Brexit is a weapon against workers

theAn unofficial magazine by LABOUR AND Momentum activists£1 (unwaged 50p)

By Sacha Ismail and Simon Hannah

The “real fight starts now”, tweeted Jeremy Corbyn after Parliament’s voteto trigger Article 50. “Over the next two years Labour will use every oppor-tunity to ensure Brexit protects jobs, living standards and the economy”.

But Labour has just voted to hand the Tory government a huge blankcheque. It has facilitated Theresa May’s Tory, migrant-bashing, “hard Brexit”version of leaving the EU and all that it implies.

It’s a bit like left groups who make a big deal of defending migrants’ rights,

but simultaneously advocate Britain leaving the EU, despite the inevitablestrengthening of anti-immigration feeling and boosting of the nationalistright.

There was no real democratic mandate involved here. Referendums are ashallow and shoddy form of democracy, this one particularly so. The vote wasextremely close – almost half the population, including two thirds of Labourvoters, voted “remain” – and yet we are ending up with a radical-right versionof Brexit which a clear majority of people oppose.

tom watson and immigration • us labour’s response totrump • the British anti-trump movement • sid ryan:

canada’s corbyn? • by elections • labour and derby tas • momentumdemocracy • international women’s day • cinema workers’ fight

inside:Continued on page 3

clarionissue 4: FEB-Mar 2017

FIGHT THE RIGHTWING SURGE

The Clarion’s fourth issue comes at a dark time, not long after theinauguration of Donald Trump, with the nationalist right surgingall over the world.

Here in Britain, the Stoke Central and Copeland by-elections willtest just how much nationalism has eroded Labour’s core support. Mo-mentum is in self-inflicted disarray and hopes of transforming theparty seem to be receding.

Don’t despair! Educate, agitate, organise… We don’t know what willcome next, but we know that what we do now can make a difference,sometimes a decisive one. The Clarion hopes to be an essential part ofmaking that difference – please support the magazine and get in-volved.

The Labour Party and the country are standing at a crossroads.Jeremy Corbyn's election as Labour leader in 2015 opened a

space for socialist politics to re-emerge into the British main-stream. His re-election in 2016 confirmed that there are at leasthundreds of thousands in Britain of people who want to see anend to austerity, to neo-liberalism and to the worst misery inflictedby the capitalist system. There are hundreds of thousands of peoplewho at least aspire to a better society than capitalism. The socialistleft of the labour movement has a historic opportunity now – wemust seize it.

That means an open discussion on politics and principles, as-sisting the grassroots of the labour movement to develop our ownpolicies and programme for a Labour government and for trans-forming society, building on and critically engaging with policiesproposed by the leader’s office, the unions, the constituencies, andother parts of the movement.

It means democratising the Labour Party, preventing furthercoup attempts against the leadership, and preventing further unjustpurges, suspensions, and expulsions. It means facilitating debateon Momentum, its purpose and its future.

The Clarion is a space for and a contribution to those debates.In addition to news and reports from the movement, our coveragewill particularly focus on

• Debate and discussion on class and class struggle today, andhow we go beyond “new politics” and “progressive politics” to reviveworking-class politics.

• How we make socialism, a new society based on commonownership and need not profit, the basic, unifying goal of the left;and fight for bold socialist policies in the here and now.

• Fighting nationalism, building working-class solidarity acrossborders and between workers of different backgrounds and com-munities.

• To take a serious and consistent approach to equality and lib-eration struggles.

• To stand up for rational debate and against nonsense, againstthe culture of clickbait, conspiracy theory, and instant denunciationwhich has taken root in some parts of the left.

We welcome involvement from comrades who are in broadagreement with these points. We aim to complement rather thancompete with existing publications on the Labour left, and to crit-ically engage with ideas from across the left.

ISSUE 4Page 3

Brexit: fight the right-wing surge Sacha Ismail and Simon Hannah

page 4Stop Trump! Michael ChessumThe politics of hope Rida Vaquas

page 5Canada’s Corbyn? Interview with Sid Ryan

US labour and Trump Traven Leyshonpages 6-7

Reply to Christine Shawcroft Jamie GreenMomentum and democracy Suzanne Gannon

page 9-10Women’s fightback Maria ExallMinnie Lansbury Janine Booth

International Women’s Day Rida Vaquas

page 11Labour: Copeland, Stoke, Derby TAs

Back pageInterview with Picturehouse strikers

Contents

the clarion panel:Simon Hannah, Rida Vaquas, Sacha Ismail,Edd Mustill, Rhea Wolfson, Jill Mountford,Michael Chessum, Nik Barstow, Dan Jeffrey

Get involved:• I want to contribute content to future editionsof The Clarion• I want to take out a trial subscription of 5 issuesfor £5• I want to be a local distributor. I will take 5 is-sues each month for £4 . I will take 10 issueseach month for £8 (send £20 for 5 issues,£40 for 10 issues).Name: ................................................................Email: .................................................................Phone: ................................................................Address: .............................................................Send money via PayPal to the email addresstheclarionmag@gmail.com

This issue of The Clarion was printed on 15 February 2017Printed by Mixam, WatfordEmail: theclarionmag@gmail.comFacebook: www.facebook.com/theclarionmagTwitter: www.twitter.com/clarion_magWebsite: theclarionmag.wordpress.comAddress: BM Box 4628, London, WC1N 3XX

WHERE WE STAND

the clarion : FEB-mar 2017 Page 3

Voting with the Tories will not win support from anti-migrant voters.It is much more likely to alienate mainly younger, left-leaning, pro-mi-grant voters. In any case, vote-seeking calculations cannot be fundamental.Politics has shifted to the right – and now, in many countries, the radicalright is rising and on the offensive – because left-wing, class-based, inter-nationalist arguments have been marginalised for decades. The labourmovement must begin shifting the political debate fundamentally, or wewill continue to feel the ground break up beneath our feet.

The fightback starts… when?In November, Corbyn told the press that Labour would put amend-

ments to the Article 50 process, and if they were defeated vote against.It was Tom Watson who insisted that Labour should vote with May re-gardless, and unfortunately Corbyn conceded. No doubt the role ofbackroom people from a Stalinist background, like Seamus Milne andAndrew Murray, who positively welcome Brexit, played a role too.

Labour’s position on Brexit is obviously related to its veering abouton the decisive issue of immigration – where the general trend is to con-cede on migrants’ rights. There is a real danger that Labour, under a left-wing leader, will end up to the right of the Tories on this – as evidencedby Watson’s call for “regionalised” immigration controls which wouldrequire restriction on free movement inside Britain.

Moreover, the problem of a lack of fight from Labour is a much widerone. Take the NHS, Labour’s “chosen” issue. Despite clear policy passedat conference in September, the party continues to say little about pri-vatisation. During repeated crises over the convulsions in the social caresector, it does not speak out for its agreed and potentially popular policyof public ownership. Labour held one day of action on the NHS, butthere is no obvious evidence of plans for ongoing campaigning. Thereis a national demo for the NHS on 4 March but the party has not donemuch to promote or mobilise for it.

