Labour Briefing, June 1993

JUNE 1993 £1.00

ACIST VIOLENCE

Britain's growth industry

inside ... LT» @ USA today @ Supporting the miners @ Avoiding the Liberals

LABOUR - TAKE THE POWER!

stop press

M25 Three defy court stitch-up

THE NEXT STAGE of the M25 ‘Three’s leave to appeal hearing will commence on 2ist June. The prosecution, with the compliance of the court, is refusing to disclose vital evidence to the defence. Campaigners for the Three have now discovered that the secret evidence is in fact a “highly sensitive” report of the Surrey constabulary’s investigation into complaints made by Raphael Rowe, one of the Three.

The investigation was triggered when defence lawyers discovered that police had conducted several unrecorded interviews with suspects who later became prosecution witnesses.

Interestingly, the police property officer in the M25 Three case and the subject of a complaint from Rowe is one ex-Detective Sergeant Donaldson, also one of the accused in the recent trial of police officers alleged to have stitched up the Guildford Four.

Even more interestingly, the Crown Prosecutor who has been demanding non-disclosure of the Surrey report to the M25 Three defence - one Mr Bevan QC - is the same Crown Prosecutor who so grossly mishandled the case against the Guildford cops that their trial turned into a vicious retrial of the innocent Guildford Four. © Contact the M25 Three Campaign: c/o

Joanna Rowe, 42b Copplestone Road, London SE15 4AD.

Trentham women vow to fight on

HUNDREDS OF MINERS and supporters marched through Hanley on 22nd May in support of defiant Trentham miners and Trentham Women’s Pit Camp. Delegations from Parkside and Vane Tempest joined the rally.

They were told by Arthur Scargill, “The courage of the women of Trentham, despite brutal treatment by British Coal, should inspire us all. A 24 hour general strike against pit closures is now the way forward for the whole trade union movement.”

Brenda Proctor, one of three women who occupied the pit for four days, told the rally, “We are now planning more action. We will not go away.”

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In this month's

Strategy Of fError ......s..sccssccesscessssccsneeessccenes & Tactics of resistance ........ccccccscccsscesrssssreceees D Labour gains .. No pacts with vermin .........ccssseesscees Maastricht house of horrors .........ssccccccsseeeeee 8 Weimar revisited? ..........ssssccccssscssssssssseeeees 10 Defiance despite closures ............scsssssscsseeeee 11 Miners fight on 12 Trade Union Notebook How f0 Stop G CriMe ......ccccccccsssccsecceescceseerene 15 Family debate...........scccscccssscsssccsceceesccenessene 16 JUNE CAMPAIGNS ..........cccccrsscssseerrsesseeeesssseeee 17 Brighton: NCC rides out Backing for Bosnia International Briefing .........0.0.000eseerereee 24 Anger and accord ........ccscscccssssssssssssseseseesees 2D Reviews . Periscope .. L@HELS .....sscssscccssccccsensssssscnsnsssssssssnsssececeoess OO

No fuel tax .......ccsccccsssssssssssnsessssssssencsssssseoees OL

Cover design by Gary Drostle

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Lib-Lab Fib-Flabbery

AMIDST ALL THE talk of pacts with the Liberal

Democrats, it’s often forgotten that Labour already is in a pact - with the Conservative government. What else was the abstention on the final vote on the Maastricht Treaty? As is made clear in this issue of Briefing, Maastricht is not a flawed step towards European integration, but an integral package of measures designed to strengthen ly European capital against both overseas rivals and

‘its own working class. It is all about fostering

social and economic inequality. It will exacerbate

national and regional divisions. It will strip electors in all European countries of even the hope of democratic control over key political decisions. It sets in stone an economic policy which is the exact opposite of what Labour needs to do if it wins the next election.

Perhaps this is why the Labour leadership were prepared to let the divided Tories off the hook and save the discredited Treaty. It is now a commonplace that Labour has abandoned all but the pretence of opposition to the Tories. As Tony Benn rightly says, the leaders of all the major parties now subscribe to an ideological consensus.

A Lib-Lab pact cannot be effectively opposed unless we break with this consensus. The tactical arguments against a pact are overwhelming. The media commentary on the May 6th elections was predictable and was little influenced by actual scrutiny of the results. Disgust with the Tories was, of course, the over-riding factor. And yes, the Lib Dems benefited from this. But Labour was undoubtedly the biggest winner on the night, capturing the greatest number of seats and over 40% of the vote, enough to give it a majority in the Commons. Across the shire counties there are now strengthened Labour Groups. In many areas, there is a visible Labour presence for the first time in decades. We now need the politics to match and exploit this ballot box success. The renewed Labour presence offers a platform for the independent advocacy of working class interests - something which is needed just as much in Surrey as in Scotland. But any deals with the Lib Dems on County Councils will compromise this independence and blunt the Party’s effectiveness.

Itis this political independence of the working class - reflecting the reality that our society is run in the interests of the few and can only be changed by the collective action of the many - which is at stake in the current dispute over Labour's links to the unions. The apparent determination of T@WU, GMB, NUPE and COHSE leaders to maintain the union vote in Parliamentary selections and leadership elections is most welcome. “One member one vote” - a classic piece of Orwellian Newspeak - will actually disenfranchise millions of trade union members, the very people who have been footing the bill for the Parliamentary leadership's catastrophic performance. Smith’s “compromise” proposal is nothing more than a resuscitation of the cut-price trade union membership first mooted in the mid-80s and already implemented with pathetic results. It would remove the collective, democratic structures of the unions themselves from Party participation.

Of course, Labour's constitution needs reform. Why not eliminate the MPs/MEPs from the electoral college (as Party and union members they already have a vote) and split both the college and the conference 50-50 between the two wings of the Party? Why not insist on recorded votes at NEC and Conference and circulate all CLP and union members with the details? This would foster partnership and equality between the trade union and constituency wings of the Party. Coupled with other measures to promote the free flow of information and block the hijacking of policy-formation by the Shadow Cabinet (in cahoots with the media), it would also encourage rank and file participation among both union.and Party members.

But the key to regenerating the Labour and trade union link - something that must happen if Party and unions are to regain effectiveness against Tories and employers - is through successful joint struggle on the ground. What happens to the Party constitution at Brighton this autumn is vitally important for the future of the link, but equally so is what happens to the miners, public sector workers and others standing in the firing line as the Tories try to solve their acute political and economic problems at our expense.

If the Labour and TUC leaders had acted, as they could have done, to foster instead of throttle mass opposition to the pit closures, if they had used their numbers in the Commons to kill the Miastricht Treaty, as they could have done, the Tories would not now feel free to fly kites on such horrors as £30 a night charges for NHS beds, taxing child benefit or ending free prescriptions for pensioners and children. Wherever they fall, the coming cuts in public spending will be brutal - and unpopular. They can be stopped. Labour’s leaders should make sure they are by repudiating not only the prospect of pacts with the Liberal Democrats but also the present pact with the Conservative government.

Lagpour BRIEFING

Strategy of

terror

Bombings, burnings, beatings - these are the stock in

trade of Combat 18, the latest gang of psychopathic nazi

thugs to hit Britain’s streets. Arthur Kent reports.

OMBAT 18 - the 18

represents the alphabetical

position of Adolf Hitler’s initials - was masterminded by Harold Covington, a former leader of the American Nazi Party. Covington had more than a hand in the massacre at Greensboro in 1979 when nazis and Klansmen opened fire on an anti-racist march, killing five and wounding a further nine. Its members are drawn from the street brawlers of the British Movement, the National Front and the British National Party, from soccer hooligans and followers of skinhead bands and supporters of Ulster loyalist terrorism. Many, if not all, of them have convictions for violent crimes.

With the retum of Covington to America - C18 still uses his PO Box in North Carolina as its address - the leadership has fallen on the shoulders of Charlie Sargeant. Sargeant cut his political teeth in the British Movement and is nowadays linked with the loyalist Ulster Defence Association which is now outlawed in the six counties. One of his brothers runs a nazi bookclub from an address in Herts which has also been used by Covington.

Another C18 chief linked to Ulster loyalism is Eddie Whicker, who was seen to play a leading role in the harassment of the Rohit Duggal march in Eltham which ended with an assault on the local ARA secretary. This was thought to be a ‘dry run’ for much more violent attacks on anti-racists. Whicker is a former NF parliamentary candidate, nowadays engaged in gathering intelligence for the UDA. Having escaped conviction for alleged smuggling for the UVF, Steve Martin is another C18 member with links to the UDA. BNP/C18 thug Phil Edwards

4 Lazsour BRIEFING

was recently found not guilty of attempted murder. A major prosecution witness did not appear, fearful of a savage beating.

A major C18 activity is the production of a tatty and sub-literate bulletin called Redwatch. This is the work of John Cato who also produces a nazi journal The Oak. Adorned with pictures of Hitler and gun-toting masked figures, Redwatch’s main content has been listings of the names, addresses and phone numbers of antifascist activists. This resulted in attacks on premises of the Morning Star, Democratic Left and Labour Briefing. Socialist paper sellers and Anti-Nazi League leafleters have been beaten up, and an anarchist book shop and printing press wrecked.

For many years nazis have followed a twin-track strategy. On the one hand they have tried to present themselves as a respectable political force contesting elections, as the National Front and the BNP attempt to do. On the other they have long engaged in covert terrorism aimed at intimidating their political opponents and ethnic minority communities, and creating a climate of terror which will be the overture to a ‘white revolution’. C18 is the latest manifestation of this strategy. It makes no secret of its extreme violence, proclaiming “dead enemies are the best propaganda!”

When faced with C18 thuggery it is no use running away and relying on the police for protection as some on the Left have done. We have to defend our homes, offices, meetings, demonstrations and paper sales from any threat. We have to be willing and able to hit back and hit hard! We have to shed the image of being a bunch of middle class wankers who couldn’t

punch their way out of a wet paper bag.

We have to use the power we have to isolate the nazis. Those with jobs should be expelled from their trade unions and ‘sent to Coventry’. Those on the dole should have their availability for work closely scrutinised by CPSA and NUCPS members. Those who are council tenants who racially harass their neighbours or run nazi book clubs from their homes should be evicted. We must call on the Labour MPs currently involved in the Parliamentary investigation of the nazis’ international links to demand that C18 be outlawed and its leaders prosecuted for criminal conspiracy. Above all, in the rundown areas which for decades have been Labour rotten boroughs, we must rebuild the labour movement at the grass roots level. Then Labour rather than the nazis could provide an outlet for the frustrations of alienated white working class youth. A thriving, campaigning, democratic Young Socialists would be a step in the right direction.

When it comes to fighting the nazis, the Left is often its own worst enemy. Disunity abounds and much energy is wasted slagging off rival groups. The nazis don't distinguish between members of the Labour Party, the SWP, Socialist Action or any other group. To them we’re all ‘reds’ and they want us dead.

C18 was cock-a-hoop when it managed to mobilise 600 nazi and loyalist stormtroopers to oppose the Bloody Sunday march. But on 25th April only 200, mostly BNP members, tumed out for an anti-republican march under the banner of ‘British loyalists.’ Opposed by 2,000 antifascists, their march was diverted from the Irish Embassy to the backstreets of Pimlico. This shows what can be done. But the lessons of uniting to fight back must be learnt and applied if the strategy of terror is be thwarted once and for all.

Anti-Racist Alliance Supported by TUC

Remember Ruhullah Aramesh

March Against

Racist Murders

Saturday 12th June Assemble 11am Norbury Park,

Norbury Avenue, Croydon

HE CHALLENGE for the Left

will be whether its new found

enthusiasm for the fight against racial harassment, the enthusiasm of the convert, can be translated into consistent and practical support for those under attack. The history of the fight against racism predates the emergence of the would-be standard bearers of the movement - its history is that of the collective experience of resistance by black people in Britain.

Much of the practical work has been taken up by local community groups such as Newham Monitoring Project (NMP) in east London. In. 1992 NMP dealt with 198 cases of racial harassment in Newham alone. One such example is the series of violent racist attacks on Mrs S, who lives in West Ham with two young children, one of whom was beaten unconscious with a brick. She has been forced to endure attempted arson, numerous broken windows and frequent assaults. The only response from the police has been to urge her to seek rehousing. In another case Mr A, a Ugandan refugee who had only been in Britain for a few months, was violently assaulted in a pub. He was followed into a toilet, had his head pushed into the urinals and was punched and kicked, suffering cracked ribs, back injuries, cuts and bruises. To date no-one has been. arrested.

These cases are unfortunately typical of NMP’s casework. Many black people are isolated on predominantly white estates with little or no black community to provide support. Our case load shows that racism disproportionately affects poor, jobless and working class black communities, particularly single parents, refugees and those on benefits. In too many cases the response of the police to racial harassment is either inadequate or extremely hostile. Often those suffering from racist violence get arrested for daring to defend themselves. The experience of groups like NMP, defending working class communities from attack and demanding the right of self-defence, provides the Left with the basis for its approach to fighting racism. Unfortunately, its response has been to place its own agenda above that of communities which have been resisting racist attacks for years.

Two paternalistic strands have emerged. The first is to treat black communities as ‘victims’ to be ‘defended’, and to separate everyday racism from the more immediately visible, less complicated threat posed by fascist groups. The second is to

Anti-racists on the march. Photo: Bryn Griffiths

Tactics of

resistance

The murder of Stephen Lawrence in south London, part of a mounting wave of racist

violence, has revealed the fragile state of the anti-racist movement as national anti-racist

groups compete for media supremacy. When the camera crews have gone home, argues

Kevin Blowe of the Newham Monitoring Project, the truth is that the racists will remain.

believe that racism can be eradicated by the efforts of an elite working within institutions which themselves are inherently racist and which perpetuate racism. Both strands fail to involve the black community’s own fight against racism, and both suffer from a common failure of the Left - to address the day-to-day realities of people’s lives.

The results are obvious. On the one hand, we have demonstrations where black communities are later left to face the racist backlash when the marchers have gone home. On the other, we have misguided legislation such as the Racial Harassment Bill, which ignores the fact that existing laws are sufficient to prosecute racists but are not enforced by a police force that is itself a primary source of racial harassment.

Faced with an anti-racist movement which is largely divorced from daily struggle and sometimes degenerates into sectarian squabbling, how should the Left respond to the black community’s urgent need for support? The answer surely must be to accept that political analysis is based on practical experience and that the latter shapes the former. It is not good enough for

socialists simply to be saying, ‘racism is very bad, we need new laws’ - after all, there is supposed to be a world of difference between socialists and guiltridden liberals! The Left's anti-racist work should be responsive to and supportive of the demands of progressive black community groups, working alongside rather than on behalf of those communities, offering practical, financial and physical assistance. The respect that the Left will win for this strategy can then be turned into support for wider issues of social justice.

The launch of anti-racist initiatives across the country is a welcome development, although scepticism about the motives of much of the ‘white Left’ still lingers. As long as the Left fails to respond to the criticisms of it made by radical black groups, the fragility of the anti-racist movement will continue. Common cause between the Left and those on the frontline of resistance to racist violence is a matter of urgency. Antiracism is not a game - as the family of Stephen Lawrence and others are painfully aware, it’s a matter of life and death.

Lasour BrieFine 5

cn

Pact or principle in the South

East?

FTER THE worst Tory rout in local government elections since the war, the orgy of Lib-Labism was a let-down. However, early fears that the increase in councils where there is no overall control (NOC) would herald a new era

Andy Howard Reigate CLP

of Lib-Lab deals and electoral pacts as a strategy to defeat Conservatism have not yet materialised in the South East.

Kent, Surrey, East and West Sussex all fell to NOC as the Tory vote crumbled and the Lib-Dem vote surged. The temptation of Labour Groups to use the politics of NOC to seek committee chairs and influence was intense, but only East Sussex was prepared to take the trail so publicly set by Berkshire.

