Cutsdeepenthe crisis

No 257 19 September 2012 30p/80p www.workersliberty.org For a workers’ government

Make the labourmovement fit tofight pages 6-7

AfterHillsboroughpage 8

Exams: whatare they for?page 9

Solidarity& Workers’ Liberty

Federal Reserve and EuropeanCentral Bank plan cash boost,but governments sharpen cuts

See page 5

UK high street:shops struggle,while payday loancompanies andpawnbrokers arebooming

Fernanda Milan is a 22-year-old transgenderwoman and activist fromGuatemala.

In 2009, Fernanda fledpersecution to seek safetyand asylum in Denmark.Fernanda has now beentold that Danish law doesnot recognise gender iden-tity as a motive for perse-cution.

This is despite a 2011 Di-rective of the EuropeanParliament (2011/95/EUArticle 10d), which specifi-cally mentions genderidentity as a reason for per-secution.

Fernanda has been in-formed she will be de-ported back to Guatemalaon 17 September.

During her detention inthe Sandholmlejren Centrefor asylum seekers, Fer-nanda suffered appallingdiscrimination and sexualviolence because the Dan-ish authorities refused toaccommodate her in thewomen’s unit and wouldonly recognise her as aman. Fernanda was rapedon more than one occasion.The authorities denied Fer-nanda the hormone re-placement therapy she hastaken since the age of four-teen because she didn’t ful-fil their “criteria” for the

psychiatric diagnosis“transsexual”.

Fernanda’s deportationback to Guatemala willplace her life in great jeop-ardy. In Guatemala, trans-gender people are treatedas social outcasts, deniedemployment and access tohealthcare, regularly intim-idated and abused by thepolice, and subject toshocking levels of trans-phobic violence and hatemurders.

Fernanda faces arrestand torture by theGuatemalan authorities.

NEWS

2 SOLIDARITY

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What is the Alliancefor Workers’ Liberty?Today one class, the working class, lives by sellingits labour power to another, the capitalist class,which owns the means of production. Societyis shaped by the capitalists’ relentless drive toincrease their wealth. Capitalism causespoverty, unemployment, the blighting of lives byoverwork, imperialism, the destruction of theenvironment and much else.Against the accumulated wealth and power of the

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through struggle so that the working class can overthrowcapitalism.We want socialist revolution: collective ownershipof industry and services, workers’ control and a democracymuch fuller than the present system, with electedrepresentatives recallable at any time and an end tobureaucrats’ and managers’ privileges.We fight for the labour movement to break with “social

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We stand for:� Independent working-class representation in politics.� A workers’ government, based on and accountable to thelabour movement.� A workers’ charter of trade union rights — to organise, tostrike, to picket effectively, and to take solidarity action.� Taxation of the rich to fund decent public services, homes,education and jobs for all.� A workers’ movement that fights all forms of oppression.Full equality for women and social provision to free womenfrom the burden of housework. Free abortion on request. Fullequality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.Black and white workers’ unity against racism.� Open borders.� Global solidarity against global capital — workerseverywhere have more in common with each other than withtheir capitalist or Stalinist rulers.� Democracy at every level of society, from the smallestworkplace or community to global social organisation.�Working-class solidarity in international politics: equalrights for all nations, against imperialists and predators bigand small.� Maximum left unity in action, and openness in debate.� If you agree with us, please take some copies of Solidarityto sell — and join us!

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By Vicki Morris

On Saturday 15 Septem-ber more than 100 peo-ple joined a marchagainst NHS cutsthrough Harlesden to theCentral Middlesex Hos-pital (aka Park RoyalHospital).

Along with Ealing andHammersmith Hospitals,Central Middlesex is set tolose its A&E departmentunder proposals put for-ward by NHS North WestLondon (NHSNWL). Thedeadline of the NHSNWLconsultation is 8 October.

Central Middlesex is abusy hospital, in an areawith significant industry,close to Wembley Stadium,but already the A&E isclosed at night. If the A&Eclosed permanently, pa-tients from this area ofBrent would have to travelto Northwick Park Hospi-tal; patients travellingthere at night report thereare already long queues.

According to the Health

Emergency campaign, thecurrent “reconfigurationprocess” is driven by pres-sure to cut costs.

NHSNWL faces an esti-mated £1 billion gap be-tween resources and risingdemand for treatment by2015; it wants to cut £314million from hospitalbudgets over three years,and £297 million fromhealth commissioning

budgets.Cuts could mean 1,750

job losses in the next 12months and 5,600 joblosses by 2015. The closureof A&E units underminesthe very viability of a hos-pital: “history shows thatthe closure of an A&E isvery often the prelude to aprocess of rundown ofother services, and evenclosure”, says Health

Emergency.The lively demonstra-

tion of local trade union-ists, Labour councillors,the anti-cuts group BrentFightback, Navin ShahAM, and residents, fin-ished up in front of thehospital itself, where itwas met by a group ofcleaners contracted to G4Swho are among those whowill lose their jobs if theA&E closes.

The march in Brent wassmaller than that for Eal-ing A&E on the same day.While the Labour group onBrent Council (which itruns) are supporting thecampaign for Central Mid-dlesex, the Council has notput as many resources intocampaigning that Ealingand Hammersmith Coun-cils have done.

The Ealing march hadmore than two thousand.

• More: bit.ly/U8L1Cr• Brent Fightback:http://brentfightback.blogspot.co.uk

By Dave Ball

Friern Barnet Library inNorth London has beenoccupied and re-openedto the public.

Squatters made homelessby new legislation werelooking for commercialproperties to squat, foundwindows left open in the li-brary which was closed byBarnet Council in April thisyear, and occupied it.

The occupation was wel-comed cautiously at first bythe Save Friern Barnet Li-brary (SFBL) campaign.SFBL and Barnet Alliancefor Public Services (BAPS)have been fighting this clo-sure and demanding thatBarnet Council re-opensthe library as a properlyfunded and staffed publicservice.

When the council firstclosed the library there wasa short-lived occupation ofabout 20 local residents.Protest “pop-up” librarieson the small green spacenext to the library buildingand community demon-strations have helped

maintain an active cam-paign through the springand summer.

After the occupiers madeclear they see themselvesas caretakers of the librarywhile SFBL and the councilnegotiate its future, localcampaigners and other vol-unteers in alliance with thesquatters have set aboutfilling the shelves withbooks, videos, games,leaflets and local informa-tion, as well as providing acommunity centre for arange of leisure and recre-ational activities. The li-brary has also become acampaign centre.

Barnet Council has beentaken aback by the deter-mination of the campaign-ers and has sent seniorrepresentatives to negotiat-ing meetings at the library.

The Council has tried topersuade the SFBL cam-paign to give up the librarybuilding (because it wantsto sell the building and theland) and has offered alter-native space. This offer hasbeen refused by the cam-paign — the demand is fora library in the heart of thecommunity run as a publicservice.

The Council has simul-taneously begun evictionproceedings but an initialhearing, scheduled for 18September, has been de-layed for 21 days in orderto allow the occupiers toprepare their case.� Save Friern Barnet Library:https://sites.google.com/site/savefriernbarnetlibrary

Save Central Middlesex A&E!

Jean Lewis (RCN), staff-side chair, Central London CommunityHealthcare (right) said: “In community healthcare they aredownsizing. Hospital services will not be replaced in thecommunity.”

Friern Barnet Libraryre-occupied andre-opened!

Don’t deport Fernanda Milan!

Activists from the LGBTAdvisory Committee of theRail, Maritime, and Transportworkers’ union (RMT) held aprotest at the Danishembassy, where they handedin a letter supportingFernanda Milan signed bydozens of union officers andactivists.

Activists demonstrated opposite the Russian Embassy inNotting Hill, west London, to demand freedom for feministpunk band Pussy Riot and oppose Putin’s authoritarianregime. They left the above message on railings in theopulent neighbourhood.

SOLIDARITY 3

INTERNATIONAL

By Rosalind Robson

The violence of some ofprotests outside US andother Embassies againstthe Innocence of Muslimsfilm will have horrified alldemocrats and socialists.

So dismayed were secu-lar-minded Libyans withthe killing of Americandiplomats in Benghazi theyorganised counter-demon-strations.

The protests were rela-tively small in most citiesin the Arab world, Africa,and south-east Asia, butlarger in some places (likeKabul, Monday 17 Septem-ber).

The Kabul protest willhave been fuelled by re-sentment against theNATO forces, the corrup-tion of the Afghan govern-ment, and much else. Butthe religious-political lead-ers behind these demon-strations were onlyinterested in stoking upand exploiting ethnic andreligious division.

A demonstration outsidethe US Embassy in the UKwas the work of the ultra-Islamist sect, Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Mainstream Islamists re-sponded in line with what-ever they perceived theirpolitical advantage to be.Hezbollah and Iran’s rulersappealed to “Muslimseverywhere”, in order topuff up their own positionin the Muslim movement.

But in Egypt both theMuslim Brotherhood gov-ernment and the Salafistswho want to be part of thenew Egyptian political set-up distanced themselvesfrom the violence of theprotests.

In Libya Benghazi-basedIslamists with a specificbeef against the centralgovernment are said to be

behind the attack. Overall the protests have

been manipulated by dem-agogues, rousing people tofight for their religion...against any threat — orrather, against people orbuildings which, by dint ofbeing American or “west-ern”, were seen as symboli-cally associated with arubbishy, far-distant crankfilm.

Yet one group on theBritish left, the Interna-tional Socialist Group(Scotland), felt able to de-scribed the protests as“anti-imperialist”.

They said the protestswere symptomatic of a newdrive against rampagingwestern powers, the USfirst and foremost, and allsocialists must back them.

RIDICULOUSThis was both mind-numbingly ridiculous andvery toxic (see page 10).

Can there be any worsekind of “ideology” thanthat we saw in the protests?

In fact the ultra-rightwing, politicised Christianfundamentalism of the peo-ple behind this film isabout as bad.

In the US, some peopleenjoy provocations likeQu’ran burning, have longbeen mobilising to stop“abortionists”, and gettheir kicks by ostenta-tiously condemning gaypeople to burn in hell. Theytoo are fringe people.

But short of the radicaltransformation of Ameri-can society, they could be-come more numerous. Andprobably more so if, asseems likely, Mitt Romneydoes not get elected asPresident in November.

Others on the left (NickCohen, the Observer, 16September), have argueddefending the free speech

of the film-makers is key,even in the face of their ig-norance and stupidity.

That’s alright. Any at-tempt by the American orother state to ban e.g. pub-lic showings of the filmwould in the long runharm the possibility of hav-ing a rational discussion onreligion and politics.

However, the film is adifferent case from the 2005case of “Danish cartoons”which satirised the ProphetMohammed. Those werepart of a serious debate onself-censorship (from aviewpoint I would notagree with). I would notwant to solidarise to anydegree with these film-makers.

No good will come fromfurther intervention by thebig powers in Libya or, asis possible, in Yemen be-cause of these protests.

Secular-minded peoplein the Muslim-majoritycountries and the westneed to join together tofight for societies free of allforms of bigotry and sectar-ian divisions.

As economic and so-cial inequalities rise andrise, that task is becom-ing more urgent.

By Martin Thomas

The election in theNetherlands on 12 Sep-tember produced an in-creased vote, and victory,for the main right-wingparty, VVD.

The Socialist Party, a leftsocial-democratic grouporiginating from Maoism,which had led the polls forlarge parts of 2012,slumped badly in the lastweeks before the electionand ended up with thesame number of seats, anda smaller vote (9.2%) thanin 2010.Solidarity asked Peter

Drucker, a socialist based inthe Netherlands, to explain.

On the election result it-self, Peter Drucker referredus to an article by Alex deJong (http://links.org.au/node/3026).

The result, wrote de Jong,

“shouldn’t come as a sur-prise.

“The SP is not very simi-lar to Greece’s Syriza...” Itgeared its campaign roundgetting into a coalition gov-ernment, and avoiding thedisappointment it had in2006, when it won 25 seatsyet was excluded from thegovernment coalition.