The right-wing press attacks the Labour Party for supporting strikes,but in reality the support is rather limited. Just as Corbyn did not appearon the junior doctors’ picket lines, apparently under pressure from theLabour right, it seems hard to get him to picket lines generally. JohnMcDonnell appears more often, but it seems to be in a personal capacity,not as a Labour leader. This at a time when every spark of organisationand struggle needs to be nurtured and fanned into the biggest possibleflame. The situation is difficult, but the only way to avoid it gettingharder still is to shift to a more active, fighting stance in deed and notjust words (though a few more words would help too).

Nationalism, liberalism – or class politicsLabour’s difficulties are reflective of a wider trend in world politics –

the crisis of labour movement-based parties in the face of those move-

ments’ decay and the pushthe economic crisis hasgiven to right-wing, na-tionalist populism.

The press, crowing atLabour’s troubles, is full oftalk about the workingclass – but almost alwaysin connection with nation-alistic views which havegaineds serious grip insome sections of the work-ing class, particularlyamong older, white work-ers in small towns andareas which have seen atraumatic decline of indus-try. Many commentators

have said, and they are right,that Labour faces the risk of

being squeezed or pulled apart between a socially conservative, nationalistpolitics strong in the areas that voted Brexit and a fundamentally liberal,pro-European politics in the big cities.

But the alternative, cutting across these divisions and capable of ap-pealing to workers in both “sections” and of all backgrounds who havebeen battered and will continue to be battered unless we can rally thelabour movement to fight back, is precisely class-based politics. It’s easyto say, harder to do – but not even said nearly enough.

The socialist left needs to act as the generator for a great labourmovement discussion about what a 21st century working-class poli-tics looks like and how we begin to make it a reality.

BREXIT

Labour needs a better, clearer course

Continued from the front page

Labour’s Deputy leader Tom Watson has floated the idea of “re-gionalised” immigration controls in which some areas of the coun-try would have tighter restrictions than others.

1. Watson specifically justifies this by saying “there are parts of thecountry [de-industrialised areas that voted for Brexit] where immi-gration may be putting pressure on public services like schools andhospitals” – so his proposals are specifically motivated on endorsingthe false and disastrous idea that immigration is the reason for thecrisis in public services.

2. The press has reported this as Labour “planning” regional immi-gration controls. Watson says this is the “debate that is going on rightnow in Labour”. Once again, what is actually going on is a completelybypassing of the party’s democratic structures and processes by theLabour right. Note that the only motions submitted to Labour Partyconference last year on these issues were in favour of defending andextending migrants’ rights and free movement.

3. If meant seriously, regional immigration controls would requireborder controls of at least some sort within Britain, or at least a mas-sively expanded system of immigration police and a further militari-sation of British society, with all the obvious consequences fordemocracy generally as well as a growth of racism.

The threat of the Labour right taking Labour to the right of theTories on immigration is real. Labour members and the wholelabour movement must push back.

Regional immigration controls? StopLabour moving right of the Tories!

Labour needs to come out fighting against the damaging effects of Brexit

For an alternative point of view please read Stuart King’s article on our website: theclarionmag.wordpress.com/2017/02/03/brexitmoveon

The clarion : FEB-Mar 2017 Page 4

trump

By Michael Chessum

There are very few moments in political ac-tivism when you can feel a movement becom-ing truly massive and spontaneous – in whichturnouts at meetings and demonstrations in-explicably rocket, and the volume of peoplevolunteering their time and energy com-pletely outstrips the capacity of any “leader-ship” to centrally direct it.

This is how the student movement of 2010felt, and to some extent the anti-austeritymovement of 2011. Other than the studentmicrocosm of ‘cops off campus’ in 2013-14, theanti-Trump movement of recent weeks is theonly other time I have witnessed this kind ofexplosion.

On Monday 30th January, at barely a day’snotice, tens of thousands of people crammedinto Whitehall in protest Trump’s proposedstate visit and Theresa May’s complicity in giv-ing the new American President cover as hesigned an edict banning muslims from thecountry; tens of thousands more protested na-tionwide. In London and across the country,the crowds were noticeably young and unsea-soned, and carried homemade signs.

When the organisers of that protest called aLondon-based activist meeting in the suitablysurreal neo-classical setting of St Pancraschurch, well over 200 came, this time at about48 hours notice. The meeting was not a rally –and although it heard speeches, it spent mostof its time split into working groups which arenow undertaking bannermaking, video mak-ing, meme generation, community outreach,and planning for the February 20th day of ac-

tion for migrants’ rights called with One DayWithout Us. Well over 50 events are alreadyplanned nationwide – you can view and addthem on an interactive map at www.stoptrump.org.uk/map

A radical momentTo understand the significance of those

crowds, and the crowds that will come againon February 20th, you have to understand whatthey are really saying and thinking. It is impos-sible to gauge exactly what people have comeonto the streets for – but it is certainly fair toassume that this is about more than Trump,and more than an objection to Theresa May’sunwholesome closeness to his administration.What this movement is really about – or rather,what it must become about – is holding up amirror to our own society: its disgracefulrefugee policy, its normalised racism and anti-muslim bigotry, its domination by an elite whoturn working class people against each other

while serving the interests of big business. This radicalism has found the broadest of

expressions. Just prior to the 200-strong ac-tivist meeting in St Pancras Church, the StopTrump coalition – for which I am an organiser– held its founding meeting. Attending werethe general secretaries of major trade unions,Black Lives Matter, famous newspaper colum-nists, grassroots student activists and housingcampaigns, NGO fulltimers, and self-organ-ised migrants. While the initial call to protestwas put out by Owen Jones, the Stop Trumpcoalition is genuinely broad, not dominated byany particular group or personality, and self-consciously committed to opening a space inwhich a variety of strategies and tactics canfeed off and support each other.

There is another anti-Trump coalition in play– Stand Up To Trump, an initiative of StandUp to Racism, Stop the War and the People’sAssembly (including the SWP, Socialist Action,Counterfire and the Communist Party – mostof whom were, notably, pro-Brexit). Unity is ofcourse a good thing, and at a local level activistsare already working seamlessly together – butunity is also more than a formality. The currentdivisions stem from a range of differences – onhow to build a genuinely inclusive coalition, onthe tenability of the SWP (which recently cov-ered up rape allegations against a senior mem-ber) to lead a movement against a misogynisticPresident, and on what Brexit and Trumpmean. To unite, we will have to address andovercome these differences.

In its explosive energy, its ability to speak tocommunities the left rarely reaches and its po-litical breadth, the Stop Trump movementrepresents an opportunity to bring mobilisa-tion and legitimacy behind causes that untilrecently were just desperate, defensive slogans.

The resistance starts here

Stop Trump!

