An excellent Social Investigations Blog article which provides a damning list showing the dire state of our alleged ‘democracy’. The financial and vested interests of our MPs and Lords in private healthcare. Why are these people allowed to be in charge of our NHS, to vote on a bill that they clearly have something to gain from? Who cares that they have put it in the register of interests? This doesn’t excuse their interests, it merely highlights clearly why they should have no part in voting for the privatisation of the NHS. A definite conflict of interests! They should have no say in the matter whatsoever.

Suggestions as to what we might do to bring this to the wider public’s attention and to bar these people from participating in Parliamentary debates and voting, are warmly welcome.

Women need pensions too!

1.00PM SUNDAY 4TH MARCH
ALL SAINTS, OXFORD ROAD
MANCHESTER

Join Us At The International Womens’ Day March Against The Cuts

Women face the biggest impact of the cuts – job losses, pay and pension cuts, effects of social care and health cuts, closure and reduction of child care, and more. The poorest and most vulnerable are being hit hardest, while the richest 1% of the population as a whole have seen their share of wealth increase. The next round of cuts by Council’s across Greater Manchester will be ‘announced’ the day before the 8th March, International Womens Day. March with us in Manchester city centre to protest those cut backs and celebrate International Women’s Day.

THEME: No return to Victorian Poverty

Two hundred years on, this Government’s policy is for mass austerity, recreating poverty and inequality not seen since Victorian times. To highlight this point, some marchers will dress as ‘urchins’ and carry bowls asking for ‘some more.’

The march will pass the Palace Theatre where ‘Oliver’ is being performed, then on to the Royal Bank of Scotland Centre at Spinningfields on Deansgate for a photo shoot protest, highlighting the contrast between the Banks that were ‘bailed out’ and the people who have been ‘sold out’.

The final will be in Catherdral Garden, by Urbis. This is an area where Engels may have looked upon when they wrote about the Conditions of the Working Class in England .. and the political force that could end all exploitation and oppression.

Please bring banners, placards. Urchin dress is optional. Bring spoons on pots and pans to bang, as was used in the protests against austerity in Argentina.

Called by Manchester Coalition Against Cuts; supported by Unite The Union’s Save Our Sure Starts Child Care Conference and UNITE Fujitsu Manchester.

Wigan & Leigh Save Our NHS/Keep Our NHS Public Banner sponsored by Leigh UNITE, Wigan UNISON & NW PCS.

Wigan & Leigh Save Our NHS/Keep Our NHS Public campaigners have been pushing for a Rally like this for months. At last we appear to have got it. On the Platform will be:

Andy Burnham – Shadow Secretary of State for Health and MP for Leigh
Yvonne Fovargue – MP for Makerfield
Julie Hilling MP – MP for Bolton West (tbc)
Speakers from Unison & Unite (tbc)

Friday, 2nd March 2012 at 6.30pm

Ince Town Hall, Ince Green Lane, Wigan, WN3 4QX (Close to Ince Railway Station)

If we are lucky, Ian Heyes, Secretary of Leigh UNITE and a stalwart of the Wigan & Leigh Save Our NHS/Keep Our NHS Public campaign might be one of the union speakers, we’ll certainly be trying for it!

Wigan & Leigh Save Our NHS/Keep Our NHS Public Campaigners in Wigan last summer!

We need well attended rallies, hopefully like the one in Ince in two week’s time, all over the country, to help rack up the pressure on the Government to drop the Health & Social Care Bill, or alternatively see the thing run out of Parliamentary time.

Either way it would be a victory for those who have had the faith to fight for OUR NHS and a defeat for the Government!

Join the Wigan & Leigh Save Our NHS/Keep Our NHS Public Facebook Group @ http://www.facebook.com/groups/WiganandLeighSaveOurNHS/

Join Keep Our NHS Public nationally @ http://www.facebook.com/groups/40921988278/

Website: http://www.keepournhspublic.com/

Famous comedy sketch photo of 'upper class' John Cleese, looking down on 'middle class' Ronnie Barker, looking down on 'working class' Ronnie Corbett who "knows his place".

by Roy Ratcliffe

In recent discussions among the anti-Capitalist Left, a number of questions have been raised, and assumptions made, which seem to me to have missed the mark by a considerable margin.

An important assumption I heard recently, was that because the working class has not engaged in struggle ‘en-masse’ against the proposed cuts and austerity measures, the working classes must be politically backward.

The fact that they are also not turning up in great numbers to anti-cuts events organised by the Left was also voiced as evidence that the working class and oppressed are backward or have some other deficiency of understanding which impedes their fight-back. An allied assumption has been that working people need a political party of their own. One that truly represents them. Personally, I have not seen or heard of any such demands emanating from within the working and oppressed classes only from the Left, and can it ever be the case, that a party can truly represent them? We shall see. In the spirit of comradely discussion , I wish to argue against this type of  opinion which I suggest is more of an expression of ‘Left’ frustration, than it is of anything else.

Perhaps it is a frustration born of the fact that working people are not doing what the ‘Left’ think they should do.  And what is that?  Basically, the various left groups, think the workers and oppressed should follow one or other of the versions of the ‘Left’s’ suggestions currently on offer.  However, as yet, the vast majority of workers and non-working oppressed in the UK are still thinking about the situation, making economic adjustments and do not yet seem to have concluded they need to do more than they already are.  This situation should not be surprising.  It has historically been the case that working class and oppressed people in general only become really active – on mass, or otherwise -  when they think they need to as in Greece and elsewhere – not when the Left think they ought to. There are also of course, many good reasons for not quickly following the lead of those trying to provide a political way forward.

Scepticism Born of Years of Experience

For a start, there is a great deal of soundly based scepticism among the working class over politics and politicians – all politicians – left, right and centre. This scepticism is born of years of experience in which politicians have demonstrated that politics and political parties are a one-sided, self-serving, elite-controlling, means of obtaining power and influence ‘within the system’ for a relative few. Politics is full, bursting to the seams one might say, with politicos who make many promises, but keep very few. This scepticism, is not a symptom of backwardness. It is also extended to the Left, including the anti-Capitalist Left, who whilst often stridently advocating ‘political’ solutions at the same time make obvious their own mini, elite controlling, one-sided, sectarian patterns of behaviour.

For the last fifty years, or more, the anti-Capitalist Left, for example, have demonstrated to the working class and oppressed, very little other than divisions, disrespect for each other, demagogic outbursts and unrealistic calls such as for an immediate general strike. This well considered, intelligent scepticism about politics and politicians, of all shades, is nothing new. It is generations old. Indeed, Marx, after studying the problems workers were having in previous pre-revolutionary situations came to very clear conclusions, based not on his own experiences, but primarily that of workers in struggle. He noted;

“Where political parties exist, each party sees the root of every evil in the fact that instead of itself an opposing party stands at the helm of the state. Even radical and revolutionary politicians seek the root of the evil not in the essential nature of the state, but in a definite state form, which they wish to replace by a different state form.” (Marx/Engels. Collected Works. Volume 3.  page 197.)

This analysis has particular relevance to the development of politics in Russia, prior to and after the October 1917 revolution, but that’s a line of development for another article. However, the above is not the only criticism of the political mind-set with regard to understanding the nature of society and the needs of the working and oppressed classes. In more general terms, within the same article, Marx noted;

“The political mind is a political mind precisely because it thinks within the framework of politics. The keener and more lively it is, the more incapable is it of understanding social ills.” (ibid. page 199)

‘Omnipotence of the Will’

Let’s repeat the essence of that observation. ‘The keener and more lively the political mind, the more incapable it is of understanding social ills.” And further;

“The more one-sided and, therefore, the more perfected the political mind is, the more does it believe in the omnipotence of the will, the more is it blind to the natural and spiritual limits of the will, and the more incapable is it therefore of discovering the source of social ills.” (ibid. page 199)

These statements can come as quite a surprise to those who have become accustomed or ‘trained’ to view politics as the primary solution to human affairs. They did to me when I first came across them. Yet on reflection, this incapacity is exactly what I had encountered in my own experience mixing with the politicians in the Labour Party and the revolutionary politicos in various Left groups I joined.

Politicos on the Left, as in mainstream politics, also felt they must speak more often than anyone else, felt they must speak longer than anyone else, must speak more eloquently than anyone else, would patronisingly listen or rudely brush aside criticism – Why? Because these are the requirements of politics.

The Culture of Politics is one of Grooming and Competition!