“To avoid a repetition ofthis, the SP leadership de-cided the party had to...lose its radical image andshow it was prepared togovern. This approachseemed successful — for awhile. But since peoplewere not asked to vote forthe SP’s program and its so-lutions for the crisis, but fora future prime minister, the‘experienced’ Labour Partybecame more and more alogical choice for many ofthem”.

The SP advocated somewelfare measures but made

“no proposals to nation-alise, for example, parts ofthe financial sector”. It re-jected EU demands to getthe budget deficit belowthree per cent in 2013, butin favour of setting that tar-get for 2015. An increase ofthe pension age from 65 to67 after 2025 was acceptedas inevitable.

“The SP’s programme isto the right of what theDutch Labour Party wassaying in the 1970s and isnot that different from whatone might hear in the cir-cles of France’s Parti Social-iste of Hollande”.

“There exists a longer-term trend of Labour Partyvoters, sick of the betrayalsof this ‘third way’, social-liberal party, moving fur-ther to the left... Amongtrade unionists, for exam-ple, the SP is now morepopular than the LabourParty...”

But “the Labour Party,under pressure from the SP,adopted a much more left-wing discourse than it hadused for years, trying andsucceeding, to win backmany voters”. And “themoment the Labour Partywon only a nose-lengthover the SP in opinionpolls, voters started mas-sively to leave [the SP] for...Labour [as having] morechance to prevent the re-turn of [VVD leader]Rutte”.

Now, and paradoxically,“the most likely scenario isa coalition of Labour and

the VVD, plus at least onemore party”.

Peter Drucker added:“My sense is that the PvdA[Labour Party] always usedthe idea of a coalition withthe SP to attract left-wingvoters, but didn’t and does-n’t take the possibility seri-ously. Moreover, since bothD66 [a small Lib-Dem-typeparty] and CDA [ChristianDemocratic Appeal] havevirtually ruled out govern-ing with the SP, that ‘centre-left’ coalition [advocated bythe SP] is an illusion, andone that distracts peoplefrom the key task of mobil-ising the next round of at-tacks on the horizon.

“I suspect the SP leader-ship doesn’t believe in thepossibility itself, but simplywants to make it harder forthe PvdA to ... form a coali-tion with the VVD...

“I’m not aware of any op-position at all in the PvdA

now, though I supposesome could develop if theVVD’s terms are too grue-some (which is likely).

“As for the unions, theyare very divided, with adeep left-right split on nar-row union issues cross-cut-ting party loyalties. That is,the right is mainly PvdAand to a lesser extentGroenLinks, while the leftis mainly SP (with a rangeof positions) but also withsome PvdA’ers. So it’s hardfor any union or any cur-rent in the unions to putforward a clear political po-sition.

“Going into the elec-tions their position wastacitly ‘vote PvdA or SP’— with the left wingdoing most of the mobil-ising around that — andthat’s about the limit ofthe political interventionunionists are capable ofright now”.

By Gerry Bates

Workers in dispute at theQueensland Children'sHospital construction sitein Brisbane, Australia, arelooking to industrial ac-tion at other sites andworkplaces to add thefinal extra squeeze to thepressure on the maincontractor, Abigroup, andforce it to settle.

Delegations from the sitewill be going out to talkwith workers elsewhereand make the case for soli-darity.

In dispute since 6 Au-gust, the workers arestanding firm despite re-ceiving no strike pay andnot even being able to col-lect donations through abank account. All dona-tions have to be in cash or

in supermarket vouchers.Unions have been served

with court orders to keepaway from the site, and theworkers have been contin-uing the dispute as a com-munity protest with thehelp of Bob Carnegie, a for-mer Builders LabourersFederation organiser calledin by the workers afterunion officials withdrew.

Further pressure will beapplied on 21 September,when Bob Carnegie faces acourt hearing to order himto keep away from the site.Bob has discussed with theQCH workers and statesclearly: "When injustice be-comes the law, defiance be-comes our duty".

There is huge pressureon Abigroup, too. It is los-ing $300,000 a day. Abi-group bosses are stubborn,but they are calculators of

profits and losses, not peo-ple willing to defy the oddsfor a principle as BobCarnegie and the QCHworkers are.

The workers' demand isfor a union enterprise bar-gaining agreement to coverthe site, with a clause en-suring that workers em-ployed by differentsubcontractors are all paidthe rate for the job.

After weeks of obstinaterefusal, Abigroup startednegotiating on 4 Septem-ber. It is still negotiating.QCH workers want sup-port for the extra push toget Abigroup, and its par-ent company Lend Lease,to concede.

Please send messagesof support to

ishmael1819@gmail.com

By Helen Simpkins

On Monday 10 Septem-ber taxi, bus and truckdrivers, around 24,000,struck throughout theWest Bank.

In the cities thousands ofprotesters filled the streetsto support the strike andprotest against the eco-nomic crisis, the result ofunpaid pledges by thePalestinian Authority.

The Palestinian FinanceMinistry recently reportedan estimated a shortfall of$1.2 billion — a quarter ofthe annual budget. PA em-ployees, almost a sixth ofthe West Bank populationin employment, have notbeen paid their full salariessince June.

Civil servants havestruck before. Unrest has

grown in recent monthsover the Paris Protocolwhich linked inflation inthe West Bank to that in Is-rael, preventing more thana 15% difference in pricesfor fuel and goods.

Israel was also hit with awave of protests last yearabout the high cost of liv-ing. Tax, food, fuel andhousing costs skyrocketedas the Israeli Governmentattempted to redress the fi-nancial balance with aus-terity measures.

As fuel prices in the WestBank are an all-time high, itis no surprise that it waspublic transport workersthat have led the charge.

This strike and the con-tinuing protests are creat-ing debate amongPalestinian activists aboutwhether or not this is a use-ful expression of the anger

in the region.Some are suggesting that

it is a distraction from thefight against the occupationand that the energy wouldbe better spent fighting Is-rael than the PA; othersthat the PA cannot be en-tirely separated from the Is-raeli government. The PA isIsrael’s way of “outsourc-ing” the occupation, agroup of limited powerover only 40% of the WestBank and funded largelyby foreign donations.

In Nablus the PA policeforce was sent out to sup-press the street actions andnumerous protesters wereinjured in clashes that in-cluded batons and tear gas.

Protests continueacross the West Bank.• Full article: workersliberty.org/node/19546

New push for QCH disputeA clash of two bigotries

SouthAfricanminers’strikespreadsNew mines join thestruggle as the strike atthe Lonmin platinummine continues. Seetinyurl.com/saminers2012

Palestinian workers strike

Dutch elections: disappointment for the left

COMMENT

4 SOLIDARITY

The questions that Eric Lee raises in his opinion piece(Solidarity 255), “Why American unions supportObama...” have been long settled for revolutionaryMarxists in the US.

Debate over the viability of a “realignment” strategy likethat carried out by Max Shachtman’s followers was largelysettled by the Vietnam war and the abandonment byShachtman’s formerly third camp socialists of an independ-ent working class perspective.

Since the mid-1970s, as US capital shifted away from ac-cepting the regulated capitalism of the New Deal to drivingan aggressive neo-liberalism, lingering hopes on the part ofsocial democrats about prospects for taking over or realign-ing the Democratic Party have evaporated as corporate con-trol and financing have become increasingly obvious as theparty has moved steadily to the right.

Given the experience of the Obama administration, illu-sions about being the “party of the people,” “hope andchange,” or Obama being a transformative president, havelargely collapsed. This is why the social movements andradicalising youth, as expressed by the Occupy movement,are mostly bypassing electoral activity.

However, the labour movement, which has become re-liant on relationships with politicians, rather than on an ed-ucated, mobilised and militant rank and file, is justifiably ina panic. With the collapse of private sector unionism, labouris extremely vulnerable. The public sector unions are largelypaper tigers. Privately, labour leaders think that a Romneyvictory would be like a shot in the head, while Obamawould continue to be a slow bleed.

CORPORATEFor a sense of who owns the two corporate parties,consider that labour is outspent 30 to 1 by the big cor-porate donors.

Altogether, labour spent at least $300 million to elect Pres-ident Obama, and their ground-level mobilisation of mem-bers played a decisive role. If we only had the courage andvision to focus those resources on internal organising andeducation, new organising, and running labour candidates!

At a recent labor rally the AFL-CIO attempted to makesome small steps towards political independence by an-nouncing a new political program called the Second Bill ofRights which advocates the right to a job at a living wage,the right to full participation in the electoral system, theright to collectively bargain, the right to a quality education,and the rights to health care, retirement security and unem-ployment insurance. The AFL-CIO is asking the two corpo-rate-financed parties to adopt this Second Bill of Rights. Theonly politician to announce their support is Green Party can-didate for President, Jill Stein!

Symptomatic of the real relation of the Democratic Partyto the working class is former Obama chief of staff and nowChicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s speaking about educationreform at the Democratic convention. According to theChicago Teachers’ Union “Democratic mayors likeEmanuel, have led an unprecedented attack on organisedlabor and with a prolific focus on teacher unions.”

In a decisive test for US labour, the 26,000-memberChicago Teachers Union is striking against Emanuel and his

appointed school board in a faceoff between two conflict-ing visions of public education. The conflict has its roots ina national corporate reform agenda pushing to privatiseschools, and destroy job security for teachers. This was firstcarried out by Arne Duncan, former Chicago schools chief,and now President Obama’s Secretary of Education.

Teacher union-bashing at the Democratic convention in-cluded a screening by the Democratic National Committeeof the anti-union drama “Won’t Back Down,” sponsored byDemocrats for Education Reform, made up of hedge fundmanagers seeking investment opportunities in education.

The left we need would be rooted in the organised, andorganising, working class with clear ideas about the needfor independent politics and working class self-activity thatcan promote that consciousness and organisation — muchas the Labor Notes trend is doing.

Leftists need to be organising rank and file movements(like that in the Chicago teachers union) to push our unionsto focus our resources on internal organising and membereducation, organising the unorganised, building strikefunds, and beginning to build political alternatives to theDemocrats.

While in a few places, like in Vermont, unions are sup-porting labour candidates running as independents or inprogressive third parties, unlike in the late 1990s, there iscurrently no credible motion towards a labour party.

Social explosions like the Wisconsin uprising, Oc-cupy, and the mass support for the Chicago teachers’strike are the most likely way forward. Mass struggle,not support for the bosses’ politicians, holds the hopeof real change.

Traven (Supporter of the US socialist group Solidarity andSecretary-Treasurer of the Vermont AFL-CIO)

Labour party is nofantasyEric Lee (Solidarity 255) creates a straw man when hecounterposes a mass revolutionary party as the fantasyalternative to a “realistic” orientation to the US Democ-rats.

The issue is whether the US working class has an inde-pendent political voice — a labour party. He ignores themost recent attempt to create a labour party and the lessonsto draw from it.

In 1996 I attended the Founding Convention of the LaborParty in Cleveland. The new party was supported by anumber of the smaller US unions — the Oil and ChemicalWorkers, the United Electrical Workers, the Farm Workersand others — and by its predecessor organisation, LaborParty Advocates, which had campaigned under the slogan“The bosses have two parties. We need one of our own.”

It turned out that the party was still-born. The reason wasnot too much independence from the Democrats. Rather, atthe behest of the unions, the Convention adopted a self-denying ordinance that it would undertake no electoral ac-tivity on the grounds that it was 'premature'.

Thus there was to be no direct challenge to the Democratsand, with the exception of a few areas such as Vermont, localactivity withered almost before it had begun.

It can be argued that the launching of the party was pre-mature in that it should have been preceded by a longer pe-riod of campaigning. And whether it would have ultimatelybeen successful is, of course, a historical might-have-been— unlike attempts to “realign” the Democrats which havefailed many times.

But the attempt was neither fantasy nor precluded bya supposed active orientation of the US working classto the Democrats.

Bruce Robinson, Manchester

US socialists are right to shun Democrats

Letters

The crux of this matter appears to be resting onwhether Assange would be safer from extradition to theUS in Sweden.

His detractors claim that he would be, and claim that As-sange’s defence to the contrary is a smokescreen to avoidthe rape charges. Several counter arguments have been pre-sented.

