23/06/2008 by admin.

The Convention of The Left is being held as an alternative to the New Labour conference in Manchester.  The aim is to encourage wide participation in debate on The Left, which may lead to the development of ‘charters’ around which socialists can agree to mobilise in unity so as to campaign more effectively. 

After discussion on more general political issues over the weekend of 20-21^st September, the following three days will focus on particular themes, namely Politics (Monday), Public Services (Tuesday) and Peace (Wednesday), each with its own sub-committee.  The Public Services sub-committee covers Education, Health, Housing and Transport; the following concerns the Transport meeting. 

Why is transport an issue?

Any local bus journey will show the main users to be the young and the elderly – namely people on low incomes.  For rural families in poverty the situation can be equally difficult with a car being an unaffordable necessity in the absence of local transport and the closure of local amenities.  High fares can limit travel and lead people to live isolated lives or to refuse employment.  The Oyster card in London has shown how people can be drawn to use public transport.  And are all the lorries speeding up and down the motorways really necessary?  Is there an alternative which meets the needs of people, society and the environment? 

Integrated?

On the political left there is general support for an ‘integrated transport policy’ as the solution.  However, what the word ‘integration’ means in this context is not always clear.   Does it refer to the co-ordinated time-tabling of public transport, such as train connections or bus-train timetables?  Or, regarding haulage, the more efficient use of freight trains and distribution of goods? And how should other forms of transport, such as coach travel, metro/trams/underground, cycling, domestic flights and inland waterways and ferries be integrated into the transport system?  And then there is the private car issue … and, of course, our own in-built transportation, our legs! So, does an integrated transport policy mean the most efficient ‘integration’ of these various forms of transport?  Taking ‘efficient’ here to include energy efficiency (less fuel and pollution), cost efficiency, time efficiency and convenience for the user. A second way to consider ‘integration’ of the transport system is how the movement of people and goods integrates with other aspects of society.  This perspective would require consideration of issues such as:

• The environment and pollution, including noise pollution
• The effect of various forms of transport and associated infrastructure on local communities
• Congestion and parking
• The effects of the ‘school run’ and how to minimise this
• Safety – in terms of transport workers, health, accidents and late night travel in public transport
• The needs of rural communities, adolescents, young adults and the elderly.
• Minimising the need to travel by retaining local schools, Post Offices, shops and health care, de-centralised employment and local food production.

 A third aspect of integration is that between public and private ownership.  There is a consensus amongst socialist, and more widely, that all aspects of rail transport should be in public ownership or re-nationalised.  But there could be debate around how a nationalised railway is run, and how this is made accountable to its users.  Who should own and/or control the local bus services, the trams, metro etc?  How should road haulage be controlled and owned?  And ferries?  How can the various roles of the government, the local authority and local/regional transport committee and the private sector be integrated?  Who pays, and what is the role of subsidies?   

Input to the debate

These issues are raised in order to stimulate debate and clear realistic thinking about the sort of transport policy we, as socialists, would support.  As it will be impossible to discuss all the above, never mind other issues that may be raised, the following is proposed: 

a)         a debate on transport starts on the website now, prior to the Convention in September. 
b)         organisations (such as transport Trade Unions, political parties and pressure groups) which have an existing transport policy, submit this, or a summary, to the Convention of The Left website discussion. 
c)         submissions and comments from individuals are equally welcome, especially thoughts about various forms of integration.  It would be particularly interesting to learn about successful transport systems operating in other European countries and how these are organised, run and financed. 
d)         Questions and issues arising from these submissions will be available before the Transport meeting on 23^rd September.  Organisations are also welcome to bring a summary of their own transport policies to the meeting to circulate.  

Aim of the Transport meeting:

The aim of the meeting is to initiate ideas for an integrated transport policy, which can be further developed at a later stage, and to identify the first steps needed to achieve this.  For example, people can’t be expected to use their cars less until there is a more convenient, safe and reliable alternative for a similar cost – so do we start by campaigning for off-the-road cycle routes to schools and major centres of employment?   The actual issues discussed at the meeting will be those identified by contributors to the pre-meeting debate, or raised at the meeting, as being most relevant in the context of an overall integrated transport policy which is based on meeting people’s needs, and not on private profit. 

Ann Papageorgiou – June 2008

Posted in Planet, People not profit, Statements | 1 Comment »

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

Posted in Power and politics, Statements | No 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 »

07/04/2008 by admin.

The Convention is gaining new sponsors every week. Read what some of them have to say below (all in personal capacity unless otherwise stated).