By Rida Vaquas (Secretary of Oxford Uni-versity Labour Club, a member of the YoungLabour NC and an editor for The Clarion)

It is always a sign of a good protest whenyou find it nearly impossible to find yourfriends and find yourself next to people youdon’t know at all. It means that something ishappening, there is a movement emerging be-yond the usual wearied protesters.

In these contexts it makes little sense tosneer at the newly engaged – “Where wereyou during the record deportations underObama?” or something similar. There is noone on Earth, even the most active cam-paigner, who was born with an awareness ofall the horrors that take place in this society,let alone a sensation of feeling impelled to act.Even the people who pride themselves ontheir political experience, and their politicalknowledge, and their record of fighting injus-tice, had their first demonstration sometime,

the first time they thought: “I need to confrontthis world as it is, and try to change it”.

Power with the peopleThe greatest danger facing society is not

that people get angry about every injusticethat has taken place, but that they never getangry at all, as millions of people don’t. If2,500 people can come out in Oxford on arainy Monday evening, that is something totake heart in. Oppressors partly work by en-gendering a sense of powerlessness amongstpeople who comprehend injustice: when thehorror is so overwhelming, what can we pos-sibly do against it? The fact that people resistthat sensation of powerless is to be celebrated,it signifies taking social responsibility on ahuge scale, it signifies what we need the most:an understanding that all our existences aredependent on each other’s solidarity. Facingthe world, in all its horror and beauty, is a so-

cial and collective action.However, that doesn’t mean a mass move-

ment is automatic. Political activity over thenext few years has to be constant, but more-over, it has to pose a challenge to power.

That means strategically we must aim to dis-rupt the day-to-day functioning of the state, solong as the state enables the oppression of ourbrothers and sisters. That necessarily means as-serting the power of the working-class move-ment. Because workers as a social force have thecapacity to attack capital as a revolutionaryagent - to disrupt and throw a spanner in theworks. The politics of class is necessary to sus-tain a mass movement and make it an effectiveinstrument for social change – as the strike bythe New York taxi drivers against the executiveorder demonstrates.

There is a long struggle ahead, but wemust take heart in the fact that so many arestanding by our side across the world.

Find out more, take actionThe coalition to stop Donald Trump’s

state visit has a website atwww.stoptrump.org.uk

Inspiration and politics in the fight against Trump

Page 5

Sid Ryan: Canada’s Corbyn? North America

By Traven LeyshonI’m President of a small AFL-CIO Central Labor Council, the Green Mountain Labor Council in Vermont, and I was an organiser withLabor for Bernie, I’m a member of a US socialist organisation called Solidarity.

Resistance is breaking out all over, with much more to come. From the day Trump was elected president, millions of people began to resist hisagenda, many of whom had not been political previously. Demonstrations broke out in American cities and airports. Police chiefs, mayors andgovernors declared they would not implement his attack on immigrants. Three millions, mainly women, took to the streets on January 21st todefend womens’ rights. More recently, protest actions were held at 60 airports to demand an end to the ban on citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the country. The moment is bursting with possibility. The labor battlecry “An injury to one is an injury to all”takes on new urgency.

However, the inconvenient truth is that the labor movement, aside from social media posts, has been largely missing in action. The AFL-CIO,for example, no doubt acting at the request of the construction unions, issued a statement explicitly calling for support for the Dakota AccessPipeline. Many top labor officials are clearly looking to strike deals with the Trump administration just as they’d been looking to strike deals withObama or Clinton. That’s for many of them their only concept of how to function. Many but not all the building trade unions have gone furtherin praising Trump and attacking the unions who stood with Native Americans in opposing the pipeline projects.

Unions that supported Sanders supported the resistance at Standing Rock. The New York Taxi Workers’ Alliance refused to take fares to andfrom JFK Airport during the travel ban protests. ILWU Local 10 shut down the port of Oakland in northern California.

Most people look to varying degrees to the Democratic Party as the only viable alternative, despite the fact that the Party is probably the majorfactor in the ascendancy of Trump to the presidency. Sanders is encouraging his supporters to join the Democrats and turn it into a grassrootsparty. My view is: good luck with that. Hopefully they will learn some lessons and a chunk of that effort will split off and be some kind of masssplit in the party.

This a moment bursting with possibility but it can soon be transformed from possibility into the political dead-end of the Democrats if stepsaren’t taken in the direction of independent working class politics. However, I believe we can begin to go beyond resistance and advocate a visionfor the future. We need a common agenda, to marry defence and offence. The most promising work is happening at local and state level: socialmovements, Black Lives Matter, and a rising and reinvigorated women’s movement. The more democratic and progressive unions are coming outof their silos, looking for a way to come together. The key goal is to bring back the working-class Trump supporters who previously voted forObama and Sanders – there’s millions of them. Unions that represent manufacturing found that up to half of their members who voted, votedfor Trump, largely because of Clinton’s record on trade deals like NAFTA and TPP.

The goal of any new formation has got to be to win back those working-class Trump supporters.

The clarion : FEB-MAR 2017

The US workers’ movement and Trump

The shine is slowly coming off JustinTrudeau’s Liberal administration after itspost-election honeymoon, featuring a genderbalanced cabinet, steps to legalise marijuana,and nods towards electoral reform – but aneconomic programme wedded to free tradedeals and the construction of gas pipelines.

The New Democratic Party – Canada’slabour party, with a similar structure of unionaffiliates – briefly looked set to win the 2015federal elections. When it came a surprise third,members blamed the party’s centrist leadershipand removed its leader, Thomas Mulcair. Now,Sid Ryan, one of Canada’s most prominenttrade unionists, is considering running.

Ryan is a first generation Irish immigrant.Having moved to Canada from a working-classdistrict of Dublin in the 1970s, he began workas a plumber and pipe fitter in an Ontario fac-tory. His early politics were informed by the re-alisation that while a large part of theworkforce was Caribbean, “there were no peo-ple of colour in any of the management posi-tions at all. So it was black activists who got me

into politics,” he says. On his last day at theplant, in October 1976, he organised a walkoutagainst the wage policies of then prime minis-ter Pierre Trudeau, father of Justin.

After that Ryan spent 17 years working forOntario Hydro in a heavy water nuclear facility,eventually rising from the shop floor to becomepresident of the Canadian Union of PublicEmployees and then leader of the Ontario Fed-eration of Labor. Unlike in the UK, NDP lead-ers do not have to be current members ofparliament. Ryan is a candidate who, even morethan Sanders or Corbyn, is a genuine outsider,having never served as a frontline politician.

If anything, these outsider credentials are aselling point. Ryan describes himself as “a rad-ical and a grassroots socialist”. “If you’re goingto have someone like Trump, who turns thingsupside down from the right, you need someoneto do it from the left as well – with a bold so-cially progressive programme”, he told me.“People are hungry for that kind of leadership.”