The first of these notes Sweden’s unblemished humanrights record and their ratification of the European Conven-tion of Human Rights (Owen Jones, The Independent, 17 Au-gust). Jones and others have failed to mention the fiercecriticism the Swedish authorities came under when in 2001they handed over two asylum seekers to the CIA who werelater tortured in Egypt under the United States’ programmeof extraordinary rendition.

In the same article Jones cites David Allen Greene, an “ex-pert” who has been keen to lead the Assange lynch mob.Greene published an article called “Legal myths about theAssange extradition” (New Statesman, 20 August) in thiswhich he wrongly repeats the claim of Sweden’s foreignminister, who released a statement that the Swedish courtswere independent of the Government. This is clearly untruein extradition cases as is evident from a cursory glance at

the Swedish government website:“The government can however, refuse extradition even if

the Supreme Court has not declared against extradition, asthe law states that if certain conditions are fulfilled, a person‘may’ be extradited — not ‘shall’ be extradited.”(bit.ly/fWOpyf)

In Solidarity 254, Mark Osborn states that: “It is probablythe case that he will be safer in Sweden than in the UK(Swedish legal safeguards against unjustified extradition tothe US are stronger than Britain’s)”.

On closer inspection this does not seem so certain, espe-cially given the Swedish governments’ ignorance of suchsafeguards in their capitulation to US rendition requestspreviously. Elsewhere these “safeguards” include the legalrequirement for the British Home Secretary to approve athird-party extradition request, hardly comforting for As-sange, given the close alliances of the three nations con-cerned.

The ECHR in this case is doubtful to offer any solace, asthe US is quite unlikely to be naive enough to make an ex-tradition request to Sweden on a charge where the punish-ment may breach the convention.

If Osborn is correct when he states: “[Assange’s] abilityto stay out of a US jail will largely rest on the campaign thatcan be built in his defence…” (letters, Solidarity 256), then itfollows that he would actually be better grounded in the UKto avoid ending up in a US prison, where he has a great dealmore public support than in Sweden. Accepting this pointseems to contradict the idea that Assange would be saferfrom the US in Sweden, rather than the UK.

It doesn’t seem unreasonable that the Swedish (or for thatmatter the British or American) authorities give Assange as-surances of some kind. This could be as simple as publiclyreasserting their commitment to the 1957 European Conven-tion on Extradition, specifically the part which explicitlyprohibits extradition in the case of political offences, withoutany specific reference to the case in hand that could preju-dice judicial proceedings. This would at least cause greatconcern amongst their own populations and demonstratethe existence of a fault line between convention and realityif such a statement was contradicted later on.

The right to recourse of justice for his accusers does nottrump Assange’s right to avoid being exposed to chargesthat are politically motivated.

It is right therefore to argue that he faces the allega-tions against him in Sweden, and not contradictory tosuggest that he is given assurances to protect him fromthose forces seeking to punish him for his actions po-litically.

Andy Forse, London

By Sacha Ismail

George Galloway's comments on rape, in connectionwith the Assange controversy, have outraged many onthe left who have not paid much attention to Gallowaybefore.

That is good. They have even sparked criticism, perhapsopportunistic, from some whose general stance over theyears has been to defend Galloway and promote him as aleader of the left. But what is important to understand isthat Galloway's latest outbursts are not an aberration, butentirely consistent with his broader politics.

In terms of economic policy, Galloway was never betterthan a middle-of-the-road Labour careerist. His politics onanything to do with religion and international conflictsmark him out as something much worse.

Galloway has often taken reactionary positions on issuesconnected to women's rights. For instance, he is anti-choice, against a woman's right to have an abortion.

And he has always been willing to subordinate princi-

ples which define any real left — women's liberation,LGBT liberation, democracy, working-class struggle — tohis warped version of “anti-imperialism”. He has backedpretty much any regime which clashes with the US (par-ticularly in the Middle East — Saddam Hussein's Iraq,Assad's Syria, Iran) not only against the US but against itsown people.

Galloway has not suddenly gone off the rails. His polit-ical trajectory dates back to at least 1994, when he visitedSaddam Hussein and publicly fawned before him. Yet formuch of that period big sections of the left have courtedand promoted him. Even after his falling out with the SWPin Respect, they hailed his victory in Bradford West thisyear.

Galloway should never have been accept as part of theleft. His star may now be waning, but the role he hasplayed over the last decade highlights the need to put theleft's house in order.

Readers who want to have a look the AWL's com-ments on George Galloway, going back to 1994 canfind it all here: tinyurl.com/93cg57h

Assange: safeguards and assurances?

Galloway on rape: not an aberration

In the UK, wages accounted for 70.6 per cent of GDP in1975. Recent figures from a UN agency show that fallto 62.6 per cent by 2010, the largest drop of any ad-vanced economy except the US. The government wantsto go further along the same road.

Real wages have been falling since 2009, and are set tocarry on falling. Far from doing anything to reverse thattrend, the government now (17 September) talks of can-celling the automatic upratings which are supposed to en-sure that benefits at least keep up with price rises.

Why? To boost profits at the expense of wages and socialprovision.

The strange story of Ben Bernanke tells us a lot. Mitt Rom-ney now sees Bernanke, head of the Federal Reserve (theUSA’s central bank), as the symbol of economic laxity andinsufficient capitalist rigour in managing the crisis.

On 13 September Bernanke announced “QE3”, a policyunder which the Fed will buy bonds and other financialpaper, mostly from banks, without limit until a capitalist re-covery is well underway in the USA.

This policy is a version of “printing money”. A dollar is anIOU from the Fed. Dollars held inside the Fed, therefore, donot function as money. (If you write yourself an IOU, youdon't become better off).

When the Fed buys bonds from a commercial bank, it isnot like an ordinary buying-and-selling operation. The com-mercial bank which previously had bonds now has cash.The total amount of hard cash outside the Fed increases.

This is not quite the same as there being generally moremoney in circulation.

The “monetary base” is defined as notes and coins in cir-culation outside the central bank, plus commercial banks’balances with the central bank. (Commercial banks have ac-counts with the central bank in the same way as individu-als and firms have accounts with commercial banks). That“monetary base” expands. In the USA, the monetary baseis now three times as big as in August 2008. There is threetimes as much “hard cash” in the USA as there was fouryears ago, although output and sales have stagnated.

Individuals or firms, however, count how much moneythey have not just from their purses or petty-cash boxes, butalso from their bank balances. To estimate how much moneythere is sloshing around in all the various marketplaces of acapitalist society, we must add bank balances (and arguablysome other balances) to hard cash. Broader money, in thatsense, is in the USA at present about four times as much ashard cash.

CASHBroad money is manufactured out of hard cash by banklending. If I put $1000 into my bank account, and thebank then lends that $1000 to someone else, then theoperation has manufactured $2000 in broad money outof $1000 in hard cash.

Because credit has been frozen or drastically cooled,broad money has expanded only slowly in the USA since2008, while hard cash (the monetary base) has been ex-panded very fast.

Bernanke’s view is that if hard cash hadn’t been expandedso fast, then broad money would have shrunk, leading to acollapse in prices and a deeper slump. In a capitalist econ-omy, when prices and wages fall overall, then individualsand firms become unable to pay off loans or outstanding in-voices, and they postpone purchases because everything be-comes cheaper if you wait. It’s bad news.

QE3 shows that Bernanke is alarmed. Very alarmed. Theexpansion of hard cash hasn’t gone far enough and fastenough. He is guaranteeing rapid future expansion of hardcash in the hope of unfreezing credit and opening a way outof slump.

Mitt Romney says this is giving the US economy a “sugarhigh”. Jens Weidmann, the German representative on theboard of the European Central Bank (which is for the euro-zone what the Fed is for the USA) thinks much the sameabout ECB boss Mario Draghi’s 6 September “OMT” plan.OMT is also a bond-buying plan, though very much morelimited than Bernanke’s QE3.

That central bankers, of all people, have become more ex-pansive and growth-oriented about economic policy thanmainstream politicians, and that those bankers are beingcondemned as soft-hearted spendthrifts by a significant mi-nority of mainstream ideologues, tells us something.

Bernanke’s policy is directly and explicitly based on thedoctrines of Milton Friedman, who from the 1970s to hisdeath in 2006 was a benchmark for right-wing economicviews. Friedman inspired the economic policies of MargaretThatcher’s Tory government in Britain after 1979.

Friedman’s “monetarist” principle was that if inflation is

high, then the central bank must act to shrink the stock ofbroad money. Thatcher did that after 1979. Conversely, ifthere is a risk of deflation (falling prices), then the centralbank must act to expand the stock of broad money. Fried-man’s academic standing among economists depends on astudy of the Great Depression of the 1930s in which he ar-gued that the Depression was due to the Fed not acting toexpand broad money.

Bernanke has called Friedman’s book “the leading andmost persuasive explanation of the worst economic disas-ter in American history”. At a birthday celebration for Fried-man in 2002, he said: “I would like to say to Milton andAnna [Schwartz, co-author of the study]: Regarding theGreat Depression, you’re right, we [the Fed] did it. We’revery sorry, but thanks to you we won’t do it again”.

So a man who is following the doctrines of the benchmarkright-wing economist of recent decades gets slammed... forbeing a pinko.

More liberal mainstream economists argue that monetaryoperations like Bernanke’s cannot be enough. At a certaindepth of crisis they become like pushing on a string. Inslump, governments should also expand public servicesand public spending, and deliberately run budget deficits.

That more liberal view had a brief triumph in 2008-9. Pan-icked governments, however right-wing, deliberately ranbudget deficits and boosted public spending, for a shorttime. They did other things that had been anathema tothem, like nationalising banks. In the test of acute crisis, theyhad to admit that the capitalist market system is not self-stabilising, and that economic life with advanced industryneeds extensive public regulation.

It was always, however, only a skewed “socialism for therich” — socialising losses where gains had been privatised.As soon as the immediate panic ebbed, the governmentschanged tack.

“NOT WASTING CRISIS”Their motto now was pronounced in early 2009 byRahm Emanuel, then Barack Obama’s chief of staff andnow the Chicago mayor who is trying to break theChicago teachers’ strike. “You never want a serious cri-sis to go to waste. [It] is an opportunity to do things youthink you could not do before”.

Thus wave after wave of cuts. And not just cuts. Privati-sation. Marketisation. In the European Union, a centraldrive to strip workers’ rights and conditions, like the recentEU-ECB-IMF calls on the Greek government to remove theability of unions to negotiate conditions across whole indus-tries and to increase Greece’s standard work week to sixdays and cut the minimum daily rest to 11 hours.

It is partly that the governments are scared of the globalfinancial markets. Unless governments show themselves“hard” enough, international financiers will refuse to lendto them, or demand over-the-top interest rates. Bernanke isless hidebound because the USA’s standing in world capi-

talism means that it is less worried than any other stateabout the risk of being unable to borrow in global markets.

It is not just that. If they just wanted to reduce deficits,they could tax the rich. Most of all, the governments wantthe crisis not “to go to waste”. Each government wants touse the crisis to shift the balance of class forces in its coun-try decisively and lastingly against the working class, sothat an eventual recovery can build high profits on the basisof permanently lowered wages and social costs, and perma-nently curtailed workers’ rights. Each government wants todo that more ruthlessly than others, so that its country willbe the favourite destination in future for footloose globalcapital.

These policies deepen slump and delay recovery. But thegovernments don’t mind. That is secondary to “not wast-ing” the crisis.

Our fight against government policies is not just, ormainly, an argument about economic doctrines. It is afight about whether the crisis will be used by the capi-talist class to hammer social conditions, or used by usto advance working-class awareness and confidenceto tackle the crisis and to overthrow the capitalist sys-tem which generated it.

WHAT WE SAY

SOLIDARITY 5

Books from Workers’ LibertyWhat is capitalism?