The culture of politics is one of grooming and competition for leadership positions, control of membership, always knowing better and never admitting being wrong. I think it should be frankly stated that this process occurs within some parts of the anti-Capitalist Left as well as elsewhere. As a consequence of this ‘culture‘, the more perfected the political mind – the more one-sided and limited it is. What a body blow Marx delivers to politics – all politics – including revolutionary politics. This is an amazing 19^th century theoretical indictment of full-time (and even part-time) politicians of whatever persuasion. And yet it is still one fully in line with the experiences and opinions of 21^st century working and oppressed people across the globe.

The over-politicised reader may need to ponder the implications of this pivotal insight for a moment or two. It implies that dedicated anti-capitalist ‘politicians’ can be incapable of discovering the real source of social ills. It implies that professional revolutionaries can also become blind to the natural and spiritual limits of the will. And this by the way is not simply a personal failing.

It is not merely that there are one-sided and blind politicians, it is that politics itself is a one-sided and frequently deceitful human endeavour. It is not just that there are ineffective politicians, it is that politics by its very nature, beyond a certain narrow range of circumstances, is ineffective.

This enhances and supplements the frequent working-class observation that all politicians, even their own representatives, soon get out of touch with them. The term ‘out of touch’ being a catch-all term to cover the one-sided, self-serving and narrow concerns of politicians, who love it when you follow and hate it when you don‘t.

Tracing the Material Foundations of Political Culture

In tracing the material foundations of political culture, Marx argued that social distress, often experienced by workers, does not produce political understanding but on the contrary, it is social well being which produces political understanding. In other words political understanding and political culture arises and is developed in those who already are relatively comfortably situated, who therefore have the time and opportunity to develop their political mentality and reflexes and dedicate their lives to it. But this very development, where it occurs among workers, can create problems. Marx pointed to the example of the French workers of Lyons. They felt confident in their success since they were pursuing clear political objectives. Marx commented;

“Thus their political understanding concealed from them the roots of social distress, thus it falsified their insight into their real aim, thus their political understanding deceived their social instinct.” (ibid. page 204)

A similar problem may well have arose with regard to the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. Mass participation in 2011 uprisings destroyed the political figureheads of Mubarak and Ben Ali, and brought about their removal.  However, the military power, behind the political throne, so to speak, still remains. The political focus given to the revolts and later dominating them led the participants to place political demands upon the regime rather than pursue their own social and economic needs. In granting these political demands, the regime has now created a massive checkpoint barrier across the road to their real needs.

The workers and oppressed must now divide themselves, form political parties, fund them, elect representatives, woo voters, win elections – and still the real power will lie elsewhere.  In Egypt it is an economic and military power which will be used to corrupt and control their newly elected representatives and frustrate their aspirations.

The Egyptian, Tunisians and Libyans now nearly have what we have in UK, Europe and North America. Nearly, because they still have the military really in charge – we in Europe don’t – yet? Their situation may be better than the circumstances they previously faced, but it by no means solves their problems and the political system granted them will remain a substantial barrier to be overcome, (as it is for us) not an instrument of their liberation. And it is the type of case that was anticipated by Marx;

“Hence, too, a revolution with a political soul, in accordance with the limited and dichotomous nature of this soul, organises a ruling stratum in society at the expense of society itself.” (ibid.)

Political Forms Need to Correspond with Needs of the Masses

In uprisings and revolutions with a political focus, the results will invariably be political, and politics is the system of rule by a particular stratum over the rest of society. In a period of crisis and mass uprisings, the political form needs to correspond to the numbers, and direct needs of the masses, which are social and economic, not directly political. This is the reason that Peoples Assemblies, Soviets and other mass forms of participation were devised. The real political act of the masses engaged in a social revolution is to organise to create a dual power and use this to overthrow the existing political system of power and to dissolve the old socio-economic forms.

The political actions, energies and sacrifices of the masses organised in their own committees and assemblies, is ill-advised if it is directed to ‘re-forming’ the rule politics, rather than abolishing political forms of rule. Any uprisings against the present conditions will be an uprising against the current social and economic system, including its present political forms. To mistakenly channel such uprisings into the framework of existing political structures would be to betray its social purpose and delay or demolish this purpose. Hence the money and influence of the ‘powers that be’ will press in this ‘reform’ direction in the future as they have in the past.  ‘Lets give them reform or they might give us revolution’ many currently pro-capitalist, will start to think as the crisis deepens and if many are already asking for it – well they are half-way there!

As Marx emphasised again, with regard to any sustained political emphasis in a revolution;

“The ‘political soul‘ of revolution, on the other hand, consists in the tendency of classes having no political influence to abolish their isolation from statehood and ‘rule‘.” (ibid. page 205.)

New Form of Mass Political Act

Uprisings are political acts in themselves and a revolution is also a continuation of this new form of mass political act. As a consequence, in a revolution, mass participation must destroy politics and positions of power, or politics and positions of power, will destroy mass participation. The two cannot co-exist. Marx again.

“Revolution in general – the overthrow of the existing power and the dissolution of the old relationships – is a political act. But socialism cannot be realised without revolution. It needs this political act insofar as it needs destruction and dissolution. But where its organising activity begins, where its proper object, its soul comes to the fore – there socialism throws off the political cloak.” (ibid. page 206).

Revolution is itself a political act. It does not need any further political form than those participative ones it throws up during any pre-revolutionary uprising. And after the dissolution of the old forms of politics, social and economic forms, consistent revolutionaries cast off the political form and begin their organisational activities. Why would this be the case?  And yes it’s Marx yet again.

“The community from which the worker is isolated by his own labour is life itself, physical and mental life, human morality, human activity, human enjoyment, human nature….The disastrous isolation from this essential nature is incomparably more universal, more intolerable, more dreadful, and more contradictory, than isolation from the political community. Hence to the ‘abolition‘ of this isolation…” (ibid page 205)

How well that speaks to real experiences of the working and oppressed classes. Before such an outcome are the processes which lead up to it. And of course, Marx, as usual, had something interesting to say on how this process of emancipation might develop.

The Emancipation of the Working Class

“The emancipation of the working classes must be achieved by the working classes themselves. We cannot therefore co-operate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic persons from the upper and lower middle classes.” (Marx/Engels. Selected Correspondence. Progress. page 307.emphasis added. RR)

This was Marx’s position with regard to the level of education and abilities of workers in the 19^th century. Those who think that modern 21^st century workers are backward and need leading everywhere and must be freed by the benevolent efforts of those who think they know better in this or that Left group, will need to mount a powerful case against Marx and simultaneously against the abilities of contemporary working people.  We on the anti-Capitalist Left would be better to critically look to our own development in order to ensure we eventually don’t fall into the following category ourselves.

“In every revolution there intrude, at the side of its true agents, men of a different stamp; some of them survivors and devotees to past revolutions, without insight into the present movement, but preserving popular influence by their known honesty and courage, or by the sheer force of tradition; others mere brawlers, who by dint of repeating year after year the same set of stereotyped declamations against the government of the day, have sneaked into the reputation of revolutionists of the first water. After the 18th of March, some such men did also turn up, and in some cases contrived to play pre-eminent parts. As far as their power went they hampered the real action of the working class, exactly as men of that sort have hampered the full development of every previous revolution.” (Marx. ibid. page 84 emphasis added. RR)

So I would argue, that when you think about it carefully, it is not (as many sectarians themselves often imagine) that working people need a ‘higher level’ of consciousness or more revolutionary commitment in order to join or ‘follow’ the direction advocated by this or that anti-Capitalist sect.  The real situation is that working people  – with revolutionary thoughts or not – do not yet feel the need or desire to rise up.

Barren Soil of Sectarianism

It would seem they also realise that the barren soil of sectarianism, with its petty internal wrangles and its arrogant assumption of correctness, is of no use to them in furtherance of any of their struggles. So on the contrary, I would suggest it is many of us anti-capitalists within our sects or outside them who need to reach a higher level of unity and consciousness, in order to transcend an inherited narrow sectarian outlook and become of some real use to any unfolding anti-capitalist struggle.

Viewed from the standpoint of the anti-capitalist struggle, it is the Left who are often backward and need to learn from workers and in particular from a critical examination of the history of their own, often dysfunctional, tradition.

R. Ratcliffe (February 2012)  www.critical-mass.net

Power to the people is what we need. Only the people themselves can actually bring it about!

We really need go little farther than economically rundown town’s like Atherton & Tyldesley in the once proud Lancashire Coalfield and the North West’s industrial heartland, let alone to the wider British, Eurozone or global economy to see why we need a new political party of, for and by the vast majority of ordinary people.

We need such a Party, precisely in order to better help defend, and more effectively fight for our collective interests in the here and now, as well as in the coming period of intense attacks by the Coalition Government and the employers.