In Surrey Labour gained three seats but lost two leaving it with eight councillors and potential balance of power in the county. The Labour Group resolved, however, to take no committee chairs and make no arrangements with any other party. Reigate CLP voted overwhelmingly to support the county Group’s stance and urged the leader to reject publicly any deals with the Lib-Dems.

The Labour Group in West Sussex

Wilton wins

John Wilton, newly elected Labour county councillor for Plymouth Drake Ward, reports:

“Labour reasserted itself in Devon where the Tories lost 36 seats. The Liberal Democrats are the largest single party with 40 seats out of 85 but Labour is second with 21.

There is no Lib-Lab pact. The LibDems intend to form a minority administration but it is clear that they will fall apart within a year, if not sooner, as they are already backtracking on manifesto commitments.”

6 Lasour Brrerinc

gained one seat (Haywards Heath East) but remains very much the junior party. Group leader Alf Pegler denounced all deals before the election and is adamant that Labour will take no chairs but will vote ‘on the issues’ with no favours to other parties.

The temptation to do deals for committee chairs is greater where Labour is better represented. In East Sussex the Labour Group voted unanimously in Council to support the carving up of committee chairs with the Lib-Dems and isolating the Tories.

As the larger group, the Lib-Dems took the key posts of Education, Social Services and Environment. Labour took leadership of Libraries and some sub-committees. Labour Group leader Ken Bodfish becomes deputy leader.

One Labour councillor justified the Group’s decision by pointing out the impossibility of allowing continued Tory administration, and the risks of allowing the Lib-Dems to go it alone and take all the credit for any improvements.

The idea of a stark choice between Labour making pacts or watching in glorious isolation while Liberals bask in their new-found power is undermined by developments in Kent.

Here Labour gained five seats and retained its second position on the Council. The Labour Group has refuted any idea of pacts.

At a meeting following the elections all three Group leaders decided to amend standing orders and retain their independence.

The arrangement replaces the

privileged position of committee chair with a system in which each party appoints a spokesperson on each committee. This ‘Cheshire’ solution avoids inter-party deals, But the Tory Group rejected its leader’s plan and voted to withdraw into opposition and lick its wounds.

The Kent Group's approach is clearly more in line with NEC guidelines than East Sussex's “experiment in cooperation”, as one councillor called it.

In reality all strategies for Labour depend hugely on relations between parties on individual councils and the political context of each county. If four counties in the South-East can produce three different responses to the political challenges posed by the 6th May results, surely fears of an unstoppable momentum for LibLabbery are unfounded.

All sections of the Party should reject knee-jerk responses on pacts. Blanket condemnation of all deals with Liberal-Democrats as unqualified treachery repeats the same errors as those of the craven apologists for LibLabism. They muddle the real distinetion between tactics and principles and ignore the very different political contexts in which Labour Groups operate.

The results of 6th May mean that the NEC compromise position to ‘maximise influence’ without taking committee chairs may have to give way to a more flexible attitude. After all, the combined authority of the leadership and NEC failed to stop the Berkshire deal. Faced with Labour Groups across the county asserting their right to choose their own tactics, the only realistic option is to confirm Group autonomy.

The bottom line is to reaffirm the need to maximise the pressure for socialist policies and principles in the South, and not seek local conveniences that threaten the long-term future of Labour as a campaigning electoral force in any given area.

Nuclear disarmament & the peace dividend in the New Europe

Saturday 5th June Conway Hall, Red Lion Square (Holborn tube}

10.30 - 5.00

Speakers include: Marjorie Thompson (Chair CND), Claire McMaster (Vice Chair CND), Jeremy Corbyn MP.

No pacts with vermin!

Ripping away the Liberal Democrats’ respectable facade,

Tower Hamlets Labour councillor Christine Shawcroft reveals

the racist underbelly of our would-be pact partners.

HO ON EARTH has come

up with the idea that ‘Left

of Centre’ parties should unite to defeat the Tories? Why, Hugo Young of the Guardian, of course. Has the man ever set foot in Liberalcontrolled Tower Hamlets? It seems unlikely. If he had he would know that Tower Hamlets Liberals are to the tight of the Tories. And they are not unique nor a blot on the good name of Liberalism, as some seem to think. This mob have been supported every inch of the way by Ashdown.

They have enthusiastically embraced privatisation, CCT, and are now trying to tum all Council support services into Business Units. These can only make a profit the same way private companies make a profit - by ruthlessly attacking the terms and conditions of the workforce.

Casualisation on these lines will enable the Liberals to sack about 300 people. The Business Units are to be moved to a new Town Hall. The move will cost £7 million which could be spent on new homes.

The old Town Hall had become known as the School for Scandal. About two thirds of the Liberal Group have been investigated over allegations ranging from fraudulently claiming housing benefit through receiving stolen goods to market corruption, never mind the court cases arising from the notorious fake Labour leaflet issued in marginal wards in 1990.

Their leaflets repeatedly state how they want to help “local people” by getting rid of “homeless families”. During last year’s Millwall byelection, they issued a leaflet with a copy of a letter from Mildred Gordon to Paddy Ashdown complaining about their racism. This letter was obviously sent to them from Ashdown with the intention of tipping the wink to the racist voter. The BNP complained that the Liberals had stolen their propaganda!

Those of us who campaigned during

the Bermondsey by-election will recall how Simon Hughes was provided with a “girlfriend”, while Peter Tatchell was vilified as a “poof”, “queer”, “queen” etc,

Make no mistake, these Liberals are no aberration. Their tactics were originally perfected in Liverpool by David “Ban Abortions” Alton.

How can anyone, even a drippy Guardian journalist, contemplate an alliance with these vermin? 0

Man with

Louis Hotchkiss reports: MEP Mike McGowan has been reselected as Labour’s candidate in the Leeds Euroseat.

For the last 18 months every Leeds Labour Party activist had assumed that Jon Trickett (former leader of the Leninist faction of the ILP and now right-wing leader of Leeds Council) would challenge the sitting MEP. Certainly he made no effort to deny a newspaper report to that effect. He had even arranged for Vincent Hanna to be hired by the Council to develop Leeds’ “European image’.

However, after the narrowness of the trigger ballot result, Trickett announced he was not a candidate and claimed he never had been. Among the bars of the House of Commons his

no bottle

behaviour was put down to crude lack of “bottle”.

Three candidates emerged after Trickett's announcement. The long campaign was the most bitter seen in the Leeds labour movement in years. Only McGowan consistently stressed the need for an internationalist approach against the narrow “socialism in Leeds” outlook of his two main challengers.

95% of trade unions nominated McGowan and he received 67% in the final vote.

Trickett is now said to be sniffing around Leeds Central and Morley and South Leeds CLPs looking for a ticket to the Commons but with his track record no one can seriously expect him to stay the course.

EPLP meets MCC?

BRITISH LABOUR MEPS are already notorious in Europe for being among the most male dominated groups in the Euro-Parliament. Only seven of the current 45 Labour MEPs are women. Yet it looks as if this sorry state of affairs will actually worsen after the current round of selections!

In London North West Robert Evans, a member of the Co-Op Party, was nominated. But he discovered that a woman Co-op Party member had also

been nominated. Co-op Party rules, reasonably enough, stipulate that members should not stand against one other. Rather than give way, he resigned from the Co-op Party - and was selected!

Anyone who thinks that men are going to step aside voluntarily can think again. Yet Clare Short and others in the leadership still claim that women-only shortlists are not the way to close the Party’s ‘gender gap’.

Lapour BriscFine 7

OW FITTING that the Danish ‘yes’ vote in the Maastricht referendum was greeted with the biggest civil disturbances in Danish peacetime history. The dispossessed of Copenhagan declared an “EC Free Zone” and defended it for two nights at the barricades. The police opened fire. Interim score: police 27 injured, “rioters” 11.

‘The Danish ‘no’ campaigners achieved a remarkable result (43%) in the face of concerted opposition from the entire Danish political and business establishment, including 46 of the country’s 48 newspapers. Toy manufacturers Lego threatened to halt construction of a new plant in Denmark if there was another ‘no’ majority. Prime Minister Rasmussen bribed voters with offers of a tax cut, but the dispossessed of Denmark were in no doubt who would pay the price of Maastricht. ‘No’ voters were predominant amongst Denmark’s 12% unemployed, among women, the urban poor and fishermen.

When the European political establishment met in Maastricht to carve up the continent 18 months ago they little expected the resistance they would encounter. No one foresaw the costs of German reunification, continuing high German interest rates, deepening European recession, the collapse of the ERM with Britain, Italy, Spain and Portugal all devaluing, the mass unpopuarity of Britain’s Tory government, the crises in the French, Italian and Spanish Socialist parties or the protracted warfare in former Yugoslavia.

‘As a result, the Maastricht Treaty is not now what it was only a few months ago. Popular anxiety, mobilised more often, it must be said, by the right than the left, forced a series of concessions. To sell Maastricht, politicians had to under-sell it. Again and again they assured people across the EC that democracy and/or national sovereignty was not under threat. Opt-outs were agreed. Reconstruction of the ERM, not to mention the goal of monetary union, was pushed further and further into the mists of the future. The triumphant march of European capitalist unity seems now halting and uncertain.

8 Lasour BRIEFING

“The long night is over,” declared the Guardian following the ‘yes’ majority in the Danish referendum on Maastricht. Paul

Field and Mike Marqusee argue that it’s only just begun.

Thanks not least to the British Labour Party, Maastricht now looks set for ratification. Obstacles still lie ahead. Legal challenges look set to prove the Financial Times’ prediction that the optcout clauses would “tum the social charter into a lawyer’s charter”. The German Constitutional court may even be swayed by clear evidence of public scepticism in the heart of the EC. 83% there want a referendum and two thirds wanted Denmark to vote ‘no’. In Britain, 73% want a referendum. Three out of four voters in Newbury said they would vote ‘no’ in such a referendum. Within the ruling class, there is increasing unease about the future of the Maastricht process. The Economist concluded, “The dangers of persisting with it are smaller than the dangers of scuttling it”.

‘Apologists for Maastricht on the soft left have argued that for all its faults it does offer us an opening to build a “social Europe”. They argue that it is a necessary step towards the desirable goal of European integration. If they really believe what they have been telling us, they are in for bitter disappointment.

The Social Chapter, presented as a balm to the bane of the European Central Bank, is not what it’s cracked up to be. The laudable general aims stated in Article 1 are restricted by the overriding “need to maintain the competitiveness of the Community economy”. The EC would be empowered to do no more than set “minimum requirements for gradual implementation having regard to ... constraints which would hold back creation and development of small and medium sized undertakings”. Any positive measures on social security, job creation or protection for redundant workers would require a unanimous vote of the Council of Ministers. Bear in mind, it's not just the UK which has blocked implementation of previous social

legislation. Belgium, Italy, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Portugal all bridled at EC regulations on noise at work, as did France, Greece, Italy, Ireland, Luxembourg and Portugal on control of chemical agents in workplaces.

Article 2, Clause 6 of the Chapter stipulates that the EC will have no powers

over “pay, the right of association, the right to strike or the right to impose lockouts”. Any hope that British workers will be able to leap over the heads of British employers, government or trade union laws to get satisfaction from the EC is unfounded, despite the claims put about by the TUC, the ETUC and most major trade union federations in Western Europe.

Bluntly, the trade union bureaucracy has been bought off. Faced with declining memberships and hostile economic policies, the bureaucrats have sought refuge in Maastricht, which grants them an institutionalised but powerless consultative role - and the substantial perks that go with it.

In any case, Maastricht's social and environmental promises are explicitly subordinate under the Treaty to monetary policy and the primacy of “price stability”. Under the aegis of an unaccountable Central European Bank charged specifically with ensuring low levels of inflation, Maastricht sets the stage for what economist Jonathan Michie calls the “rate capping of a continent”. ‘The convergence criteria may be unreal, but they do set in stone the austerity economics which would slash public spending, block borrowing and add millions more to the 17.5 million currently unemployed in the EC.

Maastricht is predicated on the capitalist assumption that Europe suffers from a massive “overcapacity” which impedes successful competition with North America and Japan. The shakeout must therefore continue. Far from curing the British disease of low investment and economic decline, Maastricht will compound the contagion, not least because it outlaws all the necessary structural remedies.

HE ‘democratic deficit’ is not

an incidental flaw in Maas-

tricht: it is a direct consequence of its economic raison d’etre. To do the work assigned to it, the European Central Bank must be shielded from ‘political’ (i.e. democratic) pressures. A complex and largely hidden decisionmaking procedure - in which the European and national parliaments will be impotent bystanders - will remove debate over economic policy from the electoral arena. No wonder career politicians all over Europe have welcomed Maastricht!

The freedom of movement for capital which Maastricht promotes is not matched by freedom of movement for labour. It’s obvious that investment can flit around the EC with greater ease than working class communities. Maastricht itself insists that freedom of movement for workers is “conditional upon possession of sufficient resources to prevent the beneficiaries becoming a financial burden on the host member state”. ‘A common visa policy coupled with the

requirement that non-EC nationals carry

residence permit will allow European governments to turn on and off the tap of cheap foreign labour at whim. Immigration, refugee and asylum rights will be curtailed by a process of “harmonisation” which threatens to institute the worst existing practices of Britain and Germany. Maastricht even grants the EC emergency powers to introduce temporary visa requirements “in the event of an emergency situation in a third country posing a threat of a sudden inflow of nationals from that country into the community”.

OR THE 15 million non-EC

nationals now resident in the

EC, Maastricht means increased repression from EC police forces strengthened to deal with “immigration, drugs and terrorism”. Checking the new residence permits will be an excuse to shift harassment of black workers from national frontiers to cities and workplaces. Immigrant communities will become a rootless army of cheap labour with no civil rights.

As for the alleged benefits of Maastricht for women, the Social Chapter pointedly excludes any commitment to equal pay for work of equal value (as opposed to equal pay for the same work). The labour “flexibility” at the heart of the Maastricht vision will push even more women into occupational ghettoes.

The capitalist Europe of Maastricht not only breeds but needs inequalities. Already, the Tory government is placing adverts in the German business press urging corporations to take advantage of cheap labour in Britain. Within the ‘single market’ capital will chase cheap labour and cheap labour will chase capital. We will see the creation of a highly stratified, acutely insecure proletariat subject to constant downward pressure on wages, conditions and benefits, competing with each other for ever fewer jobs and ever scarcer resources. Europe will become home to a swelling US-style ‘underclass’. Inflammatory social grievances will multiply.

Does the soft left really believe this “Europe’ can be a springboard for positive European unity? Surely a clear lesson of the last 18 months is that ‘unification’ designed by the elite for the elite actually accentuates national and regional divisions and opens the way for tight-wing demagogues? Worse yet, the Treaty institutionalises the economic conditions in which bigotry and reaction thrive. Liberal democracy will be seen to have no value because of the power of the Central Bank. Authoritarian nationalisms will seem to many the only alternative.

The focus on monetary control will deepen the inequalities between regions and nations. A prosperous ‘Golden Triangle’ (Milan, Frankfurt, Paris) will stand in stark contrast to an increasingly impoverished periphery. Every hitch in the progress towards European unity will

unleash mutual recriminations. The tensions between Germany and Britain over the ERM crisis last autumn will seem small beer compared to what the future holds.

The underlying aim of Maastricht is to consolidate and rationalise European capital so that it can compete with North America and Japan - and take advantage of new markets in eastern Europe. Maastricht lays the basis for the richer west to hold the poorer east in indefinite subordination - not least because there is simply not enough investment capital in the EC to build.capitalism in eastern Europe to equal status. Far from ushering in an era of international harmony and stability, Maastricht is a major step towards a tripolar world of huge trading blocks competing to exploit all those undeveloped countries excluded from the blocks.

