InsidE: Corbyn and Russia • london wins • the labour left’s tricky history • is prestona model? • arguing the right to strike • pamela fitzpatrick • women’s lives matterclass solidarity • the ucu strike, NUS and student struggles • labour and violent crime

By Mark Boothroyd, member of Camberwell and Peckham CLP and activist with Syria Solidarity UK

The Labour frontbench make great claim of their anti-war credentials, Cor-byn having been chair of the Stop the War Coalition, and having been activein the anti-war movement in 2001-2003 opposing the disastrous attacks onAfghanistan and Iraq. Stop The War are holding a speakers tour round thecountry calling for an “anti-war government”, and touting Corbyn’s admin-istration-in-waiting as just that.

Yet despite their anti-war stance, Corbyn and his front bench have been re-luctant to openly criticise the Syrian regime or its imperialist backers. WhenRussia openly entered the Syrian conflict in 2015, sending its airforce to bombopposition strongholds into submission, Corbyn said he may welcome Russiain a “peacekeeping” role.  No further condemnation was forthcoming of Rus-sia’s role in the conflict, despite its widespread targeting of civilian areas anduse of banned weapons like white phosphorous.

When the Assad regime besieged Aleppo and subject it to unrelenting bom-bardment, it was months before Corbyn issued a statement which explicitlycondemned the Syrian regime and Russian attacks, and this was only doneafter protests by Labour Party members and Syria solidarity activists overLabour’s lack of response.

Corbyn’s responseContrast this with Corbyn’s response to Trump’s strikes on a Syrian regime

airbase; this was issued within days and condemned the airstrikes, even though

they only targeted a military base and were explicitly in response to the regime’suse of chemical weapons against civilians.

Corbyn was again very quick to respond when there were reports that a mi-nuscule amount of UK aid funding was appropriated by extremist rebel groups,issuing a statement within days condemning this fact. He has been silent how-ever on the constant obstruction of aid going to opposition areas besieged bythe regime, the regular reports that UN relief aid has ended up in the handsof Syrian regime forces, or the glaring hypocrisy that the UN and World FoodProgramme (WFP) have carried out over 257 air drops of food to Deir Ezzour,a regime controlled city in north eastern Syria that was besieged by ISIS from2015-2017, yet the UN and WFP has carried out zero air drops to any besiegedopposition areas, despite repeated pleas for them.

At the 2017 Labour Party conference, Corbyn talked about the impact ofwar and authoritarian regimes worldwide, but failed to mention Syria once, afact which drew criticism from UK-based Syrian organisations.

Russia’s roleCoupled with these belated and weak condemnations of Russia and the

regime’s actions, Emily Thornberry on numerous occasions was seen lendingcredence to Assad regime claims that the problem in Aleppo was “jihadists”rather than the regime’s siege, and advocating a Homs-style solution to theconflict. Homs was another city besieged by the Assad regime during the con-flict. Civilians were forcibly evacuated from the siege, the first of many forceddisplacements engineered by the regime.Thornberry was essentially advocating for More on page 3

Oppose Assad andPutin’s crimes in Syria

£1 (unwaged 50p) A socialist magazine by Labour and Momentum activists

issue 7: May 2017

theissue 14: April 2018 clarion

The Tories and their press are full of hysteria about Russia. TheRussian regime may not pose a real threat to most people in Britain,but our labour movement should still strongly oppose it.For the people of Syria, Russian imperialism poses a clear and

immediate danger. Without Putin’s backing (plus that of the Ira-nian state and its clients) Bashar al Assad’s brutal war against thecountry’s civilian population would not maintain itself.

In many ways the situation in Syria is complex, but solidaritywith democratic forces, including the Kurdish movement, andsharp opposition to the Assad regime and its backers should bebasic. The reality is that the position taken by Jeremy Corbyn’sLabour leadership is, put mildly, not good enough. We explain why.Plus more on: internal party struggles; Labour councils; repeal-

ing the anti-union laws; women’s liberation; working-class history;and the awkward issue of Labour’s attitude to the police and crime.

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

in 2016 opened up a space for socialist politics to re-emerge into theBritish mainstream. The 2017 General Election result confirmed thatthere are millions of people in Britain who at least want to see an endto austerity, neo-liberalism and the worst miseries inflicted by thebroken capitalist system. The socialist left of the labour movementhas a historic opportunity – we must seize it now.That means an open discussion on politics and principles; assisting

the grassroots of the labour movement to develop our own policiesfor a Labour government to transform society; building on and crit-ically engaging with policies proposed by the leader’s office, theunions, constituency parties and other parts of the movement.It means democratising the Labour Party, preventing further coup

attempts against the leadership, and preventing further unjust purges,suspensions, and expulsions. It means facilitating debate on Momen-tum’s purpose, problems and future.

The Clarion is a space for and a contribution to those debates. Inaddition to news and reports from the labour movement, our cover-age will focus on:• Debate and discussion on class and class struggle today, and how

we go beyond ‘new politics’ and ‘progressive politics’ to revive work-ing-class politics.• How we make socialism’s task of building a new society based on

common ownership and need not profit the basic, unifying goal ofthe left; how we fight for bold socialist policies in the here and now.• Fighting nationalism; building working-class solidarity across

borders, and between workers of different backgrounds and from dif-ferent communities.• Taking a serious and consistent approach to equality and libera-

tion struggles.• Standing up for rational debate and against the cultures of click-

bait, conspiracy theory and instant denunciation which have unfor-tunately taken root among certain sections of the left.We welcome involvement from comrades who are in broad agree-

ment with these above points and aim to critically engage with ideasfrom across the left.

page 3The left and Putin’s regime Omar Raii

page 4Mayoral struggles Rhetta Khan, Dane Smith

Anti-racism and Zionism Dale Streetpage 5

London left progress Simon Hannah, Streatham andDAWN Labour activists

page 6Interview: ‘A party with socialists in it’

Page 7 Is Preston a model? Rosie Woods

Oxford homelessness fight Atticus Stonestrompages 8-9

Arguments for the right to strike Sacha Ismailpage 10

Interview with Pam Fitzpatrick, Harrow East PPC PAGe 11

Women’s lives matter Jennifer JonesCharnwood women, Yarl’s Wood hunger strike

page 12Breaking the chains Tony Barnsley

The Miners’ Next Step and ours Rida Vaquaspage 13

Should we support the NEC slate?Momentum NCG: for real empowerment

page 14-15Youth pages: UCU strikes and the student

movement; Dudley Young Labour; Transform NUSpage 16

More police is not the answer Ellie Clarke

Contents

editorial board

Get involved:• I want to contribute content to future editions ofThe Clarion• I want a 6 month subscription for £6 I want ayear’s subscription for £10• I want to be a local distributor. I will take 5 issuesfor 6 months for £24 . I will take 10 issues for 6months for £40 . I will take 5 issues for a year for£40 . I will take 10 issues for a year for £70 .

Name: ................................................................Email: .................................................................Phone: ................................................................Address: .............................................................Send money via PayPal to the email address theclarionmag@gmail.com

This issue of The Clarion was printed on 26 March 2018Printed by Mixam, Watford. Designed by Gemma Short & Simon HannahEmail: theclarionmag@gmail.comFacebook: www.facebook.com/theclarionmagTwitter: www.twitter.com/clarion_magWebsite: theclarionmag.wordpress.comAddress: BM Box 4628, London, WC1N 3XX

ISSUE 14

WHERE WE STAND

Edd Mustill, Rida Vaquas, Sacha Ismail,Simon Hannah, Rhea Wolfson, Rosie Woods,Daniel Round, Michael Chessum, NikBarstow, Dan Jeffery, Sahaya James

forced displacement as a solutionto the regime’s atrocities.

Thornberry wrote an article forthe Guardian on the anniversary ofthe start of the Iraq war whichmade no mention of the Assadregime or its attacks, and only ref-erenced Russia’s “devastatingblows against... proxy armies”within Syria.

What this pattern of responsesshow is that the Labour front-benchers have a tendency todownplay or legitimise the crimesof Russia and the Syrian regime.Whatever their reasoning for this– be it wilful ignorance, dangerousnaivety or calculated politics – itrepresents a line of thinking which

is apologist in its lack of consistentopposition to Russian and Syrianregime war crimes, and legitima-tion of the regime and its backers.

At a time when millions of Syr-ians are desperate for any sort ofaid, this politics only gives succourto their oppressors, and is hypo-critical in light of their stridentopposition to US-led wars and in-terventions.

Why is the leadership’s position sobad?

The Labour leadership’s failureson Syria can be traced to thelegacy of  “campist”  politics, thehangover of the old Cold War pol-itics in to the 21st century whichstill sees “the western camp” as themain enemy, regardless of the ac-tions and imperialist nature of

regimes like Russia, and the brutaldictatorship and unbridled neo-liberal capitalism of Assad’s Syria.A whole generation of socialist ac-tivists were educated to view theworld this way, and it is this whichinforms their position on Syria.

This is apparent when you ex-amine the politics of those advis-ing the frontbench on Syria. In2015 Corbyn’s main advisor onSyria – who  briefed the parlia-mentary Labour Party before the2015 vote on intervention – wasjournalist Patrick Cockburn.Cockburn has made no secret ofhis regime sympathies, callingopenly for the  UK military towork with the Assadregime against ISIS. Another cul-prit is Seumas Milne. Milne is Ex-ecutive Director of Strategy andCommunications for the LabourParty and is  well known  forhis  campist politics. Milne is onrecord as stating focusing on Rus-sian and Syrian regime atrocitiesin Syria “sometimes diverts atten-tion from other atrocities”. It’shard to imagine similar statementsbeing made about US atrocities inthe Vietnam war, or US and UKatrocities in the Iraq war. Both ofthem, coupled with Stop The War

and its troop of pro-Assad com-mentators have had a malign effecton Labour’s position on Syria.

