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Enough Is Enough

Time to fight back!

WE COULD be heading for a "summer of discontent". Public sector workers in particular have had their fill of privatisation, cuts and attacks on working conditions. Many are saying "enough is enough".

After five years of New Labour's big business policies and attacks on public services it is time to fight back.

Staff at the British Museum went on one-day strike over job cuts, closing the museum for the first time in 250 years. (See page 2) UNISON local government workers in London also took two days of action over the London allowance.

Nancy Taaffe, a striker in Waltham Forest told The Socialist: "Some members, particularly low paid workers who can't afford rent in London, are really desperate for this action to succeed. We need £4,000 a year London Weighting."

1.3 million council workers are also being balloted for a one-day strike on 17 July. These low paid workers have been offered a measly 3% rise. Low pay is a big issue. Workers in further education, higher education, firefighters and air traffic controllers have all either taken action or could be taking action over pay.

Meanwhile, London Under-ground workers in RMT are balloting over safety and privatisation and are expected to vote overwhelmingly for strike action.

But we have to make sure that the union leaders give a fighting lead to workers who want to take action. As Nancy explains: "The amount of participation depended a lot on activists. My office came out a lot stronger than in May. Next time the union has got to go on the offensive to get people involved."

Socialist Party members will be campaigning alongside other trade union activists to put pressure on the union leadership to take the struggle forward, to organise to ensure that action is successful and that we have fully funded public services that benefit both workers and users.

 

 

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Hands Off The Post Office

WHEN OUR manager announced the £1.1 billion loss in Consignia and the additional 17,000 job losses on top of the 15,000 already announced, my workmates cheered at the resignation of Chief Executive John Roberts.

A London postal worker

But some have had enough and want Early Voluntary Retirement (EVR).

While the first batch of redundancies was largely in Parcelforce, the second batches are mainly delivery workers. This is a consequence of the abolition of the second delivery and the proposed introduction of the so-called Tailored Delivery Service. Management claim that only 4% of mail is being delivered on second delivery.

Postal workers don't want to spend four hours a day without a break carrying heavy mail bags around the streets and EVR is tempting if people expect to get another job. But recession is looming and many who take EVR may regret their decision.

The new chairman, Leighton is trying to disassociate himself from his predecessors. In particular, he criticised the buying up of foreign companies, instead of investing in Royal Mail. But he's still in favour of another fashionable management policy, outsourcing.

Haden, part of Balfour Beatty, one of Railtrack's most notorious contractors is likely to take over building maintenance and cleaning, now done for Consignia by ROMEC. Vehicle services and health and welfare services are also being targeted for outsourcing.

Whatever happens, it looks like we will pay for senior management's mistakes as usual.

Gary Clarke, from Edinburgh added:

"THERE WAS a mixed reaction to the announcements in my workplace, some people are in the mood to fight the redundancies but some older workers want to go. But everybody wants to know what's happened to the cash. What happened to the 22 years of profit, when we had our pay rises frozen?

"The most any postal worker can get if they go now, with long service, is £25-£30,000. For less than ten years service you can only get three weeks wages for every year served.

"How much is John Roberts going to walk away with, after presiding over the transformation of a profit-making organisation to one making record losses?

• Stop the break-up and privatisation of the post office.
• Bring back into public ownership all industries and services privatised by Labour and Tory governments. Run them under democratic workers' control and management.
• Organise strike action to defend jobs in the post office.
• For a one-day public sector strike against privatisation.

 

 

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Protesting At World Bank

SEVERAL PROTESTS are planned against the World Bank's Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics (ABCDE) in Oslo from 24-26 June.

Trond-Sverre Kolltveit, Norway

ABCDE will discuss global poverty but as "Oslo2002" - a network organising the biggest demonstration on 24 June - points out: "The World Bank is one institution responsible for global poverty".