In this context, Maastricht’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, which declares an EC intention to move to a *common defence’, is ominous. There is much talk of strengthening the Western European Union (WEU) in response to the perceived threat of US disengagement from Europe, but the EC could never afford to match the military resources of the US - and would never want to be saddled with the expense. In reality, the WEU will act as a bridge to NATO. Indeed, in a parallel declaration to Maastricht’s CFSP, the WEU stipulated that a “common defence” in Europe would have to be “compatible with the Atlantic Alliance”.

Worse yet, the CFSP extends NATO’s sphere of action, previously confined to north of the tropics. “Joint actions” will be considered in any region where EC “interests and attitudes coincide”. The Balkans, Nagorno-Karabakh, the Middle East and North Africa are given as examples. Longstanding German ‘interests’ in eastern Europe, Frerich ‘interests’ in west Africa, British ‘interests’ in the Malvinas could be foist on the EC as a whole.

F COURSE, the grand decla-

rations of ‘European unity”

in foreign affairs are in stark contrast to the pathetic reality, as seen in former Yugoslavia, where German recognition of Croatia was endorsed in retum for German acceptance of changes in the ERM and the opt-out clauses. Desperate to present a united face, the EC members in the end could do little more than send in Doctor Death and then seek military back-up from Bill Clinton.

The point is that the processes of European integration and disintegration are intertwined. In this context, what on earth does it mean to reiterate “we have to be in Europe’?

The biggest obstacles on the line of march to European monetary union mapped out in Maastricht are the convergence criteria on rates on inflation, government debt and public deficits. At

the moment, only Luxembourg meets all three criteria and to get anywhere near them a holocaust of austerity measures would have to be unleashed across the EC. In Britain, this would mean an immediate cut in public spending of £25- £35 billion. This poses huge political difficulties for the European ruling classes. The riot in Copenhagen could be just a foretaste. Not surprisingly, the 1996 review of progress towards convergence has effectively been postponed to 2000. Indeed, a common currency is probably 100 inflexible for European capital in its present decrepit phase. It simply cannot afford it!

The European landscape opened up by the Maastricht Treaty is dangerous terrain for the working class and the Left. How do we find our way across it? Certainly the approach so far adopted by socialist and labour leaders across Europe has proved a disaster, hamstringing working class organisations and leaving a vacuum which the far Right is only too happy to fill. But the left opposition to Maastricht, bravely championed in this country by a minority of Labour MPs, has remained isolated and diffuse. Worse yet, we have not always been able to distinguish our opposition to Maastricht from the nationalist Right’s.

T'S OFTEN said that whatever

happens to the Maastricht process

we will have to build international trade union links to deal with an increasingly globalised capitalism. But just what are these desperately needed links for? We need, of course, to organise international resistance to the job losses and public spending cuts. We also need to bring together working class organisations across Europe (all of Europe, not just the privileged twelve) to create an alternative to Maastricht involving not only defence of workers’ rights and living standards but also proposals for crossborder social ownership. Without such initiatives, we will be unable to combat the bourgeoisie’s threat of ‘Maastricht or chaos’.

In Denmark, the Red-Green Alliance held a conference of anti-Maastricht activists at which a European People’s Movement was launched. The latter has adopted the Charter of People’s Rights in Tony Benn's Commonwealth of European Nations Bill. The left oppositions within the European socialist and labour parties need to agree a common statement for next year’s Euro-elections linked with a broader manifesto endorsed by Communist, Green and other left parties opposed to Maastricht. The Socialist Campaign Group in Britain could play a valuable role in taking the lead here. As a first step, it could adopt the idea of organising a Conference of the European Left floated at the SCG Network Conference in Sheffield in April.

The fake ‘internationalism’ of Maastricht can only be exposed if we build the real thing on the ground. 0

Lasour BRIEFING 9

N GERMANY the constitution

requires a 75% majority for

strike action in a secret ballot before it can go ahead. This level of support was easily exceeded with some areas experiencing between 95% and 97% in favour. In addition there have been short solidarity stoppages in major west German industrial sectors. The strike has been organised by Europe's largest engineering union, IG

1997. Even though this is being grudgingly accepted by cast German workers, it is clear to them that having broken one set of promises the employers are likely to do so again and future disputes are clearly on the cards. -However there are certain elements to this dispute which will have clear consequences in terms of the political education of the east German working class. Firstly, this dispute and the

eimar revisited ?

Metall, and vigorously promoted by its leader Franz Steinkuhler. It arose from. the engineering employers’ declared intentions not to honour an agreement made in 1991 to increase wages in the ex-GDR to west German levels by 1995. This on top of general disillusionment with the consequences of German unification - official unemployment levels of 20% and real levels nearer to 40-50%. This rejection by employers of a decision arrived at by the newly-introduced process of ‘free trade bargaining’ has begun to open the eyes of many to the reality of living under a system where the rhetoric of ‘social parmership’ masks clear class division.

The strike appears to be coming to a premature end with a less than

magnificent compromise between Steinkuhler and the employers to postpone the equalisation of wages to

The first major strike in the ex-GDR since reunification has been a short and sharp introduction to workers there in the ways of western trades disputes. Peter Thompson, member of Labour Focus on Eastern Europe’s editorial collective,

examines the significance of the IG Metall strike for the German working class.

compromise which is ending it are taking place in the context of the longest and deepest economic recession since the 1930s. The golden west which workers in the GDR voted for en masse in 1990 is very quickly turing to lead before their eyes. Secondly, the political elite in west Germany which claimed the moral and ethical high ground over the corrupt system of the east is being decimated by a series of political and financial scandals. The transport minister, the leader of the ruling CSU in Bavaria and the leader of the SPD have all resigned recently and in doing so have brought into question the whole basis of the political system in Germany.

The result is demoralisation and polarisation, with support for the major parties falling away and the potential developing for other forces to fill the vacuum. With the German

media full of comparisons with the collapse of the Weimar Republic, a sense of doom is beginning to pervade the country.

Finally, not only are the bourgeois and social democratic parties and politicians falling into disrepute, but it is emerging that Steinkuhler himself has used the knowledge gained from his membership of the supervisory board of Daimler-Benz to dabble on the stock market to his own advantage. He admits to having made DM64,000 (£25,000) profit but says that this is not the result of insider dealing but “normal” stock market speculation. The political naivety of using this defence at a time when workers in the ex-GDR are striking for a few pounds a month extra wages will not be lost on them. The general disgust at the west and all its workings will increase.

‘The question is whether there are any progressive political forces who can fill the increasing political vacuum. We have seen the increase in the vote for extreme Right wing parties, but this latest round of scandals and disappointments has quite clearly shifted the centre of attention and blame away from asylum seekers and foreign workers, who have been the dominant targets for anger so far, to the whole political system.

What the Left in Germany needs to do now is to organise itself for maximum unity to press the demands of the workers for proper representation and leadership. The strongest forces on the Left are: the Greens allied with the citizens’ movements from the 1989 GDR revolution; in the east the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism, successor to the old CP which still maintains support of around 16% and is the second largest party in east Berlin); and the Left in the SPD. These forces need to drop their differences and unite to defend the workers against the employers’ onslaught. If they do not there will be others who will be more than happy to exploit the situation, and comparisons with ‘Weimar will then be unavoidable and indeed justified.

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The North East gladiators

The Swan Hunter closure would lay waste to Tyneside’s traditional

shipbuilding skills. But even this latest shock will not sink the

fighting spirit of the North-Eastemers, declares defiant Jarrow

Labour councillor George Porter.

LADIATORS - that is what I

call the people of the North

East as they will not let anything or anyone put them down. North Easterners will always come back fighting.

The job losses in this region have been more severe than in any other part of the country. You only have to look at a small area like Jarrow and Hebbum to see the number of factories that have closed or had to pay workers off.

Reyroll Hebburn at one time had : over twelve thousand workers. It now

has under two thousand. Hebburn Palmers and Leslies shipyards have closed. The Pyrotenax in Hebburn, and Cigarette Components on the Bede Trading Estate at Jarrow both have

only got half the workforce they had a few years ago. Whites in Hebburn closed. RW Transmissions closed. Baker Perkins Hebbum closed. Hebburn Coke Works closed. Jarrow Tube Works closed. Jarrow Rolling Mill closed. Jarrow Steel Works closed. Jarrow Brick Works closed. The Mercantile dry docks at Jarrow closed. Several other small factories in the Jarrow and Hebburn area have had to close.

After all this, you would think that the people of this area would just give up. Well that did not happen. Lots of them ‘got on their bikes’ and looked. for work anywhere they could. Then came the shock announcement of the closure of the Westoe Colliery, which was another heavy blow for this area.

Timex: watch

Workers from across Britain gathered outside the Timex factory in Dundee on Monday 17th May, for a mass picket in support of the workers sacked three months earlier for refusing wage-cuts. Sally Hutchinson, 10 attended the demo, told Briefing:

“I travelled on one of two buses from Edinburgh to the Timex factory in Dundee. We arrived at about 5.50am, only to learn that many of the scab workers had already gone in. As this was an hour or two earlier than the workers usually clock on, it is clear that the management had organised this to defeat the mass picket.

When the scabs went in there were less than 1,000 people outside the

plant, but at the height of the demo there were as many as 5,000 people from all over the country.

Eight people had been arrested when the scabs went in and later in the morning another 30 were arrested. The crowd were chanting and singing but there didn’t appear to be any focus for the demonstration. No stewards, no coordination, no information.

As far fewer scab workers than usual had gone in the crowd were anticipating further attempts to get scabs into the factory.

There were a large number of police (500) and the crowd felt intimidated by such a large presence.

Of the 38 arrested, wo women were reported to have been charged with

Now with the announcement that Swans may close with the loss of around six thousand jobs - about eight hundred of them in South Tyneside - I wonder how much longer the people in the North East can sustain this.

The news has totally shocked everyone in the area. People are asking ‘what is going to happen next? Whose job is next on the line?’ In the North East we have one of the best trained and highly skilled workforces in the world for shipbuilding, coal mining, steelworking and a host of other industries that this country is going to need.

On Tyneside we have had regeneration programmes, seen new factories built and job-creation schemes come and go, but none of this has compensated for the amount of employment we have lost over the past twelve years.

The people from Tyneside are devastated about the job losses. Despite all this they will not lose hope and bury their heads in the sand. They will fight alongside the workforce to keep Swans open, and to save the pits.

out

attempted murder for driving a van at the police cordon. Although the charge was later reduced (to reckless driving!) many of those arrested still face serious charges.

At noon the pickets marched to a rally to hear speeches by Arthur Scargill, John Kidd (Timex Strike Committee), John McAllion (Labour MP) and Alex Salmon (SNP). It seems strange that at the rally there was no mention of the arrests and no attempt was made to mobilise the protesters to go to the police station to show solidarity with those arrested.” Donations, messages of support and requests for speakers to: Timex Strike Committee, c/o AEEU, 2 Union Street, Dundee.

Lagour BRIEFING

drivers, railworkers at Waterloo Station, University College Hospital workers, NALGO members, the Annual Conference of the NUJ, Timex strikers and many, many others. We've been just about everywhere. And the response has been, to say the least, warm. Everywhere.

LB: What was your thinking in calling the conference at Rugely on May 22nd?

JP: The mood across the country is for a fight. But without a leadership to direct it, effective resistance isn’t possible. We're seeking to build a working class leadership which can unite things. We're not trying to replace the TUC, but organising underneath it to force it to act. There's got to be a general strike. We know this from the experience of 1984. But we should also have learned that the TUC did not call a general strike then and it won't push for one now. The TUC will only move when people are taking action anyway - and then they'll try to control the movement and divert it. So we’ve got to organise and retain the initiative from below. If enough pressure comes from below, then perhaps we can blow the top off!

LB: Some would say you can’t be serious in talking about a general strike. Surely not now with the RMT ballot having gone the wrong way and only a few isolated local disputes still running?

JP: You most certainly can be serious. Social conditions have never been so tense as they are now. The whole country is a tinder-box of anger, just waiting to be ignited. Look at Newbury. Look at the upheaval over testing in the schools. With four million unemployed, OAPs outraged at VAT on fuel, we can see that this dictatorial and hated government has never been so close to being toppled. All we need is one victory and the steamroller will start. And once it has started, nobody will be able to stop it. Timex could be the spark or it could be somewhere else. It doesn’t matter where - but we've got to have a victory. If we agree to pinpoint Timex then it’s in the interests of every miner to make that the nation-wide focus until we win. Those 300 sacked Timex workers are just as precious to us as any pit. Our struggles can’t be separated.

LB: So what flows from the Rugely conference?

JP: We've shown that there is now a means by which we can bring about a general strike from below. We want all those involved in every dispute in the country to know about this. Go out, report back to whichever struggle or struggles you are engaged in, and then bring back new information and new strength to our next conference, which will involve all who attended the first one plus many more. I very much hope the next conference will be organised within a month.

Miners’ aw moment of truth

Can the miners still win? How can we ‘unite the

struggles’? Labour Briefing asked Jim Perry, Secretary

of Littleton NUM.

LB: What’s the current situation in the pits?

JP: We’ve had some casualties. British Coal’s industrial terrorism has worked in places. Some have been worried about losing their redundancies if they fight the closures. It is best they go now. We want areal fight involving all those who are prepared to take the consequences of their actions. The Coal Board and the private companies won't be employing any NUM branch secretaries. So we should be leading the way. Those who are worried about their money should get out.

We've lost eight pits. I don’t know as yet precisely how that works out in terms of jobs lost, since some of the eight have been mothballed. In those cases, there may be a few jobs for workers brought in to do care and maintenance.

LB: Arthur Scargill stated at the Timex rally at Dundee on 17th May that not a single one of the 31 pits has as yet been closed. Isn’t there a contradiction somewhere?

JP: If by ‘open’ Arthur means that a pit is physically still there, then I can agree: all the 31 pits remain ‘open’. If he ‘means miners are cutting coal or can look forward to such work in the very near future, then my information is that in eight pits at least, that’s wrong. A further five are earmarked for ‘closure’ in the very near future. I am not a diplomat. I like to speak the truth.

LB: Would you say Littleton has been effective in fighting the closures?

JP: Yes. We’ve been on just about every major rally at every pit, marched in every major city in the country. We've spoken to the Crawley binmen, the London bus

lull in the fight for jobs. Paul Simon of Frickley NUM explained why miners at several Yorkshire pits had felt compelled to accept redundancy.

March on Parkside

ON 20TH JUNE four marches, one

Wrong strategy?

CANNOCK CHASE NUM hosted an. activists’ conference at Rugely on 22nd May with miners from several areas joining strikers from Burnsalls, railworkers and other trade unionists to discuss the way forward.

The conference elected a National Steering Committee to build solidarity and link together workers in struggle.

There was discussion on the current

12 Lasour BRIEFING

“An amazing feeling of solidarity last October has been lost,” he said. “The strategy of persuasion was wrong. We had two options and chose the wrong one. Instead of trying to persuade the other trade union leaders we should have taken strike action and spread it from below. We need no more sellouts, no more respectability. We must now have a go back at the bosses with a vengeance.”

starting in Lancaster on 17th June and three from other points yet to be announced, will converge on Parkside colliery for a mass rally. Further details from: Women Against Pit Closures, Parkside Camp (0925 291799), Lancashire NUM (0942 262218), St. Helens Miners Support Group (0744 54728), Leigh, Atherton and Tyldesley MSG (0942 891673), North West TUC (051 933 6067).

‘VER SINCE the government

announced its intention to

close 31 pits last October, a fierce campaign has been waged to stop the carnage. For some, the massive demonstrations of that month signalled the reawakening of a class struggle that had somehow been forgotten during the long years of Conservative rule.

This interpretation of events has become so commonplace as to be almost pernicious. It ignores much reality in favour of a web of media images geared more to promoting the values of New Realism than to reflecting the truth.

The NUM’s efforts to save the coal industry did not begin in October. Nor} did they begin with the Rothschild Report in 1991 or even the strike of 1984-85. For the NUM and its members, the fight has been, in the words of one activist, “the best part of 180 years of unbroken class struggle trade unionism”.

