One Million Green Jobs Now!

The Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union Group has produced a 50 page pamphlet, ONE MILLION CLIMATE JOBS NOW. This comes out of an alliance of a wide range of unions, campaigns and experts.

This is not a policy report intended to be read by a few and gather dust. It is the first step in a national campaign to make the government employ a million unemployed workers to save the climate. It contains the arguments workers need for building that campaign. It will take mass action to make the government act. But first we have to convince people. Here is how we start:

You can get one copy for £2 or ten at a time for £15 from: The Campaign against Climate Change, www.campaingncco.org, info@campaigncc.org, or 0207-833-9311, or from the following people at union head offices:

Anne Elliott-Day at PCS

Manuel Cortes at TSSA

Tony Kearns at CWU

Janet Pantland at UCU.

Then sell the pamphlet at all the union, political and environmental events you can.

The key step is to get a small group of union activists together to start organising. Four people in a room in your town is enough. The Campaign union group will send a speaker. Contact Martin Empson on 07958535231.

Then contact union branches and workplace groups in your town. Ask the reps to take five or ten copies. If they take it and like it, try to get a speaker to a branch meeting or stewards meeting. Contact by phone is better than email, contact in person is best.

Organise a public meeting for One Million Climate Jobs Now in January or Feb. This does not have to be large. All it has to be is the largest meeting of union members about climate ever in your city. That’s not very big. For speakers contact Martin Empson 0795853231.

The Campaign will be sending out copies of a petition and a model union resolution, and will campaign for the TUC to call a national demonstration.

A longer report will come out in March. And the Campaign against Climate Change will have a national conference on Saturday March 15 in London to discuss how we organise to win a million new jobs.

Respect conference

Some of the more senior members of the Mac Uaid clan used to mortify their flesh by going on pilgrimage to Lough Derg. It involves fasting, getting by on black tea and dry bread, walking barefoot, and keeping continuously awake for a period of 24 hours. My occasional trips to Birmingham serve the same purpose without improving my chances in the hereafter.

Yesterday’s Respect conference took place in Sparkbrook, the constituency which Salma Yaqoob has a strong chance of winning in next year’s election. There were about two hundred delegates with a pretty good geographical spread from Southend, Dorset and Liverpool as well as the Birmingham and London redoubts. It’s worth mentioning that the conference voted to drop the “Unity Coalition” tag and adopt the new name The Respect Party.

The first part of the conference was marked by a vigorous and mature debate over a couple of major strategic issues. Salma opened the morning session which was themed around “one society, many cultures”. She explained how she had got into politics as a result of the wave of anti-Muslim prejudice after September 11. She rightly attributed the rise of the BNP to the pro-war, pro-capital politics of the three major parties. As if it were necessary she reaffirmed that she was opposed to the attacks on New York and London, as well as any attacks on innocent people. In a backhanded tribute to her local profile someone has taken the trouble to produce a glossy leaflet which has been posted to anyone with a white sounding name on the local electoral register which aims to put her and Respect in the same camp as the demonstrators who protested in Luton at the troops’ homecoming parade. You don’t do a job like that unless you are seriously worried she’s going to win the seat. Accusing Gordon Brown in his recent speech on immigration of pandering to racism she countered that the best way to oppose racism is to tackle it head on and went on to call for investment in housing, infrastructure and and working class people to cut racism at its root.

Racism and the rise of the far right dominated the discussion that followed. One speaker said that in his industry jobs were being taken and wages driven down  by skilled workers from Eastern Europe.  This is a real concern in sections of the working class and Salma struck the perfect note in acknowledging his concerns by describing the collapse of the manufacturing sector, Labour’s reliance on the City and trickle down theory to create jobs and the failure of union leaders to organise workers to defend their conditions.

Much of the rest of the discussion was over the way to deal with the rise of the far right. On the general principle that a new party is needed for working people there was no dissent expressed. On the issue of whether or not to call for state bans there was disagreement, broadly speaking along the lines that have already been discussed at length on this site and elsewhere.  Summarising the debate Salma said “we do not fetishise tactics. At times it’s right to take to the streets.” Some of us might quibble with the weight that she attached to complimentary statements from senior police officers and backing from the Lib Dems. However a point that some lose sight of in this discussion is that Respect’s leadership makes no claims to be revolutionary Marxist and that a relatively new organisation is debating its tactics against the far right in a developing situation.