Any criticism of Labour over itsstance on Syria is liable to bring ona deluge of rancorous apologismfrom soft and hardline Assadistswithin the Labour Party and theStop The War movement. It is ab-solutely necessary though to chal-lenge them on this. Civiliansthroughout Syria are being subjectto attacks which would provokemass demonstrations if they wereinflicted on Palestinians, yet theyare met with silence by Britain’santi-war organisations and osten-sibly anti-war politicians. This sit-uation must change.The Syrian conflict will be as

defining an event for the 21stcentury as the Palestine-Israeliconflict was for the 20th. To havea Labour leadership promulgat-ing essentially a pro-regime lineis abhorrent and a betrayal ofbasic anti-war and anti-imperial-ist principles which the Labourfrontbench claim to hold.

the clarion : April 2018 Page 3

SYRIA

Continued from page one

To read a much longer version, witha focus on the crisis in Eastern Gh-outa, go to bit.ly/2FOriaA

By Omar Raii, LewishamWest and Penge CLP

Jeremy Corbyn rightly con-demned the recent, dreadful poi-son attack in Salisbury butseemed reluctant to point thefinger at Russia straight away.

He later appeared to clarify andmade a statement that was muchmore critical about Russia’shuman rights abuses.

On the face of it, what he saidwasn’t exactly outrageous andmuch of the criticism of it comesfrom a place of classic Tory quasi-jingoism, which is ironic to say theleast. It is simply unconvincing forTories to take huge sums ofmoney from Russian oligarchsand Putin’s chums and then re-gard themselves as a credible op-position to Putin.

But the fundamental problemfrom a left viewpoint was with hisreticence to clearly condemn theRussian regime, without needingto be pushed into it. A likely rea-son for this is the influence of hisspokesperson, Seumas Milne.Milne’s history of euphemising

and downplaying Russian and So-viet crimes is so well known atthis point it would be boring torecount it.

Opposition to Putin is a pre-requisite for the left. His is, afterall, a regime that signs coopera-tion deals with European far-rightparties (Lega Nord, Front Na-tional, AfD, etc.), that has invadedseveral countries in the pastdecade, and has the largest nucleararsenal in the world.

Scepticism is important, espe-cially about what the British statesays given its history (we hardlyneed to remind ourselves of therun up to the Iraq War). But whyon earth should socialists not ex-tend their critical faculties to theclaims of a Russian President whohas denied the repeated use ofchemical weapons by his staunchally Bashar Al-Assad, that hasclaimed perhaps it was Jews whointerfered with American elec-tions, and who made vague state-ments about whether Russianforces actually invaded EasternUkraine, despite their quite bla-tantly having done so?

Soon after the awful incident,McDonnell announced he wouldnot be appearing on Russia Todayagain, saying that the Kremlin-backed broadcaster “goes beyondobjective journalism”. He calledon other Labour MPs to followsuit. Since he has categoricallystated that, while full details arenot yet known, all possibilitiesshow that the blame for the attackultimately lies with the Russiangovernment. McDonnell was right. The

left needs to be forthright in notonly denouncing Tory hypocrisyand any warmongering fromWestminster, but also theheinous crimes of the Putinregime and the continual sabre-rattling – and real military oper-ations – from Moscow.

Their opposition to Putin and ours

Solidarity with the Kurds!

As we go to press, Turkish-backed Islamist and fascistfighters have entered the city ofAfrin in Rojava (Syrian Kurdis-tan). This is a serious defeat butthe Kurdish struggle continues.• For a model motion forLabour Parties from the Kur-distan Solidarity Campaign seebit.ly/2G6bRJW• For more, by Owen Jones, in-cluding on Britain’s shamefulrole, see bit.ly/2FL57lC

Peter Tatchell writes for The Clarionon why our leadership has failedSyrians fighting for democracy

• bit.ly/2FPrS7E

The clarion : April 2018 Page 4

Labour

By Dane Vincent Smith, Leicester West CLP

For seven years Sir Peter Soulsby hasbeen Mayor of Leicester. In 2019 thepeople of Leicester will get a chance tovote for the cities mayor, so a grassrootsgroup in the party decided to trigger aballot on whether Soulsby should beautomatically selected, or a democraticprocess of open selection should takeplace in the party.

Unfortunately the process of this trig-ger ballot was a total stitch up. Manymembers had no idea that the vote wastaking place and didn’t vote. Most affili-

ates didn’t even have a members’ meeting on which way to vote. 38 party units and affiliates to 23 voted yes to put forward Soulsby

without an open selection process. However 227 individual LabourParty members wanted an open selection and 157 wanted no openselection. The local newspaper misinformed the public by saying 157wanted the mayor returned (which misses the whole point of thevote). This wasn’t about personalities, it was about democracy. Somevoting for open selection would still have voted for Soulsby. He him-self said the process was flawed. At the count half the room was dis-satisfied. The open selection process can be an opportunity to debateissues like austerity.

This now will be appealed to the NEC and lawyers have been con-tacted.

Challenge to Leicester mayoral stitch-up

By Rhetta Khan

Sir Robin Wales has beenLabour’s longest serving Mayor,elected in the London boroughof Newham.

His tenure has been overshad-owed by accusations of patronage,aggressive behaviour and bullying.He and a senior advisor werefound guilty of threatening be-haviour by the independentNewham Standards Board.

In the trigger ballot for re-se-lection as mayoral candidateWales was backed by most affili-ates, including the GMB andUSDAW but all 20 Labourbranches voted against his re-newed selection. The resulting se-lection race saw local councillor,Rokhsana Fiaz, beat Sir Robin by861 votes to 503.

Fiaz was supported by Mo-mentum but does not hail fromthe hard left. She supported Jere-

mey Corbyn in both leadershipelections but stood on a platformto appeal to the breadth of theLabour Party. This included acommitment to genuinely afford-able housing and to local democ-racy, arguing that under Wales thecouncil has been too hierarchicalwith decisions taken by a narrowgroup around the mayor. Signifi-cantly she also pledged to hold alocal vote on whether Newhamcontinued to have a directlyelected mayor. Such positionshave long been criticised from theleft for concentrating power in thehands of one person with nomeans of accountability.

Robin Wales won the initialtrigger ballot but this was set asideas complaints were made about ir-regularities. Had local activists notorganised to push these com-plaints forwards Wales wouldhave remained auto-reselected.We need to scrutinise every elec-

tion, selection and committee de-cision. We need to be bold andtenacious.

A politically corrupt cultureIn various Labour Parties up

and down the country the numberof GMB branches affiliated tolocal Labour CLPs has soared. InNewham the number of affilia-tions soared from 4 to 35 betweenthe trigger ballot and the selectionvote. It seems that either GMBbranches are taking a sudden ac-tive interest in Labour politics orsomething dodgy is going on.Strangely it has been found thatsome of the affiliated branchesknew nothing of their affiliationand some do not even meet. InLabour Parties around the coun-try the surge in GMB affiliations

appears to be in seats held by rightwing Labour MPs. Could it bethey fear the result of their owntrigger ballots? The defeat of Robin Wales is

an important victory for the leftand a vote against a directlyelected mayor in Newham wouldbe a step forwards in renewinggenuine local democracy.

Rokhsana Fiaz replaces Wales

Newham Labour members deselectright-wing mayor

Oppose ban on Zionist groupsBy Dale Street, Glasgow Central CLP

On Saturday 17 March pro-Israeli Jewish groups were forcibly pre-vented from joining the Stand Up to Racism demonstration inGlasgow.

In the weeks leading up to the demonstration there had been a con-certed campaign to push the demonstration organisers into banningtwo "Friends of Israel" groups from marching. The objection was notto the exact politics of those groups (which in fact defend not just Is-rael's right to exist but also its governments' policies), but just to thefact that they are Zionist and fly the Israeli flag.

The Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and othergroups demanded exclusion.

The march organisers refused. The organisations which had beencalling for a ban announced that they would boycott the march.

The Scottish PSC, the Communist Party of Great Britain (M-L),the Red Front Republic, the Revolutionary Communist Group, andClass War turned up on 17 March regardless, and "kettled" the Jewishgroups to stop them joining the march.

Speakers over their sound system also denounced Jeremy Corbynand Diane Abbott. "Jeremy Corbyn met with the Zionists, with theLabour Friends of Israel, and said that he admired the Israeli state".

The official stewards did nothing. The demonstration set off twentyminutes early, leaving the "Friends of Israel" groups kettled.

One speaker at the post-demonstration rally promised: "Jews whodo not fully share our opinions will be protected against antisemitism".

But that requires an understanding of how contemporary anti-semitism expresses itself. Most of it is expressed not in old-fashionedterms naming Jews as such, but in terms of "absolute anti-Zionism".

Absolute anti-Zionism is something very different from supportfor Palestinian rights. "Zionists" - the majority of Jews, who identifywith Israel to one degree or another, from obvious historically-deter-mined reflex - should be treated as "racists" and banned from anti-racist marches.The discriminatory, and divisive character of that attitude played

itself out on the streets of Glasgow. Consistent anti-racists shouldstop the spread of this poison.

Left-wingdoubles itsstrength atStreatham AGMBy Streatham LabourLeft activists

At the AGM of Streatham CLPon 22 February, the Progress-dominated leadership held on toevery officer position by a clearmargin. But the meeting was farfrom being more of the same: theleft-wing bloc organised byStreatham Labour Left has vir-tually doubled its representationon the General Committee.

Last year, the left had about 30delegates to about 100 for theright. This year, we had 60 whilethe right remained static, takingour proportion of the GC fromsomething like 23pc to something

like 38pc. In two years the vote ourcandidate for chair received hasmore than quadrupled.