Joan Abrams, vice-chair Greater Manchester CND, CND National Council, Labour party member

“Political policies will not change towards the left until a socialist left is seen as an important political constituency. Only by giving a voice to a strong and convincing movement towards socialist policies may we turn the tide against the currrent assumed acceptance of a right wing consensus.”

Dr John Lister, author, The NHS After 60: for patients or profits?

“In this 60th Anniversary Year of the NHS it is vital for socialists to recognise what a massive asset we still have to defend in the NHS, a public service that reaches parts the private sector cannot or will not reach – because they do not offer the prospect of profits.”

Ken Loach, film director

“We should all welcome this convention. The fragmentation of the Left benefits the warmongers, privatisers and polluters. This meeting should help to affirm a Socialist alternative and to discuss how we can move forward. There is a mood throughout Europe to develop the anti-capitalist Left - we need to be part of that.”

John Nicholson, former Labour Deputy Leader Manchester Council and Convenor of the Socialist Alliance.

“We need to start defining a new way of working (even to reclaim that word “new”), so that we can come together in practical campaigns, regardless of the organisations we may belong to, so that we can stop the war and nuclear proliferation, the cuts and privatisation, the racism and environmental destruction.”

Councillor Susan Press, Calder Valley CLP, Chair Calderdale NUJ

“The Convention Of The Left is a serious opportunity for those of us who feel disillusioned by New Labour’s neo-liberalism to discuss the way forward . As a member of the LRC, I wish to carry on the fight for socialist values within the Labour Party. supporting left MPs like John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn. But I am also keen to campaign on issues like globalisation, peace and climate change with comrades from across the political spectrum . I look forward to taking part in the Convention.“

Raphie de Santos, Scottish Socialist Voice editorial board member

” I whole heartedly support the convention of the left. We need more developments like this that can bring together all those who are looking to build a left socialist alternative to New Labour’s failed neo-liberalism. Many comrades from the Scottish Socialist Party will coming down to Manchester to support and join in the discussions and share our experiences of left unity in Scotland.”

Clive Searle, on behalf of Greater Manchester Respect Renewal

“For too long we have been told by New Labour, and the Tories before them, that there ‘is no alternative’ to the free market and the wars that support it. This convention gives the Left, in all its variety, the chance to show that there is an alternative, to clarify what it looks like and discuss how we can work together to achieve it.”

Derek Wall, Green Party principal speaker.

“I would be very pleased to have my name lent to this venture.I am been very encouraged both by talking to John McDonnell and with a lot of positive stuff coming out from Morning Star that the left can work in practical non sectarian ways to promote change. Keep up all your good work”

Posted in Statements | 2 Comments »

10/03/2008 by admin.

As socialists we continue to defend the NHS but we need to ask “what are we defending?” by Norma Turner

 The NHS

The founding principles of the NHS we support and hold onto. These were: equitable, universal health care free at the point of use, financed on the basis of people’s ability to pay through progressive taxation. Providing health services would neither be an opportunity to make money nor a charity. To provide a comprehensive, universal, equitable service, the organisation and funding needed to be integrated across the country.

Unfortunately, right from the conception of the NHS, compromises meant these principles could never be fully achieved. Financial restraints meant that only hospitals were included, making it a service for sickness rather than health. GP surgeries, dentists, opticians, community pharmacists were left as private concerns linked to but not accountable to the NHS. Ambulance services, community health, prevention, child health and public health were the responsibility of local authorities. Distinction was made between health and social care. Within the NHS the power of the consultants ensured mental health and geriatric services were marginalised. But the worst compromise was that private health care was allowed to run alongside the NHS.

These compromises have provided the private corporations with a way in to public funding; and successive governments have helped this process. This current Labour Government has been by far the worst, and most inexcusable. Their project is one of changing the NHS from a public service with some semblance of democratic accountability into a full health care market.

In my opinion this process is now beyond the point of no return; it will be fully in place within the lifetime of this Government. The general public will not feel the effects for a few years because the private health care industry is not interested in a purely private market. Its interests lie in becoming for-profit providers in a basic health system funded out of taxation while also providing, for additional fees, a higher quality of service for those who can afford it.

As socialists we can remind people of the founding principles. Before the NHS, the system had only served the rich and the rest lived in fear of ill health. Now people have no experience of a time before the NHS and therefore it is harder to convince them of its importance.

But there is an increasingly unwilling public appetite for the privatisation of everything from private armies, prisons, probation, transport, housing, education, health and social services, water, and on it goes to include the air we breathe. We can link the opposition to what is happening to the health service to the anti-capitalist struggle against the rush to privatise to make the rich richer and the poor poorer across the globe.