In victory, magnanimity. Not

The second section was on the theme “resisting the cuts agenda” and had motions on electoral strategy, the crisis, the politics of our election campaign, electoral alliances and the People’s Charter. This was introduced by George Galloway. Revisiting some of the theme’s from the first session he insisted that he was standing only as a Respect candidate and not as part of any alliance with minor parties, specifically the Communist Party and the Socialist Party. Asked a direct question as to who Respect supporters should vote for if there is no Respect candidate he said that they should vote Labour, though he did make several exceptions including Caroline Lucas, Peter Tatchell, Dave Nellist and candidates standing against particularly venal ministers like Geoff Hoon, adding that assigning degrees of venality to Labour ministers is no easy thing. The criteria were that they had to have a chance of winning; be credible or opposing one of a small band of Labour ministers. His reasoning was that a Labour government, no matter how bad, is more favourable to working class people than any Tory regime. He also argued that when Respect wins three seats in Westminster next year that it will become the magnet for all those seeking an alternative to Labour and, for this reason, has no need of alliances with the left.

My take on this is that a building strategy based solely on winning elections is as flawed as a financial strategy which relies solely on being lucky at the bookmakers. Salma had already indicated the lengths to which her opponents are willing to go to deprive her of  the seat and there is already a well known history of electoral dodgy dealings in Birmingham. Then there’s the small fact that elections are very unpredictable. Effectively this approach requires achieving a set of victories no small party has ever managed before and then assuming that everyone else will want to join it. Or, more precisely, everyone else who is not already on the organised left. A recurring theme in George Galloway’s contributions was use of the phrases “left group”, “Trotskyist” and “far left” as terms of abuse in much the same way you might call someone a “Bon Jovi fan” or a “Tory”.

A vote to take an emergency motion on supporting the child of No2EU was defeated by a margin of just over two to one. The rest of the resolutions were accepted. As in the morning session the debate had been frank but conducted with maturity and without rancour. Then, in a interesting new procedural innovation, George Galloway replied to the debate after the vote had been taken.

One would have hoped that he’d have remembered Churchill’s maxim “in victory, magnanimity”. Instead he decided to give the small group of child of No2EU supporters the same treatment that Socialist Resistance had received from him, John Rees and Lindsey German at the 2005 conference or Neil Kinnock doled out to Militant. It was ugly though at least this time there was not a howling mob ready for a lynching. He asserted than “No2EU had objectively helped Nick Griffin get elected by standing against the Green Party’s Peter Cranie. The good bit was that he shares a healthy distrust of the progressive nature of prison officers as a mass. On the negative side any of the valid criticisms he did make of child of No2EU, including its lack union support, the certainty of its small vote etc were lost in a flurry of contempt for the organised left and the strong sense that a group of the leadership was determined to drive out two newly elected members of the national council and a small number of members in Southwark. It poisoned the rest of the day.

The international debate was squeezed by pressure of time and was followed by some constitutional housekeeping.

On reflection the decision to try to pulverise the supporters of the new coalition was the worst possible choice a leadership could have made. It sent a message that dissenting political views are not something to be given space and time to show that they are right or wrong. Instead they are something to be ridiculed and isolated. Quite how these methods will attract people looking for a home outside the Labour Party  is something that is not apparent.

Boycott Israeli products – do try this at home

Have you ever wondered how you would do a supermarket boycott action? This helpful video shows Manchester PSC’s recent visit to Morrison’s supermarket in Chorlton. 25 protestors entered the store, collected Israeli and illegal settlement goods on sale, leafleted shoppers, and staged a protest at customer service.

“We could ask groups of activists to participate in a X-factor style competition of who can do the best supermarket action” suggests film maker Richard.