All these attacks are spurred on by the same thing: the death agony of a repeatedly state-bailed-out otherwise bankrupt global Capitalist system.  Without the mass of the people acting decisively in response to these attacks in Britain and elsewhere, the vast majority will face an uncertain future involving a combination of long-term mass unemployment, much lower living standards, increased poverty and more widespread social deprivation.

Worse than that, the entire global Capitalist system threatens to transform itself in conjunction with the ecological degradation, the increasing threat of irreversible climate change, and the hideous, fake moral, hypocritical, dog-eat-dog, crass materialist ‘make it while you can’ mentality that goes with it, into a part Mad Max, part Waterworld, part Orwellian 1984 style socio-economic and political barbarism.

Over a hundred years ago Socialists such as ourselves, along with some of the Trades Union leaders at that time, set about the construction of such a Party. It became what is now the Labour Party! Millions of workers and ordinary folk subsequently voted for it, and still do. Does this, however, mean that Labour Party is, or that it has ever been a party which truly stands up for the interests of the working class and the vast majority of ordinary people, let alone lives up to its claim of being a democratic Socialist party?

MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE

Even at its inception, the Labour Party represented more a marriage of convenience between key sections of the country’s top Trade Union leadership and full time apparatus; who were primarily looking for more improved Labour legislation than they were able to obtain via their previous alliance with the Liberals; with the leaders of the various Socialist parties, societies and co-operative organisations who formed its from then on, constituent parts (e.g. Independent Labour Party, Social-Democratic Federation, Fabian Society) than it did any worked out vision of the future. This was certainly more so the vase, than it being driven from the bottom up by grassroots Socialists, Trades Unionists and ordinary working class people wanting to stand up for themselves and their communities and to create a better society for everyone and in which the great mass of people would be in the driver’s seat.

As the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) grew in size it later too also became more unaccountable to, and independent of the grassroots members and Labour voters, and whenever deemed necessary, even of the Trades Unions and Trades Union leaders as well. It has since, generally acted in its own interests and increasingly that of the existing political establishment and social order. Indeed, as time went on, the PLP became ever more and more concerned with the needs of King & Empire, the wooing of so-called ‘middle class’ voters by toning down its more radical slogans, and the furtherance of Labour MPs own Parliamentary careers, than they ever did the actual needs of the great mass of the people the Labour Party purported to represent.

Former Labour Leader & Prime Minister Ramsey MacDonald - One of Labour's first high ranking traitors. He formed a National Government (Coalition) with the Tories and a majority of the Liberals in 1931 to force through dole cuts and similar policies to the current Coalition Government. When asked why he did so he said: "..because the King asked me to!"

One of the most notable pre-WWII examples of this are the Parliamentary Labour Party leadership’s role in the 1926 General Strike, which it worked hard to prevent from the outset and then worked hard to get called off once it was underway. Another notable example, is Ramsey Macdonald’s & Railworkers’ union leader Jimmy Thomas’s and a few other leading Labour figures at the time, splitting with Labour to form a National (Coalition) Government in 1931 with the Tories and the Liberals in order to push through policies similar to those of the current Coalition Government and which were at that time precipitated by the Wall Street Crash of 1929, policies which they also said were for “the common good”and in the “national interest” at the time.

The common good they referred to here, like now however, was not that of the great mass of the population, but the common good of the British ruling class, the Banks and big business, which, like now, dominated the British economy and British society.

But even this historical betrayal by many of Labour’s former key leaders and the unprecedented austerity measures they introduced with the backing of their Tory & Liberal Coalition partners, did not lead to any improvement of the dire economic situation Britain was faced with. It made the situation worse in fact. Moreover, with most Western Capitalist Government enacting similar austerity policies elsewhere, with similar results, it led to what’s known as the ‘Great Depression” of the 1930s which only ended with the outbreak of World War II and a new mass slaughter of the people. It also led to the Labour Party suffering its greatest ever set back at the next elections following this betrayal by its former key leaders, losing 236 or its former 288 seats won in 1929.

POST-WAR LABOUR

Since then, and the end of WWII, we’ve had of course the great so-called Attlee ‘reforming’ Labour Government of 1945-1951 which amongst other things brought us the NHS, nationalisation of the mines, steel and the railways, a massive Council house building programme throughout the land, and which saw the start of the formal end of the British Empire, etc. Many of the Attlee Government’s policies were indeed socially progressive. However, their introduction had less to do with any new found ideological commitment by Labour’s leaders, many of whom served in Churchill’s wartime Coalition (which banned strikes and greatly restricted democratic rights) to egalitarianism, more widespread social justice and a vision of a democratic Socialist society, than it did with the real threat of revolution throughout Europe encouraged and spurred on by the emergence of the USSR as military victors of the War in Europe, and one of the World’s two new ‘Superpowers’ . Especially, this would include the millions of Soviet troops and many thousands of tanks still stationed in Eastern Europe immediately after the War, whose ‘liberation’ and subsequent occupation of Poland, Czechoslavakia, Hungary, Romania & Bulgaria, along with the seizure of power by Tito’s Communist Partisans in Yugoslavia, and those in Albania, was already resulting in the overthrow of Capitalism in those countries.

Additionally, it had less to do with any ideological commitments on the part of the Labour Party to a better future for ordinary folk, though this obviously did play a part for some, such as for example, Labour’s Health Secretary Aneurin Bevan and those who supported him (often referred to as the “Bevanites”), than it had to do with the growing demand for change from below on the part of ordinary working class people.

This would especially include the overwhelming majority of the then comparatively huge, mostly conscripted, British armed forces who had fought the War, many still then overseas, who voted for Labour as the only Party broadly supporting the proposals of the famous Wartime “Beveridge Report” which called for a welfare state “from cradle to grave” and a land genuinely ‘fit for heroes’.

Combined with the dire situation of Britain’s War wrecked economy, including the near bankruptcy of many of its key industries such as the railways, and the continuing shortages and rationing the entire population of the country was faced with, anything other than a massive continuing state intervention into the economy, has had already partly taken place during the War, additionally backed by massive loans from the newly formed IMF and World Bank, rather than a continuance of the pre-War policy of cutbacks and austerity, became completely untenable, even if the Tories had won. So much so in fact, that even the next Tory Government under Churchill elected in 1951 did not undo any of the nationalisations and social reforms enacted by the Attlee Government.

Map showing the extent of Soviet domination & other so-called 'Communist' forces in Yugoslavia & Albania at the end of WWII. This map combined with the massive pressure for change by ordinary people in Britain at the end of WWII, including especially by those serving in the armed forces, helps to show the real driving force of the 1945-51 Attlee Government's 'social reforms' as opposed to any alleged ideological commitment by the Labour Party's leaders to a radical vision of a better, fairer, more egalitarian, democratic Socialist society in which ordinary people, rather than small ultr-rich minority call the shots.

LABOUR’S RESIDUE OF SUPPORT FROM ATTLEE PERIOD

This is what Labour’s current residue of working class support is firmly based on, along with the so-called ‘post-war economic consensus’ established by it, a consensus the Tory PM Edward Heath in 1970-74 called “On Nation Conservatism” which lasted up until the late 1970s and the Callaghan-Healy Labour Government which faced the notorious “Winter of Discontent” as a result of its abandonment of it, followed soon afterwards by Margaret Thatcher’s ‘Neo-Liberal’ juggernaut which sought to kick the whole thing into touch, and her subsequent defeat of the the Miners’ and Printworkers’ strikes in the mid 1980s necessary to achieve that.

The nationalisations undertaken by Labour during the Attlee period were not, of course, of the nature as we might have called for then, and would do now, involving ALL the key sectors of the economy, nor did they include workers’ control and management of production and overall centralised planning of the economy, but generally were only of the least profitable or bankrupt parts of it, which were needed to keep the rest of the economy going. They were managed by state appointed bureaucrats who were unaccountable to the work force, and operated outside of any centralised planning of the economy as a whole. i.e were in reality State Capitalist nationalisations similar to the recent bank-bailouts only without the latter’s £multi-million bonuses for their CEOs and any initial intention at least, to sell them back off to the private sector, once they could be restored to a suitable level of profitability.

The Attlee Labour Government also in keeping with the Tories and Liberals before them, continued to waste countless £million on expensive overseas military bases. It also joined with the US in intervening militarily in Korea (including by extending post WWII conscription in the form of ‘National Service’ by six months to two years). This of course, is not unlike what the Labour Party has done subsequently in supporting British and French action during the Suez Crisis, Britain’s own action under Thatcher in the Falklands War, as well in North Ireland, Aden and elsewhere. Also, alongside the US & other NATO powers military actions and wars in Yugoslavia, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq and recently in Libya. Also in supporting Israeli military actions in the Middle East and the Israeli states continuing oppression of the Palestinians.