Miners have had to fight tooth and nail against coal owners and then the state for every advance in wages, conditions or job security. None were granted through benevolence. Each took years of struggle to achieve. To expect matters to alter now is to substitute imagination for reality.

For example, the DTI Report

Women Against Pit Closures demonstration at the High Court, May 20th. Photo: Paul Mattsson

War of attrition

As the miners battle on against pit closures, Jim Clayson,

the same time their enemies were

suggests that the 1908 Miners Regula- preparing the ground for retrenchment. tion Act be repealed. Among other Similarity with the miners’ victories matters, this Act limits the time miners of 1972 and 1974 and the strike of 84may spend underground to eight hours. 85 as well as the current struggle are This basic humanitarian measure took _ clear. Those people who thought in thirty years of trade union and political November we were on the verge of action to achieve. Its passage inthe revolution were either deluding

House coincided with an upsurge in themselves or trying to hoodwink industrial militancy that led to the loss others.

of ten million days in strikes in 1908. But to draw only that lesson from

The five following years were marked _ history would be to miss half the truth. In 1926 the miners were left to fight

alone. They battled on for months until forced to return to work with longer hours and lower wages. That must not be allowed to happen in 1993. Remember that after the betrayal of 1926, the

Tory government took the opportunity

by intense working class struggles. The government took countermeasures. In 1911 the Committee for Imperial Defence set up the structures that were to provide the basis for the defeat of the 1926 General Strike. Workers were moving forward, but at

Solidarity with the miners! National Miners Support Network

213 Eversholt Street, London NW1 1DE Tel. 071 388 7961; fax. 071 383 0956 Next issue of Coal Not Dole out soon!

Secretary of the National Miners Support Network, looks back on

a long history of struggle - and forward to an uncertain future.

to crack down on the working class and to proscribe all trade union activity. There can be little doubt that should the pit closure programme proceed unchecked, something on the same lines will happen again. Already the government is feeling arrogant enough to propose a new round of massive social security cuts.

Timex, Arrowsmith, Crawley and Burnsalls workers all know through bitter experience the difficulties of pursuing trade union struggles in the 1990s. The last word should be ieft to someone who has so far proved uncannily accurate in his predictions. Talking in 1987, Arthur Scargill noted: “A war of attrition is being waged as capitalism, in a condition of acute crisis, lashes out with increasing ferocity to protect itself”. He concluded then that only the determination of the NUM “stands between the government and the fate of the coal industry”. And he was right when he added that we must “realise our strength, mobilise in solidarity and fight back.” O

Lanocr BRIEFING

13

Jimmy Knapp, General Secretary RMT. Photo: Paul Mattsson

From debacle to defiance

The result of the May RMT ballot on further industrial action (50.2% against, 49.8%

HERE WAS never a need for

a ballot in the first place, as

the strength of support for the dispute was clear. Knapp & Co were not prepared to give a lead in the dispute, as their main concem was to protect the union’s income and thereby their own jobs and salaries. Once British Rail management threatened to halt the collection of union subscriptions through the check-off system, the union bureacracy caved in.

If the ballot had not been held the membership would have continued to support the days of action.

The Left in the union feels that the leaders have betrayed the members, and has demanded that the seven executive members who refused to call further days of action should stand down and seek re-election.

in favour) reflects rank and file members’ distrust of the union leadership, argues

Greg Tucker, National Secretary, RMT Train Crew Grades (personal capacity).

A ballot will shortly be held amongst RMT workers on London Underground over pay. The issue of pay remains unresolved in BR.

Anger amongst the membership is still high, and with determined leadership a campaign around the issue of pay can defeat the management and their government backers.

The most significant event around the ballot debacle has been the founding of the Campaign for a Fighting Democratic Union (CFDU).

CFDU has been formed to campaign to tum the union into a fighting organisation which will protect members’ interests. It will also work to defend the democratic rights of members, given that over the last year the union bureaucrats have repeatedly ignored conference decisions.

ASLEF loyalty

A MEASURE OF the loyalty that can be built up in a union is revealed by the recent one-day strike by train drivers’ union ASLEF. The vote to strike was just 55% to 45% yet not one train ran on the day of the strike. ASLEF is claiming victory over the issue of staff transfers and subsequent work agreements.

NCU Left revival to lead resistance

Clive Walder previews the NCU Conference, Blackpool, 7th-11th June: NCU Conference meets as the union faces its biggest credibility test ever. BT has signalled its intentions to force engineers to work any time between 7am and 10pm, seven days a week for flat rate pay. All this in retum for a possible 36-hour week. To date the icadership has promised to ‘defend the members’ interests’ and resist compulsory redundancy, whilst putting out joint statements with the company. This is all supposed to combat increased competition and effects of the recession. In reality, the union has swallowed all BT’s arguments and expects our members to pay. If BT gets away with this it will try it on with other sections of staff.

Our members in the Post Office are facing privatisation, and members in subsidiaries face an uncertain future. For example, members in one subsidiary suffered a 16% pay cut to save their jobs. All this has happened with no resistance from the union, and thousands of job cuts have taken place with the agreement of the union. Now members have started to say enough is enough. This year’s NEC elections saw the Broad Left gain nine seats from the Right to give them a 20-15 majority. It looks possible that there will now be some national resistance to this onslaught. The task of this year’s conference is to provide the NEC with policies to defend the members not the employers.

TUC black workers conference

The first resolution-based TUC Black Workers’ Conference heard from NALGO’s Jackie Burnett, cousin of murdered South East Londoner Stephen Lawrence, backed the AntiRacist Alliance’s June 12th March in Croydon, and called for the closure of the BNP headquarters in Welling. The

14 Lasour BRIgFING

main debate centred on a successful motion from the NUJ calling for black self-organisation in the unions.

Disabled access to

schools ‘within reach’

Just £14 per primary school pupil and £82 per secondary school pupil needs to be spent to enable the majority of schools to be made wheelchair accessible. Research conducted by the

National Union of Teachers and the Spastics Society show that many obstacles can be overcome by an expenditure of £59 million to open up 15% of primary schools and £251 million to provide access to 50% of secondary schools.

Thus relatively modest expenditure could achieve integration and end the denial of access to mainstream schools for children with disabilities.

;_

How to stop a

crime

InFebruary this year, Islington’s Labour Council, with red flag flying, voted to close two Council nurseries. Angry staff and parents picketed the Council and watched in growing outrage as local Labour leaders refused even to defend the decision. Nine Labour councillors broke the whip and voted to keep the nurseries open. The Labour Group

thought the issue would go away. But on 5th May,

Photo: Martin Thomas

as the Council began to close the nurseries, staff and parents went into occupation to keep them

open. Springdale Nursery parents, Lynn Harvey and Sharon Whittington, and Harvist under-5s

worker Gina Connolly talked to Labour Briefing.

6 “WwW EARE occupying the two nurseries so that the London Borough of Islington cannot shut them. We feel the facilities

are vitally important for those now under five and for all

the children to come.

We have had support from pensioners, parents, workers, students, everyone. Two American tourists even spent their last night in the country at the occupation. They had seen one of our leaflets and thought it was great. We have had support from the Council trade unions and from nursery workers in other local authorities. Some homeless people came to the occupation after we had leafleted in Clissold Park. They gave us £15 which they had collected amongst themselves. The staff at a local Council office gave us £38 donation. We have been going to political meetings and received donations. One pensioner telephoned and asked what she could do - then she arrived on our doorstep with £10 and a home-made banana cake.

Another old lady came in today. She had her slippers on and looked very ill. She had seen us on the television news three days before and wanted to come and see us immediately, but had been too ill. She was bewildered. She said her children had been brought up by the nursery from when they were six months old. We showed her round and she knew all the rooms. She walked around with tears in her eyes.

We aim to keep the two centres open and we want the Council to run them. We want the staff to keep their jobs. In the long run, we are fighting for more centres in deprived areas. But first, we have to stop the Council shutting these two.

We expect full support from a Labour Council against any cuts in facilities for the under-5s. Islington Council sending members of staff redundancy notices on May Day is the biggest insult imaginable. Some of those staff have given more than 25 years service to children in Islington.

We are very disappointed in the Labour Party. Threatening councillors with suspension for voting to keep the nurseries open is completely out of order. Those councillors were speaking out for the people threatened by the closures, the very same people who voted for the councillors. We as parents feel for the staff. We have cried with them, laughed with them and worked with them. The children who have been helped by the staff will now lose out and go backward instead of forward. To do that to children is a crime.” © Contact Springdale Under-Fives Education Centre, 1SA Springdale Road, London N16, tel. 081 254 7937, or Harvist UFEC, 100 Hornsey Road, London N7, tel. 081 609 0319.

© Cllr Liz Davies, Chair of Islington Council’s Women’s Committee, adds: “The same councillors who voted to keep the nurseries open worked and voted for Derek Sawyer to be Leader of Islington Council. Without our help he could not have come close to winning. He must now show that he is worthy of our support by keeping the nurseries open. A lead is being given by the parents and nursery workers, with solid public support. They are willing to stand up and fight for more resources. Now is the time for the Council to take their side against the Tory government.”

Lazour Brizrine 15

What do

children

need?

In the 1970s feminists were often accused of seeing the family purely as a means of keeping women in subjugation. They were also accused of ignoring the needs of children or even being anti-children. Now the Right is trying to pin the blame for a perceived increase in youth crime on single parent families and poor parental skills. How can ‘family’ be defined and how necessary are families? Is the working-class family to blame for young delinquents? What is the

role of fathers? Leonora Lloyd re-opens

the debate.

VERY SOCIETY has had to

find ways to care for

children until they are able to look after themselves. This has produced a wide variety of structures which are described as families, study of which enables us to refute the suggestion that the modern nuclear form is the only, never mind the best, way in which to raise children.

Whilst the care of children is the main function of families, they also serve as an important way for men and women to relate to each other. It is women’s role as the bearer and raiser of children which is key to her position in most societies. In many, she is not considered an adult until she has given birth (preferably to a boy) and barren or single women are often treated as outcasts. Once women attain some level of independence and freedom, they can have status outside of this child-bearing role.

16 Lasour BRIEFING

Children have a different value and meaning in different societies. In many they are seen as valuable workers from a very early age. The idea we have of childhood as a time of relative innocence, a time for playing and learning, is recent in historical terms and does not exist in many parts of the world.

Recently, the United Nations drew up a document outlining the rights of children. Most of the rights it specifies - such as suitable education, housing, health care, freedom from unsuitable work - are unlikely to be achievable for most of the children now in the world. By contrast, most children in the west have many of these things in relative abundance. Yet even in ‘advanced’ countries, many children do go hungry, lack good education and decent housing and other things seen as necessary to a healthy development.

The Declaration of the Rights of the Child also include such things as a loving family life. But we know that the reality of family life for many youngsters is violence, incest and other forms of abuse.

There is a particular question mark over the role of men. On the one hand, in response to the ideas of the women’s movement, many men want to take more part in caring for their children. On the other hand, it is mainly men who abuse children - and their partners - and many women would rather raise their children alone, in poverty but in safety. The Right believes this lack of male ‘role models’ leads to youthful criminality.

In some societies, children are raised largely by women, with men visiting only for brief periods, usually for sex, leaving the woman pregnant again. Is modem society going that way, and would it matter if it did? Can women support each other enough to make the absence of men unimportant? Do we want a world in which large numbers of women have ‘given up’ on men, or in which large numbers of men have become detached from their families? Are the sons of women who were feminists in the seventies different from other men?

The Right blames single mothers, rather than the poverty and lack of decent support services which they face. The advent of the Child Support Act raises a lot of new questions.

Many women have an ambivalent attitude to the question of men’s role

in the financial support of the children they father. Those who oppose abortion and easily available contraception often say that their availability Jets men off the hook, and there is some truth in this. If men need not take financial responsibility at the very least for their offspring, what effect does this have? Because some men have an abusive relationship with women, does this mean that all men who leave women should escape

having to pay for their children? | Indeed, there is an argument for all men having to pay - through a third |

party - otherwise the more unscrupulous could ensure that their wife never wanted anything more to do with him,

thus escaping their responsibilities.

But should men - or even women, for that matter - have financial responsibility for children? Surely, the state should provide?

Such a question is far removed from the real world we live in. Most people want to provide for their own children. Women left to cope alone are usually frantic to get decent child-care to enable them to get back to work.

Whilst we might have all sorts of ideas about what ought to happen in an ideal world, we need policies for the next step. There is certainly an argument for vastly improved child-allowances and better social security to allow women with young children the choice to stay at home, but this should not provide an excuse to prevent mothers working.

Children need far more than just those things which a reasonable family income can provide, important though they are. It is impossible to legislate for love, a feeling of security, parental support for education - although the Declaration of the Rights of the Child attempts to do so. How can we ensure that children get those things, given again that we have to start from where we are, not where we want to get to?

If we give children ‘family educa- l tion’ and retrain parents lacking ‘parenting skills’, are we enforcing the structure that causes the problems in the first place? How do we balance the rights of the child against the rights of its parents, and the right of the state to interverte?

It is time for the Left to take up these issues again and not let the Right make the running. I hope that Briefing readers will join in a wide-ranging debate around these questions, 0

Water not weapons

WHILE BILLIONS OF pounds are spent on weapons each year tens of millions of people have no access to clean water. It is estimated that 25

Paul Walker Campaign Against the Arms Trade

million people die annually due to water-borne or related diseases. In every Third World continent this is the most important development issue.

In the Middle East just under 50% of the rural population have no access to aclean supply, a region where many analysts expect new wars over water rather than oil.

The current widespread cholera epidemic in Latin Amercia can also be directly traced to an absence of clean water supplies. Forty per cent of the urban districts in Peru have no running water and in many areas there is only one tap per thousand people.

In Africa, it is the twin evils of war and drought that underlay the famine that has affected much of the continent since the 1970s.

All of these facts should be enough to suggest that the kind of exports that the Third World needs urgently are

June 1993

NATIONAL

supplies of technology and aid to ensure that all have access to a local and clean supply of water.

Instead, the industrialised nations continue to supply military hardware to regions already riven with political tensions or with acute developmental needs.

The UK government is a key player in the arms exports market. Just under 80% of UK exports go to the Third World. It is important to raise public awareness of these facts so the government can be pressurised into changing its priority from the export of arms to aid and trade that will, amongst other things, improve the access to water of tens of millions of people in the Third World.

This is why Campaign Against Arms Trade and the World Development Movement have decided to hold a second Water Not Weapons Week of Action from Saturday Sth to Sunday 13th June 1993. The Week is based on local activities and this year will also have a national launch event in Tafalgar Square on June 4th. The launch will involve the painting of a banner 3.8 metres high and 77 metres long with the aim of getting a national media focus on the campaign. Painting begins at 6pm and finishes some time

Attention: Tampons are associated with Toxic Shock Syndrome (TSS). TSS is a rare but serious illness that may cause death.

THIS IS THE warming printed on all tampon packets in the USA, and now most in Britain.

TSS is caused when a normally harmless bacteria, staphylococcus aureus, produces large amounts of the toxin TSST1, infecting the blood and overwhelming the immune system. This bacteria is naturally found in warm, moist parts of the body such as the vagina. The presence of a tampon in the vagina can cause changes allowing the bacteria to multiply unnoticed. If the body has little immunity, vital organs such as the liver, kidneys and lungs collapse. The

after noon - so bring a paintbrush and get involved!

@ You can order leaflets or a Water Not Weapons Action Pack for £2.50 from CAAT, 11 Goodwin Street, London N4 3HQ, tel. 071 281 0297. Call the CAAT office if you want more information about the national launch in Trafalgar Square on June 4th.

Tampon alert

results can be fatal.

Eighteen months ago, Manchester schoolgirl Alice Kilvert died as a tesult of tampon-related TSS. She was fifteen. Her parents, alongside the Women’s Environmental Network, have been tirelessly campaigning for wider public information on the potential dangers of internal sanitary protection.