 

 

=================================
Manchester Palestine Solidarity Campaign
http://www.psc-manchester.org.uk/
email: contact@psc-manchester.org.uk

END THE SIEGE OF GAZA
BOYCOTT ISRAELI GOODS

Race and Class in Britain: a Critique of the statistical basis for Critical Race Theory in Britain

Dave Hill is Professor of Education Policy at the University of Northampton, also at Middlesex University as well as Chief Editor, Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies www.jceps.com . He has written this piece of which I am publishing the introduction and conclusion. The theoretical and Policy/ Political Implications section is only briefly developed. He develops this more in `A Marxist Critique of Culturalist/Idealist Analyses of ‘Race’, Caste and Class’ in the Indian Marxist online journal Radical Notes, at http://radicalnotes.com/content/view/68/39/.

Dave is interested in readers’ comments.

Summary

In this paper I critique what I analyse as the misuse of statistics in arguments put forward by some Critical Race Theorists in Britain showing that `Race’ `trumps’ Class in terms of underachievement at 16+ exams in England and Wales.

I ask two questions, and make these two associated criticisms, concerning the representation of these statistics:

1. With respect to `race’ and educational attainment, what is the validity of ignoring the presence of the (high achieving) Indian/ Indian heritage group of pupils- one of the two largest minority groups in England and Wales? This group has been ignored, indeed, left completely out of statistical representations- charts- showing educational achievement levels of different ethnic groups.

2. With respect to social class and educational attainment, what is the validity of selecting two contiguous social class/ strata in order to show social class differences in educational attainment?

At a theoretical level, using Marxist work (2) I argue for a notion of `raced’ and gendered class, in which some (but not all) minority ethnic groups are racialised or xeno-racialised) and suffer a `race penalty’ in, for example, teacher labelling and expectation, treatment by agencies of the state, such as the police, housing, judiciary, health services and in employment.

I critique some CRT treatment of social class analysis and underachievement as unduly dismissive and extraordinarily subdued (e.g. a critique I make of Gillborn, 2008). I offer a Marxist critique of Critical Race Theory from statistical and theoretical perspectives, showing that it is not `whiteness’, a key claim of CRT, that most privileges or underprivileges school students in England and Wales.

This analysis has policy implications regarding school/ school district/ national education policies, and also wider social and economic policies such as social cohesion, exclusion/ inclusion, and addressing wider economic and power inequalities in European societies (Booth, 2008; Toynbee and Walker, 2008; Hill, 2009a, 2009b; Hill and Kumar, 2009).

Accepting the urgent need for anti-racist awareness, policy and activism- from the classroom to the street- I welcome the anti-racism that CRT promulgates and analyses, while criticising its over-emphasis on `white supremacy’- and its statistical misrepresentations.

Expected Outcomes

This paper is a contribution to a Europe wide debate about race and class exclusion from educational success and alienation from/ integration into school success, entry to higher education, and social cohesion and stability. It also relates to the political debate about whether a focus on anti-racism is enough, for anti-racists, or whether (as Marxists argue) the focus should also be on creating class unity, similar to the `Black and White, Unite and Fight’ anti National Front activism of the 1970s, which focussed also on class politics. The debate will continue. It is a debate among academics, equality activists and governments concerned about `social cohesion’. It is also a debate among political groups in the UK, and elsewhere, today.

The findings of this paper are that `white supremacy’ as a CRT form of explaining inequalities is not only not supported by statistics, but that in terms of theorising and deriving policy from theory, such a term is too blunt, ignores xeno-racism, and the racialisation of the poor white working class (as, for example, `chavs’- a perjorative term used to describe and vilify unskilled and poor sections of the white working class-) and downplays social class factors in educational and social alienation.

………… Introductory Extract ends

Support UNISON activist Caroline Bedale

CAROLINE BEDALE from Manchester has been banned from holding UNISON office for 8 years. All charges relate to the campaign to reinstate Karen Reissmann – who had been sacked by her employer (Manchester Mental Health Trust and Social Care Trust) – and who was supported by UNISON in this campaign, not just for reinstatement to her job but for the right for trade unionists to speak out against cuts and privatisation.

Caroline Bedale has been found guilty by a UNISON Disciplinary Committee of charges relating to things she did after UNISON withdrew legal assistance from Karen Reissmann, just before Karen‟s case was due to be heard by an Employment Tribunal. The disciplinary penalty means she will be barred from holding union office for 8 years.