Nine trade unions and 35 other organisations are in the network. The demo has support from Oslo's transport workers and social workers, while the TUC in Oslo has donated to the network. Attac in Denmark is supporting the demonstration.

However, the authorities have organised a scare campaign and the police threaten to stop demonstrators travelling from Sweden and Denmark.

The protests' main slogan is: "Our world is not for sale - Stop the World Bank's undemocratic market policies".

Oslo2002 is campaigning against World Bank policies to undermine trade union and workers' rights, for cancellation of Third World debt and against destruction of the environment.

CWI members from Norway and Sweden will be there campaigning for a socialist alternative.

 

 

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THIS WEEK is Refugee Week. Thousands will be demonstrating in London to defend the right of asylum. Meanwhile EU ministers will be meeting in Seville to discuss further repression against refugees. Naomi Byron looks at the question of asylum and what socialism has got to do with it.

Defend Asylum Rights

A RECENT poll showed that people in Britain are four times more likely to be sympathetic towards asylum seekers than negative or hostile. They also greatly overestimate the proportion of refugees worldwide coming to claim asylum in Britain. People said on average that 24% of the world's refugees came to Britain whereas in fact less than 2% actually do.

These overestimates and some of the hostility that has been shown towards asylum seekers, while rooted in a fear of overburdening inadequate and underfunded services, are fuelled by the media and politicians who are anxious to find scapegoats to blame for their unpopular policies.

A recent EU study confirmed that the main reason refugees seek asylum is not for what they think they can get in the country they seek refuge in but the unbearable situation and risks in their countries of origin.

The largest numbers of refugees claiming asylum in Britain last year were from Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Somalia and Iraq; all countries wracked by war, conflict and repression.

Socialist Party members campaign to defend the right to asylum and for more funding for housing, health, education and services for all. However, we know that if the refugee crisis is ever to be solved, the root causes of the problems that force refugees to leave their homes must be addressed.

The British government hypocritically refuses people the right to asylum whilst funding and arming the very regimes they have fled from.

For New Labour the profits of the British arms industry (the second biggest in the world) and British big business are the priority, even if human rights suffer as a consequence.

Britain exports arms worth £64 million to India and £6 million to Pakistan, despite the threat of war.

Capitalist crisis

The problems refugees are facing, political repression, persecution, war, terror and economic devastation are overwhelmingly caused by the capitalist system, which puts profits before people's lives.

Capitalism has led to environmental destruction, forcing more people to flee their homes than ever before and resulting in environmental disasters becoming one of the biggest single reasons why people become refugees.

The extent of the floods in Mozambique last year, was enormously increased by the actions of logging companies, who cleared huge areas of forest, allowing valuable topsoil to be carried away by the floods.

The 'structural adjustment programmes' of the IMF and World Bank have destroyed the living standards of millions. They have forced governments around the world to open up their economies to foreign competition and capital.

This has resulted in the asset stripping of whole countries by big business internationally, a massive increase in food prices and the slashing of government spending on education and health in some of the poorest countries of the world.

The imperialist powers, the US, Britain etc. are more dominant economically in the world than they have been in the last 50 years. Unimaginable wealth is owned by a tiny, powerful minority. The assets of the 200 richest people are more than the combined income of the poorest 2.4 billion people in the world.

Yet, according to the United Nations "it is estimated that the additional cost of achieving and maintaining universal access to basic education for all, reproductive health care for all women, adequate food for all and safe water and sanitation for all is roughly US $40 billion a year... This is less than four percent of the combined wealth of the 225 richest people." (UN Human Development Report 1997)

The Socialist Party is fighting against the interests of big business. We are part of a socialist international which is fighting on every continent for movements of the working-class, poor peasants and the oppressed to take back the wealth and resources stolen from us all and establish a socialist society run for need not profit; where the resources of the world would be democratically owned and planned to provide for the needs of everyone, laying the basis for an end to war, environmental destruction and economic crisis.

Campaigning For Justice

THE SOCIALIST Party defends the right of people to asylum.