They advise that if tampons are used:

+ Use the lowest-absorbency tampon, and change it every 4-6 hours.

+ Use a sanitary towel at night and at the end of your period.

+ Keep tampons clean and dry. Handle them as little as possible, and always wash your hands before and after use.

+ If early flu-like symptoms occur, remove the tampon and seek immediate medical attention.

@ Alice Kilvert’s birthday, 8th June, is now National Tampon Alert Day. For further information, including free leaflets and a video (£10) contact: Alice Kilvert Tampon Alert, 16 Blinco Road, Urmston, Manchester M31 INF, tel. 061 748 3123. Information on TSS and other environmental and health issues is also available from the Women’s Environmental Network, Aberdeen Studios, 22 Highbury Grove, London NS 2EA, tel. 071 354 8823.

Lapour Brigrinc 17

IGHTEEN MONTHS after

20 Brighton Labour Party

members were suspended by the NEC, the disciplinary process seems to be grinding to a halt.

Eight people accused of being Militant members have been expelled, but contrary to expectations not one of the seven non-Militants dealt with so far has been expelled. Former Parliamentary candidate Rod Fitch was suspended from holding office for two years. Tony Greenstein was suspended from membership for one year. Former councillor Fiona Roberts was reinstated. Of the six former councillors

who were suspended from the Labour Members of Brighton Labour Party picket the first hearing back in 1991

Group in June 1990 and forced from office, only two were expelled. Richard Stanton, Mark Thompson and Andy Winter received periods of suspension from office. Recently Jean Calder was re-instated as a full member of the Party.

Following the collapse of the case against Jean Calder, appeals to drop the remaining cases were made to Labour's NEC. As a result the NEC agreed to drop the cases against Petra Kopp, Dave Lewney, Jim Grozier and Jon Green, but proceeded with that of the only remaining councillor, Hilary Metcalfe.

Steve French of the Campaign Against the Witchhunt said: “A two and a half year campaign has forced the NEC to admit some of its mistakes. This will give confidence to others fighting for a broad church of opinion within the Party.”

Larry Whitty recently wrote to Dave Lewney informing him that the NEC

would not pursue its case against him. Dave replied: Thank you for your recent letter. I will put it with the others which describe me as a “valued member” and ask for donations.

The indifferent tone with which you drop the charges barely conceals the fact that a! last Walworth Road has recognised that the witch-hunt of Brighton Labour Party is a costly and self-defeating exercise. It was designed primarily to allow Cllr Steve Bassam to continue with his programme of council cuts, free from the hindrance of debate, let alone opposition from the local Party.

‘The last two local election results have seen huge swings, first to the Tories, then to Labour. Indeed, the results of May 6th show that Labour is quite capable «winning the next general election without entering into any deals or pacts, but only if we seize on the disarray of the Tories and their supporters.

Unfortunately the actions of Walworth Road have left Brighton Labour Party in its weakest state for years. Gone is the fighting spirit and trust that was built during the 1980s - and the local Tories are well aware of this. Apparently the AGM of Brighton Kemptown was abandoned as inquorate.

We must now begin to rebuild the local Party, not through phoney glossy propaganda with matching slick business image, but by fighting alongside workers who are rapidly regaining confidence to defend their pay and conditions against the employers’ offensive.

Follow this broad strategy and there will be no need to remain on the defensive; the party of the trade unions will not have to feel embarrassed about answering charges of “being soft on the unions’. Hamess the plain anger we found on the doorstep in the last few weeks, use it to put Labour where ordinary people want us - in office AND in power!

Link not missing

A MORI poll of 2,000 randomly chosen members of the TGWU, GMB, COHSE and NUPE reveals that:

75% want their unions to maintain links with Labour; 76% think their union should sponsor MPs; 69% want unions to support Labour to balance business backing for the Tories.

Of the 70% who supported Labour, 66% favoured continued union involvement in selecting Parliamentary candidates and 62% in elections for Party leader.

Of those who supported Labour, only

18 Lasour BRIEFING

5% were individual members; of the rest one in six said they would be interested in joining. Two thirds said they wanted participation in selections and leadership elections to be through their unions rather than as individuals.

are getting utterly fed up with this pitiful excuse for a leader.

At last!

Under fierce pressure from the Guardian Tendency (Co-chairs: Robin Cook and Peter Mandelson; Minutes Secretary: Patrick Wintour), John Smith is ‘standing up’ to the unions and insisting on the Orwellian ‘onemember-one vote’. His concession to clear majority opinion in the movement is to resuscitate the failed cutprice membership scheme for trade

No wonder backbench MPs and even NEC soft lefts like Blunkett and Short

THREE YEARS after Party Conference voted for it, the Black Socialist Society will finally be allowed to hold its inaugural national meeting on Saturday 26th June at Leeds Civic Hall.

Local societies can be set up by black members in any constituency - following Regional Office approval - with representation on General Committees. The Society will send delegates to Party Conference and have a seat on the National Executive Committee.

Cease-fire

benefits

HE GUERILLA wear in north

Kurdistan (south-east Turkey)

between the forces of the PKK (the Workers Party of Kurdistan) and the Turkish state is now the subject of an uneasy truce. Paradoxically, this has itself now led to a number of useful developments that offer the chance of real progress for the Kurdish people.

The unreconstructed Stalinist PKK

has exerted a sectarian and baleful

Keith Veness Kurdistan Focus

influence in Kurdish politics, regularly denouncing all other Kurdish organisations as ‘collaborators’ or ‘autonomists’ and physically attacking many of its opponents. It has even tried to stop the famous Kurdish singer Shivan performing at concerts in western Europe and has broken up the recent Newroz rally held in East London by the local supporters of the Kurdistan Socialist Party (KSP).

It was therefore with great surprise, and not a little pleasure, that most supporters of Kurdish freedom greeted the announcement of the cease-fire. This took the form of a joint communique signed by the PKK and KSP General Secretaries, Abdullah Ocalan and Kemal Burkay. Also present at the

Kurds

signing in Bekaa Valley, Lebanon, was the Iraqi Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani,

who spoke at the 1991 Labour Party Conference in Brighton and is widely respected internationally. Only a few months ago the PKK had been denouncing him as an ‘autonomist and imperialist agent’.

The response to the cease-fire in

Turkey has been patchy. Many Turkish

politicians still talk about ‘defeating terrorism’ with the same myopia that mainland British politicians regard Ireland. Nevertheless, some real progress has occurred. The SHP, the

Turkish equivalent of the Labour Party

that is currently a partner in the coalition government, met at a special Congress in April. It agreed sweeping demands that call for recognition for the Kurdish language and culture, for freedom of expression and for economic development for the south east of Turkey. These public demands would have been unthinkable a few years ago and show real progress. There is now a move to establish a legal Kurdish political party - the People’s Democratic Party - that will aim to organise all socialists and supporters of Kurdish freedom in Turkish Kurdistan. How this will work, and whether the Turkish authorities will genuinely allow such a

development Temains to

be seen. However,

the general thrust of these moves is tremendously positive. They open up the chance of cooperation between all Kurdish groups and will provide a defence for Free Kurdistan in the former northem Iraq. There is no doubt that the successful free elections last year there made a profound impact on the Kurds of Turkey and helped push the PKK into both the cease-fire and its new willingness to work with other forces.

However, the harsh reality is that the cight year long guerilla war forced the Turkish government to finally realise that it can no longer ignore the 12 million Kurds within its boundaries. The European Parliament recently agreed a resolution, promoted by British MEP Stan Newens and others, that called on Turkey to use the ceasefire as a way of genuinely negotiating a just settlement with its Kurds. Pressure must be exerted to ensure this outcome, and that the PKK is not driven back into guerilla war. 2

PKK guerillas in training

Massacre in Tadzhikistan

Dushanbe, Tadzhikistan: The body of ‘an extra-judicial execution victim lies dead in the street.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL is highlighting a human rights disaster in Tadzhikistan, scarcely reported elsewhere. Up to 20,000 people have been killed, and half a million displaced in the former Soviet central Asian republic.

Since last December, when the capital Dushanbe fell to the paramilitary People’s Front of Tadzhikistan, hundreds of unarmed civilians have been killed. On 15th December uniformed Interior Ministry soldiers boarded a bus in Dushanbe, took off about twenty people from the Garm or Pamir regions where opposition to the government is strong, and shot them

dead on the spot.

Muso Isoyev, a well-known actor who had demonstrated against the government, was picked up at a bus stop in Dushanbe by government soldiers. His bullet-ridden corpse was found in the street next morning. Others, like deputy head of the Consumers’ Union Shogunbek Davlatmisov, have been dragged off planes at Dushanbe airport and shot on the spot. Many bodies in the city morgue show evidence of torture, including mutilation and skinning alive.

@ More details from: AI, 1 Easton Street, London WC1X 8DJ.

Lasovur BRigFinG 19

Protect the people of

Bosnia

Margaret Thatcheris right, says Tribune. But what should socialists be

saying? Mike Phipps joins the debate on former Yugoslavia.

IRST THE silence, then the

confusion. After a long

abstentionism that mirrors that of western governments, the Left is now oscillating around a variety of positions from support for Serbia to arming Bosnia or opposing intervention. The old ‘programmes’ are clearly inadequate and no amount of dubious historical references or propaganda about a future socialist federation of Balkan states will hide that. Meanwhile nothing realistic is being proposed to end the slaughter and concentration camps that Serbia - and now Croatia - have brought to Bosnia.

Socialists need to start from first principles. That means recognising that self-determination and definitions of nationhood are not the primary issues here. There is a more fundamental, overriding principle: the right to live in peace. Some have argued that the historical claim of Bosnia to nationhood is debateable. But if the majority there want to continue living in multi-ethnic and religiously pluralist communities - not a Muslim republic as their detractors claim - how can socialists possibly object on ‘nationalist’ grounds? No amount of word-spinning about the Serbian right to self-determination can legitimise the ‘ethnic cleansing’ of nonSerbs - any more than the existence of Germans in Poland gave Hitler that right in 1939.

‘This must be understood, because many such problems are surfacing in eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Baltic states, Africa and Asia. And there will be more, as the arbitrary borders imposed by imperialism and Stalinism at the end of World War Two are challenged by newlyindependent states keen to flex their nationalist muscles.

To take an obvious example: the fact that Lithuania was politically and culturally oppressed by the Soviet Union before the USSR’s break-up does not now give Lithuanians the right to deny the human rights of ethnic Russians living in the country.

More such conflicts will emerge. As the

20 Lasour BRIEFING

economic pain of de-Stalinisation intensifies and real living standards tumble, the nationalist card will increasingly be played - to justify the redivision of a diminishing cake in favour of one ethnic group over another. The global crisis of socialist perspective makes it more likely that this scenario will be an enduring one. To tag behind any of this nationalist privilege-seeking is a cul-desac for the Left.

Taking sides in general is not on. We are against Bosnia over-running Serbia as much as we are against Serbia overrunning Bosnia. But only the latter is actually happening. Yes, there may be atrocities on both sides and these will increase the longer the conflict goes on. But the uniformed atrocities of the Serb fighters, such as institutional rape and starvation camps, are an act of war policy decided at the highest level, wholly in line with the racial policy Serbia is waging.

Over the last months, Bosnia has been dismembered militarily by the Serbs, diplomatically by the West’s peace negotiators. Two million permanent refugees have been created. Campaigns such as Red Aid for Bosnia, which demand that Britain open its asylum doors and give maximum material aid to these refugees, are laudable. But what should be done in relation to the actual cause - the Serbian destruction of Bosnia?

There are essentially only two courses of action: do nothing, or protect the people of Bosnia - all of them. All the rest is hand-wringing. Many on the Left Jecture about the dangers of imperialist intervention, but are silent on the practical alternatives. To justify their position of doing nothing, many have invented an imperialist agenda for Bosnia. If this really existed, western governments would not have appeased and dissembled for so long.

The EC’s attitude to the region was not part of some anti-Serbian plot. Arms sanctions have hit Bosnia far more than Serbian forces which have been comforta-

bly resourced by the Yugoslav army.

If the genocidal drive towards a greater Serbia or an ‘ethnically pure’ Croatia is to be stopped, Bosnia must be protected militarily. How? Thatcher says ‘arm Bosnia’ and some on the left have taken this up, preferring it to western intervention. This is convenient for those who would like to halt the “greater Serbia’ project whilst keeping their hands politically clean. It falsely assumes that the different warlords and militias in the region speak for the ordinary people. It also falsely assumes the heavy arms come without training and outside strings. Itis unlikely to stop either the war or the war crimes.

Proposals for action must be based on defined policy goals, not cynical notions of an ‘equality of terror’. So far the West has accepted the Serbian agenda of ethnically defined territories and come up with ‘peace plans’ aimed at rewarding and buying off the worse nationalist leaders. Socialists reject this. We want a lasting peace, which in the first instance means defending and supporting those communities which want to live in tolerant multi-ethnic communities, as has been the case in Srebrenica and Sarajevo.

The UN is frequently a mechanism for imperialist projects and is riddled with contradictions and double standards. But nothing else is available to protect the most basic human rights of the ordinary people of Bosnia.

What is needed is an international protectorate in Bosnia-Herzegovina, with the power to disarm the paramilitaries, repel invaders and safeguard a civic peace. This is what 500 participants at a peace conference in Macedonia called for last November. It is also what Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic is asking for. A fact scarcely picked up by the western media.

Would calling for this form of UN protection make the Left dupes of the western powers? In fact this kind of commitment to the people of ex-Yugoslavia is the last thing western governments want. Too complex, too costly, too open-ended. Much easier to get Vance-Owen to redraw the map and impose it on the people. Much easier to ‘zap the Serbs’ from the air. But no lasting peace lies down that road.

The Macedonian approach is advocated by the Coalition for Peace in Bosnia, which was launched in March. It is an initiative associated with Mary Kaldor of the Helsinki Citizens Assembly, Tony Borden of Balkan War Report and Zoran Pahic, law professor at Sarajevo University, among others.

@ The Coalition can be contacted at 11 Goodwin Street, London N4 3HQ, tel 071 272 9092.

fascists. If not stopped their evil cancer will spread throughout Europe. It will affect the rights of every black and Asian in Britain. Those of us in Leeds involved in the campaign for arms for Bosnia believe

Arm Bosnia against fascism

Muslims and all who between the increase in racist murders believe in multi-racial and multi-

cultural society are being wiped out.

in Europe and the fighting in Bosnia. We have to join in this war against fascism.

The United Nations has shown itself to be totally impotent, just like that old “den of thieves’, the League of Nations, over the invasion of Ethiopia by the Italian fascists. Its sole role has

Cllr Garth Frankland leeds

The attacks from both the Croatian and Serbian armed bands are those of

Red Aid for Bosnian refugees

Draft programme of actio

Red Aid for Bosnian Refugees aims to mobilise working class organisations and the anti-racist movement in support for refugees from war-torn Bosnia.

We aim to:

+ campaign for the opening of the asylum doors to all victims of ethnic cleansing and those facing political persecution.

+ help provide material assistance to the refugees in Britain: housing, jobs, employment, food, clothing, welfare advice etc.

+ take direct action to stop any deportations threatened.

+ expose the hypocrisy of the present Conservative Government in their relation to refugees; and how western governments are supporting right-wing nationalist (and even fascist) forces in ex-Yugoslavia.

* urge trade unions at all levels, Labour Parties at all levels, to take a fighting stance on the defence of, and aid to, Bosnian refugees.

+ forge links with left-wing, trade union and workers organisations in exYugoslavia to assist in our aims. To support democratic forces genuinely fighting for democratic rights against dictatorial rule and imperialist interven tion.

+ build links throughout Europe with those of a similar outlook, with a view towards co-ordinated action in an International Red Aid.

* support other campaigns to open asylum doors, stop deportations and to oppose racism and fascism.