What Would You Have Done?
Legal assistance was withdrawn because Karen decided not to take some legal advice. Only the legal assistance was withdrawn – UNISON policy continued to support the campaign for Karen‟s reinstatement and for the right for trade union activists to speak out against cuts and privatisation.
What would you have done if your branch was under attack from a vindictive employer who had sacked the Chairperson of your branch because of their trade union work and speaking out against cuts and privatisation? Wouldn‟t you have been dismayed if, after an unprecedented strike by health workers and a high profile union campaign for reinstatement, the union‟s legal assistance had been withdrawn? Given that the union policy of campaigning for Karen‟s reinstatement still continued wouldn’t you have done what you could to defend and support her?

What Caroline is charged with

A: “Seeking to secure alternative legal advice and representation for Karen Reissmann, whose legal advice and representation had been terminated by the Union”.

B: “campaigning against UNISON policy” – that policy is defined as “the decision of UNISON to withdraw legal representation from Karen Reissmann” – and that Caroline has acted in a manner prejudicial to the Union in so doing.

C: “using UNISON resources to campaign against UNISON policy” – Caroline is said to have campaigned against the Union’s rules and policy, and acted in a manner prejudicial to the Union in so doing. It is not specified what rules she is meant to have campaigned against, and the “policy‟ is actually a “decision‟ not a policy.

What Caroline did – as Joint Branch Secretary

1. At Karen‟s request, Caroline sent a letter to Salford Unemployed and Community Resource Centre (SUCRC) asking if they would “look into taking on” Karen‟s case if UNISON did not agree to continue the legal assistance. No UNISON funds were used for Karen‟s new legal representation.
2. As agreed by the Branch Committee, Caroline sent a letter to all branches in September 2008 to update them on Karen‟s case, and to say that the campaign continued for her reinstatement and for the right for trade unionists to speak out against cuts and privatisation. The letter asked branches to sign an open letter and petition to Ivan Lewis MP. A branch delegation together with the NW Regional Secretary, Frank Hont, was planning to meet him about Karen.

The letter mentioned that the Union had withdrawn legal assistance, and said that the Branch Committee “think this is a shame”. That was the only comment on the withdrawal of legal assistance – but this is said to be „campaigning against UNISON policy‟ and prejudicial to the union. There was NO campaign to get the union to reinstate legal assistance. There WAS a continuing campaign in support of Karen, supported at national, regional and branch levels. Caroline was found not guilty of breaking any rules by sending this letter, but was found to have acted in a manner prejudicial to the union.

What Caroline did – in a PRIVATE capacity, but which she is accused of having done “whilst Joint Branch Secretary”. This is a crucial issue for all union activists – we must be allowed to do things in our private life which are not under the control and scrutiny of the union.

3. She allowed her private telephone numbers to be used as the contact point on a press release from the independent  “Reinstate Karen Reissmann Campaign‟.

4. Caroline sent an email from her own computer using her email to a closed discussion email group for members of the United Left in UNISON, to let them know what was happening in Karen‟s case. She said that legal assistance had been withdrawn and that there were attempts to persuade the union to reinstate legal support. This email is said to have been “in furtherance of a campaign against a decision of UNISON to withdraw legal representation from Karen Reissmann”. There was NO such campaign to try to get the legal representation reinstated. A comment in an email does not constitute a campaign. Furthermore, it was from her private email. Caroline allows the branch to use that email address for convenience. It is not a UNISON resource, it is hers.

Again, she was found not guilty of breaking any rules by sending this email, but was found guilty of acting in a manner prejudicial to the union.

Comments

By these four pieces of evidence Caroline is said to have broken various rules, and to have acted in a manner prejudicial to the union. It is not clear how Caroline has broken all these rules, nor how her actions are “prejudicial to the union‟.

Is This Disciplinary Action Fair?

Caroline does not deserve to have been found guilty of the charges. She has given almost the whole of her working life to the trade union, for the benefit of members and to support public services. She does not deserve the penalty of being barred from holding any union office for 8 years – as she is 58, that will take her well beyond retirement.

Caroline is said to have acted “in a manner prejudicial to the Union and/or her Branch”. No members of her branch have complained about the way she conducts business in the branch, about her representation in individual cases, about her organising and support for groups of members, about her negotiating skills with the employer, about her tireless work for the branch, for the union and for public services.