In addition the left now holdsfour of the eight ward secretary-ships and all the major positionsapart from secretary in a fifthward.

Entrenched oppositionThese results are all the more

impressive when you consider howwell entrenched and committedProgress and other right-wingersare in Streatham (in addition to aProgress-dominated council wehave a Progress full-timer and the

Labour First national organiserbased here, as well as a full-timerfor the “steel union” Community);and also the many cynical tricksand manoeuvres they used to pre-vent the left from winning moredelegates.

This included preventing theestablishment of a Women’sForum in the CLP ahead of theAGM, and refusing to allow elec-tion of a Women’s Officer, both in

clear violation of Labour Partyrules.Streatham Labour Left will

continue to build our strength inthe party while campaigning forLabour elections victories as wellas on other issues. We are morethan happy to come and speak toother constituencies to explainhow we have made progressagainst Progress! If it can be donehere it can be done anywhere.

Page 5The clarion : April 2018

Labour

By Simon Hannah, Tooting CLP

Local Momentum groups in London havehad two meetings now over the last couple ofmonths to coordinate Labour left activitiesacross the capital.

Like other regions, London hasn't had anorganised Momentum regional network sincethey all got shut down over a year ago whenthe new constitution was imposed. It wouldhave been possible to continue the networks,but demoralisation and lack of leadershipmeant that didn’t happen. Now, though, ac-tivists felt that with so much happening, withsome victories and some set backs, there was alot to learn from each other.

At the two meetings we have held so far dis-cussion has ranged from the Newham Mayoralelection, to the issue of Caste and the cam-paign against caste discrimination in a numberof London boroughs; we heard from cam-paigners in Hackney against cuts to SEN pro-vision and Lewisham activists spoke abouttheir opposition to cuts to CAMHS. Futureplans are for a training event to develop Mo-mentum groups’ social media presence andreach as well as practical street campaigningskills.

With thelocal electionslooming on the3 May and by allaccounts a po-tential sweepingvictory forLabour acrossthe capital, Mo-mentum mem-bers felt that as aleft we did nothave a clear ideaof what plat-form we could stand on in local government.We know what we are against but the left hasbeen shut out of Labour councils in any mean-ingful way for decades and what we are practi-cally for is not clear. To this end we haveorganised a day event called ‘ReimaginingLocal Government: London for the many notthe few’ on 24 March to bring left council can-didates and campaigners together to discuss is-sues from housing to finance.

While Momentum’s new councillor networkis to be welcomed we felt that the gulf betweenlocal activists and councillors should bebridged. The left should oppose the political

elitism that means Labour councillors feel theycan act with impunity once elected and do nothave to include or consult local Labour mem-bers in their decision making.

Reimagining Local Government was de-signed to started the discussion amongstLabour councillors and activists over whatpolicies we should pursue and was a well at-tended and vibrant event. We encourage allMomentum regions to consider similar initia-tives. We should not retreat into our localities

but reach out to discuss ideas and learn fromeach other.

London Momentum gets organised

A new DAWN next door

By Dulwich and West Norwood left activists

This week the left in Dulwich and West Norwood (DAWN) wereelected to the key positions on the CLP Executive Committee at apacked AGM of over 200 delegates.

This would be a tremendous achievement anywhere, but even moreso in the heartland of Lambeth’s Progress-led council.

The DAWN left has built up through hard work and campaigningaround the Picturehouse Living Wage struggle and Ritzy victimisa-tions, the campaign to defend Central Hill estate and the Save Lam-beth Libraries campaigns, as well a lot of campaigning during thegeneral election.

Progress against Progress in Lambeth

The clarion : April 2018 Page 6

new book

Martin: The book is a story of the left losingagain and again. Why?

Simon: The fundamental reason is that theideas of a socialist Labour left cannot be re-alised in the Labour Party as it has been his-torically constituted. So Labour leftmovements have made some gains, but they al-ways come up against the weight of right-wingunion leaders and MPs, and the impasse of try-ing to reform capitalism through the existingstate.

The high points for the Labour left were theSocialist League in the 1930s, and the Benniteand CLPD movement in the 1970s and '80s.Compared to them, the Bevanite movement ofthe 1950s was not so advanced.

The SL got some good policies throughLabour Party conferences, like nationalisationof the banks in 1932. But the Socialist Leaguewas never more than a network of intellectualsand a few worker activists. As soon as theLabour Party NEC [National Executive] toldit to shut itself down in 1937, it did that.

And, considered as a transformative force,the Socialist League was also vitiated by suc-cumbing to the influence of Stalinism.

Some Socialist League leaders – Cripps,Laski – saw themselves as influenced by Marx-ist idea, but for the, at the time that meantmoving into the orbit of the Communist Partyof Great Britain. After about 1934, the Social-ist League, failing to secure internal reforms inthe Labour Party, turned more to externalcampaigning, in which it worked with the ILPand the CPGB. Yes, it didn’t really challengethose Stalinist politics effectively.

You mentioned the Labour left of the 1970sand 80s as another high point. I was surprisedat how positive an account you gave of theLabour left "Alternative Economic Strategy"of that period. That was influenced by theStalinist (or by then neo-Stalinist) CPGB,and Marxists at the time thought it was crap.

It was a high point of the Labour left in thatit established ideas of political economy whichoffered an alternative to mainstream Labourthinking and included, in Stuart Holland'swritings for example, criticisms of old-styleLabour corporatist thinking. But insofar asthat AES was adopted by the Labour Party, itwas never implemented. It was a national pro-posal which lacked grip on the internationalcrisis of capitalism.

The AES left was routed in 1975-6 when itwas defeated in the European Union referen-

dum in 1975 - leaving the EU was always theAES's first-line, most practical proposal -and the Tribune MPs voted for cuts in 1976after Wilson made it a vote of confidence.But then a few years later, in 1979-80, the leftrevived, and focused much more on trans-forming the Labour Party itself.

The left turned to institutional reform be-cause it was so horrified by the failure of the1974-9 government, which had come to officeon a radical manifesto and then failed com-

pletely. The left wanted to make the LabourParty more accountable. In its own terms thatfight was quite successful.

But then you had a paradox. The LabourParty had carried through big democratic re-forms, it had a left-wing leader, it had left-wingpolicies, but it crashed, because the full trans-formation didn't happen, and the unions weredefeated.

The Bennite movement of the 1980s at itsbest did cross over the divide between theLabour Party and the unions. That is a scandalin terms of traditional Labourism, where it'sok to have a Labour left, and even ok to havesome rank-and-file movement in unions, butthe combination of the two is too dangerous.

Your book gives little coverage of the Marxiststrands in the history of the Labour left - theSDF and BSP before 1918 (the SDF, in fact,remained active within the Labour Partyright through from 1900), and the pre-Stal-inist Communist Party and the National LeftWing Movement in the 1920s.

I wanted to look at the elements of the leftwhich had the biggest impact on Labour poli-

cies, and so, for example, the ILP in the 1920s.Militant also had an impact in the 1970s and80s.

I thought your coverage of Militant blurredover their decisive capitulation in 1984, whenthey had Liverpool council accept a deal withthe Tories to postpone its financial problemsto the next year so that the Tories could evadea fight on two fronts, miners and local gov-ernment.

Yes, taking Militant to task on their myth-building is quite important.

How does today's Labour left, in Momen-tum, measure up against the lessons of thepast?

Momentum needs to be much more politi-cal and educative, and not afraid of debatingbig ideas. Politically the Labour left is very un-even. It has some people who are very knowl-edgeable, but little collective discussion.

Over history, Labour lefts have never fallenapart because of educative debates. They havefallen apart because they have been defeated.Even when political debates have caused splits– as the argument over rate rises did in 1979-80, for example – those splits have not stoppedcomponents of the left working together.

On the other hand, we want to avoid peoplebeing unprepared when we actually get a leftLabour government and face new struggles asa result.

The Labour left must get much better atextra-parliamentary campaigning. There havebeen high points in the past of extra-parlia-mentary campaigning by the Labour left, butthey have not been linked in to a strategy aboutpolitics, and that sort of campaigning is at alow level at present.

The Labour left needs to be bolder aboutdemocratic reform within the Labour Party.And it needs to be more democratic itself. TheLabour left should be more prefigurative of theleft-wing Labour Party it wants. It is hypocritical if a Labour left calling for

a more democratic Labour Party is so thor-oughly undemocratic itself.

The difficult history of the Labour left

“Alternative models of ownership” and socialismFollowing Alena Ivanova’s report of theLabour Party’s “Alternative Model of Owne-ships” conference in issue 13, Simon Han-nah discusses some of the political issuesraised by the conference further.

•Simon at bit.ly/2pmBAEC

•Alena’s report at bit.ly/2pqEwPC

Clarion editor Simon Hannah, author ofA party with socialists in it: a history ofthe Labour left, spoke to Martin Thomasabout the book.

The clarion : April 2018 Page 7

councils

By Rosie Woods, Harrow Momentum chair

The Preston Model, the product of collabo-ration between The Centre for Local Eco-nomic Strategies and a number of publicbodies in Preston and Lancashire, has beenreceiving nationwide political and press at-tention.

The Preston Model is based on an initiativein Cleveland, USA, in which cooperative busi-nesses have been strategically developed to wincontracts to supply local institutions. The the-ory is that through key institutions investingtheir available ‘spend’ with local businesses andespecially cooperatives, wealth is kept withinthe local economy and shared more equallyamongst the local population.

In Preston there is an attempt to promotethe development of cooperatives through edu-cational initiatives, cooperative networks and abusiness development hub. One aim is to edu-cate young people and students to set up co-operative businesses to fill local procurementgaps.

There is obviously much to be welcomedhere. Models that foster notions of equality,democracy and social responsibility are pro-gressive when compared to the massive globalcorporations like Amazon or Starbucks.