Can it last?With articles from Leon Trotsky,

Max Shachtman, Maziar Raziand many more. Edited by

Cathy Nugent. £5 — buy online fromtinyurl.com/wiccil

Working-class politicsand anarchism

Debates between members ofWorkers’ Liberty and comrades

from various anarchisttraditions. £5 — tinyurl.com/wcpanarchism

Treason of the IntellectualsPolitical verse by Sean Matgamna. £9.99 —

tinyurl.com/treasonofintellectuals

Cuts deepen the crisis

The Greek unions and left are preparing for yet another round of cuts. Aristotelou Square, Thessaloniki, 8 September

20 0CTOBER

6 SOLIDARITY

Make the labour movement fit to fightBy Ira Berkovic

The 20 October TUC demonstration is a chance to senda spectacular message to the government — a messageof opposition, of disaffection, of discontent.

Socialists should fight to make the demonstration a plat-form to amplify and build solidarity for ongoing industrialdisputes, and articulate a positive political message — a rad-ical, working-class socialist alternative to the government’sausterity project.

Since the huge demonstration on 26 March 2011, unionleaders sold out the public sector pensions dispute, leavingworkers facing the prospect of working longer, paying more,and getting less. The Labour Party leaders have missed opengoal after open goal; most recently, Ed Balls got the frosty re-ception he deserved at TUC Congress when he said thatLabour would continue the public sector pay freeze.

20 October is an opportunity to send a different message.To make sure it has an impact, and is not just a one-off exer-cise in letting off steam, we should avoid seeing the demon-stration solely — or even primarily — as a “launchpad”, themagical key that will unlock future action.

Last year, the left fell into “next-big-thing”-ism in a bigway. From December 2010 onwards, a string of one-dayevents were declare to be the big occasion that would set thestruggle alight. The lack of strategy, either from the labourmovement leadership or the far left, meant that each “bigthing” was just a disconnected, one-off protest.

Seeing October 20 as a “launchpad” also elides the fact thatsignificant struggles are already underway. For NUT andNASUWT members, whose action-short-of-a-strike launcheson 26 September and will be well underway by the time ofthe demonstration, October 20 will be a chance for teachersfrom different schools and different areas to link up and

march together. Unison members in Higher Education, whoare in dispute over pay, can profile and galvanise their strug-gle. The struggle against Remploy factory closures is ongo-ing. There could be strikes on the way at Birminghamairport. And workers from other local disputes — such as theTube cleaners, Tyne & Wear Metro cleaners, London Midlandand East Coast cleaners, and the cleaners in London organ-ised by the IWW/IWGB — can also have visible contingents.Workers from ongoing strikes and disputes should be giventhe platform on 20 October. If, as is unfortunately but unde-niably likely, the TUC restricts its platform to bureaucraticleaders, the left should organise alternative platforms wherestriking workers can tell their stories and discuss them withothers.

MOBILISATIONMobilisation for the demo has already begun to reinvig-orate anti-cuts committees. Any revivals in local activity— in anti-cuts committees, Trades Councils, or otherbodies — must be seized on and maintained.

Revived anti-cuts groups should not spend the next monthexclusively discussing who will be doing O20 leafleting andwhere. If activists are coming together again, they shouldagain discuss and organise around local struggles. Mobilis-ing people in local areas to mobilise for a demonstration inLondon in a month’s time (and after that — what?) is not em-powering, consciousness-raising, or sustainable.

Perhaps the most fundamental job for socialists (in the run-up to the demonstration, on the demonstration itself, and be-yond) is to fight at every level of the labour movement forthe movement as a whole to articulate a positive political al-ternative to the programme of the government (and theLabour Party leaders).

The TUC has produced a (poorly-distributed) pamphlet

that attempts to articulate a positive political case, under thedemonstration’s meaningless headline demand: “for a futurethat works”. It relies on quotes from prominent liberal-bour-geois economists such as Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz.The pamphlet cites America under President Obama (whereunemployment currently stands at 8.3%, and is increasing,along with inequality) as the model society! “The USA showsthe way”, says the pamphlet, and ends with a lengthy quotefrom Obama. The TUC’s political strategy is not goodenough. Class independence should be the basic principlehere; our movement needs a programme for an entirely dif-ferent way of organising society.

DEMANDSThis is not to say, however, that we should reduce our-selves to “socialism-is-the-answer” propagandists.

We should fight for the labour movement to develop andfight for a workers’ plan — a comprehensive set of demandsand policies for reorganising society in the here and now, po-litical measures that overturn the existing subordination ofsocial need to the needs of profit (see box).

No Tory, Lib Dem, or likely Labour government wouldenact any of the workers’ plan’s component policies. Whatkind of government would? A workers’ government, thatrests for its political legitimacy not on the capitalist state andthe existing parliament but fundamentally on working-classorganisations in workplaces and communities. A govern-ment of, by, and for our class which governs in the same par-tisan spirit as the current government governs for the rich.

We are not going to win our unions to this perspective inthe month before 20 October. We are not going to replace thelabour movement’s existing political representatives withrevolutionary socialists in that time.

But socialists can agitate and educate. We can help fellowworkers begin to challenge the power of trade union andLabour Party officialdom by building rank-and-file networkswithin particular industries or unions, such as the new LocalAssociations Network in the NUT. We can reform labourmovement structures where we have influence so they run asmodels of best practice, grassroots-led and responsive to theneeds of members. Where we are in a position to catalyse orinfluence the direction of industrial disputes, we can runthem on the basis of democratic control and militant tactics.

We can begin to build up independent rank-and-fileconfidence, organisation, and strength to challenge thehegemony of the bureaucracy that was at the root of thepensions defeat.

� No cuts to jobs and services — Weneed a massive campaign of industrialand political action against the cuts,starting now, not after the TUC demo.The unions should fight to win, not justto protest. Build rank-and-file move-ments across the unions to hold the lead-ers — including the “left” ones — toaccount and organise the fight whenthey won’t. For workers’ unity acrossEurope.

� Expropriate the banks — place theentire financial sector under public own-ership and democratic workers’ controland use its wealth to fund jobs and serv-ices.

� Wages that match the cost of living,and living wages for all workers. Bene-fits you can live on.

� Jobs for all — share out the work byreducing the working week to 35 hours— cut profits, not pay.

� Free education for all — scrap fees,living grants for all students. ReconvertAcademies to community schools.

� Decent homes for all — fight the at-tacks on council housing and HousingBenefit. Demand a mass council housebuilding program.

� Free the unions — a charter of work-ers’ rights in place of anti-union laws.Defy the laws where necessary.

� Open the books — workers need ac-cess to all company accounts so we canchallenge the bosses’ version of what isand is not “affordable”.

� Fight racism and the causes ofracism — stop the anti-migrant drive: noone is illegal! End stop-and-search andracist police harassment. Drive the BNPand EDL off the streets! Black and white,British-born and migrant, all religionsand none — unite and fight for jobs,homes and services for all.

� Make Labour fight — the unionsshould assert control and accountabilityover their political representatives, de-mand that they refuse to implementcuts, and pledge to reverse austeritymeasures.

A workers’ plan for the crisis

From top: Remploy workers fight factory closures; Tyneand Wear Metro workers strike against low pay; cleanersdemonstrate at the Société Générale bank. 20 Octobershould be an opportunity to amplify and build solidarityfor these, and other, disputes.

SOLIDARITY 7

We need ourown strategyBy Todd Hamer

“Now is the time for action”, boomed Dave Prentisat the end of his TUC speech, just before scuttlingoff to reporters to reassure them that he actuallymeant: “Spring 2013 is the time for action”.

This time last year, at his own union’s conference,Prentis proclaimed: “[The strike against the pensions re-forms] will be the biggest since the general strike [of1926]… We are going to win.” He added: “A one daystrike won’t change the mind of anyone in government”.So why, after a one-day strike on 30 November, did heorchestrate a massive demobilisation?

The failure of the pensions dispute is largely due toUnison’s miserable understanding of trade union mobil-isation. According to Unison, the strike did not consti-tute the self-defence of several million workers against amassive attack on our pensions, but rather a protest ma-noeuvre to strengthen the unions’ hand in negotiations.

When David Cameron said that N30 was a “dampsquib”, Prentis made a public rebuke. But in private, theUnison leadership complained that only a fraction of themembership had responded to “their” strike call. Con-trast this to the experience of many rank-and-file ac-tivists, who saw the small beginnings of a union revival.Whilst some union members crossed picket lines, a lot ofnew members joined the pickets and there was potentialfor organising a new generation of trade unionists. Fromtheir ivory towers, the Unison leadership only saw statis-tics and members failing to march to their orders. On theground we saw hollowed-out branches coming back tolife.

After five months of silence, the union issued a surveyto find out what the workers were thinking. Surveys area notoriously inaccurate way of judging the mood ofworkers in struggle. Demanding that workers commit to“sustained industrial action” before organising any fur-ther action at all changes the mood, and for the worse.

If the Unison leadership want to make Prentis’s wordsa reality, then they need to re-evaluate their understand-ing of workers’ organisation. Any trade unionist who hasever organised a strike understands the hundreds of per-sonalities involved and thousands of conversations andarguments.

This is what Trotsky described as the “molecularprocesses” of workers’ mobilisation. The dynamics arecomplex, and a lot rests on a general confidence in thechance of success. These dynamics cannot be controlledby a central committee, but strong leadership (democra-tically proposing thought-through strategies, not justbarking orders at the membership) can inspire confi-dence, maintain momentum, and get people talking.

Prentis’s proclamation that the 20 October demonstra-tion will be a “launchpad” for strikes in spring 2013 isridiculous. The national leadership announces these cau-tious timetables to frustrate the left, who will now pressto make it happen faster. This whole terrain of debate isa distraction. Rank-and-file militants who are tired of theleadership’s cowardice and flatfootedness need to con-centrate on industrial strategy. How can we prepare theunion for national action? What tactics can healthwork-ers use to win an industrial dispute? What constitutes ef-fective industrial action for local governmentemployees? How can we cause maximum disruption toour employers whilst maintaining the support of ourservice users? What is the role of selective action?

If the leadership attempted to initiate this conver-sation then we could draw on the creative and imag-inative powers of 1.1 million public sector workersto develop an industrial strategy that would terrifythe government.

By Martin Thomas

On 26 September school teachers, members of the NUTand NASUWT unions, begin non-strike industrial actionacross England and Wales.

The action is a sort of work-to-rule. According to officialunion strategy, it is intended as a lever to make educationminister Michael Gove agree to talks with the union on work-ing conditions, pay, pensions, and jobs, and will be followedby national strike action if after a while Gove does not do that.

Most immediately, however, the action is a lever to imposeliveable working conditions in schools, to enable teachers toget on with teaching with less bureaucratic harassment, andto push back the new breed of bullying head teachers trainedby the infamous National College for School Leadership.

The unions have 25 action points. The first ones are aboutdecent conditions for management appraisals of teachers’work and limits on lesson observations done by school man-agement (only three a year, five days’ notice of each, writtenfeedback). The unions say that if head teachers refuse to ac-cept union conditions, then teachers should refuse to coop-erate at all with appraisal or observations.

REFUSETwo other high-profile points: teachers should refuse tosubmit lesson plans to management (a plan should be tohelp the teacher teach, not to show management thatshe or he is ticking the right boxes: there is no contrac-tual or statutory obligation to submit lesson plans).

They should also refuse to cover for absent workmates.(Official policy is that teachers should cover only “rarely” andin unforeseen cases, but many head teachers routinely floutit).

As Lewisham NUT secretary Martin Powell Davies pointsout, to be effective this “non-strike action” must quickly esca-late into strikes. “Where schools are imposing unacceptablepolicies, strike action is the best response”.

Some head teachers will agree the union conditions on ap-praisal and observation. Others will refuse or stonewall. Inschools where that happens, some teachers will be confidentenough to ask students just to cross their arms and waitsilently until the head teacher retreats from an unwanted in-trusion in the classroom, and some will be confident enoughto refuse to attend appraisal meetings. Some will not.

Unless the action is to be very ragged, the school uniongroups need to collect evidence of management’s failure tokeep to union conditions, and — having collected a dossier,

but soon — tell the NUT that its ballot now authorises imme-diate strikes to impose the union conditions.

Martin Powell Davies says: “Where Local Authorities areignoring union protocols, we need to be urgently discussingabout escalating action to coordinated strike action in linewith NUT advice. Alongside this localised action, we alsoneed to call national strike action. That’s what really hits theheadlines and puts the Government under pressure”.

