Empty Rhetoric

Tremendous press coverage always follows parliamentary debates and legislation. Politicians always emphasise its importance and of course their own importance. 'The Child Poverty Act of 2010 holds the government accountable for reducing child poverty. On Wednesday, new figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies show that not only are they failing to do so, the numbers of children living in poverty will actually rise, from 2.4 million to 3.4 million by 2020 – the date that was set for the elimination of child poverty in the UK.' (Guardian, 8 May) So after all that pompous talk and so-called erudition what is the result? More kids are living in poverty than before the brilliant legislation. RD

Understanding class

There are two classes in society - the one possessing wealth and owning the means of its production, the other making the wealth by using those tools and technology but only with the permission and only for the benefit of the possessors. These two classes are necessarily in opposition to one another. We have before us today, in capitalist society, masters and slaves, exploiters and exploited but to put it more bluntly, robbers and the robbed. Two economic forces whose interests ceaselessly clash, are pitted against each other. These two classes can never be reconciled and it is this that we call the class struggle. Workers, be they “white” or “blue” collar, skilled or unskilled, because they are workers, cannot survive except by selling their labouring power. Yet were it not for the working class, the whole social fabric would collapse in an instant. It is they who do the useful work. It is they who produce the wealth.

UCS - A Brave Defence

“We don't only build ships on the Clyde, we build men. They have taken on the wrong people and we will fight." - Jimmy Reid


Occupations and sit-ins in Britain have been primarily used as a defensive method in union struggles as a means to oppose redundancies in a more determined manner. Occupying work-places are seen as a tactical improvement on conventional striking. After all, It’s warmer sitting-in, rather than standing outside picketing .

The Upper Clyde Shipyards Shipyards (UCS) work-in of 1971–72 posed, implicitly if not explicitly, the question of workers’ control of industry. Sit-in strikes challenges property rights and no matter how temporary, it does represent a seizure of ‘company property’ which is held ransom until the workers’ demands are hopefully met. No employer likes the idea of having their property seized, or having their plant used as bargaining power. But if the occupation is peaceful and unlikely to spread, why risk confrontation by management instigated evictions? In Glasgow, Chief Constable David McNee warned he would need 5000 additional policemen to keep control of the city if the yards closed

“The problem facing the leaders of the UCS workers was to devise a new technique of struggle which would achieve their objective, to prevent redundancies and closures, in what was bound to be a tough struggle. A strike could play into the hands of the employers when they were set on closure anyway. A sit-in would have been difficult to maintain for long enough. It would have also given the employers a good excuse to attack the workers by arguing that the sit-in made it impossible to fulfil any contract and aggravated the bankrupt situation. This could have helped the Tories to alienate public opinion from support of the UCS workers.” - UCS – The Fight for the Right to Work by A. Murray, Communist Party.

Strike action is inappropriate so instead overtime bans, go-slows were the order of the day. Trade Union officials, far from leading any fight against redundancies, often actively involved themselves in negotiations of phased sackings. The demands ‘last in, first out’, ‘voluntary retirement’, ‘natural wastage’ reflected the defensive nature of trade unions.

The UCS workers wanted to complete the partly-built ships and launch them (and even start on new ships already designed and commissioned). The employers and the state wanted to close down the yards.

The support for the UCS work-in was high within the working class, particularly in Scotland, expressed in two regional general strikes. The work-in also generated wide support beyond the organised labour movement. John Foster and Charles Woolfson in British Trade Unions and Industrial Politics, Vol 2 wrote:
“The ploy of ‘working-in’, which forced the government to accept the continuance of the yards as a going concern, immediately ranged behind the workers the 700 creditor firms which stood to lose all they were owed as well as the custom they depended on for the future. It forced local authorities, even the Conservative controlled Glasgow Council to confront the dilemma of supporting ‘their communities’ or the government. It took leadership of the dispute out of the hands of the official movement and temporarily neutralised a Scottish press which tended towards the Conservative Party (Herald and Scottish Daily Express) or right-wing Labour (Record) This response, of seeking to work upon and include the specific interests of local business and the professions in the regional economy, was based precisely on what [Jimmy] Reid reported to the C[ommunist]P[arty] national executive; an analysis of the specific contradictions of monopoly capitalism."