In Britain we campaign to raise awareness of the horrific conditions refugees are fleeing from, build and support campaigns against the unjust deportation of asylum seekers, fight for more resources for services for refugees and working-class people in general and expose the unjust and often dishonest decisions which the Home Office makes concerning many asylum applications.

The biggest single category of applications that get turned down on the initial decision are turned down on technicalities, without the individual cases even being looked at. For instance, an asylum application is automatically turned down if the applicant fails to return an 18 page form filled out in English to the Home Office within two weeks of making their application.

For many refugees, traumatised, homesick and in some cases not even speaking English, this is virtually impossible to fulfil.

But even when cases do get looked at by the Home Office, they often turn down applications on the flimsiest of grounds. For example, up until 1997 virtually no asylum seekers from Cameroon were getting asylum in Britain whereas this was not the case in the US.

This is because the Home Office said that Cameroon was a democratic country and members of the opposition party (SDF) were not at risk from persecution because they had MPs.

A number of SDF members from Cameroon joined the Socialist Party and from 1997 onwards publicity campaigns and a legal campaign using UN reports and reports from Cameroonian groups showed that the Home Office assessment of Cameroon not being a risk to SDF members was wrong.

Socialist Party members and others have been able to help significantly increase the number of Cameroonian refugees granted the right to asylum in Britain, including around ten of our own members.

 

WE SAY:

• Defend the right to asylum. Oppose the detention of asylum seekers.
• Refugees to be allowed to enter legally and be treated humanely while applications are processed.
• All applications to be dealt with in a reasonable time and applicant``s given a right to a full hearing before the case is decided.
• Applicants to have a right to appeal to an elected tribunal, including representatives of trade unions, community organisations, welfare, refugee and legal rights organisations etc.
• Asylum applicants to be allowed to work rather than forced to live on just 70% of the income support minimum.
• Oppose the Immigration and Asylum Bill and repeal all racist immigration laws.
• Massively increase public spending on housing, health, education and other services.

 

Duman Family Must Stay

THE LEWISHAM branch of the teachers' union NUT is supporting a Kurdish family whose children are being taught in Lewisham schools from the threat of deportation.

Mr Duman was held in detention on 15 June after reporting to immigration officials at Dover, and is now awaiting deportation. His wife and four children, Mazlum, 12, Nazim, 10, Ali, 6, and Inan, 2, have also been served with notice that they should leave the country on 25 June.

Lewisham NUT support the Duman family's fight to remain in Britain. They came to England three years ago to flee years of harassment and persecution as Kurds in their part of Turkey. They were not allowed to speak their own language.

Mr Duman has suffered arrest many times and his life would be in danger if he returned to Turkey.

Inan was born in England while his three brothers have made enormous progress at their schools. Nazim for example has been chosen for a Gifted and Talented programme in Maths.

We support the family's right to remain in Britain. Mr and Mrs Duman do not want their children to suffer in the way they did. We want the children to remain amongst their school friends and playing their part in the local community.

Lewisham NUT and the Duman Family Must Stay Campaign are organising protests against this threatened deportation.

For further details, contact: Martin Powell-Davies, secretary Lewisham NUT 07946 44 54 88.

Fax your protests to: Beverley Hughes MP Minister for Nationality and Immigration Fax: 020 7273 2043 quoting Ref: D011628 Duman Family.

 

Demonstration to defend asylum rights

Saturday 22 June

Assemble: 12.00pm Malet St, London, WC1.

Nearest tube: Goodge St.

 

 

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What About Russia?

Does The Fall Of The USSR Prove That Socialism Will Inevitably Fail?

MILLIONS OF people have joined anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation protests internationally; angry at the economic crisis that's wrecking countless lives; at the wars waged by the USA and its imperialist partners, at the oppression, exploitation and environmental destruction of modern-day capitalist society.