He is right. But another Lewisham teacher told Solidarity:“Well-organised regions building for local strike action enmasse is a more desirable outcome. There may be a problemabout asking London branches to go first, on their own, withno assurance of anything to follow. Many London teachersalready feel like sacrificial lambs because of 28 March, whenthe NUT Executive ignored a big majority in a members’ sur-vey for a national strike and instead called a regional strike inLondon, with the promise, never delivered on, that other re-gions would follow.

COORDINATED“My proposal would be that regions, divisions, and asso-ciations affiliated to the Local Associations Network (arank-and-file grouping established in June this year) startthe ball rolling with a coordinated wave of local strike ac-tion”.

This approach would make it easier to carry through poli-cies like refusal to submit lesson plans. There is no contractualobligation on teachers to submit these plans; but the individ-ual teacher, confronted individually by a bullying headteacher, may find it hard to hold the line. A wave of strikes,and the possibility that if they build up a dossier of lessonplans submitted under duress then they can get furtherstrikes, will embolden them.

“Some head teachers are probably confident that they canoutsmart the union on this one by carrying on with divisivebully tactics that isolate older workers, and those choosing toobserve the mandate of the non-strike action, from less con-fident younger teachers. The worst academies have a highturnover and a high proportion of newly-qualified teachersand ‘Teach First’ staff (teachers taken straight from univer-sity). Head teachers will try to get round the union by stag-gering the changes to appraisal policy and terms andconditions, so that by the time all members are affected, unionmobilisation will have faded.

“We need rapid local, regional and even national col-lective action in response to foul play from head teach-ers”.

Teachers’ action shouldescalate to strikes

20 0CTOBER

Make the labour movement fit to fight

FEATURE

8 SOLIDARITY

By Luke Taverner

Can any of us really believe the protestations of politi-cians and cops in the last week, that they have been“shocked” by the findings in the Hillsborough report?

If they were genuinely shocked at the changed statements,the catalogue of lies, the obstruction of justice, and so on,this points to a level of incompetence among them that isdifficult to comprehend.

If they are just saying it because it’s the right thing to say,and in fact knew about or suspected the extent of the cover-up, then we can only conclude that the go-to response of theBritish ruling class when the integrity of its institutions isquestioned is simply to lie, lie, and lie again.

Yet maybe the scale of the cover-up should be surprising.Even political activists, who wearily expect evasion and liesfrom the police after a demo or a death in custody, may havethought, “But this was just a football match.”

Why would the police defend their decision to open anexit gate to the Leppings Lane end of the stadium so avidly?

DUCKENFIELDAfter all, David Duckenfield, the officer who made thedecision, could have been forgiven for his actions. Hewas inexperienced at policing football matches, he hadan on-the-spot decision to make, and he made thewrong decision.

He could have been forgiven — were it not for the fact thathe immediately began to spin the lie of the drunken, ticket-less fan, the lie that would make its way, via a string of un-savoury characters, to the front page of the Sun and othernewspapers a few days after the event.

The lie told by a panicked officer to save his own arse waspicked up, embellished, and carefully marketed by a groupof people including senior South Yorkshire Police (SYP) of-ficers, Paul Middup, the regional spokesman of the PoliceFederation, and Tory MP Sir Irvine Patnick.

So why the lie? Various Labour politicians, including for-

mer Home Secretary Jack Straw, have been criticised by To-ries for stating the obvious — that the police had played apolitical role during the Thatcher years. Straw has talked ofa “culture of impunity” that existed in a police force which,by the end of the 1980s, felt that the powers-that-be owed ita debt of gratitude for dealing successfully and violentlywith industrial disputes such as the miners’ strike.

Straw is obviously correct, even if we choose to ignore hisown role in obstructing the Hillsborough families’ campaignfor justice while Labour were in office, which is enough in it-self to consign him to the bonfire of hypocrites. But there issome danger of this view catching on, that of course the po-lice were “politicised” in the bad old Thatcher days, more sothan now, or since.

CORRUPTLast week, the current SYP Chief Constable DavidCrompton said there was “a whiff of ‘Life on Mars’”about the force in the 1980s. It’s a clever turn of phrase.Everyone knows old-time cops were laughably corrupt,isn’t it a good job that things are better now?

The excruciating 23 years it has taken for the truth to comeout show that things aren’t much better. The agents of thestate must always be innocent. Ask the families of theBloody Sunday victims, or of Mark Duggan, or of Ian Tom-linson. What makes Hillsborough so remarkable is not theextent of the cover-up, but the extent to which it has beenunmasked, thanks to the tenacity and courage of the victims’families.

Last week too, in the media, the narrative suddenlychanged. Now, and only now, there appears in the newspa-pers the figure of the wronged Liverpool FC fan, keepingdignified in the storm of smears that those very same paperswhipped up. Now, and only now, newscasters quiz seniorpolice officers with the same aggression that they usually re-serve for union officials or “fringe” political figures.

This is what it takes for most of our media to even startgoing after the powerful — the deaths of 96 people, a 23 year

long cover-up involving a wide variety of local and nationalstate institutions, and the release of thousands of previouslysecret documents, under the auspices of an Anglican bishop,which provide incontrovertible proof of said cover-up. Then,when the answers are more or less out, they can start safelyasking the questions they should have been asking 23 yearsearlier.

The press attempt to portray themselves as innocent vic-tims of the lying state. “The man who hid the truth,” pro-claims the Sheffield Star’s front page of 13 September,alongside a picture of former SYP Chief Constable PeterWright. But rewind to the front page of the Star immediatelyafter the disaster, and we find “Ticketless thugs staged crushto gain entry.” The Wright-Middup-Patnick lie again, wordfor word. So at best, the press can be said to have sufferedfrom a collective lack of journalistic rigour, a willingness torely on lazy stereotypes and the uncorroborated words ofpowerful people.

We now have the unprecedented spectacle of senior politi-cians and police officers calling for criminal prosecutionsagainst those responsible for the cover-up. This in itself isprogress.

There are all sorts of questions that even the release of theHillsborough papers has not answered. Why was Ducken-field put in charge in the first place? Why exactly did thecoroner chose 3.15pm as the cut-off for his investigation,when we know now that victims were alive beyond thatpoint? Did West Midlands Police, who investigated SYP(and whose own Serious Crime Squad was disbanded in1989 because of corruption), make a concerted effort tochange the statements of SYP officers?

The Hillsborough Families Support Group is seeking newinquests, and criminal prosecutions, which will hopefullylead to answers. We will see if, and how, the state decides toclose ranks again.

State cover-ups are not a thing of the past. Anyonewho has any interest in telling truth to power will foreverowe the Hillsborough campaigners a debt of gratitude.

As is now very well known, the response of the Sunnewspaper to the Hillsborough disaster was to mount afront page attack on the fans.

Under the fateful headline “The Truth” the paper printedthe vilest lies about the victims of the horrific event. The sup-porters, it was alleged, urinated on police, stole from theirown dead, beat up rescue workers, and caused the problemsin the first place through widespread drunkenness. The ed-itor of the paper and the man who decided on the headlinewas Kelvin McKenzie.

On 10 September McKenzie issued the apology he hadspent the last 23 years aggressively resisting. “Today” hesaid “I offer my profuse apologies to the people of Liverpoolfor that headline.” One of the lead representatives of the vic-tims’ families was quick to reject this apology out of hand. Itwas “too little too late” said Trevor Hicks, whose daughterdied at Hillsborough, and for sure he spoke for the otherfamilies.

Kelvin McKenzie has built his reputation as the “say-it-like-it-is” big bruiser of British tabloid journalism. During alifetime working in the foulest sections of the press he hascultivated an image as someone who you can disagree with(indeed he invites it with relish) but has to be respected forhis fearless and independent-mind.

Another part of his persona is that of “man of the people”.Whereas liberal-lefties bleat on about “ordinary people” andthe working class, he understands instinctively their con-cerns and priorities and makes it his mission to let these in-stincts shape his papers.

The proof that only he has his finger close to the pulse ofthe masses, he would claim, is the huge and increased salesof the papers he worked on. His view of the typical Sunreader: “He’s the bloke you see in the pub, a right old fascist,wants to send the wogs back, buy his poxy council house,he’s afraid of the unions, afraid of the Russians, hates thequeers and the weirdos and drug dealers. He doesn’t wantto hear about that stuff (serious news)”. The content of theSun and News of the World has for decades both reflected andreinforced this toxic fusion of pandering to and sneering at

their own readers. McKenzie and his ilk get away with thismost of the time because the prejudices he talks about arereal, even if not as widespread and deep-rooted as he thinks.They have a certain appeal amongst the most exploited andsocially disenfranchised sections of (in particular) the whiteworking class. The Hillsborough tragedy has from the startbeen a powerful reminder of the limits of this take on ourclass.

This time McKenzie was promoting an essentially middle-class prejudice (football fans are all drunken hooligans) to alargely working-class audience whose lived experience sus-pected it to be lies.

DEMOGRAPHICThe vast majority of their demographic follows footballkeenly. Many Sun readers will have experienced hugeand dangerous football crowds, brutal policing andshoddy, unsafe stadiums.

In 1989 the paper’s editor published the kind of prejudicethey routinely print about travellers, immigrants and strik-ers only this time it was about a demographic their readersknow all too well. Prejudice relies for its power on igno-rance. Sun readers are not by and large ignorant about foot-ball supporters or the issues they faced at British groundsbefore Hillsborough. An attempt to blame fans for an eventas grotesque as Hillsborough was always going to be hard tocarry off.

So why did McKenzie think he could get away with it?This was the high point of Thatcherism. The police had

been given extensive powers to deal with the 1984-5 miners’strike and after the Tory victory were basking in more thanusual licence and political protection. The South YorkshirePolice had been in the forefront of confrontation with strik-ers. Local government power had been decisively defeatedafter a poorly-led battle with a few left-Labour councils. By

far the biggest stand-off had been between the Thatcher gov-ernment and Liverpool City Council.

For people like McKenzie the working class people of Liv-erpool were no more than feckless, commie-supportingskivers. But the South Yorkshire Police were the very epit-ome of the upstanding Briton the Sun aspired to lead. Andjust as the tide of history was bringing the upstandingBritons to the surface it was drowning the strike-happy so-cialists of Liverpool forever. Drunk on Thatcherite hubrisMcKenzie launched his attack and assumed the “blokes inthe pub” would cheer him on.

Kelvin’s defence of the Hillsborough story has waveredalong the way but never out of any genuine rethink. In 1993he was forced by Rupert Murdoch [thinking about damageto his business] to appear on BBC Radio to apologise for thefront page, calling it “a rather serious error”. The same yearhe appeared in front of a Commons Select Committee anddescribed it as “a fundamental mistake”, blaming the chiefsuperintendent of South Yorkshire Police and a Tory MP forproviding the information. These were not sincere regretsbut cynical attempts to overcome a phenomenally successfulboycott of the Sun across Merseyside.

Speaking to what he thought was a private audience in2006 McKenzie revealed that “I only did that (went on‘World at One’ to apologise) because Rupert Murdoch toldme to. I wasn’t sorry then and I’m not sorry now because wetold the truth”.

In 2007 McKenzie appeared on BBC’s ‘Question Time’ andrefused again to apologise. More than that, he repeated theclaim that ticketless fans had been responsible for the disas-ter. And last week his “profuse apology” was a grudging,cowardly affair, concerned more with passing the blameonto his sources than taking responsibility for his ownshameful role.

McKenzie doesn’t matter anymore. Trevor Hicks of theFamilies Campaign was right to respond to his apology bydescribing him as “low-life, clever low-life but low-life”. Hisreputation and ability to promote his poisonous ideas willhopefully never recover. More important is that our classlearns the one lesson that could strengthen us long into thefuture.

What the Sun and papers like it print about immi-grants, asylum seekers, strikers and benefit claimants isno more reliable or honest than what it printed about theLiverpool fans in 1989. Like the families we will only getjustice when we unite in solidarity with each other tofight for it.