@ For further information contact: Red Aid, PO Box 3104, London SE13

6EU. Tel: 081 694 9799. Weekend of Action Red Aid for for Bosnia Besnian Refugees National demonstration —_ National Launch Conference Saturday 5th June Sunday 6th June Open the asylum doors now Assemble ipm, Elephant & Castle 10am-5pm, Lambeth Town (fiat $0 Tebernnica, Hall, Acre Lane, Brixton, London. London.

the fight is about a

multi-cultural

Europe. It is not ‘ ‘i : 5 : HAT IS kaggemaga sche Sieau Tmopolje: « Serbian concentration comp for Bosnian Muslims Bosnia is genocide. We believe there are direct links

been to take arms off the Bosnian government. Not a single gun has been taken from the fascists!

As socialists we should be opposed. to outside intervention in the affairs of the democratic Bosnian government. All troops should therefore be withdrawn and the government should be allowed to buy arms to defend itself.

Only when the fascist advance is stopped, will it be possible to extend the multi-racial intentions of the Bosnian government. And only when this happens will it be possible for a socialist perspective to develop among the people of Bosnia. Socialist influence in the future will be in exact proportion to how socialists fight the fascists now. Those who argue against this perspective, like some Labour right-wing shadow ministers, are in effect allowing the complete slaughter of all those who stand for multiracialism in Bosnia. It is legitimate to ask them where they stand on racist murders in Britain and the rest of Europe. There is a strong smell of hypocrisy.

Humanitarian aid is important, but without guns the majority of it is falling into the hands of the fascists. It has always been legitimate for socialists to block with capitalist governments against fascism. We don’t have to hide political differences with the Bosnian government, but our failure to fight for them will not only prevent the struggle for a socialist multi-racial Balkan federation, but will destroy any attempt to develop such a society in westem Europe.

Socialists are obliged to join in the many Bosnian action committees such as the one in Leeds, which organised a 600-strong demonstration to demand a socialist solution. Only through intelligent struggle can this be achieved.

Lazpour BrizFine 21

USA today

Socialist Bernie Sanders is currently the only independent sitting in the US Congress. First elected to

the House of Representatives by the people of Vermont in 1990, last year Sanders took over 50% of the

vote in a three-comered fight against both Democrat and Republican rivals. The following is an edited

version of his speech to the Labor Notes conference on 23rd April.

T DOESN'T take a genius to know that the American people are hurting. Ten million workers are unemployed. Six million workers are underemployed. Two million sleep out on the street. Five million children go hungry. We have the highest rate of poverty among children in the industrialised world. People know that there is something wrong but when they read the paper in the morning and watch the television that reality is not reflected back at them. They end up feeling

to clean up our environment, to build sewer systems, homes and schools. We can do this but not by the $16 billion programme Clinton was talking about - it'll take many times that amount.

Where are you going to get the money? Well, some of you may have heard that the Cold War ended. Nonetheless this country continues to spend some $280 billion a year on the military. Some of us believe that much better use could be made of this money - putting people back to work doing

“The bosses have two parties,

isolated. Unless we can get the message out and bring them together, there is not much of a future.

The bottom line is that in many respects the United States in 1993 is becoming an oligarchy ruled by relatively few people of tremendous wealth and power. Remember when we were in high school they used to talk about those Latin American countries where a few families ran the whole show? Well, guess what's happened! In the US in the 1980s there was a massive transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the rich and the very rich. Today, the wealthiest 1% owns 37% of the wealth. The bottom 90% owns 31%. During the 1980s the richest 1% of the population saw a doubling of their real incomes. For the vast majority, however, there was a decline. What we experienced was a Robin Hood principle in reverse.

Every country in the industrialised world with the exception of South Africa and the United States Tecognises that health care is a right of all people, not just a privilege of the wealthy. In our country today we have some 37 million Americans, most of them in work, who have no health insurance. And we have another 50 million Americans who are under-insured.

The irony here is that those of us who are fighting for the single payer system they have in Canada - the only sensible system for us - are the conservatives. The radicals like Bill Clinton who advocate managed competition think that we should be spending tens and tens of millions of dollars more on health care. We think that if you stand up to the insurance companies and get them out of the health care business, if you stand up to the hospitals, the drug companies and the medical equipment suppliers, you can provide quality health care to every individual in this country without spending a penny more than the $900 billion a year we are currently spending.

There is a way we can put millions and millions of Americans to work in a very short period of time. The infrastructure of this country is collapsing. We need to rebuild our roads and bridges. We have the worst mass transportation system in the industrialised world. We need

22 Lasour BRIEFING

jobs that need to be done so that all of us can have a better life. That's called the trickle up theory - and it makes a lot more sense than the phoney trickle down theory.

Ordinary workers have very little clout in this country because we have one of the weakest trade union movements in the industrialised world. Ultimately, the future of this country rests with the trade union movement. The trade union movement must grow. It must go out and organise the unorganised and get heavily involved in politics. Because either we will have a strong workers’ movement in this country or else for working people the furure will be very bleak.

It’s obvious that we're going to need a political revolution in this country to make an economic revolution. It seems to me therefore that the major task in front of us is to move away from single issue politics into broad-based class politics.

The US has the lowest voter tum out of any industrialised nation on earth. That is not an accident. And don’t think that the people who own this country are not delighted that 90% of poor people don’t vote. Don’t think they're not delighted that people say, ‘I'm not interested in politics, I’m not going to participate.’ Of course they're delighted because, believe me, they participate in politics! They buy and sell politicians. They put huge amounts of money into campaigns. The question for us is: how do we involve those people who are disgusted with the system and exhausted by the daily struggle of just staying alive?

It seems to me our goal - and it’s not a new one in this country - is to create a class-conscious population who understand that the people who own this system, the people who own the media, the people who own the corporations, are working against their interests every single day.

The challenge we face is to bring together the diverse elements of the progressive movement - trade unionists, gay people, black people, women, the peace movement - on the basis that we are the vast majority of Americans and we have our own common interests. Separated we fail. Standing together we succeed.

66 OU CAN think of this conference as an alternative to the annual AFL-CIO meeting,” observed Labor Notes Executive

Director Kim Moody. “The leadership of the labour

movement may have collapsed on major issues like

opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement and the single payer health care system but what this gathering has shown is that there are still a lot of people around who want to fight for these things.”

Over the weekend of 23rd-25th April some 1000 American trade unionists gathered in Dearborn’s Hyatt Regency hotel, within sight of the Ford World HQ. Since it was first published in 1980, Labor Notes has become essential reading for militant US trades unionists. Closely linked to the rank and file reform movement that last year toppled the millionaire mafia leadership of the Teamsters, Labor Notes has combined detailed coverage of everyday workplace issues with championship of union democracy and a wide political agenda embracing the issues of race

we should have

and gender, internationalism and independent labour politics.

Like the magazine (whose monthly circulation is now 10,000), the superbly organised conference was a model of non-sectarian class struggle politics. The conference revelled in its own diversity and not a paper seller was in sight. Discussion in workshops was always keen and comradely. Plenaries covered international solidarity, the new Teamsters, and the need for a new party. Over one hundred workshops dealt with everything from running a union newspaper and dealing with quality circles to the EC and AIDS. The all-embracing theme was the need for the labour movement to abandon collusion with management, reanimate its membership and, as the Labor Notes slogan says, “put the movement back in the labour movement”.

The dangers posed by the North American Free Trade Agreement were cited repeatedly. NAFTA, like Maastricht, is an attempt to create a deregulated trade bloc within which capital is guaranteed the upper hand over labour. Speaker after speaker spelled out the dire consequences of NAFTA for workers in all three countries, USA, Canada and Mexico: job losses, cuts in wages and conditions, attacks on union rights and public services.

Traditionally, internationalism has not been the strong point of the US labour movement, but discussion - to which contingents of Canadian and Mexican workers made essential contributions - was well-informed and rooted in practical initiatives to foster solidarity.

“NAFTA was the wake-up call,” explained Moody, “The days of blessed isolation are over. If you don’t have a counter-strategy to corporate internationalism you are left high and dry.”

VIRTUAL HEALTH

The completion of Bill Clinton’s first one hundred days in office neatly coincided with the fifth national conference organised by Labor Notes, the bulletin of rank and file

trade union militancy in the US. Mike Marqusee reports

on inspiring goings-on in Detroit.

Support for the single payer health care scheme used in Canada was also enthusiastic, even though Clinton has informed the public that it is not even “on the table”.

“I think it’s possible to build a grass-roots movement for single payer,” Moody argued, “not least because Clinton and his advisors still don’t know themselves what ‘managed competition’ is or just how successful it can be in dealing with the health care crisis. There is a mass, semi-

at least one!”

organised constituency for this issue, including the labour movement, consumer and church groups, retired people, gays and lesbians. But is someone going to bring it together? There is a political opening if a strong enough force comes through with a clear, simple programme. It could be a contributing factor to building a general political constituency that is willing to go beyond the Democrats.”

Though there was disagreement about the appropriate strategies for going “beyond the Democrats” there seemed to be a consensus summed up in the slogan of Labor Party Advocates: “The bosses have two parties, we should have at least one”.

LPA supporters, working to build trade union support for the idea of a US labour party, were thick on the ground at the conference. According to Moody, it was not always so. “Two years ago there was more ambiguity and more people committed to strategies to change the Democratic Party. For the moment, on the big scale, the Clinton presidency has put the issue of a third party on the back burner. Even many people who were not Clinton enthusiasts support the idea that what we have to do now is push Clinton to deliver the maximum - and that’s not necessarily the wrong idea. But this doesn't contradict the idea of having a labour party, which is gathering more and more support amongst the kind of progressive trades unionists who come to Labor Notes conferences. They know that for all Clinton's social issues symbolism we're still talking about a neo-liberal economic programme, about market based solutions to economic problems geared to the needs of the corporations.” 0 @ Contact Labor Notes at 7435 Michigan Avenue, Detroit, Michigan, 48210, USA.

JUST UKE THE REAL

Lasour Brigrinc 23

a ee

INTERNATIONAL

BRIEFING

Brazil

Mike Phipps reports: Amnesty International has called for an enquiry into the brutal abduction and murder of Renildo Jose dos Santos, a gay local councillor from Coqueiro Seco in north-east Brazil.

On 14th March Renildo was kidnapped by armed men, believed by witnesses to be plain-clothes police. Next day his decapitated body and head were found on separate areas of waste ground, both bearing apparent marks of torture.

Renildo had received death threats repeatedly since 1989, and was shot and wounded three times in an attack by a local police officer. He had reported these incidents to a judge, but no action was taken.

South Africa: campaign for mobile clinic

“I WAS BORN on a newspaper. Children in the townships today are still being born on newspapers. The only thing that changes is the date at the top of the page.”

Two hundred thousand people live in Alexandra township, South Africa. Half are unemployed and 80% of the children are malnourished. One in ten dies before the age of two.

Alex has one clinic built and run by the people themselves. The nearest hospital is for whites only, the nearest black hospital is 20 miles away.

Greenwich and Bexley AntiApartheid Group is campaigning to raise money to fund a mobile clinic that can reach rural areas around Alex. So far they have raised £1,500. More support is needed. Contact: Greenwich and Bexley AA Group, GCRE, 115123 Powis Street, London SE18 6JL.

US workers go part-time

THE REGENERATION of the American economy hailed in recent months conceals a disturbing new trend. Of 380,000 new jobs created in February, 348,000 of them went to temporary or part-time workers.

24 Lapour BRIEFING

killing

After Renildo publicly admitted his homosexuality in a radio programme, the local council set up an enquiry accusing him of acts “incompatible with parliamentary decorum and bringing the House into disrepute”. He was stripped of his seat by the council, but reinstated pending a judicial appeal.

Several human rights groups demanded state protection for Renildo a month before he was killed. None was given, and no arrest has been made since his death. Amnesty International is demanding that his murderers be brought to justice.

@ More details available from AI, 1

Easton St, London WCIX 8DJ.

The biggest private employer in the US is now not GM or IBM but Manpower Inco. Existing jobs are also being down-graded. The BankAmerica Corporation has reduced the hours of tens of thousands of its workers in its 1,300 California branches. Already the average salary of a full-time bank clerk is only $19,000 a year.

Workers can expect to lose up to 50% of their earnings. But in addition they will be deprived of benefits such as paid holidays, sick leave, and medical and retirement insurance.

Ten days before the cutbacks were made public, the bank announced record profits for 1992 of $1.5 billion.

Thai corporate

massacre

KADER HOLDINGS, the Hong Kong owners of the Thai doll factory where at least 220 workers were bumt to death on 10th May in the worst factory

Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign Women’s environmental brigade to Nicaragua

December 1993 to January 1994

Contact: NSC, 129 Seven Sisters Read, London N7 7QG. Tel: 071 272 9619

Nicaragua Solidarity Campaign Day School

Nicaragua & El Salvador: Looking forward, fighting back

Seturday 26th June, 10am - 4pm.

Chequer Centre, Chequer Street, London EC1 (Old Street tube). Day school & rally speakers include: Jacaranda Femandez (Intemational Relations Secretary, Nicaragua Health Trade Union)

Emesto Espinoza (General Secretary, Nicaragua Public Service Union), Representatives of the FSLN, FMLN & Brazilian Workers Party.

fire in history, have reassured shareholders that it “will not harm the company” (FT, 13th May). Thai officials have revealed that most of the victims were young women, some of whom had taken their children to work with them at their low-paid jobs. Of the 516 people hospitalised, most suffered from broken bones after having to jump from the third and fourth floors, because exit doors had. been locked to deter pilfering. Kader has said that it will pay compensation of about six months’ wages to relatives of the deceased, and two months’ wages to the injured (workers earn $120 - $160 a month).

The news that Thai police have issued summonses to the executives of Kader, responsible for this corporate massacre, is welcome. However the fact that such a disaster could occur, and that President Chuan continues to repress state enterprise unions, demonstrate the superficiality of Thai ‘democracy’ one year after the overthrow of General Suchinda.

Anti-Apartheid Movement

March and Rally

Peace, Freedom and the vote in South Africa now! Sunday 20th June

Hyde Park, London 12.30pm -

3-5pm - rally at Trafalgar Square Speakers include: Walter Sisulu, Trevor Huddleston

OUTH AFRICA is entering yet

another crucial phase in the

struggle for a democratic society. The assassination of Chris Hani has exposed the terrible truth behind the headlines - that real power is not under the control of those seated around the negotiating table.

It has been an incredible month in many respects. The massive outrage expressed by ordinary people at the Hani assassination was further fuelled by the sanctimonious bleatings of the government and the provocative actions of the police. Popular anger underlined both the frustration of the masses and the high regard in which they continue to hold those who are identified with militant activity. Despite the best efforts of the ANC, Communist Party and church leaders to portray Comrade Hani as a reformed guerilla who latterly embraced nonviolence and the negotiations strategy, it was his involvement in the armed struggle, and his consistent expressions of solidarity with the working class which made him popular with those who suffer under apartheid.

Class

and effective focus for the anger of millions. Strike action and demonstrations everywhere were of an unprecedented size. Stayaways were virtually solid throughout the country and whole industries and municipalities closed. The most intransigent of employers was forced to tum a blind eye to breaches in contracts and the law.

The discipline of the marchers, the clarity of their demands and their fearlessness in exercising their democratic rights were a powerful antidote to those who say that mass action is a thing of the past.

The power of the organised working class was also an awesome reminder for all those around the negotiating table that the struggle for a democratic South Africa is also a struggle between contending classes, even if a generation of ex-Marxists would like to pretend otherwise.

Itis within this context that COSATU’s Reconstruction Accord has gathered new significance. The demands of the Accord - for an end to starvation pay levels, for democratic rights, for basic social benefits and for

arise

Sean Coyne surveys the impact of Chris Hani’s assassination

on the South African working class, and predicts a stormy

period ahead.