Caroline is respected by UNISON members and by other trade unionists for her honesty and integrity and total commitment to trade union principles and to members.

Support Caroline Bedale

If you would like to show your support for Caroline and protest against the disciplinary action, you could:
 Send a letter to Dave Prentis, General Secretary, and to Gerry Gallagher, President of the NEC, at UNISON, 1 Mabledon Place, London WC1H 9AJ.
 Consider the model motion in your Branch.
 Send copies to the Support Group for Caroline, supportcarolinebedale@googlemail.com
 Attend meetings called by the Support Group. Monday 23rd November, 7.30pm, Friends Meeting House, Mount Street (near Manchester Town Hall).
 A website is being set up – check it for information.
www.supportcarolinebedale.co.uk

All I want for Christmas is a Trotsky number four shirt

“The revolution will inevitably awaken in the British working class the deepest passions which have been diverted along artificial channels with the aid of football.”

Leon Trotsky

Philosophy Football have come up with the must have Christmas gift for the leftist in your life.

Every team needs a fourth international, though expect plenty of red cards for dissent. The quote is genuine, taken from Trotsky’s 1925 Where is Britain Going? Though his prediction of an impending British revolution hasn’t proved quite as prescient as his analysis of the drain on class consciousness the obsession with football can provide.

Available here

 

Protest to defend anti-war soldier

Lance Corporal Joe Glenton, the soldier who faces desertion charges for refusing to return to Afghanistan, has been arrested and charged with five further offences for leading Stop the War’s demonstration in London on 24 October and for expressing his opposition to the media in defiance of orders.

The new charges carry a maximum of ten years imprisonment in addition to the sentence of three to four years that Joe could get if the desertion charge is upheld.

Joe’s mother, Sue Glenton, has spoken out against his arrest:
“You’ve got government ministers, army commanders and MPs speaking every day in support of the war. What’s so scary about a Lance Corporal having his say? My son is only speaking out for what he thinks is right.”

Joe’s arrest and imprisonment are signs of panic by the government and military commanders, faced with an ever growing majority of the British public opposing the war and an increasing number of prominent voices in the media calling for the withdrawal of British troops.

A poll published in the Independent shows that only one in five voters believes that Britain’s military presence in Afghanistan is helping to protect the country from terrorism, as Gordon Brown insists. The same poll shows that 48 percent of voters think the war in Afghanistan increases the risk of
domestic terrorist attack.

Stop the War has launched a campaign to defend Joe Glenton and his right to freedom of speech. (For updates see http://www.stopwar.org.uk.)

A protest has been called outside the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall on Thursday 12 November at 5pm and we list below what you can do to support the only serving soldier who has so far had the courage to stand up for what many in the army believe; that this is a futile and unwinnable war.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

* EMERGENCY PROTEST AT THE MINISTRY OF DEFENCE
If you live in London, please try to join the protest on
Thursday 12 November, 5pm, at the Ministry of Defence,
Whitehall (opposite Downing Street)
FACEBOOK EVENT (Please circulate): http://bit.ly/2h9IOf

* WRITE TO DEFENCE SECRETARY BOB AINSWORTH
EMAIL: defencesecretary or ainsworthr
WRITE: Secretary of State for Defence, Floor 5, Main Building,
Whitehall, London, SW1A 2HB
FAX: 020 7218 6538

* COLLECT PETITION SIGNATURES
The Defend Joe Glenton petition can be downloaded here:
http://bit.ly/10gDKb

* WRITE LETTERS OF SUPPORT TO JOE GLENTON
Lance Corporal Joe Glenton
Military Corrective Training Centre (MCTC)
Berechurch Hall Camp
Colchester
Essex CO2 9NU

* EMAIL SUPPORT
defendjoeglenton

The deeply weird execution of Gary Glitter

In an easily imaginable parallel universe New Labour reintroduced the death penalty for murderers and child rapists in 2005. Its first victim was convicted paedophile and 70s musician Gary Glitter. Travellers from this parallel universe took control of Channel 4 and screened a documentary about it tonight.

