Trades Council Meeting against the cuts

The next meeting of the trades council will be an open meeting to begin a campaign against the cuts. The focus will be identifying how the cuts will effect people in Mid Sussex and Surrey and organising effective opposition.

Date Wednesday 15 September

Time 7.30 pm

Place St John's Church Hall in Crawley

Click here for a map

Meeting in East Grinstead

Crawley and Mid Sussex Socialists are meeting for the time being at the Sportsman in Canteloupe Road.

Next meeting Thursday 19 August at 7 pm

Click here for a map

Make the TUC get off its knees!

Margaret Thatcher always advised her friends only to employ a gardener who had patches on the knees of his trousers. Thatcherites like the working classes on their knees and the present coalition is no exception.

The NSSN is potentially very useful for public sector unions to co-ordinate actions and simply to exchange information. Various unions have produced data on the “gold plated” public sector pensions one reads about in the media. The median pension for PCS members is 8000 pounds a year – you couldn’t get gold-plated cufflinks on that.

There was a wide range of participants from pensioner activists who reported on the number of OAPs who are up in arms about the government’s plans…down to the Youth Fight for Jobs representatives who are seeking to secure a future for school-leavers.

The representatives of the BA cabin crews got a standing ovation – as you would expect really.

The NUT’s own Linda Taaffe moved the keynote resolution . She is using her so-called retirement to invigorate the NSSN.

The resolution aimed to get the TUC off its knees. The suggestion is that union branches and individual members should be urging them to organise a national protest against the cuts. This is in contrast to their current plan of inviting David Cameron round for tea. Matt Wrack of the FBU said this was about as useful as having a chat with the hangman about what kind of knot you want.

Contact the TUC by email, phone or via the web page:

http://www.tuc.org.uk/the_tuc/about_form.cfm

Tel 020 7636 4030
Fax 020 7636 0632
Email info@tuc.org.uk

Trades Union Congress
Congress House
Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3LS

A number of trade unions support NSSN at the highest level – the PCS, POA, RTM and FBU for example. The NSSN will work with the official Trade Union Congress when possible but without it when necessary. We have no plans to invite David Cameron to our next conference.

Labour leadership election

Derek McMillan writes:

I have to say the leadership election of the Labour Party shows the
depths to which the party has sunk. Noticing that they have a plethora
of white gentlemen in suits the right wing consciously used their votes
to include Diane Abbott on the slate on the assumption that a snowball
in Hell would have a better chance than she will.



Diane Abbott does not do herself any favours by cuddling up with Portillo - the most hated Tory after Margaret Thatcher - or by her championing of the "excellent academies programme" on her website.



We should not be "building bridges" to the Labour Party as some left union leaders have suggested. They have cut all the bridges just as they proposed to cut everything else - except bankers' bonuses of course.

I joined the Labour Party in the 1960s because I believed in peace, social justice and public ownership.

People who have joined Labour in the last decade have done so because of a belief in war, privatisation and inequality. If you seek hatred and vituperation of trade unionists you need look no further. Ask the Firemen. Ask the BA cabin crews.



We need a party for the common people:
a party of the working class.

Cabin Crew action undermined by exhibitionists

Now that it appears talks between BA and Unite have collapsed the Socialist Party has released the following statement concerning the actions of the SWP and the cabin crew dispute.

Occupation A Mistake

The defeat of Willie Walsh and the brutish BA management is the most important aspect to this dispute. It is therefore unfortunate that the reported decision of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) members at the end of the Right to Work Conference to invade talks between British Airways management and Unite has partially obscured this issue. This occupation was completely mistaken.

Whatever the nature of the deal being negotiated it is not for a group like the SWP to decide to break up talks. A decision to accept or reject a deal is solely the property of cabin crew and their democratically elected representatives.

In an industrial dispute the final decision on tactics to confront the employer must always rest with the strikers themselves. Socialists can assist by sharing experiences and ideas in past disputes and building support and solidarity for the strike among the general public. This has always been the method of the Socialist Party. We will offer our opinion on the course of a dispute to workers but we believe that any initiative taken in support of a dispute should be taken in consultation with the workers themselves.