Anchor institutions (local bodies that havecapital to spend and are rooted to the localarea) such as Preston Council and others have

been trained in altering their procurement ap-proaches to ensure a greater percentage of theirspend is local and investment in cooperativeinitiatives is encouraged; this has been coupledwith the establishment of Preston Council asa Living Wage Employer. This, however, doesnot extend to staff employed by contracted outservices or to companies from which goods orservices are procured.

Here in lies one of the problems with thelocal wealth creation approach. Small andmedium local enterprises will be the biggestbeneficiaries. But, small and medium busi-nesses generally want to become larger busi-nesses and compete with each other forcontracts. One of the key ways to save moneyis to cut back on Labour costs.

While cooperative organisations may scorebetter in terms of equality and workers’ rights,they still have to compete within the widereconomy. Can they genuinely flourish withoutlarge subsidy when going up against leaner,cheaper options? Will they be forced into mak-ing their own cutbacks in order to compete?

What we need is change to ensure thatcouncils and other bodies spending publicmoney must ensure that companies fromwhich they buy services pay the living wageand meet basic standards, such as recognisingtrade unions.

Anchor institutions procure goods; they alsodeliver services. But under conditions of aus-terity there simply is not enough money to pay

for the services needed, no amount of localspending is going to plug that gap.

What we need is a commitment fromLabour to restore local government funding toprevious levels and legislation to enable coun-cils to raise their own funds to invest and ex-tend direct service provision.

This is the fundamental problem with theModel. It does not challenge the market. Toimprove services and keep wealth local by con-tracting out to better local organisations or co-operatives sounds good but the marketoperates on the basis of competition and thedrive for profit. To advance the idea that wecan create alternative local economic systemswithin capitalism is naïve and disorienting. Where cooperatives and community

wealth schemes create bubbles of betterworkplaces and better conditions they arewelcome. But socialists should have biggeraspirations for the way that local governmentoperates and far bigger aspirations for thetransformation of the economy.

By Atticus Stonestrom, OxfordEast CLP

Austerity has cast an ugly shadow overBritain’s housing landscape.

Today, as many as one in two hundred in theUK are homeless. Tory cuts to homelessnessservices have crippled local provision, policepersecution of rough sleepers is rampant, andtenant rights remain anaemic, undermined byThatcher-era landlord empowerment schemes.

This crisis is on clear display perhapsnowhere more than in the streets of Oxford,home – in a meagre sense – to nearly a hun-dred rough sleepers. The student body artifi-cially inflates rent costs; the city is dominatedby the University, a regressive institution thatowns tens of thousands of acres of land.

Now, although the magnitude of the prob-lem has secured great interest and engagementfrom the community at large, local policychange in particular tends to be driven by di-rect internal pressure from activist groups – see,for instance, the 2015 campaign against a Pub-lic Space Protection Order banning rough

sleeping in the city centre, or the more recentcampaign to expand the Severe WeatherEmergency Protocol.

This pressure is naturally accompanied bytension and charged debate, and OxfordLabour – which comprises thirty-five of ourforty-eight city councillors – is often dividedon the question of homelessness. The intentionhere is not to sow discord for its sake; instead,it is to question institutional thinking, hold au-thority accountable, and bypass unnecessarybureaucracy – all vital tasks.

The established narrative surroundinghomelessness in the UK is often deeply defi-cient, and, at times, actively destructive. It is anarrative that leads councils to redirect fundingfrom homelessness services into “Your Kind-ness Can Kill” campaigns; a narrative that co-opts St. Mungo’s outreach teams to serve as defacto immigration compliance agents; a narra-tive that permits “moving on,” forced removal,the effective social cleansing of city streets. Itis, in short, a narrative built upon the myth ofthe “deserving” poor, right-wing rhetoric of theworst kind: petty, narrow-minded, and reduc-tive.

Provision for the homeless is limited, and,for many, not even an option. It fails to coverthose without a local connection, those withoutlegal IDs, or foreign nationals and refugeeswithout recourse to public funds.

Even for those to whom provision is avail-able, there are a host of reasons that it mightbe less than ideal. Homeless shelters and hos-tels are usually rife with drug and alcohol use,serving as strong relapse triggers for those re-covering from addiction. Theft, bullying, andgenerally poor conditions are another deter-rent, and the often limited space available foranimals is a common concern for those withdogs; the list goes on.

Remember, too, the broader context of anydialogue around homelessness in the UK; thewidely enforced Vagrancy Act of 1824 makesrough sleeping a criminal offense, revoking, ina cruelly perverse irony, the nearly universalright to free and public space from only theones who need it most. Progress in the face of this crisis can come

only through difficult questions and strongdemands: not only of our political adver-saries, but also of ourselves.

Is Preston a model for Labour councils?

Oxford Labour is failing the homeless

1. You can’t have strikes without a ballot!

Workers should have democratic control overwhen and how they strike.

Clearly the Thatcher governments did not in-troduce a legal requirement for postal ballots inorder to encourage that! Quite the opposite.Postal ballots are designed to slow down andatomise the process of deciding on action – andif possible prevent it altogether – with workerssitting at home by themselves rather than takingpart in a collective process with their workmates.

Why can’t we have online voting? Why can’twe have ballot boxes in workplaces? And in fact,ballots are not the only form of democratic de-cision. Before the anti-union laws people oftenvoted in mass meetings. In fact it would be per-fectly possible to combine the two – a massmeeting followed by people voting by ballotthere and then. Sometimes a delegate meetingor conference of some sort might need to decide.Lastly, there may be times when workers feel orjudge there is a need to simply walk out, eg inorder to take quick and decisive action againstsome attack from their employers. The lawshould protect this right as much as possible, notoutlaw it.

These things should be decided by workersand their unions, not by the state.

We should also note that the idea of postalballots with extensive notifications and waitingperiods is an imposition of Thatcherism. Eventhe Tory government that imposed anti-unionlaws in 1927 after the defeat of the GeneralStrike did not introduce compulsory ballots. Theidea a left Labour government would leave themin place is absurd, and an indication of how farthings have shifted to the right.

In fact that applies to many aspects of this dis-cussion. We need to shift the discussion left-wards.

2. Mass picketing and flying picketsmeans intimidation

To be effective, a picket needs to discouragepeople from going into work.

There are various forms this can take. Cer-tainly large numbers of pickets are almost always

desirable. To limit the right to picket is to try tomake pickets ineffective and undermine strikes– which is the entire point of these rules.

The ban on flying pickets means that strikerscannot target other workplaces and institutionswith a link to their employer and cannot go andexplain their case to other workers and ask forsupport. Again, it is about making strikes inef-fective. We should oppose that.

3. The “closed shop” violates people’sright to decide

Before it was banned there were issues with the“closed shop” – compulsory union membershipin order to work in a workplace or company –being used bureaucratically for eg top unionofficials to get radical troublemakers excludedor sacked by denying them union membership.

Self-evidently that is not why it was banned.Again, it was about undermining unions’ posi-tion.

It may or may not be a good idea for a unionto insist on compulsory union membership in agiven workplace or company, but that should beup to the union – or more to the point, the work-ers organised in the union – to decide, not thestate. And is the demand really so outrageous inall circumstances? Do people have the right toeg not pay taxes? Or to ignore health and safetylaws?

All workers in a well-unionised workplacebenefit from the union’s presence and strengthand so it is perfectly understandable why a strongunion might insist on people joining.

4. The state must insist on unions beingdemocratic

Again, do we really believe Thatcher caredabout union democracy?

Or governments which for decades have usedany and every legal technicality to undermineeven overwhelming democratic votes to go onstrike? For sure the undemocratic nature of someunions helped justify the introduction of laws topartially control union constitutions (laws whichamong other things insist on regular elections),

but the purpose of this control was to tameunions, not democratise them.

In the ’70s some unions were undemocratic,and some unions are undemocratic now – whatthe law has done is changed the specifics andform of that, while also suppressing union inde-pendence.

We need democratic unions – but this mustbe controlled and enforced by union membersthemselves.

5. Strikes for political goals are undemocratic

Are demonstrations for political goals un-democratic?

What about direct action and civil disobedi-ence? In fact a society where working peoplehave extensive ability to organise and take actionto influence what the government does is farmore democratic than one where that ability iscurtailed or suppressed. To deny that suggests avery shallow conception of democracy – whichof course is precisely what we are encouraged tohave. If you accept popular action to influenceand pressure governments: strikes are the mosteffective form of such action.

In addition, is not at all easy to say what is apolitical and issue and what isn’t.

When political strikes are banned then in re-ality workers’ ability to fight for their own im-mediate rights is also limited – as we see all thetime when strikes over immediate workplace is-sues are declared political and therefore illegal bythe courts (or by union officials).

6. It would be unpopular

It’s not clear that this is true at all, rather thana “fact” which has simply been declared.

We need to build an active campaign torepeal all the anti-union laws – part ofwhich must be fighting for Labour’s new(2017) conference policy to be carriedout. Such a campaign will meet numerousobjections from the Tories, the right-wingpress and so on, backed by outrage de-signed to prevent rational discussion.Sacha Ismail considers some of the likelyobjections and the kind of arguments wewill need to answer them.

the clarion : April 2018

The Central issue

Arguing against the ant

Workers at Ford Dagenham voting to strike

In the early 80s miners struck for nurses

The Central issue

Page 9

ti-union laws

Unfortunately it seems to be influencing someat the top of the Labour Party.