Asked to describe the most important mo-ments of his career, Ryan speaks about his roleorganising workers during the anti-globalisa-tion movement and the Battle of Seattle in1999; and about his role in the 1997 campaignagainst Bill 136, which would have curtailedthe right to strike across Ontario – and whichwas beaten back by co-ordinated strike actionand marches on the legislature.

Many of Ryan’s proposals would be recog-nisable to followers Corbyn or Sanders. He ad-vocates large scale public sector borrowing to

build homes and create jobs. He promises tomake the NDP “the centre of popular resist-ance to neoliberal policy”, linking the electoralproject directly to social movements. His plat-form directly addresses the rust belt – promis-ing to reverse decades of free trade agreementsand underinvestment.

The point of this kind of radicalism is notabstract – it is about becoming electable again.“I remember the exact day when the NDP lostthe (2015 federal) election,” says Ryan. “It waswhen we committed to a balanced budget. Theresult was that the NDP looked like the Tories,while the Liberals promised to borrow and in-vest billions.”

Across the world, leftwingers and progres-sives are looking to the Corbyn project for in-spiration – and that inspiration is a two-waystreet. If Corbyn won an election, he wouldneed allies around the world; and to get there,activists must be able to feel a part of a globalmovement for radical change.

With Donald Trump in the White House,we will need those international alliancesmore than ever.

In December Michael Chessum visitedCanada on behalf of Momentum, and metwith Sid Ryan, an Irish-born trade unionleader who may be running for leadership ofthe New Democrats, the Canadian equiva-lent of the Labour Party. You can read alonger version of this interview at:theclarionmag.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/sidryan

the clarion : FEB-Mar 2017

In the February issue of Labour Brief ing (not the magazine run by theLabour Representation Committee, but the other one of the samename), Labour NEC member Christine Shawcroft justified the coupagainst democracy in Momentum. Here Lambeth activist Jamie Greenreplies. Jamie stood on the “Grassroots Momentum: for democracyand socialism” slate for the new Momentum National CoordinatingGroup (results out 17 February).

The recent decision by Momentum’s steering committee to implementa new constitution have sent shockwaves through the organisation andput a huge question mark over its future.

There’s been somewhat of a ‘shut up and get on with it’ line from thosearound the current leadership. Knowing they have the keys to the car (orthe name on the private company that owns the data at least), they havebeen able to carry on without debating the underhand implementation ofa new constitution too much. However, a rare break of rank was seen inChristine Shawcroft’s print-only article defending the coup in the LabourBriefing.

Her piece defends the actions of Jon Lansman et al and the new rulesthey have ushered in. Despite its small circulation, I believe some of the ar-ticle’s key points deserve to be aired and duly critiqued.

The coupThe coup is justified by Christine in the ways we’ve come expect. She

runs a cliche’d narrative about proverbial ultra-leftists wanting to split theorganisation. Ironically, this ‘Reds under the bed’ tactic is often used by theLabour right.

She claims about the left groupings in Momentum: ‘…they were only

interested in building their own little group and wanted to use Momentumto do so’. She is not specific about who she is referring to, nor does she citeany evidence for her claim, such as a specific encounter or an article thatwould suggest this.

This is typical of the tactics employed by the wider leadership in this de-bacle – creating anonymous common enemies (usually just labelling all suchdissenters as ‘trots’ – again a popular trope by the right) and attributingnegative intentions to them. However, I am yet to see any evidence thatany left groups are conspiring to make Momentum split off into a politicalparty to rival Labour as is suggested by the likes of Laura Murray andOwen Jones.

The other justifications for the implementation of a diktat constitutionare that a third of members live in areas without a local group and, morebizarrely, that the behaviour of ‘the ultra left’ at a National Committeemeeting in Birmingham (where Shawcroft’s faction lost a key vote) meant‘…something had to be done’.

On the former, Christine doesn’t consider a) The possibility that Mo-mentum should work to build more groups to overcome this, and b) thatit’s patently untrue to say that a lack of groups makes having delegates orrepresentatives structures impossible. In the NC meeting she cites, therewere delegates present in the room who represented areas without a group.

Shawcroft’s wider narrative is crammed full of dishonesty. For exampleshe claims that members approved the new constitution when they were infact told to quit if they were against it. Such dishonesty is rife throughoutthe piece, particularly so in her appraisal of the new system of governingMomentum.

Shawcroft states that the new constitution is what is needed to deliver aJeremy Corbyn government. However, she offers few clear direct reasons

The Central issue

By Suzanne Gannon

For an organisation whose raison d’etre is to support Jeremy Corbyn indemocratising the Labour Party to have drawn on the worst of politicalhacks and spins is deeply troubling.

I attended the Yorkshire and Humber Regional meeting [on 22 Jan].What I heard expressed from the majority of branches was outrage andcondemnation of the undemocratic way in which the existing structures(as imperfect as they were) had been dissolved and a constitution imposedon us by fiat, and with absolutely no consultation. What I heard from therepresentative from “Team Momentum” and the few branches that sup-ported the actions, was fear mongering.

There were attempts to mollify our hurt with apologetic admissions thatthe process that had been undertaken “pretty imperfectly” and that it was“unfortunate”. But these acknowledgements of harm or wrongdoing wereimmediately coupled with imperatives and modal verbs of necessity, claim-ing that the actions taken by Jon Lansman and the handful of SteeringCommittee members who agreed with him were “absolutely necessary”and “had to be kept” secret as they were being cooked up because Momen-tum was “descending into factional warfare” and was, apparently, “on theverge of being proscribed by the Labour Party” (the representative fromMomentum HQ said this no less than five times in the meeting!).

As a result of this impending disaster or worse, Momentum’s HQ “hadno choice” but to act in the way they did; indeed one contributor said thatMomentum’s headquarters were “forced into that situation”. The support-

ers of Jon Lanman’s actions repeatedly used phrases such as “had to”, andresorted to quasi-legalistic scare tactics that claimed without dissolvingthe old structures and imposing the new constitution on members withoutconsultation, that somehow Momentum itself was “illegal”, or that “theNational Conference would have been illegal”. It was claimed that theplebiscite posing as a survey was “the only way of consulting on the con-stitution”.

When pressed for a reason as to why Momentum had suddenly falleninto such a precarious situation that necessitated such drastic and imme-diate action outside any democratic mandate, the only reason given wasthat because the national conference intended to put policy decisions be-fore members, and because Momentum allows anyone who is eligible tobe a member of the Labour Party and supporters of its principles to be amember (just as the Socialist Education Association and other affiliatedsocialist societies do), that “there was a real threat of non-Labour membershaving influence” over Labour Party policy. When it was pointed out thatthe Fabian Society, Labour First and Progress all do devise and promotepolicy within the Labour Party, and that they allow members to be part oftheir organisation who are not Labour Party members, we were told thatsomehow Momentum fell into a different category because we were sobig.