For a party which says it stands for international solidarity and to be working towards global peace in the interests of all humanity, Labour’s record both in Parliament and outside of it, almost since its inception, both in and out of office, barring a relative few exceptions, is far from showing much evidence of that.

END OF THE ‘POST WAR CONSENSUS’

Later on in the late 70s, despite having announced at a previous Labour Party Conference that the Labour Government “would squeeze the rich until the pips squeak” to much applause from Conference delegates, Labour Chancellor Dennis Healey having gone to the IMF to solicit a bail-out loan for the UK economy, instead agreed to all their stringent conditions, which obliged the Labour Government to implement precisely the type of Government tax, spending and privatisation policies, currently being called for by the IMF, the World’s Banking system and the various ‘Rating Agencies’ in every country requiring their ‘assistance’ i.e. to almost exactly the same type of Neo-Liberal policies which are being implemented by the present Coalition Government, of essentially making ordinary folk pay for the repeated crises of the Capitalist system, here as everywhere else, and as a consequence showed where Healy and the Callaghan Labour Government’s true class loyalties ultimately lay when the chips were down.

Son of Thatcher, and “New Labour” Tory Blair wasn’t really that new at all, only in his new forms of opportunism and political betrayal. Despite taking power in comparatively less austere times, indeed holding office during a period which saw increased Government spending and the introduction of a Minimum Wage rather than Government cut backs, Tony Blair nevertheless presided over a period of greater social disparity and division than any of his predecessors, in stark contrast with the narrowing of social inequality he pledged to help eradicate. In terms of the ‘Neo-Liberal’ privatisation programme of state owned utilities, companies, land and buildings initiated by Healy and Callaghan in the late 1970s, and later more rigorously pursued by Thatcher in the 1980s, the Labour Government he led also very much continued where the previous Tory administration left off, combining the latter’s privatisation programme with/via a big increase in PFI (Private Finance Initiative) schemes and tax breaks for the rich.

Remember this? PM Tony Blair embracing the former Libyan tyrant Gaddafi in 'happier times'? The photo above is just after the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi on alleged compassionate grounds, and BP's signing of a valuable oil exploration contract worth potentially £13 Billion with the then Libyan authorities. So much for freedom and democracy anywhere in the face of that kind of dosh!

When it came to waging further wars this time in Afghanistan & Iraq, his and the Labour Cabinet’s slavish support for US foreign policy and its alleged global war on terror, and in relation to Iraq in particular, primarily in support of US Oil, Military and other commercial interests, but also including British ones as well, masquerading under the pretence of disarming Saddam Hussein of his WMD and bringing about the ‘enduring freedom’ of the Iraqi people, reached an all time low; demonstrating his and their ultimate subservience to interests of global Capital and the depth of the lies Labour was prepared to peddle in order to justify it.

In the case of Labour’s support for UK domestic Oil, Military and other commercial interests, this is evidenced no more disgracefully than in Tony Blair’s burying of the BAe-Saudi Arabia EuroFighter bribery scandal prior to leaving office, and his let’s kiss, hug and make-up rapprochement, including the release of the Lockerbie bomber al-Megrahi, in 2007 with the now fallen Libyan tyrant Gaddafi, to help secure a favourable, potential £13 billion oil contract for BP with his regime. With that kind of dosh involved who gives a shit about freedom and democracy?

TONY BLAIR THE SOCIALIST

Since standing down as Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who in his maiden speech to Parliament in 1983 said “I am a Socialist […because it] stands for equality” has amassed a considerable personal fortune estimated to be worth between £25 and £60 million. As a Senior Advisor at US Investment Bank JP Morgan, he also earns an annual salary estimated to range between £500,000 and £2.5m, advises the Swiss insurance firm Zurich Financial Services on climate change issues for a reputed £1m a year and also holds a consulting role with luxury goods firm LVMH for a further substantial annual figure. If Blair was ever at any point a Socialist, then I reckon I’m a Banana!”

It was also Blair’s successor Gordon Brown’s liberalisation and lighter regulation of the Capitalist Banking system, which started under Blair’s own Premiership, few in Parliament opposed, and which Brown heralded as the beginning of a “New Golden Age of Banking”, along with the increased prominence placed on the finance sector within the UK economy by Labour at that time, which led us directly to the 2008 Banking crisis and subsequent recession.

2008 BANKING CRISIS & SUBSEQUENT RECESSION

The entire Banking crisis from a UK perspective had its origins in both this lighter regulation and the attendant huge increase in the speculation by some UK banks in a whole array of to say the least ‘dodgy’, and in some cases outright fraudulent ‘investments’, including US sub-prime mortgage backed ‘financial derivatives’ and other new types of ‘bundled’ investments created primarily by US & UK Banks, which all the World’s so-called ‘Rating Agencies’ as well all the other Banks and investors in them, all equally failed to recognise earlier than they did, the near worthlessness of, following the collapse of the US sub-prime mortgage market. The huge scale of the potential losses arising from of it are what directly led the global financial crisis of 2008 which is still ongoing, as well as to the subsequent multi-£billion state bailouts of those banks affected, by a number of Governments, including those of the US, the UK and Ireland.

It is also Labour under Gordon Brown, with the acquiescence of all other parties, who rather than simply nationalising at the very least all the residual assets of all the various banks who where effectively bankrupted during the 2008 crisis, without paying a single penny of compensation to the shareholders, at the same time as taking on the liability of all the small deposit and current account holders, but none of the other creditors – something which might have cost us nothing, instead decided to take on itself on behalf of us all, the £850 billion ‘Sovereign debt’ that most economic commentators say was the overall cost of the UK bank bailouts, and most of the additional £150 billion debt built up since, which has arisen mostly as a consequence of the recessionary economic knock on effects of the 2008 Banking crisis, and the last and the current Governments attempts to address that.

LABOUR’S APPROACH TO DEBT & WORSENING ECONOMIC CRISIS LITTLE DIFFERENT FROM COALITION’S

Former Labour Chancellor Alastair Darling’s plan to half the Government’s deficit by cuts in public spending over 5 years if Labour had been re-elected in 2010, rather than instead making the Bankers and the ultra-rich pay for the mess they and their system has got us into, via a more progressive taxation system, as well as Ed Ball’s current “slower, less deep cuts approach” although arguably less harsh economically in the shorter term for the majority of people than the more draconian proposed cuts and privatisation policies of the current Government, is in reality, in the longer terms little different an approach to both the burgeoning state debt and stagnant economic condition as the current Coalition Government. This is because their objective is essentially the same: the maintenance of the overall status quo and existing social order at the expense of the vast majority of the people, contrary any Labour claims to the opposite, via cuts and privatisations detrimental to the latter rather than making the Bankers, huge corporation and ultra-rich foot the bill instead.

The MP’s expenses scandal involving the likes of Hazel Blears and other Labour MPs, their consultancy work for large companies, receipt of peerages and other ‘honours’, more and more shows what most Labour MPs are actually in politics for, which is little other than their own self-advancement, the possibility of obtaining some High Office and a degree of political clout, and of course, the kudos and the dosh that goes with it! It has little if anything ultimately to do with improving, and currently even maintaining, the lot of the vast majority.

WHY DO MANY ORDINARY FOLK CONTINUE TO VOTE LABOUR?

Of those people who continue to vote Labour, a great many do so purely because their parents and grandparents did so when Labour did appear to stand up for them more than any other party. Clearly, this group of Labour voters would not yet themselves appear to recognise this is no longer if ever historically the case, or alternatively appear to accept them as still being more pro-ordinary folk than any of the other parties are. Alternatively, they agree with a great deal of what Labour says believing it the more socially just and less obviously harsh than that of the political Right, and a less radical and potentially catastrophic option to that of the ‘Luny Left’. Certainly, at General election time, a great many vote Labour simply due to them being the least worst option and because there is no credible pro-majority of the people alternative to it

On a local level, Labour’s poor defence and championing of the interests of ordinary folk is all the more revealing. It not only almost willingly succumbs to instructions from on high in terms of national policy leading to the implementation of ‘less harsh cuts than the Tories or any other Party’ on a local level, but combines this with a strategy of simply ‘grin and bear it’ until the next General election when Labour might hopefully get back in. Even if it does, this would simply be in order to carry on with the cuts necessary to balance the Government’s books and to pay off the near £1.5 trillion debt it will inherit, only less harshly than any of the other traditional parties might over a longer period.