The South African Broadcasting Corporation, not known for its impartiality, even went so far as to cover the funeral rally as if it were a state occasion, complete with solemn commentary throughout the day. Phone-in programmes on independent radio were jammed with calls expressing sadness and outrage at what had been done. These events would have been totally unthinkable even a short time ago.

But it was the extent of the mobilisations, initiated largely by COSATU, which the more serious analysts were watching. In contrast to the initial reluctance of the ANC to call for mass action (clearly they fear a further loss of control of the township youth), COSATU provided an amazingly swift

an end to the violence - represent a minimum workers’ platform for supporting the ANC in the coming elections. And it is a powerful bargaining tool.

It is now recognised that without the tireless efforts of worker-activists in the townships and rural areas, the ANC’s election campaign could be doomed. Most worker-activists are under no illusions that the minimum demands being put forward by COSATU will need to be fought for vigorously, whatever happens after the elections. The ANC appears to have reluctantly recognised this political fact of life, but it is still unclear about how exactly its economic policies, tailored to pacify the concerns of the international banks and foreign

A Programme to Rebuild our Country!

COSATU is calling on all its structures and members to discuss the idea of a Programme for Reconstruction.

Our programme must:

@ have concrete, realistic ways to solve the problems of unemployment, bad education, low skills, no houses, workers’ rights, and so on.

@ make sure we have an ANC victory in the elections so that they can implement this programme in govemment.

@ negotiate for these issues NOW at company, industry and national level through negotiating forums like the National Economic Forum.

@ be supported by our members and backed up by struggles on the ground.

investors, can deliver even this minimum set of demands without challenging the power of the wealthy and the gross corruption of the De Klerk regime.

Meanwhile, the extreme right openly boasts about its armed capacity. De Klerk arrests the murderers of Comrade Hani in order to complete his international reputation as a person of honour. The armed wing of the PAC activates its no-hope slogan of ‘one settler, one bullet’. .

More death lists and assassination plots are uncovered. But all of these worrying developments remain essentially window dressing for the moment. The class act in town is the working class itself. Awake, angry, and waiting.

Lapour BRigFinc 25

e ( r 0 C h | re) n Dinah Livingstone, a radical poet living in London, has been writing and performing her

poems for over 25 years. The H2Owner is taken from her new collection, re | = r Second Sight, available from Katabasis, price £5.95.

The H2Owner

Sue Lukes visits the

Cardiff Red Choir. Is your water really safe? Defend your family with a Highbrook filter. Only £125.50 for the undersink model. ATURDAY MORNINGS in Cardiff are different. Removes nitvates, ead, alaataiat Come rain (usually) or shine, the Cardiff Red and other harmfol chemicals. Choir sings out socialist and international classics Pare te be cere.

and rattles buckets for a cause chosen by choir members the Sunday before. Anti-apartheid, the Welsh language movernent, the miners, Nicaragua Solidarity have all been glad to receive the contents of those buckets and welcomed

Highbrook was so successful this year it was able to diversify and expand

the accompanying posters explaining the issues in Welsh into waste disposal and English. “The choir makes it come alive for us and the on land it bought, very reasonably, people watching, listening and walking by,” says secretary from South East Water ple Gill Parsons. near the happy valley reservoir. The choir celebrates its 10th anniversary this year, and is also hosting the 11th national Street Music Festival (16th- Sone of the waste was toxic 18th July). All street bands and choiss are invited (contact aan ise Hie 1 eal bait COR Gill for details). It will be well worth arranging a weekend this helped maintain public anxiety in Cardiff. There will be a procession and concert on the acid boost’ sales nets Saturday. If you cannot get there, order one of their five : tapes (see below). You get superb arrangements of songs of . . struggle, and the proceeds again go to campaigns the choir With foresight at the flotation supports. Highbrook had also acquired a major shareholding The choir is unique, combining the living Welsh tradition in Derwent Water plc and when of choral singing with a deep and active political commit- pollution rumours - always denied by the board - ment. They work to break down the alienation of people increased in the South East (and especially the working class) from music and song as till fear levels rose, overflowed, drowned a form of political expression. the belief that home filters They do not audition, but demand commitment from their could cope with so many possible poisons, members to the weekly rehearsal, meeting and street then simple: Highbrook Derwent

singing. They believe that the power of song has been lost by the left, but look set to regain it. The whole choir was arrested at Merthyr Tydfil Tescos singing in support of the alan boycott of South African goods. More were arrested for in millions of bottles bringing courts to a halt with a musical protest against the to households in Kent,

Poll Tax. They “got grudging approval from their unwilling Sussex, Surrey and London. audience” reported the local paper when they stopped a PR exercise at Cardiff University and called for the withdrawal The City is bullish:

of troops from the Gulf. this business is doing fantastically well,

The choir has visited the North of Ireland several times. naturally, it makes sense.

They are now seeking sponsorship for a trip to Palestine’s occupied territories next year, invited by the friends of Bir Zeit University. Contact Gill if your union or ward can help with this.

“The left is seen as dreary,” says Gill, “You cannot just put a toe in the water; you fall in up to your head. People don’t want to get involved. We've got an uphill struggle in raising a socialist perspective. We must get across the notion that you can enjoy politics.” © Contact: Gill Parsons, Cor Cochion Caerdydd, 43, Spring Gardens Place, Adamsdown, Cardiff CF2 1QY, for bookings, tapes, details of the festival, and sponsorship of the Palestine trip. The Cor’s “Freedom Walk” tape is available for £5. Proceeds are split between the Cor, cymdeithes yr iaith (The Welsh Language Society) and glor na Gael (The Irish language movement).

moves in for the kill and sells its water

26 Lazour BRIEFING

What’s Left?

Kevin Flack reviews Building on Maastricht: a Left Agenda for Europe Tribune Group of MEPs, £1.

HIS PAMPHLET does not live

up to its title, which may be

why several leading Tribune MEPs have not endorsed it. Their place has been taken by that wellknown supporter of a Left agenda, Peter Mandelson.

While pointing out the international pressures that prevented national governments such as the French in the early ’80s from introducing socialist measures, they fail to recognise that Maastricht will prevent all EC governments from introducing even moderate socialist economic policies such as state aid to industries, blocks on finance fleeing abroad or moves to stop transnational companies moving in search of cheap labour.

We are led to believe “a single currency would liberate a Labour government from a year of a run on the pound and consequently would hugely increase its scope for action.” The authors state that national monopolies could no longer artificially inflate prices while failing to realise that ECwide monopolies could. They note that Labour MEPs have argued that a European Bank should be under democratic control and that low inflation ought not to be the Bank’s sole concem. But having lost these arguments they do not see any need to revise their rose-tinted view of our favourite Belgium town's namesake.

They recognise the monetarist nature of the EMU criteria, the fact that the single market is increasing the divide between richer and poorer parts of the EC and the lack of resources richer EC states are willing to put into regional development. But somehow they still put their faith in renegotiation of the Treaty of Rome in 1996 (and we've all seen how well the Left has done in national elections across Europe recently). They don’t believe we are necessarily heading to a ‘Fortress Europe’ and they do believe decisionmaking is moving more to local level and that we are heading for greater democracy.

They seem not to have noticed the scandals racking Labour’s sister parties across the EC or, to cite only one example, the £52 million worth of fraud discovered in olive oil grants alone in 1991 (an average false claim of over £18,000 in Italy).

Their most ludicrous argument

against voting against Maastricht is that there is nothing immediately available to put in its place. Presumably if these MEPs were in the House of Commons they would blithely vote for all Tory legislation unless they had fully-drafted alternatives ready for the statute book.

One scenario for recovery is Stuart Holland’s brainchild of a reduced working week (on no loss of pay). Multinational companies across the EC are presumably expected to hand this over to the workers on a plate.

Searching desperately for concrete solutions, the best the pamphlet can come up with is a call for publication of the Council of Ministers’ minutes.

“Just say no”

Paul Field reviews Maastricht - Implications for Public Services Jonathan Michie, published by NALGO, £1.

THIS BOOKLET IS welcome not least

because it manages to explain the devastating implications of Maastricht in terms that are accessible to more than those with a PhD in applied economics.

Published by NALGO, which has rejected the TUC’s support for the Treaty, it deserves to be read widely by trade union activists.

By “rate capping a continent”, Michie argues, Maastricht would kill any hope of economic recovery as recession turned into indefinite slump.

Michie dispels the widely held myth that Maastricht will reverse the legacy of the Thatcher years and make the British economy more like its European counterparts. Rather than restoring Britain’s manufacturing capacity the Treaty would actually outlaw the kind of massive public intervention that is needed to force a historic change of direction.

The Treaty's neo-liberal content arose from the deliberations of the Delors Committee - a body composed largely of bankers - before the community slumped into recession. Michie concludes that it is “yesteryear’s treaty, focusing on 1980's issues” when what is needed are policies for expansion and employment.

In the section entitled ‘Just Say No” the author points out that the Tory Right and fascists will be the main beneficiaries of the social unrest that this process will provoke unless the labour movement is seen to oppose it. Tf this analysis has a weakness, it is its call for anew Treaty on European Union that would embody progressive social democratic reforms within the framework of the existing European Community.

He says at one point “the EC needs a new deal”. This not only mistakes the nature of the EC which was determined by the Treaty of Rome long before any moves to monetary union, it actually misunderstands the epoch in which we live. The sort of Keynesian social contract which he describes is no longer even an option for the bourgeoisie.

As Michie himself acknowledges, Maastricht is little more than an attempt to strengthen European capital against North America and East Asia by removing the burden of comprehensive welfare provisions throughout its states.

If this is true it does not seem plausible that the EC will give up this objective and embrace Keynesian economics and public spending just because Maastricht proves unpopular.

Lasoca Be

Hounded

‘The death of a 15 year old hunt saboteur in April focused media attention on an arena of violence unnoticed by most of the urban population. While newspapers and various TV documentaries have focused on dyedhair, militant-vegan anarchists from Brixton, those looking behind the stereotypes have seen another, more sinister side to the story.

Most foxhunts in the South East and Cheshire now employ ‘hunt stewards’, hired thugs whose idea of a day out in the country is picking a fight with a saboteur and generally blocking both lawful and unlawful protests. In Essex, this has included preventing demonstrators fromthe Hunt Saboteurs and monitors from the League Against Cruel Sports from even walking along public footpaths. These characters enjoy pay of up to £85 a day. In the case of the Countrywateh firm, a brownshirt uniform reminiscent of Nazi Germany is also on offer.

After violence against demonstrators at one hunt, saboteurs organised ‘mass hits’ on that hunt over the following weeks, mobilising up to 300 people on a regular basis. The inevitable fracas will at least make so-called stewards think twice before belting some unfortunate individual on a future occasion.

‘A welcome side effect is that many cashstrapped hunts, including the prestigious Surrey Union, are paying out a formne in stewards’ fees, backed up by a police presence costing up to £28,000 a day (helicopter and mounties don’t come cheap) all to allow 20 or 30 riders the chance fora day’s ‘sport’.

The fox will now receive a short respite until the start of cub-hunting in early August. Meanwhile, hound, hunters and terriermen pursue that most ferocious of beasts, the furry foot-long mink. Oh, forthe traditions of the British countryside.

Indigestible

For socialists with cash to spare, the Greater London Labour Party is organising a£50a head dinner at the QE II Conference Centre in Westminster on 22nd June. °

Never mind the food and the booze, the piece de resistance will be an after-dinner speech by John Smith.

Of course, most socialists would pay fifty quid not to hear the speech, whatever the merits of the dinner.

28 Lanour BRIEFING

Unhealthy

Health Authorities, we're told, have no money to throw around.

But it has now been revealed that West Midlands Regional HA paid a subsidy to its Information Technology Department - after privatisation - of £600,000 in 1989 and a farther £350,000in 1991.

The District Auditor has now pointed out that the RHA had no right to make the payments, the first of which was a revenue guarantee figure paid to its own former managers who had organised the buy-out!

Asked for his comment, NHS Chief Executive Duncan Nichol admitted, “It’s a shambles.”

Junk mail

Junk mail is something we're used to at Briefing, but the letter from James G. Maclean of Leith, Edinburgh takes the biscuit.

Maclean, a well-known Orange Lodge leader, is urging support for his campaign to get Edinburgh District Council to ban the Sth June Connally (sic) March, organised by the James Connolly Society. He labels both the Society and Red Action - the driving force behind Anti-Fascist Action - as representing “peculiar brand of fascism”. He also claims that “IRA supporters have decided to tum ‘Edinburgh into a battlefield”. After the fascist attempt to stop the Bloody Sunday March in London, itis vital that this commemorative march is supported by the labour movement.

‘The march will assemble at 2pm at King’s Stables Road (off Lothian Road). Periscope understands it will go ahead whether or not the Labour Council bans it.

Wither Tribune?

Periscopeis sorry tohear that our comrade Paul Anderson will soon be leaving the editorship of Tribune.

Under Paul’s tutelage, the old warhorse rediscovered some of its past radicalism and once again opened its pages to contributors not always approved of by the Party hierarchy.

Paul also ensured a steady flow of gratuitous publicity for Labour Briefing which was much appreciated.

Class warrior

We were sad to leam of the death of Cesar Chavez, who spent his life fighting for and with the brutally exploited Latino farmworkers of California.

It’s rare that the Economist has a good word for a militant trade union leader, but even those hard-headed capitalist lackeys were impressed by the dedicated, selfless Chavez. In awed tones they reported that at his death his salary from the United Farmworkers wasamere $6,708 plusroom and board.

Union leaders in North America and Europe who have ritually praised Chavez over the years could do worse than follow his example.

Soundbitten

On BBC TV Clare Short explained Labour’s position on Maastricht and PR.

Apparently there was no problem supporting a referendum on the latter and blocking ‘one on the former because “consistency in life isn’t everything”. Well, Clare, as an expert in inconsistency, should know.

But what on earth did she mean when she then said that we had to support Maastricht because although “it’s a lousy treaty we've got to prevent economic and monetary union”.

From inconsistency to incoherence in a single soundbite!

Fulham sunk

Asif Fulham Football Club didn't have enough problems, they now have the

‘mighty’ GMB as sponsors. Certainly puts paid to them having any strikers next year.

Wot no Class Traitor?

Since that’s the question on all Briefing readers’ lips this month, we thought we better come clean.

Bowing at last to popular demand, the Editorial Board had decreed that this, month's Class Traitor should be Kate Hoey, who has done so much in recent years to endear herself to socialists.

Onr award-winning (not) investigative team, feared by Class Traitors everywhere, gotto work. Reams of embarrassing material on the MP christened by the Sun the “division belle” poured into the Briefing lair.

Then, at the last minute, we learned that the Honourable Member for Vauxhall had been sacked from the Labour Front Bench for voting against the Maastricht Treaty. We therefore decided to give our most popular feature amonth’s rest. After all, the Class Traitor treatment would be a poor way to acknowledge this rare, mnexpected but nonetheless welcome twinge of what is left of Hoey’s socialist conscience.

Mind you, it’s only a reprieve, Kate. You're still on our lst.

Groaniad

‘Among the most odiously dishonest of Guardian hacks is South African correspondent, David Beresford, who opened a recent column with these bold words: “In a brave move of the kind South Africa has come to expect from President F.W. de Klerk, the government has thrown open the state broadcasting services to non-partisan control, seizing the moral high ground, at least for the moment, from the African ‘National Congress.” He follows this with a lengthy account of a squabble involving figures from the arts world and ANC bureaucrats.

No wonder activists in the liberation movement in South Africa regard Beresford asa complete fraud. “He sits in his house and writes things up from the telly and the Tocal newspapers,” observed one veteran trade unionist. “He has rebuffed every attempt we've made to give him our side of the story.”

Briefing AGM: no blood on the

floor

THE LABOUR BRIEFING AGM held on Saturday 8th May in North London was marked by rich and varied debates and a renewed determination among Briefing supporters to raise the money and do the work necessary to sustain and improve the magazine.