If indeed, this was a genuine argument, why was it not put before themembership? Why were we not allowed to know about any of these so-called dangers and allowed to debate how to deal with them? Why didone person (or a handful of people) feel that they had the sole responsibilityto decide to do away with the existing democratic structures in a matter

Momentum, democracy, socialism

A response to Christine ShawcroftSpinning the Moment

Pages 6-7

The Central issue

why. The closest justification given is the claim that newly engaged activistsentering the organisation following Corbyn’s victory wanted a movementorganised by digital democracy. She, again, does not follow this up with anytangible evidence. She does however cite the survey circulated by head officeas proof that members wanted the new constitution. There are a few prob-lem with this idea:

Firstly, anyone who’s done even the most basic level of study in method-ologies will tell you that surveys are tricky things to write if you want ac-curate data. It is, of course, far too easy to write questions that nudgeparticipants in one direction or another to suit what you want to find. Themain basis for OMOV derives from a survey question on how ‘key deci-sions’ should be made, that offers a binary choice and where there is a clearimbalance and lack of neutrality in the wording of these choices. For ex-ample, the leadership’s preferred option, uses positive words like ‘accessiblemeans’ which isn’t featured in the other option. This was likely, intentionallyor not, to send users one way.

E-democracySecondly, as I outlined in a previous article, the new constitution offers

anything but member-led democracy and it certainly does not offer a fed-eral form of democracy as Shawcroft claims. In reality, the new governing‘National Coordinating Group’  makes nearly all key decisions and 60% ofseats will be taken up by external bodies such as Jon Lansman’s blog ‘LeftFutures’, rather than members or representatives from groups.

Shawcroft ends her article by asserting ‘…we need to build Momentumas a democratic, member-led organisation’ and that ‘All members andgroups are welcome to take part’.  Seemingly she does not get the irony ofclaiming to be the champion of democracy in one breath and, in the other,welcoming groups and members to get involved with something where theparameters, rules and structures have already been decided without them.

However, this is likely indicative of the Lansmanite plan to run Momen-

tum - with a small group at the top, deciding the campaigns that membersshould spend their time on or the slates they should vote for inside Labour.What she and the current leadership do not understand is that this will notempower or enthuse members and it will not get them active. It certainlywill not build the movement needed to transform the Labour Party andwider society and this trajectory will likely result in Momentum resemblingthe many failed left groups of the past.

The futureThe Momentum coup has winded a once buoyant organisation in which

many of us have put much hope and hard work into. The effort put in bythe leadership of asserting their dominance and implementing their con-stitution has diverted time and resources away from campaigning on keyissues like the NHS crisis or building for the many huge battles that faceus inside the Labour Party.  

Following the coup many Momentum groups have continued to reporta downturn in activity and attendance at meetings. History will not lookkindly on us if we botch the amazing chance we’ve been given to shapeLabour and make socialist politics a force in the UK, especially if it’s lostdue to factional wrangling predicated on a fight against the manufactured‘enemy within’.

Christine Shawcroft, Jon Lansman and the like may yet have won thebattle of Momentum’s direction and got their hands on the steeringwheel. Their scaremongering against the left has ultimately weakenedour collective hand and put us back into first gear.

of minutes, and impose another structure on us without any semblance ofdemocratic debate? If members of Momentum do not protest at the un-democratic way it has been imposed (which in reality, is a coup), then wehave no place at the table insisting that the Labour Party changes its un-democratic practices, as we are settling for a socialist alternative that hasuntied itself from democracy.

Why we can’t “just put this behind us and fight the Tories”Momentum has attracted thousands of socialists back to the Labour

Party; it has also attracted thousands of people completely new to politicsto socialism and the Labour Party. I salute these young people who are ei-ther volunteering their time or working for low wages in order to furtherthis noble political ideal. At the same time, I worry about what messagesthe actions of their elders are communicating to these younger peopleabout how politics should be done on the left.

Doing a hatchet job on your enemy and demonising groups that don’tagree with you (calling them “wreckers”, “hypocrites”, “rightwing proxies”,“overpaid middle class”, “militantly hostile to Labour”, “dinosaurs”, “saba-teours”, “the Fifth Column”, “entryists”, and of course “Trots” — all termsthat have been bandied around on social media) should have no place indiscourse amongst socialists. Such actions and language are those of bullies,not comrades. No matter what structure we eventually end up adopting, ifbullying and autocratic rule from the centre is not stopped and dealt with,Momentum will have a fatal flaw at its heart. And a generation of new ac-tivists will have learnt that stepping on your perceived enemy’s neck is theonly way to advance your cause.

The latest actions from Momentum’s centre has, in my opinion, createdthe groundwork that I fear will lead some of our members down the verysame path those politicians most of us decry have trod. This needs to berecognised and rectified. It is not that those who have carried out this coupneed to be publicly castigated (we need to find a way for all sides to make

peace and save face); but the younger members need to be informed thatthe actions taken, were ill-advised and undemocratic and should neveragain be attempted by anyone calling themselves a socialist.

So, while we may get through this current crisis, and we may be able tofind a way to heal the rifts that have grown between different factions ofthe movement around Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, I worry about theyounger members, who are, after all, the future. What will they be takingaway from all this? I do not doubt their idealism or their motives. What Iworry about is that they are being taught by those who should know muchmuch better than this, that “the ends justifies the means” if you are con-vinced that you are right.

This is not the “new way of doing politics” Momentum promised; itis the oldest, dirtiest way of doing politics; one that those of us with po-litical histories recognise and despise.

• Suzanne Gannon is delegate from Momentum’s Yorkshire andHumberside region to the Momentum NC. She originally publishedthis report on her blog creativepens.net

Momentum grassroots networking conference, London, 11 MarchOn 28 January the Momentum National Committee met in defiance ofthe coup and agreed to organise a networking conference for Momentumgroups on Saturday 11 March. 10am-5pm, London (venue tbc). More information at bit.ly/2jY44i8

Read reports of the NC • By Ed Whitby and Tracy McGuire: bit.ly/2ktDWMj• By Nick Wrack: bit.ly/2lg4Mf9

ntum coup

In the fifth chapter of his 1952 collection of essays In Place of Fear,former miner and trade unionist, Labour politician and NHS founderAneurin Bevan wrote:

“One of the consequences of the universality of the British HealthService is the free treatment of foreign visitors. This has given rise to agreat deal of criticism, most of it ill-informed and some of it deliberatelymischievous. Why should people come to Britain and enjoy the benefitsof the free Health Service when they do not subscribe to the nationalrevenues? So the argument goes. No doubt a little of this objection is stillbased on the confusion about contributions to which I have referred. Thefact is, of course, that visitors to Britain subscribe to the national revenuesas soon as they start consuming certain commodities, drink and tobaccofor example, and entertainment. They make no direct contribution to thecost of the Health Service any more than does a British citizen.