In other words a strategy, and a practice which does not challenge how we got into the economic and financial mess we’re in in the first place, does not address the failure of the Capitalist market to create the necessary jobs and decent living standards we all need, which does not seek to make the Bankers and the ultra-rich pay through a much more progress system of taxation for the mess their system has got us into, which fails to address environmental sustainability and the threat of climate change, and which continues to support military interventions overseas in the interests of US foreign policy and predominantly US based multi-national oil, military and other commercial interests.

If people think things are bad now in places like Atherton & Tyldesley, Platt Bridge, Bryn, Worsley Mesnes, Golborne and other parts of our Borough, then they should ponder on how much worse its going to get under such a further regime of austerity and cut backs after the one currently being pursued by the Tory-Lib-Dem Coalition, even were Labour  to get re-elected.

In Atherton, we can complain all we want about how Labour, even in better times, closed our youth club and sold off the land, run down our youth service, closed our baths and sold off the land, closed down our high school without giving us a better replacement, sold off the Formby Hall, is shutting Libraries, cutting back staff in every department – as we’ve really seen nothing yet!

Without seeking to build an alternative ordinary folk will get nowhere other than closer to the edge of an abyss.

The answer lies not in supporting cynically opportunist ‘popular’ so-called ‘Independent’ candidates who are nothing of the sort, who make up their policies as they go along and try to suit everyone, and who in places like Atherton, are really Tories masquerading in disguise and don’t have the guts to stand openly as such.

Nor does the answer lie in the one by one recruitment to an ultra-Left ‘neo-Stalinist’ fringe group which has the same characteristics as a Life of Brian political sect combined with a complete detachment from political reality! The answer lies in the conscious building of a new broad, pluralist, democratic party of, by and for the mass of the people. Only the People themselves can build such a Party.

We see our own role in this within the Wigan area as not too dissimilar to that of yeast in the process of making of bread. This is why we do not ourselves claim to be such a party, or indeed to be a proper political party at all, but rather a group of people prepared to work with others in the Wigan area and wider afield towards the building of such a Party.

As Green Socialists we obviously have our own slant on things and believe such a party would need to be consistently both in order for it to objectively defend the interests of the vast majority in the face of the ever worsening decay and ultimate collapse of the Capitalist system and the growing threat of a global environmental catastrophe perpetuated by it. However, we do not believe that agreement with our particular view should be a pre-condition of membership of a new broader Party, or for agreeing to work with others towards such a Party, or even for working together on more lose a basis outside of such a new broader party framework.

If you agree with our view of course, then you might consider joining us and adding your weight to the cause. Failing that you might simply want to work alongside us towards in the fights ahead. Either way we aren’t going away!

Part II Will look more at how we might practical go about building such a new Party, locally and nationally!

The fight against the Government’s and bosses attempts to make the mass of ordinary people foot the bill for the crisis of the Capitalist system requires the greatest possible unity on our part. We cannot hope to succeed without such unity. However, there are clearly differing views as to what is meant by ‘unity’ and how we might bring it about.

The recent  ’Unite the Resistance’ (UTR) initiative promoted by the Socialist Workers’ Party is a good case in point.  Is it a principled initiative whose aim is to promote a genuine grassroots unity of the resistance movement, or is it as some suggest, merely yet another top-down bureaucratic sectarian party building project on the part of the SWP which will foster nothing but disunity, but might gain them a few recruits?

WHAT ARE THE AIMS OF ‘UNITE THE RESISTANCE’ IN GM?

Most of the present publicity produced by UTR talks of “…bringing trade union activists together to discuss how we can ensure that the new pensions offer is rejected – and how we can organise further action to defend our pensions in the coming year.” It also talks of working “…collaboratively with other forces (e.g. the National Shop Stewards Network, the Coaliton of Resistance and Right to Work), relevant broad left and grassroot activist organisations within the unions and, wherever practicable, Trades Councils and local anti-cuts campaigns. Put abstractly, all this sounds great stuff, but how does this match with the reality of the ‘rolling out’ of UTR at a local level?

This is especially relevant for us in Greater Manchester, where there is to be a ‘Unite the Resistance launch meeting’ with Mark Serwotka on the 29th February. This is because despite, the appearance of a willingness to ‘open’ the project out to the grassroots (the implication of that, and likely truth of it being, it is currently closed to the grassroots of the movement) its launch on that date, and efforts around it, so far reveals little evidence of the SWP really wanting to work collaboratively with other forces on the Left on the ground outside their own supportive and influenced orbit, and which a great many on the Left across GM, likely a clear majority in fact, outside of the SWP, are already highly sceptical of the outcome and success of, based on their current and previous experiences of the party in Manchester and their own areas, in some cases over very many years.

CRITICISMS SO FAR

A first, but less important criticism of the UTR GM project is the apparent over arching and almost exclusive emphasis and focus on the pensions issue, and the lack of tie-in to the ongoing fights also being waged against local Government & NHS spending cuts, the Health & Social Care Bill and the Welfare Reform Bill (to name but a few) which gives the whole project the appearance of a campaign solely, or predominantly focused on pensions, involving primarily trades union activists in the public sector (although there is some mention of the private sector) rather than an attempt to build a genuine rank and file alliance of all those wanting to build the fightback on every front.

A second and more important criticism is that few prominent activists it would appear, outside of the SWP and its supporters that is, and from the other nine local authority areas in GM outside of the City of Manchester, have so far been directly approached, at any stage, to become involved in, and collaborate with the Unite the Resistance project nationally, and until a few of us attended the first ‘Organising Committee’ last week, in its proposed launch in Greater Manchester either.

This is something which few on the GM Left will likely expect to change much if it is left in the SWP’s hands. Their only efforts in the direction of collaborating with Trades Council, individual union, anti-cuts and anti-privatisation activists outside of its own ranks across GM so far being the circulation of a general e-mail to invite everyone to an ‘organising committee’ meeting to oversee and mobilise support for the launch of UTR Greater Manchester, which will be taking place on the 29th, come what may, due to Mark Serwotka agreeing to speak at it.

His speaking is probably one of the few things that adds any element of credibility to the entire project. It is also why the launch meeting of UTR in Greater Manchester, despite having all the appearance of becoming yet another SWP sectarian front initiative, which left to its own devices will invariably alienate everyone else on the Left, cut across other more genuine and honest unitarian initiatives of a similar nature, and which would ultimately fail as a result of that, might actually provide the opportunity for the majority of the more serious Left forces across GM, who are genuinely wanting to overcome the current disunity on the Left and wider resistance movement, to bring their combined weight to bear to create something altogether different. This at the same time as inflicting a major blow to the narrow, top down, bureaucratic, “Do what we say” conception of unity and sectarian method of operating that has hitherto prevailed on the Left across GM as well as nationally. It can be done!

JOIN THE FIGHT TO MAKE UNITE THE RESISTANCE GM SOMETHING USEFUL AND WORTHWHILE!

The Greater Manchester Anticapitalists network which has recently come together to oppose sectarianism, promote anti-Capitalist unity and work towards building a united and effective struggle against the ruling class’s austerity programme, are appealing to all the serious Left across GM who recognise the urgent need for the greatest possible unity in action in the unfolding struggles ahead of us, who recognise the need for greater collaboration and working together in a comradely manner on the part of Left in general in order to help achieve that, to join with us in working to make any UTR GM initiative, a genuine, bottom-up, democratic, pluralist alliance of grassroots activists, that might actually be something which is useful to us and worthwhile being a part of.

If we write the thing off in advance as destined to have the opposite negative outcome then we will all gain little from it. If on the other hand we collectively build the event and argue strongly at it for this general idea or something similar, and in the run up to it, of what something genuinely worthy of the name ‘Unite the Resistance’ might look like, i.e.

(i) an alliance of those wanting to work together to build the mass movement in a comradely and non-sectarian way across Greater Manchester area.

(ii) an alliance which is pluralist and democratic, which everyone might believe they have a genuine shared ownership of, and a say in

(iii) which might see itself everywhere as a pro-unifying current of non-sectarian facilitators of the fightback by workers and the mass of ordinary people in general’ rather than its divinely pre-ordained leaders

(iv) which would seek to win support for its views via open democratic discussion and debate rather than bureaucratically imposing its views

(v) which would seek at all times to get the ‘official’ structures to take the lead, rather than seeking generally to by-pass them and thus counterposing itself to the ‘official movement’ in a sectarian fashion, or worse substituting itself for the mass movement, and

(vi) which might rightly take the lead, if the official structures don’t act, falter or even betray the movement provided there is sufficient support for it – then by the time of the proposed GM UTR launch meeting with Mark Serwotka  -  it might well be possible for us to win this position resoundingly, and those arguing to the contrary shown clearly to be in the minority.