A Socialist Alternative

To link these struggles we also have to link our vision. A socially responsible programme of community health care cannot be run outside of a socialist context. I think we can find inspiration and ideas by looking to Cuba.

Article 49 of the Socialist Constitution of the Republic of Cuba states:
“Everyone has the right to the care and protection of their health. The state guarantees this right: by offering free hospital and medical services…; by offering free dental treatment; by developing plans for sanitary efforts, health education, periodic medical exams, general vaccination, and other preventive medical means. In these plans and activities the entire population participates through the social and mass organisations.”

This commitment is achieved through a nationally integrated system of public health in which social legislation about its application is unified with the training programmes of the workers. Public health is integrated with social welfare. Family planning is free, abortion is available on demand. There is a nationalised pharmaceutical industry, a high doctor to patient ratio, and no-one is without access to a doctor either geographically or financially.

Every GP lives in the community they serve, they are highly trained and chosen for training not just on academic achievement but more importantly social criteria. The doctors are part of community activities addressing environmental problems, sources of community stress, e.g. bad housing, family dynamics. They also are involved in organising social, sporting and fun events. There are political structures which enable the whole community to participate in making life decisions around what the community needs and wants.

This works because people are educated from nursery school throughout their whole lives, about health issues, including physical, psychological, social and political aspects needed for a healthy person, and because they develop an obligation to their community. Any health service requires people to adhere to principles of co-operation, equality, self-government and individual freedom.

In Britain the biggest providers of health and social care are not health and social service professionals, it is mothers and carers who provide over £87 billion worth of unpaid care a year.

Long term health depends on strengths of social networks, family structures and economic self-sufficiency. We need a system for instilling values in our young people – of caring and sharing, for community aspirations and involvement in civil society. This requires a high level of education and an understanding and commitment against discrimination, because of class, race, sex, sexual orientation, age and disability.

The current provision of health and social care defines people by what they lack or need and has resulted in people losing a sense of what they have to give, thus becoming inhumane to others.

Children in Cuba learn that the person beside them is healthy if they are kind to each other. Here in this country children learn to grab what they can for themselves, resulting in increased mental illness and suicide among young people.

A World Out of Balance

The other vital consideration in creating a vision of health is tackling global warming. We live in a world out of balance. Thanks to climate change and the results of the free market, we will be faced with both new diseases and old diseases re-emerging.

Already because of increased poverty and poor housing there is an increase of tuberculosis and rickets. Climate change causing floods and testing an ageing sewage system will see the return of enteric water-borne diseases. Also insects will thrive due to global warming in places they previously did not live. We have more mosquitoes and in time malaria will be introduced. We have already seen blue tongue disease in animals from midges. Other bacteria, viruses, fungi, parasites will appear, causing disease in humans, plants and animals, threatening the eco-system. Any future discussion on health must be set in the context of strategies of environmental activists.

In conclusion a National Health Service can only be realised within a socialist ideology within which structures of organisation are developed to involve the participation of everyone in the needs of their own communities, linking education and health with environmental issues within an international perspective against global capitalism.

Easy – we start with nationalising the pharmaceutical industry.

Posted in People not profit, Statements | 1 Comment »

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.

Posted in Power and politics, Statements | 5 Comments »

13/02/2008 by admin.

By Richard Searle

The economic system we all live under was born, as Marx succinctly put it, ‘red in tooth and claw’. The arms trade, the defence industry, security interests, national interests, which every way they call it,  they  are all prefaced on killing.   

There’s no polite way of putting it: for this economic system to succeed, continue and renew itself, others must die. The wars of the 20th century have killed millions. We have turned it ‘art of war’ into an industrial process   

In the eight short years of  21st century, and estimated one million more have joined the tally of war dead, from Central Africa and the Middle East, to the Caucuses and the Andes    How far we come from the slaughter of the trenches of WW1?

We now have high-tech wars in Afghanistan and Iraq where missiles fired from pilotless drones are directed from thousands of miles away in command rooms in the USA.  Those who fire the missiles never have to step foot in the country of those they kill. This is the iron fist of globalisation.

We can now turn on our televisions or Log-on and see wars being fought in real time.   Our society puts its best brains to work finding more efficient ways of killing people. Our governments subsidise the arms industries, gives bribes to the purchasers and justify this by saying it’s protecting jobs.  There exists an absurd and obscene contradiction at the very heart of capitalism. It provides the potential to extend life but is driven to end life. The combined defence budgets of the world for one year would eradicate world hunger, provide clean drinking for every person on the planet, an education for every child, could provide the medicine for every person with HIV and still have plenty of change left over.   Resistance to this logic, this drive to destruction, has always been there. It has been resisted by passive and active means. There have been those who have refused to fight and those who have turned their guns on their masters.  The 15th February 2003, turning point in modern history.   The convergence of global protests on one day in 2003 marked a first in human history. Protests moved through 12 time zones around the world, Those protests were organised from the grassroots up. They combined differing forces, movements and traditions. Those protests joined up the world as never before This is our immediate heritage not an event from another era.  It showed how far we have come together, our potential, our ability to communicate with new technology but it showed us how far we still need to go.    