Pete Dickenson

Quite rightly socialists direct their main fire against those responsible for the present state of affairs. Official spokespeople for anti-globalisation campaigns often confine themselves to saying what they're against and don't explain what the alternative is, or at best put forward inadequate slogans such as "make the rich pay".

The anti-globalisation movement needs a convincing socialist alternative which says what we're for as well as what we're against. However some will immediately ask "what about Russia? Surely, the collapse of the Soviet Union proved that socialism failed". To answer this, you need to look at the history and development of the former Soviet Union.

Since the USSR collapsed, academics have been busy rewriting history. One of the new myths is that capitalism before 1917 was developing rapidly and successfully in Russia and the revolution in that year cut across this.

Certainly there was a feverish growth of industry in a few big cities in the Czarist empire, (the Czar was autocratic ruler of a Russian empire stretching from Poland to Alaska), but this activity depended on profits generated by impoverished, super-oppressed workers herded into massive factories.

At the same time, the new capitalist class completely failed to transform the country into a modern industrialised society. In particular, it remained dominated by neo-feudal landlords, ruling over an exploited peasantry only recently released from serfdom. There was no sign of the development of an efficient agricultural sector, run on capitalist lines and capable of supporting wide-scale urban industry.

Also, crucially, the oppression of the empire's non-Russian peoples continued unabated during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, resulting in a seething discontent among them - a bomb ticking away.

These factors undermined the system's stability and created the conditions for revolution. The trigger was the horrific conditions resulting from the first world war, where millions of peasants were slaughtered in the trenches and the country gradually bled to death.

The October 1917 socialist revolution, led by Lenin, Trotsky and the Bolshevik party, was unique - for the first time the capitalist system had been overthrown and a workers' state established. It was based on soviets - committees of workers and soldiers created spontaneously during the revolution to organise activity, that were later to become the organs through which the new society would be built.

Initially the soviets were democratic bodies where strict controls were imposed on elected representatives to prevent them usurping their positions.

Workers' support

THE SUCCESSFUL overthrow of capitalism in Russia caused the ruling classes throughout the world to mount a cruel and bloody civil war which devastated the country and killed millions.

All the main Western countries, including Britain and the USA, sent armies into the country to aid pro-Czarist forces trying to overthrow the new socialist government. But the world's first workers' state emerged victorious due to the Russian workers' and peasants' heroism and self-sacrifice in trying to build a new society.

Victory would have been much harder though if the Bolshevik government had not had support from workers in the West, because the main powers dared not intervene more widely for fear of provoking indignation and revolution in their own countries.

But victory came at a price, since the most class-conscious workers were killed in the war, making it easier for the careerist and the corrupt to infiltrate the soviets and ultimately take them over.

This process was accelerated by the terrible conditions. The USSR was ravaged by famine and disease and devastated by economic dislocation resulting from World War One and the civil war. It took years of back-breaking effort to re-organise society just to get it back to the pre-war level.

In appalling circumstances of a struggle to survive, speculators and careerists prospered and each looked for ways to build their political influence. Gradually the soviets' lower ranks came under their control as they formed alliances with demoralised workers' leaders. They then looked for support higher up in the bureaucracy that was emerging.

They found what they were after in Joseph Stalin, originally a minor figure in the revolution, but hungry for personal power. He saw a chance to consolidate his position by allying himself with the new layer of corrupt bureaucrats.

As a result, by the late 1920s, all vestiges of democracy had been removed from Soviet society by Stalin and his supporters, despite a heroic effort by socialists around Leon Trotsky to defend the October revolution's democratic principles.

European powder keg

WAS THIS degeneration inevitable as the critics hostile to socialism claim, implying that the revolution itself was counter-productive and futile? Lenin, the leader of the revolution, had no illusions of the difficulties facing the Bolshevik government.

He believed, however, that a revolution in Russia would be part of a Europe-wide working-class movement to overthrow their oppressors. When the opportunity arose to take power in October 1917, he had no hesitation in pressing forward, even though Russia's poverty and backwardness made for a very difficult environment to build socialism.