The forces already exist out there to achieve this outcome, in the various GM based anti-cuts groups, unions and trades councils, in and around the Convention of the Left, Occupy Manchester, the Manchester Ecosocialists, Socialist Party, Green Left, Sol Fed, UK Uncut, the Autonomous Students, various Union Lefts, etc, and there are even a few within the LP who might support it. It’s about time they collectively asserted themselves and came together to create a real fighting unity which might have a measurable effect on events.

Though small in number, our network currently embraces activists from Wigan Borough Green Socialists, Occupy Manchester, Socialist Resistance, Workers’ Power, Permanent Revolution, Manchester Against Fees and Cuts, SolFed, Manchester Ecosocialists and Communist Students as well as non-aligned individuals from across Greater Manchester. We do not claim to have all the answers. However, by our all working together we do believe we might help to develop more thought-through strategies and actions which might help take the entire resistance movement forwards rather than backwards.

Our next meet up as a network is on Saturday 4th February at 11.00 am at The Friends’ Meeting House, Mount Street, Manchester, before the Manchester Coalition Against Cuts annual meeting, which those comrades who live in Manchester will also be attending.

Stop privatisation; improve existing & build a new generation of first class council housing

Anger at 8 to 10% council rent rises is growing.

Cambridge Council is demanding Government action as in 2009, to cut the formula increase for 2012/3. See Cambridge Council Letter.

Camden tenants have rejected a £10 average weekly rise in rent, heating and other charges. See Report Here.

Harlow tenants opposed the rise at a consultation meeting last week.

The £30 billion debt settlement and inflation-busting rent formula the Government are imposing on Councils, are driving the huge rent rises, which will be coming our way soon.

Tenants, trade unions and councillors rejecting the rent rises, are calling for:

* re-opening of negotiations on the debt settlement
* changes to the rent rise formula
* joint deputations to demand promised £7 billion capital funding backlog.

If Government can continue to write off Housing HRA debt for stock transfer, we should insist on a similar write-off of debt which has been paid many times over in rent and receipts siphoned off by Government.

Campaigns are proving we can succeed in resisting the mounting attacks on council housing. Swindon council tenants rejected transfer by 6,073 No votes (72.3%) to 2,329 Yes votes (27.7%). See Report.

The government is promoting a new wave of stock transfer of council homes, subsidised with more public money. Where tenants choose to stay with the council they are demanding the same debt write off.

Wandsworth Council is retreating on a threat to evict a tenant, in face of a growing and determined campaign against political post-riot evictions. See Report.

Public Meetings
Meetings around the country will challenge rent rises and government attacks on tenancies, rents and benefits:

Organise a local meeting – contact DCH for speakers and leaflets.

Other Action:
Welfare Reform Bill – Vigil & Lobby: 1pm-3pm, opposite House of Lords, Tues 17 Jan  Sign Petition Here

For background information on the demand for investment in council housing and who supports the campaign see www.defendcouncilhousing.org.uk

Photo of Gayle who sadly died last weekend.

Wigan Borough Green Socialists members are saddened to hear, and inform readers of this Blog, of the death of Green Left member and Ecosocialist fighter Gayle O’Donovan at the weekend.

Gayle was the Green Party candidate in Hulme at the last General Election and an activist in the Manchester Green Party.

She moved to Norwich to work for the Green Party there, soon after the election. 

It is tragic that someone so young has died!

Reblogged from Wigan Borough Green Socialists:

At our launch meeting we agreed to schedule a discussion on a revised ‘Wigan Borough People’s Charter’ which it is hoped might form the basis of both a common ‘Left’ local election Manifesto in the May 2012 elections and provide the framework for ongoing joint campaigning work across the Borough, alongside the national ‘People’s Charter’, by all those who claim to be ‘of the Left’. Here is the last draft of it. Please feel free to pass comment on it and to suggest revisions of it. Also to comment on other …

Don’t forget to give us your views on our proposed platform for a unified Left of Labour slate at the May 2012 local elections. If you fancy standing as a candidate, then you should get in touch a.s.a.p.

The latest unemployment figures for the quarter ending Nov 2011 show an increase of 118,000 to 2.68 million - the highest number since 1994. The figures also show youth unemployment at record levels. The prognosis is that there is worse to come as the Eurozone crisis intensifies and the Government and private sector employers maintain their common offensive on the jobs, pay, pensions and the 'social wage' of ordinary people. Along with public service and welfare benefit cuts and the privatisation of the NHS, all these things are an indication of the worsening economic crisis that the global Capitalist system and ordinary people everywhere are all facing, that Capitalism isn't working, and the extent to which the mass of the people will be made to pay for it merely in order to maintain the power and wealth of a tiny minority.

An appeal to the ordinary folk of Wigan Borough who are concerned about the worsening economic situation we are facing, the effects of Government policies, and how little Labour is doing for us! 

We need a new

party of Labour,

which stands up

and fights for the

mass of ordinary

people – not new

‘New Labour’!

The Wigan area has been staunchly Labour for almost a hundred years. So strongly is it a Labour area in fact that some people still say “…you could stand a pig for Labour and it would still get in!” However the times they are a changing, and its electoral support has dropped considerably over the last thirty.

Labour has enjoyed this support because it was believed by a great many people in the past, due to the support it receives from the unions and its links with them, to politically stand up for labour in the workplace, as well for the mass of ordinary folk in general. Also, because the Liberals (forerunner of the Lib-Dems) were generally seen to represent more middle class people, and the Tories were seen to represent the bosses and owners of the factories, mines and mills most people worked for, and to be the party of the existing economic and political establishment.

Backed by a number of progressive reforms by the first post WWII Attlee Labour Government such as the introduction of the NHS, a massive Council house building programme, the nationalisation of the mines, steel and the railways, the continued support it received from a majority of the unions, and a long period of post War prosperity in relative terms, until the early 70s, this view of Labour was passed down from generation to generation almost in the same way as a religious belief.

In some cases it was done even in the belief that Labour might at some not too distant future date abolish Capitalism altogether and establish a Socialist society which might “…secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.” (Old Clause IV, part 4 of the Labour Party Constitution).

Remember this? PM Tony Blair embracing the former Libyan tyrant Gaddafi in 'happier times'? The photo above is just after the release of the Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, and BP's signing of a valuable oil exploration contract worth potentially £13 Billion with the then Libyan authorities. Since standing down as Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who in his maiden speech to Parliament in 1983 said "I am a Socialist …because it stands for equality" has amassed a personal fortune estimated to be worth between £25 and £60 million. As a senior advisor at Investment Bank JP Morgan he also earns an annual salary estimated between £500k and £2.5m, advises the Swiss insurance firm Zurich Financial Services on climate change issues for a reputed £1m a year and also holds a consulting role with luxury goods firm LVMH for a further substantial annual figure.

During the Thatcher years however things began to change significantly. By the time of Tony Blair’s New Labour victory in 1997, despite retaining most of its union support, Labour had became more and more indistinguishable from the Tories as a result of its common support, alongside the Tories and the Lib-Dems, for the new mantra and approach to the economy and politics that is now widely referred to as ‘Neoliberalism’.

Their only difference with the Tories, and indeed the Lib-Dems was in the alleged greater fairness in relation to the majority of people of their particular take on this new mantra. Perhaps also, in their even more slavish support for the UK Banking Sector and Anglo-US oil and other corporate interests than either of the current Coalition parties.

The trouble with Neoliberalism, however, is that it emphasises non-intervention from government in the economy and rejects regulation in markets as inefficient. It also emphasises the efficiency of private enterprise, liberalised trade and the necessity of relatively open markets to promote globalisation. It further seeks to maximize the role of the private sector in determining the political and economic priorities of the World. In other words it is first and foremost about ‘liberating’ and ‘oiling the wheels’ of Capitalism, and promoting its continued maintenance and growth on a global level – an aim which is the very opposite of Labour’s former commitment to common ownership and the “best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service” even if the Labour leaders of the past have never actually been serious about working towards a society based on such principles.

MILIBAND & BALLS SPELL OUT NEW ‘NEW LABOUR’ APPROACH CLEARLY

If Labour’s conversion to Neoliberalism to become New Labour under Blair, its abandonment of the vision embodied in its old Clause IV and our own closer to home experiences of its betrayal of ordinary folk in town’s like Leigh, Atherton and Tyldesley, Ince, Ashton and Hindley in our locality, has not already become apparent to most people; if the handed down view of Labour as the party which stands up for ordinary people is not yet recognised by the majority of traditional Labour voters to be really one of myth, then surely last weekend’s speeches by both Ed Miliband and Ed Balls must clearly spell out to all what Labour now stands for.