Despite all this, the movement came nowhere near bringing about a social overturn. But the work-in did force major concessions out of the government. In July 1971, the 8,000 took possession of the shipyards and held them for 15 months. As the authors point out:
“By October 1972 when the sit-in ended they had forced the Conservative government to abandon almost all its original objectives. Most of the 8000 jobs remained. Four yards were in operation. Worse still for the government, it had been pushed into a much wider reversal of regional policy. Its original intention in ending credits to the publicly-owned Upper Clyde Shipbuilders (UCS) had been to demonstrate its determination to stop support for all ailing industries. Now it had to reverse its entire regional policy and pay for a massive refloatment on the Clyde."

The UCS struggle continued for 16 months until October 1972. In the end the Tory government was forced into a U-turn and had to come up with £35 million in public money, plus millions more in credit, to maintain 8,000 jobs at UCS, in conjunction with a US company.

“Not a yard will close - Not a man down the road". Sadly, Socialist Courier has to note that years later the jobs and the yards saved no longer exist. But nevertheless 8,000 workers were kept in employment for longer than they would have been.

Trotskyist critics attacked the Communist Party leadership of the work-in for selling out and betrayal because they limited the struggle. They did not press for the extension of work-ins and workers’ control. These criticisms were unjustified. Reid and Fairlie cannot be criticised for settling for what was possible, given the relationship of forces and the general level of consciousness and organisation of the labour movement at the time, instead of indulging in ‘revolutionary’ gestures doomed to failure.

The UCS work-in demonstrated that closures and redundancy need not be passively accepted and that alternatives existed. The UCS work-in raised the expectations of thousands and captured the imagination of many more. A solidarity march from George Square to Glasgow Green saw 80,000 strong protest. 200,000 took part in what was effectively a partial general strike.

In the months and years that followed the commencement of the work-in, the idea of resistance spread. Workers at Plesseys of Alexandria, at the Scottish Daily Express with the publication of the Scottish Daily News and later Henry Robbs of Leith tried the same tactics. Capitalism in the end always prevailed.

Barriers To Socialism

There are many barriers to the ideas of socialism but at least one of them seems to be weakening. 'One in four people no longer believes in any religion, official analysis of national census returns found yesterday. It revealed Christianity is in decline and Christians are increasingly likely to be older or retired people. Many young people, young men in particular, appear to be rejecting religious belief altogether. Nearly one in three under-25s – 32 per cent – say they do not have a religion.' (Daily Mail, 17 May) Now we have to get rid of some of the other barriers - patriotism, racialism, sexism before we can get rid of the worst ism. Capitalism! RD

The Real Union Question

Have no illusions about the role of governments, the police or the law - the defence of capitalism and exploitation is the main function of the capitalist state.

Both Marx and Engels advised the workers to unite in trade unions and fight for improved wages and shorter hours. In these struggles, victories would be won. The workers could wring concessions out of the capitalists. “Now and then”, the Communist Manifesto explained “the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers.”

The hand-to-mouth existence of the workers has never made it easy to strike for higher wages and better working conditions. The employers can recuperate lost profits, the workers’ lost wages cannot. As long as the capitalist system exists, the bosses will always try to take back what they have been forced to concede. They will continually try to step up the exploitation of the working class in order to boost their profits.

Young and without a future

A report for the Scotland Institute – The Changing Face Of Youth Unemployment In Scotland 1992 To 2012 – found that over the past two decades, youth employment has gone from being characterised as consisting of stable, relatively well-paid work with career prospects to short-term, part-time, poorly paid work with limited long-term prospects.


Report author Dr Roger Cook, the research director at the institute, said: “Twenty years of sustained removal of employment protection and the casualisation of work has created a situation where young people are becoming trapped in low-paid work with limited longer-term opportunities... This is the conscious outcome of an approach to the labour market over 20 years that has stressed flexibility and ignored the impact of this on people’s working lives or standard of living. Those who are relatively well educated are finding jobs but those jobs are less likely to offer a career, progression, security or a decent wage than was the case even in the depths of recession under the 1992-1997 government. Stagnation of wages and loss of security has wider implications than just inflicting hardship on individuals.”