Lenin correctly foresaw that Europe was a powder keg, due to conditions created by the world war, and that a successful uprising in Russia would be a spur to workers in other more developed countries like Germany to take power. The German workers would then come to the aid of their comrades in Russia and ease the difficulties they faced, enabling a healthy democratic workers' state to be built.

This perspective answered the argument of right-wing workers' leaders, who used Marx's writings to oppose the revolution, because he envisaged socialism first starting in the most advanced capitalist country not the most backward.

Lenin's prediction of revolutionary turmoil throughout Europe after imperialist world war and the Russian revolution proved correct. Unfortunately all these attempts to overthrow capitalism were unsuccessful due partly to the revolutionary workers' mistakes and inexperience, but mainly due to betrayals by the leaders of the European socialist parties and trades unions.

This failure was not however pre-ordained; the outcome could only be determined during the struggle itself and, particularly in Germany, the situation was on a knife-edge. Nevertheless, the result was that the world's first workers' state was left isolated and impoverished.

This development allowed a layer of demoralised and corrupt bureaucrats to consolidate their position, because by this time, only the intervention of the international working class, with its democratic traditions, could have dislodged them.

The new bureaucratic caste's wiping out of the remnants of democratic workers' control of society was ultimately to lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union itself.

Colossal wastage

IN THE early 1920s Russia's new government were forced to re-introduce a widespread capitalist market to revive the economy from the devastation inflicted on it. This successfully boosted food production but also created a new class of rich farmers called kulaks.

Socialist opponents of Stalin, particularly Leon Trotsky, warned that the kulaks' economic power would eventually grow so much that they would threaten the regime. Stalin ignored this for years, but then panicked when danger was imminent in the late twenties and took drastic steps to transform Russia from a predominantly agricultural to an industrial society.

A five-year plan was introduced to build up heavy industry at breakneck speed and a programme of repression implemented to "liquidate the Kulaks as a class". The new line was given an ideological cover under the slogan of building "socialism in one country", which consciously rejected the internationalism that until then was at the heart of socialist thinking.

Much to Stalin's surprise, the drive to industrialise made spectacular gains. Growth targets were raised every few months as production exceeded the plan. Within a decade the Soviet Union was an industrial giant rivalling the capitalist powers.

How was this achieved? This transformation was unprecedented - capitalist countries had taken centuries of development to get to this point. The driving force in Russia was the plan of production itself; freed from the shackles of the market system, then in its deepest crisis after the Wall Street crash. There seemed no limit to growth.

The allocation of resources directly by the state planning body, rather than by the "hidden hand" of market forces, ensured a staggering pace of growth.

But the downside to the economic miracle was the huge wastage, up to 30% of production, due to the bungling, corruption and bad planning inherent in the undemocratic command system of economic management. The quality of goods was bad; Trotsky called poor quality the 'Achilles heel' of the planned economy.

The only way round this problem was to introduce a democratic system of control over production where consumers would have real power to ensure that the goods produced were both fit for purpose and made in the right quantities.

The re-introduction of the soviets on democratic lines would have achieved this, but Stalin would not contemplate such a course. Any vestige of democracy would have threatened his regime which, despite the surface calm, was unstable.

Much of the new infrastructure to support industry was built by armies of slave labour political prisoners, where millions perished due to the fiendish conditions imposed on them. The survivors of the camps and the super-exploited workers would have taken a swift revenge if Stalin had loosened the noose for a moment.

Unaccountable bureaucracy

THE RESILIENCE of the planning system was shown again after World War Two when society was rapidly rebuilt after being virtually demolished by the Nazi rampage. By the 1960s the Soviet Union was at its peak, a pioneer of space travel, a superpower rivalled only by the USA. The statistics below demonstrate the economic situation at that time.

The first table shows that in the production of basic industrial commodities, the USSR was in the same league as the main capitalist powers although it never overtook the USA.