Labour now stands squarely behind a similar programme of austerity for the great many  as the current Coalition Government does, and for the entire foreseeable future. It stands for a “fairer and more responsible Capitalism” than even arch-Thatcherite Cameron has said he stands for only yesterday. This will be the new ‘New Labour’ approach in preference to the slightest thought of upsetting the applecart of British and global Capitalism; especially the World’s financial markets, Credit Rating Agencies and Britain’s EU, WTO and other international Treaty obligations in relation to “free trade”, “free markets” and the fostering of “private ownership of the means of production distribution and exchange” over public ownership and state intervention into the economy.

Not unlike the Tories who are historically firmly wedded to Capitalism and have no intention of upsetting their own supporters, Miliband and Balls run scared of the thought of making the Bankers, the City, big business and the small minority of ultra-rich multi-millionaires and  billions who most benefit from the existing economic set up, foot the bill for getting us out of the worsening economic and financial mess we’re in as country, and which they are ultimately collectively responsible for, rather than the rest of us, fearing they might all leave and go work and live elsewhere; that it might alienate ‘middle class’ voters who they are wanting to woo having effectively abandoned their former core working class supporters; that it might reduce the likelihood of private sector investment in the UK which they, like the Coalition parties, hold as the key driving force behind all our future prosperity and which accordingly, all of society must serve the interests of.

OUR CUTS ARE ‘FAIRER’ & ‘BETTER’ THAN THEIR CUTS

Labour will now officially be supporting the Government imposed pay freeze on public sector pay for the next financial year, and suggesting its own spending cuts in the preference to those of the Coalition Government which it continues to deem as only ‘too deep’ and ‘too fast’ rather unnecessary at all. It is also now giving no commitment to reinstate a single cut imposed by the Coalition and will be presenting its own programme at the next General election of ‘fairer’, ‘less deep’ and ‘less fast’ cuts which will still hit the mass of ordinary people most, a programme which as under the last Labour Government’s of Blair and Brown, will no doubt see the rich get even richer and the poor get even poorer in the process. Such alleged frank realism and honesty, and showing Labour as the ‘fairer party’ even in bad times, however, is hardly the kind of stuff likely to inspire a mass resurgence of support by ordinary people who will have to suffer the consequences of it, and a landslide Labour victory in 2015.

Even if it did, like the Coalition parties, Labour will still be relying on private sector growth to lead the economy out of recession. As however, even Tory Chancellor George Osborne is forced to admit, the prospects of that right now don’t look good even from his position, given the relative downturn in the US economy and the prevailing policies of mass austerity and worsening crisis in the Eurozone. An underlying belief however in the private sector and the Capitalist system as a whole delivering the goods at some stage is something Osborne definitely has, and which unites him ideologically with Miliband, Balls & Clegg.

The failure of such private sector growth however, in conjunction with the scale of the planned public spending cuts, can only lead to a further increase in unemployment and the Government’s outlay on unemployment related benefits combined with a simultaneous reduction in tax and other Government revenues.  This might lead to a further potential increase in Government borrowing such as was the case last year, when instead we saw a £65 billion increase in the Government’s projected borrowing despite the Coalition implementing cuts of around £35 billion which they expected to reduce the figure by the same amount, i.e. an error in the Government’s originally projected Budget figure for public sector borrowing for the year so huge as to leave George Osborne’s pledge to balance the Government’s books by 2015-2016 and the next General election, completely in tatters.

Certainly, such as there may be any private sector growth, little of it is likely to be in the Wigan area. It certainly won’t plug the loss of the public and private sector jobs which have already been lost, and which are going to be lost in our area as a result of Government cutbacks, privatisation and the worsening economic recession generally over the coming years, let alone for any other reason.

LABOUR IN WIGAN IS DOING NOTHING BUT IMPLEMENT THE CUTBACKS

Wigan Council's Labour Leader Lord Peter Smith - the closest thing we have in the Borough to a latter day Joseph Stalin and an unelected equivalent of Tory London Mayor Boris Johnson. You don't cross him and get anywhere in the Labour Party and certainly not into his well rewarded by enhanced allowances, Wigan Council Cabinet.

On a Wigan Borough level the Labour Party, supported by the local Tories, are merely implementing the cuts in the Council’s budget imposed on them by the Government’s reduction in funding to the Council from central coffers. They have done little even to verbally protest about the imposition of these funding cutbacks by a Government which in reality does not have a legitimate mandate, no one voted for, and which has increased Government funding to many Tory and Lib-Dem Councils despite claiming: “We’re all in it together”. Nor have they even for a second contemplated showing any kind of leadership or making any kind of stand against them alongside other Labour controlled Councils and the unions, which might show at least a willingness on their part to fight what the Government is doing, and to seek to rally the mass of the public behind them in opposition to their detrimental effects on the vast majority.

Instead they have done what they would have done had even Labour got in at the last General election and simply got on with implementing them to the penny and merely pointed to the Government as the source. They have done this, as Miliband and Balls have argued nationally, on the basis that Labour cuts are intrinsically ‘fairer’ and ‘better’ than any which might be proposed by an of the other parties represented on the Council or the Independent Councillor group’s alternative proposed cutbacks, and which the case of Wigan even have the endorsement of the Tory group of Councillors to go with it. If the latter is so however, doesn’t that mean that Labour and Tory share a common view of what constitutes ‘fairer’ and ‘better’ cuts as far as Wigan Borough are concerned?

Given the main opposition to Labour on the Council, the so-called ‘Independent’ group of 8 Councillors confines itself merely to arguing the contrary (i.e our cuts would be better than Labour’s and the Tories’ cuts) and don’t challenge the necessity of implementing any of them, i.e. don’t challenge Neoliberal thinking either, and the comparative weakness and disorganisation of the existing political Left both inside and outside the Council Chamber across the Borough – which in broad brush terms would include former members of the Labour Party’s Bennite left-wing as well as disgruntled traditional Labour voters who think Labour has sold them out, but as yet see no coherent political alternative to them; trades union activists in UNITE, PCS, UNISON and other local union branches; Morning Star Readers and supporters, Christian Socialists, members of the recently formed Wigan & Leigh Green Party, local members and supporters of the Socialist Workers’ Party, Socialist Party and the former Socialist Labour League, the latter of which once had a strong base in the area; it is hardly surprising that the vast majority of people across our Borough are not yet aware that there might even be a qualitatively different alternative to a policy of austerity, privatisation and public sector spending cuts and what the Coalition and Labour are doing and saying, which involves little to zero hardship for the overwhelming majority of people.

If they do, then likely think of it as a ‘fringe’ viewpoint which has little support currently and will never have, and which therefore isn’t going to happen, and as a consequence of that, reconcile themselves to the ‘least worse option’ and looking after their own and their family’s back, in the hope they might make their way through it all and remain relatively unscathed if not emerge in a better position than they might be in currently at the end of it! Will there however, ever be an end to it?

INDEPENDENT COUNCILLOR GROUP NOT A SERIOUS OR COHERENT POLITICAL ALTERNATIVE TO LABOUR

While the success of the so-called Independent Councillors in some areas of the Borough, and before that the Community Action Party, have been based on a growing break by many former traditional Labour voters with the former widely held, inherited ‘mythical view’ of the party, and an increasing view of them as “…little different from all the rest and just in it for themselves” combined with the mistrust of all political parties, this does not mean for a moment, that the election of more Independent Councillors provides a serious or coherent political alternative to Labour’s increasing betrayal of ordinary people across the Borough, or to any of the other main parties locally either.

Indeed, their entire stance everywhere seems limited to little other than attacking Labour (often justifiably) and to become, sometimes quite cynically and opportunistically, the professed champions of many genuine grassroots, but often narrow and ill thought-through local causes (especially once they add their support to it) i.e which appear to extend little beyond “…we don’t care if the Council has to shut another town’s Library, or close another town’s baths, or that the axe will have to fall elsewhere in the Borough just don’t shut our particular Library, school, baths, or other local Council owned amenity or service” which is a very narrow parochial view of politics which would pit all the so-called ‘Independent’ Councillors, and the area’s they allegedly represent, against each other if they were ever to become in charge of  the Council’s budget in the current economic climate, a prospect which right now would look to be highly unlikely.

The two faces, or is it four or five, of Atherton Ward's ex-New Labour so called 'Independent' Councillor Norman 'Cameron Fan' Bradbury. 'Stormin' Norman and his ex-Wigan Lib-Dem leader buddy Bob Splaine, now also an alleged 'Independent' but who had no difficulty supporting the Tory rather than a genuine independent candidate standing in Bolton West in the 2010 General Election, give all genuinely independent Councillors and candidates a bad name. They are just cynical and unprincipled, small time political opportunists who seek to retain their Council seats and handy allowance of £11k+ that goes with it as a result of the increasing numbers of ordinary people deserting Labour, appearing to be staunchly anti-Labour themselves without also, as out and out Tories, and by appealing to the more older and better off residents who they are the contemporaries of, and who unlike two-thirds of the Atherton electorate can at least find the time and put in the effort to vote in the local elections in the Ward. Some might say we deserve what we get!