Cricket And Capitalism

Capitalism distorts everything it touches including sport. 'Legendary Indian batsman Rahul Dravid has spoken of his anguish after three players from the team he captains in the Indian Premier league were arrested over allegations of spot-fixing. The Rajasthan Royals captain said he was "shocked" at S. Sreesanth, Ankeet Chavan and Ajit Chandila's arrests. On Thursday, a court sent the players into police custody for five days.' (BBC News, 17 May)Dravid may well be in anquish but he can't be that surprised, for last year Indian cricket officials suspended five players after a sting by undercover TV reporters purported to show cricketers agreeing to bowl no-balls and spot-fix matches. And in 2011, three top Pakistani players - Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Amir - were banned after they were found guilty of involvement in a betting scam. RD

Two Different Worlds

Socialism is a society wherein every human being capable of it works according to their ability and in return takes according to their needs. Capitalism is a society wherein a small minority own the means of production and distribution and where the majority must work for a wage or a salary and produce a surplus value enjoyed by the small minority. So how is capitalism faring today? 'The unemployment rate in Britain has risen for the third successive quarter, with 15,000 more people jobless and looking for work in the three months to March. The total rose to 2.75 million, pushing the official unemployment rate up to 7.8 per cent of the workforce.' (Times, 16 May) Nearly 3 million people are stopped from producing wealth today in Britain. Think of a world socialist society and how much more productive it could be than a production for profit society like capitalism. RD

La Belle Sansculotte

LA BELLE SANSCULOTTE


She is coming, O my masters, she is coming in her might,
With the red flag o’er her legions and her sword sharp, clean and bright;
She is breaking through your dungeons, she is tearing off your chain,
She is coming to take vengeance without mercy once again!

She is coming, O my masters, with a new might in her arms,
Her vision clear, unclouded by a dying Satan’s charms;
She is coming in hate’s beauty, with love’s fierceness in her eye,
Like a maddened mother hast’ning where your tortured child-slaves die!

She is coming, O my masters, with her strong, steel-muscled hands,
She is reaching for your factories, your gardens and your lands;
She is calling to her standard all the sons of grief and toil,
She is promising your soldiers all your stolen wealth for spoil.

She is coming, O my masters! ’Neath her red, triumphal arch,
Lo! the guards that now surround you in her rebel ranks shall march!
She is coming as forever and forever she has come,
Arm in arm with Hope and Freedom, to the long roll of Right’s drum!

She is coming, O my masters! Soon her troops shall rest their feet
In the limpid waters flowing through your bowers, cool and sweet;
Soon her hungered hosts shall gather in your gold-roofed banquet hall,
And to ecstatic music hold high revel o’er your fall!

She is coming, O my masters, she is coming in her might,
With the red flag o’er her legions and her sword sharp, clean and bright!
She is coming in hate’s beauty, with love’s fierceness in her eye,
Like a maddened mother hast’ning where your tortured child-slaves die!

By Covington Hall
Oldtime Industrial Unionist

Our Benevolent Masters

The owning class and all their "experts" are always trying to improve the health of the working class, so the following report should come as no surprise to anyone. 'Research by the the Institute of Economic Affairs found that both mental and physical health can suffer, and that the Government should help people work longer and raise the state pension ages. The study - Work Longer, Live Healthier: The Relationship Between Economic Activity, Health And Government Policy - shows there is a small boost in health immediately after retirement but that, over the longer term, there is a significant deterioration. It suggests retirement increases the likelihood of suffering from clinical depression by 40 per cent and the chance of having at least one diagnosed physical condition by about 60 per cent.' (Daily Telegraph, 16 May) Despite this touching concern for the health of the working class the owning class seem to live long and healthy lives without the added benefits of anything remotely resembling hard work. RD

Life Is Cheap In Capitalism

The recent loss of over 1,000 worker's lives in a Bangladesh factory is not peculiar to that country. 'Cambodian clothing industry workers have been killed in the partial collapse of the shoe factory where they worked, adding to the loss of life in the Asian industry of making garments for the west. ...........Authorities told the Associated Press that two bodies had been pulled from the wreckage and at least seven people were injured, while a union official speaking to the Reuters news agency put the death toll at six or more. There were estimates of up to 50 people trapped in the wreckage.' (Guardian, 16 May) Reports say it is unclear how many people remain trapped. Capitalism in its drive for greater and greater profits roves the world and Asia is an attractive source of cheap unprotected labour. The garment industry is Cambodia's biggest export earner. In 2012 more than $4bn worth of products were shipped to the United States and Europe. RD

Man from the Pru

Chief executive Tidjane Thiam remuneration for last year totalled £7.8 million.