The “it’s unpopular” argument is not a trumpcard. It is only ever used selectively. The pressoften assumes politicians are obsessed withwhat’s popular and what’s not, and there is ofcourse some truth to that, and yet the huge un-popularity of eg privatising the NHS has notstopped governments doing it. Tony Blair was agreat fan of citing public opinion to justify right-wing policies – but even when there really wasopinion on his side this served to justify policieshe wanted anyway, to appeal to the right-wingpress or simply because he supported them.There is also, no doubt, some element of suchpoliticians genuinely believing, in defiance of ev-idence, that only right-wing policies can be pop-ular. Meanwhile public opinion never stoppedBlair carrying out unpopular right-wing policieslike privatisation and increasing inequality.

In fact the Blairites worked hard to shift bothofficial political discourse and wider public opin-ion to the right. More generally, what is popularand unpopular is not a fixed matter of black andwhite – it is complex, shifting and shaped by po-litical initiative. Left-wing movements have aduty to help educate and reshape public opinion,particularly when the question involved is an im-portant one. The anti-union laws surely are im-

portant: should workers who want to organiseand struggle have legal space to do so effectivelyor not?It is not such a leap to imagine that the idea

of workers being able to organise and take ac-tion against an out-of-control corporate elite– or for instance for goals such as saving theNHS – could be very popular, if substantialforces made the case and argued for it.

Which side are you on?

If you’re on the side of workers standing up forthemselves, then repealing the anti-union lawsshould be a no brainer.

The kind of heroic workers’ struggles we sawin the ’60s and ’70s and ’80s faced difficultiesenough without the laws we have now. We needto do everything we can to make the smallerstruggles taking place today and the biggerstruggles we will have again in the future as easyand effective as possible. That is obviously notjust a matter of the laws that exist, but laws arean important part of it. The possibility that aCorbyn government could leave the bulk of anti-union laws in place – and at the moment theleadership are not saying one way or another,with various evidence that they are hesitating –is cause for concern.

We need to organise to make sure Labourconference’s decisions on this are carried outand campaigned for.

Mass picketing during the Grunwick strike made national news, 1976-78

At Labour Party conference last year, dele-gates voted unanimously for a motion to re-peal not just the 2016 Trade Union Act butthe anti-trade union laws introduced by theTories in the 1980s and 90s – and to introducepositive legal workers’ rights. HoweverLabour is not yet fighting for these policies.The task is to get them known and activelycarried out.

Clarion activists are working to get discus-sion in the labour movement about the anti-union laws, how they are used, and what thenext Labour government should do aboutthem; researching the effect of the anti-unionlaws, documenting their use today, and delv-ing into the history books to learn about pre-vious campaigns against anti-union laws; andorganising events around these issues.Get your union branch or Labour Party to

support the statement.

• Find the statement, plus articles and otherresources at bit.ly/2DGSnX5

Help make it happen!

the clarion : April 2018 Page 10

Parliamentary selections

I grew up in Harlesden, in a working-classIrish family that was always struggling finan-cially.

We faced homelessness several times. Myfamily was quite political, coming out of classexperience but also the Troubles in Ireland.

I joined a trade union in my first job, and myfirst strike was when I was 19. I’ve been a shopsteward or workplace rep numerous times.

The theme of helping people fight for betterterms and conditions was central to how mypolitics developed, coming both through myunion experience but also the jobs I’ve hadsince my mid-20s, in the voluntary sector, witha focus on advising people about welfare ben-efits and also migrants’ rights. I worked for theCitizens' Advice Bureau and the Child PovertyAction Group. I helped set up and now runHarrow Law Centre.

In the late 90s I found myself campaigningagainst much of what the Labour governmentwas doing, in terms of benefits. Lots of my col-leagues asked how can you be in this LabourParty; but because of my strong roots in unionsI saw Labour as the only place it was possibleto achieve real change. From about 2010 I gotmore involved and threw myself in. I stood asa councillor.

Of course it was very difficult for a longtime. I remember the years in Harrow whenthe Fabians seemed to be the most radical po-litical force... Then Corbyn happened and sud-denly it wasn’t so difficult!

We need more political education and dis-cussion about how society can be different. Iwant to see a society where people have some-where really decent to live, can easily put foodon the table, have decent healthcare - wherefamilies can afford to stay together. There’snothing massively radical about that, of course,but it will require shifting wealth and power,which is why public ownership is so important,and the questions John McDonnell has raisedabout workers having more say in their work-places, about cooperatives and so on.

What’s needed is that we help more peoplebecome politically educated and confident tobe active. Social media is useful but democracyhas to be about people engaging in the realworld. Really central to that is reviving strongtrade union activism. The people I went toschool with, their mums worked in factories, itwas low paid work, but it was unionised. That’svery different from today.

The legal bar you have to hit to take strikeaction is absurd. Union officials are alwaysworried about what overstepping the bounds

will mean for their unions’ funds. Those lawsintroduced by the Tories were kept in place bya Labour government for thirteen years. Nowwe have an opportunity to repeal all of them.

Turning Harrow LabourI don’t think Harrow is really a traditionally

Tory area. Even before 1997 parts of Harrowwere Labour sometimes. Since then HarrowWest has been Labour for two decades, nowheavily so, and Harrow East was until 2010.

I think people in Harrow are crying out forthe kind of policies Corbyn is offering.

Harrow was very hostile to the Iraq war, un-surprisingly given the diverse make-up of ourcommunity, which is the most religiously di-verse in London and near the top for the mostethnically diverse.

The ward I represent is very mixed but hasa lot of middle-class areas. So-called middle-class people are worried about their kids com-ing of university with £50,000 of debt and thennot being able to find a decent job. Those kidsare worried because they very possibly can’t af-ford to live with or near their partner. Everyoneis worried about the health service, and olderpeople losing their homes to pay for social care.

We have the worst level of low pay in thecapital according to the research by Trust forLondon and the TUC. We have the secondhighest rate of evictions, and the lowest levelof council housing.

The kind of policies we are offering meanthat, minimally, people will be able to stay to-gether in Harrow and not be sent off round thecountry because there is no housing for themhere. It means kids will be able to get an edu-cation racking up those huge debts.

With a socialist message and a strong cam-paigning candidate, Harrow East is extremelywinnable. The Tories will attack the left, ofcourse, but our response will be a positive cam-paign around the issues and around our vision.

Haringey seems like a clear example ofcouncillors not listening to their party or theircommunity. The media presented it as theNEC over-riding councillors, but in reality thecouncil leadership had lost support from theparty and all sections of the community and

even many of their own councillors.Labour councillors and councils need to be

more ambitious. We need to make sure theparty does what is needed and restores the lostfunding to local authorities.

Under Blair we moved to councils being runby cabinets. We need to go back to democraticcommittee systems, which mean power isspread among more councillors and there ismore influence and democracy for party mem-bers and also for the wider community. Exec-utive mayors are even worse than cabinets.

The way our MPs have related to the lead-ership, in particular the coup against Corbyn,hasn’t helped, either. Now I think things in thePLP are shifting and some good, popularpoliticians are starting to come through. Cor-byn himself has shown that it is possible toconnect with ordinary people.

There is also a question of who becomes anMP. We lost the trade union route, which pro-duced politicians with a variety of life andworkplace experiences. There has been a ten-dency to have upper middle-class people, inmany cases the stereotype of PPE at Oxfordand then a life in professional politics. We needmore working-class candidates.

When I set up Harrow Law Centre, we es-tablished pay parity – as the director I get thesame salary as the administrative staff. That’sbeen a really popular and successful thing, de-spite some sceptics. There’s clearly an issue about the kind of

lifestyles MPs enjoy too and I’d like to thinkmore about what we can do about that.

“An independent workers’voice”CWU activist Jenn Forbes is campaigningto be Labour’s parliamentary candidate inTruro and Falmouth, a Cornish con-stituency which saw the Labour vote rise by172pc in last year’s general election. Shespoke to The Clarion about her campaign,trade unionism and how the left can developworking-class political consciousness andsocialist ideas - see our website.

Following a hard fought campaign,Pamela Fitzpatrick was recently se-lected as the Labour PPC for themarginal Harrow East seat. She spoketo The Clarion.

“Help people get educated and confident”

the clarion : April 2018 Page 11

women’s struggles

By Jennifer Jones, Sheffield Heeley CLP activist and SheffieldMomentum chair (pc)

Women’s Lives Matter is a non-party groupof grassroots campaigners who first came to-gether when Doncaster Women’s Aid wasunder threat of closure.

We came together again in 2017 when theservice born out of that campaign, South York-shire Women’s Aid, was told they’d no longerreceive funding.

Through campaigning we got in touch withother women’s rights activists and campaigns.We became increasingly aware of otherwomen’s centres, refuges and women’s medicalservices, eg the Liverpool Women’s HospitalCampaign. We were pleased to make theselinks but there was a lack of a platform to shareexperiences, techiques and support. That’s whywe came together to hold our first Women’sLives Matter meeting.

The panel included DPAC, Save Women’sAid, the Liverpool Women’s Hospital Cam-paign and the Durham TAs. We had contribu-tions from Barnsley Save our NHS campaignand from young Muslim sisters. This year’swe’re aiming to hold another “umbrella” meet-ing, but make it bigger and a day long event,more like a conference - dates will be availableon our Facebook pages! We’re hoping to makelinks more widely, eventually across the UK.

We continue to focus on winning ring-fenced funding for domestic violence supportservices and refuges, but we are also trying toraise awareness of issues like Yarls Wood.

We are a trans-inclusive campaign. We arevery clear about that on our campaign materi-als. We had a bit of discussion about it, but itdidn’t last long and there was a strong consen-sus. Women are women. People who identifydifferently from the body they were born withare not our enemies; our enemy is a classenemy.

We are non-partisan – many of us are mem-bers of the Labour Party and many aren’t – but

we are very outspoken about being a pro-Cor-byn organisation. When we’re doing publicevents or speeches or visiting other women’sgroups, we talk about the need for the countryto be governed by a Corbyn-led Labour Party.That’s the only hope for women of our class tosee positive change.