A key task for socialists and trade union activists is to raise the confidence of workers to fight not to substitute themselves for workers in struggle. This will mistakenly create the impression that a special minority of activists will do the fighting leaving workers as bystanders. The Socialist Party stands for the maximum control of workers over their dispute.

It is the view of the Socialist Party that the actions of the SWP on Saturday was not in the best interests of striking cabin crew workers. Such tactics will prove to be counter-productive. It is the mass action of cabin crew through their union that is the key to defeating Walsh, not the actions of a self appointed minority. Despite this we are totally opposed to any victimisation of those who took part in this mistaken protest.

The priority for all workers in the trade union movement now is to support the cabin crew workers against Walsh and BA management.

A voice for those who don't want cuts, privatisation and war.

http://cnwp.org.uk/news.80.htm

New electoral coalition of unions and left groups

OVER RECENT months meetings have taken place of the participants in the 'No2EU-Yes to Democracy' European election coalition to see whether another alliance could be constructed to contest the forthcoming general election. Informal discussions have also been held with some left trade union leaders not involved in No2EU.

No2EU was a coalition of the RMT transport union, the Socialist Party, the Communist Party of Britain (CPB), the Alliance for Green Socialism, and others, explicitly assembled early this year to fight June's European election.

This was the first ever national election challenge by a trade union, the RMT, since that union's predecessor helped establish the Labour Party over one hundred years ago. It attracted as candidates important representatives of workers in struggle, including Lindsey oil refinery strike committee members and Visteon convenors fighting closure of their plants.

The coalition won 153,000 votes which, along with the vote for Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party, was 2.2% of the total poll (one third of the BNP vote). While not a breakthrough, No2EU was still an important first step towards independent working class political representation.

With the added support this time, in a personal capacity, of Brian Caton, the general secretary of the Prison Officers Association (POA), and leading national officers of the PCS civil servants' union - and with other union figures likely to come on board - the basis is there for a credible general election challenge.

The Socialist Party believes that Labour has been transformed from a 'capitalist workers' party' (a party with pro-capitalist leaders but with a democratic structure that allowed its working class base to fight for its interests) into the capitalist New Labour. This does not mean, however, that in the general election many workers will not vote Labour as the 'lesser evil' in the absence of a clear left alternative (in contrast to Germany, for example, with the existence of Die Linke to the left of the SPD).

This reflects the fear of what a Cameron government would mean - similar to someone instinctively raising an arm to ward off a blow. But unfortunately, a fourth-term New Labour government will offer no effective protection against the effects of the capitalist economic crisis. With New Labour now fundamentally no different to the Tories and the Liberal Democrats, the only certainty is that workers will face a torrent of blows from whichever party, or combination of parties, forms the next government.

To put it another way, there can be quantitative differences between the parties' policies, for example on exactly how deep public spending cuts will be, when they will be made, and where the axe will fall. But to effect a qualitative change in British politics, to provide a vehicle to resist the coming 'savage cuts' and the other effects of capitalist crisis, requires the development of independent working class political representation.

The debate between the capitalist parties over the role of public spending in a cyclical economic downturn is not completely phoney. It reflects conflicting positions within the capitalist ruling class on how best to attempt to preserve their system. But that is different to a clash between parties committed to defending capitalism and a party that starts from the interests of the working class or at least, in the case of 'old Labour', which could potentially be forced by its working class base to resist the capitalists' demands.

The existence of such a party today would transform the political situation, including forcing the capitalist parties to shape their actions in relation to it. New Labour's timid 'Keynesianism-lite' (at least in comparison to the Tories) does not make it a vehicle for workers' representation, revealed once again by its efforts to break the Communications Workers Union as a prelude to the casualisation and privatisation of Royal Mail.

A general election challenge building on the No2EU coalition, while it will be able to attract significant new support, will not fully provide the necessary alternative. But it would be another important step forward. It would also have an impact on post-election developments. Whether there is a Labour victory or defeat there will be a reckoning in the trade unions on how workers' interests can be defended, and possibly even a pale reflection of this inside the rump Labour Party in the event of a crushing defeat.

An election coalition potentially drawing in the most combative sections of the working class in defence of jobs, public services and workers' rights, would be well placed to shape this discussion.