He was censured by the Financial Services Authority in March after Prudential was fined £30m for two regulatory breaches relating to its aborted £23 billion acquisition of Asia-based AIA three years ago.

Shareholder Ian Michel told Prudential's annual shareholder meeting in London: "It seems to me that the executive pay is very high. I have no doubt everybody works very hard but the word 'greedy' is not entirely removed from my mind."


Another described Mr Thiam's pay as "obscene".

Steve O'Donnell, a representative of staff union Unite at Prudential UK, which has a large site at Craigforth, Stirling, questioned the bonus payout to Mr Thiam in light of the FSA fine.

The fight for houses

"Ever since the Highland Clearances in the 18th Century, ordinary Scottish folk have been pushed around according to the whims of property owners and their servants the politicians."

This pamphlet by the now defunct group Solidarity, although dated now, makes interesting reading.

http://libcom.org/library/housing-rents-tenants-struggle-scotland

State ownership or common ownership

The term “State capitalism” (sometimes misleadingly designated as State Socialism) is an economic form in which the state performs the role of the capitalist employer, for instance the Post Office(at least for the moment). Under State ownership or State control of industry, the exploitation of wage workers continues. Surplus-values are appropriated by the capitalist class just the same. The government now functions as the exploiting agent of the capitalists who receive their incomes in the form of interest on government bonds or on loans to the government. Although the exploitation may be less direct, the profits go to the capitalists as formerly. The workers are not any better off. That is what Engels meant when he said, “State ownership does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces.” Millions of employees are now in the State sector and the capitalist class are just as rich while the working class are just as insecure and just as poor, as before. But state property is not socialism for the workers are still not the masters of their labour conditions and remain separated from the production process.


“State ownership of the productive forces is not the solution... [in Marx and Engels’ view, for] neither the conversion into joint-stock companies nor into state property deprives the productive forces of their character as capital... The workers remain wage-earners, proletarians. The capitalist relationship is not abolished; it is rather pushed to an extreme.” (Anti-Dühring)

The Madness Of Capotalism

We are constantly being told that we are living in a time of economic recession and must learn to tighten our belts. That advice is not paid much attention to by the owning class.'An enormous Gerhard Richter painting of Milan's Piazza del Duomo (Cathedral Square) that was commissioned to cheer up the offices of the electronics conglomerate Siemens sold for $37m (£24m) on Tuesday, setting a new auction record for a living artist. .........It was bought by a Napa Valley vineyard owner, Donald Bryant, who punched his fist in the air after successfully buying the Richter at Sotheby's big contemporary art sale in New York.' (Guardian, 15 May) In case you think the owning class are mad to pay such prices for a painting it should be pointed out that the Milan painting was sold by the Hyatt hotel group achieving a price 10 times higher than they paid for it in 1998. It is not the art buyers that are mad - it is the capitalist system. RD

Transcending the trade union struggle

The working class are as our Chartist forefathers were not afraid to call it, a class of wages slaves. Yet today we are less preoccupied with the abolition of the wages system than ever. Reformists attempt to mollify inhuman social relations whilst preserving them intact. The old cry for a fair day’s pay echoes repeatedly time and time again. The essence of working-class enslavement is not impoverishment. Whether a worker’s wages be high or low his existence is imposed. It is necessary to abolish the basic condition of modern exploitation, wage slavery.


The old conceptions in the labour movement have become faulty and inadequate and working class organisations offer indecision and confusion, and are reduced to impotence.

Karl Marx counseled the working class many years ago that “they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘abolition of the wages system.’ ”

When we fight for a demand like a wage increase, we are merely fighting against the effects of capitalism. Not merely that. We are demanding it from the capitalists. In other words, we envisage the continuation of the capitalist system. What trade union struggles really do is to fight to improve the conditions of the working class within the framework of the capitalist system. They do not challenge capitalism itself. That is why they degenerate to pure and simple reformism and, in the end, bolster up capitalism.

