatisation in the UK and internationally. A theme on trade unionism could focus both on drawing together current experiences and on dealing with the major political issues facing trade unionists.

I suggest setting up another sub-group to work out a detailed plan with speakers etc and a meeting to get together those interested specifically in this area.Here are some ideas to kick around for possible sessions. These are only suggestions and obviously open to amendments, additions and deletions but I think they might form the basis for a viable, relevant and interesting stream.

Organising the unorganised:·
Young workers·
Migrant workers

Where now for the unions?:
Should the unions still support Labour?
Rank and file organisation-Shop stewards network/trades councils; union lefts
Current disputes / Public sector pay freeze

International labour:
Solidarity with Iraqi & Iranian trade unionists
Fighting sweatshop labour: union organisation worldwide
Chinese workers and the Olympics IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO BE INVOLVED, PLEASE CONTACT ME BY EMAIL AT:
BRUCE@BRUCEROB.EU

Comradely,Bruce Robinson

Posted in Power and politics, People not profit, Statements, Planning | 3 Comments »

27/02/2008 by admin.

By Bill Jeffries

If Unity is Strength, then the Left is very weak, not only has it suffered from three decades of defeat, but since the late 1990s has systematically failed to take advantage of the many opportunities for it to substantially extend its influence.

Most notably out of the enormous stop the war movement it failed to build a mass alternative to New Labour, rather the opposite, the anti-war movement, in spite of its many awe inspiring achievements, consolidated the Left’s fragmentation, its general retreat from class politics and overall decline. 

Faced with this situation it is a good time to re-think where the Left has gone wrong, what are the lessons and the next concrete steps we can take together to re-build the movement. There are obviously many different answers to these questions, but first among them must be, in a general sense, an appreciation of the situation and the tasks that it posed activists.

Notwithstanding the scale of the anti war movement, and growth of climate change activism, the anti-capitalist movement, ESF/WSF and so on, the overall level of class struggle remains weak. Strike figures are lower than the 1950s. Trade union organisation is down when compared with the 1970s/80s.

The Labour Party left is a shadow of its former self, while the various left regroupment initiatives, the SLP, SSP, Socialist Alliance, CNWP, Solidarity, Respect, Respect Renewal, LRC etc. without wanting to get into the specifics, have failed to unite the whole left within them. 

Faced with this fragmentation, what can the Convention of the Left do? 

Firstly it can provide a forum for the Left of all shades to discuss their differences and what unites them, their assessment of the world, where they think the priorities for struggle are, what are the key issues that face working people today. 

Secondly it can start to co-ordinate activists within these areas to make their struggles more effective. 

And finally in the light of its success with steps one and two it can consider future options.

Posted in Power and politics, Statements, Planning | 6 Comments »

25/02/2008 by admin.

Politics, Power and Participation: what does it mean to democratise power? by Hilary Wainwright

The Labour Party’s commitment to the common ownership included the commitment to ‘the best obtainable system of popular administration and control’. Here was a recognition, buried in labour movement history that democracy is something more than parliament: it’s also about popular control over how public resources and institutions are run. When Labour did finally bring parts of the country’s infrastructure and heavy industry into public ownership, the idea of ‘popular control’ was pretty much forgotten. Public control meant state control; socialism became increasingly identified with the state.

Traditions of popular participation and popular power were rediscovered – often in new ways – in the 60’s and the 70’s with the radical workplace trade unionism across Europe and through movements for social liberation: of young people, women, black people, gays and lesbians. A new impetus has been given recently to the idea of popular power by movements and radical political parties in Latin America in particular in the muncipalities of Brazil and the aspirations of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela.

These experiences in the South have inspired citizens in the North who find the possibilities of exercising democratic control over politics diminishing daily. People are demanding the right to share power with elected politicians. We are no longer prepared to trust them to act on our behalf. But as politicians sense the decline in their legitimacy, they too espouse the rhetoric of partcipation: communities and different social groups are being consulted ad nauseum while real power relations – of state and economic domination remain untouched. How do we develop the autonomy and strength of community groups and social and labour movements to challenge power rather than be incorporated by it?

We need to rethink left politics to answer this. Grass roots social movements of recent years – feminism, black movements, the global justice movement, gay and lesbian movements and radical parts of the trade union movement offer some tools for this rethinking. In practice they distinguish between two radically distinct meanings of power: on the one hand, power as the capacity to transform and on the other hand power as domination.

Historically the major parties of the left have tended to be built around a benevolent version of the second understanding of power: around winning the power to govern and using it paternalistically to meet the needs of the people. This has meant a politics focused around legislation and state action.

The social movements’ assertion of power as transformative capacity produced a break with this narrow definition of politics. It led to a far wider understanding of the scope of politics, way beyond the traditional focus on state, government and legislation, and involving the struggle for justice and dignity in all the relationships and institutions of our daily lives.

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