State cover-ups and police corruption

We need to talk about KelvinPress WatchBy Pat Murphy

Low-life

DISCUSSION

SOLIDARITY 9

The government plans to replace GCSEs with a newqualification, the English baccalaureate, which will putthe focus on end-of-year examinations. Pat Yarker dis-cusses the history of school exams, and how they havebeen used.

End-of-school exams for all, like mass compulsory ed-ucation, arrived fairly recently in England.

The situation before 1945 was different, but for twodecades or so after that date most working-class pupils wereprevented from sitting public exams. Denied access not onlyto fee-paying schools but also to the grammar schoolsLabour had established, they could not take the O-Levelcourses (established in 1951 to replace the previous systemof School Certificates) initially only taught there. A situationin which perhaps 80% of each cohort of school students leftwithout taking exams seems extraordinary in our age ofover-testing and intensified credentialism.

As exam grades became increasingly read (and necessary)as indicators of labour capacity, teachers took the lead in re-forming the assessment and qualification system. They didso principally to provide courses and qualifications (notablyvarieties of CSE, and then the GCSE) which would go someway towards validating what the great majority of pupilsknew, understood and could do, and in order to better equipthem for success in the labour market.

At the same time, theoretical investigations continuedinto how public exams help reproduce and legitimise exist-ing social hierarchies of class, and make individuals avail-able for particular kinds of social definition and control.

In the wake of the 1968 events, two French social theo-rists, Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, put for-ward a detailed account of the role played in capitalistreproduction by contemporary (French) schooling.

RULING CLASSBourdieu and Passeron were interested in how theideas of the ruling class did indeed come to be the rul-ing ideas of the age, and why despite securing masseducation into the teenage years the education systemhad failed as a force for social liberation. Instead,school reprised and consecrated social inequality.

Bourdieu and Passeron argued that part of the explana-tion lay in the way the education system appeared as meri-tocratic and hence neutral while in fact it ensured that thosealready advantaged would make the most progress and se-cure the highest attainment. Teachers who lament the homebackgrounds of some pupils unconsciously bear witness tothe salience of Bourdieu and Passeron’s insight: social origintends to predetermine educational destiny under capital-ism.

Bourdieu and Passeron noted how those who lose out ed-ucationally locate the cause of their failure not in pre-exist-ing social conditions and the biases constructed in theeducational system, but in themselves. Such school leaversexplain their low attainment in terms of personal inade-quacy: they were not clever enough, interested enough, orhard-working enough to do better at school.

Public exams play a key role here, since they ratify thesystem as meritocratic and so contribute to what Bourdieuand Passeron call its misrecognition: “Nothing is better de-signed than the examination to inspire universal recogni-tion of the legitimacy of academic verdicts and of the socialhierarchies they legitimate, since it leads the self-eliminatedto count themselves among those who fail… The examina-tion [has] the function of concealing the elimination whichtakes place without examination.” (Bourdieu and Passeron,Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture.)

When schools are seen as neutral institutions, and exam-inations trusted as both formally equal for all and as a pub-licly-acceptable code for quality (or “standards”), they havewide legitimacy. Students who do well are deemed to do soby dint of their inherent merits, revealed (rather than con-structed) by the examination system. But in a crisis such asthe current GCSE marking debacle the social role of the ex-amination as a key discriminator for assigning futures be-comes more visible. The exam’s status as a neutralmechanism becomes more available for questioning since itis apparent that possibilities for candidates, particularlythose at the socially-crucial C/D borderline, have been fore-closed by external pressure motivated arbitrarily (that is,politically) rather than by factors to be found in a candi-date’s performance.

For Glen Rikowski, educational activist and theorist, “for-mal” education is a form of production, and its product isthat unique commodity, labour-power: “ ...the aggregate ofthose mental and physical capabilities existing in a humanbeing, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description.” (Marx, Capital volume 1).

For at least a century employers have regularly accusedschools of failing to provide students with “the basics”. Wemight understand this as pressure exerted by capital on thestate to pick up the cost of increasing the capacity or qual-ity of labour-power. Exams become pivotal here as the dis-ciplining element in producing the child as thecommodity-labour-power required by capital.

DISCIPLINEMichel Foucault, picking up on some aspects of thework of Bourdieu and Passeron, explored this “disci-plining element” in depth.

He saw the examination as a key part of the historicalprocess which produced the individual in modernity, andmade each of us visible for what he called governmentality,or how conduct is shaped. The examination is one of theways we are each made a subject available for the inscrip-tions of power.

For Foucault: “The examination combines the techniquesof an observing hierarchy and those of a normalising judge-ment. It is a normalising gaze, a surveillance that makes itpossible to qualify, to classify and to punish. It establishesover individuals a visibility through which one differenti-ates them and judges them… The examination is at the cen-tre of the procedures that constitute the individual as effectand object of power, as effect and object of knowledge.”(Foucault, Discipline and Punish). Foucault’s understandingmight resonate with those of us who, in conversation withteachers, have had our children talked about as “being”,rather than as working at, a given test level or exam grade.

Exams, then, have been seen as a means of social classifi-cation and control, a stamp of labour-power accreditation,and a way to produce individuals as subjects of power.

More mundanely, they also strongly determine what istaught, and how it is taught. That which is excluded fromformal summative assessment is much less likely to find aplace on a syllabus or be deemed worth spending class timeon systematically. This has always been so, but in thestrongly-centralised education system neoliberalism hasconstructed since 1989 to replace the weakly-centralised ver-sion put in place after 1945, the implications are graver.

For example, Michael Gove has directed that primaryschools must teach reading only through the use of system-atic synthetic phonics programmes, and has instituted anexam for five years olds predicated on such a programme.Gove’s directive and test negates the teacher’s informed

professional judgement about how best to help a child be-come a reader (and about what might constitute reading). Itrenders that teacher merely an operative.

Gove’s instruction about the teaching of reading alsoboosts the sale of products designed to underpin the re-quired phonics programme, signalling the increasing, andincreasingly-profitable, symbiosis between public examsand edu-business. Public money continues to fund, via feespaid to the privatised exam board Edexcel, dividends forshareholders in its parent company Pearson, and the salariesof its executives. The market in exam-related materials ofall kinds is burgeoning.

As well as distorting the work of teaching, exams tendalso to distort the learning process, replacing an intrinsic de-sire to find out, understand, know and do, with the nar-rower remit of pleasing the examiner.

For the student the risk entailed by an exam system is thateducation becomes a kind of charade, or is regarded asmerely instrumental.

NARROWINGFor the teacher, the need for students to achieve giventarget grades may compel not only a narrowing ofclassroom experiences but a decision to game the sys-tem, perhaps in quasi-approved ways such as exam-question-spotting or the use of class time to teachexam techniques rather than the subject, or in entirelyillegitimate ways such as the various forms of cheatingwhich have come to light.

Is it misguided, then, to work constantly to reform, ratherthan straightforwardly to abolish, exams?

There have been significant positive reforms to the con-tent and format of public exams, and to the proportion ofthe student cohort included. The time-limited one-shot sit-and-deliver unseen written test remains the most commonsort of examination, and that’s a big part of Gove’s newexam plan. But it is not the only sort.

Alternative forms of assessment using pre-released ques-tions, open-book papers, tasks carried out over extended pe-riods, spoken rather than written responses, and varietiesof coursework offer ways around the obvious drawbacks ofthe traditional format and legitimise other ways of learningand studying and other forms of knowledge arguably morenecessary for living and working in 21st century society.

A socialist society would, one imagines, need exams nei-ther to differentiate between students for the purpose of cre-ating a hierarchy, nor to motivate students to aspire torationed social goods. Without a class structure schoolswould actually fulfil their declared social function and fos-ter educational growth and development in untrammelledways. (That is, if schools still exist: there are none in the so-cialist society envisioned for example by William Morris inhis novel News From Nowhere.)

Assessing students’ progress and development would ofcourse remain central to the educational enterprise. But thatwould be assessment’s sole justification, and techniques forenabling it would be developed accordingly, free of the con-straints and agendas capitalism imposes. Testing, which isonly a sub-set of assessment, might still have a place. Certi-ficating skill and competence at high-value, high-risk activ-ities (say, flying planes and cutting brains) would,presumably, continue to be necessary.

The big question as always is how to get there fromhere? As Seamus Heaney has his poetic fisherman putit: “Now you’re supposed to be/An educatedman.../Puzzle me/The right answer to that one.” Wewelcome readers’ thoughts.

The history of school exams

The rise of the exam1947: 107,000 students take School Certificate in Eng-land; 26,000 students take Higher School Certificate

1951: 134,000 take O Level (about 10% of the relevantage-group)

1965: 231,000 take CSE

1969: 983,000 take CSE

As late as 1972, 43% of secondary school pupils left with-out taking a public exam.

Figures from Tattersall, K. in Newton, P.; Baird, J-A;Goldstein, H.; Patrick, H. and Tymms, P. (eds) Techniquesfor monitoring the comparability of examination standards.• http://bit.ly/NzsPPU

Exams: all about social classification and control

10 SOLIDARITY

FEATURE

By Pablo Velasco

The Venezuelan elections on 7 October are an impor-tant turning point for the Chavista movement in thecountry and for the international left.

Hugo Chávez faces not only a resurgent right wing can-didate Henrique Capriles, but also a socialist challenge inthe shape of Orlando Chirino. Chávez, despite being ham-pered by his treatment for cancer, has over 40% in most re-liable polls and is well ahead of Capriles. But it is aroundChirino that the genuine working class forces can coalesce.

The traditional forces of the right have united aroundHenrique Capriles of the centre-right Justice First party, partof the Democratic Unity Coalition (Mesa de la UnidadDemocrática, MUD). Capriles represents the bourgeois frac-tion that has been in opposition since Chávez came to powerin 1998, having administered the state for forty years beforethat. These forces sought to overthrow Chávez in a coup in2002 and by a lock-out in 2002-03. They boycotted the polit-ical process for several years as Chávez consolidated hispower.

NEO-LIBERALCapriles and the old pro-US Venezuelan bourgeoisiestand on a neo-liberal political programme with an ori-entation towards the United States.

Capriles supports the privatisation of publicly ownedfirms and social programmes. He and other right-wing gov-ernors of regional states have used repression against work-ers’ struggles. There is absolutely no reason for Venezuelanworkers to support or vote for Capriles.

Hugo Chávez represents the Partido Socialista Unido deVenezuela (PSUV), part of the Gran Polo Patriótico (GPP)coalition.

Chávez thunders against capitalism and claims to be“building socialism”, but the bulk of the economy remainsin private hands, while the state sector engages in joint ven-tures with multinational capital. After more than a decade ofChávez in power, the Venezuelan bourgeoisie continueswith their property, business and profits.

Chávez rants against “US imperialism”, but has madeagreements with the multinational oil companies and withdictatorial, imperialist and sub-imperialist regimes. TheVenezuelan government has agreements with Chevron, Mit-subishi, Total, Repsol, Petrobras, as well as other Norwe-gian, Russian and Chinese companies. It even has relationswith Swiss multinational Glencore and Chinese multina-tionals in the aluminium and steel business.

The Chávez government proclaims itself to be a leftistgovernment, but refuses to support Arab revolutionsagainst dictatorships. Chávez defended homicidal dictatorslike Qaddafi in Libya and Bashar Al Assad in Syria, callingthem “anti-imperialist governments”. He famously toldIranian car workers that Ahmadinejad was their friend,while at the same time covering for assorted despots acrossthe globe.

Chávez tries to portray himself as a friend of the Venezue-lan workers, but the independent trade union movementUnion Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT) has stalled becausehis supporters sought to bind it close to the government.

Chávez introduced a new Labour Law in May, which re-duces the working week to 40 hours (from 44), bans out-sourcing for ongoing jobs and increases maternity leave.The government does not respect the collective agreementsof unionised workers and often ignores the right to strike. Itdoes not respect trade union autonomy, criminalises socialprotest and accuses striking public sector workers of being“counterrevolutionaries”.

Rubén González, general secretary of the Sintraferromin-era ironworkers’ union, spent more than a year in jail forleading a strike.

Chávez has threatened to use the National Guard againstMitsubishi workers. He supported the dismissal of nearlyall trade unionists in that struggle. He has backed repres-sion of workers in mining and petroleum working for Russ-ian and Chinese joint ventures.