Every wage increase that is won by the workers is eventually offset by the employers by more intensive work. So, usually, the workers are back to from where they started.

What all workers should understand is that their misery is due to exploitation carried on by the capitalist class. Trade unionism merely restricts their struggle to attempts at lessening this exploitation. It does not fight to end exploitation i.e. to end the capitalist system and replace it by socialism. This is the limitation of trade union struggles. However, we should not oppose trade union struggles. It is essential to organise workers and help them to realise the value of their labour power in the fight for their day to day demands. And it is also in the course of these fights, that the workers can learn about the system of capitalist exploitation and the need to abolish it. They will not only discover how to fight for wage increases but also how to abolish the wage system itself.
The objective of the Socialist Party is nothing less than the socialist reconstruction of society, the abolition of the wages system. We press the workers to transform the economic struggle into a political struggle for the seizure of power by the working class. Otherwise we will sink into the morass of never-ending reformism.

The poor once again pay the rich

The Duke of Roxburghe could net £1.5 million a year from a wind farm on the Lammermuir Hills. The Earl of Moray is estimated to receive £2 million a year from a wind farm near Stirling. The Earl of Glasgow could be earning upwards of £300,000 a year from turbines on his Kelburn estate. These hang-overs from our feudal past earn large sums by renting their land to wind-turbine energy firms whose wind farms are in turn subsidised by extra levies on ordinary electricity consumers.


Alison Elliot, chair of the Land Reform Review Group (LRRG), said the issue would be investigated amid concerns that aristocrats are benefiting from the renewables revolution while the poor grapple with fuel­poverty. Dr Elliot told Sir Robert Clerk of Penicuik, a consultant for Smith Gore and a landowner at the centre of a storm over plans for wind turbines on his estate: “Land is implicated in providing food, space for housing and in overcoming fuel poverty.“We are an energy rich country so why do we have fuel poverty?”

The Church of Scotland said such figures represented a “significant transfer of income from domestic electricity consumers, including those living in fuel poverty, to landowners...The Church is concerned this redistribution of income is tending to promote inequality. The ownership of land in Scotland remains deeply inequitable and the new landed income from wind power entrenches that inequality.” It added: “A paradox of life in rural Scotland is that the rapid growth of renewable energy is matched by a growth in fuel poverty… This is unacceptable and if landowners are gaining financial rewards from renewables while a growing number of households are living in fuel poverty, then the strong case for re-examining land reform to ensure the financial benefits of renewables are shared more equitably is strengthened further.”

A taxing question

Amazon paid less in UK corporation tax last year than it received in government grants, its official company accounts show.
Its corporation tax bill was just £2.44m – less than the £2.5m it received from the Scottish Government in inducements to build a new distribution warehouse in Dunfermline.

Its corporation tax bill was just £2.44m – less than the £2.5m it received from the Scottish Government in inducements to build a new distribution warehouse in Dunfermline.

Alex Salmond has previously spoken of what he described as an “historic” deal that saw Amazon set up a distribution centre in Dunfermline, alongside its customer call centre in Edinburgh.
Peter Walsh, Scottish spokesman for union Unite, warned the latest Amazon tax payments were a “drop in the ocean” compared to its vast UK sales figures. “We desperately need to look at tax reform and how to achieve tax justice,” he said. “The taxes they pay, combined with the fact they are a low-wage, low-skills employer, poses the question as to what benefit they bring to Scotland and to the UK. We have put significant public funds into luring this employer here and this is what we get back.”

Sunday Morning Hypocrisy

On a Sunday morning throughout England the man of God in the pulpit will attack those who place reliance on material gains. 'Thirst not after the material things of life. Blessed are the poor.' he will declaim. That's all very well for lecturing his gullible flock but in real life the church is less unworldly. 'The Church of England will announce some of its best financial results in recent years today, with a 9.7 per cent return on investments for 2012. ........... The Church commissioners manage £5.5 billion in assets for the Church of England. (Times, 15 May) RD

who owns the north pole - part 58

China, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Singapore have been permanent observer status on the Arctic Council.


The Arctic Council has until now been an organisation for the environmental sectors of government but you are moving into real politics and that's a different game explained Leiv Lunde , a former special envoy on energy and climate change at the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.