The second table shows a more contradictory picture on consumer goods. For simple goods such as footwear there was comparability, but in technology based industries like artificial fibres there was a huge gap which kept increasing over the next 25 years.

It also shows that production of food lagged behind, a legacy of the disastrous forced collectivisation of agriculture in the 1930s, which the USSR never recovered from.

Nonetheless after Soviet leader Khruschev boasted that the USSR would overtake the West, Britain's then prime minister Macmillan commissioned a secret report to see if it was possible. The research concluded that, on the basis of the then available evidence, it could happen.

But instead the gap between the USSR and the West gradually increased from the 1960s. By the 1980s the Soviet economy was at a standstill. How can this be explained?

Two fundamental inter-linked factors were involved: undemocratic bureaucratic planning could not cope with the needs of a modern, technology-based consumer society while the command system of industrial management failed.

During the Stalin period, bureaucrats were subjected to a carrot and stick approach. They were richly rewarded for reaching planning targets but exposed to fierce reprisals if they failed (one aim of the great purges of the 1930s was to terrorise this group).

This approach 'worked' in the early period. The material incentives were massive particularly since they were starting from a very low base, and the fear factor was terrifying.

By the 1960s, however, repression had eased following Stalin's death. The material incentive was also weaker, since the bureaucrats by then already had an opulent life-style, so managers were content to sit back and enjoy life. Their main priority was to defend their privileges, the development of the economy was of minor concern for them.

The other inter-linked reason contributing to economic decline was the breakdown of the planning system. In the first period of Soviet development the task was to develop basic industries and infrastructure, relatively simple from a planning angle.

There was huge wastage because of the undemocratic methods employed, but the inherent advantages of planning over the market led to dramatically successful results. The USSR also had an ample supply of labour from the peasantry, most of the economic growth was due to putting these people into the labour force.

However after the basic industries were built, the job was to orientate the economy to the mass production of consumer goods. This task involved increasing the productivity of labour by applying modern technology.

This is more complicated from a planning viewpoint, but by the 1960s new planning techniques using computers would have made this technically possible. What was missing was the essential element of democratic control in allocating resources, feeding back consumers' needs to the planning bodies and acting upon them.

The bureaucrats were unaccountable to the consumer, and indifferent to their needs, for reasons discussed above, so nothing happened. As a result the economy went into long-term decline and came to a halt almost completely in the mid 1980s.

Lessons of democracy

THE EFFECT of the economic stagnation was to demoralise large sections of the ruling caste, some of whom began to consider a move to capitalism. However Gorbachev, the Soviet leader from 1985 wanted to reform the system, by bringing in elements of the market and decentralisation to make the command economy work more efficiently (in his opinion).

He gave the Soviet republics huge powers to make autonomous decisions. This policy unwittingly led to political disintegration very rapidly due to an explosive growth of nationalism, which had been suppressed during the Soviet period, but not eliminated.

The process proved unstoppable and the first workers' state collapsed ignominiously. Capitalism, with all its horrors, emerged from the ashes, literally in many cases.

This historical defeat for the working class can be traced back to the eradication of democracy in the Soviet political system in the 1920s which in turn led to economic failure and ultimately political collapse.

The USSR's failure was not a failure of real socialism. Genuine socialism must be based on a non-capitalist planned economy but also has to be linked, in order to function efficiently, to democratic controls at all levels of society. This requirement was not met in Russia.

Even if it is accepted that democracy in the system was vital, critics may still say that the degeneration of the 1917 revolution into dictatorship was inevitable. However this was not the case.

Although poverty and backwardness in Russia created fertile ground for Stalinist totalitarianism, the international movement that the events of 1917 triggered could have cut across this development, by the working class in an advanced country like Germany taking power and coming to the aid of their Russian comrades.

This outcome, which was in the balance, would have made a decisive difference and resulted in history taking a completely different course.