Those protests were at once a victory in mobilisation, but within short space of time some participants read the 15th February as a defeat. The threat of war that had brought them on the streets had gone ahead. ‘We had marched in our millions but the bombs still fell’.   

Un-ravelling all the lessons, layers and contradictions of the 15th February 2003 provides the key to developing our strategies to stop the masters of war.   

What is the impact of 15th February ? Is it too early to tell?  

Discuss

Posted in Peace, Statements | 1 Comment »

13/02/2008 by admin.

By Declan O’Neill

When Labour dumped its formal commitment to “common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange” it was the final straw for many in the Labour party who still regarded themselves as socialists.    

In practice, of course, Labour had never challenged the dominance of the market or the supremacy of private property but few, would have predicted how quickly new Labour would rush to privatise those bits of the economy still in public hands. 

 In opposition it was “our air is not for sale” and a commitment to renationalise the railways; in government it was selling off air traffic control and cuddling up to Virgin Rail. Private good, public bad became the new mantra.  As Mark Steel has written in their worship of the market today’s politicians “sound like ancient pagans expressing fear of a bad crop brought by angry gods. And once it descends, all we can do is offer a sacrifice, of a few million jobs and lives ruined and thousands made homeless until the gods are satisfied with our gifts and we can start all over again.”  

New Labour is so desperate to avoid anything that smacks of” old- style nationalisation” that Gordon Brown would rather give Northern Rock to his mate Richard Branson than contemplate taking it into public ownership.  The latest obscenity is the Virgin group’s attempt, responding to the government’s “reform strategy” for the NHS, to move into Primary Healthcare.  

So what is the alternative?  What is wrong with running public services on the basis of peoples’ needs not private profit? Decisions about how and where we use those resources should be made by the people themselves through democratic means.  This does not mean a return to old style nationalisation. In practice the old nationalised industries aped the private sector: their management boards were composed of the great and good – neither workers or users had any real say in the day to day running of public services, never mind strategic direction. 

Yet even at their worst the old nationalised industries were a thousand time better than the privatised chaos we now face. 

The society we aim to build is not one built on ever increasing production and consumption but one democratically run to meet the needs of all humanity. Reclaiming our public services is an essential first step in this process.  We have the resources to do this: our task is to build a movement to transform the system from one built on private greed to one that meets the needs of all humanity.   

Posted in People not profit, Statements | 1 Comment »

13/02/2008 by admin.

By Peter Allen

In the last two or three years a near consensus has developed around the view that something dramatic needs to be done to ensure the survival of the planet. The few remaining “climate change deniers” in the scientific community increasingly have the near pariah status of “holocaust deniers”.

However although there is an agreement that “something needs to be done” there is far less agreement about what and how. In particular there is a recognition that our consumer society and individual prosperity is based on resource intensive production and an assumption of never ending growth. How can living standards be (at least) maintained in the relatively rich economies and societies whilst reducing, minimising or ideally eliminating the risk of environmental destruction?

At least as importantly how can those economies/societies (most of the world’s population) be given the chance to enjoy the benefits of advanced industrial society if the planet’s ecosystems are so fragile? The question raises issues for socialists as well as for supporters of the free market.

Socialist orthodoxy, starting with Marx, holds that socialism cannot be built in conditions of poverty, and that rational economic growth(democratically controlled perhaps and planned rather than left to the free market, but growth nevertheless) is necessary to provide abundance for all. If the finite resources of our planet mean that notions of never ending, resource intensive growth need to be questioned, and yet most people remain poor, then What is To Be Done?

We might have come to the view that we can’t have socialism without saving the planet .Our task is to persuade others that we probably can’t save the planet without socialism. By socialism we probably mean a society based on co-operation rather than competition, production for need rather than profit and a system of government based on genuine participation and democracy.

We need to engage others in a debate about the best way of distributing what we have, distinguishing between what we really need and what we have been persuaded that we might want and deciding things for ourselves, individually when appropriate and collectively when necessary.

Such a debate needs to involve discussion not just about the way we produce electricity or solve our food and transportation needs but about the way we live our lives and how we can ensure an equitable sustainable future for our planet.

Posted in Planet, Statements | 3 Comments »