The morning session, a wide ranging discussion on “Major, Maastricht and the Miners”, was introduced by Tony Benn (see above), a heart-rending speech by Hilary McLaren of the Trentham Women’s Pit Camp and an appeal for support from Steven Hepbum of the Justice for the Casement Park Accused Campaign.

The AGM approved a report from the outgoing EB which proposed to respond to our shortage of money by regretfully replacing our full-time worker with a part-time editorial post. Treasurer Dave Palmer explained that the Briefing Junk Bonds were a tremendous scam which would yield over £5,000 on a £5 investment in 25 years time - if the revolution comes first! Write in now for your Briefing Junk Bonds issued in £5 units.

A resolution condemning the failure of the TUC and Labour leaders to mobilise solidarity for the miners and pledging continued support for the National Miners Support Network was carried, as was another resolving to campaign against the Child Support Act. It was agreed to organise regular meetings for Briefing readers at which broad issues affecting the labour movement could be discussed in depth. Anew EB was elected (see page 3).

Tony Benn told the Briefing AGM: “Maastricht is a union which consolidates the ruling class in western Europe - bankers, commissioners, Labour and trade union leaders - to run it in the way the Cardinals ran the Holy Roman Empire. It is not a nationalist argument about hating foreigners or thinking some of them have crept into Wolverhampton. It is about the struggle to create a Europe of people based upon the decentralisation of

power.

volutionary >

Nog H3uvEE CO OS |

Briefing needs (badly) paid help! Wanted: Part-time editorial worker

80 hours per month (fiexible); £7.00 per hour.

The successful applicant will be responsible for commissioning articles, sub-editing and preparing them for the production team and some writing of shorts and features.

Editorial/journalistic/WP skills desirable. Commitment, enthusiasm, sense of humour essential.

For more information contact Liz Davies, Briefing Co-chair, tel. 071 359 3043, or write to Labour Briefing, PO Box 2378, London E5 9QU.

Famous last words....

From London Labour Briefing, June 1983:

“Many economists are predicting that sometime before the end of 1984 we will see a ABOUR ioe a world depression as deep

and unexpected as 1929. They predict a complete collapse of the property market with ordinary people’s homes losing up to half their value. If the Labour charge that the Tories want the election out of the way before the economy goes bust begins to stick, then the election could go badly wrong for the Tories.” — Ken Livingstone

7 ag $ NST ECTION SPECIAL

“The People’s March and Labour’s election campaign should dovetail, each boosting the other. The problem is that Labour’s Shadow Cabinet never wanted the March in the first place - they thought that angry unemployed youth on the streets would harm Labour's image.” - Martin Thomas

Lazour Brigrinc 29

Your letters are welcome, but please keep them short.

Write to:

Gerry MacLochlainn of Sinn } Fein (May Briefing)

appeared to regard the deaths in Warrington as some kind of natural disaster, unprovoked by any kind of human agency. The fact is that Jonathan Ball and Tim Parry died as a direct result of the Provisional IRA’s continued armed struggle. One could argue that such deaths were tragic but inevitable. It is interesting that Gerry Maclochlainn does not, referring instead to the “last atrocity”, which I assume is not the official line that Sinn Fein takes upon the IRA’s military operations in England.

It is perfectly proper to point out the stench of hypocrisy that surrounds the howls of outrage which follow English deaths issuing from the same throats which remain strangely mute when Irish people are killed by British security forces. But this does not in itself constitute an argument, merely a comment. The concurrent military campaigns being waged by the British state, Republican movement and Loyalist death squads have all combined to produce a bloody crop of corpses young and old. The problem is that people weep only for their ‘own” dead. Genuine peace will be in sight when all working class victims are seen as ‘our’ dead by all the working class communities both sides of the Irish Sea.

The same applies to acts of injustice. We cannot automatically assume that the UDR 4 are guilty simply because they served with the security forces, any more than we can assume that the Casement Park Accused are guilty simply because they attended a Republican funeral. I am not seeking to prove some kind of moral equivalence between the oppressed and the oppressor. I am merely suggesting that itis pointless for Sinn Fein to deride the politics of the last atrocity, then immediately launch into the litany of the atrocities before last.

If we want to talk about atrocities being inflicted on working class people in North-East Ireland, it may be more

30 Lasour BRIEFING

useful to dwell on mass unemployment, poverty, sub-standard housing, run-down health services and the expunging of all hope from the lives of ordinary people regardless of their religious affiliations. I know that it is unfashionable, even in journals such as Labour Briefing, to suggest that to deal with problems created by capitalism it might be useful to campaign for socialism. But if we do wish to see peace in our time then surely socialists in both Britain and Ireland would be advised to campaign against just such atrocities. The Unionist working class is neither uniquely wicked nor uniquely stupid. They can be won to see that only united working class action can reverse the everyday evils that they face, and such unity can only be achieved when they challenge and defeat the very sectarian chains that fetter both themselves and their nationalist sisters and brothers. Gerry MacLochlainn suggested that the only solution to Ireland's war will be by negotiation. He is wrong. The road to peace lies through class struggle. Yours sincerely, Steven Hepburn Southall

The article by Keith Veness S ( in May Briefing was bad in

tone and content. I am not on the John Smith wing of the Labour Party, but he did start his Christian Socialist Movement lecture on Professor Tawney, on 20th March, with these words:

“T do not claim that Christianity can provide the only moral framework for an ethical approach to politics. Our own experience tells us that an ethical approach to life and politics can be held as firmly by people of other faiths and by those who hold no religious conviction.”

Has Keith studied the full text of the lecture? He certainly seems to be ignoring Labour's history. The radicalisation of Left Labour leaders Hardie, Lansbury, Cripps and Heffer sprang from their Christian beliefs.

Christians are supposed to stand for loving their neighbours and for sharing the resources of this planet.

Ileamt my socialism and internation alism in a Methodist Sunday school. Today some of the most trenchant criticisms of capitalism are coming from liberation theologians, radical church leaders and local religious communities in the Third World. Failure to recognise all this weakens Keith's article when he rightly reminds us that Britain today is a multi-racial and multi-faith country.

There has always been a Christian Socialist input into Labour’s thinking. The Party probably does owe more to Methodism than Marxism. All of us must recognise that Labour has to remain a broad church, reflecting the views of religious socialists no less than agnostics and atheists, We must have understanding and appreciation of different viewpoints, not the intolerance displayed by Keith Veness. Let's leave witch-hunting to the Right and not make false claims about others in

the Labour Party. Yours sincerely,

Ron Huzzard Orpington

Ai all been on antiracist demonstrations but the

Jobs not Racism demonstration on the 8th May was different.

“Black and white workers unite’ slogans are all very well, but Militant Labour presents a specific programme on which they can unite. It makes sense to anyone that cutting the working hours of those in work (without loss in pay) could create jobs for three million unemployed. If the capitalist class can’t afford it, then we can’t afford them.

Tommy Sheridan was cheered to the echo when he described how the BNP were driven off the streets in Scotland. I would like to see John Smith conjure up such enthusiasm.

The attitude of all the Panther Youth that I spoke to was excellent. The BNP want racist murders to engender a series of tit-for-tat ethnic killings which will retrospectively justify their actions. But Panther Youth are keen to target the real enemy and drive the BNP off the streets as part of a campaign for socialist change.

Like Mosley, the BNP operate behind a protective screen of riot police and the ‘blue cavalry’. There are a few decent ‘workers in blue uniform’ who resent this role, and serious Marxists have to find the way to reach them.

Yours fraternally, Derek McMillan East Grinstead

a.

T was sad to see May } AS lovcine using its editorial to knock PR. It seems axiomatic to me that political groupings should be represented in Parliament in proportion to their support amongst the electorate.

The kind of socialist transformation of society which Labour Briefing wishes to see would need a popular majority behind it. An artificial one in Parliament generated by first-past-thepost would not be able to stand up to the state and other capitalist interests.

The present system certainly has the effect of ensuring safe Labour seats in working class areas, where Labour municipal bureaucracies cheat and manipulate, where winning further votes for Labour is irrelevant, and where left activists can easily be expelled into an clectoral wilderness.

Yours in struggle, Peter Bowing Exeter

The unsigned report ca the 7 Campaign Group Supporters

Network Conference in the stop press column of the May Briefing was largely accurate and objective except for one extraordinary sentence: “Unformnately a resolution declaring the introduction of PR to be a disaster for the working class was narrowly defeated.”

The author might have pointed out that this resolution, phrased in typically confrontational language, was moved by a Socialist Action supporter - possibly with the aim of sharpening divisions in what was otherwise a pleasantly consensual conference, rather than with a view to clarifying debate. The manoeuvre was defeated. What was unfortunate about that?

Does the author of last month’s report really believe the introduction of PR to be “a disaster for the working class” - comparable to fascism, perhaps? Is there not a trace of overstatement here? At the very least Briefing's anonymous reporter might have put their name to such a controversial opinion.

Yours, Mike Phipps Brent Editor’s note: we are pleased to reveal that the culprit was Graham Bash.

Your brief account of the } F { Sheffield Conference (May Briefing) didn’t do justice to the heated argument over PR. The conference did not support PR, but carried a resolution opposing pacts and

calling on the Campaign Group to sponsor a debate on electoral reform. Call me cynical if you like, but I took this to be a simple manocuvre to head off a decision on PR.

The Campaign Group is firmly opposed to any change in the electoral system and it is to be regretted that its Supporters’ Network is now out of line with the Group.

The mischievous motion was put forward by Socialist Organiser and Socialist Outlook supporters, both of whom have rigid lines in favour of PR and neither of whom have hitherto exhibited any great enthusiasm for discussing electoral reform.

Were they serious about a debate then the time to have called for one would have been at the Leeds Conference last year. But we didn't hear a peep out of them then. But now, after two and a half years of argument in the Party over PR, and when the Annual Conference is about to make its decision, they suddenly pop up with this disingenuous demand.

The Campaign Group has already launched a campaign to defend firstpast-the-post, and in the few months between now and Conference we have to put this message vigorously across. Unfortunately the Sheffield decision has prevented the Supporters’ Network from playing a part in that campaign.

In any case, Organiser and Outlook do not have a credible position. To call for PR and at the same time oppose pacts is not sustainable. PR means pacts. Don’t take my word for it, ask Professor Plant.

It is also puzzling why the ultra-left should want to give the Lib Dems (not to mention the fascists) a huge boost. Unless they have a hidden agenda...namely, the old chestnut of splitting the Labour Party (which could well result from PR).

To counter the PR bandwagon that is now being hyped up by forces hostile to Labour it is essential that the Left provides a lead and puts forward a clear line in favour of first-past-thepost. The time for debate is over.

Yours in comradeship, Pete Willsman Plumstead

Cripes! The tenant of the

) A Caen Comal teeeeeiie

being challenged, and he is

our man! Briefing to the rescue, comrades (May Briefing, Periscope)!

Over 50 prospective Labour candidates in the field, blimey! But hang on. “Ten work full-time in the Labour Party or unions. The rest are the usual gaggle of media professionals, lawyers, lobbyists, ‘experts’, consult-

Comrades, this lot are bureaucrats and middle class! Not a horny hand among them, it seems. That was a near thing! And look who is among them. Michael Cashman, “whose sole qualification appears to be that he played the gay character Colin in EastEnders some years ago”. Can this be the Michael Cashman who, as just about everyone knows, is gay? The actor who performed with Sir Ian McKellan in ‘Ghetto’ at the National, the play about gays and Nazis, and who compaigns for gay rights?

Then there is Judy Mallaber, director of the Local Government Information Unit, who “spent time aiding and abetting the persecution of Poll Tax non-payers”.

Is this the LGIU funded by Labour local authorities and the unions, and which - among other research and campaigning - is a valuable Labour voice against the privatisation of local government services?

Think of the company you keep when you deride middle class professionals inter alia. Tony Benn was a TV producer, and a peer of the realm no less. Che Guevara a doctor, Mao a librarian. Lenin won a Tsarist gold medal when he graduated as a lawyer. His dad was a school inspector; Trotsky's was a kulak.

Stalin wasn't lumbered with that kind of background. Pol Pot ran that sort ~ our sort - out of town. London Central ano-go area?

Thear you ask why we don’t like tabloid journalism. Well, included in their bag of tricks is the habit of rubbishing people in lurid ways, and hey, they choose their facts selectively!

Yours, Myra Trevelyan London NW8

The latest issue of the new-

4 style super soaraway Labour

Party News informs comrades that they still have time to submit suggestions for the new youth structure of the Party.

We are told that names are coming in “thick and fast”.

Thick presumably as in the classic “the Labour Rose Buds” (ah, bless ‘em), and fast as in ‘fast asleep’.

However I’m ‘game for a name’, so considering the abysmal state of the Party’s youth wing since the left and Militant tendency were replaced by the NOLS/LCC ‘media tendency’- how about calling it Red Dwarf!

Yours in solidarity, Alan Bedford Goole

LaBour BRIEFING 31

Repeat the Poll Tax victory

Kevin Flack (Lewisham East CLP) calls for amass campaign against the forthcoming fuel tax.

THE ANNOUNCEMENT THAT VAT will be charged on gas and electricity from next April is more than an outrage. Itis as important an attack on the unemployed, the pensioners and the low paid as the Poll Tax. It will surely lead to the deaths of even more elderly people who are afraid to turn on their heating because they can’t pay their bills, or who do tum it on and are then cut off for non-payment. The immediate response to this part of the budget was disbelief. We need to turn

James Connolly march and rally

Saturday 5th June

Assemble 2pm King Stables Road (off Lothian Road)

Edinburgh National mobilisation for 125th anniversary of

his birth in Edinburgh. The James Connolly Society, PO Box 4, Prestonpans, Edinburgh, East Lothian.

Mildmay Labour Party public meeting Fight back against racist attacks Jeremy Corbyn MP, ARA, Talal Karim, Ali Ece.

Thursday 10th June, 8pm. St Jude’s Church, Mildmay Grove,

Printed by Wernham Printers Ltd (TU), 4 Forster Road, London N17

that reaction into anger and turn that anger into action.

The Poll Tax campaign showed just how powerful community action can be - if it is well-organised and based on mass action.

We need to hold meetings and discussions as soon as possible to decide how best to fight this new tax - the tax on warmth, on life itself. We should argue for a mass boycott of the 17.5% addition to the bills and for a campaign to stop the cutting off of those who can’t or won’t pay.

Many people cannot join this boycott because they have been persuaded or forced to have key meters. Although superficially attractive, to ‘pay as you use’ in fact means immediate disconnection if you can’t pay on any particular day.

However, many people still receive a bill and could boycott the tax. As part of this campaign we should highlight the general problem of disconnection of basic essential services which is becoming more widespread. Remember the electricity companies introduced key meters because more and more people couldn’t afford to pay their bills. The key meter takes this problem away from the

government and electricity companies and places it on the individuals who cannot afford heat and light such as pensioners and the unemployed.

Join the boycott, and let's tell this government we won't accept their policy of ‘can’t pay, don’t get.’ Heat, light and water are basic rights, not the privilege of those who can afford them.

(This article first appeared in the broadbased local campaigning paper, The Lewisham Leveller, PO Box 574, Brockley, London SE4 1DL).

Tyne & Wear Anti-Fascist Association Unity Carnival - free anti-racist event Saturday 12th June, 1-7pm.

Nuns Moor, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne Special guests include Shamen.

Lesbian & Gay Pride celebration Saturday 19th June Parade begins at noon, Victoria Embankment, London. Festival, disco & open air concert in Brockwell Park, London, from 3pm.

Anti-Apartheid Movement march and

rally Sunday 20th

June

Peace, Freedom and the vote in South Africa

nowl Assemble Hyde Park, London, 12.30pm; Rally, Trafalgar Square, 3-5pm. Speakers include: Walter Sisulu, Trevor Huddleston