The so-called Independent Councillor Group (which operates in every respect like a political party other than in calling itself one and having a clear set of principles which everyone allegedly agrees with) is really just a rag bag of political misfits and small and parochially minded political opportunists who are “…all things to all men”  and have few principles other than to get elected and make out they are doing something positive locally to justify the £11k+ Councillor allowance plus expenses that might pick up in the process. They have no strategy or perspective of taking control of the Council and making it act and implement policies in the interests of the majority of ordinary people living in the Borough. In the case of some, they simply have no political idea at all.

In the case of the Atherton Ward, the so-called ‘Independents’ worked alongside the Tories for the return of former Tory, Trafford Council leader, Susan Williams in Bolton West at the General Election in 2010. They have also campaigned alongside the Tories for a Free School replacement to the town’s former Hesketh Fletcher High School which was closed by the Council in 2011, which will be unaccountable to local people, outside the control of the local authority and ultimately overseen and controlled by a London based, Salvation Army Christian inspired, private “Change Agency”. They have focused their criticism on Labour’s local inaction and miserable recent record in the town, which is justifiably worthy of condemnation by everyone living there, but which many traditional Labour voters, who still self-evidently, believe in the myth of Labour as the party which stands up for ordinary folk, appear to nevertheless want to turn a blind eye and give their repeated backing to at the polls, if not as in 2010 on the last occasion.

On that occasion, and as result of our own electoral intervention (we got 322 votes and a 9.8% share of the vote) voters returned alleged ‘Independent’, former Labour Councillor and New Labour defector Norman Bradbury, who in the course of the last four years voted whilst still in the Labour Party and Council Labour Group, to close Hesketh Fletcher High School as soon as possible and to replace it with a new 14 to 19 year old College. He then jumped ship , condemned Labour’s closure proposals and helped to organise a petition to keep Hesketh Fletcher open. When it was decided by local campaigners that the better idea was to fight for a new and adequately funded, non-religious, better, community run school rather than ‘saving’ Hesketh Fletcher, he changed tack again. In the hope of currying favour for himself in the General election against Andy Burnham in Leigh constituency, he then campaigned for his own slant on the latter, in the shape of a CofE University of Chester run Academy. When the possibility of that evaporated, he then began a campaign in alliance with the Tory candidate in Bolton West, for the return of a Tory Government and the promise of directly Tory Government supported Academy.

Ex-New Labour now so-called Independent "working for the people not political parties or groups" Councillor Norman Bradbury, alongside Tory hopeful in Bolton West and former Trafford Council leader Susan Williams outside Parliament after their joint lobbying of the then Shadow Minister for Schools, Nick Gibb, to solicit his and the Tories' frontbench support if returned to power at the General election, for an Academy to replace the closure threatened Hesketh Fletcher High School in Atherton. Despite Gibb's promise of such support the proposed bid failed to meet the Government's qualifying criteria for Academy status, which only goes to show you should never believe in any Tory promises.

When the Tories didn’t get in outright, and Hesketh Fletcher failed to meet the new criteria for establishing an Academy, he changed tack again in favour of a directly Government financed Tory ‘Free School’, which is now referred to as a ‘Community’ school, but which bears no resemblance to the original Community school idea, run in partnership with the locality authority, proposed by the Atherton Demands Its Own High School (ADIOHS) campaign, and which unlike the London based Change Agency ‘Chapel Street’, Wigan Council has considerable experience of running and would be ultimately accountable to us for.

Instead what we are alleged to be getting will be a ‘Free’ of local authority control School (hence the ‘Free’ in ‘Free School), unaccountable to us, which need not employ qualified teachers, which will be potentially hugely under resourced and funded, will be top heavy in terms of its overall running and administration, and a potential ‘cash cow’ for Chapel Street’s ‘private sector partners’.  Though it is planned to open in September, it is a school without a building currently, which is opposed by the teachers’ unions, and which falls short of what the people of Atherton are deserving of.

Should the school open as planned which is by no means certain, possibly with the personal appearance of Tory Education Secretary Michael Gove thrown in on the day, then it is the combined efforts of Labour, the so-called Atherton Independents and the Tories we will have to thank for it.

WE NEED A NEW PARTY OF LABOUR WHICH STANDS UP & FIGHTS FOR THE MASS OF ORDINARY PEOPLE – NOT NEW LABOUR OR ALLEGED DO-GOOD ‘INDEPENDENTS’ WHO IN MOST CASES TURN OUT TO BE TORIES!

The idea of building a new broad democratic grassroots driven party which might actually stand up and fight for labour in the economic equation and ordinary folk in general, and which might in time, rightly replace the Labour Party as the new, widely recognised and supported party of the great mass of the people, and working people in particular, will likely be seen by even many on the Left, as both a daunting and perhaps even impossible a project to embark on and turn out successful. However, that is what is needed, or alternatively a movement rather than a party like it, as Labour certainly isn’t the answer.

That key figures in both UNITE and GMB have already been critical of last weekend’s speeches by Balls & Miliband, and in the case of GMB General Secretary Peter Kenny, gone so far as to suggest might even bring into question the union’s future affiliation to the Labour Party, and that many in the RMT, and PCS unions are favourable to the idea of creating a new ‘Workers’ Party’ suggest that it might perhaps be more than a mere possibility.

The Wigan Borough Green Socialists are fully committed to the idea of creating and building such a Party, of, for and by the majority of ordinary people, however we are incapable of doing either by ourselves even at a local level, let alone nationally.

It is for this reason we have sought to work with others locally and nationally towards the perspective of creating such a party and have sought to promote the greatest possible unity of front of both the political Left opposed to all cuts and privatisations as well as the wider movement of the working class and all those who are oppressed by the Capitalist system and who want to put an end to it.

It is for this reason we are making this appeal to the ordinary folk of Wigan Borough who are concerned about the worsening economic situation we are facing, the effects of Government policies, and how little Labour is doing for us, to join with us at the forthcoming local elections in seeking to plant the seeds of such a future party by standing for and/or alternatively supporting a unified ‘Left of Labour, No to All Cuts, Make the Bankers and the rich pay’ slate of candidates in the May 2012 local elections, which we propose calling the Wigan, Leigh & Makerfield or Wigan Borough People’s Alliance, believe should add its effort to that of the Trades Unionist & Socialist Coalition (TUSC) nationally. Even if we were only able to stand half a dozen candidates in May then we would already qualify as the Borough’s fourth political force, supplanting the dwindling Lib-Dems, BNP and Community Action Party.

We propose as the basis of such a unified slate of candidates, support for the People’s Charter nationally (see: http://www.thepeoplescharter.org/) which is supported not only by most Left of Labour organisations and parties including the Green Party, SWP, SP, CPB and Morning Star, but by the TUC, a number of national Trades Unions and not a few in the Labour Party as well. Additionally, we propose as the basis of such a slate, support for a local Wigan Borough People Charter (see: http://wigangreensocialists.wordpress.com/2011/10/09/wigan-borough-peoples-charter-discussion-forum/) which if elected we might collectively fight for in Wigan’s Council Chamber, and which even if any of us aren’t elected, we might ALL fight alongside each other for across the entire Borough, notwithstanding our existing party allegiances or none, or our own individual ‘take’ on other issues.

We think that this might represent a step forwards rather than a step backwards in the current climate, and is infinitely preferably to the current apparent division and disorganisation of those opposed the Tory-Labour-LibDem tripartite Neoliberal consensus, less harsh, or more fairer any of them might be than the others, which demands the working class and the mass of ordinary people foot the bill through cuts in their jobs, pay, public services, pensions, benefits and living standards, rather than those supportive of the system and ultimately responsible for the economic and financial mess we find ourselves in , doing so via a clamping down on tax avoidance, evasion and non-payment by higher earners and big business, a more progressive system of general taxation including a ‘Robin Hood’ tax on all City financial transactions, and other proposals which if implemented would avoid the need for any public spending cuts whatsoever. Indeed which might generate sufficient funds to invest in longer term economic and environmental sustainability and help put people back to work.

If you’d like to stand in the forthcoming local elections in the Wigan area on something like that a basis, or alternative support others doing so, then please do get in touch with us either by phoning 07724 139 278 or alternatively sending an e-mail to: stevechik@talktalk.net

Appeal issued by Stephen Hall on behalf of the Wigan Borough Green Socialists.