“However, there are a number of more potent reasons why it wouldbe unwise as well as mean to withhold the free service from the visitorto Britain. How do we distinguish a visitor from anybody else? AreBritish citizens to carry means of identification everywhere to prove thatthey are not visitors? For if the sheep are to be separated from the goatsboth must be classified. What began as an attempt to keep the HealthService for ourselves would end by being a nuisance to everybody. Hap-pily, this is one of those occasions when generosity and conveniencemarch together. The cost of looking after the visitor who falls ill cannotamount to more than a negligible fraction of £399,000,000, the total

cost of the Health Service. It is not difficult to arrive at an approximateestimate. All we have to do is look up the number of visitors to GreatBritain during one year and assume they would make the same use ofthe Health Service as a similar number of Britishers. Divide the totalcost of the Service by the population and you get the answer. I had theestimate taken out and it amounted to about £200,000 a year. Obviouslythis is an overestimate because people who go for holidays are not likelyto need a doctor’s attention as much as others. However, there it is, forwhat it is worth, and you will see it does not justify the fuss that hasbeen made about it.

“The whole agitation has a nasty taste. Instead of rejoicing at the op-portunity to practice a civilized principle, Conservatives have tried toexploit the most disreputable emotions in this among many other at-tempts to discredit socialized medicine.

“Naturally when Britons go abroad they are incensed because they arenot similarly treated if they need the attention of a doctor. But that alsoI am convinced will come when other nations follow our example andhave health services of their own. When that happens we shall be ableto work out schemes of reciprocity, and yet one more amenity will havebeen added to social intercourse. In the meantime let us keep in mindthat, here, example is better than precept.”

• For the whole chapter, in which Bevan discusses the philosophybehind the NHS more generally, see the Socialist Health Associationwebsite: www.sochealth.co.uk

the clarion : FEB-mar 2017 Page 8

battle of ideas

Don’t let racism into the NHS “One of the consequences of the universality of

the British Health Service is the free treatment offoreign visitors. This has given rise to a great dealof criticism, most of it ill-informed and some of itdeliberately mischievous.

“Why should people come to Britain and enjoythe benefits of the free service when they do notsubscribe to the national revenues? So theargument goes...

“The whole agitation has a nasty taste. Insteadof rejoicing at the opportunity to practice acivilized principle, Conservatives have tried toexploit the most disreputable emotions in thisamong many other attempts to discreditsocialized medicine.”

Nye Bevan, founder of the National Health Service

Page 9the clarion : FEB-mar 2017

labour party

Crunch time in Stoke and CopelandBy Chris Spence

Understandably, considering the way these by-elections have beenbuilt up in the media, a lot of people want to know how it's going inStoke.

While the bookies have Labour and UKIP more or less level-peggingsince the #FakeNews about the Leave.EU “poll” that showed UKIP win-ning, and despite almost two years of consistent UKIP decline at thepolls, there are still plenty of people in the media happy to talk the Kip-pers up.

But Labour is the only progressive choice. Hundreds of Labour ac-tivists have been out speaking to voters in the largest drive in recentyears. Comrades say the talk of a UKIP surge is just that: talk.

There is no evidence of a mass transfer away from either ourselves ortraditional Tory voters. Our pledges seem to be holding up, and everysign shows that this is the same for the Tories. If anything, there seemsto be a small shift away from UKIP and towards Labour.

Just because UKIP are running a poor campaign is no reason for com-placency. With the general tone of political debate vomited out of thebroadcast media and off the pages of the press doing their job for them,UKIP don't need a well-run campaign because they're swimming withthe stream. Every copy of the Daily Mail, Daily Express, Daily Star, andSun sold in Stoke does a more effective job of making UKIP's case thanUKIP itself ever could.

Make no mistake, this election is crunch time for the Labour Party

in Stoke – but win or lose, we won’t be going away anytime soon, andlocal members won’t allow the upsurge in activity to just fizzle out afterthe election.

The hard work of rebuilding in those communities has begun, andwe must never falter from that task again.

• Chris is a party activist and councillor in neighbouring Newcastle-under-Lyme, who put his name forward for the Stoke Central candi-dacy but was not included in the selection by the party machine. Thiswas written two weeks before the election and published immediatelyon our website. • A fuller version of this article can be found at: bit.ly/2l4LtmQ

The Clarion has carried several articles about the Copeland by-election, which takes place six days after this issue comes out, and we havehad a number of activists from Copeland write in to thank us and praise our coverage (and offer one or two corrections!)

We were particularly pleased to hear from Rachel Holliday, the Momentum supporter who came close to be selected as Labour’s candidate(losing 76-89 after members who joined after the start of June were excluded from voting). Rachel wrote: “I have just read your report on theCopeland campaign trail and I wanted to say thank you… for supporting us in Copeland and again for your lovely feedback from people outthere. It means such a lot.”

A London based activist who has been up to campaign in the constituency has sent us a brief report of the experience:“We based ourselves in Millom, in the South of Copeland. Many residents there considers themselves forgotten – even when comparing them-

selves to the ‘them up there’ residents of Whitehaven in the North. Hardly surprising that people felt this way when you consider that Copelandhas suffered the largest cut in budget of any council in England. On the doorstep we encountered many former Labour voters who were uncertainthis time. What was surprising though was how many were ready to reaffirm their allegiance after just a few minutes chat about local issues.Labour’s plans to help communities went down well. It was an incredibly rewarding place to campaign, as it was possible to feel you were makinga real difference.

“It certainly gives me hope that anything is possible if the Labour membership can mobilise in future elections.”

By Helen Clark and Callum Salfield, Derbyshire Momentum

Derbyshire Momentum has thrown its weightfour square behind the Derby Teaching Assis-tants in their dispute with Labour-led DerbyCity Council.

The TAs have been striking since June 2016against the council’s imposition of a “fair pay” re-view which will cause some workers to lose a quar-ter of their annual pay packet.

In Derbyshire Momentum, we believe thatLabour Councils can and should be at the fore-front of resistance to the Conservative austerityagenda.

We ask the council, working with the unions,to find a solution to the dispute.

• Nottingham Momentum activist Pete Radcliffadds: My CLP, Broxtowe, has written to the NECcalling for it to discuss the dispute and consider

action against Derby council. Jeremy Corbyn hasstated support for the TAs – he needs to act onthis urgently. By a party conference

delegate

Labour has not been transformed. The Labour right is fighting back

all along the line – with success. Fromthe constitutional amendments passedat last year’s conference to the contin-uing purge of left-wing activists andsuspension of left-wing local parties,from candidate selections in Stokeand Copeland to the London YoungLabour AGM, the right is out-organ-ising and beating back the left.

The left needs to seriously discusswhat to do about this. We hope tocarry analysis of this problem from anumber of perspectives in our nextissue.