Although Chávez’s government has spent money on so-cial programmes, it has also implemented harsh austeritymeasures since 2008, including increasing VAT by a third,freezing collective agreements by public sector employees

and for steel and aluminium workers.Orlando Chirino, running as the Partido Socialismo y Lib-

ertad (Socialism and Freedom Party, PSL) candidate, has along track record of support for working class political inde-pendence.

He has led the rank and file union grouping CCURA(Corriente Clasista, Unitaria, Revolucionaria, Autónoma)since before the rise of Chávez. During the formation of theUNT, he supported trade union autonomy in the face ofBonapartist attempts to co-opt the unions.

Chirino opposed Chávez’s constitutional changes, includ-ing extending his possible terms in office. He was illegallylaid off from PDVSA state oil firm as a political reprisal. Hehas spoken out against the Venezuelan government’s aus-terity measures, using the slogan: “Let the capitalists paythe crisis, not the workers”.

INDEPENDENTChirino has supported the Arab spring and denouncedthe massacres perpetrated by Assad in Syria. Voting forChirino and supporting his campaign will strengthen thebuilding of a politically independent labour movement inVenezuela as well as the revolutionary socialist left.

Chavistas have accused Chirino of being divisive andserving Capriles, warning of the danger of a comeback ofthe right to power. But it is Chávez’s fault that the old righthas come back, after 13 years of making big promises with-out delivering for Venezuelan workers.

Orlando Chirino is backed by small groups of socialistsinside Venezuela, as well as a wide range of trade unionsand activists across Latin America. He is a credible and se-rious candidate for working class political representationand deserves the solidarity and support of Marxists acrossthe globe.

Sadly, much of the international left calls for a vote forChávez. Predictably, the most high profile apologists havebeen Green Left Weekly in Australia and the InternationalMarxist Tendency, which includes Socialist Appeal inBritain. The election has not so far been worthy of commentby the British SWP, no doubt dithering between lesser evil-ism and Chávez’s anti-imperialist credentials.

The Socialist Party’s international, the CWI, and its sup-porters in Venezuela call for a vote for Chavez, adding that“this is not sufficient”.

Instead they make a long list of demands on Chávez,including the demand that he introduce socialism. Suchincoherence gives Marxism a bad name, and providesno guide for workers anywhere.

Like many others, I watched The Innocence of Muslimsthinking it must be some kind of satirist’s joke — thatthis couldn’t possibly be what all the fuss was about. Itwas too ludicrous, too obviously amateurish and awful,for anyone to take seriously.

I had precisely the same experience reading articles by theInternational Socialist Group (Scotland) (which is linked tothe English splinter from the SWP led by John Rees). Some-one, I thought, has written a parody of playschool “anti-im-perialism”.

But no. David Jamieson, a student at Glasgow CaledonianUniversity, writes: “Another day, another racist provocationfrom the west directed at Muslims [and] another opportu-nity for western politicos [etc.] to portray Muslims as irra-tional and intolerant when they choose to protest.”

He means, as “provocation from the West”, this film madeby an Egyptian Copt (presumably he’s not studying geogra-phy). He means, by “choosing to protest”, obviously, theprotests outside US and other embassies.

Muslims are a single, homogenous, one-voiced mass,which “chooses” collectively to “protest”, targeting peoplewho had nothing whatsoever to do with the thing they’re“protesting” about. Oh, but it’s those in “the west” Jamiesonis attacking who are racist. (It’s unclear what he thinks ofthe vastly greater number of Muslims in, say, Libya or Egyptwho have not attacked US embassies and have, indeed,demonstrated against the attacks. I guess they must beracists, too.)

Next Jamieson provides lessons in history and literature.

The “most memorable example” of attacks on Muslims isthe “Salman Rushdie affair”. Rushdie, he explains, “wrote asemi-literate anti-Muslim polemic, The Satanic Verses, whichportrayed Muslim men as sexual predators and Muslimwomen as inviting of sexual violence.” He celebrates theburnings of Rushdie’s novel, comparing it to “a book whichperpetrates the blood libel” (against Jews).

I suppose whether or not Salman Rushdie is “semi-liter-ate” is a matter of judgement, though it’s an eccentric one;but since Jamieson plainly has either not read the novel, ornot understood a word of it, “semi” literate in his casewould seem generous.

Another member of the ISG, though, is quick to outdoJamieson in self-parodying idiocy. Chris Walsh, in an arti-cle entitled “Anti US protests are legitimate”, confidentlyassures us: “It matters not one iota that this particular pieceof islamophobic filth is not being directly pedalled by theUS state; it conforms to the prescribed dominant ideology ofsaid state... and as such [the US state] is not only a legiti-mate target, but a strategically prudent one.”

Leave aside whether it’s true that The Innocence of Mus-lims can reasonably be said to represent the “dominant ide-ology” of the US. By this logic, if literally anyone, anywhere,does anything you or “Muslims” don’t like — well, it’sdominant ideology, innit! Kill Americans! What differencedoes it make that there even was a film, or what it says, oranything else? “Protests”about quite literally anything, realor imagined, would be “legitimate”.

Ah, but you see, it doesn’t actually make any difference.Walsh has that covered. “Those... who see this wave ofprotests as a massive over-reaction of Islamic extremists arepredictably blinkered,” he tells us, because “struggle oftencomes from quarters that are not necessarily of our choos-ing... How struggle begins is of little interest to revolution-aries; how it concludes is everything.” Any “struggle”,about anything is “legitimate” if its enemy is “the West”,meaning America. Surely not any struggle, you think...

(Was, for instance, the Nazis’ “struggle” against British andthen American imperialism “legitimate”?).

Well, no: any struggle by Muslims, obviously. Once again the only thing which makes sense of the ar-

gument is a view of “Muslims” as an elemental knee-jerkingmass with a single reaction, a single opinion, a single voice.What it really means is: we clever people in Europe, wehave political movements with aims and objectives andstrategies which divide us; those Muslims, they all sound(and let’s face it, look) alike.

But to confound the mind-numbing cretinousness of theargument, Walsh — bless him — notices that this isn’t quitetrue. He quotes a member of the Egyptian RevolutionarySocialists, a group linked to the SWP: “Almost everyone Iknow was against the protest from the start. Who supportsany of this?” Undeterred, Walsh comments sagely that “so-cialists on the ground are capable of making mistakes.”Things of course are clearer from Glasgow.

All right, that’s a cheap shot. A socialist in Glasgow might,in principle, be right against a socialist from Egypt. But thatwould presuppose some effort to understand what is actu-ally happening — in Egypt and elsewhere in the “Muslimworld” — rather than deduce it from unexamined preju-dices about “imperialism” and “Muslims”.

In fact it is not “Muslims” who are protesting but actualpolitical forces, with ideas, objectives, aims. Other Muslims— not to mention secular, democratic and working-classforces in the region — disagree with them. This is because,contrary to the utterly racist basic assumptions of Jamieson,Walsh and the like, the Middle East consists of actual humanbeings with brains.

And they disagree with them for very good reason:because whatever their demagogy about America,these groups — the Salafists — are deeply reactionaryanti-working-class movements which, in power, wouldnot thank the likes of Jamieson and Walsh for theirfawning, pitiful apologetics, but would slit their throats.

The LeftBy Clive Bradley

Film protests: any “struggle” will do?

Support the independent left in Venezuela

Orlando Chirino

REPORTS

SOLIDARITY 11

Sparkshold masspicketBy Darren Bedford

Activists have beenstaging daily masspickets at a Crossrailconstruction site inWest London, follow-ing the dismissal of 28electricians from thesite.

The workers lost theirjobs when their em-ployer, EIS, had its con-tract at the siteterminated by Bam Fer-rovial Kier (BFK), theconsortium responsiblefor building Crossrailtunnels. It is widely sus-pected that BFK tookEIS off the job becauseits workers — includingUnite reps RodneyValentine and FrankMorris — raised con-cerns about health andsafety conditions in thetunnels. Crossrail denythe allegation, claimingthat EIS’s contract wasterminated because itswork was completedearly. But Rodney andFrank were removed orbanned from the site be-fore the termination ofthe contract (in Rod-ney’s case, immediatelyafter his election ashealth and safety rep).

The Unite union hasbeen demanding directemployment on Cross-rail sites, under a na-tional, collectively-bargained agreement,since 2011. The sub-con-tracting now ubiquitousin the construction in-dustry makes it mucheasier for bosses to getrid of workers and shiftthe blame to some otherlink in the contractingchain. These sackingsalso take place againstthe backdrop of ongoingunion campaignsagainst blacklisting, andconstruction worker ac-tivists argue that the dis-missal of the EISelectricians are furtherevidence of systematicvictimisation of unionreps in the industry.

Workers calledemergency pickets ofthe site following thedismissals, and suc-ceeded in blockadingroads into the site.

� More info —http://jibelectrician.

blogspot.co.uk

TUC: considering a general strike?By a Congressdelegate

The motion that causedthe most controversy atthis year’s TUC Con-gress (9-12 September)was from the Prison Offi-cers’ Association, callingon the TUC at “the con-sideration and practicali-ties of a general strike”.

It resulted in a lively de-bate and debate.

Unite, the largest votingbloc at Congress, agreed tosupport the resolution.Unite’s Steve Turner ar-gued that it would be a“political strike” (ratherthan an industrial one).Unison also supported themotion. The union was op-posed by more historicallyconservative unions suchas the Association ofTeachers and Lecturers,civil service managers’union Prospect, shopwork-ers’ union USDAW and pi-lots’ union BALPA.

The passing of the mo-tion represented the pres-sure that exists for thetrade union movement tooppose the Tories. How-ever, the motion seemed tomean different things todifferent people — forsome, it expressed theneed to properly build andco-ordinate industrial mili-tancy; for others, it meanta one-day political proteststrike.

LEADERSHIPSThe motion allowed theleaderships of the bigunions to sound left-wing, despite their sellout of the pensions dis-pute.

The debate provided animportant opportunity fortrade unionists to discussthe need for coordinatedaction and the possibilitiesfor organising it.

The TUC General Coun-cil also issued a statementof solidarity following the

massacre of mine workersat the Lonmin platinummine in Marikana, SouthAfrica. Although there wasconsensus around con-demnation of the killingsfrom a human-rights per-spective, there was dis-agreement about thepolitics. The statementdidn’t support the de-mands of the workers andtheir right strike, and out-rageously expressed soli-darity with the NationalUnion of Mineworkers(the official union fromwhich the Lonmin minersbroke, and which wascomplicit in the state’s ac-tions) and South Africanunion federation COSATU“in their work to resolvethe issues facing the min-ing industry and restorepeace with justice in theplatinum fields.”

The influence of theCommunist Party ofBritain (linked to the SouthAfrican Communist Party,which is part of the gov-

ernment and also com-plicit in the massacre) indrafting the initial state-ment is clear. Howeverslight amendments weremade, and discussions inthe delegations showedthat the position of fullsupport for the NUMcould only be maintainedif people were ignorant ofthe facts.

EUROPEIn another internationaldebate, a motion fromrail workers’ union RMTcalled for a referendumon EU membership andsupport for Britain’swithdrawal.

The debate was impor-tant because the workingclass across Europe isbeing made to pay theprice for the crisis of capi-talism, and the attitude thetrade union movementtakes to European unitywill shape our ability tobuild a movement that can

stop it. Elaine Jones fromUnite argued against with-drawal from the EU. Shesaid: “Our enemies are notthe institutions of Europe,but the political represen-tatives of the rich acrossEurope and in Britain”.She added that we needEuropean-wide working-class answers to austerityand more links betweenworkers. A campaign forwithdrawal from Europenow would cut againstthat, and would only in-crease nationalism. The ap-proach Syriza has taken inGreece was given as a pos-itive example — a refusalto make any cuts or sacri-fices to remain in the Euro-zone or the EU, but a firmcommitment to Europeanunity.

The RMT motion wasoverwhelmingly de-feated, and the debatewas dominated by a dis-cussion of what sort ofmovement trade union-ists need across Europe.