We have a lot of support from local LabourParties. My CLP, Sheffield Heeley, votedunanimously to support the campaign. I wassurprised it was unanimous. MomentumSheffield supports us too. The first officialLabour organisation to give support was theLeeds Women’s Forum, they’d seen what washappening on Twitter. It so happened we werehaving a very difficult day, we felt tired andstruggling, and then there was this ray of sun-shine when these women sent through a pic-ture with home made signs supporting us.We’ve had a lot of support from unions, localbranches but also some national unions. Alsosome prominent individuals: for instance KenLoach did a fundraiser for us.

Some individuals in the Green Party but notthe party as such, which surprised me. And alsowe’ve been disappointed by the lack of supportfrom some prominent left-wing Labour andunion figures in the region.

Obviously much of our campaigning isaround Labour councils, in the first instanceDoncaster. Our general view is that councilsshould be doing more to stick to the anti-aus-terity line of the leadership. Not long before we

heard South Yorkshire Women’s Aid was hav-ing its funding withdrawn, Keir Starmer madea statement bout the importance of women’srefuges and DV services and Labour’s commit-ment to supporting that.

Doncaster has £8-9 million in reserves andwe were asking for £30,000 for the service, soit’s a big question why they don’t concede that.The council’s own domestic violence servicesare nowhere near adequate to deal with thehuge volume of domestic abuse incidents inthe area, 6,500 last year. Often cases are re-ferred to Women’s Aid for that reason, so thismakes no sense.Beyond that, many of us would be in favour

of setting no cuts budgets. If a number ofLabour councils were willing to stand to-gether they could defeat the government.Strong union support would be crucial.

• Search “Women’s Lives Matter” on Face-book. Jennifer writes as a campaign activistand not on behalf of South YorkshireWomen’s Aid.

Solidarity with the womenat Yarl’s Wood! Close alldetention centres!Over a hundred women detained in Yarl’sWood immigration detention centre inBedfordshire have been on hunger strikeagainst inhumane conditions at the facil-ity, including inadequate medical care andthe fact that they are in effect detained in-definitely.

It is good that Labour politicians haveexpressed concern, tried to visit Yarls Woodand raised the hunger strike in Parliament.But Labour policy is for a time limit on de-tention, not its abolition.

Labour activists should build solidaritywith the inmates of detention centres andcampaign for all of them to be closed – asadvocated in the model motion promotedby the Labour Campaign for Free Move-ment bit.ly/2waxDat

Women’s lives matter!

Charnwood celebrates women in struggleBy Liz Yeates and Maria Bagnall

50 Labour Party members joined Charnwood CLP’s 9 March International Women’s Daycelebration with the theme of “Women in Struggle”.

We heard speeches from sacked Picturehouse rep Kelly Rogers and trans activist HeatherPeto, and poetry from self-declared ‘Disaffected Middle-Aged Woman’ Janine Booth. The eventwas inspired by the motion Charnwood sent to last year’s Labour conference supporting thePicturehouse and McDonald’s strikes and committing the party to repealing all Tory anti-unionlaws.

A huge success and we raised £242 for the Picturehouse strike fund.

• Full report on the website.

the clarion : April 2018 Page 12

working-class history

The growth of zero-hour con-tracts means that there is a grow-ing proportion of workers in‘precarious’ employment.

Annual real wage growth, isnow a distant memory and strikesare at an all-time low; with tradeunion membership now at 6.5million there are many workplaceswhere unions simply do not exist.What can be learnt from the pre-carious workers of the past?

The chainmakers’ strike of 1910,where ‘unorganisable’ womenworkers took on their masters, andin doing so doubled their wages,inspired a generation. The domes-tic chain trade was made up ofhundreds of small forges, many inpeople’s backyards. The chainbosses “commissioned” the workwith each chainmaker individually.This system meant the women,who needed the work, seemed tobe in no position to force up their

wages. The trade union agitator Mary

MacArthur described the forges assomething akin to medieval tor-ture chambers. Poverty wages werepaid for a hard 54-hour week.

After a national campaignagainst low pay by the Anti-Sweating League, the governmenthad introduced legislation to end“sweating” in the domestic chaintrade and for a minimum wage of11s 3d a week. But the employersrefused to pay it. By then MaryMacarthur and the National Fed-eration of Women Workers(NFWW) had recruited some 400domestic chainmakers to theunion.

DemandedThe NFWW demanded that thewomen be paid the 11s 3d imme-diately.

The response from some of thesmaller factories was to lock outthe workers. This was the spark forthem to fight back. MacArthur or-ganised a mass meeting and thestrike had begun.

The employers did not expect along strike. They knew how littlethe women were paid, and that togo without meant hunger.MacArthur, aware of the dire need

for money if the chainmakers werenot to be starved back to work,threw her energies into raisingenough solidarity funds to pay thestrikers.

By 1 September some 650chainmakers were on strike. Col-lections were held outside churchcongregations and footballgrounds. MacArthur wrote leafletsand letters asking for support. Butshe also used the new media of theera—cinema. She made a film ex-posing the miserable conditions ofthe chainmakers, watched by tenmillion people which helped gen-erate the much-needed cash.

Enough money was being raisedto pay every striker freeing them tokeep fighting to double theirwages. The strike grew and so didsupport for the strikers and the

bosses caved in. On 22 October,Mary MacArthur addressed amass meeting in Cradley Heathand declared that the new mini-mum wage of 11s 3d a week hadbeen secured by the strike.

The chainmakers had won a100% pay rise.

Whilst a future Corbyn ledLabour government might passlaws increasing workers’rights. We need our class to learn the

importance of struggle and col-lective organisation to improveour lot in an increasingly grosslyunequal world.

• Tony Barnsley is author ofBreaking Their Chains: MaryMacarthur and the Chainmakers’Strike of 1910, available fromwww.bookmarksbookshop.co.uk

Breaking the chains of low paid, precarious work

By Rida Vaquas

I came across The Miners’ NextStep in Sheila Rowbotham’s con-tribution to Beyond the Frag-ments.

Rowbotham highlighted itsquestioning of the old certaintiesand an openness to new ideas asemblematic of a more energisingand generous spirit in the socialistmovement.

For her, this was demonstratedin the words “Do what you willwith it, modify, or (we hope) im-prove, but at least give it yourearnest consideration.”

It was in the context of theUCU strike that I proceeded togive this pamphlet, published in1912, my earnest consideration.

Written by a tendency in theSouth Wales Miners’ Federation

known as the Unofficial ReformCommittee, the pamphlet waspublished in light of bitter scepti-cism around the conciliation poli-cies pursued by the trade unionleadership.

The questions it poses we arestill tackling in the movementtoday. Recently, we have seenUCU branches vote overwhelm-ingly to reject an ‘agreement’ withthe employer UUK which was ne-gotiated by their leadership. It isnot an isolated story.

Whilst the history of tradeunionism cannot be simplified to‘radical rank and file vs bureau-cratic and conciliatory leadership’,the questions of democracy andcontrol in unions is a very resonantone.

For its part, The Miners’ NextStep eloquently makes the case

against the dominance of a narrowleadership in union decision-mak-ing, arguing “Sheep cannot be saidto have solidarity. In obedience toa shepherd, they will go up ordown, backwards or forwards asthey are driven by him and hisdogs. But they have no solidarity,for that means unity and loyalty.

“Unity and loyalty, not to an in-dividual, or the policy of an indi-vidual, but to an interest and apolicy which is understood andworked by all.”

In other words, the basis of sol-idarity is conscious and active in-volvement in the movement,which necessitates thinking aboutand discussing a lot of things to-gether, rather than consigning therealm of strategy to a few at thetop of the organisation.

This durable case for industrial

unionism also contains lessons forthe socialist movement in the de-bates about the nature of tradeunionism.

Herman Gorter, in his open let-ter to Lenin in 1920, notes thegrowth of industrial unionism andstates “I am criticizing those poli-tics… that assume that the leaders,once they have great massesaround them, will be able to win”regardless of the political convic-tions of those masses.

We are reminded by this thatour project is not about accumu-lating ‘the masses’ or the rank andfile around any individual left wingfigure. Solidarity is between peers in a

struggle, not leaders and theirfollowers.

Solidarity, not loyalty to leaders

In issue 13, for InternationalWomen’s Day, Kelly Rogers-mentioned the inspirational1910 chainmakers’ strike.Here Sandwell General Uni-son branch secretary TonyBarnsley tells the story.

the clarion : April 2018 Page 13

movement ELECTIONS

YES: Support Momentum’s NEC slateBy Rosie Woods

The decision by the Labour Representation Committee to seek can-didates to stand in a partial slate against the Momentum backed NECcandidates is understandable.

There is deeply felt and growing frustration at the complete absenceof democracy in Momentums decision making, including in candidateselection. Organisations including Red Labour have long been voicingtheir disquiet over the manner in which decisions like these are made;The Clarion editors share the concerns.

However, what is needed is a more robust approach than another smallgroup of left organisations declaring their own set of candidates. Thereis no indication that the candidates will be anymore democratically se-lected or that they will be representative of the breadth of the left.

We need serious discussion about how candidate selection can beagreed with the maximum democracy possible and for a broad range ofgroupings to sign up to this. NEC nominations close in three monthsand it is unlikely that such agreements and processes can be agreed intime.

It is also the case that while the left is advancing within Labour pol-itics is a funny game and much can change very quickly. We need tokeep our heads and think through the implications of our actions. Thegut instinct to rebel against the appalling way Momentum nationalleadership has behaved is right and good, but there is a bigger picture.Open Labour have already split from the CLGA and will be supportingAnn Black in opposition to the Momentum slate and possibly othercandidates. We cannot afford for the left to fragment.