Labour and the Derby TAs’ struggle

Sue Bonser, Unison Schools Convenor forDerby City Council told The Clarion:

“As schools convenor for DCC my number onepriority here and now is supporting our mem-bers in their campaign. However my widerconcerns are for the future of the LabourParty in Derby. Derby has always been an in-dustrial town with a strong Labour and unionbackground. Other parties including UKIP arenow moving in and convincing not only ourmembers but the wider traditional Labourvoters that the Derby Labour Party is not aparty that represents them. This is a difficult-to-defend position at the present time. I amashamed that only one Labour councillor hascome out openly in support of our struggle.”

Labour right gainingground

the clarion : FEB-Mar 2017 Page 10

Minnie Lansbury: example for Labour women

international Women’s day

By Janine Booth, RMT activist and author of Guiltyand Proud of It, Poplar’s Rebel Councillors

Minnie Lansbury was a school teacher, suffragette, championof thevictims of war, rebel councillor and socialist martyr.

Born Minnie Glassman in 1889, she was the daughter of Jewish immi-grants to the East End of London, who had fled the anti-semitic tyrannyof Russian Poland. Born into a storm of working-class revolt and left-wingpolitical agitation, Minnie became a socialist and a campaigner for votesfor women, leaving her teaching job in 1915 to become full-time assistantsecretary of Sylvia Pankhurst’s East London Federation of Suffragettes.

She and her husband Edgar Lansbury (son of future Labour leaderGeorge) campaigned against the First World War, and were arrested ata peace demonstration at the Dock Gates in December 1916. Labourdemanded representation on the committees that administered war relief,and Minnie became a member of Poplar’s War Pensions Sub-committee.She became well-known as a fierce advocate: she refused to administerthe funds in the “neutral” way expected, but acted more like a union rep-resentative for widows, orphans and disabled servicemen.

Enthused by the Russian Revolution, Minnie became a CommunistParty member as well as a Labour Party member. It was then possible tobe both, and the unity between different shades of opinion in the EastEnd’s labour movement was one of its strengths.

When newly-enfranchised working-class voters elected Labour coun-cils across London in 1919, Poplar Borough Council appointed MinnieLansbury as an Alderman. Continuing her community activism, sheopened her house to constituents every morning, and delivered signifi-cant improvements in maternity and child welfare provision. Poplar’sLabour Council radically improved services to the working-class resi-dents who had elected it.

But when economic crisis hit, Poplar Borough Council faced a choice:

to cut services, raise rates or defy an unjust funding system. It chose thelatter, and refused to collect the precepts for cross-London bodies. Asthe councillors, including Minnie, went to court, thousands of peoplejoined demonstrations in their support. Minnie was imprisoned at thestart of September 1921, along with 29 of her fellow councillors. Stillthey held their nerve, Minnie causing a great fuss in Holloway prison todemand better conditions and fight for the councillors’ cause.

After six weeks in prison, the councillors won. They were freed fromprison, and the government rushed through legislation to change the-funding system so that rich boroughs paid in much more and working-class boroughs like Poplar were paid much more. It was a huge victory.

But imprisonment had taken its toll on Minnie’s health, and on 1January 1922, aged just 32, she died of influenza and pneumonia. Tensof thousands of people marched through the East End at her funeral,paying tribute to a great socialist and a great champion of workers’and women’s rights.

By Maria Exall, CWU activist

With a Conservative Government in power the aims of women’sequality are being co-opted for a corporate agenda.

This is done to culturally neutralise the progressive rise of women inthe world of work and in civil society. As well as pernicious racism andprejudice against immigrants, other reactionary ideas on women’s rights,on sexuality and gender identity, on disability, are becoming fashionable,and their ideological promotion threatens our liberation.

At this time of Brexit, we need to articulate a vision of a new deal forwomen workers based on global social solidarity and working class unity.We must defend the rights of our sisters who are EU citizens to live andwork here, and our immigrant sisters who are being vilified. We mustnot allow ourselves to be divided.

The extent of working class women’s support for the misogynist bil-lionaire Donald Trump in the USA was a shock for many liberal com-mentators. Yet we should not be surprised at the extent of internalisedsexism or working class deference to the rich and successful. It is notnew! The scale and fervour of the current anti-political mood in ad-vanced capitalist countries such as the USA, France and Britain is, how-ever, something we cannot ignore. The ‘anti establishment’ of the righthas a corollary, despair about democracy. Both are characteristic of au-thoritarianism which if unchecked, can lead to fascism.

The support for the Women’s March in London and for resistance tothe ‘normalisation’ of a Trump state visit is good. But we need to do muchmore. In the turmoil about Brexit we need to engage with those whofeel disenfranchised. Labour should be out there - we need engagementwith alienated voters from working class communities. We need to pro-mote socialist policies to empower communities where many have be-come poorer, ill and hopeless. We need a re-enfranchisement based oncollective aspiration and egalitarian policies.

We must fight back against the Tories’ massive cuts in public fundingto the NHS, and the destruction of social care. It is women who bear theburden of providing the care that the state withdraws. We should expectmore subtle and not so subtle messages that our place is in the home –taking care of children, and relatives who are elderly and disabled. Thecritical undermining of any effective social security demands it.

On the 29th April women from the Labour left are meeting in centralLondon to discuss how to encourage more socialist women to stand ascandidates for Labour in Parliament and local Government. Womenfrom the trade unions, Party members and community activists are com-ing together to support each other with this aim.

We need more women political representatives in Parliament and inlocal communities, not because they will automatically lead us towardsa more equal and liberating society but because we need a diverse polit-ical leadership with representatives that will articulate all aspects ofworking class concerns.

Black women, LBT women, and women with disabilities have toput themselves forward to ensure the diversity of working classwomen’s experience.

Women, fighting back on every front...

Lansbury on her way to being arrested in Poplar

Page 11

By Rida Vaquas

International Women’s Day, now marked annually on March 8th, hasbecome something more of an apolitical celebration rather than a dayof struggle. It has become a day where women who are millionairescelebrate how amazing it is that now women too can be millionaires,with perhaps a small, vague mention of things that are left to be done.

Nothing could be further from the original political aims of Interna-tional Women’s Day, a project conceptualized, organised, and fought forby revolutionary working class women. The idea of an InternationalWomen’s Day was proposed in 1910 by Clara Zetkin, a German SocialDemocrat on the radical wing of the party, at the Second InternationalConference of Socialist Women.

The resolution, passed unanimously, read as follows: “That in agree-ment with the class-conscious political and trade union organizationsof the proletariat in their countries, the socialist women of all countriesevery year arrange a Women’s Day serving the primary purpose of agi-tation for women’s suffrage. The claim must be elucidated in its inter-connections with the whole woman question in accordance with thesocialist approach. Women’s Day must have an international characterand be painstakingly prepared”.

Women’s Day was therefore conceived as not simply a celebration buta fight: as a means for working-class women to agitate for their owndemocratic rights and to organise themselves politically as women.