By Janine Booth, RMTExecutive (pc)

In October and Novem-ber, trade unionists froma variety of differentunions will attend a one-day seminar on “Autismin the Workplace”,hosted by the Workers’Educational AssociationLondon Region.

Working with the WEA,and with RMT’s sponsor-ship, I have put togetherthis seminar to enabletrade unionists to mobilisearound this issue, effec-tively representing autisticworkers and those whocare for autistic depen-dants, tackling discrimina-tion, and engaging withpolitical debates aboutautism and disability.

When the first seminarwas advertised, it wasfully booked within a cou-ple of days; so we set a re-peat date, which bookedup just as quickly.

We are now organising athird event, and workingon extending it into athree-or four-day coursewith full accreditation.

There are several reasonsfor the high level of inter-est in this subject. Over re-cent years, there has been abig increase in diagnosis ofboth children and adults as

having autism. Some sug-gest that this is just a mod-ern fad (“everyone’s got asyndrome these days”),and others that there issome kind of “epidemic”that should panic us all.Neither of these is accurateor helpful.

The truth is that under-standing of the autisticspectrum has increasedover recent years, the inter-net has increased access toknowledge, and self-or-ganisation of autistic peo-ple has given a morepositive view of life on thespectrum.

SCHOOLSAlso, as schools becomebetter at identifyingpupils with autism, manyof those kids’ parentscome to the realisationthat they may also haveautism and seek assess-ment.

It may also be the casethat increasing pressure toconform socially has putpeople with autism underincreasing stress, so moreof us seek out answerswhich may lead to anautism diagnosis.

Add to this the lastLabour government’s in-troduction of some pro-gressive but weak laws.New legal rights to requestflexible working, to time

off for domestic emergen-cies, and to protectionfrom disability discrimina-tion have some value, butmean very little in practiceunless trade unions fightfor them.

These are some of the is-sues we will be looking atduring the seminar. JohnMcDonnell MP will lead adiscussion on autism, poli-tics and the labour move-ment, and we will alsodiscuss fighting to makeworkplaces — and ourown trade unions — moreautism-friendly.

APPALLINGThere are some appallingcases of employers’ mis-treatment of workersand carers.

These include persistentbullying, paying less thanthe minimum wage be-cause of a worker’sautism, and even on-the-spot sacking of a workerwho told his manager thathe might have Aspergersyndrome.

A better understandingof the autism spectrumand of the neurological di-versity of humanity (andtherefore of the workingclass) will enable tradeunions to better defendtheir members. It will alsoenable them to involve andmobilise more members byensuring that union cul-ture and procedures andnot unnecessarily gearedtowards a narrowly-de-fined neurotypicality.

I hope that these semi-nars — together with thepolicy development andhandbook for tradeunionists that will followin their wake — will be auseful contribution tothat process.

By Ollie Moore

Workers on the state-owned CaledonianMacBrayne (CalMac)ferry services havevoted to strike, after theScottish governmentfailed to give them as-surances that theirterms and conditionswould be protected inthe event of servicesbeing put out to tender.

First Minister AlexSalmond said that the ten-

dering was necessary toprotect the services’ fu-ture, but has given theworkers’ union, the RMT,a commitment that Cal-Mac services would not be“unbundled”.

A union statement said:“[We are] still waiting forfurther confirmation onthe pensions and work-place rights issues at theheart of the on-going dis-pute.”

The workers voted by89% to strike.

By Ira Berkovic

Workers involved in along-running battle withcontractor Carillion atSwindon’s Great West-ern Hospital (operatedunder a Private FinanceInitiative) took the fightto Portsmouth’s QueenAlexandra Hospital(QAH) on Tuesday 18September.

Carillion managers atQAH have been accusedof the same bullying andharassment practisesagainst which the Swin-don workers have taken21 days of strike action.One Carillion managerfrom Swindon also worksone day a week at QAH.

GMB Regional SecretaryPaul Moloney said: “Weare not anywhere near re-solving this dispute atSwindon. The companyhas yet to meet GMB to re-solve the dispute. How-ever trade unions know

that standing up to bulliesworks. That is the mes-sage that we want to sharewith Carillion’s staff at thePortsmouth hospital.

“We know that Caril-lion’s own investigation,forced on it by GMB mem-bers taking strike action,found that there was evi-dence of shakedowns andcorruptions by their man-agers in Swindon.

“Carillion has failed todeal with managers whocovered this up for years.”

Carillion are also impli-cated in the blacklisting ofconstruction workers,with evidence suggestingthat they blacklisted over200 workers over a periodof four years.

The GMB is calling forthe public sector con-tracts it holds, includingthrough PFI schemessuch as the one at GreatWestern Hospital, to bewithdrawn and for thework to be taken backin-house.

Ferry workers vote to strike

Hospital workersspread their fight

Discussing autism at work

Artwork Landon Bryce thAutcast.com

Solidarity& Workers’ Liberty

Greek strikes buildto 26 SeptemberBy Martin Thomas

On 26 September theGreek government, led bythe right-wing NewDemocracy party with thesupport of Pasok (similarto Labour) and the Demo-cratic Left (soft-left), willtake its latest round ofcuts to parliament.

Some Democratic LeftMPs, such as former Pasokrebel Odysseas Voudouris,have denounced the cuts.

On 14 September, Chris-tine Lagarde, head of theInternational MonetaryFund, said that givingGreece two more years todo its cuts “needs to beconsidered as an option”.

Austria’s finance minis-ter Maria Fekter concurred:“We will give Greece thetime they need for that.There will probably be nomore money though”.

Lagarde and Fekter say,in effect, that if the Greekgovernment pushesthrough these huge cutsnow, then in the coming

years the EU may demandonly what is devastatingand pauperising, not whatis impossible.

German chancellor An-gela Merkel, whose gov-ernment has previouslysuggested that Greeceshould either step up itscuts or get out of the euro-zone, told a press confer-ence on 17 September thatGreece could surely stay inthe eurozone. She claimedthat her “heart bleeds” forthe people of Greece. Allthat was soft soap for abasic message that the cutsmust go through.

The €12.5 billion of newcuts first have to confrontthe resistance of the Greekworking class and theGreek people. On 17 Sep-tember, criminal and civiljudges, prosecutors andcourt officials started atwo-week strike.

Workers on the Athensmetro, trams and city trainswill strike for 24 hours on20 September, in protestagainst both wage cuts andfare increases.

More than 22,000 doctorsat state-run hospitalsstarted an “indefinite”strike over unpaid over-time pay. State clinicsacross Greece will onlytreat emergency cases.

PROFESSORSUniversity professorsbegan a strike until theend of the month againstwage cuts.

On 26 September otherswill join them in yet an-other general strike.

Over the summer the fas-cist Golden Dawn partyhas gained support, andracist attacks have in-creased.

A lot depends on the out-come of the attempts bySyriza, the left-wing coali-tion which came close towinning the 17 June elec-tion, to transform itselfthrough district-by-district“people’s assemblies” intoa single party with rightsfor minority views and amass working-class mem-bership.

DEA, one of the revolu-tionary socialist groupswithin Syriza, has calledfor Syriza to “confirm itscommitment to the projectof setting up the necessaryRadical Left rather thangoing for a ‘big’ — but ide-ologically and politicallyvague — camp of democ-racy”.

TSIPRASIt criticises a recentspeech by Syriza leaderAlexis Tsipras in which hecalled on “any Greek,every Greek” to ally withSyriza, but failed even tomention the word “so-cialism”.

Syriza, says DEA, mustmake it clear that it “seeksthe overthrow of the mem-oranda [imposed by theEU, ECB, and IMF], butfrom the standpoint of theinterests of workers andfrom the perspective of so-cialism”.

Syriza’s slogan of “nosacrifice for the euro”, itsays, should be based onbuilding resistance at na-tional and European level

The task is to “build amass radical Left, reject-ing all pressure to shifttoward the political cen-tre”.By Joan Trevor

At least 314 garmentworkers burned or suffo-cated to death in twofactory fires in Pakistanon 12 September.

Twenty-five people diedin a shoe factory in the cityof Lahore, when chemicalscaught alight; 289 died in agarment factory inKarachi.

In the Karachi fire,workers were trapped in-

side the burning buildingbecause exits had beenlocked and they could notopen security grilles at thewindows.

Factory bosses and gov-ernment officials, whohave turned a blind eye tothe flouting of health andsafety regulations, arebeing prosecuted in thewake of this national scan-dal. But, equally, as thetragedy fades from theheadlines, Pakistan'ssweatshop bosses will be

prosecuting their normalbusiness of squeezingprofits from workers slav-ing in unsafe conditions.

LabourStart havelaunched an internationalappeal, addressed to thePakistani authorities:“Make textile factoriessafe” — alturl.com/smci6

To support the work ofPakistani trade unions,we can also put pressureon clothing retailers whosource from Pakistan.

Capitalism: a murderous system

Aristotelou Square in Thessaloniki, 8 September. (Picture from piazzadelpopulo.blogspot.com)

By Todd Hamer

The size and scale ofthe NHS demolitionproject is slowly cominginto view.

Every Primary CareTrust is now putting threeservices out to tender. InApril 2013, the NationalCommissioning Boardwill sell off 912 specialistservices (or “products” asthey are referred to ingovernment reports). ByOctober 2013 a furtherthree chunks of the NHSwill go to the private sec-tor.

In total the FinancialTimes estimates contractsworth a staggering £20billion (or 20% of theNHS) will be in the handsof private contractors inthe next few years.

The Tories have decreedthat PCTs must have com-pleted the privatisation ofthree services each by theend of September. Theyhave been selected by thegovernment as the easiestservices to privatise. Theyinclude:

� Musculo-skeletalservices for back and neckpain

� Adult hearing� Continence services� Diagnostic tests� Wheelchair services

for children� Podiatry services� Venous leg ulcers and

wound healing� Primary Care Psycho-

logical Therapies foradults

In 13 months time, Clin-ical CommissioningGroups (the replacementof PCTs) will have to selloff a further three serv-ices. They must choosefrom the following list:

� Maternity services� Speech and Language

Therapy� Long Term Condi-

tions� Community

Chemotherapy� Primary Care Psycho-

logical Therapies for chil-dren and adolescents

� Wheelchair servicesfor adults

Clinical CommissioningGroups will decide whogets which contracts. Pri-vate health firms thathave managed to infiltratethe boards of CCGs, likeVirgin Care, are likely towin many contracts.

But perhaps the mostshocking news is thatfrom April 2013 the Na-tional CommissioningBoard will be selling offspecialist services for rareand uncommon condi-tions. These services in-volve just a fraction of thepopulation and are basedat national or regionalcentres. There are 88 serv-ices in total that havebeen identified and in-cluding:

� Radiotherapy serv-ices

� Blood and MarrowTransplant services

� Fetal Medicine Serv-ices

� Gender Identity Dis-order Services

� Adult Secure MentalHealth Services

These 88 services arethe elite core of the NHS.

Sixty-six years of theNational Health Servicehas produced these highlyspecialised units whichhave evolved to ensurethat the promise of com-prehensive care extendedto people with the mostcomplex needs. Losingthese services from theNHS will mean losing thebrightest minds and mostskilled clinicians.

At the same time as thisis happening the NHS isfacing long-term cuts of£50 billion. The privatesector will not only bemoving in to provide coreclinical services on theNHS but will also bepoised to capitalise on abooming private healthinsurance market.

As waiting lists forNHS services increaseand standards fall, moreand more middle classpeople will start to payfor better quality care.

The NHS is being re-duced to a rump serv-ice. We must mobilise tokeep the NHS public.

Rescue the NHSfrom demolition

Lobby Labour PartyConference to demandthey rebuild the NHS!Sunday 30 September,2.30pm, Peter Street,ManchesterMore: labournhslobby.wordpress.comTransport from London: nhsliaison@yahoo.co.uk

Sponsors include: Unite the Union,Merseyside Association of Trades Councils,Liverpool Wavertree CLP, Wirral South CLP,Broxtowe CLP, London KONP, LRC

Housing for theCounihans!

Housing for all!Demonstration:

Saturday 6 October,2.30pm, KilburnSquare (London)More: tinyurl.com/counihandemo