Over the next period those on the left committed to reversing the an-tidemocratic tide which overtook Momentum under the helmsmanshipof Jon Lansman should work together to aply maximum pressure for achange in direction from those currently dominating the left nationally.There are indications that there is growing unease at the lack of pluralityand autocratic nature of decision making from within Momentum aswell as from external groupings and the grassroots. We should exhaustthe possibilities of rescuing Momentum and forging a new left alliancewith democratically selected candidates before allowing the left to de-generate into warring factions. For now, the left should support the Momentum-run slate, but pre-

pare ourselves for the next round.

By Emma Maxwell

The Momentum slate for the Labour Party NEC elections this yearhas been chosen without any real involvement or participation ofgrassroots Labour Party activists or members.

This is symptomatic of the growing democratic deficit in Momentum.Anyone who is a socialist and believes in political change from the bot-tom up should be worried by this lack of democracy. Anyone who wantsa Labour government committed to delivering for working class peopleshould be concerned. A healthy democratic left organisation in the Partyis necessary for a successful Labour Government.

`Decision making of the Centre Left Grassroots Alliance slate for theNEC elections has been controversial in the past. Input from certain leftlabour organisations was effectively vetoed, and there was a biased se-lection of others that accorded with (or could be relied on to accommo-date to) the politics of the leading lights of CLPD. Their politics was inparts Stalinist, in parts soft left, and timid on policy except in foreignaffairs. But now the stakes are much higher, and there is an alliance withMomentum whose data operation dominates the “left” in the Party.

The left is in the leadership of the Party and there is a real possibilityof a Labour government within the next few years. The lack of a left or-ganisation which is able to call leaders and internal Party representativesto account will be a real weakness. Put simply with the left in the ascen-dance democracy in the left becomes more not less important.

Secondly the ability of the Momentum machine to deliver in internalParty elections, setting the agenda of Conference etc. Because of Mo-mentum’s dominance, it has become in effect a vehicle for the new ca-reerists. Everyone is a Corbynista now. In the event of a LabourGovernment however we do not need cheerleaders but people ideolog-ically committed to working-class people’s interests – for massive in-vestment in public services, a radical extension of public ownership,unashamedly for workers’ rights and the abolition of the anti union laws,and a transformed welfare system.

Under the cover of “members-driven” Labour Party what is actuallybeing promoted is control by a clique at the top, participation in digitalconsultations with no binding power at the bottom, and an attempt tocreate a left cultural hegemony of inadequate, and often very bad, ap-parently ‘left’ ideas. This is far from the best traditions of labour move-ment democracy.

Even in its social democratic/ ‘labourist’ versions there has been anopenness to debate and at local level in the Labour Party and develop-ment of informed activists. At present Momentum appears to be justanother form of machine politics which is contemptuous of even thesemild norms within the Labour Party. Despite all the talk of memberdriven politics what people see is a cynical use of OMOV when it suits.It is a distorted reflection of the worst of the trade union bureaucracy –without the discipline of answering to a working-class base.

There is political will from some organised socialists, notably theLabour Representation Committee, to put (at least some) alternativecandidates forward for the Labour NEC elections this year. This shouldbe supported and left organisations that care about grassroots democracyshould accept the open invite to discussions from the LRC to ensurethat broadly supported credible candidates are on offer. There is time toorganise nominations as English CLPs are not meeting until after thelocal elections in May.Socialists should act now to demand greater democracy and ac-

countability on the Labour left. What we do not challenge now wewill be forced to fight in the future.

Nominations for the second elections to Momentum’s NationalCoordinating Grop close on 29 March and the election runs 2-16April.

Clarion editors Rida Vaquas (Midlands/Wales/East/West region)and Sahaya James (London and South East) are both currently onthe NCG, and Michael Chessum intends to stand (London and SE).

At the time we went to press there were still discussions going onabout left slates of candidates for the three regions, but we urge mem-bers to vote for candidates committed to sorely-needed democracy inMomentum, to bold socialist policies and to free movement and mi-grants’ rights, as well as with a record of organising and supportinggrassroots struggles.

The Momentum leadership/office-supporting slate is, laughably,called “for an empowered grassroots”. That is exactly what we need –which is why no one who cares about democracy, socialism or a grass-roots empowerment should vote for those candidates.

Momentum elections: irony alert

NO: Demand a more democratic process

the clarion : April 2018 Page 14

YouthCLARION Youth pages Edited by: Maisie Sanders, Rida Vaquas, Tom Zagoria, Justine Canady

UCU Strike shakes up studentpolitics... next stop LabourBy Monty Shield, NCAFCcandidate for NUS NEC

Occupations summitAround 40 activists from 13

campuses who had been in occu-pation came together on Sunday18th March to share experiences,learn from each other and planhow we can unite in support ofUCU for the struggle ahead.

After a hugely inspiring fourweeks we had a collective discus-sion of the national situation.Swansea UCU activist CathFletcher gave an overview of therecent history of the UCU and thecontext of the strike, and Cam-bridge postgraduate teaching as-sistant and UCU member DanDavison spoke of the effect of the2010 student movement on hiscurrent involvement in the occu-pation at Cambridge University.

National Campaign AgainstFees and Cuts (NCAFC) activist,Clarion editor, Momentum NCGmember and NUS Presidentialcandidate Sahaya James, whoplayed a key role in the occupationat UAL and UCL called for theNational Union of Students toorientate itself towards the emerg-ing leadership of the studentmovement: the grassroots activistswho have made the last four weeksas significant as they have been.

This comes in the context of thelargest wave of student occupa-tions and direct action since 2010.So far, 23 campuses have occupiedin solidarity with UCU, with thelargest wave coming last weekafter UCU rejected the awful dealbeing offered by Universities UK.

A different character to 2010In 2010, the occupations and

direct action were a reaction to therise of tuition fees and includedmany school students angry thatthey would personally face the ef-fects of the Government’s policy.

The current revolt has largelydifferent backbone. While somestudents have cited their desire togo into academia as a reason fortheir current protest, for the vastmajority of the thousands of stu-dents are acting because of an ide-ological commitment to theabstract notion of student-workersolidarity.

Emboldened by the confidenceof UCU in calling its largest everset of strikes, this mass action hasbeen politically educative for largegroups of students who under-stand that students and workersare on the same side against theGovernment and UUK.

The 2000 must talk to the 2 mil-lion

The task for the students whohave been involved in the action sofar is to turn ourselves outwardsand inspire many thousands moreto join with us and staff.

If we organise collectively, thiswave of occupations and this strikecould provide the spark for a massstudent movement against mar-ketisation in this country. Such amovement, focussed on demo-cratic organising, political educa-tion, worker solidarity and directaction can achieve great things. Itcan provide the bottom up pres-sure that helps to turn the excite-ment over Labour’s free educationpolicy into reality. And it can pro-vide the basis for a student move-ment with genuine links toworkers’ struggles on and off cam-pus. This would not only bolster

By Carolanne Lello andJack Downes (bothStourbridge CLP)

Dudley Young Labour launchedon 6 March at the Dudley Coun-cil House.

Young activists came togetherfrom across the borough to discussthe integral role of Young Labourin taking back control of DudleyCouncil, and the UK as a whole.The main theme of the event washow forming active Young Labourgroups can effect real change.

The event was prefaced by atalk from local councillor JudyFoster. Judy invited everyone tocome along to events surroundingInternational Women’s Day. Shewas followed by a rousing speechfrom local Labour group leaderPete Lowe, who spoke about histime in the Labour Party YoungSocialists in the 1980s, and thefights they faced as a combative,left-wing youth section. Pete

urged Dudley Young Labour ac-tivists to “be radical!”

Stourbridge Young Labour ac-tivists Jack Downes, Eliot Brookesand Ellen Cobb then led a discus-sion about how their group hasbeen leading the way with localactivism, encouraging memberspresent from the other threeCLPs to get organising. Theytouched on how to set up a YLgroup, best practise when recruit-ing, holding campaign days, hav-ing interactive events andproducing an effective campaigncalendar to meet constituencycampaign goals.

Stourbridge YL activist Car-olanne Lello spoke about issuesfacing young parents under theTories and how they are oftenunder-represented in politics as awhole. She thanked StourbridgeYoung Labour for its inclusivitysince she joined, making it possi-ble for her children to come alongto events such as the recent Ac-tion Saturday with Jeremy Corbyn

- giving her young son the oppor-tunity to hug his hero!

Daniel Round talked exten-sively about the occupations insupport of the UCU strike andthe current state of Young Labournationally before introducingClarion contributor and NUSVPHE candidate Ana Oppen-heim. Ana spoke about how wecan use our platform to campaignfor important issues such as free-dom of movement and workers’rights. She touched upon howCLP and branch meetings canoften be off-putting and even in-timidating for some young mem-bers, and how Young Labour cancombat this by holding age-ap-propriate events and more social,casual meetings.

Community organiser ArunDevasia gave the keynote speech.Arun shared his personal experi-ence growing up in Australiaunder PM John Howard, thestruggles of the indigenous peopleof Australia at the time, and going

on large demos with his family inSydney. Arun went on to speakabout innovative new campaign-ing methods such as Tinderbot,which was used in the GeneralElection to check that people hadregistered to vote and then to seeif people had voted.

Seats in the Dudley boroughneed to be won to deliver aLabour majority at the next Gen-eral Election. Crucial work suchas building contact rates and cam-paigning to turn these seats redwill be strengthened by the pres-ence of active, well-organisedYoung Labour groups. Our great-est asset is our membership, andour strength lies in our numbersand our enthusiasm. Events such as the launch of

Dudley Young Labour epitomisethe hope and innovation comingfrom Young Labour activiststhroughout the country, demon-strating that YL now has vastamounts of potential.

dudley young labour launches

the clarion : April 2018 Page 15

YouthCLARION Youth pages

By Ana Oppenheim, candidate for NUS VPHigher Education

This term has seen the biggestsurge in student activism inyears.