Observer journalists and former Sun ranters took their chance for a few degrading minutes of TV exposure and were intercut with actors in the docudrama format. Right wing Tory and occasional reality TV star Anne Widdecombe was there too. She was probably serious when she insisted that evil exists and there’d be a lot less of it around if more people were hanged.  Only Hilton McRae emerged with any credit from ninety minutes of undiluted oddness. He did a first class job of depicting the singer’s unstable, exuberant creepiness and represented him as an isolated, unrepentant, unsupportable pariah who collapses in tears reading his final statement. Which is probably what would happen.

To the extent that the programme had a thesis it was that majority opinion in Britain has had its wish granted and capital punishment has been restored. The one thing that it did well was to present what the death penalty in the 21st century might look like. The only real changes are that the judge no longer says “and may God have mercy on your soul”; the condemned prisoner has to wear a bright orange jump suit, in a Guantanamo stylee and the hangman is now a “hanging technician”. The tradtional rope and drop are unchanged.

Wrestling with the surrealism of the whole thing is made no easier by the specially commissioned piece of music shown as the executioners walk towards the cell and Glitter cracks up. Imagine a cheapo drum and bass backing track with clips of Gary Glitter orating from the dock. Not easy, is it?

Denied any dignity even at the end the script’s last words for its anti-hero are; “This isn’t happening. It’s gotta be a wind up.”

In what can only have been a wilful attempt to make the whole farrago even more bizarre and meaningless than it already was, the impact of the voiceover during the closing credits inviting viewers to join a discussion of the issues was slightly reduced by the spectre of celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay’s ugly mug grinning across the right half of the screen.

Not even Jack Straw or the Tories have mooted bringing back the death penalty in recent years. The topic is a complete non-debate in Europe and you can only wonder to what degree Colombian marching powder influenced the commissioning and broadcasting of one of the oddest bits of television you’re ever likely to see.

The only bit of good news for Glitter in the whole thing was that he would have picked up a few quid in song royalties now that his work now goes unheard.

Fighting the far right – video

 This is the video of Alf Filer’s talk at a Socialist Resistance meeting a few days ago at which he explored some of the themes in his recent article.

 

Chris Harman: a life in the heart of the struggle

This is the Socialist Resistance editorial board’s tribute.

Chris Harman, the editor of International Socialism and a central committee member of the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), died from a massive heart attack on November 6th. He was 66. We, and others in the Fourth International, join in sending condolences to Chris’ family, friends and comrades.

A convinced revolutionary socialist all his adult life, Harman had played a key role in founding Socialist Worker and editing it until 2004. Harman was an internationalist from the start. That was reflected in myriad ways, from his participation in the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign in the the late 1960 to the symbolic location of his death: Cairo.

Harman was a polymath, gifted as an author, speaker, editor, leader and economist. His book The Lost Revolution: Germany 1918 to 1923 is a powerful tool for revolutionary socialists.. His greatest work, A Peoples’ History of the World, is invaluable. He was also outstanding as an activist and leader of the SWP and its forerunner, the International Socialists. Harman played a major role in helping the organisation develop its political direction and in explaining its choices to a radical audience. His famous 1992 debate with Ernest Mandel on the bureaucratic Stalinist dictatorships in Quatriéme Internationale was translated into English and is still in print as The Fallacies of State Capitalism. His analysis of SWP split from Respect was valued even by those who opposed the SWP’s decision: it was translated by Inprecor and published in Respect: Documents of the Crisis as the clearest exposition of the SWP’s viewpoint.

Harman took his role as an SWP leader seriously, but that did not stop him from having a transparent and comradely working relationship with socialists outside the SWP. Last month he was an active participant in the IIRE’s economists seminar, in which most participants were Fourth Internationalists. While there, he spoke at a public meeting sponsored by Grenzeloos, the magazine of the Fourth International in The Netherlands.

As one of our comrades, Clement, put it on hearing the news: “Harman was for me the person from which I discovered Marxism, and which showed and revealed that revolutionary engagement was compatible with highly demanding scientific investigation for understanding and changing the world.” Harman’s openness, his books and articles, his work in the struggle and the contribution he made to developing the socialist consciousness of tens of thousands of people are a fitting monument to his revolutionary life.

November 7 2009.