And this is precisely what happened. The first International Women’sDay in 1911 was dedicated to mass demonstrations for the cause ofwomen’s suffrage. In Berlin alone, 41 mass meetings were held, withhundreds more across Germany. Attendances numbered thousands inworking class areas such as Moabit and Wedding, and men were askedto leave in order for women to be admitted. The demand for women’ssuffrage was forcefully made part of socialist organisation. Hundreds ofwomen would join the SPD on this day. The same day in Poland wasmarked by women, be they Ukrainian, Jewish or Polish, demanding suf-frage “hand in hand as sisters” and, in Lviv, leading women in the so-cialist movement, such as Helena Landau, delivered speeches. In Russia,where the first International Women’s Day was celebrated in 1913, thesocialist Maria Ianchevskaia spoke of the working class women’s move-ment as a “tributary, flowing into the great river of the proletarian move-ment and giving it strength”.

Her point was proven four years later in 1917, where it was the actionof women workers (that many of their male comrades thought ill-ad-vised), which set off the Russian Revolution. On International Women’s

Day in the Russian Calendar, a mass demonstration, organised and ledby women textile workers, marched upon the Duma in Petrograd to de-mand bread. This set off a wave of strike action across Russia, leadingto 90,000 workers being on strike. International Women’s Day is a dayworthy of a revolution, not just a UN Speech.

The strength and inspiring potential of International Women’s Daylies in the legacy of these women (not only the ones we can name, butthe ones whose participation form the large impressive numbers of at-tendees) and their determination to assert women’s political interests,both against repressive states and against male-dominated party execu-tives.

International Women’s Day is a day of collective struggle, a day inwhich women across the world pour our might into fighting for our-selves, both as women, and as part of the working class. It’s a historyof banners and illegal street demonstrations and making ourselvesheard – not a history of celebrating the few women who got a seat atthe table which our sisters broke their backs to build.

international women’s day

The socialist origins of International Women’s Day

Wow — What a great issueof The Clarion!

WELL, YOU CAN!The Clarion editorial board is open to volun-teers. You don’t need previous experience. Allwe ask is you (roughly speaking) agree with thestatement we have published on page two.

Email us at THECLARIONMAG@GMAIL.COM

to find out more!

I’m sad it’s almost over.Such great articles,

interviews and reviews. Iwish there was a way Icould get involved with

writing and contributing tothis great new magazine.

the clarion : FEB-Mar 2017

theissue 4: FEB-Mar 2017

An unofficial magazine by LABOUR AND Momentum activists

Kiv: Ritzy workers have been campaigning for the Living Wage since2007. In 2014 we had thirteen strikes and won a 26% rise. Now man-agement are refusing to negotiate on our demands for the Living Wage,sick pay, maternity pay and increases for various roles. This time we’vebeen joined by Hackney, Central and Crouch End Picturehouses, whoare fighting for the same things plus union recognition, which at presentonly the Ritzy has.

Kelly: We’ve had 22 days of strike action so far [and all four cinemasstruck together for the first time on 11 February]. We’ve supported otherdisputes and causes and got out to speak at union branches, LabourParty wards and constituencies and Momentum meetings.

Kiv: We’re holding a demonstration in Leicester Square on 25 Feb-ruary, assembling outside the Empire cinema, because Cineworld, whichowns Picturehouses, has just bought that chain for £92 million. We saythe Living Wage should become the legal minimum wage. We are onlytalking about £9.75, in London.

Kelly: The CEO of Cineworld is on £1.2 million, which we justworked out is...

Kiv: £575 an hour! We come across the argument, well, you get paidmore than lots of other people in different jobs, but the thing is, all thosepeople demand higher wages. We have an opportunity and platform, be-cause we’re unionised, to stand up and fight for the Living Wage, if every-one got unionised and campaigned then we’d have a stronger movement.

Kelly: Our demands link into various things Jeremy Corbyn hasraised – a £10 an hour minimum wage, and the anti-union laws, whichhave affected our strike at every stage. Even the requirement for a postalballot is designed to cause problems; you’ve got to tell the employer whois being balloted; and you have to give them notice. Strikes can be de-clared illegal on a technicality. If we get those laws repealed, then thatimmediately makes strike action much more effective. We need to putthat on the political agenda.

Kiv: We’ve been contacted numerous times by the Picturehouselawyers alleging intimidating behaviour and unlawful picketing, toomany people on the picket line, and things like that. The Trade UnionAct makes things worse, but they’re already bad. We need to push backand expand workers’ rights.

Kelly: We recently went to a United Voices of the World [a small,

radical “independent” trade union] London branch meeting, and we metthe LSE cleaners who are taking action at the moment and workerscampaigning at Harrods – these are predominantly migrant workers. AtPicturehouse we also have many migrant workers.

The day after the Brexit vote the company’s managing director sentan email to every worker saying, don’t worry, we’ll do our best to makesure no one’s deported... It hammered home the significance of Brexitfor workers and the trade union movement. One thing I really regret isthat we didn’t do much as a branch around the EU referendum.

The Ritzy is by far the most politically engaged workplace I’ve workedin, though I’ve worked in other young workplaces and in arty cinemasand theatres. That might be because it’s London but I think the primarything is the history of struggle. People have been going to anti-Trumpdemos, people have been to anti-austerity demos, and feminist events.Quite a few registered for the Labour leadership election to vote forCorbyn, but I’ve faced some criticism for working with the Labour Partywhen, for instance, Lambeth council [where the Ritzy is based, in Brix-ton] is brutally closing down libraries.

Kiv: Some people are politically engaged, some aren’t. It’s our job torepresent members’ views and fight for their basic interests at work, andnot let the politics overwhelm that. On the other hand, sometimes ifyou make things more political, some people find it easier to get engaged.

The support we’ve had from other trade unionists is astounding. I’veonly got involved in unions in the last year, but I’ve already noticed thatwhen people see your t-shirt, they know it’s the Ritzy campaign.

Kelly: There has been this small but significant surge of left-wingLabour members in Lambeth, which is why there are people organisingto get us invited to meetings, and once we’re there we get a wider audi-ence. The councillor might sit at the back looking a bit grumpy, but thenat the end they tweet support. Vauxhall Momentum organised afundraiser for us, there have been bucket collections, and Dulwich andWest Norwood CLP are bringing their banner again [on 11 Feb].

Kiv: We hope Corbyn will come to the demo on the 25th…Kelly: The problem is everything is filtered through Corbyn’s office.

I think our fight is one of the most exciting things happening at themoment – it’s a shame if people in Corbyn’s office aren’t convinced ofthat. If Sadiq Khan, who condemned the Tube strikes, can support us,surely John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn can.

• More: ritzylivingwage@gmail.com / A Living Wage for Ritzy Staff(Facebook, includes links to the other cinemas)

theclarionmag@gmail.com @Clarion_Mag Facebook.com/theclarionmag

Cinema workers’ fightback grows

Kiv Legate, newly-elected secretary of the Ritzy cinema branch ofentertainment union BECTU (part of Prospect), and Ritzy rep KellyRogers spoke to The Clarion about Picturehouse workers’ struggle.

clarion