 

Read Leon Trotsky's classic book:

The Revolution Betrayed, What is the Soviet Union and Where is it Going?, published by Pathfinder.

Available from Socialist Books, PO Box 24697, London E11 1YD. Tel: 020 8988 8789.

£14 including postage.

 

Table of figures

Comparitive Figures For Production And Consumption, 1960s

 

Production per head of population 1964

	France	Italy	Britain	W Germany	USA	USSR
Electric Power (kwh)	2051	1474	3418	2835	5984	2013
Sulphuric Acid (kg)	56	54	59	62	108	34
Cement (kg)	448	436	315	579	319	285

 

Consumption per head of population 1962-3

	USSR	USA	Britain	France
Meat (kg)	39	85	71	78
Artificial textiles (kg)	1.6	6.7	6.3	5.0
Leather shoes	2.1	3.7	2.8	2.3

Source: E Mandel, Marxist Economic Theory Vol. 2 Merlin Press 1968 p 558

 

 

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German Building Workers Strike

THOUSANDS OF building workers downed tools and walked off sites throughout Germany to demand a 4.5% pay rise. The strikers are also demanding a rise in the minimum pay rate for workers in the former Eastern Germany.

The strike called by the 900,000-strong IG Bau union is the country's first construction workers strike since 1945 and follows a series of labour strikes in recent weeks.

As reported in The Socialist (Issues 254/255) the metalworkers' trade union, IG Metall, launched a rolling regional programme of strikes over pay. Eventually, a 22-month deal was agreed by the union's leadership which fell short of the union's official demand for a 6.5% pay rise.

The strike is significant as it follows a massive 98% vote for action by union members and comes at a time of severe recession in the construction industry.

The strike also comes just three months ahead of the general election, much to the chagrin of Chancellor Gerhard Schršder whose Social Democrat and Green Party coalition government is haemorrhaging working class support because of its capitalist agenda.

The strike which began in Berlin and Hamburg is set to spread to southern Germany and nationwide next week failing any resumption of pay talks.

 

 

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Unison conference

Delegates Back Privatisation Battle

UNISON LOCAL government conference, meeting for two days before the main UNISON conference, saw the leadership overturned five times in the first four hours.

Bill Mullins

Delegates treated with derision the leadership's claim that they have real influence with Tony Blair.

By a vote of 380,000 to 290,000, they voted to condemn the so-called deal between the government and UNISON to review the whole privatisation process.

The platform had claimed that they had 'access to number 10' but Simon Donovan from Waltham Forest said: "The leadership have no national strategy or policy to defeat privatisation. They leave us at local level to fight alone."

In another well-received speech, Roger Bannister hammered the executive for opposing national industrial action against privatisation, on 'legal grounds'. "We have co-ordinated national action over pay across 400 employers. This is not a case of action being illegal but of the unwillingness of the leadership to act." To widespread applause he finished by saying "Where there's a will there's a way."

Angie Waller of Kirklees, who had moved the main resolution on national action to defeat privatisation, gave examples of how PFI is wrecking schools and children's education. "The roof was blown off one of the PFI schools in Huddersfield, it's no wonder we're opposing privatisation."

Julie Thompson, also of Kirklees, defeated the platform when she successfully called for a national conference and a national demo of school support staff. "Our members are fed up signing on in the holidays, they want action now."

Other Socialist Party speakers included Nancy Taaffe, Brian Blake, Brian Debus and Onay Kasab.

At a packed fringe meeting on the political fund and New Labour, Dave Nellist, speaking on behalf of the Socialist Party, called for the unions to build a new mass workers' party and in the process begin breaking with New Labour.

He was opposed by Liz Davies, for the Socialist Alliance, who called for the union's fund to be democratised but wouldn't support disaffiliation.

Geoff Martin, London UNISON, said that they should maintain the link but cutback on the amount UNISON gives to Labour.

See next week's The Socialist for a full report.

 

 

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