When Universities UK an-nounced changes to the USS pen-sions scheme, threatening a cut ofaround 40%, thousands of studentsmobilised to support their staff onstrike.

Across the country studentsturned out en masse to picketlines, teach-outs, demonstrationsand, occupied over 20 campuses.

This follows other impressivecampaigns led by students in thepast year: a number of successfulrent strikes in university halls, acampaign against pay inequality inBath led to the UK’s highest-paidVice-Chancellor stepping down,and students at UAL went intooccupation to protest their univer-sity’s complicity in gentrification -to name just a few.

John McDonnell addressed a300-strong picket line at Gold-

smiths and Richard Leonard evenvisited an occupied lecture theatrein the University of Edinburgh.

It’s not new that established fig-ures of the Labour left show sup-port for the student movement:Corbyn and McDonnell wereboth vocal advocates of the 2010protests against tuition fee rises,were present at the UCL occupa-tion and have spoken at countlessstudent demonstrations ever since.

The difference, of course, is thatnow they are leading the party .

This, unfortunately, cannot besaid about the leadership of theNational Union of Students. Justas Labour inspired millions withits manifesto pledge to scrap tu-ition fees and create a cradle-to-grave National Education Service,the new NUS leadership shiedaway from even mentioning itspolicy on free education,

Instead of harnessing the powerof the mass of students who en-thusiastically voted for a debt-freefuture, NUS focused its energy onlobbying for a seat on the board ofthe Office for Students.

In November, when a thou-

sands-strong demonstration de-manding free education and livinggrants funded by taxing the rich,Corbyn filmed a video encourag-ing students to join the march -NUS President Shakira Martinundemocratically ruled out a mo-tion to support it from being heardat an NEC meeting, and wrote aFacebook post complaining thatfootage of her at a previous protestappeared in said video for a splitsecond.

When senior Labour figureswere visiting picket lines and oc-cupations, Martin dismissed occu-pations as a sign of privilege.

These are just some of the manyexamples of the growing discon-nect between the national leader-ship and activists on the ground.By the time National Conferencearrives, it is likely that more stu-dents will have slept in occupa-tions than will show up atGlasgow’s SEC centre.

When education is under fierceattack from the government andgreedy Vice-Chancellors, we needa robust movement to fight back.

At a time when student activism

is thriving again and leftwing ideasare gaining ground across society,a radical national union could offerimmense opportunities.

With its multi-million budget,millions of members and access tomedia platforms, NUS could bethrowing its weight behind mean-ingful campaigns and pushing ourmovement forward instead of lag-ging behind it.

It could pose a serious challengeto the Tories and university bosses,and put forward visionary policiesthat expand our conception ofwhat is possible.

This is why I’m standing to beNUS’ Vice-President Higher Ed-ucation, and backing other candi-dates who are part of the Corbynsurge. In particular, I’m campaign-ing for Sahaya James - an activistwith the National CampaignAgainst Fees and Cuts and Mo-mentum NCG member who isstanding to be National President. It is time for our union to re-

connect with its grassroots andprove its relevance to the stu-dents who are mobilising andwinning on their campuses.

BRING THE CORBYN SUrge into NUS

these individual struggles, but ed-ucate a new generation of futureworkplace organisers.

While we should always takecare to be grounded and not slipinto wishful fantasy, it is the casethat the potential here is huge andwe should be ambitious in ourgoals.

Ultimately it is up to us to dothe groundwork to make this hap-pen. Already, further occupationsummits are being planned forLondon and Scotland campuses.It should be the collective goal ofstudent activists to help bring to-gether this movement and fosteras much national cohesion as pos-sible, through demos, days of di-rect action and occupations.

What have Labour and Corbyngot to do with this?

Indirectly, the huge excitementthat the Labour Party fosteredaround its free education policy inlast year’s elections has led tomany campuses having a muchlarger group of politicised and

broadly left wing students thanwe have seen in decades. It’s im-portant that this is factored inwhen we ask ourselves why somany students have suddenlybeen willing to take an active rolein solidarity for this strike.

However, solidarity action hasin the vast majority of places notcome as a result of organisation byor through Labour clubs and so-cieties. Additionally, the lack ofhigh-profile support for thesestrikes from the Labour Partyleadership has also been notice-able. Why has Corbyn not beenvisiting picket lines? Or joiningroving pickets? Why has Labournot called a national demonstra-tion in support of this strike,which could have galvanised tens,if not hundreds, of thousands?

This strike has shaken nationalpolitics. Labour should see itselfas a the vehicle for translating theupsurge of struggle here into a na-tional movement that can makethe difference in catapulting itinto Government and imple-

menting its free National Educa-tion Service.

Finally, it’s important that wesee our role in making that hap-pen. Let’s get policy in support ofthe strikes passed through our

local Labour branches and CLPs. Sometimes, the leadership

will just slow as it is now. Let’sshake it into action from thegrassroots level up.

Students in occupation in Edinburgh

theclarionmag@gmail.com@Clarion_MagFacebook.com/theclarionmag

Violent crime, the police and LabourBy Ellie Clarke, Holbornand St Pancras CLP

There is no doubt the UK is experi-encing a sharp surge in violentcrime at the moment.

Moped muggings, acid attacks andstabbings aren’t media invented bo-geymen designed to sex up a slownews day. I’ve lost count of theamount of young men in my areawho have been stabbed over the lastyear. We’ve watched this build tofever pitch and shamefully justshrugged it off with the same plati-tudes over and over – “The problemis kids don’t have anything to dothese days.”

In Camden this changed on whatis now referred to as “the bloodynight”. On this one night there weretwo fatal stabbings within an hour,one critical stabbing, and many morenon-fatal. One of the young menwho died is the third person in hisfamily to be stabbed to death.

It is also true that that there havebeen huge cuts to local policing, withofficer numbers falling by 20,000since 2010. So it’s very tempting andeasy to draw and A to B line betweenthese two truths and say, well, weneed more police funding and morepolicing. My branch recently over-whelmingly passed a motion callingfor police funding to go back to pre-2010 levels. Sadiq Khan haspromised that the Met will signifi-cantly increase stop and search acrossthe capital and even the left ofLabour are happy to use police fund-ing as a stick to beat the Tories with.

But does more and tougher polic-ing actually make us any safer? Doesit do anything to keep our childrenaway from the blade? Well actually itdoes quite the opposite.

Stop and searchA ten year study by the famously

pinko lefty Metropolitan Policeshowed that stop and search had noimpact; a 10% increase in stop andsearch would only see a 0.1% de-crease in violent crime. Again,tougher sentencing does nothing toeffect violent crime and in fact makesit worse.

According to the Knives Act of1997 possession of a knife would getyou up to six months’ imprisonment.Skip forward to the 2006 ViolentCrime Reduction Act and the maxi-mum sentence is doubled from twoto four years. More people than everare being imprisoned under theseActs, yet our rates of reoffending runat 44% within a year of release. Prisonmakes people more likely to reoffend.

Drugs don’t just magically appearin our communities. There is a globalsupply chain at play and gangs haveextremely strict and exploitative hier-archical structures. Incentives likestop and search will never give youaccess to the puppet masters.

Policing itself is perverted by knee-jerk political responses. Police targetsactively hamper the fight against vi-olent crime. A Metropolitan Police

Federation report in 2014 claimedquotas for arrests and stop and search(which is already up to 10 times morelikely to target BAME people) wereunrealistic, demoralising, and encour-aged unethical behaviour. This leadsa situation where kids are ending upin the criminal justice system whohave no business being there, whichis even more alarming when you con-sider our rehabilitation rates.

What are our answers?We need to have the hard argu-

ment and make the positive case forwhy social provision and the welfarestate are the way to go. Early inter-vention programmes work. There is ahuge link between family instability,poverty and violent crime. Thingslike SureStart centres, parental train-ing, family support, youth outreachwork and after school clubs havebeen proven time and again to have abeneficial effect on the health, edu-cational attainment and behaviour ofchildren and young adults. There isalso a very pronounced link betweenschool exclusion and violent crime.You don’t often hear about how anobsession with exam results, teamed

with the chronic underfunding ofschools and a myriad of cultural andsocial issues, leads to expulsions andpertains to knife crime. But youshould.

Mental health services also need toact as preventative measures. Youcan’t just step in once shit has hit thefan. Mental health and trauma has tobe actively worked on every day.

Obviously people need to havetheir material needs met. This willcut out a lot of the basic roles thatgangs fulfil. This means clean safe so-cial housing, free education, a liveabledole, and a fully functioning NHS(including rehabilitation services).

But we also need to find a new wayby seriously calling for the legalisa-tion of drugs, not because we are coollibertarians who are down with thesesh, but because until this happenswe will always be fighting a losingbattle. The black market drug trade isworth a mind-boggling amount ofmoney and where there are drugsthere is violent crime. GeorgiaGould, leader of Camden Council,recently said, “if you engage in recre-ational drug use you’re implicated inchild exploitation” but this is misdi-rection. For as long as we continue to pre-

tend that the criminalisation ofdrugs does anything but cause mis-ery, violence and mass incarcera-tion, we are all implicated in childexploitation.

£1 (unwaged 50p) A socialist magazine by Labour and Momentum activists

issue 7: May 2017

theissue 14: April 2018 clarion

On 14 March, socialist Rio deJaneiro city council memberMarielle Franco, a prominentcritic of police brutality and themilitary occupation of her city,was assassinated. Tens of thou-sands have protested acrossBrazil. We send solidarity.

•More at bit.ly/2GMvwg3